How's this for a prototype? http://www.e-architect.co.uk/liverpool/james_may_meccano_bridge.htm

It's pretty fundamental to the concept of ecosystems, as well as lots of other elements of biology. I'd have to turn that question around though and ask why you'd possibly want to leave out such an important theory from the last century or so of biology?

But you'd also have to go through a few contortions not to mention evolution in a biology course, treating it a bit like the elephant in the room. The students are bound to bring it up at some point anyway, even if you don't do it as a controlled part of the curriculum.

There are plenty of good kids games with local multiplayer and not many of them are split screen, separate consoles looks that element of all huddling around together to play. There are tons of really good cheap ones on PSN as well. I've got two kids, aged nine and six, and there are loads of games they like on there.

But does it do OpenDocument and Impress files correctly? I see this a lot, people don't actually want Word Processing software, what they actually want is Word Document Processing software. So the native well supported formats are ignored in favour of the defacto standard.

It's not surprising, but if you want to do the switch you really have to go the whole hog. You can accept Word documents with caveats but have to make clear that your supported format is OpenDocument and encourage it's use. You could easy provide links to the implementations and say they're obtainable for free, much like we used to link to Adobe Acrobat when PDF documents were first used.

I see office documents as a barrier to progress. People will throw a form in word or excel format to their users, both of which have atrociousness usability, rather than putting up a clean and simple web form. It's a symptom of laziness and the whole "I'm really familiar with this so I use it for everything syndrome". It is nice in a way though, the ability to edit documents you have to sign or add new clauses can be advantageous :-)

I use OpenOffice for Word Processing (but Gnumeric for Spreadsheets) but if I'm going to share documents I'll normally do it in PDF. If a preferred format is specified i.e. Word or RTF, I'll generally send the OpenOffice file as well, but I don't like sending editable documents unless they're likely to be edited.

After 15+ years Linux usage I'm sticking with GNOME3 because I also want things to just work, and it gives me what I want, a clean desktop which stays out of my way most of the time. I simply did the GNOME2 to GNOME3 transition without stopping at Unity in between.

If I didn't like GNOME3 then there are so many alternatives that are simply an apt-get install away that I simply can't understand all the whining. I'd likely go back to WindowMaker or fluxbox.

I've used GNOME3 on Ubuntu for a few releases now, you just need install the gnome-shell package, and I much prefer it to Unity.

I did hit a user switching issue with 12.10, but that has been resolved by swapping lightdm to gdm, and it might just have been something with my setup. I haven't tried the new Ubuntu GNOME version yet.

Does that mean that chinese executions + chinese prisoners > us executions + us prisoners?

I find it slightly annoying but have got used to seeing it now, much like people who manage to "loose" things under the sofa, it's just one of those Americanisms you gradually get used it.

It's had it for years and I use it all the time, it's just a bit hidden: middle click and drag. Which gives you (if memory serves): copy here, move here or link here. Haven't checked yet what's different about the new implementation.

I liked GNOME2 a lot, it was my favourite desktop environment for a long time, but it was beginning to show it's age and I've found GNOME3 to be a great update as a desktop for reasons that have nothing to do with "tablets".

The reason I liked GNOME2 in the first place was that it was clean and kept out of the way, with sensible defaults and no need for constant tinkering. I didn't want to be constantly babysitting the UI while trying to get other stuff done.

If anything GNOME3 does this better than before. I'm surprised by this tablet meme as a lot of desktop orientated features seem quite tablet hostile. It's very keyboard navigable and I used that a lot, super + typing to launch apps, ctrl-alt-up/down to switch through workspaces.

I like being able to switch through windows just by flicking my mouse to the top left (though alt-tab still works fine), as well as giving quick and easy access to workspace management. So what is the problem?

I seriously just don't get the hostility. Is this a case of the windows refugees getting restless?

Oh and I'm not a gnome dev either, though am glad they've pushed through their vision without giving in to every feature request by someone with an opinion. Providing an extension system that provides the ability to perform something deeper than just configuration seems to offer an option that undermines those claims of arrogance.

Was that the "$30 per phone for rounded corners" licensing? Sounds very reasonable and nothing at all like a protection racket.

They don't necessarily get wealthy by building factories in America, they get rich by offloading that work to China or India. Which also manages to turn a lot of lower paid workers into drains on the welfare system rather than productive members of society. I don't get where the idea comes from that letting the rich keep extra money somehow creates extra investment in the economy when a lot of that investment goes offshore.

I thought that at first but I'm not so convinced any more. I get the impression it's like those deals where companies buy out each other using stocks. So the licensing money paid is offset by free Windows Phone licenses or some other similar wheeze.

People sitting on their backsides doing nothing has little to do with socialism. Socialism is about workers not welfare, welfare is meant to be a safety net to stop people sinking into abject poverty. I'd say the situation we've got is down to two things: the lack of low paid manufacturing jobs which has it's beginnings in Thatcher, and that aspirational culture that says I can be wildly successful without doing any work, which again has its roots in Thatcher but became far worse once the reality TV celebrity turned up. Once those people are your aspirational role models then you can wave goodbye to people putting any effort in while not wanting to do work which is beneath them because immigrants do it.