Yearly Archives: 2011

My first impression of GNOME 3

GNOME3 has been released, Ubuntu has a repository for it, so I dutifully upgraded to the latest version. To be honest, I was curious at getting to see the big changes that have led to massive amounts of both praise and rants. I have to say, that I am kind of like it, but am still pretty disappointed.

I installed gnome3-session, which led to a desktop that looked approximately like Windows 3.1 in its appeal. Only after I found out that gnome-standard-themes are also required but apparently not pulled in by default, did things start to actually make sense. One Ubuntu peculiarity is that gnome3-session apparently pulls in gnome 2.32, but gnome-session pull 3.0, don’t ask me why. At least they block each other.

Speaking of themes, after I was presented with the most ugly window border I had ever seen (due to the lack of gnome-standard-themes), I tried to find settings related to themes. There are NONE, as far as I could find out. The only one is to change the desktop background, but there is no "theme switcher" (I have now learned that theme switching is not yet implemented and you have to manually copy and overwrite the theme file). There is no "window border" setting, letting me choose how window borders can look and there is not even a color scheme setting that lets me choose to use a pinkish desktop if I wanted to. I know, all this is probably possible by fudging with javascript and css files, but I was a bit puzzled by that. I am sure tools will come over time that make this easier in the future, but for now you better like the standard theme and colors (the theme is nice, even if the titlebar is using a bit too much vertical space for my taste).

On the issue of settings. Whenever I click on a mail address, it invokes the evolution first time wizard now. Heck, I don’t use evolution, I write my mails either in Thunderbird or in emacs thanks. There used to be a setting called "preferred applications". That one seems gone now. Not even the gnome-tweaks tool has it. Does anyone know where I can set things so that it sends mail not using evolution?

The desktop looks pretty, and mostly things haven’t changed that much: Notification icons look similar, workspaces are stacked vertically rather than horizontally now (and grow as required). What was previously "panels with autohiding turned on" is now essentially the Gnome shell.

What annoys the heck out of me, is that there is no way to find out how things work or how they can be changed, which is not so intuitive. Take the "Accessibility setting" icon for example: I like the fact that accessibility is given prominent space and has been thought about. But I am mostly not challenged, and I would like to remove the icon to save space. Left-click, mmh, "accessibility settings", nothing there… Right-click? Nothing happening. How the heck do I get rid of unwanted notification icons? Google… The solution: Download a "gnome shell extension", consisting of a .js and a .json file, that sets some weird variable to ”, to make the icon disappear. You must be kidding right? Second, I want my weather indicator back. More google… Besides some hand-drawn scetches on live.gnome.org there I find nothing. Is it already there and I am too stupid to find it? Is it in the works? has it been deemed uneeeded? Neither google nor yahoo helped me find out.

Previously I had my 5 most needed apps in the panel which I could start immediately. Now I have to go to the hot-corner to make the panel appear, find the app and go there to start it. It’s more moving and more waiting. I can live with that but it’s not much of an improvement for me. The work spaces display is quite nice, I liked that. Also, the windows placement, offering easily full screen and split-screen window sizes make sense, and I am going to use them a lot.

I have not found out yet if keyboard shortcuts are configurable, the current ones need a lot of F-keys (to get the window overview, etc). Unfortunatley, I use Apple-Keyboards, and to reach F-keys you have to press ‘fn’ in addition to the Fx key. This makes it a bit inconvenient to use them often, so I would prefer some other keyboard shortcut. By the way, the GNOME cheat sheet is helpful in getting to know those shortcuts. I wonder why they did not add a help icon that loads that web page so that people starting GNOME3 for the first time are not lost and get some hand-holding. Had I known about that page earlier, it would have shortened my learning curve for sure.

Gdm displays a list of users on login, and although I always login with the same users, sometimes a different user is selected. I know that at some version in gnome2, I could select which users should be shown in the selection (or which one should be pre-selected), but this is apparently gone. To be hones, it was like this in the last versions of Gnome2 already, I believe. Not sure.

One thing that is absolutely horrible, is that I am an avid emacs user. Emacs most important area is the "minibuffer", the lowest line in the window. However, that happens to be exactly the space where "notifications" are now shown. Notifications are not translucent enough to actually see what happens beneath them (say, if I want to type the path of a filename I want to open). They also don’t go away by themselves without me clicking on them, which is very inconvenient when I am just typing in emacs.
Once, I click it away, it seems that immediately the next one pops up, preventing me from ever getting my file opened:
"You are now offline" followed by "Battery discharging" followed by the hilarious ‘Application problem: "Application problem" is ready’ (which made me laugh loudly).
Next, some empathy messages popped up there: my contact ‘lwn.net’ announced (displayed with a picture of my coworker who I am sure has never heard of LWN) that Fedora 15beta has been released. That picture of my coworker talking about Fedora had me nearly freak out.

One widget that I am not very fond of, is the ON/OFF slider. It has been copied from Apple’s UI, I believe and it makes sense on capacitive touch screens, but on a desktop that I operate with a mouse, I find it awkward to have a widget that I have to click-grab move around and release again. Also when it is in one position and is only labeled "Off", does it mean that is it Off right now, or that I have to drag it to the off direction to actually turn it off? This was not always clear to me. I would have preferred a checkbox, which is essentially what this is. On a non-touchscreen, it just doesn’t make sense to me.

Last but not least, whenever the "Authentication needed" dialog pops up, the password entry dialog is not focused initially, it requires a mouse click to do so. I believe this was different previously, and I actually preferred it that way.

Design Management – Mary Jo Hatch

Two days after listening to David Teece, I am back at Göteborg’s Handelshögskolan in Malmstensaalen (the Audimax). We arrived only just in Time for the food break as Jan Ljungberg had another meeting to attend before.

First, Ulla Johansson, talked about Design Management History o frontlinjer (på svenska), talked about Design Managers from Josiah Wedgwood, the first design manager in the industry to Alberto Alessi.
Alledgedly did design management not exist before. I kind of doubt that, just the same way that companies did not do strategy (implicitly) before the 1050’s :-))

Switch to English, (www.bdl.gu.se). Mary Jo Hatch (an ethnographer, and Organization Theorist) gave the talk titled "Death to All Concepts".
What does Art and Design offer to Management and the other way around?

She showed pictures of drawings by 5-year old kids. One does by a normal child (stick figures), and one by an autistic child (lookks like a very technical drawing with extremly many details). Wow.

She is a sympathetic and a good speaker.

She is sick of "method vultures" that create new concepts. These crave exact definitions of your concepts. Method vultures can descend upon your definitions and can feed on them. The more you can abstract the meaning away from the data, the more you can generalizability.

It’s unproductive, she pleads to create to space where art and design can help Business. Art and Design bring a creativity that Businesses need, but that conventional thinking can not give.

Actually, I found it a bit of a pity to give talks in Swedish, when the final Keynote speaker can not understand a word of Swedish (and mentioned that).

David Teece lecture

Just listening to a lecture by David Teece at Goeteborgs
Handelshoegskolan
. He takes up many interesting issues, highlights
current trends… and emphasizes the importance of Capabilities.

Some random notes:

Textbooks still have not managed to take the importance of intellectual
assets into account, balance sheets are useless as they still mainly
show physical assets.

In a similar vain, Porters 5 Forces analysis has become much less
usefull, as it focuses on a single industry, and much of the value and
success hinges on the "Salience of co-specialized complementary
capabilities," that is
the combination of capabilities and assets to provide additional
competitive advantage. The example here was the ipod/itunes, both of
which complement each other and are located in different industries.

Overall, the world might be flat, but capabilities are not not equally
distributed (the form mountains and hills), therefore opportunities are
not evenly spread out.

Previous success is no guarantee for future one: Andy Grove, CEO at
Intel (at that time): "Our current market share just gives us a seat at
the table for future technologies" (got the wording wrong).

In the following Q&A session, some things came up:

Frameworks (such as porters 5 forces) are not a theory, they are lenses
that allow us to look at things. In a way they are a "poor men’s theory" 🙂

Overall quite interesting lecture. My favorite quote is one from Winston
Churchill given at Harvard University in 1943: "The empires of the
future are the empires of the mind."

The session was moderated by Maureen McKelvey.

Groklaw.net shutting down

Oh no, my favorite legal SCO versus Linux research website
http://groklaw.net is shutting down in May.

I’d like to thank groklaw for the service it has provided, in the form of documents, facts, transcripts and analyses sprinkled with PJ’s witty humor. I’ve enjoyed reading groklaw as much as I enjoy reading http://LWN.net.

Personally, I don’t care whether PJ is a woman, men, or a pseudonym for the whole legal department at IBM (or wherever) :-), but I have deep respect for what PJ has done and achieved. Judging from some of the attacks she had to endure over the years, I find it understandable that she chose to remain anonymous.

Umbuchen bei British… (oder auch nicht)

Bin genervt von British Airways. 3 Flüge innerhalb von 6 Std gehen von Washington nach London, ich bekomme den
letzten. Würde aber immer noch um 13.35 statt um 16.05 in London
abfliegen können, denn da geht ein früherer Flug und ich komme schon um
10 Uhr an. Wollte also auf den früheren Umbuchen.

Habe es versucht:

  • Beim Einchecken: Er hat meine Tasche genommen und gesagt, ich soll zum
    Ticket sales Schalter gehen.
  • Beim Ticket sales Schalter: Er hat gesagt, ich hätte nich einchecken
    dürfen und ich müsste meine Tasche zurückholen lassen. Dann hat er
    nachgeguckt und hat gesagt, es wäre sowieso kein Platz mehr frei in
    keinem der Flieger.
  • In der Washington, DC Lounge von British Airways am
    Serviceschalter. Er sagt, er könnte nichts machen, ich solle
    1-800-AIRWAYS anrufen.
  • Bei 1-800-AIRWAYS: 40 Minuten in der Klassikmusikwarteschleife
    gehangen, dann aufgegeben. SUCKERS! Ansage, dass ich online alles
    ändern könne.
  • Auf der BA Webpage: Kann meinen Flug nicht online ändern, da ich bei
    Expedia gebucht habe. Kann allerdings den Flug von London->ZRH
    kaufen. Nur noch Businessclass, 1200CHF eine Richtung.
  • Bei der Hotline des British Airways Executive Club. Bin innerhalb von
    10 Sek drangekommen (lohnt sich doch):
    Es wäre nur noch Business frei. Sage ich, "weiss ich, will upgraden".
    Ein upgrade von LON->ZRH kostet 9000 Flugmeilen, ich habe 35000
    Meilen. Sie sagt, ich kann aber keine Teilstrecken upgraden, ich könne
    nur den gesamten Weg von den USA nach Zürich auf Businessclass
    upgraden, und dass kostet 50000 Meilen! (Ein Freiflug innerhalb Eropas
    kostet 23000 Meilen).
  • Aufgegeben, ich komme also nach wie vor um 19.00 in ZRH an, mit einem
    Aufenthalt von 6 Stunden in London. Die werde ich in der Lounge arm
    fressen! 🙁

Digital EBooks going bad

Publishers wonder why consumers balk at Digital Rights Management in new media? An article in the NYT highlights that publisher HarperCollins sets the "life time" to ebooks in libraries to 26 loans. After which they expire and become sunk costs for the library.

As someone who benefited from books buried in University libraries that have been lying there for a century and that have certainly passed more than 26 pairs of hands, I find that I am appalled by artificial restrictions like these, which are obviously designed to increase turnover at the expense of taking customers control over assets they bought. When I own a book, I want to own it as long as it keeps together (or until I decide that I don’t need that book anymore). Unlike DVDs which can only be played in a certain region, I can read my books all over the world. I own books that I have inherited from my Grandfather, something which apparently would not be legal with much DRM’d media).

Digital content is more fragile than physical assets anyway: hard disks crash, backup disks disappear or become unreadable, and technology moves on (what am I supposed to do with my 5 1/4" backup floppies again?). And now, you want me to artificially shorten the life time of those as well? Plus, DRM’ed media require by definition proprietary software that checks and enforces these. Which most of the time means, that people that use Linux (like me) are out of luck reading the books. And once the viewing software stops being supported, your book gets worthless too. That doesn’t even need to be Windows 3.1 software, no. It suffices that online DRM servers go down, such as the media DRM servers at Microsoft, Walmart, or Yahoo, the Major League baseball, ebooks using Overdrive, or computer games from Ubisoft have been doing.

This increases the power of publishers to do things as deleting bought ebooks from your devices, as had happened with Amazon deleting `Orwell’s 1984 (of all books) from Kindle devices..

Die Wolke

Gerade höre ich vom Erdbeben in Japan, und der anschliessenden Explosion, die zu einem Austritt von Radioaktivität führte. Ich musste sofort an "Die Wolke" denken.

Erinnert sich noch jemand an das Buch, dass 1988 von Gudrun Pausewang erschien? Das war kurz nach Tschernobyl und ich 14 Jahre alt. Ich erinnere mich nicht mehr an die Details, aber es war eines der Bücher, die mich am Meisten mitgenommen haben.

Ich glaube es gibt auch einen Film dazu, den ich aber nie gesehen habe. Ist der sehenswert?

Ahh, und von wegen, sowas kann in Deutschland nicht passieren, da es hier keine so heftigen Erdbeben gibt: Obwohl natürlich noch keiner nichts genaues weiss… Der Schaden kam wohl nicht als direkte Folge des Erbebens, sonder laut BBC:

An attempt to explain the risk to the Fukushima nuclear plants
following the earthquake: The plants are designed to shut down
automatically, which halts the main nuclear fission reaction, but
there is a residual amount of intense heat within the system. Back-up
generators should kick in to power the cooling mechanisms needed to
dissipate that heat – but if they fail, as appears to have happened
here, temperatures rise. If this isn’t stopped, the reactor vessel
itself could eventually melt and leak.

Ein anderer Report sagt, dass die Notstromaggregate angesprungen wären, aber nach einer Stunde aus (der Öffentlichkeit) unbekannten Gründen wieder abschalteten.

May we live in interesting times…

Semlafrukost i Göteborg

mmh, semlor!

© powi, licensed: CC-BY-2.0

Heute ist in Schweden "Fettisdagen" (aka Fat Tuesday, Mardis Gras, oder Fastnacht). Und in dieser Zeit gibt es "Semlor". Eine Semla ist im Grunde ein riesiger Windbeutel, der mit Sahne und Mandelmasse gefüllt ist.

Habe heute in Göteborg an der Uni ein Semlafrukost gehabt, ein richtig leichtes Frühstück. Ummpf. :-). Lecker!

Arrived in Göteborg

Plane without my luggage

©Spaeth, Plane without my luggage

Right after my holidays, I had a few hours to unpack and repack and make my way to Göteborg, as a visiting scholar at the IT University in Göteborg with Jan Ljungberg. I last visited them in 2003, so it has been a while.

One thing I will never understand is luggage transport and customer service with airlines. I understand that things are made more complicated by the interaction of multiple organizations, but are airlines not supposed to be good at processes and customer service?

This time, they did not even board my luggage in Zurich, my starting destination. So obviously, it also did not make its way to Copehnhagen, or Göteborg. So I am now left without any luggage… again. On average, 3.6 Passengers out of 1,000 reported lost luggage in Dec/Jan 2011 [USFlightStats], unfortunately, I seem to always be one out of them.

Äntligen Måndag

©Spaeth "Äntligen Måndag!"

Otherwise, I am still in the process of getting set up and going again. I will be enjoying this stay, but I hope it is also going to be a productive time.