Every time I start my computer, the Update Manager appears. I don't want this to happen; how can I make it stop? I want updates to be done only when I want them done. Among other things, sometimes I'm connected via expensive wireless connection, and I don't want to accidentally start a multi-hundred MB download.

Under Settings / Updates (within the Update Manager) I have unchecked the "Check for updates" option, because the dropdown it provides does not include a "never" or "only when asked" option. I can find no other relevant options there.

Eh. 's'been a while.

Today, I posted a story about the release of Fedora 12. It seems like Ubuntu (the distribution I use most, these days) sometimes gets all the attention; I know (being a user and generally a fan of Ubuntu) I ever so slightly contribute to this, and I am glad when I see Slashdot-appropriate news about other distros. I am happy that Red Hat has been successfully in business for so long, and am happy with what I see of Fedora 12's look and feature set. (And, Yay! there's a PPC version, too.)

The particular one I posted to the page came from someone (Adam Will) involved with Fedora project, and it was loaded with well-placed, relevant links. It's a compact, readable paragraph, written in sentences, and it's not loaded with either hubris or rhetoric.

There were several other submissions about the same actual nucleus, but the ones I saw prior to Adam's did not appeal to my taste (or my laziness), they were mostly one liners, something like "Fedora 12 released! Download!" or (just slightly better) a few items pasted in from a bulleted list of features. That's useful in a limited sense, but not a great motivator, especially with news like the release of a prominent Linux distro -- you can bet that more than one person will submit a note about it.

(Could have put this under X, I guess -- wobbly windows aren't yet a feature available to Windows or Mac OS X users, are they?)

When I first saw the wobbly windows that were being shown off as X "eye candy," (perhaps when I read this story: http://tinyurl.com/ygcepfp) I had the same reaction that a lot of people still do: "Neat -- but, eh, what's the point?"*

Once it became part of mainstream distribution's options, I would sometimes turn on the "funny" effects, though -- it's fun to play w/ some of that eye candy, after all. Then I started selecting it by default when I set up a new system or upgraded. Some people said (paraphrasing -- nearly quoting one slashdot reader's comment) that the point of the wobbly windows wasn't to improve usability, but to show off what X was capable of.

At first I agreed with that. Now, after a few years of a wobbly-windows desktop environment, I've changed my mind about the wobbliness: rather than eye candy, now I think they make the desktop more intuitive to use, by making the objects on screen move more like physical objects. I realize that paper doesn't dramatically deform and wiggle if you move a sheet of it around your desk, but there's something about the movement of your arm that the instant stopping and starting of typical on-screen objects doesn't match well; making onscreen objects (windows, that is) "absorb" some of the starting energy and then release it when the mouse-motion ends somehow makes moving them around much more natural. It's not a *perfect* translation from brain to mouse to screen, but then, I doubt it ever will be.

* Meaning no disrespect, that's still how I feel about most of CompizFusion effects, which are awesome, and (IMO) useless, except in the non-useless act of making the desktop more fun to use.

[Inspired by frustrations w/ power, placement, and design of my current GPS receiver]

Dear Carmakers:

OK: if you can do it for car stereos, you can do it for the next generation.

I want a standard flat plate mount in my car for GPS. Make it a dished-out surface deep and wide enough to hold a 10" screen device (think of a netbook tablet); smaller ones can use spacers, and larger ones could I suppose use some sort of extender, and just not be flush w/ the surface. Include a USB power socket. Include space behind in case it includes / needs further connections (traffic monitor doohickey, external antenna, whatever). Have a flexible baffle around the edges, to account for ecentricities in design (where does powercord go, etc).

Be creative. Keep it blank for low-end cars; sell up if you want. Include a Nakamichi GPS that smells like roses on a Lexus. Include a Delco piece of junk on a piece of junk American cars, figure it'll get replaced.

I have a few laptops -- I'm bad about getting rid of even the never-worked-well, 12-year-old, tiny-keyboard Toshiba Portege for which I paid way too much (used) at a computer show a while back. Like cars, laptops have obvious and welcome utility, but always coupled with frustrating annoyances. All of my laptops have at least something good, some of them have several things I wish I saw on others.

Here's my list of the features I want in a laptop, all of which are demonstrably feasible. (That's what I mean by "from whom to steal" -- I've listed some example sources for at least the conceptual sources of most of these; some of them don't really need proof, so much as for someone to design bits in or out. And by "steal" I mean learn from and implement -- not, of course, to sidestep the advancement of the useful arts and science made possible only through the current patent system.) Even the few quixotic ones at the end are quixotic not because they're impossible, but more because I suspect the demand wouldn't justify the engineering at a price level I would like. I would not hold out for either of the Blue Sky ideas -- I'd pay if I could just get a good chunk of the others.

What's the closest you can come now to wishlist below, and at what price? (Some of my favorites seem to be Apple-only, or at least Apple-included; perhaps then it's a MacBook that's the closest.)

Before the list proper, an overarching demand is that it run (or be able to run) at least some popular version of Linux, and without special tricks to be done (reflashing bios or something). ("Popular" so that support seems likely a few years down the road.) What it comes with by default I don't care all that much about. (Would anyone like a nearly new "Designed for Windows XP" sticker?)

Now, the all-possible list of features I want:

Top of the list: a hardware volume control, or -- alternatively -- at least a mute switch. This is one of the most annoying things about starting up my Eee; unlike my mostly mediocre Toshiba laptop, there's no external physical switch. Starting up in a quiet environment (classroom, etc) means that the admirable Ubuntu noises (in two phases; the quick drum trill when it's ready for login, and the extended ambient sounds of nature *after* logging in, as Gnome starts) play at embarrassingly high volume, unless I remember to insert (and have handy) a pair of headphones. Note: I am not knocking the existence of these miniature soundscapes (I like them), but I want them quiet by default. (Is there a key command I can use for quiet startup? There is a mute key on the Eee's keyboard, but it doesn't seem to work for me w/ Ubuntu -- right now I'm on a late beta of 9.10.) STEAL FROM: Toshiba, others.

Next, a couple of easy things, because they're deletions, not additions:

No caps-lock key. Or a hardware switch for it, NOT on the main body of keys. But caps lock sucks. Kill it, or exile it. STEAL FROM: keyboard!

No "Delete" key (and for that matter, no "insert" key). Insert should be the default; "delete" is like Caps Lock -- banish, or kill. It's esp. annoying on small keyboards, as on my Eee. Steal from: keyboard, dammit!

LED light on AC adapter, so I know that it's getting juice. Yes, there's an LED that says the *laptop* is getting powered in most cases but a) if there's something wrong w/ the machine, not powering on, etc, I like more options for troubleshooting and b) if I'm *charging* the laptop but across the room reading a book or something, the lighted AC adapter is reassuring, when I can glance at it. A small point, but between want and not want, I want this. STEAL FROM: Asus among many others.

LED light *at* AC adapter point: This is one of the many things that Apple's done, design-wise, to make me smile. Clever! STEAL FROM: Apple (others?).

Built-in battery meter: Another Apply one, STEAL FROM: Apple, and who else?

Instant-on sub-OS in the BIOS. Glad that this idea seems to be catching on. STEAL FROM: BIOS makers generally; Dell is one maker who's been doing this (and even w/ a whole ARM sub-system, which is nice but seems like overkill ;))

Long-lasting battery. Apple's seem to generally do better than any of the others; this is one area where laptops have been improving quite a bit -- the current gen. of netbooks, 6-8 hours seems like an actually truthful claim, under some circumstances :) (Mine, no longer current as netbooks go since it's more than 24 hours old, gets 4hrs plus on a full charge.) However, the tech I want to see on this front is not such much the initial power, but how much it can do after a few hundred charging cycles. STEAL FROM: Toshiba (they had demo batteries that shrug off 600+ charging cycles -- says Toshiba -- at this year's CES).

Tablet hinge. I used to think this was silly, but then saw how useful this is for diagrams / sketching / reading lengthy things. STEAL FROM: OLPC, many others.

SCREEN ITEMS:

Touch screen: useful! STEAL FROM: Any tablet maker; imperfect is better than unavailable.

Dense screen: 1024x600 is too small. Give me pixels! STEAL FROM: Sony, Dell, Nokia PDAs -- anyone with an ultradense screen.

Mary-Lou Jepson-style (Pixel-Qi) screen: energy-saving, daylight readable, flexible: Mary-Lou, we're all waiting! (This, along with a tablet design, with a moderately powerful chip, would make me smile so broadly people around might get hit.) STEAL FROM: Pixel-Qi; the OLPC screen I like too, though I wish it was denser. I admit, this might not jibe with the ultradense-screen item just above.

LED backlight -- luckily, this is pretty normal now. And this is another part where a battery-saving screen would be great in combination; b/w, e-ink mode is perfectly fine and nice for outdoors under the sun when power is scant. STEAL FROM: Numerous makers! (Does anyone *not* use LED these days? Is there anything better for a backlight?

Related: A screen that can be *turned off,* like Apple's. Neither my Toshiba laptops nor my Eee like to be turned off below a dim glow. STEAL FROM: Apple (and who else?)

Keyboard borrowed from old IBM ThinkPads; the E600 I think had the best key feel of any laptop I've ever seen. STEAL FROM: IBM (anyone else?)

Tough case -- STEAL FROM: OLPC, Panasonic, Grid. The OLPC design shows it doesn't have to be too expensive.

External, diversity antennae -- OLPC again (though in fairness my Eee gets admirably good WiFi reception.)

Free RAM slot. STEAL FROM: any maker not too annoying to have put the included RAM in the only available slot. I want to expand, not throw the old RAM away!

ROTATABLE camera, not just a fixed one -- old Sony PictureBooks had this. How often do I want to send people a picture of my face as I type? I use my webcam once in a while, but it's ridiculously awkward. (OLPC approach at least allows one to hold the machine with the camera out, while it's folded as a tablet -- only half as awkward as most fixed-view webcams. (Also, the camera should be capable of close focus of a letter-sized page for use as a scannerish thing.) STEAL FROM: Sony, at least. (Anyone else? Older Nokia PDAs, too.)

Power inlet on the back, *and* on at least one of the sides. Laptops get uses in awkward spaces, like on plane trays, cars, the corner of other people's desks, etc; getting the cords to agree with the rest of the world is a hassle that could be avoided if there were more than one (intelligently managed, so you couldn't accidentally double-feed) power inlet. STEAL FROM: no one in particular, but Apple goes mostly on the side, while my Toshibas get power from the back. Just put one in each place, and make the system select whichever's actually connected. I'm no EE, but that seems like other than rocket science.

Similarly, steal / license / somehow surpass Apple's magnetic power-connector. Wish there were a similar thing for USB and other connectors, too. STEAL FROM: Apple.

Trackpoint ("nipple") pointer controller: OK, keep the trackpad if you must (see next item), but please -- think of everyone spoiled by the red eraser in the middle of old ThinkPad keyboards. STEAL FROM: IBM, Toshiba, Dell, others.

An easy off-switch for the trackpad. If you must have a trackpad, that is. STEAL FROM: No one I know of, though usually it's at least an option buried in the BIOS settings.

Target-disk mode: Sometimes, I want to use a laptop as a hard disk -- just hook it up to another machine for data transfer, one way or the other. STEAL FROM: Apple; anyone else? (I know my old iBook could be started in this mode and then be seen as a FireWire disk at least, not sure of the state of this nowadays, hope that USB works, too.)

Lots of USB ports. I've never ever thought "Gee, I wish I had one less USB port." [Note: perhaps that should be "one fewer" but "one less" sounds better to me. Gripe to yourself, if you'd like.] STEAL FROM: No one has enough, but there seems to be plenty of room on every laptop I've owned.

The most blue sky idea: I want a slide-out "dish" into which I could put the ball from a Logitech MouseMan. Or, a tiny USB version I could stick more easily in my bag than the whole stting-ray shaped thing. STEAL FROM: Toshiba, circa 1989. Some of their laptops had side-mounted trackballs, before the invasion of the (annoying) trackpads. This is close; what I want is one that's optical, and uses the size / texture / weight of the one in my Logitech trackball, which isn't sluggish or grippy like most I've tried.

OK, I lied: even more blue-sky: a built-in LED projector, available to the OS as a 2d display, usable as a primary display. Even if it's 640x480 (or, better, 800x600) rather than bigger. STEAL FROM: the demo booth of several different cell-phone makers.

And a pony.

a) yes, I like the phrase "first-class option" -- I don't have a better substitute to describe software features that should be in whatever the *main* menu / control panel / other command-entry-point, rather than buried 6-levels deep or only accessible through an obscure keyboard command.

b) The one I'm thinking about right now: "Restart this app." All too often (blame whatever point of the stack you feel like -- I know I do), apps get unresponsive. (System: Asus Eee, running Ubuntu 9.10 b5 and Gnome) Firefox needs to be restarted for certain things to work, and when it hangs (more often than I'd like, but sometimes enough alive I can still at least sorta use the menus), restarting is the main cure.

OK, clearly, apps shouldn't ever *need* to be restarted (or jump-started), but I'd rather not need to go to another app (like system manager) or start a virtual terminal, then htop, in order to kill a runaway. I want the frame w/in which a runaway, memory-leaking app is running to be outside of its chaos, so I can restore some sanity more quickly.

Not that I haven't spent some money on ephemera like movie tickets, food to make the Romans blush (omokase at Mashiko, for instance), and another copy of my favorite Natalie Merchant album, but I've done alright conserving my money in the last year. Bought car, paid money toward school-loan balance, rent, etc, and still have a positive balance. But in the last few months, I've experienced pangs of covetousness I'm trying to channel and cool, by indulging only in moderation, and thinking about and allocating money toward specific items in a reasonable order, RMiB style, rather than making impulsive purchases. A few examples:

1) Speakers. Have grown tired of listening to my partly dead Radio Shack speakers. (Partly dead = a blown tweeter, or perhaps a corroded wire -- upshot is, semi-stereo from 1.5 working speakers.) So I considered speakers (and integrated sound systems, and simple but high-quality receivers) for a while, finally ordered a truckload of overkill, in the form of a pair of Mackie c200 PA speakers. I don't have an amp for them yet, but am watching Craigslist. I already have a mixer, long neglected in its box, which makes a good control center for all things audio.

2) Flashlight. Why flashlights should be so addictive, I cannot explain, but they are. All I want is the brightest man-portable AA-powered LED light I can find; it seems like the Fenix TK40 is that light, as of now. Around $130 at Amazon. I want to believe that if I had this, I would be set for a while, flashlight wise.

3) Camera. A shade over $400 for the Pentax K2000 that I like (w/ a decent if unspectacular kit lens). Its successor model, though, does HD video, too, which would be nice. It also costs around $200 more. Dilemma! And after getting rid of my old -- film -- Pentax years ago (why did I do that?) I've been pondering another SLR for literally more than a decade. I suppose I could get an K2000, and a Flip or similar camera, for less together than a newer model.

There are more examples, too, but those are the ones top of mind.

I have a Garmin GPS (which is the result of a long elimination contest -- I think it was candidate No. 5), about which I have two basic complaints:

1) The antenna lives in a folding extension; when it's closed, the GPS doesn't want to work as a GPS (though it can be, say, attached to a computer, might even work as an MP3 player). (I might have realized this when I bought it, so, shame on me.) I don't have a good mounting system in my car, which means that it tends to live wherever I can contrive for it to balance / stand, and semi-frequently it will shift, that flap will shut, and I have to fish it back open. Annoying design. (I don't think that design feature is in the current ones, which is lucky for those who have the newer ones ;))

2) The power socket looks like a standard mini-USB socket, but doesn't act like one. The car cable (that is, from a car's cig-light socket) that it came with served to power and charge it while driving (as it expected / normal). However, there must be something slightly different in the wiring (some pins disconnected) that mean that regular mini-USB cables, and other cig-socket-to-mini-USB cables don't work. They do send power, but at the same time they make the Garmin think that it's connected to a computer, so it goes into its computer-connected mode (useless while driving).

(I've tried a Verizon adapter made for a phone with that socket, a TomTom cable -- my best hope -- and a conventional USB-A to USB-mini cable, hooked to a car convertor with a USB socket. And I don't want to pay $30 for a true replacement from Garmin ... )

There must be a better way -- why not use a regular USB cable, not a proprietary doohickey? (The one that came with it got smashed and is long since discarded.) If they want USB connection to cause it to leap modes, at least add a hardware switch to *not* do this. Cars will have USB power sockets standard I hope in the near future, making this misfeature even stupider.

I don't actually have anything to say. Kathleen is due any day, and I'm looking forward to a few weeks of staying home, getting poor sleep, and changing diapers.
But mostly I'm testing to see if journal saving works properly.

We've made some significant updates to the submission/journal system. Visiting Submissions and Journals yields a new form that allows stuff like tags to the data types. There are a number of annoying bugs, but for the most part the dust is starting to settle. More notes will be coming, but this journal entry is really just me putting the final test on the new Journal form.

Scrabble asked for feedback and a star rating; I gave it 2 out of 5 (I'd have gone to 2.5, but not all the way to 3), and wrote:

"It's slowly getting better. Excessive flash means slow loading, which is annoying w/ multi games. New chat widget, though finally shown by default (instead of Moves) loses characters in fast typing. Last-move highlight should be default, and more obtrusive. Starting a game still broken for me (Firefox, Linux), has been for months. Stats should be more interestingly presented (missing cool oppty to show graphs of game progression, highlight most obscure words, etc). Should have a training mode, for simple vs-computer playing w/ hints. SOWPODS not an optional dictionary. Awkward to end a stalled game. Does Challenge mode work yet? (Sued scrabulous and E-scrabble, which did a better job, cleaner, and with fewer show-stopper bugs, you jerks. I realize, mostly not the programmers' fault, but still.)"

I like to watch the prices of USB keys and divide GB by $; just noticed that Buy.com has a 16GB key selling for $27-something, which is the first I've noticed a USB key that size for less than $2/GB, at least without coupons. (And I was pretty happy to see the ones -- iMation, I think -- that Wal-Mart's been selling at $12 for 4GB, or a flat $3 per.)

Most of the small files I personally keep around -- snapshots, music, GIMP doodles, etc -- could fit on a (literal) handful of these. Bigger files (movies, mostly) are still best stashed on recordable disks I guess, but are also less subject to updating etc, so that doesn't bother me much.

Tabs are great. I've been happy with tabs since I first noticed them in Mozilla long ago (Yes, I realize Opera may have actually *had* them first, but I am too lazy to check), and am very pleased with the way many apps (terminals, word processors, file managers, etc) now use tabs now to separate documents or windows.

However, Mozilla is (as often) still ahead of the curve on this, partly because the plug-in approach lets people experiment and iterate (on a per-desktop basis) faster than any one bunch of developers could. Besides just *having* tabs, I can use plug-ins to alter how they act. So:

- I use one plug-in to change the color of the tabs (I think the contrast is too low as is, between the active and inactive tabs)
- I use another one to cause new tabs to open just to the right of the current tab, which I find much easier to follow when I have several unrelated tabs open already, and then want to open new ones from within any particular one of these. (So if I'm reading a story on Slashdot with several links, I can open each of these in a new tab, and they appear just to the right of the Slashdot story's tab, rather than on the far side of *all* the existing ones.)

Don't even need a plug in (though I think at one time you did) to re-order tabs within Firefox, by dragging. (This is one thing I've been pleased to find is now SOP in a lot of apps.)

Also, under History, there's a list of recently opened tags, which is handy. Some other apps (many, these days) include a "recent documents" option under the File menu, but being able to deal with tabs as tabs is nice.

When closing Firefox, a get one dialog that asks if I'd like to save the opened tabs as the startup group for the next time -- this is smart. I'd like this ability in every terminal, word processor, etc, too -- easy to click No if that's what I want, but a real time saver when I'm working on several related docs. Cuts down on the process-switching cost of remembering which three lists were being combined into one, etc.

There may be a good plug-in for this, but one thing I miss from Galeon is that tabs could (I forget if this was the default) could be abbreviated by leaving out vowels, etc. This was a nice meaning-preserving space-saver, and I'd like to do this with all my tab-friendly apps.

Another Galeon feature for which a plug-in may exist but I am just unaware: loading tabs were one color (red, I think) and switched to blue when the page in that tab was finished loading. When dealing w/ slow-loading sites, this made reading a lot more efficient.

I've lurked at /. without posting for ages, mostly because I just don't have the time to interact like I used to.

But I've been clicking through the old RSS feed more and more lately, and when I saw the PAX Plague thread today, I came over to comment, since I'm kind of affected by the whole damn thing. I thought I'd take a look around since I haven't been here in awhile, and I saw that there are freaking ACHIEVEMENTS associated with our accounts. It's silly, and I'm sure it's been here forever, but I thought it was awesome and I was delighted when I read it.

I didn't realize how much I missed Slashdot until I spent some time here today, and I bet that anyone who joined in the last 2 years doesn't even give a shit about my stupid comments or anything, but it felt good to come back here, and feel safely among my people again.