_ph_

Unfortunately, they left open what happens after dropping DST. If they had clearly written that the EU would return to the standard time, it would have been active back then.

So much confusion about this. There was never a "vote" about it. It was more like a poll, which wasn't advertised across the EU, and on top of it was severely plagued by server failures. To have a binding vote:

- it needs to be properly announced to all eligible voters

- be declared as binding, you can't tell people it isn't a vote and later on declare it is

- the platform for voting needs to work

I don't think this would be a good choice. The current setup of the European time zones works very well, it has been decided upon a long time ago, based on geography, the local connections. All arguments point either to returning to the standard time or keep the clock change twice a year.

We do have multiple time zones in Europe. They have been agreed upon for a practical compromise. It is not clear to me what would be the advantage of calling off that compromise and have a costly rearrangement.

Yes, solar time matters as your biological rhythm depends on it. The most important part of it being able to have daylight when you either rise in the morning or at least have the sun get up quickly after that. Another important point is, that there is plenty of experimental evidence that shows that starting schools before the pupils are really awake is not effective.

It is a misconception, that "noon" is the middle point of your awake time. That was never the case. Our day usage most of the time is asymmetric: start the day and especially the work with the sunlight, spend the evening time off after work after sun set.

Using the high point of the sun as the reference for the daytime is a very practical choice, as this is the one easily observable time point which doesn't move much over the course of the year (a few minutes, but that is symmetric).

Well, actually not. What was voted on was the plan to end the DST shift. The reason it stalled on was, that there was no decision about how exactly to end the shift.

In my personal opinion, the only reasonable decision would be to permanently return to the standard time before the introduction of DST. Because otherwise the whole European timezone would have to be redesigned.

It might point to the simple fact that Apple isn't really launching a new tier of the MacBook line. It is probably an outlier in their lineup leading towards all MB Pros moving to the new screen in the next iteration or two.

Certainly not. But they may be in the market for an entry level Mac laptop quite soon. I don't think Apple plans to limit touch screen to their top model for a long time. It is just how Apple likes to introduce new capabilities. Also, there might be technical reasons why they tied touch to the OLED display. So I do expect a MB Air with OLED and touch some time in the mid-term future.

No, it isn't. It only says a lot about the lack of clear judgement by a lot of party members.

There is no such system as "political permission". Everyone is able to found a party. But of course any party has to act within the law, especially the constitution. Thus, the high court can, in a complex proceeding ban parties which are violating the constitution by their actions or even plan to overthrow the constitution.

So what? One can always fork at any point in time and of course there are plenty Linux forks internationally. Having the Linux Foundation is great, but it could be replaced at any time.

There is the EU as a political entity covering large parts of Europe. But here Europe can easily mean the same as "not the US". There are plenty of Linux forks. Which are maintained independently. In the moment it becomes relevant, any of them could be used in an instant. There is Debian, There is Suse. There is no lack of international Linux variants.

Would you like to elaborate, if you disagree with my statement? Of course it was very shortened, because the point of my post was an entirely different one.

If you want a longer version: open source software under the normal licenses give you irrevocable rights to use it, as it is open source, you can also administrate it. You have full control over it. That was the core of my statement. Additionally, European authors are major contributors to many of this software. So in what exactly do you disagree with me?

May be it is just the matter to compose a few good HOW-TOs. What I gave up on once was creating slabs with rounded edges. Basically imagine a slab which looks like an iPhone icon: you have in the plane of the slab rather a large corner radius, but for rounding the edges of the resulting slab, a much smaller one.

Writing now about it, I think I could do it with a torus, where the radius of its cross section is the small radius, the torus radius is the large one, take two of them, add two cylinders to only keep one quarter edge and then take a quarter of the resulting bevelled disk.

Sure. For practical purposes, the number is infinite. This is why I found the bug and the bug report so amusing: In "normal" language, the sentence is correct, but for a mathematician, especially such a renowned professor, it is an amazing blunder. Bonus points for being the first word in the document.