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I'm not advocating censorship, but history is shown that being nice to racists only encourages racism, and fighting them, in one way or another, is the only way to reduce it.

Well, that does not mean that you shouldn't carefully consider the consequences of that fighting. Burning the city of Dresden to the ground eliminated quite a bit of Nazi war production, but at what cost? Increased hatred of the Americans and British by the survivors, and those they told. The killing of the three voter-registration workers in the 1960s certainly caused more people to register to vote than those three slain workers every could have in their campaign.

Now, I am friends with several people who occasionally broach into racist territory. Why do these intellegent, rational, and generally friendly people do that? (They are friends with several black people, so it is obviously not that bad in the grand scheme of things, but they do still rarely revert to form -- and yes, I am trying to convince them otherwise.) Why do they do they choose to irrationally judge an entire group of people simply based on the melatonin levels in their skin? It is because they have been wronged in some way by members of that group, or have seen others wronged in some way by members of that group, and decide to judge the entire group by the actions of a few individuals rather than to make the effort to not be affected by those few individuals' comments and get on with their day.

These friends of mine react to incidents like the Peoria, IL suspension of 4 students for nearly starting a riot at a high school football game (and Jesse Jackson's immediate claims that the school officials are racist because of this suspension). They react to their parents' companies being denied contracts because of the owner's race. They react to a gang member being put assigned a dormatory room with a suburban kid, and this gang member then stealing all the suburban kid's stuff upon his expulsion, and the subsequent events (the suburban kid dropped out of college in fear for his life). They react to a large (10-15 person) group of African-Americans standing outside a building mocking, heckling, and generally begging for a confrontation with every white person who comes and goes (with the white persons believing full well that should a fight ensue, not only would they be called a racist after it was said and done, but they would also lose, badly). They react to a media expose of country clubs which exclude blacks and jews preceeded by the same media's "The NAACP is Wonderful" piece.

The legacy of these events (and the underlying policies of Affirmative Action and the refusal of prominent members of the Politico-Media Complex to acknowledge or publish stories of what has come to be termed "reverse racism") is two new racists for the next generation. Ending these policies would definately ease tensions, and would go a long way towards stopping the next generation's racists. Please don't construe this as me giving my friends a license to hate because of Affirmative Action. I'm not. I cannot stand their occasional hatred, and would stop it if I could.

What's the point of all this? Don't give a certain group privaledged (or shoddy) treatment, and the other groups will not have that to point to as an excuse for their hatred. One less reason for people to start hating.

What I find absurd however, is how the GNOME team keeps putting forward *OBVIOUSLY INCOMPLETE* projects like they are 1.0 FCS versions ready to compete with mature implementations.

I think you misunderstood the spirit of the post Miguel made. Some of the newer Gnome technologies such as Bonobo and the Gnome Print Library were not being put forward as ready for prime time. The entire point was to say we're still working on them, they need some more hacking before we'll release them in a public manner.

Maybe the GNOME/Enlightenment guys should spend a little more time themselves on UI design, and less on "looks".

Work is being done to that effect with the Gnome User Interface Improvement Project. Some of the ideas they've come up with have already been implemented, others are still being hacked on. As for Enlightenment, I'm not sure. It's not part of Gnome proper.
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linux has no such guidelines made by anyone
Nor should it. Interface guidelines don't belong at the OS level, they belong at the desktop level. See below.

GTK and QT come almost close but in fact nowhere near to guidelines of this sort.
Nor should they. Interface guidelines don't belong at the toolkit level, that would suggest that a particular toolkit has no application outside the scope of said guidelines, which is a silly restriction.

This is something the Linux community must adress eventually
Again, this isn't an OS level thing. This is a desktop level thing, and it is being addressed. I don't know enough about KDE's efforts, but Gnome has established the Gnome User Interface Improvement Project to address desired improvements for the Gnome desktop.

except that in linux if you don't like those open dialog boxes you can change them; if you don't like part of the interface you can change it.
Usually the people griping about the user interface are not interested in taking the time to change it themselves. That's why projects like the one mentioned above are important. People are given a central place to voice their desires for improvement, and thus contribute to the improvement of the desktop as a whole. This is the right way to do it.

> Incorrect.

> Democrats = Big Government.
> Republicans = Even Bigger Government.

> As you probably know, the biggest fiscal deficit
> in United States history was run up under
> Republican President Ronald Reagan and his
> extremely big government policies ("Star Wars"
> defense system, drug war, Iran/Contra, etc.).

> Clinton, despite some tendancy towards big
> government, has actually reduced the size of
> government from its high under Ronald Reagan.

Actually, it's:

Democrats == Big Social Programs
Republicans == Big Military

The difference? One's explicitly in the Constitution (read the Preamble).

As for Al Gore, I can safely say that just about any Candidate the Republican Party puts forward will win over him, although I think that a Colin Powell/Jack Kemp ticket would be the best one.

Now if only the Christian Coalition will act more Christian-like this time around (I am a Christian, but can safely say that the Christian Coalition is not a truely Christian organization anymore, despite the name -- threatening to dig up every bad thing Colin Powell ever did because he happens to be pro-choice [I'm pro-life] in '96 doesn't sound very Christian to me).

Jim Cape
http://www.jcinteractive.com

Perhaps it would be good (at this point) to not worry about integrating the mail and news clients into the initial release of Mozilla.

And why the AC post? Perhaps.. Alan forgot his password, but honestly how long does it take to get another /. account/pass..a whole 2 minutes? Depending on how bogged down the server is. So maybe that point is arguable.

Well, I you can get the password re-emailed to you, so this is almost certainly Bull.

Jim Cape
http://www.jcinteractive.com

I was quoting to disagree with the "believe their education system is the best" part.

Jim Cape
http://www.jcinteractive.com

Actually, I did RTFA, contrary to your ill deduced assuption.

I agree, only someone with a stron anti-American sentiment would write such a comment. Why? Because I am not blinded by American arrogance, believing that that the American school system if far superior in comparison to others.

I think that you don't know what you are talking about. The American Education System is a joke, and virtually every US Citizen who isn't part of the American Education System (and quit a few who are) knows that.

Unfortunately, this sort of whiny "gimme gimme gimme" attitude is exactly what one can expect from the typical student here. Part of the problem is the senseless job prereq of a college degree in the US (i.e. if you don't have a college degree, you won't get a good job, no matter how much you know), but in the end, it boils down to laziness on the part of people brazenly cheated out of the $8000/year worth of taxes paid to support the high school system.

Jim Cape
http://www.jcinteractive.com

From what I see, Richard is asking for credit for the tremendous amount of work that many developers have put into the GNU project, often with little or no reward. All they ask for is recognition! Is this so hard to give?
Richard's job is writing GNU code, with proceeds from talking. He gave a presentation on the GNU project a short while at my school (University of Waterloo) and he did come across as a very driven man. Driven by GNU? Driven by his ideals? Driven by his war against proprietary software? Driven insane? I'll not make that judgement. But I respect his views.

Personally, I view the name "Linux" as a short form for GNU/Linux. It means GNU software running under a Linux kernel. The name "Linux" is also easy to throw around verbally. Short and quick.

I disagree with this. RMS had nothing to do with Linux, other than writing the license. Any attempts by him to change the name, or promote another name, is simply egotism. If Linus had wanted Linux to be called GNU/Linux, he would have called it that.

Jim Cape
http://www.jcinteractive.com

I wish there was an option to disable the ad banner. I was using junkbuster, but it was disabling all cookies, so I couldn't log in. I'll just have to reconfigure junkbuster.

So how is Rob supposed to keep Slashdot from being Slashdotted then? Hardware is expensive, and VA Research is the only company I know of that will pay to keep an employee who's job consists of updating a non-corporate website.

Jim Cape
http://www.jcinteractive.com

I guess you're right. At least he knows that his code is too bad to release. I remember when I was learning to program, I had to rewrite things back then too.



So how many window managers and graphics libraries have you written?

Jim Cape
http://www.jcinteractive.com

I tried E once. After dowloading what seemed like 7 different libraries to get it to run, I fled in horror when I realized it couldn't minimize windows yet.

However, when a .deb comes out, if it does minimize windows, I'm willing to give it another shot. But with a simple, clean looking theme.

There is BrushedMetal-TigerT, Clean, and ShinyMetal, all of which are pretty basic/clean. Check e.themes.org for more. :-)

Jim Cape
http://www.jcinteractive.com

Freakin' gargoyles on an e-term? I suppose we were all 14 at one point.

If you don't like it, you can change it. That's sort of the point.

Jim Cape
http://www.jcinteractive.com

Actually, given the current overpopulation of BSD-variants, I would bet that one of those isn't going to be the last one standing.

I am a Linux user, but since Unix is Unix is Unix (as a general rule, my prior SunOS/X experience helped a great deal in getting to know Linux), I don't really care which one wins.

Nevertheless, from a philisophical as well as practical standpoint, I would prefer a GPL'd version of Unix (or some other superior OS). The simple reasons for this are that I distrust the uber-capitalist Tech industry (O-we-o, IPO) to not screw things up from a technical standpoint for their own short-term profit, the GPL license -- when combined with someone who knows what they are doing -- prevents the variant-o-the-week thing so prevalent in BSD-based projects from getting started (Free/Net/WhateverBSD, XF86/AccelX/MetroX/whatever -- you get the idea), and I like the idea that someone can't come in and steal everything, copyright and close it, and then resell it without any contribution.

Jim Cape
http://www.jcinteractive.com