Le mardi 04 janvier 2011 à 15:51 +0000, gpk a écrit :
> Actually, on consideration, I don't think that automatic detection of 
> the timezone
> is a viable solution.    It suffers from all kinds of potential problems 
> like
> "What does it do if it's connected to a VPN?".      If I connect via VPN 
> to my
> office in the UK when I'm in France, I'd get the incorrect time.
People using VPNs are not the majority, and we can disable automated detection
of timezone if we're connected over a VPN. Plus, we can also use GPS devices
when present.

> Or, if I'm in the airport and I'm not yet connected to a network in my 
> new location,
> it will be silently giving me incorrect timezone information.   It'll be 
> telling me
> what time it is in the other country.    That's acceptable if you know 
> you have to
> set it manually, but people will depend on an automatic system, and miss 
> their
> connecting flights.
If people are smart enough to change their timezone manually, they are smart
enough to understand their laptop still uses the previous timezone
because it has no way of finding out you've moved.

> The trouble this will cause is a classic computer problem:  it will be a 
> system that is
> smart enough to be right most of the time.    Being mostly right, people 
> trust it
> and depend on it, and then get surprised in those cases where it is wrong.
So you'd suggest computers should always wait for users to do things manually,
just to avoid being smarter than them? The automated solution is better
than nothing. Anyway, discussing this here is pointless since it will be
implemented in GNOME and I'm not involved at all in this work.

> Besides, there is a laptop-detect package in Ubuntu:
> 
> > $ aptitude show laptop-detect
> > Package: laptop-detect
> > State: installed
> > Automatically installed: no
> > Version: 0.13.7ubuntu2
> > Priority: optional
> > Section: utils
> > Maintainer: Ubuntu Core Developers <[email protected]>
> > Uncompressed Size: 57.3k
> > Depends: dmidecode (> 2.8-2)
> > Description: attempt to detect a laptop
> >  laptop-detect attempts to determine whether it is being run on a 
> > laptop or a
> >  desktop and appraises its caller of this.
> >
> So, it is certainly technically possible to tell if you're on a 
> laptop.    Therefore gnome can make
> decisions based on that fact.
We can, but PolicyKit really isn't designed around the idea of changing
policies depending on that kind of setting. And the fact that your
computer is a laptop doesn't mean you want to grant this kind of
permissions to all users on the system.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/696115

Title:
  Timezone should not require superuser on laptop

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