The new indicator widgets are wide and don't seem to re-orient vertically,

That's not GNOME, that's Canonical. And there's a simple solution: don't use it. Just remove it and everything will go back to normal.

Marvel vs Capcom, as another example. But really, these types of games tend to be really fun. It's a shame IP law has made them more or less impossible to do correctly without someone bitching about their rights being trampled over.

Now they're doing the right thing and we get news how they refuse to patch the systems which .dll files have been damaged? Welcome to slashdot.

Why is not patching the system acceptable? Shouldn't it just determine if the DLL was damaged and replace it with the correct, working patched version if it is? Sorry, but automatically throwing their hands up and saying "you're fucked" is the Microsoft shortcut for not being able to fix their own security problems.

Well first of all, since it makes no sense for me to reiterate them here: wtfjs

Secondly, Prototype-based OO is quite ugly. Sure, it's workable, and you can argue that it's the more pure way to do OO as it emphasizes object orientation and encapsulates better, however, any way you try to sugar coat it, Javascript makes it a lot uglier than it needs to be.

Thirdly, the fact that it's a defacto standardized language, a lot like the web itself was defacto'd into existence rather than people trying to follow standards (which came later), each implementation is different enough that what will work in one does not necessarily work in another. While this is a lot better today than it used to be, there are still places where this is really rough.

Still, you can point out flaws and inconsistencies in any language, but the web-related technologies tend to be a lot more, well let's call them "special" (just to make them feel better).

Well you are definitely right in that you don't follow: "what is the smallest unit then" "it depends on what we're talking about." Planck areas or volumes would be much smaller than 10^-44.

Depends on what we're talking about. Probably Planck units is about the best we can do, so starting with ~10^-100-ish would be a good first guess.

...And the runtime environment has millions of lines of #ifdef __LINUX__, ...

Whether you hide behind a runtime is entirely irrelevant. Because the APIs differ between OSes, somewhere, someone had to write some nasty sticky portability shims.

Sure it's completely "unchanged" on every platform. That doesn't mean that it doesn't have a million lines of ifdef'd code. It's just the code doesn't do anything on the platforms where it's not needed. There are vast number of portable libraries and a somewhat smaller number of applications that do just this, having platform specific code conditionally compiled in.

Anyways, I fully suspect this guy's "solution" will be something like "We just used Flash and embedded it into these application 'runtime' thingablobs and then it was simply a matter of loading up the platform agnostic swf file." "Wait, what about the source code?" "Here's the source to the Reversi game. ahahaha did you seriously think we'd open source a runtime that'd put half of us out of a job???"

Voting with your wallet doesn't work anymore anyways, not sense companies learned that they can blame some phantom nemesis on the reason they can't make sales and get 'bailed out'.

On my layout, which is similar to the ones in the screenshot, the X is somewhere between "Edit" and "View". To miss either of these and hit the X would be significantly less likely than trying to grab a corner and hitting the X; I know this from both my own experiences, from pixel distances, from the interface highlighting menu items on mouse-in and from Fitts' law which states that items within a window are more likely to be hit precisely since the user need to pay more attention to hitting it, rather than corners, where users are more often less attentive and would rather "ram" their mouse to the right position.

On the correct side of the window, but in the incorrect position. However, with the button being red and expose, the likelihood you'd accidentally hit it is significantly diminished from, say, Windows.

The problem is that there isn't a good pick for most commonly used window management element, because it's the same as the most destructive - the close window button.

According to Fitts' law, the corners of the screen and the corners of the windows should have the most significant function, and the user will experience fatigue with components that are a) further away from these corners and b) further away from each other. This is why you will see interfaces such as "The Sims"-interface with all of the buttons, menus and readable information clustered in exactly one area of the screen.

This should be the same on modern desktops. The application menu should be at one corner, as should the window controls and the window's "main menus". Keeping them together means the mouse doesn't have to go flailing across the whole screen to do simple actions such as saving a file or hiding a window. It greatly reduces fatigue and RSI.

Like the corners of the screen, the corners of the window are just as important, and should not default to destructive operations, since the corner is the easiest to hit. Unfortunately, that's exactly what it does right now.

I've used the setting that Ubuntu is adopting as default for as long as I can remember using metacity, and I cannot remember the last time I've accidentally closed a window in Linux. However it wasn't even a day ago when I accidentally closed an incomplete document while trying to resize the window on Windows 7. Think back to how many times you've screamed at yourself for e.g. accidentally closing a Firefox window (back before they had "Undo close window ", which they only needed because of this interface bug).

The window controls are precisely where they should be.

First, which side of the window, and for that matter the screen, are all of the menus on? That's right, the left-hand side. So why would you want to have to move your mouse a thousand pixels to close a window?

Second, what is the most destructive operation you can perform on a window? Closing it. Why on earth are you beating your users over the head by putting the most destructive operation that close to the corner? When it's on the corner, it's much easier to hit by accident, for example when reaching to resize the window. This has happened time and again with me on Windows to the point of absolute fury

What's the least destructive operation that still gets the window out of your line of sight? Minimize. If you hit it on accident, it takes you maybe a few hundred pixels to reach down, or up if you're like me, to restore the window. Unlike if it's closed by accident, which can take minutes to restore if it was a large networked word processing file.

Every Mac user can immediately appreciate the position of the window controls, if they use them at all. They are clearly colored for improved accuracy, they're out of the way, and what's even better, you usually don't have to use them, since OS X's Expose is so much more convenient, even more so than Compiz, anyways. The only reason not to switch is because of existing Windows users, and we stated a long time ago that Ubuntu isn't Windows.

And one less machine to buy when your company becomes a target of an SEC investigation! Just put the paper into the printer, hit "Erase", and the evidence is gone! It's like Magic! [/infomercial]

Not only can you not save arbitrary files (mp3s included), you couldn't use an Amazon-specific downloader app, because Apple would have to approve it through the App Store, which, let's face it, is not going to happen (unless the Justice Department goes all Sherman act on their asses, but they're too impotent to ever do that, just ask the 'Corporations are People Too' Supreme Court). So no MP3 purchases from an iPhone for you. Sorry for your troubles.

Does anybody think Barnes and Noble would be willing to post a sign saying your book was #38 in its category on Amazon?

No, but I see all the time people with stickers on their book covers indicating their position on the New York Times Best Sellers list, or the Oprah Bookclub.

You can't expect to place ads for a competing store's award in another retail store.

This isn't that. This is advertising that you won a Fields Metal at a Nobel Consortium (with an enormous pinch of salt).