Sounds like they're trying to stick to a name with more lasting weight and a sense of authority. A name like Recursity may be trendy (a portmanteau ending in the letter 'y'), but I suspect ten years from now it will look very tacky.
Flickr launched in 2004 and, at 11 years old, doesn't look very tacky (Yahoo's meddling aside). It also seems like a good problem to have - it needs to last ten years first. If the name's a problem then, the option to rebrand is still there.
As an aside, I decided to try out Cinnamon on my Debian box, and I actually found it to be a breath of fresh air. It's a modern approach to the non-bloated Gnome desktop of years ago. Reminded me a bit of when I first used xfce; very clean and straightforward. I feel Gnome and Unity try far too hard to dazzle and stand out, when it reality it all just gets in the way. No comment on KDE since I haven't tried it in a long time.
Some day though I'll go back to straight DWM, my old love.
I have very mixed feelings about some of the stuff Gnome is doing. Some of them are at least interesting from a certain point of view, like sandboxing applications. I get why this would be nice to have in corporate environments, and that brings money to Linux, which Linux does need. I also think it's solving problems at the wrong level for everyone else. (Selective) communication between sandboxed applications seems to be something they have no coherent framework for. Besides, as many Android applications show, savagely enforcing sandboxing has had questionable effects on privacy (as applications that really want your data will happily just request permissions to do everything and refuse to work otherwise). As for the security gains of such an approach, I'm skeptical about the effectiveness they add to an open source environment. What remains is offering additional protection against bugs (that e.g. allow otherwise unauthorized access). But proper desktop sandboxing is so incredibly complex that it's hard not to think a far more efficient approach would be fixing those bugs in the first place.
For better or for worse, they're also experimenting with a lot of new approaches to UI. Which is pretty much how innovation happens -- something that computer desktops could use since everyone else is, at this point, imitating either Mac OS or Windows 95. However, an opt-out solution for users who are happy to encourage innovation, but would rather not be the victim of failed experiments every other release would be nice...
I have positive feelings about the effort of Gnome to sandbox applications. When you want to run closed applications it is obvious why you would want to sandbox. Even with open applications there is an additional security layer which is _very_ valuable because security related bugs are the normality, not the exception. The permissions system in android has had a good effect on privacy since you can deny access to private data for individual apps, and if need be to not make it crash you can just feed it empty or random data.
> Even with open applications there is an additional security layer which is _very_ valuable because security related bugs are the normality, not the exception.
Considering that regularly writing secure servers or browsers seems to be beyond our reach for the moment, I think it's a safe bet to say that writing a secure sandboxing system is even farther beyond our reach. I doubt there is as much to gain in terms of security as we may think.
> The permissions system in android has had a good effect on privacy since you can deny access to private data for individual apps, and if need be to not make it crash you can just feed it empty or random data.
I know that Xprivacy does that in a way that makes me seriously question its security ( if these guys are correct, at least: http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/59093/how-does-th... ). Not sure about PDroid and other solutions (my phone isn't supported by Cyanogen Mod). But it looks like a big pile of hacks over another big pile of hacks to me.
> Considering that regularly writing secure servers or browsers seems to be beyond our reach for the moment, I think it's a safe bet to say that writing a secure sandboxing system is even farther beyond our reach. I doubt there is as much to gain in terms of security as we may think.
It is harder to breach two layers of security at the same time than one.
This is a vague argumentum ad hominem against a third party. I don't see relevance to my arguments.
> Not sure about PDroid and other solutions (my phone isn't supported by Cyanogen Mod). But it looks like a big pile of hacks over another big pile of hacks to me.
I don't see your point here in regards to this discussion.
> It is harder to breach two layers of security at the same time than one. I think sandboxes are easier to realize than, say, a secure browser.
I'm not questioning the advantages that sandboxing seems to have, in general. What I am questioning is the ability of the development team that couldn't fix Gnome panel for several years to write a secure sandboxing solution, even when relying on cgroups & co..
Either way, I'd much rather run sane applications that patch and pray that neither the application, nor the jail, have any really disastrous bugs.
> This is a vague argumentum ad hominem against a third party. I don't see relevance to my arguments.
Your argument about permissions and sandboxing on Android is that they help privacy because you can feed fake or empty data to the application. I never managed to do that on my phone (but didn't try that hard, either) so I thought I'd see if there was any progress in that field. Xprivacy was the first result that showed up.
The way it does that, apparently, is by extending /system/bin/app_process to load a JAR file on startup, thus attaching itself to every process and replacing any method in any class. Yeah, no thanks. I can't wait to have the first catastrophic exploit in the Xposed framework making every single process vulnerable.
I tried a couple of other solutions a while ago, but most of them ended up crashing or freezing applications.
I absolutely don't disagree on your point regarding innovation. A number of people accused Windows 7 of taking UI ideas from KDE, which ultimately greatly improved their OS's usability. Still, a delicate balance needs to be found among innovation, enterprise requirements, and personal/community wants. Thankfully, at least covering the third group, with Linux there are often solutions to these experiments (though they might still end up being rather involved, such as creating your own solutions or moving on to a different window manager entirely). Yet if one doesn't like the Windows 8 UI approach, for example, the only real recourse would be to downgrade and hope things change for the better in the next release.
True on the traffic. Sure, the game isn't perfect. However, one of the successes of Skylines has been the honest tone and communication with the developers. There's a sense of confidence that the game will be supported and improved over time. This didn't exist with Sim City 5, what with the always-online drama, the inability to play the game well for several months after release, and the early focus on producing large amounts of paid [overpriced?] DLC.
I think a lot of the demerits in Skylines exist within the core game of Sim City 5. The problem is, as I see it, that the obvious marketing (buy more things, here, get this Nissan leaf station for your town for free!!!), and the lies (it has to be online, simcity wouldn't work any other way), made players unwilling and unable to forgive simcity's foibles in the game. It was obvious people were being treated like a resource to be extracted, not a demographic of people who want to have a need fulfilled.
All games have failings, how many failings, and the degree people are willing to forgive them is the thing that changes.
I think after the anger of simcity 5, people are willing to forgive a lot of foibles, and despite that, Skylines doesn't seem to have many, it's pretty solid.
I had the ideal of going to law school several years ago, studied history and economics in college, with loads of public policy knowledge. Ultimately I determined that these fields actually don't interest me all that much. I mean, I had been reading texts on formal logic in my spare time because I found such subjects to be far more engaging.
I enrolled for another Bachelor's degree a while ago to help build up my chops for a career in development; effectively swapping one applied logic for another. Yet I have a lot of catching up to do to meet up with peers who have been working in the industry for nearly a decade. There's a nagging feeling of dread within me that I might just be naive at best, a fraud at worst, and end up a failure. Still, I enjoy working on projects for hours at a time (when I manage to find the time to do so) and find the subject matter I'm studying engaging. In that sense, I can at least say I don't regret the shift.
I did a BA+BS in History and Economics in undergrad intending to go to law school. Did undergraduate law review and everything. About junior year or so I realized I actually did not want to do that.
Now, 5-6 years out of undergrad I am a professional software developer without a formal CS education. I took a few CS classes and plenty of hard math as part of my Econ degree, but I don't hold a CS degree (or even a minor).
But I was always a computer geek from a young age. Through many years of interest, motivation, and self-teaching I worked in IT, then QA, and now development. I also work with many other non-CS-degree developers that are great.
In a similar vein, I feel that there's a sense that consumers feel tablets are "vaguely better." By this, I mean a number of things. For example, laptops often by and large are still sold with hard disc drives instead of solid state, and therefore tablets are actually a faster experience. tablet and smartphone UIs do a 'better job' at handling errors; by this I mean keeping redundant error message pop-ups to a minimum and attempting to more elegantly kill an app. An app store is a simple and safer place to download new software than the awful method Windows had going through the 90's and 00's of venturing out and downloading mysterious programs (which in it of itself has greatly damaged the Windows reputation).
I guess my point is that these issues are not inherently solved due to the tablet form factor, but rather better UI and more pointed hardware directed toward consumer use cases.
Just a general thought. At some point (for consumers anyway), these paradigms will unite. As such, what will follow is the necessity for window management that can handle different use cases. Right now the only OS really attempting to bridge the gap is Windows 8, which is currently an unfortunate juxtaposition of two battling WM's rather than a seamless unification. Apple isn't really bothering to unify at the moment, Google isn't sure what it wants to do, and desktop linux (though I primarily work in linux) really is a less quality product.
I'd argue that window management innovation has been a terribly sorry state for quite a while. I mean, I would venture a guess that the increasing prevalence of browser-based tools is in part a result of a lack of [good] innovation by WM's (of course, as well as better tools for web app developers). Mobile OS's have been the only thing to really shake things up.
I'm not sure exactly what my point is here. Just a general feeling that we're going to continue to debate on the differences between tablets and pc's until someone actually goes ahead and creates a useful WM for both use cases. Windows 8 is an okay start in that regard, but I feel there's a way to do it better.
Definitely agreed. Another interesting problem for the near? future is multi-device window management - can you use the collection of devices and screens (whether phone/tablet/desktop/whatever) on hand at a given moment as a kind of ad hoc multimonitor workstation? What about when multiple users are involved? (of course all of this is a systems/OS and privacy/security challenge, as well as an interaction design challenge)
I sometimes get the impression most people now think of window management as either a solved problem and/or one rendered irrelevant by the rise of "mobile", but it's quite the opposite IMO.
I'm hoping the Ubuntu phone will lead to faster innovation in this area. I don't expect it to become extremely popular, but it will give tinkerers far more ability to hack around with their WM than other phones, and it will immidietly make available all of the existing WM options for desktop linux available to try out on a mobile device.
My guess is that we as humans tend to look at what we've missed out on rather than what we've gained. During Keynes's time there wasn't quite as much competition for one's time and attention, and whatever they had probably wasn't as cheap. Now we just have so much entertainment at our disposal that we can't feel satisfied with what we have.
I'll call it the Deal or No Deal irrationality. Essentially, if you go on that show hoping to win $1,000,000 but end up with just $100, you probably feel pretty disappointed. The $999,900 you didn't win ends up eclipsing the fact that you won $100. $100! A free night out with your friends! A nice fancy dinner! Who doesn't want that sort of bonus?!
[I might have accidentally stolen the above example from a Dan Ariely book. If I did then I do apologize]
Now in our society we have competing forces of remaining sociable, watching TV, browsing the Internet, maintaining hobbies, going on vacations, and (as the article notes) trying to work and more more in the process. I mean, I've had to sacrifice watching TV and playing video games just because I need to to have 'more productive leisure.' Board games, lifting weights, going out with friends, and programming are things that I like to do, sure, but that doesn't quite fill in the gap a video game may do in the same way. At the same time I'd like to do more biking and get into other more artistic hobbies, but the time cost to learning is so great and the ROI relative to what I already have on my plate.
$100... for the hours of your time it takes to apply, get accepted, show up, sit around in the green room, partake in the gameshow itself, and make your way back home. It's not free money.
Well, the simplest answer is that incomes are way higher for certain positions, even for significantly less skilled work. I mean, engineers are a dime-a-dozen in China, but the pay is lower and STEM work is not nearly as glamorized as it is in the US right now. Doctors too. All the praise goes to business and financial managers.
Of course, if you're an international trailblazing software-engineering guru, yeah, you'll get fantastic opportunities pretty much anywhere. However, even fairly low-level IT work in the US can feed a new family (depending on your geography, of course), which is not the case everywhere in the world. And with recruiters banging down peoples' doors throwing jobs in peoples' faces, it's no wonder foreigners want to stay in the US.
I was just in Guangzhou recently. Same thing there. In TienHe all of their multiple 6+ storey malls are connected by a sprawling series of underground malls. The shopping there is crazy.
