cooler. drier. better.

GNOME 3 is not designed for people

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:45:42 -0400

Language Log: Don't know much about psychometrics

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:35:47 -0400

Language Log: Don't know much about psychometrics:

Language Log’s Mark Liberman reminds us of the importance of well-structured tests and reasoned analysis of their results:

The education professionals will see things in terms of the urgent need for more of their guidance in reforming the educational system. The domain experts will point out that their vital field needs more emphasis and more funding.

As for the politicians, they’ll blame the sad effects of others’ mistaken or even evil agendas, and the failure to give enough power to their own faction.

"our broader design goals"

Fri, 27 May 2011 19:37:53 -0400

…I thought it would be a simple matter of configuring the Launcher bar to pop up somewhere else on the screen. Like the right side. Or the bottom. This would be simple, I reasoned, because any other Linux distro I have used would let me do this.

Brian Profitt ran afoul of Ubuntu’s new “There’s only one way to do it” design philosophy when trying to move the new launcher bar in Unity to some other edge of the screen. He points to Mark Shuttleworth’s infuriatingly glib response to a user’s request that its location be configurable:

I’m afraid that won’t work with our broader design goals, so we won’t implement that. We want the launcher always close to the Ubuntu button.

Well, the thing is, we should be able to put that button somewhere else, too.

I have the same issue with Gnome Shell in Fedora 15, and Gnome has its own crew of annoying designers telling me I use my computers wrong, but I remain hopeful that some solution can be reached.

Or I can just switch to Windows. Ballmer and Gates let me put that Start menu anywhere I damn well please.

Skype for Asterisk will not be available for sale or activation after July 26, 2011

Wed, 25 May 2011 08:25:49 -0400

Skype for Asterisk will not be available for sale or activation after July 26, 2011:

Microsoft’s hobby is buying things and making them less useful.

Apple-fying your software doesn't work if you don't control the hardware. Or the users.

Fri, 20 May 2011 11:00:06 -0400

John Poelstra doesn’t like that Gnome 3 suspends the computer when you close the lid of your laptop, and there’s no way to configure that behaviour.

Well, there’s no way to configure it in the GUI, which is basically the same thing.

Poelstra has this to say:

This is going too far. I’ve never liked the suspend-on-close behavior, but I tolerate it on the MacBook because suspend always resumes. Apple is in the unique position of fully controlling the software and a finite amount of hardware. GNOME and the Linux kernel are not.

He quotes Allan Day, a Gnome Design Team member:

The vast majority of people do not like lots of settings: they find them difficult to use, and it makes them think that GNOME isn’t intended for them.

You know what makes a given piece of software feel like it’s not intended for me? If it only works in one way, and I don’t like that way, and I can’t change that way. That software feels like it was designed for use by UX designers. Or Apple users.

I have nothing against Apple or its users, but Apple’s products are designed to do the things that Apple thinks I should want them to do, not the things I actually want them to do, so I choose not to use them.

The stupid thing is, I started digging into all this because I agree with the UX designers that suspend-on-close is a good, sensible default behaviour. I just think the hibernate-on-close is better for me. And I had to dig deep to find a way to do that, because somewhere along the way, the UX designers started running the asylum and turned sensible defaults into “optimal behaviour”.

The commands for setting laptop lid closing behaviour in Fedora are here.

ZDNET's Ed Burnette on the Android data leak scare

Thu, 19 May 2011 11:00:06 -0400

ZDNET's Ed Burnette on the Android data leak scare:

The story is getting a lot of attention because it was noticed on Android, but it’s not, in fact, an Android vulnerability. It’s a security bug in any program that does not encrypt its authorization tokens.

[…]

Should you be worried? Until a patch is available (either through the Market or an Android update) the problem can be avoided by not using the affected applications in a vulnerable situation. What’s a vulnerable situation? Based on the information we have so far, IF you sync your calendar or contacts while using the open WiFi of the local StarBucks or airport, and IF somebody within 50 feet or so of you is waiting for you to do that and is running a packet sniffer, and IF you think they might do harm by looking at your doctor’s appointments and boyfriend’s phone number, THEN you might want to take precautions such as turning off WiFi until you get back home to your secure network. Otherwise, in my opinion it’s not worth getting too worked up about.

It’s being fixed server-side right now.

is changing language tantamount to changing math?

Wed, 18 May 2011 11:01:00 -0400

is changing language tantamount to changing math?:

Turns out it isn’t.

Configurable NotifyOSD Bubbles For Ubuntu 11.04

Tue, 17 May 2011 11:02:06 -0400

Configurable NotifyOSD Bubbles For Ubuntu 11.04:

Canonical appears to have given up on providing an easily-customized Gnome-based desktop environment, so it’s good to see modifications like this coming from the community.

Clippy's back

Mon, 16 May 2011 15:14:50 -0400

Clippy's back:

Perhaps the cartoon search dog from XP will return in a feature length film to coincide with the launch of Windows 8?

check. check. sibilance. sibilance. check.

Fri, 13 May 2011 11:00:05 -0400

Photo: Sound check #3 by teeba

This blog’s ten months of dormancy ends today! You’ll note that the URL is now cooldry.ca, a major upgrade from the old cooldry.tumblr.ca.

Since I last posted here, my life has changed drastically:

I got married
I flew in an airplane
I joined an organized sports league

Some things have stayed the same:

I still live in the same house in the same town
I share this house with a beautiful woman and a ridiculously cute dog
The woman continues to tolerate me, except now she is contractually obligated

I have, however, become old:

I wore a toque last week. In May.
We went to a bar in Toronto for my friend Laura’s birthday last Saturday. I wore a cardigan.
I am all the time yelling at the television.

I plan on continuing to post here with some regularity. We all know how that works out.

a conversation about transportation with Sherry's four-year-old nephew who lives in Utopia, the land time forgot

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 22:11:34 -0400

Nephew: What kind of truck do you drive?

Me: I don’t drive a truck.

Nephew: Well then how do you get to work?

Me: I ride my bike.

Nephew: [facial expression indicates mind is blown]

To be fair, in Utopia, everything with four wheels is called a truck, except things that I call “four-wheelers”, which the Utopians call bikes.

suit to kill

Tue, 25 May 2010 18:50:56 -0400

My dad needed a suit on account of certain people are getting married. After hitting the usual suspects on the main drag and finding a very promising suit at Moores, we hit the Big/Tall store in the south end of town just so we could say we’d done our due diligence. Also because that store is Starbuck’s-adjacent. My parents love that place now. It’s like I don’t even know them anymore.

The shop was staffed by a taciturn and unhelpful man who didn’t even bother to pull out a tape measure or help us reach the merchandise, and a teenaged boy wearing a black suit who loitered behind a cash register. After my dad tried on a few jackets and we began to doubt that the place had anything we were interested in, the teenager stepped out from behind the counter and I saw the red flag that meant we had to leave immediately.

Poor little apprentice suit seller had done up all three buttons on his jacket. We made haste toward the parking lot.

Oh hell yes it’s happening.

Mon, 03 May 2010 09:50:27 -0400

Oh hell yes it’s happening.

I dreamed this and everybody wants to read about other people's dreams on the internet

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:51:32 -0400

I was hanging around in a cul-de-sac that was very similar to the cul-de-sac where my parents live. All the garage doors were open, and all the garages had cars in them, and all the cars were stacked on top of things. One garage had 50’s-era Corvette propped up on two chest freezers. Another had two Pontiac Grand Prixs stacked one on top of the other, both a little crumpled and crushed. Their bumpers had metal adhesive lettering on them that read “EAT MEAT”.

How to upgrade Deluge BitTorrent client in Ubuntu Lucid

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:40:00 -0400

Deluge is a BitTorrent client available for Linux, Unix, Windows and Mac OS X. It is my preferred client for Ubuntu. Unfortunately, the version (1.2.0) included in the repositories for Lucid doesn’t want to stay running for more than half an hour on my machine.

The quick and simple fix is to add the Deluge team’s PPA (personal package archive) to the list of repositories in Ubuntu’s package management system.

In a terminal, run sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deluge-team/ppa
Now update your list of software sources by running sudo aptitude update
If you already have Deluge installed, upgrade to the newer version by running sudo aptitude safe-upgrade. If not, run sudo aptitude install deluge.

Now you have Deluge 1.2.1 installed and it should keep running till you tell it to stop.

Ray Kurzweil on Avatar: This movie is not very realistic

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:30:00 -0500

Ray Kurzweil on Avatar: This movie is not very realistic

"Why, when we read left to right is the most destructive action first?"

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:33:24 -0500

“Why, when we read left to right is the most destructive action first?”

- Ivanka Majic, on the serious thinking that went into the decision to rearrange window controls in Ubuntu Lucid [via ars]

Benjamin Humphrey: 16 things that could be improved in Ubuntu 10.04

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:54:00 -0500

Benjamin Humphrey: 16 things that could be improved in Ubuntu 10.04:

“It’s not easy for the average user to change [the window controls] back to the right (Gconf is NOT easy!)”

Benjamin hits on a few things I had noticed, and a number of things that passed me by — I eschew gnome-panel and its terrible applets, and they feature heavily here. One thing I had missed is that the new window control placement and order breaks many existing themes.

They’re fit-and-finish issues, but important ones, not only for providing a smooth transition for adopters, but for continuing to improve the experience for established users. Plenty of time before the end of April to address these concerns.

[via omgubuntu]

How to Fix the Window Buttons in Ubuntu Lucid

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:06:00 -0500

Window buttons in Ubuntu have always been at the top right of the window, arranged, left to right, Minimize, Maximize and Close. Like so:

In the most recent Alpha release of Ubuntu, the window buttons have been moved to the top left of the window and rearranged, like so:

Here is how to move the buttons back to their original location and order.

Press Alt-F2 and run gconf-editor
In the tree on the left, navigate to apps/metacity/general
Right-click button_layout and click Edit key…
Change the value to :minimize,maximize,close and click OK
Quit gconf-editor
There is no step 6

The colon in “:minimize,maximize,close” represents the window’s title. You can shuffle those elements around however you like. No one will yell at you.

ubuntu finally replacing xsane scanning app with something that doesn't hurt my face

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:09:28 -0500

ubuntu finally replacing xsane scanning app with something that doesn't hurt my face:

This is good, because xsane is friggin’ complicated and gnome-scan never really got off the ground.