downx3

Right. I don't think it's a stupid aim to have. All you need to do is make an OS, that is stupidly easy to use... I still see people flounder over windows. I put Salix with a bare amount of apps on an older family member's computer - and I think it's pretty elementary - but they still run into a few issues. I think it's more user friendly though than Windows XP - so that's a plus point.

Sounds like you are in a sea of technology! Nice point though.

I'm running Gnome Classic as I don't fancy Gnome Shell at the moment. And it's nearly there for me. My quit applet hangs my machine, my cpu applet has redraw issues. And nautilus and gedit are giving me some agro, but that's going off topic. It's taken me a week to theme the thing (Gnome 2 at least had a helper app - where I could make my own changes - though it was still problematic - I run a dark theme.) My keyboard switching applet sometimes doesn't respond to clicking. And I'm lost when it comes to audio configuration.

I think that's where the pain lies, when you run into a wall it hurts.

I guess these are teething issues. I'd like to know what GTK3 does bring to the table?

I get video flicker in games under Gnome Shell, and I've had flickering issues with video under Unity (11.10) on an Intel GM45 and Nvidia 6200 respectively. I crashed Unity in about an hour and made my desktop inaccessible the last time I used it. Unity 2D wasn't that bad, but some elements of the UI didn't gel well together at all - dialog boxes that are out of place etc.

The sad thing for me, is that I remember seeing Compiz for the first time. And there were elements and plugins that I really liked about it, and it felt like the desktop was moving forward. I was hoping that Gnome Shell would take the best bits of Compiz - but really get to the point where it would manage my desktop for me . But I can't say it brings me anything.

The negativity is just a case of sour grapes. We'd prefer to see the free desktops outdoing their commercial cousins. OSX10.4 Tiger is a pretty good benchmark to beat. And that's a 2007 OS.

It would be nice to see a Desktop OS competing with Android, W8 and the iPhone though.

I find network-manager takes more time than anything else getting a foot hold onto my wireless network. Other than that Debian Wheezy, with Gnome Classic is pretty good for me on an ancient SATA 1.0 spinner.

I think that there is middle ground to be had, with some sensible defaults, and sensible configuration options.

Make it good for the mouse, good for touch and good for keyboard! And let me mix it up a bit. And good for small and large screens alike.

The last time I tried Ubuntu, probably 11.10 - I could not use it without a mouse, just because of some wretched dialogues that I couldn't get keyboard focus on!

Is that Ubuntu specific? I'm running Debian Wheezy with an Intel GM45, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that hot plugging of my monitor worked. I'd read in the past, that that was Intel specific. Either way it's very welcome. I'd imagined I'd be stuck with Windows because of poor multi-monitor support - on my laptop.

Multiple monitors need a good window manager. I sacked off my second monitor out of frustration in the past, I wanted shortcuts to move apps to the other screen, the ability to turn off one screen when not needed - I inevitably had to turn it back on, when I'd loose a window or dialogue somewhere. Full screen apps chose the wrong monitor, some windows sat between monitors etc. It was just a bind, and a distraction in the end. Virtual desktops were a better fit for me because of the inadequacies.

I don't fancy hostname clashes.

What a load of rot. You're better to advertise something generic such as 'visit the <brand> website.' or 'find us online', rather than a barrage of non memorable domain names and various social media urls. This is such an elaborate con.

pepsi.com or www.pepsi or site.pepsi or brand.pepsi. You've then just got a multitude of hostname parts to guess - which is more confusing.

Thought it might be better to sniff the device resolution, but apparently the ipad3 lies!

http://www.priteshgupta.com/2012/04/detecting-ipad-3-for-spe...

Might be just as well to sniff the user agent.

Would it be better to sniff the header?

Accept: RETINA

Something like that, at least then you could turn it off in the browser.

I thought it might have been inspired to mimic a cursor blink. But no.

Semantically it might have been better authored as the 'pester' element, with blinking being one implementation.

Thanks for this.

I wonder how this interferes with on device picture optimisation - scaling etc.

The leather always put me off the chumby.

I must add then that it was just below 0 degrees C! Don't fancy minus eighteen at all.

That's pretty cool. I was thinking about something similar. Just the ability to easily blend video signals. Say two inputs on the TV.

It would be good to then plugin a 'computer' something like the Raspberry Pi, that would overlay the existing signal, or merge two video inputs (Would this be simple digitally?).

It would be nice if there was meta info available alongside a program, that you could hook into somehow, so you could do something useful with it. A cue sheet or something. Having meta info about a playing scene could be useful. Digitized credits would be nice.

I didn't know you could do this, faster loads would help. But by the time you've done this you may as well just run some web services/pages.

Agree - why so slow?

Would be nice to see an open implementation here. I was kind of thinking that Google Tv might be that. But you really need the ability to overlay the picture. I've considered placing a low resolution lcd next to the telly and doing something myself. Something text based would be fine, it wouldn't need a supercomputer.

When David Cameron visited the Queen to be signed in, I had a live Twitter feed running and it was hilarious. I like the alternative commentary. You could also do audio overlays - over the net. Or even (though a little Orwellian) a webcam to communicate with your mates, something like hangouts.

The smart TV landscape and digital services are pretty confusing. It was tricky enough choosing between Ceefax and Teletext.

Currently I resort to a laptop for lookups and my partner claws her smartphone - which is pretty antisocial, and you miss the action.

You could use solar water heating as a vector to trap the suns heat in an underground heat store, that you then release at night. How cold does it get?

Edit:

I just tried to find out about night time temperatures. On the wikipedia page 'desert', it suggests it only gets as cold as 0 degrees C. Although I did find a remark that Antarctica was technically a desert.

I just camped out in temperatures below 0 weekend gone, and it wasn't that comfortable, but I was staying under a thin piece of plastic. If I'd have been a bit better prepared it would have been much more bearable.

I like the idea of taking the water back out the sea and placing it in underground aquifers. Some are are seriously depleted through industrial agricultural farming.

Would be nice if you could just pull a cloud or two down from the sky.

I doubt you'd care for hot water in the dessert. You could just fill a black bag. Cool clean water is probably preferential.

Nice, and I thought this was good: http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/living-without-water...

Agreed, so annoying.

Tried in Google Chrome on Debian Wheezy AMD64 with Intel GM45.

Place feedback and alternative links at the top of the page also. Otherwise users are just left puzzled.

I was so looking forward to a more 'web like' replacement for Ceefax/Teletext, to augment broadcasts. I never use the digital TV red button as it feels even slower than the 70s technology.

Add to that that I can't even read what is on the screen. At least I can read Ceefax. Perhaps it is because I don't have a TV display larger than 22".

The company that can add useful overlays to existing broadcasts - could clean up: think Twitter/Wikipedia on the telly. A use for something like raspberry pi?

See also a discussion here about Teletext, a similar service: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=996889

Surprised to see Google advertising on the TV in the UK for G+, a week later they change the navigation - that's pretty bad timing for any new adopters.

I was quite relieved to find that this iteration is actually semi-usable without JS. Still doesn't degrade as well as facebook mobile. Can't tell what the buttons are without the rollover, unless you have learnt them. Both Gmail and G+ rely on background images for buttons too, which leads to quite a bit of mystery meat navigation for me (I prefer to set my own background in my browser.)

False assertion.

That's good to know though. As it's pretty easy to waste a year learning framework X.