Tag Archives: Last November

Automobiles

Rumormill: Audi design getting big overhaul?

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By Jonathon Ramsey

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Car and Driver has an update on the design shuffle in Ingolstadt that will ultimately bring more differentiation to Audi products. Last November, Audi design chief Wolfgang Egger spoke of the need to do “something new without breaking from tradition” in Audi design, but talk at the time centered on how the Crosslane Coupe Concept would influence the new looks of the brand’s Q cars. The most recent moves appear focused on passenger cars, with designers from Volkswagen Group kin like Bentley and Seat moving to Audi, and outsiders from Alfa Romeo moving in.

While Egger decreed the end of “scalable design” to CD, last November’s report said there would be more technology and “greater visual cohesion” between interior and exterior design. We still have no idea what all this means nor when we’ll see visible changes in production, but at least we know there’s something being done behind the scenes.

Audi design getting big overhaul? originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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News, Politics, Government

Registry Study Offers Reassurance About Safety And Efficacy Of Pradaxa

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By Larry Husten, Contributor As the first new oral anticoagulant since warfarin, dabigatran (Pradaxa, Boehringer-Ingelheim) has been subject to intense concerns over its safety and efficacy in a real-world population. Last November an FDA investigation found no indication that bleeding rates for dabigatran were any higher than bleeding rates for warfarin. A new study from Scandinavia, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (see note at bottom of story), provides more real-world information that helps to confirm the safety and efficacy of the new drug. …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

What Monetary Policy Means for Your Investments

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By Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool

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For years, commentators have endlessly talked about the accommodative monetary policy that the Federal Reserve has provided to try to boost the U.S. economy. But for most investors, it’s hard to figure out exactly what monetary policy is, let alone how it affects them and their money.

In order to understand monetary policy, the natural first place to get information is from the Federal Reserve itself. Using its resources, let’s take a look at how the Fed uses various tools to implement and manage the role that money pays in the economy.

The Fed and you
For 100 years, the Federal Reserve has had the power to implement monetary policy. As it describes its role, the Fed traditionally uses three different tools to “influence the availability and cost of money and credit to help promote national economic goals.” The discount rate that the Fed sets establishes terms under which banks can borrow funds on an overnight or in some cases seasonal basis, but because the rate is typically above prevailing market rates, banks tend to take advantage of the Fed’s discount window only as a last resort. In addition, the Fed’s reserve requirements force banks to keep a certain percentage of deposits and other liabilities on reserve at the Fed.

The Fed’s most important monetary tool lately, however, has been its open market operations. Before the financial crisis, the Fed tended to buy and sell primarily short-term securities in an effort to maintain the supply and-demand dynamics that affect the federal funds rate. After setting a fed-funds target, the Fed typically used what’s known as repurchase and reverse repurchase agreements to influence trading in the federal funds market to keep market conditions from disrupting its monetary policy and keep the actual fed funds rate near its target. These temporary open market operations fine-tuned rate levels effectively.

More recently, though, the Fed’s open market operations have included massive asset purchases that have targeted longer-term rates. By spending hundreds of billions of dollars on purchasing long-term Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, the Fed has tried to keep long-term rates low in order to spur businesses to make investments that boost economic activity and create jobs.

Does monetary policy help you or hurt you?
The impact of the Fed’s rate policies largely depends on whether you’re a net saver or a net borrower. Savers have seen the rates of safe investments like bank CDs and Treasury bonds plunge as a result of the Fed’s actions, leading many of them to make more aggressive investments in riskier assets to generate income. But borrowers have been able to take advantage of favorable rates to lock in cheaper financing costs that increase profits.

For corporate borrowers, the impact of monetary policy has been huge. Last November, top-rated corporate issuer Microsoft was able to borrow money for five years at less than 1%. More recently, Disney and Coca-Cola were able to issue <a target=_blank …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Science & Technology

Controversial NIH Chelation Trial Published In JAMA

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By Larry Husten Final results of the troubled NIH-sponsored TACT trial testing chelation therapy for coronary disease have now been published in JAMA. Last November, when the preliminary results were presented at the American Heart Association meeting, the positive finding in favor of chelation therapy surprised many observers, though the investigators and senior AHA representatives expressed considerable caution about the proper interpretation of the results. Full publication of the main results should now allow for a more thorough consideration of the trial. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Technology

Automobiles

Chevrolet and Cadillac Mulling Three-Cylinder for Volt and ELR, Report Says

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By John Lamm

If you had suggested just five years ago that we could have a Cadillac powered by a three-cylinder engine, you’d have been locked away in a loony bin. They’d have made you eat the key. Yet according to a report by Edmunds, that’s what could be on the horizon for Cadillac and Chevrolet. The report says that while the plan has yet to be approved, General Motors is considering the use of three-cylinders as part of its plan to reduce vehicle weight and fuel consumption.

As they stand, the Chevrolet Volt and the Cadillac ELR plug-in hybrids are powered by a, 84-hp, 1.4-liter four-cylinder working in conjunction with a 149-hp electric motor. If the source of the Edmunds report is correct, that four-banger would be replaced by a 1.0- or 1.2-liter inline-three. About 18 months ago, GM announced it would be working with its Chinese partners to develop a new generation of three- and four-cylinder engines, which likely would be the source for the new Volt and ELR combustion engines. The Volt likely would be the first recipient of the triple with a refresh expected for 2015, while the ELR would follow suit a year later.

Just last week, GM CEO Dan Akerson spoke of the need to reduce vehicle mass, saying, “A good rule of thumb is that a 10-percent reduction in curb weight will reduce fuel consumption by about 6.5 percent. Our target is to reduce weight by up to 15 percent.” Last November, the man at Ford with the company’s longest title—executive vice president of global marketing, sales and service, and Lincoln—Jim Farley, told us, “Probably the most exciting fuel economy technology we never talk about is ‘lightweighting.’” It just so happens that Ford’s been hard at work on a three-cylinder of its own, which we’ve sampled in a European-market Focus and in the 2014 Fiesta, which will go on sale later this year.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver

Articles of Interest

A Look At Health Insurance Exchanges

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By Michael D. Shaw

undo obamacare A Look at Health Insurance Exchanges

An important component of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is the establishment of so-called Health Insurance Exchanges, given the acronym HIX. Driven by the questionable notion that getting everyone insured was the most important problem to be solved in health care, and energized by the earlier concept of managed competition, HIX are intended to help individuals and small businesses purchase health insurance coverage. By January 1, 2014 these exchanges must exist in every state.

Managed competition is a purchasing strategy based on microeconomic principles, whereby maximum value is supposedly obtained for both consumers and employers. At the heart of managed competition is an all-powerful sponsor, whose role is to establish rules of equity, select participating plans, manage the enrollment process, create price-elastic demand, and manage risk selection. Its proponents acknowledge that it will tend to succeed based on the extent of high-quality, cost-effective, organized systems of care already in existence—especially prepaid group practices.

If you find this paradigm to be ironic, you are not alone. What value is added by a parasitic bureaucracy that first requires a well-oiled machine as a host? Not to mention the army of consultants, associated vendors, and other hangers-on, who all stand to profit from HIX implementation. But then, we might also ask why physicians, nurses, and other providers are such a small part of the overall picture—and why almost no one seems to care about this. Indeed, Obamacare is likely the greatest example of “the tail wagging the dog” in history.

Last November, HHS announced that a fee would be imposed on insurance providers for the privilege of selling health insurance in the new online markets run by the federal government. Naturally, these user fees (3.5 percent) can—and will—be passed onto consumers. Throw into the mix the temporarily postponed reduction in Medicare reimbursements and uncertainty over Medicaid coverage, and the prospect of a health care Nirvana appears quite remote.

It should be noted that this sea change in the nature of health insurance has sparked an interest in Defined Contribution (DC) Health Plans. In the DC model, employees are given before-tax dollars, applicable to obtaining coverage on their own, including using the new exchanges. Many experts predict that traditional health insurance (the defined benefits model) will cease to exist by 2020, in favor of the DC model.

Enterprising insurance professionals, and this includes some carriers, have already moved into the DC space. Private health insurance exchanges are those that operate outside of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but still must meet the requirements of the exchange management. These, too, can be part of the offerings of savvy brokers.

One company doing a fine job in helping employers and brokers alike to enter this new world of health insurance products is Birmingham, AL based Health Partners America. HPA’s website provides plenty of resources, including content by founder and president Josh Hilgers. Don’t miss the videos directed to employers and employees.

Health care in America is changing. Whether for the better or worse remains to be seen.

Related …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Why Stocks Have Rebounded This Afternoon

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By John Maxfield, The Motley Fool

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Blue-chip stocks have mounted an impressive comeback this afternoon. After starting the day solidly in the red, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has clawed its way back near breakeven. With roughly an hour left in the trading session, the index is down 12 points, or 0.08%.

The day got off to a rough start after Cyprus announced that it may confiscate a portion of bank deposits in an effort to raise funds for the country’s bailout. The plan as originally conceived called for the small island nation to tax every depositor with less than 100,000 euros in the bank at 6.75% and those more than that amount at 9.9%. There have since been a number of proposed amendments that could change those figures. In the meantime, however, Cyprus has instituted an official bank holiday, closing its financial institutions until Thursday. To read more about this, click here.

Also fueling the bearish sentiment was a downbeat report about housing here in the United States. The National Association of Home Builders released its homebuilder confidence index today, showing a decline from 46 in February to 44 this month — a reading of less than 50 suggests negative sentiment. This is the second consecutive monthly decline and purportedly owes to concerns that demand for new homes is exceeding the supply. While this could constrain sales over the short term, the broader improvements in housing over the last year are nevertheless positive for the long-term outlook.

The best-performing stock on the Dow today is Hewlett-Packard . Earlier today, an analyst at investment bank Morgan Stanley upgraded the tech company’s stock from “equal weight” to “overweight,” signifying that its future performance is expected to best the broader market. As my colleague Anders Bylund noted earlier, the reasoning behind the upgrade boils down to cash flow. Last November, the company projected $5 billion in free cash flow for the current fiscal year. The Morgan Stanley analyst, however, thinks the figure will come closer to $6.7 billion.

Either way, there’s no disputing the fact that HP has struggled of late. Over the past two years, its stock has fallen by 46%, plummeting from about $42 per share in March of 2011 down to about $23 per share today. That being said, it has mounted an impressive rally over the last four months, nearly doubling since the end of November. And for the year to date, it’s far and away the best-performing stock on the Dow, up by 56%.

Conversely, shares of JPMorgan Chase are lower on the heels of last week’s dividend announcement and Friday’s congressional hearing about the now-infamous “London Whale” debacle which cost the bank more than $6 billion in losses last year.

After the market closed on Thursday, the Federal Reserve released the results of its 2013 Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review, which determined which of the nation’s 18 largest banks would be allowed to raise dividends and/or share buybacks this year. While the …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

News, Politics, Government

Remarks By Tom Donilon, National Security Advisory to the President: "The United States and the Asia-Pacific in 2013"

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By The White House

The Asia Society
New York, New York
Monday, March 11, 2013

“The United States and the Asia-Pacific in 2013”

As Prepared for Delivery –

Thank you, Henrietta, for that kind introduction and for your service, both in government and here at the Asia Society. And thank you, Suzanne, for bringing us together today. I am honored to be with you, especially in these beautiful surroundings. For almost sixty years, this organization has connected cultures— Asian and American—our ideas, leaders and people.

Of course, one of those people, a real presence here at the Asia Society, was your chairman and my friend of thirty years, Richard Holbrooke. Richard was famous for his work from the Balkans to South Asia. But he was also a real Asia hand as the youngest-ever Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia. Richard dedicated himself to the idea that progress and peace was possible—a lesson we carry forward, not only in Southwest Asia, where he worked so hard, but across the Asia-Pacific. I’ve come here today because this project has never been more consequential—the future of the United States has never been more closely linked to the economic, strategic and political order emerging in the Asia-Pacific.

Last November, I gave a speech in Washington outlining how the United States is rebalancing our global posture to reflect the growing importance of Asia. As President Obama’s second term begins, I want to focus on some of the specific challenges that lay ahead.

This is especially timely because this is a period of transition in Asia. New leaders have taken office in Tokyo and Seoul. In Beijing, China’s leadership transition will be completed this week. President Obama and those of us on his national security team have already had constructive conversations with each incoming leader. We’ll be seeing elections in Malaysia, Australia and elsewhere. These changes remind us of the importance of constant, persistent U.S. engagement in this dynamic region.

Why Rebalance Toward Asia

Let me begin by putting our rebalance to the Asia-Pacific in context. Every Administration faces the challenge of ensuring that cascading crises do not crowd out the development of long-term strategies to deal with transcendent challenges and opportunities.

After a decade defined by 9/11, two wars, and a financial crisis, President Obama took office determined to restore the foundation of the United States’ global leadership—our economic strength at home. Since then the United States has put in place a set of policies that have put our economy on the path to recovery, and helped create six million U.S. jobs in the last thirty-five months.

At the same time, renewing U.S. leadership has also meant focusing our efforts and resources not just on the challenges that make today’s headlines, but on the regions that will shape the global order in the decades ahead. That’s why, from the outset—even before the President took office—he directed those of us on his national security team to …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at The White House Press Office

News, Politics, Government

4-story building collapses in Senegal, killing 2

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Ibrahim Balde knew his place. He was the newest member of the construction crew, expected to do the hardest tasks for the lowest pay. So when he showed up for work on Friday morning, he went to take his place on the ground floor, at the bottom of the pulley used to yank buckets of cement up the four stories of the apartment complex they were building.

He was surprised and touched when his fellow crew member decided to give 20-year-old Balde a break, telling him to go to the top of the building and unload the buckets of cement, a far lighter and less-tiring task. It was that act of kindness that saved Balde: On the fourth floor when the building began to shake, Balde first fell with the structure, then regained his footing and succeeded in leaping off. The building crumpled beneath him, killing two members of the construction crew, including the young man who had traded places with him earlier.

It’s the latest loss of life due to a building collapse in this part of Africa, where regulation is lax and officials are easily bribed. Last November, a housing goods store crumbled in Ghana, killing at least 17.

The four-story building was only permitted to be half as tall, said Omar Samb Gueye, the local chief in the Ouakam neighborhood, a former fishing village which has become part of Dakar’s urban sprawl. He confirmed that two people were killed when the building fell between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. on Friday. Gueye blamed badly-executed and hasty construction for the tragedy.

“It’s due to a defect in the way the building was constructed,” he said. “There’s no cement. Look,” he said pointing to the rubble, which appeared to consist mostly of cinderblocks, a sand-like filling and metal wiring. “I’m not a mason, but even I can tell that it’s bad construction.”

Balde was hired a month ago and agreed to work for $4 a day doing whatever the foreman asked. He was brought on after his friend, the foreman’s son, put in a good word for him. And for the first month — up until Friday — his job had consisted almost exclusively of hauling bags of cement to the mouth of the large bucket. Then filling the bucket, and then yanking the pulley until the bucket ascended, a job that he said left his arms tingling by the end of the day and the palms of his hands as hard as wood.

“I was …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

No Retirement For China's Banking Elite Amid Political Transition

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By Simon Montlake, Forbes Staff

China‘s once-in-a-decade leadership change has put a new generation in the hot seat, led by Xi Jinping, the president-in-waiting. Last November‘s congress elevated Xi to secretary-general of the ruling party and head of a seven-man central committee. China‘s new cabinet will be confirmed next month when the national legislature meets in Beijing, with President Hu Jintao keeping a low profile as he prepares to hand over the baton to his successor. But not everyone is going quietly into the night. Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan, who recently turned 65 and had been expected to step down after the legislative meeting, now appears to be digging in his heels. Reuters reported Wednesday that Zhou would avoid compulsory retirement by joining a national consultative assembly as a vice-chairman, which would put him at a sufficient rank to hold onto the governor’s post. The South China Morning Post also cited unnamed sources as saying that Zhou would stay on and wanted to see through his financial reform agenda, including the gradual unshackling of China‘s currency. He has served as governor of the People’s Bank of China since 2002. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

News, Politics, Government

Unattended, 5 boys in China die from suffocation

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Chinese state media say five unsupervised boys aged 4 to 6 have suffocated after lighting a fire in an abandoned barn in southwestern China.

The official Xinhua News Agency says four of the boys were found dead in the barn Monday in Majiang county in the southwestern province of Guizhou, and that the fifth boy died later in a hospital. A Majiang official confirmed the report Tuesday. He declined to give his name.

Xinhua said a preliminary investigation showed the boys burned hay in the mud-brick structure, which had only one exit. It said the boys were left unsupervised because their parents were helping with a local wedding.

Last November, five runaway boys died in a garbage bin where they sought shelter and warmth, also in Guizhou.

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

Automobiles

The Most Wanted List, Part II: More of the Greatest Enemies to the C/D Way of Life

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By John Pearley Huffman

From the March 2013 issue of CAR and DRIVER

Personal transportation is at the vanguard of freedom. Cars aren’t just p­ractical tools, but manifestations of  liberty, which, for lack of a better definition, is the ability to go wherever we want, whenever we want, in air-conditioned comfort, and while listening to Perry Como (if we feel like it). Last month, we listed five enemies of automotive culture. Here, we complete our rundown of C/D’s Most Wanted with ­profiles of five more opponents.

↳ The Interstate Highway System
As conduits for delivering goods and services, America’s highways have been a boon. But they were designed with a grim, unimaginative, straight-line efficiency that makes them some of the most boring 46,900 miles on Earth. Hills were flattened, mountains were cleaved, and the contours of the land ignored as the system was designed and built, resulting in a dull, droning sameness. It stretches coast to coast, bypassing great small towns, propagating instead a KenTacoHut/Motel 6 combo at every exit. The upside is that many of the roads the interstates superseded are lightly traveled and unsullied by billboards.

↳ Google
It’s bad enough that search engines have reduced publishing to the synergizing of mission-critical keywords to optimize organic visibility. But must Google now spend its vast wealth developing a driverless car? There’s a certain phlegmatic beauty to the idea: Issue a few voice commands and your vehicle safely and efficiently whisks you off to your destination. Meanwhile, you can call up this month’s Car and Algorithm on your tablet and read the latest comparison test of floating decimal points. Driving isn’t a chore crying out to be automated. It’s the greatest spiritual innovation of the last 200 years.

↳ American Traffic Solutions
American Traffic Solutions (ATS) is the largest provider and administrator of red-light-camera ticketing systems in America. ATS claims that its products reduce red-light running and, consequently, crashes. Supporting evidence is thin, however, and there are some indications that the cameras actually make intersections more dangerous. The cameras face mounting opposition. Los Angeles canceled its ATS contract in 2012, having stopped issuing tickets in 2011. Last November, voters in Murrieta, California, easily passed a ban on the cameras despite an ATS-financed campaign that outspent its opposition by 100:1.

↳ Car Dealers
Despite the internet marketplace, consumer-protection laws, and a savage winnowing of their numbers in recent years, many car dealers still play games with your trade-in, overcharge for paint and fabric treatments, and push financing that pads commissions. Protected by franchise laws and contracts with carmakers, dealers have resisted most any innovation that would make car buying more …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Car & Driver

Linux

Jonathan Carter: Gnome Panel is Alive

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The death of Gnome Panel

Gnome Panel (or more properly, gnome-panel) is the main dock that you would see in the Gnome 2 series desktop, and in the Gnome Fallback session (also called Gnome “Classic” in many distributions) in Gnome 3.

To provide the typical desktop experience, it’s also accompanied by Nautilus and Metacity along with a few other libraries (hence forth, gnome-panel’s friends). Gnome Panel and friends have recently been deprecated so that developers have more time to focus on Gnome Shell, the new default shell for Gnome that has a vastly simplified (and better) technology stack. Last November, Vincent Untz announced that he would stop maintaining Gnome Panel and friends beyond the 3.6 release, which means the death for it unless anyone else takes it up.

Then What

I’ve been an avid user of the Gnome 2.x series and also Gnome Fallback in the 3.x series. I’ve gotten rather good at supporting it too. We include it by default in Edubuntu, and even have an option in the installer to make it the default for installations over Unity. It provides a low-footprint, fast and simple desktop experience with very reasonable usability, while being very configurable and lockdownable. (my spell check says that’s not a word, but I don’t care).

I’ve been considering whether we should switch to having Xfce or LXDE as an alternative to Unity, but after discussing it with other Edubuntu contributors, it became clear that if I wanted to do that, I’d have to be willing to maintain it for Edubuntu by myself. In Edubuntu we’ve been pretty good at having at least 2 people being interested in any side-project we pick up and I like to keep it that way if we can. It means that if someone gets a bit busy, there’s someone who can pick up the slack for a little while. Also, Xfce and LXDE had big holes in usability, especially when it came to things like having multiple displays and running on laptops. I decided to put that project on the backburner a little since Ubuntu 13.04 will still be using Gnome 3.6, which meant that we’d have the Fallback session for one more release anyway.

The Inevitable Fork

Ikey Doherty forked off Gnome Panel to create a new environment called Consort. Metacity is forked to become Consortium. The website where the Consort desktop environment used to live seems gone now, but here’s a link to some screenshots from Google+.

This caused a bit of a stir, Vincent Untz posted a good chronology of what lead up to it and why he believes that a fork is a bad idea when the Gnome project has effectively put the upstream code up for adoption.

I’ve been interested in the Consort family since it could potentially be something that we could use in Edubuntu once the upstream gnome-panel is no longer in the archives. Also, while Gnome Shell, KDE Plasma Desktop and Unity are great and have come incredibly far in terms of stability and performance, it’s just not always for me. I want to be able to use it for myself in virtual machines, older machines and some other special cases (most notably, on LTSP).

Josselin Mouette, maintainer of Gnome in Debian, approached Ikey after some requests have been made for it in Debian. If you’ve read the post and the IRC logs linked, then you’ll probably agree that it could’ve gone a lot better. I’m not on the SolusOS IRC channel so only saw the conversation after the fact, but I was disappointing since it would need to go into Debian if I’d want to support it in Edubuntu. I think both Josselin and Ikey could’ve handled it better, but humans are just that and emotions and misunderstandings happen.

And so I Bite

I was chewing a bit on Josselin’s comment on how the former maintainer “maintainer decided to give the key to anyone who wanted to” and it’s been several weeks since Vincent invited people to take over maintainership. I decided that I’d at least be willing to do the absolute minimum just to keep the project releasable every six months so that it can be included in distributions, maintain its online presence pages, bug tracker status and keep up with component changes in the stack. So I e-mailed Vincent and explained what I’m willing to do. I had very little resistance, Vincent sent an email out to other people who are steakholders in the gnome-panel project and after a week, there were no objections. So here I am, brand new maintainer of the Gnome Fallback session and its components!

This means that the project is, at least for now, alive again. It’s not going to be part of the official Gnome 3.8 release (I still have to figure out exactly what that means), but there will be a 3.8 release of Gnome Panel and friends as tarballs and for people who maintain it in distributions, things will continue to work exactly as it did before.

Short-term Goals

  • My complete primary goal for this at the moment is to ensure that gnome-panel, metacity, etc is releasable alongside the Gnome 3.8 release. This basically means making sure it builds, including any patches that we can and releasing.

Medium-term Goals

  • Do something about the long buglist. The Gnome bug tracker has an ugly long list of gnome-panel bugs (939 at my last count). I want to eliminate all the stale Gnome 2.x gnome-panel bugs of which a very large amount of them are no longer relevant (at least on first glance). Then I’d like to do some regular posts to the mailing list and blog about a few prominent bugs every now and again and try to fix them and get people involved.
  • Porting Metacity to GTK3. So here’s a bit of really good news. Josselin is also involved with this and one of his mid-term goals is to port metacity to gtk3. It’s something that I know would have to happen, but I don’t have the skills to do that (yet) and I’m glad that he has took this up. Josselin’s mid-term goals also include possibly adding support for the new notification  system (if necessary) and adding support for the new Gnome global menu.
  • Create a nice project page with goals and to-do list, who’s envolved and what they’re doing and encourage more people to get involved. The current page is rather outdated so it would be nice to fix it. For now that mostly involved bringing the Gnome Panel Gnome Wiki page up to date.

Long-term Goals

  • My pet peeve…  intelligent launcher icons. Windows 7, Mac OS X, KDE, Unity and Gnome Shell have docks that work very similarly in many ways. You click on a launcher and those same launcher entries are recycled as your window list. Gnome Panel is a bit old fashioned in this regard. Many people use 3rd party panels and launchers just to get around this. I have thought for a long time that this should be fixed in Gnome Panel and long-term, it’s something that I’d like to see happen.
  • Make the stack as downstream-friendly as possible. Regarding Ikey and Consort, I don’t actually think it was a completely horrible idea at the time. We live in a free world where we use free software and anyone is allowed to do whatever they want and fork whenever they want, and while that doesn’t necessarilly mean it’s a good idea, it also doesn’t mean that we need to get all hissy about it. I’d actually be very interested in working with people who want to fork and find out why they want to fork and try to reel them in closer to upstream. In the case of Consort, I think it would be most beneficial for both projects and all their users if Consort was a branch of Gnome Fallback, rather than a fork. Both projects use Git, FFS. I’ll reach out and try to minimize duplication of effort while not blocking anyone on experimenting with new features or implementing distro-specific changes.
  • More metacity features. Metacity’s compositing features have come quite a long way, there are still a few bugs that need to be sorted out, but more than that, there are many window manager features that users have become accustomed to in pretty much all the other environments. Ikey has indicated previously that he wants to do this for consortium. It’s one of the reaons I’ll be super-nice to him because I’d really prefer that he submit as much of that upstream as possible.
  • Make everything worth configurable and lockdownable. There are some settings that I get requests from from the users I support so often that it’s just getting boring. The Gnome 2.x series proved to work well in educational and corporate environments. I say we should play on that strength and make it even more  so, while sticking 100% with the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines, of course.

Very Long-term Goals

Well, the fact is, Gnome Fallback will die. There’s a new project called Gnome Legacy, it implements a Gnome 2.x-like experience in Gnome 3. As time goes by, older machines become more powerful and the missing pieces will be implemented and eventually there would be no more good reason for anyone to want to run what we now know as Gnome Fallback. I think it could still have a good 3-5 years or maybe even more in it. Who knows, by then Gnome 4 might even be in development and all of this will be ancient history.

So, my very quick “Eek, I’m now maintainer of Gnome Panel!” post has become quite lengthy post, if you have any questions, I’ll respond to it in the comments.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet Ubuntu