Fusket med bidragen

Se www.clarte.nu. Mycket siffror men matnyttigt. De ökande socialföräkringskostnaderna beror alltså precis som man skulle kunna tro på fler pensionärer. Ett annat intressant faktum är att sjukförsäkringen inte är ett absolut belopp utan en viss del av inkomsten. Det betyder att ju högre lön man har desto mer får man när man är sjuk. På grund av dessa två faktum har kostnaderna stigit. Men vad som undantigs är att BNP och Sveriges skatteintäkter har stigit ännu mer och att kostnaderna som andel av BNP är lägre än vad de var förut. Vem fan hade kunnat trott det med tanke på den totala mediahysteri kring ämnet som råder?

A month with Ubuntu

Recently I've installed Ubuntu 5.04. It marks a personal shift in my "Linux career." Previously I was hooked on Gentoo and all the nifty tricks you had availible to "optimize" it. Also its nifty "emerge sync; emerge -uDv world" package management was cool. I write optimize in quotes because, as I think most of you already know, there is no gain in optimizing like Gentoo does. Let's say you compile your whole system with -O3 instead of -O2, what do you gain? Not a whole lot. The majority of the processor cycles are still wasted waiting for I/O. I'm a programmer so usually I guess I should care about such things. But really, what I'm doing most of the time in front a computer is READING! Web pages, documents, emails and source code. Gaining a few milliseconds loading them is a drop in the sea compared to the time it takes me to read and interpret them. It is the human-computer interaction where the most speedups can be made - not the computer-computer interaction. For example, installing fonts that are easier on the eyes - a HUGE time saver. Another example would be consistent keyboard shortcuts. Ubuntu is good at optimizing the human-computer interaction. I can't notice Ubuntu running any slower than Gentoo, but I can notice how much simpler it is to use. Simpler means more enjoyable and that is why I like Ubuntu. But Ubuntu has its flaws just like all other Linux distributions. It seems like many other has also realized this and are now complaining hard at Slashdot and in other places where complainers usually complain. It usually goes something like "Yeah, Linux is good but it was very frustrated so I went back to crappy MS." Comments like that have been heard ever since Linux was created back in 1991. But they seem to be much more common these days.I think these complaints is a sure sign that Desktop Linux is improving. Today Linux comes in two flavours - Desktop Linux and Console Linux. The era of the Console Linux seem to be slowly phasing out and be replaced with the newer (albeit I'm not sure better) Desktop Linux. Previously, Linux users booted their OS, logged into X via gdm, kdm or xdm and started a shell to get some work done. It was a good time and I'm sure a lot of gurus will stick with it forever. I am however, sick of commans like: gcc --std=c99 -g -Wall -o foo foobar.c `sdl-config --cflags --libs` -lSDL_image To compile a simple program. Yeah, I know there is make and I know how to use it. But it just moves the typing to some place else. That's the way I used to work. Although it wasn't perfect it still beat programming in Windows by big margins. Bash beats cmd.exe. Now there is Desktop Linux which introduces a whole new model of thinking in the OS. You are now supposed to be able to do stuff by clicking and dragging instead of writing. For reasons others have detailed it is a model much easier for average users than Console Linux. Windows became a Desktop OS some years after Windows 95. Before that you just couldn't do very much in the GUI and had to resort to DOS. Now Linux with its desktop competes in the very same league that Windows does. That means that people will apply the same ruler when they measure Linux and Windows. ... and Linux will come up short. Sad but true and the reason behind the increased frequency in complaints. Desktop Linux is rapidly catching up, but are still playing catching up and are only in a few areas ahead of Windows. One of those areas is a default browser with tabbed browsing which Windows doesn't have. But um, type \\sweetstuff\Common in Explorer and it will work, in Nautilus it won't. Maybe with Samba-something and fluff it will. But since I spent four hours today trying to get it to work I will just conclude that it is impossible. :) For sure it is impossible within Desktop Linux and you will have to resort to Console Linux. Somewhat akin to how useless Windows 3.11 was for real work. Well... not really.. well... not even close. I predict that in 6 to 12 months Desktop Linux will for most uses be superior to Console Linux and that you will even be able to configure Samba in it. Ubuntu is the pinnacle of Desktop Linux. Right now it is barely usable and it is barely worth the transition from the console to the desktop. In my next blog entry, if I write it, I will write what Ubuntu miss and why XP is a better desktop still. As always, you have been a great audience.

Spring Loaded Folders in Nautilus

Spring Loaded Folders (SLF) is a feature which greatly simplifies drag and drop (DND) filehandling. With normal DND filehandling you drag a file object from one place to another container. SLF enhances this by allowing you to drag the object to a closed container which activates and you are then able to further the drag to other closed containers inside the container until you get to the target container and drop the object there. OS X supposedly have this feature and it is supposedly great. (link) The web browser Firefox also has a form of SLF. You can try it out by first creating a folder with a subfolder in the Bookmars Toolbar. Then drag the icon to the left in the URL entry field to the folder which opens and you can release the icon in the subfolder. It is in my opinion very much a killer feature and one of the reasons why Firefox is a much better browser than Ephiphany. Imagine if you can, how much better filehandling in Nautilus would be if it had this feature. Right, so someone long before me thought about it and submitted a patch to Nautilus which implemented this feature. (link) The history could have ended there and Nautilus would have been a much better file manager. But it didn't because there were some problems. (link) Yes, PATENT problems. The worst kind of problem ever. Apple has patented the idea. (link) Bastards they are, taking the best of the free software community (link) and then cripples it by patenting simple concepts! The patent problem is like a growing cancer in the free software community and to me, it is evident that something has to be done to combat them. What should be do to get SLF in Nautilus? My first idea was to emigrate the GNOME Foundation to Europe. Here we do not allow software patents so there would be no legal troubles as far as I can tell. Even if we did, the GNOME Foundation would still be much more protected because you have a harder time to make frivolous lawsuits here than in the US. Another advantage would be that it allow Cuban developers to contribute. :) But the idea carries quite a few logistic problems. Most developers contributing to GNOME are Americans and Novell, RedHat and Sun (all of which are major contributors to GNOME) are US-based companies. Still it seems like that, in the long run, basing the free software infrastructure in a more relaxed jurisdiction is the best and only option. My next idea was to try and circumvent the patent. For example, it is possible that Firefox' implementation of SLF which strictly speaking opens a menu instead of a folder is enough. Nautilus could work like that. I haven't seen how SLF works in OS X, but maybe it would even be better with a menu representation? Less mouse movement and so on. My third idea is to find prior art. If we can prove that someone else implemented an idea similar or identical to SLF Apple's patent becomes null and void. However, finding prior art is hard even if you instinctively know that there should be out there. Researching it is a lot of work. But if we work together I'm sure we can torpedo this and other equally stupid patents. According to my research the Mac OS programs BeHierarchic and DragonDrop was written before Apple's SLF patent and contain ideas very similar. A KDE FTP client named KBear may also do it. Also, according to this page: www.okinfoweb.com/moe/general/gen_0 12.htm it seems like Microsoft Outlook Express had a system extremely similar to SLF long before Apple. But more research is needed. I'd be very happy if someone with knowledge of these programs reading this could contact me and tell me if we have found any prior art or not.

Fun quotes

Just one but I'll add more. Try harder