If Wikipedia was hosted by a political party, I would say the same thing. Separating content from questionable providers isn't even only a slight deviation from the definition of censorship, it really has nothing at all to do with censorship.
If it were just the founder having something on the side, that would be an easily negligible matter, thanks to the impartiality of Wikipedia itself. Last I'd heard, though, Wikipedia is hosted and funded by the same company which had dealings in pornography.
I personally had no idea until I read it elsewhere (as I said, it's a long shot to get to pornography from the Wikipedia front page). I personally see it as a moral issue, but even more importantly for me--and more relevant for others--is that it's a matter of reputation for such an important project.
While I don't boycott electronics giants for selling camcorders without an agreement to not use them for porn (that opens up too many legal issues) or simply because they make money from people who make pornography (I'd sell a Pop-Tart to insert-your-favorite-convicted-felon-here), I do try to distance myself from companies that make money from pornography, or other things I find morally offensable. I buy my music from Russia or negligible-profit-margin sales, rather than support US copyright cartels, for instance.
Obviously, no one can find 100% separation from things that offend them, but everyone has a responsibility to exercise at least some judgement in what they participate in/support/purchase. I'd like to see Wikipedia be something that as few persons as possible can reasonably object to. It's close already, and this is one of the few roadblocks.
I don't watch TV in general, for those reasons, among others(although you might examine other news sources just as critically, it would reveal a lot to you). I've never seen or heard Bill O'Reilly, just heard people complain about him on the internet.
I do read Wikipedia, as I said. I don't participate or refer others to it, generally. Large difference.
How in the WORLD do you assume that I watch a particular news station or on-air personality from what I said? You must have some serious existing prejudices that you should examine.
Wikipedia should remain free, but it should also be removed from its root of a pornography peddling company.
As much as I love the Wikipedia project (and I do), I can't participate or recommend it in anything other than offhand speech until it is separated from the smut.
I know that it takes many steps to get from Wikipedia to the morally repugnant business, but it's still a large issue for me and for many others.
What's really frightening is that we have an Administration that couldn't invade Iraq fast enough, all the while pretending that North Korea would just go away if we ignored it hard enough.
Hardly.
The US had an opportunity to remove the murderous dictator from Iraq with minimal risk. (It was only right, the US government put him there, it was their responsibility to remove him.)
The US does NOT presently have that opportunity in North Korea. See, there's this little neighboring country called China. Perhaps you've heard of it? If China responds militarily, as they've warned they would, the risk will be enormous. If it weren't for China, North Korea would not presently be a threat.
I realize this offends some people's sense of rights, but I'm not particularly inclined to defend somebody's "right" to use a firearm outside its intended purpose.
I assume your judgement of those purposes exclude self-defense, then?
great please tell me how to get my audiotron to play ogg's, oh and my ipod. STFU about ogg until you can play them on all the popular hardware. Oh why does my car stereo not play ogg's? got a firmware upgrade for it? no? nobody and I mean NOBODY gives a shit about OGG. until it is playable in all portable, car and home players it is as good as non-existant.
Ooh! I can play this game! Let's rewind a couple of years: Replace all instances of "ogg" with "mp3" and see if this argument sounds familiar!
Please tell me how to get my home stereo to play mp3s, oh, and my walkman. STFU about mp3 until you can play them on all popular hardware. Oh, and why does my car stereo not play mp3s? Got an upgrade for it? No? Nobody, and I mean NOBODY cares about MP3! Until it is playable in all portable, car, and home players, it is as good as non-existant.
For kicks, you can also try saying "cassette tapes" or "CDs", too!
But, if you spend serious time (14-18 hours a day) looking at screens, you need top of the line CRT's. CAD, DTP, video production, etc..
For the absolute best video quality, yes, you need a CRT.
But if you are looking at your monitor for even half your work day and you are not needing that color clarity/refresh every moment, you need an LCD.
The radiation and light refresh cycle of a CRT is very detrimental to most of us, not to mention the blur for something you're looking at so closely. My energy level, headaches, eyestrain, and mood improved tremendously after switching to an LCD. Not to mention I didn't have to deal with the annoyance of flicker (which I can see even at 120Hz).
I look forward to the day of cheap OLED displays, so that we don't have to compromise between vivid, non-ghosting images and our health.
The problem that people have with the UN is that it's more than a place for nations can easily discuss problems.
It's a controlling entity, itself. It's from the issues stemming from this that many people take issue with the UN. Well, that, and it's filled with liberal US-haters.
Hating the UN goes back much farther than discussion of invading Iraq under George W. Bush.
As another poster mentioned, your LGPL problem is only a problem if you modify the LGPLed library. Not an issue, considering that on closed-OSes you can't modify their libraries, period.
As for the widgets...
Not even on Windows are they part of the "core system". Windows has a history of having its own requirements: VB,.net, etc.
Nonetheless, GTK is part of every normal Linux desktop I can think of. It's part of the LSB. Just because the code isn't shipped from the same people who provide X or the kernel doesn't mean it isn't standard. If everyone has it installed, what's the difference?
As for your comments concerning development for Linux...
The lack of a "standard GUI" is not a problem that exists for Linux. For Unix in general, perhaps, but all Linux distros (and, really, most modern UNIX desktops) have GTK, and many have QT. I can run GTK applications perfectly fine under KDE, QT apps perfectly find under GNOME, and both fine under twm. They look like native applications of my desktop of choice. Soon, they'll even have the option of using the dialogs of my desktop of choice, but standard dialogs haven't been a stumbing block on Windows, either.
Your problem of GPL-or-commercial-only is something that is only true of QT. GTK exists, is LGPL, and it works quite well. If GTK isn't suitable, there are other toolkits.
I find your omnipotence and infallibility impressive.
As a systems administrator, I find taking all precautions to be the safest method, when available, as opposed to relying on my own perfection to protect against the vulnerabilities of broken software. Congratulations on keeping your network safe, it shows that you're on the ball. Nonetheless, you are very, very lucky that you've never had a mistake or a security vulnerability beyond the aid of available patches hit any of your systems.
IT staff doing their job will both recommend the safest path as well as try to prevent damage. It's wonderful that the university took such steps, but to say that IE isn't the problem is very, very incorrect.
I see PCs all the time which have IE up to date as well as have up to date anti-virus software that are *still* plagued with problems. Why? IE vulnerabilities.
Even for a patched system, IE presents a vulnerability for computers that are used for "general" web surfing. Firefox is a perfectly valid recommendation, even for those with up-to-date systems.
I would likely be included as one of those damn, nonbelieving doctors in his next posted update. Neither he nor I would gain anything from that.
No, but if something is, indeed, wrong with him, then neither of you would gain anything from you telling him there's nothing wrong and simply leaving it at that.
There are things in the road called "curves". See also: "hills".
In places with sane speed limits, they're set so that, among other reasons, a person obeying the speed limit will be clearly perceptible in appropriate time to anyone near the street.
The risk above that speed exceeds normal expectation.
Now, just like a speed limit, there are laws that dictate how hot you can serve a beverage. That includes temperatures that can cause minor burns. It doesn't include temperatures capable of causing third degree burns.
The risk incurred by serving the coffee that hot exceeded appropriate expectation.
Imagine that you bought a mouse trap. Now, we have no sympathy if you get snapped by it. Woops, should have been more careful. You can't have hard feelings for the mouse trap manufacturer if you bruise your finger while setting the trap.
However, if the trap *cut your finger off*, that would be beyond appropriate expectation of risk.
Right now, the multi-millionaire on vacation doesn't pay taxes because s/he's not earning income. With a sales tax (which includes services), they would be paying taxes.
Of course they're not paying taxes again. They already paid it when they earned it!
Yes, there are a lot of loopholes that ought to be closed. Yes, I support switching from income tax to sales tax. I think it would be more fair in tremendous ways, including for ensuring vacationing rich people pay their share.
But suggesting that a rich person vacationing one year and therefor not paying taxes is an example of wrongdoing is... incorrect. They're not paying any less relative to their income.
No, Bush was saying that, regardless of agreeing with the presidential decisions of the past four years, certain conduct is appropriate for handling the situation as it is now.
Were you watching the debates or only your imagination?
Bush criticized Kerry for being two faced, too negative for the office, and for having an unrealistic expectations for an exit plan.
Whether Kerry agrees with the war policy or not has nothing to do with the arguments he's made. How Kerry has chosen to express this does, but not Kerry's actual opinions.
There is *potential* for great security risks when you do something like this, but there are different ways to do it, some more secure than others (sandboxing, for example).
The KDE developers have chosen a much better security model for integration. Microsoft did, in fact, implement some basic security measures, but they just left holes a mile wide, that's all.
How in the world is that censorship?
If Wikipedia was hosted by a political party, I would say the same thing. Separating content from questionable providers isn't even only a slight deviation from the definition of censorship, it really has nothing at all to do with censorship.
If it were just the founder having something on the side, that would be an easily negligible matter, thanks to the impartiality of Wikipedia itself. Last I'd heard, though, Wikipedia is hosted and funded by the same company which had dealings in pornography.
I personally had no idea until I read it elsewhere (as I said, it's a long shot to get to pornography from the Wikipedia front page). I personally see it as a moral issue, but even more importantly for me--and more relevant for others--is that it's a matter of reputation for such an important project.
While I don't boycott electronics giants for selling camcorders without an agreement to not use them for porn (that opens up too many legal issues) or simply because they make money from people who make pornography (I'd sell a Pop-Tart to insert-your-favorite-convicted-felon-here), I do try to distance myself from companies that make money from pornography, or other things I find morally offensable. I buy my music from Russia or negligible-profit-margin sales, rather than support US copyright cartels, for instance.
Obviously, no one can find 100% separation from things that offend them, but everyone has a responsibility to exercise at least some judgement in what they participate in/support/purchase. I'd like to see Wikipedia be something that as few persons as possible can reasonably object to. It's close already, and this is one of the few roadblocks.
Wow, you assume a lot.
I don't watch TV in general, for those reasons, among others(although you might examine other news sources just as critically, it would reveal a lot to you). I've never seen or heard Bill O'Reilly, just heard people complain about him on the internet.
I do read Wikipedia, as I said. I don't participate or refer others to it, generally. Large difference.
How in the WORLD do you assume that I watch a particular news station or on-air personality from what I said? You must have some serious existing prejudices that you should examine.
Wikipedia should remain free, but it should also be removed from its root of a pornography peddling company.
As much as I love the Wikipedia project (and I do), I can't participate or recommend it in anything other than offhand speech until it is separated from the smut.
I know that it takes many steps to get from Wikipedia to the morally repugnant business, but it's still a large issue for me and for many others.
What's really frightening is that we have an Administration that couldn't invade Iraq fast enough, all the while pretending that North Korea would just go away if we ignored it hard enough.
Hardly.
The US had an opportunity to remove the murderous dictator from Iraq with minimal risk. (It was only right, the US government put him there, it was their responsibility to remove him.)
The US does NOT presently have that opportunity in North Korea. See, there's this little neighboring country called China. Perhaps you've heard of it? If China responds militarily, as they've warned they would, the risk will be enormous. If it weren't for China, North Korea would not presently be a threat.
I realize this offends some people's sense of rights, but I'm not particularly inclined to defend somebody's "right" to use a firearm outside its intended purpose.
I assume your judgement of those purposes exclude self-defense, then?
Isn't 4 seconds a bit ridiculous, too?
Both GNOME and KDE tick me off in this regard.
great please tell me how to get my audiotron to play ogg's, oh and my ipod.
STFU about ogg until you can play them on all the popular hardware.
Oh why does my car stereo not play ogg's? got a firmware upgrade for it?
no?
nobody and I mean NOBODY gives a shit about OGG.
until it is playable in all portable, car and home players it is as good as non-existant.
Ooh! I can play this game! Let's rewind a couple of years: Replace all instances of "ogg" with "mp3" and see if this argument sounds familiar!
Please tell me how to get my home stereo to play mp3s, oh, and my walkman.
STFU about mp3 until you can play them on all popular hardware.
Oh, and why does my car stereo not play mp3s? Got an upgrade for it? No?
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY cares about MP3!
Until it is playable in all portable, car, and home players, it is as good as non-existant.
For kicks, you can also try saying "cassette tapes" or "CDs", too!
But, if you spend serious time (14-18 hours a day) looking at screens, you need top of the line CRT's. CAD, DTP, video production, etc..
For the absolute best video quality, yes, you need a CRT.
But if you are looking at your monitor for even half your work day and you are not needing that color clarity/refresh every moment, you need an LCD.
The radiation and light refresh cycle of a CRT is very detrimental to most of us, not to mention the blur for something you're looking at so closely. My energy level, headaches, eyestrain, and mood improved tremendously after switching to an LCD. Not to mention I didn't have to deal with the annoyance of flicker (which I can see even at 120Hz).
I look forward to the day of cheap OLED displays, so that we don't have to compromise between vivid, non-ghosting images and our health.
The problem that people have with the UN is that it's more than a place for nations can easily discuss problems.
It's a controlling entity, itself. It's from the issues stemming from this that many people take issue with the UN. Well, that, and it's filled with liberal US-haters.
Hating the UN goes back much farther than discussion of invading Iraq under George W. Bush.
As another poster mentioned, your LGPL problem is only a problem if you modify the LGPLed library. Not an issue, considering that on closed-OSes you can't modify their libraries, period.
.net, etc.
As for the widgets...
Not even on Windows are they part of the "core system". Windows has a history of having its own requirements: VB,
Nonetheless, GTK is part of every normal Linux desktop I can think of. It's part of the LSB. Just because the code isn't shipped from the same people who provide X or the kernel doesn't mean it isn't standard. If everyone has it installed, what's the difference?
Sir, you've replied to the wrong post.
As for your comments concerning development for Linux...
The lack of a "standard GUI" is not a problem that exists for Linux. For Unix in general, perhaps, but all Linux distros (and, really, most modern UNIX desktops) have GTK, and many have QT. I can run GTK applications perfectly fine under KDE, QT apps perfectly find under GNOME, and both fine under twm. They look like native applications of my desktop of choice. Soon, they'll even have the option of using the dialogs of my desktop of choice, but standard dialogs haven't been a stumbing block on Windows, either.
Your problem of GPL-or-commercial-only is something that is only true of QT. GTK exists, is LGPL, and it works quite well. If GTK isn't suitable, there are other toolkits.
I find your omnipotence and infallibility impressive.
As a systems administrator, I find taking all precautions to be the safest method, when available, as opposed to relying on my own perfection to protect against the vulnerabilities of broken software. Congratulations on keeping your network safe, it shows that you're on the ball. Nonetheless, you are very, very lucky that you've never had a mistake or a security vulnerability beyond the aid of available patches hit any of your systems.
IT staff doing their job will both recommend the safest path as well as try to prevent damage. It's wonderful that the university took such steps, but to say that IE isn't the problem is very, very incorrect.
I see PCs all the time which have IE up to date as well as have up to date anti-virus software that are *still* plagued with problems. Why? IE vulnerabilities.
Even for a patched system, IE presents a vulnerability for computers that are used for "general" web surfing. Firefox is a perfectly valid recommendation, even for those with up-to-date systems.
No, it shows that people tend to like streamlined interfaces and lack of bloat.
If it showed that people didn't like having options, Firefox wouldn't have very many extensions.
I would likely be included as one of those damn, nonbelieving doctors in his next posted update. Neither he nor I would gain anything from that.
No, but if something is, indeed, wrong with him, then neither of you would gain anything from you telling him there's nothing wrong and simply leaving it at that.
There are things in the road called "curves". See also: "hills".
In places with sane speed limits, they're set so that, among other reasons, a person obeying the speed limit will be clearly perceptible in appropriate time to anyone near the street.
The risk above that speed exceeds normal expectation.
Now, just like a speed limit, there are laws that dictate how hot you can serve a beverage. That includes temperatures that can cause minor burns. It doesn't include temperatures capable of causing third degree burns.
The risk incurred by serving the coffee that hot exceeded appropriate expectation.
Imagine that you bought a mouse trap. Now, we have no sympathy if you get snapped by it. Woops, should have been more careful. You can't have hard feelings for the mouse trap manufacturer if you bruise your finger while setting the trap.
However, if the trap *cut your finger off*, that would be beyond appropriate expectation of risk.
I'm glad you brought up the car analogy, because it's a useful one.
If you cross the road without looking and a car driving the speed limit, or slightly above it, hits you, well, your fault.
On the other hand, if the car was going so far above the speed limit that you *never could have seen it coming*, it's his fault.
Yeah, because obviously the inside of our mouths are completely impervious to burns.
If I spill hot coffee on myself, I expect a mild scald. I don't expect to lose skin and have nerve damage. If it's that hot, it's TOO hot.
Uh...didja ever think maybe, just maybe, he was taking what's called "artistic licence?"
"It should be revoked!"
Right now, the multi-millionaire on vacation doesn't pay taxes because s/he's not earning income. With a sales tax (which includes services), they would be paying taxes.
Of course they're not paying taxes again. They already paid it when they earned it!
Yes, there are a lot of loopholes that ought to be closed. Yes, I support switching from income tax to sales tax. I think it would be more fair in tremendous ways, including for ensuring vacationing rich people pay their share.
But suggesting that a rich person vacationing one year and therefor not paying taxes is an example of wrongdoing is... incorrect. They're not paying any less relative to their income.
No, Bush was saying that, regardless of agreeing with the presidential decisions of the past four years, certain conduct is appropriate for handling the situation as it is now.
Were you watching the debates or only your imagination?
Bush criticized Kerry for being two faced, too negative for the office, and for having an unrealistic expectations for an exit plan.
Whether Kerry agrees with the war policy or not has nothing to do with the arguments he's made. How Kerry has chosen to express this does, but not Kerry's actual opinions.
There is *potential* for great security risks when you do something like this, but there are different ways to do it, some more secure than others (sandboxing, for example).
The KDE developers have chosen a much better security model for integration. Microsoft did, in fact, implement some basic security measures, but they just left holes a mile wide, that's all.