Behold! The new BMW Gnome 75!

Post #198,721 by Another Scott 3/15/05 7:38:43 AM Reply	Behold! The new BMW Gnome 75! New! Sweet lines! Sane defaults! New! It has the seat and steering wheel positioned so that 65% of drivers won't have to adjust them. (What? You're not in the 65%? Well you can unbolt the seat and drill holes in the floor for new mounting points, but such modifications are not recommended. Dimensions are provided in the BMW Gnome 75 Professional Modification Kit, but modifications are not recommended.) Please do not add an XM radio to your new BMW Gnome 75. We have carefully considered the User Experience (TM) and the iDrive system on the BMW Gnome 75 is not designed to use XM. While adding XM to the new BMW Gnome 75 is possible, please note that modifications are not recommended. Please do not compare the new BMW Gnome 75 to the previous BMW Gnome 45 model that had electric seats, a tilt and telescope steering column and XM as a factory installed option. That's not a fair comparison because the BWM Gnome 75 is a new model. While some may like the adjustability and extensibility of the Acura KDE TL, we think you'll like the BMW Gnome 75 much better. Why? Because flexibility is bad. >:-) Cheers, Scott. (Who tried to install Ubuntu so that he could get more experience Gnome, but it wouldn't work for me though it ran from the live CD.)
Post #198,827 by ubernostrum 3/15/05 4:18:44 PM Reply	Ah, yes. When you don't know anything about the field you want to criticize, just make stuff up and pat yourself on the back for being so right about it. \r\n\r\n Let me know when you actually want to have a discussion about usability, I'll be here. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird? \r\n[link\|http://www.shtuff.us/\|shtuff]
Post #198,830 by Another Scott 3/15/05 4:38:48 PM Reply	Happy to oblige. :-/
Post #198,848 by bepatient 3/15/05 6:30:27 PM Reply	When in doubt, claim superiority. If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. _{Fudd's First Law of Opposition} [link\|mailto:bepatient@aol.com\|BePatient]
Post #198,853 by ubernostrum 3/15/05 7:49:54 PM Reply	Re: When in doubt, claim superiority. It's not my fault that the straw man is a fallacy, ya know. \r\n\r\n So here's a serious response to his caricature: some people want to get out their tools and special-order stuff from the auto-parts store and spent months or years customizing every detail of their cars. Other people just want to get in their cars and drive. \r\n\r\n The former group should be using, at the very least, KDE, though I'd really recommend Enlightenment; they are exactly its target audience. The latter group are the people GNOME is developing for. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird? \r\n[link\|http://www.shtuff.us/\|shtuff]
Post #198,884 by admin 3/15/05 10:00:20 PM Reply	That's a false dichotomy. I just want to drive the car too. But I also want to be able to QUICKLY choose amongst several options, not spend 8 years configuring the damned thing. I used to be able to do that with GNOME. Now it's an easter egg hunt to find exactly the right obscurely named registry entry to fiddle, if it even exists any more. I've given up to a certain extent because I just want to get my work done, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it. One person's "sane defaults" are another person's pain in the ass. Lots of configurable options don't ruin usability unless the developer creates an unusable configuration application. It's not as if the configuration panel is always there. You have to open it up before your brain (according to you) is numbed by the bewildering array of options. God forbid people might actually fiddle with them. That would NEVER happen. People are sheep who are just be content with the spoon-fed "sane defaults". Anyone who believes that that sort of user is going to be a desktop Linux user is living in a reality distortion field. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #198,887 by ubernostrum 3/15/05 10:27:40 PM Reply	Nobody ever said "no configuration" Just less configuration and more usable configuration. --\r\nYou cooin' with my bird? \r\n[link\|http://www.shtuff.us/\|shtuff]
Post #198,889 by admin 3/15/05 10:37:23 PM Reply	Neither did I. Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #198,895 by Another Scott 3/15/05 11:24:27 PM Reply	We seem to be talking about different things. (Your tone is rather off-putting at the moment.) I started participating in this thread by talking about my view on the value of having an extensible desktop that can be easily modified by programmers or users without having to dig out gcc. (Specifically, the Workplace Shell that I was using in 1992.) You are talking about usability and usability testing. The two topics don't necessarily intersect. My reply to Peter was tongue-in-cheek: 1) Peter has mentioned wanting a BMW as his next car, and b) it was a car analogy, 3) it had a >:-). I guess I should have included The Sign: [image\|/forums/images/warning.png\|0\|This is sarcasm...] My reading is that part of what was removed from Gnome recently is planned to be [link\|http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/faq2.html#q12\|restored in 2.12]: 12. How do I edit my GNOME 2 menus? There is no way to add, edit, or rename GNOME menu items in GNOME 2.10 aside from manually editing the .desktop files themselves. However, deskutils/gnome-menu-editor can be used to deactivate items already in your Applications menu. Enhanced menu editing is currently planned for GNOME 2.12. I guess the value of simpler menu editing is recognized among the developers... My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.

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