I realise that you meant this jokingly, but just for the record...
As someone who supported them 100% on their choice of the PPC architecture, I am certainly not going to be buying any more PPC products from them. If I can't buy a G5-based system from another retailer, I'm going back to x86, alright, but not Mac's x86. x86-64 on Linux, and on generic hardware. Enough is enough.
It certainly doesn't take a consipacy-but hippie to realise why the world hates the US - just a little knowledge mixed with a little thoughtful consideration. Oh yeah. You're missing both.
And you, sir, are rather pathetic. A quick read of your posts and people's moderation of said posts confirms this overwhelmingly. You seem to be a 'me too' type of person... another victim of US propoganda.
Speaking of idiots, I believe you'd give George Dubya a run for his money on an IQ test. Maybe you'd make a better president:)
What will they use it for then? To pick roses? If it can destroy a missile, it can slice a person in 2, and they certainly won't stop there. There will be a more powerful one, and then a yet more powerful one.
I've been using various cvs versions for the past 18 months, and [b][i]I[/i][/b] can vouch for it's stability.
E17, E16, and possible previous versions ( I used E15, but I don't rememeber too much of it ) have had a remarkable feature built into them... if the window manager crashes, it drops everything on the desktop, restarts itself, appologises to the user, picks everything back up off the desktop ( remembering each windows' desktop and position etc ) and carries on like nothing happened.
E17 occassionally does this, but only when you do something like change themes. It's quite a harmless crash, as you never lose anything - just wait about a second for E to restart, and continue where you left off.
What baffles me is that people who have not used E17 [b][i]at all[/i][/b] feel the need to cast doubt on things they know nothing of.
I think there was some talk about supporting a Cairo backend, but obviously when it's been developed considerably further.
One of the amazing things about Enlightenment is that the libraries are simply the best around. Evas already has an OpenGL backend as well as an incredibly highly optimized software backend, and to the developer's credit, the software renderer is the fastest thing available, period! The OpenGL backend has promise, but the developers are quick to point out that OpenGL drivers for most cards are unstable and unpredictable, and that the software backend is the way to go for the medium-term.
I think what the area that is letting down eye-candy on the Linux desktop is the current state of the xorg render extension and tools like xcompmgr. Rasterman says that he'll start adding support for these when they stop sucking, and apparently they haven't stopped sucking yet. I certainly find xcompmgr too unstable to use. Every 20 minutes it brings down the whole X server. Render acceleration is also horrible. Perhaps this will change in the next xorg release? Hopefully...
The Yanks must be stopped. They are stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. But what's worse, they hate our 'way of life'. Also remember that they are ruled by an evil dictator who went against the people's will and stole the 2000 elections with the help of his cronies in the supreme court. The world would be a better place without him.
Keep stockpiling, Yanks. God knows, that's what the world needs: more weapons of mass destruction. Oh yeah, they're only for defense. How could I be so anti-American to suggest that these will in fact be used as weapons of mass destruction. They are of course weapons of love and understanding, and will only be used to save the cute white bunnies and the church picnic from the evil Arab masses and their hate, and their WOMD, and their......
The war in Iraq was completely unjustifiable, and the perpetrators should face the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges. I believe they carried out an illegal war of aggression. The 'justification' for invading Iraq - WOMD - has been completely discredited. You can't invade a country and then turn around and say "Oh yeah. We've just changed our justification. What we said before about WOMD, and the forged evidence and such... just forget all that... and try to see that Saddam, our old buddie for the past 25 years, was evil, and that's our new justification". It's an illegal war of aggression.
Invading Afghanistan I view in a very similar light. The US government intentionally discarded intelligence that an attack on the twin towers was coming. The 'breakdown' of intelligence that's now been used to justify ever increasingly draconian legislation against US citizens was not a breakdown at all. The attacks were carried out by Bin Laden and co... the same Bin Laden from the Saudi Arabian company, the "Bin Laden Group", which is the largest single backer of Bush, period. This is no co-incidence, and neither is the fact that Bin Laden hasn't been caught. The US Government is up to their eyeballs in the blood of 9/11 victims.
Now, even discarding the above paragraph completely, and assuming that the Bush administration hasn't just taken part in the most evil, deceitful and bloodthrirsty of conspiracies to drive the US into a near fascist state, and justify their illegal wars of aggresssion to assert their economic and military supremacy across the globe. Afghanistan still didn't deserve carpet bombing. The people of Afghanistan didn't do anything against anyone. They're very simple people, living at or just above the subsistence farming level. Most people involved in the 9/11 attacks were Saudis, not Afghanis. And even if they were Afghanis, the rest of the country didn't deserve the devastation that Bush brought upon them. They were not responsible.
Back to the issue of Jihad. I went to a forum last week titled "Islam is not the enemy". It was very interesting. The main speaker told us that during the 80s and 90s, the CIA widely distrubuted 'educational' textbooks to schools right through the African continent, and the Arab world, that was full of Islamic fundamentalist propoganda. These textbooks went to all the schools, and in many places in Africa, are still used as the main source of educational material. We were shown some examples. The books had guns and rocket launchers and so-called 'Jahad' warriors on every page, and were full of ideas such as the notion that it was the ultimate honour to die in a violent stuggle against another country in defence of your religion. At the time, the target was the USSR, and the CIA succeeded in whipping up enough support to form the Taliban, with the help of the Pakistani secret police ( who have a reputation for being as kind-natured as the Israelis... they are bad, bad people ). The US them continued distributing their Islamic fundamentalist propoganda while pouring an unknown amount of money ( most people agree it's in the hundreds of billions, but this is classified and probably not accounted for properly anyway ) into the Taliban to combat the evil USSR in the area. This is the source of your Jahad warriors, and the Taliban.
Ordinary Afghanis had nothing to do with 9/11, just as ordinary Iraqis didn't, just as ordinary Saudis didn't, just as Iraq didn't have WOMD, just as.........
The US government is wholly responsible for 9/11. I would even go as far to say that they ordered it. The fact that there are some extremists around the world is a non-issue. The US certainly looks the other way in the face of Israeli fundamentalism... or Christian fundamentalism, such as the right-to-life terrorists who blow up doctors, patients and by-standers outside abor
Your attacks on Islam are simply false. Your labelling of people as 'Jihadis' is a horrible deception. Jihad means 'inner struggle'. It's a term that refers to one's battle of good vs evil. There are no such thing as 'Jihadis' except for in the right-wing media. And who claimed that the attacks were targetting places that gave loans to women? The right-wing media. Who won't let women drive? Who puts them in tents? You are so full of shit it's not funny. Are you a republican senator or something?
As for putting women in charge of Space Shuttles ( no idea why you capitalised those 2 words ), so fucking what? In Islamic countries, the percentage of women that get a university degree is higher than in the US. What's so good about being 'in charge' of a space shuttle anyway... particularly a 30 year-old one that hasn't been fit to fly for the past 20 years.
As for not doing a thing... I do plently. I'm a member of a local peace group as well as the International Socialist Organisation. I educate people about the real reasons why terrorism exists. I argue for a more just world.
There's no point in beating your chest and claiming "I Am American, and I will Save the World!", at any cost. To save the world fron the next atrocity, you have to understand why atrocities happen. To do that, have to go beyond the neo-conservative, anti-Islamic propoganda and look at what your country has done to create the current situation.
If it weren't for the WOMD / war on terrorism bullshit, all these outrageous attacks on our civil liberties and 'way of life' wouldn't be happening.
Just what type of 'way of life' are they trying to protect anyway? Seems to me that on the one hand, they say the 'terrorists' hate our 'freedom'. Then on the other hand, they destroy destroy our freedom and implement a regime that's fast approaching the most model they're claiming to protect us from.
Of course the statement that terrorists hate our 'way of life' is complete bullshit. They hate our WOMD. They hate our foreign policy. They hate our support of the illegal Israeli state. They hate our neo-conservative market structure that we ram down their throat. As for our 'way of life'... they couldn't give 2 tosses.
The fact that the Western world has yet to come to terms with is that without justice, there can be no peace. And the world is severely lacking in justice right about now. Just ask Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Or ask Iran in a couple of month's time.
And everybody agrees that SQL is a pain in the ass and the people who invented it -if still alive - should be wrapped in brabed wire and shot into the sun.
I don't agree with that. SQL is logical and entirely predictable. I occasionally hear people saying that SQL needs to be replaced by some XML-centric query language, but these are mostly Access newbies or FrontPage wizzes.
Python enforces good coding habbits
It depends what your idea of 'good' is. I don't like a language dictating when I use the spacebar or tab key. I like to lay things out the way I like it. I really can't bring myself to use Python until they drop this ridiculous, condescending attitude towards programmers: "Thou shalt indent thy code THUS!". Bullshit. I'll indent my code how I feel. I indent and space my stuff more than most, and less than some. Nothing wrong with that.
If you think it's important to be a 'manly' programmer by preferring outdated development habbits over modern and, yes, easyer PLs, you're being silly.
Are you saying Perl has been outdated by Python? My God! I didn't even notice the whole Perl community up and migrate to Python, abandoning their old CPAN modules and recreating them in Python, thereby taking the Python programmer count from 3 to 3,000,000. Are you sure this has happened. Or do you wish Python was in the position Perl is in? A language isn't just what makes CS students have wet dreams by enforcing 'good programming habits'. A language is also the ecosystem of tools and community that grows around the language. Perl has an incredibly large and vibrant one. Python doesn't.
Yesterday, they were cheapskates, who were moved en-masse because of a decision that came from on-high. Pigs certainly don't forward-think. Their inability to figure out OOo after 5 years demonstates that they have enough trouble thinking in the present tense. No time for forward thinking.
Now, they are the knuckle draggers that they were yesterday, but their IT department has caved in to economic incentives, political pressure, knuckle-dragger's complaints, and quite possibly some old-fashioned under-the-table incentives.
To suggest that a police force needs nothing more than a simple text editor is supreme arrogance.
They're not putting together an encyclopaedea. They're pigs. And that bit about supreme arrogance - yeah that reminds me of some friendly protectors of the people. I challenge you to give an example of some word processing task that the cops need to do that can't be accomplished in OOo.
We switched from Office 97 to StarOffice 5.2, then rode the upgrade wave all the way to the current beta: OOo-1.9.122.
There were certainly some complaints when we started. The problem is perception. As you pointed out, users typically don't need a word processor. They need WordPad... but they want it to look like a million dollars, and cost like it too. In the 1st year, I had to field endless complaints than StarOffice / OpenOffice wasn't "up to it". I'd sit down with the complainee and ask them what they were trying to do. They weren't trying to do anything - they just wanted to complain. No-one has ever asked me how to do anything more complicated than insert an image. Oh yeah... and change the page format of old templates from Letter to A4... my favourite problem. Why the fuck do people find it so hard to get their heads around the fact that the page setup isn't in the 'File' menu, like in Word ( where it's out of place ). It's in the 'Format' menu. It belongs there. But more importantly, it IS there, so why not just deal with it?
I've briefly skimmed over the comments attached to this story, and most of the anti-OOo posts boil down to bullshit such as:
- I can't figure out how to save my document "in Word".
Yeah. Go you technical people!
- OOo takes 3.5 seconds to load in the morning, but Word loads in 2.5 seconds
- The buttons aren't as nice as Word's. Word has nice buttons, and that is how we judge products these day - by the buttons.
- I used a combination of the TAB key and the spacebar to neatly align columns of text in my 200 page Word document, and when I opened it on another computer with a different operating system, different fonts, and OOo messed up all the formatting. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!
- OOo doesn't come with an email program, and I think my life will end if I can't email from the same office package as my word processor comes from, even though in Microsoft Office, Word and Outlook are completely different applications anyway. And no I don't want to use Thunderbird. I want YOU to drop what you're doing and write an email program for OOo, otherwise I won't use OOo.
I know the IQ of the average pig, and they're not the advanced word processing type. In fact I wouldn't be surprised it it were far more efficient to give them dictaphones and employ some kids to type everything up for them. I simply fail to see what the problem was. We certainly haven't had any issues. No usability issues. No compatibility issues.
OK. To be fair, there were some regressions in the early OOo-1.9.x series, and I had to revert a number of desktops to 1.1.4 while people acted on my bug reports. But they did so, and quite swiftly, and it was only 3 months after reverting people back to 1.1.4 that I was putting people back on 1.9.79 first public beta release ).
I know why they changed back. They missed the clipart. Pigs aren't all guns and corruption, you know. They like to get creative too! And there's nothing more fun than getting your sys admin to install all the clipart from the Office CD and make a nice collage of cool images and things.
Screenshots are great, but only when they're relevant.
People who are keen enough to be interested in BSD will already know what KDE looks like. It would be far more instructive to show screenshots of things that are unique to this particular distribution of BSD. How about showing the GUI tool for software installation, or samba configuration, or something.
All I know now is that BSD runs KDE... and I knew that before I looked at the screenshots.
While I agree with the points that you make regarding Microsoft and their anti-competitive stance, I strongly disagree with your conclusion that the EU will roast them alive.
The EU is in a far worse position to be pushing Microsoft around than the DOJ ever was. The best they can do is slap fines on Microsoft, and they won't stick. Small ones, ie 10% of Microsoft's revenue might be simply shrugged off, but anything substantial will be challenged on a number of fronts. And let's face it... Microsoft very much have the blessing of the US government. They won't allow anything to happen to the 'jewel of capitalism'. The US's power in - and abuse of - the WTO is one of the reasons why the 2 towers came crashing down. Do you think from the rhetoric coming from Washington that they have learned their lessons? My interpretation is that they intend to continue on the same trajectory, only with more force and contempt for the wishes of everybody else - including their own citizens.
If this ever went to court they will obviously argue that this is an 'unfortunate' consequence of their move to the new rendering model, and that it's impossible to undo without a complete redesign. A number of other posts here say that this is in fact the case - that since Direct3D claims the card, that there is no way to provide OpenGL... other than via Direct3D. It's and ingenious approach, and it will work in court. Oh yeah - if it ever gets to court. I don't think it will.
As for people moving to Linux because of this - I don't see that happening either. Users don't care whether they're using Direct3D or OpenGL. Users don't know the difference. Certainly governments couldn't care less. There are some compelling reasons to move to Linux, but the destruction of OpenGL isn't one of them, apart from adding to the philisophical reasons. But governments aren't particularly philisophical, and neither are users.
Not to mention that who knows where the US would be if it weren't for our top-flight/well-funded Military. We'd probably all be German or Soviet citizens.:-)
Here's a tip for you and the rest of the world who cries foul over terrorism:
Stop fucking with them and they will stop fucking with you
Terrorist attacks are a response, however misguided and brutal, to far more brutal Western policies in the Middle East. Get it through your thick fucking heads that you are bringing it on yourselves. They don't "hate your freedom" or the "the way you live". They hate the way you destroy their countries, prop up dicatators such as Saddam ( and then 'flip-flop' to invade them later ) and do business with dynasties such as the Bin Laden group.
Get rid of Bush. Get rid of the Republicans. Get rid of the Democrats. Find some politicians that don't have their tongues 2 metres up big business' arse. And for all our sakes, get rid of that devastating foreign policy. You are the champions of democracy. Show the world how it's done.
Look at Emperor Dubya. Are you seriously trying to tell me that he's the best person for the job? If he is, my estimation of all the rest of you... that aren't up to the job, is pretty damned low.
It might surprise you to learn that the world is not full of Muslim extremists, just dying to take your great American freedom from you and replace it with an Islamic state. I know it defies all reason, but it just simply isn't so. What's happened is that you've been brainwashed with a propoganda campaign that would make the Nazis blush.
If only the US Government spent a tenth of the amount that they spend on Weapons of Mass Destruction (tm) on their space program, maybe in-flight repairs wouldn't be necessary.
Actually, a tenth would be way too much. The Iraq adventure is costing American citizens $US 1 billion per day... and they've been there for years now. Maybe 1/100th is all that would be needed.
Nationalistic? That's rich. The Zionists are the ultimate nationalists. And to top it off, they don't even have a nation - they had to steal one from the Palestinian people.
So they want to drive the Jews into the sea? Hardly surprising considering what the Jews have done to them. I bet the Iraqis want to drive the Americans into the sea too.
Sadly, there are some evil people in this world. And then there are idiots like yourself.
NASA should outsource the design, construction and testing of all their equipment to companies that have some credibility. Despite the massive defence contracts that the likes of Boeing and National Aeronautics and Lockheed-Martin, they simply aren't up to the quality standard of, say, the Japanese.
Think of it in terms of cars:
Who would you trust to build a vehicle that had to get you into space and back, safely?
Chrysler? Ford? General Motors? Or would you go with a company like Honda? Subaru? Don't like the Japanese? Fine. How about BMW? Mercedes? There's a world of difference, isn't there?
Have you ever thought about posting this stuff ofver at kuro5hin.org ? It'd fit much better than here.
I've poked around there a little, but Slashdot seems better for news. I have to admit that the discussions are better at kuro5hin.org though. I will have to spend some more time there. I am getting quite used to being flamed down at every post - hence the title of my post...
I do have one point about content. "Content" is created either by copyright (works of music, books, movies...), patents (process, how-to), or trademarks (pictures/words linking to certain product). Im unsure what your opinion who the ownership should belong to (possibly the whole of the citizens, but temporially proxy-owned by creator), but why do we allow transferrance of these 3 protections?
Yes I think I accidentally blurred the lines between content creators and providers in my post. The problem is that content creators currently need content providors if they want to be able to make a successful living. This is an uncomfortable reality, and hopefully one that would be lessened greatly by breaking up the distributors and the barriers to entry into the market. From the creator's point of view, obviously the only reason they'd sign any of their rights over to others is to get entry into the market... ie under duress.
From a socialist's point of view, it is the workers ( the content creators ) that should have control of production anyway, so that would be the obvious goal - taking back the means of production and also taking over distribution. That doesn't necessarily mean that you'd have completely disconnected individuals all trying to do everything themselves... it simply means that the content creators would have direct control over the means of production and distrubution... there's nothing stopping them from joining together and pooling their expertise etc.
If someone creates a neat new song, they've created it. Not Disney, not MGM, not anybody else. The creator created it. I understand that you can license it to others (as in a copy right) but why do we allow full transferrance of copyright, patents, or trademarks?
This is a good question. It's logical to say that an individual or company that creates something novel or new... something of value... should be able to make a profit from it. But when you take their right to make a profit from their creation, and sell it on to others, there are a number of questions raised. For example, why is this being done, and what effect does it have on the creators and on society generally?
By far the most common reason people would transfer their rights to something they've created is that they're forced to. They're either forced by barriers to entry to the market, or by the offer of a large up-front cash offer ( often combined with the threat of barriers to entry ).
As for the effect on creators, it short-changes them considerably, and steals away control of their work. It puts them in the situation where they are perpetually dependant on the providers... and not only them, but other creators as well. It's a positive feedback loop... ie the actions at one point of the cycle feed back into the cycle to create the conditions for the cycle to continue, but at a greater level of energy. ie it's very hard to get out of.
For society, the effect is the usual list ( that I gave before ) that all come from a monopoly situation: reduction in a novelty, choice, etc, increase in prices, and corruption of our so-called democracy.
So I would say that transference of rights from creators to providers is a necessary evil under capitalism that would dissolve under socialism. As for all the area in-between, I suppose we just have to resis
I see a lot of familiar arguements against DRM / content providers here, but most of them fall short, for reasons I'll try to address here.
The main problem is that people's arguements don't hold up to their prevailing assumption that we have to work inside a capitalist model.
For example, in the capitalist model, the content providers do own the content, and they are very much within their rights to dictate who has access to their property, and on what terms, with what software, etc. This right, under the capitalist system, is completely undeniable. People who argue for 'fair use' are missing this point. Content providers can offer you 'fair right' use if they want, but are certainly not obliged to. People can point to 'fair use' legislation in various countries, but firstly, it has no effect ( please provide example to contradict ), and secondly, the US is stamping it out where possible via their free trade agreements.
Another thing I see posted often is that people turn to piracy only because of a lack of value, either due to poor content, or excessive pricing. This is correct. However, under a capitalist system, the market decides both the content and the price. Some people argue that we should ( and in some cases do ) have legislation to control content ( eg fairness and accuracy in news, local content quotas, etc ) and also pricing, but this is completely unrealistic. The market still dictates these factors, via astronomical donations to political campaigns... which is another point that I have seen people raise... these people are getting closer to the issue than most. While corruption isn't unique to capitalism, it is certainly most rampant under it - particularly with the 'anything goes' ( market ) nature of political fundraising. Critics of socialism will point to corruption in places such as the old USSR or China, but these places are very rarely considered socialist by the left - they are more often than not considered to be state-run capitalist systems... particularly China in recent years.
So what is a socialist's take on the issues?
Content creators have the right to make a certain amount of profit for their work. Clearly without this profit, they would not work, would not employ people, and we wouldn't have content. However once a profit point is reached, they no longer have a right to continue extracting profit via force. This approach comes from the realisation that people, organisation, businesses, etc, don't only possessrights, but also have obligations to others and to society generally. One of the most important obligations they have is to not dominate the market and create a monopoly position for themselves. Another obligation is that they don't have an inflated 'influence' on our democratic system via political donations. Without these obligations, there is very little society can do to escape the sitation we have with a handful of huge multibillion-dollar media houses controlling all mainstream content, advertising, airplay, etc, as well as the democractic process itself. Re-read this paragraph a couple of times before replying please. It really is one extreme or the other. The nature of capitalism dictates the monopoly outcome. The biggest, most agressive, and most willing to corrupt our fine politicans will always end up on top.
What about DRM?
I've already asserted that content providers have a right to make a fair profit. It is yet to be seen if, under the above model, people would actually refrain from copying material to the point that the content providers could not make this fair profit point. And of course it is also open to debate what a fair amount of profit is. The point is that this should be decided by the people, and not by the market. O
This is the common excuse for dropping 2 nuclear weapons on cities full of civilians, yes.
Unfortunately it's about as full as truth as everything else that comes out of the US government.
The Japanese were crushed 6 months prior to the end of WWII. They had no energy. They were desperately trying to negotiate an unconditional surrender. The US govt, however, saw this as a dandy opportunity to assert their absolute military supremacy on the international stage.
But even if we ignore the fact that Japan were more than ready to surrender, I still find it absolutely absurd that people ( and usually American people - there is a particular irony here of course ) argue that they have the right to drop atomic weapons on civilians to bring 'peace' to the world, yet other countries aren't even allowed to possess nuclear weapons.
The thing about rules is that they have to be applied equally. Following your argument to it's logical conclusion, and assuming that all people are 'created equal under God', then the Iraqi people had every right to possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons... for the same reasons as the US can possess them.
Now I'm not meaning to come down on you particularly hard... you at least admit that there is controversy surrounding the US nuking fest. I'm just pointing out that you have to take a clear, principled stance on the issue, and defending the US's 'right' to use nuclear weapons, while being wrong in itself, also opens a very ugly can of worms when the argument is projected onto others.
Had the US not developed and deployed the bomb, someone else would have been the first to use it.
I certainly have to take issue with this argument. This is exactly the argument companies like BAE Systems, Raytheon etc want to hear people put forward. Proliferation. It won't do us any good. Sure someone *could* always build a bigger, 'better' weapon. But who always does? And what good does it do the world? Look around you at your civil liberties being eroded in the name of the 'war on terror' - and of course the hundreds of thousands of innocent people that are killed, locked up, tortured, etc. This is a direct result of the incredible inequality between the US's weapons and everyone elses... combined of course with the US's foreign policy. Are bigger weapons doing us any better on this front? No. Is the world more dangerous with nuclear proliferation? I don't think anyone who seriously thinks this through can say proliferation makes the world a safer or better place.
Slashdot Mirror
I realise that you meant this jokingly, but just for the record ...
As someone who supported them 100% on their choice of the PPC architecture, I am certainly not going to be buying any more PPC products from them. If I can't buy a G5-based system from another retailer, I'm going back to x86, alright, but not Mac's x86. x86-64 on Linux, and on generic hardware. Enough is enough.
It certainly doesn't take a consipacy-but hippie to realise why the world hates the US - just a little knowledge mixed with a little thoughtful consideration. Oh yeah. You're missing both.
... another victim of US propoganda.
:)
And you, sir, are rather pathetic. A quick read of your posts and people's moderation of said posts confirms this overwhelmingly. You seem to be a 'me too' type of person
Speaking of idiots, I believe you'd give George Dubya a run for his money on an IQ test. Maybe you'd make a better president
Nice response. Don't have an answer for my questions though, do you?
...
Not to worry. What you lack in knowledge you make up for in partriotism. It's disgusting
What will they use it for then? To pick roses?
If it can destroy a missile, it can slice a person in 2, and they certainly won't stop there. There will be a more powerful one, and then a yet more powerful one.
How stupid can you get indeed?
OK then.
... if the window manager crashes, it drops everything on the desktop, restarts itself, appologises to the user, picks everything back up off the desktop ( remembering each windows' desktop and position etc ) and carries on like nothing happened.
I've been using various cvs versions for the past 18 months, and [b][i]I[/i][/b] can vouch for it's stability.
E17, E16, and possible previous versions ( I used E15, but I don't rememeber too much of it ) have had a remarkable feature built into them
E17 occassionally does this, but only when you do something like change themes. It's quite a harmless crash, as you never lose anything - just wait about a second for E to restart, and continue where you left off.
What baffles me is that people who have not used E17 [b][i]at all[/i][/b] feel the need to cast doubt on things they know nothing of.
I think there was some talk about supporting a Cairo backend, but obviously when it's been developed considerably further.
One of the amazing things about Enlightenment is that the libraries are simply the best around. Evas already has an OpenGL backend as well as an incredibly highly optimized software backend, and to the developer's credit, the software renderer is the fastest thing available, period! The OpenGL backend has promise, but the developers are quick to point out that OpenGL drivers for most cards are unstable and unpredictable, and that the software backend is the way to go for the medium-term.
I think what the area that is letting down eye-candy on the Linux desktop is the current state of the xorg render extension and tools like xcompmgr. Rasterman says that he'll start adding support for these when they stop sucking, and apparently they haven't stopped sucking yet. I certainly find xcompmgr too unstable to use. Every 20 minutes it brings down the whole X server. Render acceleration is also horrible. Perhaps this will change in the next xorg release? Hopefully...
The Yanks must be stopped. They are stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. But what's worse, they hate our 'way of life'. Also remember that they are ruled by an evil dictator who went against the people's will and stole the 2000 elections with the help of his cronies in the supreme court. The world would be a better place without him.
... ...
Keep stockpiling, Yanks. God knows, that's what the world needs: more weapons of mass destruction. Oh yeah, they're only for defense . How could I be so anti-American to suggest that these will in fact be used as weapons of mass destruction. They are of course weapons of love and understanding, and will only be used to save the cute white bunnies and the church picnic from the evil Arab masses and their hate, and their WOMD, and their
The war in Iraq was completely unjustifiable, and the perpetrators should face the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges. I believe they carried out an illegal war of aggression. The 'justification' for invading Iraq - WOMD - has been completely discredited. You can't invade a country and then turn around and say "Oh yeah. We've just changed our justification. What we said before about WOMD, and the forged evidence and such ... just forget all that ... and try to see that Saddam, our old buddie for the past 25 years, was evil, and that's our new justification". It's an illegal war of aggression.
... the same Bin Laden from the Saudi Arabian company, the "Bin Laden Group", which is the largest single backer of Bush, period. This is no co-incidence, and neither is the fact that Bin Laden hasn't been caught. The US Government is up to their eyeballs in the blood of 9/11 victims.
... they are bad, bad people ). The US them continued distributing their Islamic fundamentalist propoganda while pouring an unknown amount of money ( most people agree it's in the hundreds of billions, but this is classified and probably not accounted for properly anyway ) into the Taliban to combat the evil USSR in the area. This is the source of your Jahad warriors, and the Taliban.
... ... ...
... or Christian fundamentalism, such as the right-to-life terrorists who blow up doctors, patients and by-standers outside abor
Invading Afghanistan I view in a very similar light. The US government intentionally discarded intelligence that an attack on the twin towers was coming. The 'breakdown' of intelligence that's now been used to justify ever increasingly draconian legislation against US citizens was not a breakdown at all. The attacks were carried out by Bin Laden and co
Now, even discarding the above paragraph completely, and assuming that the Bush administration hasn't just taken part in the most evil, deceitful and bloodthrirsty of conspiracies to drive the US into a near fascist state, and justify their illegal wars of aggresssion to assert their economic and military supremacy across the globe. Afghanistan still didn't deserve carpet bombing. The people of Afghanistan didn't do anything against anyone. They're very simple people, living at or just above the subsistence farming level. Most people involved in the 9/11 attacks were Saudis, not Afghanis. And even if they were Afghanis, the rest of the country didn't deserve the devastation that Bush brought upon them. They were not responsible.
Back to the issue of Jihad. I went to a forum last week titled "Islam is not the enemy". It was very interesting. The main speaker told us that during the 80s and 90s, the CIA widely distrubuted 'educational' textbooks to schools right through the African continent, and the Arab world, that was full of Islamic fundamentalist propoganda. These textbooks went to all the schools, and in many places in Africa, are still used as the main source of educational material. We were shown some examples. The books had guns and rocket launchers and so-called 'Jahad' warriors on every page, and were full of ideas such as the notion that it was the ultimate honour to die in a violent stuggle against another country in defence of your religion. At the time, the target was the USSR, and the CIA succeeded in whipping up enough support to form the Taliban, with the help of the Pakistani secret police ( who have a reputation for being as kind-natured as the Israelis
Ordinary Afghanis had nothing to do with 9/11, just as ordinary Iraqis didn't, just as ordinary Saudis didn't, just as Iraq didn't have WOMD, just as
The US government is wholly responsible for 9/11. I would even go as far to say that they ordered it. The fact that there are some extremists around the world is a non-issue. The US certainly looks the other way in the face of Israeli fundamentalism
Your attacks on Islam are simply false. Your labelling of people as 'Jihadis' is a horrible deception. Jihad means 'inner struggle'. It's a term that refers to one's battle of good vs evil. There are no such thing as 'Jihadis' except for in the right-wing media. And who claimed that the attacks were targetting places that gave loans to women? The right-wing media. Who won't let women drive? Who puts them in tents? You are so full of shit it's not funny. Are you a republican senator or something?
... particularly a 30 year-old one that hasn't been fit to fly for the past 20 years.
... I do plently. I'm a member of a local peace group as well as the International Socialist Organisation. I educate people about the real reasons why terrorism exists. I argue for a more just world.
As for putting women in charge of Space Shuttles ( no idea why you capitalised those 2 words ), so fucking what? In Islamic countries, the percentage of women that get a university degree is higher than in the US. What's so good about being 'in charge' of a space shuttle anyway
As for not doing a thing
There's no point in beating your chest and claiming "I Am American, and I will Save the World!", at any cost. To save the world fron the next atrocity, you have to understand why atrocities happen. To do that, have to go beyond the neo-conservative, anti-Islamic propoganda and look at what your country has done to create the current situation.
If it weren't for the WOMD / war on terrorism bullshit, all these outrageous attacks on our civil liberties and 'way of life' wouldn't be happening.
... they couldn't give 2 tosses.
Just what type of 'way of life' are they trying to protect anyway? Seems to me that on the one hand, they say the 'terrorists' hate our 'freedom'. Then on the other hand, they destroy destroy our freedom and implement a regime that's fast approaching the most model they're claiming to protect us from.
Of course the statement that terrorists hate our 'way of life' is complete bullshit. They hate our WOMD. They hate our foreign policy. They hate our support of the illegal Israeli state. They hate our neo-conservative market structure that we ram down their throat. As for our 'way of life'
The fact that the Western world has yet to come to terms with is that without justice, there can be no peace. And the world is severely lacking in justice right about now. Just ask Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Or ask Iran in a couple of month's time.
I see. So we agree then. Just checking :)
I don't agree with that. SQL is logical and entirely predictable. I occasionally hear people saying that SQL needs to be replaced by some XML-centric query language, but these are mostly Access newbies or FrontPage wizzes.
It depends what your idea of 'good' is. I don't like a language dictating when I use the spacebar or tab key. I like to lay things out the way I like it. I really can't bring myself to use Python until they drop this ridiculous, condescending attitude towards programmers: "Thou shalt indent thy code THUS!" . Bullshit. I'll indent my code how I feel. I indent and space my stuff more than most, and less than some. Nothing wrong with that.
Are you saying Perl has been outdated by Python? My God! I didn't even notice the whole Perl community up and migrate to Python, abandoning their old CPAN modules and recreating them in Python, thereby taking the Python programmer count from 3 to 3,000,000. Are you sure this has happened. Or do you wish Python was in the position Perl is in? A language isn't just what makes CS students have wet dreams by enforcing 'good programming habits'. A language is also the ecosystem of tools and community that grows around the language. Perl has an incredibly large and vibrant one. Python doesn't.
Yesterday, they were cheapskates, who were moved en-masse because of a decision that came from on-high. Pigs certainly don't forward-think. Their inability to figure out OOo after 5 years demonstates that they have enough trouble thinking in the present tense. No time for forward thinking.
Now, they are the knuckle draggers that they were yesterday, but their IT department has caved in to economic incentives, political pressure, knuckle-dragger's complaints, and quite possibly some old-fashioned under-the-table incentives.
They're not putting together an encyclopaedea. They're pigs. And that bit about supreme arrogance - yeah that reminds me of some friendly protectors of the people. I challenge you to give an example of some word processing task that the cops need to do that can't be accomplished in OOo.
I have to agree.
... but they want it to look like a million dollars, and cost like it too. In the 1st year, I had to field endless complaints than StarOffice / OpenOffice wasn't "up to it". I'd sit down with the complainee and ask them what they were trying to do. They weren't trying to do anything - they just wanted to complain. No-one has ever asked me how to do anything more complicated than insert an image. Oh yeah ... and change the page format of old templates from Letter to A4 ... my favourite problem. Why the fuck do people find it so hard to get their heads around the fact that the page setup isn't in the 'File' menu, like in Word ( where it's out of place ). It's in the 'Format' menu. It belongs there. But more importantly, it IS there, so why not just deal with it?
We switched from Office 97 to StarOffice 5.2, then rode the upgrade wave all the way to the current beta: OOo-1.9.122.
There were certainly some complaints when we started. The problem is perception. As you pointed out, users typically don't need a word processor. They need WordPad
I've briefly skimmed over the comments attached to this story, and most of the anti-OOo posts boil down to bullshit such as:
- I can't figure out how to save my document "in Word".
Yeah. Go you technical people!
- OOo takes 3.5 seconds to load in the morning, but Word loads in 2.5 seconds
- The buttons aren't as nice as Word's. Word has nice buttons, and that is how we judge products these day - by the buttons.
- I used a combination of the TAB key and the spacebar to neatly align columns of text in my 200 page Word document, and when I opened it on another computer with a different operating system, different fonts, and OOo messed up all the formatting. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!
- OOo doesn't come with an email program, and I think my life will end if I can't email from the same office package as my word processor comes from, even though in Microsoft Office, Word and Outlook are completely different applications anyway. And no I don't want to use Thunderbird. I want YOU to drop what you're doing and write an email program for OOo, otherwise I won't use OOo.
I know the IQ of the average pig, and they're not the advanced word processing type. In fact I wouldn't be surprised it it were far more efficient to give them dictaphones and employ some kids to type everything up for them. I simply fail to see what the problem was. We certainly haven't had any issues. No usability issues. No compatibility issues.
OK. To be fair, there were some regressions in the early OOo-1.9.x series, and I had to revert a number of desktops to 1.1.4 while people acted on my bug reports. But they did so, and quite swiftly, and it was only 3 months after reverting people back to 1.1.4 that I was putting people back on 1.9.79 first public beta release ).
I know why they changed back. They missed the clipart. Pigs aren't all guns and corruption, you know. They like to get creative too! And there's nothing more fun than getting your sys admin to install all the clipart from the Office CD and make a nice collage of cool images and things.
The marvels of technology.
Screenshots are great, but only when they're relevant.
... and I knew that before I looked at the screenshots.
;)
People who are keen enough to be interested in BSD will already know what KDE looks like. It would be far more instructive to show screenshots of things that are unique to this particular distribution of BSD. How about showing the GUI tool for software installation, or samba configuration, or something.
All I know now is that BSD runs KDE
I like the KDE background, though
While I agree with the points that you make regarding Microsoft and their anti-competitive stance, I strongly disagree with your conclusion that the EU will roast them alive.
... Microsoft very much have the blessing of the US government. They won't allow anything to happen to the 'jewel of capitalism'. The US's power in - and abuse of - the WTO is one of the reasons why the 2 towers came crashing down. Do you think from the rhetoric coming from Washington that they have learned their lessons? My interpretation is that they intend to continue on the same trajectory, only with more force and contempt for the wishes of everybody else - including their own citizens.
... other than via Direct3D. It's and ingenious approach, and it will work in court. Oh yeah - if it ever gets to court. I don't think it will.
The EU is in a far worse position to be pushing Microsoft around than the DOJ ever was. The best they can do is slap fines on Microsoft, and they won't stick. Small ones, ie 10% of Microsoft's revenue might be simply shrugged off, but anything substantial will be challenged on a number of fronts. And let's face it
If this ever went to court they will obviously argue that this is an 'unfortunate' consequence of their move to the new rendering model, and that it's impossible to undo without a complete redesign. A number of other posts here say that this is in fact the case - that since Direct3D claims the card, that there is no way to provide OpenGL
As for people moving to Linux because of this - I don't see that happening either. Users don't care whether they're using Direct3D or OpenGL. Users don't know the difference. Certainly governments couldn't care less. There are some compelling reasons to move to Linux, but the destruction of OpenGL isn't one of them, apart from adding to the philisophical reasons. But governments aren't particularly philisophical, and neither are users.
Frankly, that would be a welcome change.
Here's a tip for you and the rest of the world who cries foul over terrorism:
Stop fucking with them and they will stop fucking with you
Terrorist attacks are a response, however misguided and brutal, to far more brutal Western policies in the Middle East. Get it through your thick fucking heads that you are bringing it on yourselves. They don't "hate your freedom" or the "the way you live". They hate the way you destroy their countries, prop up dicatators such as Saddam ( and then 'flip-flop' to invade them later ) and do business with dynasties such as the Bin Laden group.
Get rid of Bush. Get rid of the Republicans. Get rid of the Democrats. Find some politicians that don't have their tongues 2 metres up big business' arse. And for all our sakes, get rid of that devastating foreign policy. You are the champions of democracy. Show the world how it's done.
Your country is already overrun.
... that aren't up to the job, is pretty damned low.
Look at Emperor Dubya. Are you seriously trying to tell me that he's the best person for the job? If he is, my estimation of all the rest of you
It might surprise you to learn that the world is not full of Muslim extremists, just dying to take your great American freedom from you and replace it with an Islamic state. I know it defies all reason, but it just simply isn't so. What's happened is that you've been brainwashed with a propoganda campaign that would make the Nazis blush.
If only the US Government spent a tenth of the amount that they spend on Weapons of Mass Destruction (tm) on their space program, maybe in-flight repairs wouldn't be necessary.
... and they've been there for years now. Maybe 1/100th is all that would be needed.
Actually, a tenth would be way too much. The Iraq adventure is costing American citizens $US 1 billion per day
Anti-semitic?
They make it hard not to be.
Nationalistic?
That's rich. The Zionists are the ultimate nationalists. And to top it off, they don't even have a nation - they had to steal one from the Palestinian people.
So they want to drive the Jews into the sea? Hardly surprising considering what the Jews have done to them. I bet the Iraqis want to drive the Americans into the sea too.
Sadly, there are some evil people in this world. And then there are idiots like yourself.
NASA should outsource the design, construction and testing of all their equipment to companies that have some credibility. Despite the massive defence contracts that the likes of Boeing and National Aeronautics and Lockheed-Martin, they simply aren't up to the quality standard of, say, the Japanese.
Think of it in terms of cars:
Who would you trust to build a vehicle that had to get you into space and back, safely?
Chrysler? Ford? General Motors? Or would you go with a company like Honda? Subaru? Don't like the Japanese? Fine. How about BMW? Mercedes? There's a world of difference, isn't there?
I've poked around there a little, but Slashdot seems better for news. I have to admit that the discussions are better at kuro5hin.org though. I will have to spend some more time there. I am getting quite used to being flamed down at every post - hence the title of my post ...
Yes I think I accidentally blurred the lines between content creators and providers in my post. The problem is that content creators currently need content providors if they want to be able to make a successful living. This is an uncomfortable reality, and hopefully one that would be lessened greatly by breaking up the distributors and the barriers to entry into the market. From the creator's point of view, obviously the only reason they'd sign any of their rights over to others is to get entry into the market ... ie under duress.
... it simply means that the content creators would have direct control over the means of production and distrubution ... there's nothing stopping them from joining together and pooling their expertise etc.
From a socialist's point of view, it is the workers ( the content creators ) that should have control of production anyway, so that would be the obvious goal - taking back the means of production and also taking over distribution. That doesn't necessarily mean that you'd have completely disconnected individuals all trying to do everything themselves
This is a good question. It's logical to say that an individual or company that creates something novel or new ... something of value ... should be able to make a profit from it. But when you take their right to make a profit from their creation, and sell it on to others, there are a number of questions raised. For example, why is this being done, and what effect does it have on the creators and on society generally?
... and not only them, but other creators as well. It's a positive feedback loop ... ie the actions at one point of the cycle feed back into the cycle to create the conditions for the cycle to continue, but at a greater level of energy. ie it's very hard to get out of.
By far the most common reason people would transfer their rights to something they've created is that they're forced to. They're either forced by barriers to entry to the market, or by the offer of a large up-front cash offer ( often combined with the threat of barriers to entry ).
As for the effect on creators, it short-changes them considerably, and steals away control of their work. It puts them in the situation where they are perpetually dependant on the providers
For society, the effect is the usual list ( that I gave before ) that all come from a monopoly situation: reduction in a novelty, choice, etc, increase in prices, and corruption of our so-called democracy.
So I would say that transference of rights from creators to providers is a necessary evil under capitalism that would dissolve under socialism. As for all the area in-between, I suppose we just have to resis
I see a lot of familiar arguements against DRM / content providers here, but most of them fall short, for reasons I'll try to address here.
... which is another point that I have seen people raise ... these people are getting closer to the issue than most. While corruption isn't unique to capitalism, it is certainly most rampant under it - particularly with the 'anything goes' ( market ) nature of political fundraising. Critics of socialism will point to corruption in places such as the old USSR or China, but these places are very rarely considered socialist by the left - they are more often than not considered to be state-run capitalist systems ... particularly China in recent years.
The main problem is that people's arguements don't hold up to their prevailing assumption that we have to work inside a capitalist model.
For example, in the capitalist model, the content providers do own the content, and they are very much within their rights to dictate who has access to their property, and on what terms, with what software, etc. This right, under the capitalist system, is completely undeniable. People who argue for 'fair use' are missing this point. Content providers can offer you 'fair right' use if they want, but are certainly not obliged to. People can point to 'fair use' legislation in various countries, but firstly, it has no effect ( please provide example to contradict ), and secondly, the US is stamping it out where possible via their free trade agreements.
Another thing I see posted often is that people turn to piracy only because of a lack of value, either due to poor content, or excessive pricing. This is correct. However, under a capitalist system, the market decides both the content and the price. Some people argue that we should ( and in some cases do ) have legislation to control content ( eg fairness and accuracy in news, local content quotas, etc ) and also pricing, but this is completely unrealistic. The market still dictates these factors, via astronomical donations to political campaigns
So what is a socialist's take on the issues?
Content creators have the right to make a certain amount of profit for their work. Clearly without this profit, they would not work, would not employ people, and we wouldn't have content. However once a profit point is reached, they no longer have a right to continue extracting profit via force . This approach comes from the realisation that people, organisation, businesses, etc, don't only possess rights , but also have obligations to others and to society generally. One of the most important obligations they have is to not dominate the market and create a monopoly position for themselves. Another obligation is that they don't have an inflated 'influence' on our democratic system via political donations. Without these obligations, there is very little society can do to escape the sitation we have with a handful of huge multibillion-dollar media houses controlling all mainstream content, advertising, airplay, etc, as well as the democractic process itself. Re-read this paragraph a couple of times before replying please. It really is one extreme or the other. The nature of capitalism dictates the monopoly outcome. The biggest, most agressive, and most willing to corrupt our fine politicans will always end up on top.
What about DRM?
I've already asserted that content providers have a right to make a fair profit. It is yet to be seen if, under the above model, people would actually refrain from copying material to the point that the content providers could not make this fair profit point. And of course it is also open to debate what a fair amount of profit is. The point is that this should be decided by the people , and not by the market. O
Unfortunately it's about as full as truth as everything else that comes out of the US government.
The Japanese were crushed 6 months prior to the end of WWII. They had no energy. They were desperately trying to negotiate an unconditional surrender. The US govt, however, saw this as a dandy opportunity to assert their absolute military supremacy on the international stage.
But even if we ignore the fact that Japan were more than ready to surrender, I still find it absolutely absurd that people ( and usually American people - there is a particular irony here of course ) argue that they have the right to drop atomic weapons on civilians to bring 'peace' to the world, yet other countries aren't even allowed to possess nuclear weapons.
The thing about rules is that they have to be applied equally. Following your argument to it's logical conclusion, and assuming that all people are 'created equal under God', then the Iraqi people had every right to possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
Now I'm not meaning to come down on you particularly hard
I certainly have to take issue with this argument. This is exactly the argument companies like BAE Systems, Raytheon etc want to hear people put forward. Proliferation. It won't do us any good. Sure someone *could* always build a bigger, 'better' weapon. But who always does? And what good does it do the world? Look around you at your civil liberties being eroded in the name of the 'war on terror' - and of course the hundreds of thousands of innocent people that are killed, locked up, tortured, etc. This is a direct result of the incredible inequality between the US's weapons and everyone elses