To say the least. But I've tried both for a few weeks each and they definitely make me less productive than Gnome 2.

You can see at a glance which windows are open by their icon (which admittedly only shows the program, not document), title, and you have a good cue of which window is which from its position (rightmost is most recently opened). There may be a better solution but this is excellent in minimising number of clicks (everything is one click away) and quite good on impact on short-term memory (not much demand to remember which windows are open).

This pretty much fails when you have overlapping windows. It doesn't help that a window keeps its position if I can't see it. I find it's also useful to minimise a window to reduce visual distraction. I find in Gnome 3 I waste lots of effort manually shuffling my windows around so I can either hide them or so they're slightly overlapping so I can click on them without putting my cursor into the corner. Surely the opposite to what was intended.

It's less efficient in the sense you have to click somewhere or press a key or move your mouse to see the windows. Changing mode to change windows and having all those windows flying around I find is more distraction to my workflow. Maybe our brains work differently? I'd be happy to have both options however as sometimes an expose-style window map is useful if you've "lost" a window.

I think this is potentially a good idea that needs more polish. In Gnome 2 I can click on the desktop I want with one click from the taskbar but in Gnome Shell I need to go into the separate mode.

I think a lot more can be done with virtual desktops. It would be nice for example to have one project per desktop and then to be able to save that desktop (open programs, views, files) as a project, close it, and be able to reopen it at a later date, link it to a to-do list, etc.

I agree to the extent that you can make something too configurable. Too many options make it hard to find what you want to change, make things too easy to break, too hard to test. However, you can also make things not configurable enough. People's brains work differently so like to work in a different way, people have different hardware and software setups (e.g. number of displays), and work on vastly different projects. I think Gnome 3 shell and Unity have gone significantly into the "too little configurability" camp. Gnome 2 was a very good balance by contrast.

You can't prove Fermat's last Theorem empirically because it claims to be valid for all integers. You could only disprove it that way. The idea you can prove it statistically is pure comedy; no matter how many tests you run, there are infinitely more numbers you haven't tested, so your confidence in your result is still 0. You need a formal proof; however, the proof found is very complex and only absolutely top maths experts could get their head around it.

I have a PhD myself and have some modest scientific advances to my credit and while I don't claim to be the smartest person around, I'm better than most and I know more about science than the vast majority of the general population. I'm pretty good at maths but I haven't a hope of beginning to understand the proof without years of study. Even if I did commit myself to that, that's only one field out of thousands. You can't hope to be an expert in them all. You have to trust the experts in fields you haven't mastered. It's what human civilisation is built on.

Do you research materials science before climbing a tall building? Make sure you're satisfied with aeronautics before flying in an aeroplane? Life would be impossible.

You seem to think you have enough knowledge to challenge the experts in an advanced scientific field whereas (as you've demonstrated in this thread) your knowledge of the subject is as superficial as your knowledge of maths and logic. Sheer arrogance.

Don't be ridiculous. Of course you can. I don't understand the solution to Fermat's Last Theorem but the maths experts tell me that it works so I accept that it's true.

I think you'd have to be pretty paranoid to think your doctor was lying to you. And then absolutely certifiably insane to think that 98% of doctors were simultaneously making up cancer diagnoses in order to secure more ontology research funding.

No. No, they're not. You obviously are getting your news filtered through some crazy right wing news service, not from the scientists. So you're not even arguing against what is actually being predicted. Please, educate yourself, and not through Fox news.

Yes, you can either do the research yourself and become and expert (which you clearly haven't) or you can accept the experts' explanation.

This all rests on the premise that the prediction is for the end of human civilisation, which isn't the case. Even it was, there would be more attractive options than suddenly destroying all our power sources, like gradually switching to nuclear.

Right, it's been fun but I'm bored now. You clearly have a very tenuous grasp of reality.

If you mean the workspace switcher, I think it's a train wreck. Instead of one click to change workspaces, it's two (one double click). And why is there no visual indication of which workspace you're on, like in the Gnome 2 switcher? Come on! That's surely not hard to program. I assumed this was a bug that would get fixed in 11.10 but apparently not. Fine, someone made a really stupid UI decision but THEN you can't even remove the switcher because someone decided that I wasn't allowed to do that in case I confused myself. Aargh! A minor thing, but a good summary of Unity: bad UI decisions which are then locked down so you're not allowed to change them.

What do people who constantly rag on Unity want?

A taskbar. I've tried Gnome 3 and Unity for a few weeks each and the fact is that I'm significantly more productive with a taskbar. It's just the way my brain works, it doesn't like "modal" applications like the unity Dash/sidebar or the Gnome 3 thingy (I don't like vi either).

Correct. But overwhelmingly mainstream to the experts in the field, don't forget.

Anyway, you say that like it's a bad thing. Although a scientist myself, I don't feel that I have to understand every detail of a theory before I can accept it. In fact it would be impossible. There are so many. You have to trust the scientific method. It's served us pretty well so far.

I'm not bowing to an appeal to authority, I'm making an appeal to authority. Although an appeal to authority can't be used to win an argument from a sense of formal logic, it is an essential heuristic if you want to make use of other people's expertise.

For example, if a doctor told me I had cancer, I would believe her and take the steps she suggested, even if I didn't want to accept it. If a physicist tells me it is possible to detect extrasolar planets then I will trust him, even if I find it hard to believe.

There aren't any cracks in the theory. There aren't any serious competing hypotheses. Something like 98% of the experts studying the issue agree with the overall conclusion. And you're complaining that you're being called a denier? What would you like to be called? A fringe crazy? I think denier is the polite term.

The person I was replied to called themselves a denier so I can hardly be accused of introducing the term.

In any case, I don't claim to understand the science. I understand it on a basic level, enough to accept that it is plausible, but I certainly don't know all the details. I am just willing to accept an overwhelming scientific consensus, as I am for many other scientific fields. I'm not arrogant enough to assume I know better than the experts when they are all consistently agreeing on something.

"Denier" might be slightly inflammatory to the thin-skinned but if you're going to challenge a massive scientific orthodoxy without a competing theory then you have to accept that you will attract a certain amount of ridicule. At least admit that the deniers have been less than polite in the argument.

You've got some odd ideas about reality. What terminology I use in no way affects the validity of the science.

I don't really understand why deniers get so precious the term "denier". No, actually I do: it's because the science is overwhelmingly against them so they try desperately to cling on to whatever credibility they think they have. If you want to call me a denier of whatever pet theory you have to explain climate change (sudden dramatic (but unmeasured) increase in the sun's output, implausible number of simultaneously corrupt scientists. magic rays...) I won't complain. I'll be amused.

It's a completely reasonable term to describe someone who denies a massive body of consistent scientific evidence. For example, I would describe someone who disagreed with evolution by natural selection as a "denier", that is, denying something in the face of extremely strong evidence.

In any case, deniers of climate change don't show a lot of good faith. Their main arguments seem be that a huge number of scientists (including several Nobel prize winners) across a lot of disciplines are either ludicrously incompetent or highly corrupt in that they modify their views according to some mucky grab for research grants. Such libel is really not in the same league as calling someone a "denier".

The deniers use words like "feel" and "believe" (GP) a lot. This isn't a subject you can use your intuition on. The science is very strong but also complex. The only people who can reasonably disagree with the science at this point are experts in the field (except they don't).

That's not how it works. The science is so settled that it should be the baseline now. It's not everyone's job to convince you beyond reasonable doubt. If you want to tell people that solid, well-established science is wrong, it is your job to convince them. Is our fundamental understanding of chemistry and physics wrong? Are our models wrong? If so, what is wrong with them?

Syria's government isn't really based on religion. The governing regime is from the same minority religious group (Alawite), but that's more to do with corruption and cronyism than any strong religious belief.

Syria is a pretty free country so far as religion goes. It is a culturally Muslim country so women can't sit in the front of taxis/wear bikinis etc. but there's no problem if you want to go to church or be an atheist (even Jews living in Syria is acceptable, at least in theory).

There are religious tensions in Syria but really that's the least of their problems at the moment. The regime likes to raise the spectre of protests being religiously inspired but the protestors have been doing their best to demonstrate their unity cuts across these lines.

35 tablets isn't that many. Apple must have sold 10 million iPads by now.

On the other hand, it could make Kim Jong-Il sit up and realise how little support he has from China and think more seriously about pissing any more people off. It might improve China's relationship with the rest of the world as they recognise that China, despite its own human rights violations, are not prepared to prop up a regime as unpleasant as North Korea's. "Damaging the current relationship between North Korea and China" might well be a good thing; it is difficult to predict.

I'd agree that these leaks are not terribly damaging to any government (at least of those released so far). There are a few that may expose unethical behaviour (e.g. the kidnapping case) but some actually make the governments involved look better in my eyes.

Example 1: evidence of Gordon Brown attempting to intervene in the Gary McKinnon extradition case. I had no idea he had done so.

Example 2: evidence of China's decline of support for North Korea. I suspected China's support was a bit half-hearted but couldn't understand why they propped the regime up at all.

So if the leaks aren't damaging, and actually show some good work is being done behind the scenes (and exposing some unethical behaviour), why not release them? Less secrecy may reduce the level of paranoia in the world. It's embarrassing for the US to be shown that they spy on the UN, but everyone knew it anyway, so who cares? Man up and face the music. I think Wikileaks has done everyone, especially the US government, a big favour.

Speaking as a caver, it could well be a shakehole (sinkhole). It's not the classic shape for it but they vary in shape and size. It's big, but not enormous. If it is a shakehole it certainly won't have broken any records.

As a first step, check some geological maps. If you're above limestone, I'd say: case closed, it's a shakehole. Yes, it's above a cave (or at least where a cave used to be!) The first photo of the "new metal" looks suspiciously like limestone.

Well, take the prize for Physics:

USA 25.4
Germany 20.0
UK 14.8

As the wealthiest and most populous of first world nations, you'd expect the US to be top. But try dividing those numbers by GDP or population and the US suddenly looks a hell of a lot less impressive.