The first 5 seasons were good, Once More With Feeling was a hilarious and awesome episode, as Buffy goes, but the entire rest of the season was garbage.
I love it that our standards are so high. We call it "garbage" when it's still one of the very best shows on television. Season 6 sucked only in comparison to the previous 5. I'll stack the worst episode of season 6 up against the best episode of practically any other series any day.
Because microsoft didn't put in extra support for Hebrew, Apple has gotten up and fixed the problem.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. It's not correct to say that Apple is finishing Hebrew support because Microsoft didn't do it themselves. Apple's been doing support for Hebrew and other non-Roman languages since the WorldScript days in '91 or so. It's just taking a little time to add it to OS X.
If Apple wanted Word to have Hebrew support, then they'd put it in their OS instead of whining that Microsoft doesn't go aout of its way to include it in office.
According to rumor, Hebrew support will be included in Jaguar, the next major version of OS X. Support for scripts other than basic left-to-right was pretty much absent from 10.0 and 10.1, making Hebrew or Arabic localization impossible. With Jaguar, we expect to get expanded support for right-to-left scripts and input methods, opening up Hebrew, Arabic, and Arabic-like languages.
If the Jewish users really wanted to use the software, they could simply pick up the German versions since Yiddish, the language spoken by most Jews (besides English), is the language which modern Hebrew is based upon.
No, no. Yiddish is related only tangentially to Hebrew. Yiddish is, as you point out, related to German, but not closely enough for a German speaker to understand Yiddish or vice-versa. In fact, Yiddish is just barely more closely related to High German than English is.
Yiddish first appeared around the 10th century in what is now southwestern Germany. At the time it was a dialect of German that included a large number of Hebrew words. Later, as the European Jews moved east, the language picked up some Slavic influences. In the 19th century, some English words and constructions began to enter the language as Jews from Europe and the Baltic immigrated to the US. Since World War II, of course, Yiddish has changed significantly, since there are so few Jews left in Germany, Poland, and what used to be Czechoslovakia.
Modern Yiddish is written from right to left in a modified Hebrew alphabet, making it utterly incomprehensible to people who speak only German. And, presumably, vice versa.
Modern Hebrew, the language spoken in Israel, is, again, only distantly related to Yiddish. Yiddish borrowed a good deal of vocabulary from Hebrew, but the pronounciation is influenced by Slavic languages, and the grammar is a mixture of High German and English. A Hebrew speaker might be able to pick out the occasional word of Yiddish, in writing, but almost certainly not in speech.
I'm afraid your suggestion was completely wrong.
(What I'm really curious about, though, is how many anti-Semitic trolls this post is going to inspire.)
Tolkien was in perfect agreement with the 1920s Hollywood mogul who said, "there are are only 5 stories in human history: we are just retelling those five in different forms".
Hollywood mogul? I thought it was Joseph Campbell, oft quoted. Specifically, I think he was quoted by Opie-- er, Ron Howard-- in the commentary track on the Apollo 13 DVD.
The only time I've been able to perfect match screen color to press color is when I'm working in black-and-white. Even then, the white is usually a little off.
I hope this will be an eye-opener for many users of commercial software. This is what may happen to any such software. The only guarantee is to do like the electronics industry does, and prefer stuff that has more than one provider. In software the only way to do this is to go with Open Source.
You know, for all the posts on Slashdot that point out the failures of the commercial software industry (most of them with the subject "Great for Linux"), the fact remains that there is no competitive open source software for these sorts of applications. There's no open source equivalent of Flame, or Shake, or Boujou, or Audio Logic. There's nothing out there that even comes close.
Tclosed-source software model may have flaws, but despite those flaws it has one thing going for it: software.
I'm curious to see if all these purchases are truly being made to improve Apple software, or just to limit Windows users access to such software.
I think the answer to this question is obviously "both." Like many others, I played with Shake running on dual-processor Power Macs at NAB. It was very fast and very stable, at least to the extent that I was able to exercise it.
Getting these applications running on Mac OS X is great for Apple. If you buy the argument that Macs have lower TCO than Windows machines (and I do) then it's great for the customers that use these applications, too.
And getting these apps off of Windows is definitely good for Apple. No question about that.
There are at least two examples of prior art in this case. In the 1960's... In the 1970's...
Cage's 4'33" was first performed in 1952. But that doesn't matter anyway, because "prior art" doesn't apply to copyright claims. If I own the copyright on something, can I choose to sue one person who violates it while ignoring or even condoning another. Copyright is inviolable until such time as it expires.
By the way, you obviously have no idea what 4'33" is all about. Crack a book sometime before dashing off on the subject.
When you stop believing that the system works, the system stops working. It's that simple. Corruption and graft are exceptions, not the rule.
I would also argue generally when it comes to any technology based bill the people here on slashdot probably have a better understanding of the issue than the majority of congress, and the majority of the population as a whole.
Oh, what arrogance. Just because you know what all the acronyms stand for doesn't mean you understand anything about the big picture, or about how that particular issue fits in with other aspects of the law or of society.
That's why judges and lawmakers shouldn't be experts. Experts are well informed about a specific subject, but are not known for having a good grasp of the big picture. Judges and lawmakers have to weigh all the factors and make the right decisions, and not get bogged down in the trivial details. A working knowledge of technology is not necessary for making good decisions about technology policy, and can, in fact, end up getting in the way.
I think you meant to say that "Representative democracy works best when people actually represent their constituents."
I meant exactly what I said. I subscribe to the belief that my elected representatives are not sent to Washington to do what I would do if I were there. Rather, I trust my elected representatives to make wise decisions in my name and with my authority.
This is an important distinction. I realize and accept that I may not always agree with my elected representatives on every issue, because I'm not always aware of all the facts, or of all the outside factors. I trust them to do what's right, in the broad sense, even if that means doing some specific things of which I may not approve.
If that trust is bruised or broken, I may vote for the other guy next time around. That's my prerogative as a voter. But I don't elect Joe Congersmann on the assumption that he's going to do what I want, all the time. That's pure democracy by proxy, not a republic.
More than five thousand years of gold as stable currency puts the odds into my favor.
I'd say seven hundred years of the pound sterling, or two hundred fifty years of the dollar, put the odds pretty much even. Paper currency is here to stay. Deal with it.
What about Apple's insistence on a one-button mouse?
I have two points.
First, a significant fraction of the population at large has problems with multiple-button mice. Young children, older people, and handicapped people all have trouble with manual dexterity. Even otherwise average people of middle age can have problems with multiple-button mice if they suffer from arthritis or other degenerative joint or muscle maladies.
So first, we have about 50% of the total population that would object to the required use of a multiple-button mouse.
Second, Apple's user interface supports but does not require a second (or third, or whatever) mouse button. While you can use multiple-button mice on a Mac-- and I do, on one of mine, with no special drivers or software-- it's not necessary in the slightest. The second (or third, or whatever) button is a user-configurable shortcut. For users that prefer them, multiple-button mice are available from third party vendors at very low prices.
The conclusion: Apple is right to design their computers around a one-button mouse, while building support for multiple-button mice into their software.
This is a basic principle that the designers of software like Gnome have thus far failed to implement in any comprehensive way: design first for everyone, and only then provide unobtrusive features for those who want or need them.
Who needs to be able to read 5.25" floppies when you can just move the files onto a CDR? At my office we did this years ago.
Yes, but I think the relevant question here is, "what if you hadn't?"
Active maintenance of a data archive is all well and good in theory, but in practice it only takes one foul-up for huge swaths of data to become unreadable. Let's say that something tragic happens, like a war or something. My family's carefully maintained data archive-- about five DVD-ROMs worth, let's say-- gets stuffed in a shoebox and hauled across an ocean. It spends the next twenty years in an attic. Because of any of a number of possible outside factors beyond our control, the archive stays untouched while DVD-ROMs fade and some new technology evolves to replace them, until one day we find that nobody's building DVD-ROM readers any more. Poof. The family data archive is effectively lost forever.
Over a long enough time span-- like a century-- the likelihood of that one foul-up happening converges to certainty.
Analog media, on the other hand, doesn't have to be actively maintained. A photo from 1902 is still useful to me today, even though it has deteriorated over the century.
It's a trade-off. A digital archive is either perfect, or it's dust. An analog archive, on the other hand, can be mostly or partially recoverable for a long time without any human involvement.
Now that doesn't mean JPGs on a CD are going to automagically last 100 years either...but it is not as hard to think that if you recopy them every 5 years or so they will last...and if you stick the source code of something that converts JPG to a bitmap, and some documentation on the current C language...and JPG...maybe in 100 years it can be reconstructed even:-)
The heck with that. All my photos get converted to RGBX, uuencoded, and printed out on acid-free paper. I store 'em in a special nitrogen-filled refrigerator in my basement.
In a hundred years, my descendants will be able to read the characters off the paper and key 'em into whatever computer happens to exist at that time.
I pay $.26 apiece for my 4"x6" prints from digital at Wal-mart Photo Center. The color is always just like it looks on screen as I edit in Photoshop.
I spent the first seven years after college working as a graphic artist in advertising. I probably worked in 1000 projects, give or take a few hundred.
As a result, whenever somebody says, "the color looks just like my screen," I can't help but laugh and laugh and laugh....
I would estimate that if every home user were to quit using Windows today, it would take 15 years before the corporate world (major customers of MIcrosoft) followed.
It always amuses me when people advocate using new-technology-thing-X, and act bewildered when other people don't rush to adopt it. Some people can be so short-sighted sometimes.
And which is why I prefer currency backed by something other than a politician's signature.
All currency is backed by one thing, and one thing only: opinion. Gold only has value because people agree that it does. If opinion shifts, then value disappears. This is as true for gold or diamonds as it is for dollars or pesos.
Maybe you need to do a little reading on the rejection of the gold standard.
UCITA gives it all that 100%-All-American Bought and Paid For Congressional Stamp of Approval. Some democracy we have, huh?
Complain all you want about UCITA or whatever other laws, but keep your stinking paws off of democracy.
The lawmakers at the state and national levels who have voted for those laws you disagree with were all rightfully elected. They're doing their jobs: making difficult decisions for us. If you don't like the way those decisions were made, then, first, get educated. If you don't know as much about the issue-- all sides of it-- as your Senator or Congressman, then you need to read more. If you know all about it and you're still unhappy, join the other guy's campaign. Even better, put your own name down and run for election yourself.
Your post came across as pretty darned arrogant. If you're so sure you know what's right and what's wrong, maybe you should stop complaining and do something constructive, instead of just criticizing the system. Representative democracy works best when people actually participate in it.
Re:And you wonder why people hate Linux Supporters
on
DishPVR 721 Review
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm sorry your post was moderated down. I agree completely with what you said. The GPL is a commercial-hostile license, and there are a significant number of GPL advocates who also happen to be anti-business advocates. This makes developing commercial products that are based on Linux or any other GPL'd software an absolute minefield.
My company is currently selecting the next platform for our software. (You've never heard of it, so don't bother trying to guess.) Some of my staff (I'm the CTO) are lobbying for a Linux port, mostly for business reasons but also to support Linux as an alternative to Windows on the Intel architectures.
I have vetoed that proposal summarily. My reason is mostly based on technology-- Linux doesn't have very good support for some advanced hardware that we depend on-- but the last nail in the coffin was politics. I don't want to even dip a toe in the GPL pool as long as there are vocal and influential people out there trying to make life hard for for-profit businesses.
We're porting from IRIX to Solaris. Linux is just more trouble than it's worth.
These days, I use Mac OS X. Sure, it's UI isn't perfect.
Speaking of which, the coolest thing about the whole OS X development process to date is the way things changed between the public beta and the first release, and so on heading into Jaguar.
Lots of stuff was different in the first public beta. There was no Apple menu. The Finder didn't support multiple windows. Other stuff that slips my mind at the moment.
Rather than releasing the public beta as a publicity stunt-- that is to say, solely as a publicity stunt-- Apple actually solicited, accepted, and acted on user feedback. The first release of OS X featured a dramatically different UI because of it.
Don't forget that OS X is still evolving rapidly. Lots of the stuff that people are bitching about-- including the inability to change font sizes in the Finder-- are already implemented in Jaguar.
If Apple had tried to implement every UI feature before shipping the first release... well, we'd still be waiting.
Slashdot Mirror
The first 5 seasons were good, Once More With Feeling was a hilarious and awesome episode, as Buffy goes, but the entire rest of the season was garbage.
I love it that our standards are so high. We call it "garbage" when it's still one of the very best shows on television. Season 6 sucked only in comparison to the previous 5. I'll stack the worst episode of season 6 up against the best episode of practically any other series any day.
Because microsoft didn't put in extra support for Hebrew, Apple has gotten up and fixed the problem.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. It's not correct to say that Apple is finishing Hebrew support because Microsoft didn't do it themselves. Apple's been doing support for Hebrew and other non-Roman languages since the WorldScript days in '91 or so. It's just taking a little time to add it to OS X.
If Apple wanted Word to have Hebrew support, then they'd put it in their OS instead of whining that Microsoft doesn't go aout of its way to include it in office.
According to rumor, Hebrew support will be included in Jaguar, the next major version of OS X. Support for scripts other than basic left-to-right was pretty much absent from 10.0 and 10.1, making Hebrew or Arabic localization impossible. With Jaguar, we expect to get expanded support for right-to-left scripts and input methods, opening up Hebrew, Arabic, and Arabic-like languages.
If the Jewish users really wanted to use the software, they could simply pick up the German versions since Yiddish, the language spoken by most Jews (besides English), is the language which modern Hebrew is based upon.
No, no. Yiddish is related only tangentially to Hebrew. Yiddish is, as you point out, related to German, but not closely enough for a German speaker to understand Yiddish or vice-versa. In fact, Yiddish is just barely more closely related to High German than English is.
Yiddish first appeared around the 10th century in what is now southwestern Germany. At the time it was a dialect of German that included a large number of Hebrew words. Later, as the European Jews moved east, the language picked up some Slavic influences. In the 19th century, some English words and constructions began to enter the language as Jews from Europe and the Baltic immigrated to the US. Since World War II, of course, Yiddish has changed significantly, since there are so few Jews left in Germany, Poland, and what used to be Czechoslovakia.
Modern Yiddish is written from right to left in a modified Hebrew alphabet, making it utterly incomprehensible to people who speak only German. And, presumably, vice versa.
Modern Hebrew, the language spoken in Israel, is, again, only distantly related to Yiddish. Yiddish borrowed a good deal of vocabulary from Hebrew, but the pronounciation is influenced by Slavic languages, and the grammar is a mixture of High German and English. A Hebrew speaker might be able to pick out the occasional word of Yiddish, in writing, but almost certainly not in speech.
I'm afraid your suggestion was completely wrong.
(What I'm really curious about, though, is how many anti-Semitic trolls this post is going to inspire.)
Tolkien was in perfect agreement with the 1920s Hollywood mogul who said, "there are are only 5 stories in human history: we are just retelling those five in different forms".
Hollywood mogul? I thought it was Joseph Campbell, oft quoted. Specifically, I think he was quoted by Opie-- er, Ron Howard-- in the commentary track on the Apollo 13 DVD.
Hey, somebody who understands my pain!
The only time I've been able to perfect match screen color to press color is when I'm working in black-and-white. Even then, the white is usually a little off.
I hope this will be an eye-opener for many users of commercial software. This is what may happen to any such software. The only guarantee is to do like the electronics industry does, and prefer stuff that has more than one provider. In software the only way to do this is to go with Open Source.
You know, for all the posts on Slashdot that point out the failures of the commercial software industry (most of them with the subject "Great for Linux"), the fact remains that there is no competitive open source software for these sorts of applications. There's no open source equivalent of Flame, or Shake, or Boujou, or Audio Logic. There's nothing out there that even comes close.
Tclosed-source software model may have flaws, but despite those flaws it has one thing going for it: software.
iMovie appeared as the super-easy, free-with-the-box, video editing application. Suddenly everyone thinks they're Stephen freakin' Spielberg.
To paraphrase Francis Ford Coppola, "Somewhere out there there's a six year old girl with a camcorder who's changing the future of film."
Coppola loves the G4 iMac with iMovie, by the way.
I'm curious to see if all these purchases are truly being made to improve Apple software, or just to limit Windows users access to such software.
I think the answer to this question is obviously "both." Like many others, I played with Shake running on dual-processor Power Macs at NAB. It was very fast and very stable, at least to the extent that I was able to exercise it.
Getting these applications running on Mac OS X is great for Apple. If you buy the argument that Macs have lower TCO than Windows machines (and I do) then it's great for the customers that use these applications, too.
And getting these apps off of Windows is definitely good for Apple. No question about that.
There are at least two examples of prior art in this case. In the 1960's... In the 1970's...
Cage's 4'33" was first performed in 1952. But that doesn't matter anyway, because "prior art" doesn't apply to copyright claims. If I own the copyright on something, can I choose to sue one person who violates it while ignoring or even condoning another. Copyright is inviolable until such time as it expires.
By the way, you obviously have no idea what 4'33" is all about. Crack a book sometime before dashing off on the subject.
When you stop believing that the system works, the system stops working. It's that simple. Corruption and graft are exceptions, not the rule.
I would also argue generally when it comes to any technology based bill the people here on slashdot probably have a better understanding of the issue than the majority of congress, and the majority of the population as a whole.
Oh, what arrogance. Just because you know what all the acronyms stand for doesn't mean you understand anything about the big picture, or about how that particular issue fits in with other aspects of the law or of society.
That's why judges and lawmakers shouldn't be experts. Experts are well informed about a specific subject, but are not known for having a good grasp of the big picture. Judges and lawmakers have to weigh all the factors and make the right decisions, and not get bogged down in the trivial details. A working knowledge of technology is not necessary for making good decisions about technology policy, and can, in fact, end up getting in the way.
I think you meant to say that "Representative democracy works best when people actually represent their constituents."
I meant exactly what I said. I subscribe to the belief that my elected representatives are not sent to Washington to do what I would do if I were there. Rather, I trust my elected representatives to make wise decisions in my name and with my authority.
This is an important distinction. I realize and accept that I may not always agree with my elected representatives on every issue, because I'm not always aware of all the facts, or of all the outside factors. I trust them to do what's right, in the broad sense, even if that means doing some specific things of which I may not approve.
If that trust is bruised or broken, I may vote for the other guy next time around. That's my prerogative as a voter. But I don't elect Joe Congersmann on the assumption that he's going to do what I want, all the time. That's pure democracy by proxy, not a republic.
More than five thousand years of gold as stable currency puts the odds into my favor.
I'd say seven hundred years of the pound sterling, or two hundred fifty years of the dollar, put the odds pretty much even. Paper currency is here to stay. Deal with it.
What about Apple's insistence on a one-button mouse?
I have two points.
First, a significant fraction of the population at large has problems with multiple-button mice. Young children, older people, and handicapped people all have trouble with manual dexterity. Even otherwise average people of middle age can have problems with multiple-button mice if they suffer from arthritis or other degenerative joint or muscle maladies.
So first, we have about 50% of the total population that would object to the required use of a multiple-button mouse.
Second, Apple's user interface supports but does not require a second (or third, or whatever) mouse button. While you can use multiple-button mice on a Mac-- and I do, on one of mine, with no special drivers or software-- it's not necessary in the slightest. The second (or third, or whatever) button is a user-configurable shortcut. For users that prefer them, multiple-button mice are available from third party vendors at very low prices.
The conclusion: Apple is right to design their computers around a one-button mouse, while building support for multiple-button mice into their software.
This is a basic principle that the designers of software like Gnome have thus far failed to implement in any comprehensive way: design first for everyone, and only then provide unobtrusive features for those who want or need them.
Who needs to be able to read 5.25" floppies when you can just move the files onto a CDR? At my office we did this years ago.
Yes, but I think the relevant question here is, "what if you hadn't?"
Active maintenance of a data archive is all well and good in theory, but in practice it only takes one foul-up for huge swaths of data to become unreadable. Let's say that something tragic happens, like a war or something. My family's carefully maintained data archive-- about five DVD-ROMs worth, let's say-- gets stuffed in a shoebox and hauled across an ocean. It spends the next twenty years in an attic. Because of any of a number of possible outside factors beyond our control, the archive stays untouched while DVD-ROMs fade and some new technology evolves to replace them, until one day we find that nobody's building DVD-ROM readers any more. Poof. The family data archive is effectively lost forever.
Over a long enough time span-- like a century-- the likelihood of that one foul-up happening converges to certainty.
Analog media, on the other hand, doesn't have to be actively maintained. A photo from 1902 is still useful to me today, even though it has deteriorated over the century.
It's a trade-off. A digital archive is either perfect, or it's dust. An analog archive, on the other hand, can be mostly or partially recoverable for a long time without any human involvement.
Now that doesn't mean JPGs on a CD are going to automagically last 100 years either...but it is not as hard to think that if you recopy them every 5 years or so they will last...and if you stick the source code of something that converts JPG to a bitmap, and some documentation on the current C language...and JPG...maybe in 100 years it can be reconstructed even :-)
The heck with that. All my photos get converted to RGBX, uuencoded, and printed out on acid-free paper. I store 'em in a special nitrogen-filled refrigerator in my basement.
In a hundred years, my descendants will be able to read the characters off the paper and key 'em into whatever computer happens to exist at that time.
I pay $.26 apiece for my 4"x6" prints from digital at Wal-mart Photo Center. The color is always just like it looks on screen as I edit in Photoshop.
I spent the first seven years after college working as a graphic artist in advertising. I probably worked in 1000 projects, give or take a few hundred.
As a result, whenever somebody says, "the color looks just like my screen," I can't help but laugh and laugh and laugh....
I would estimate that if every home user were to quit using Windows today, it would take 15 years before the corporate world (major customers of MIcrosoft) followed.
I think that's already happening.
What does TIFF do that PNG doesn't?
Works in existing and legacy software packages.
It always amuses me when people advocate using new-technology-thing-X, and act bewildered when other people don't rush to adopt it. Some people can be so short-sighted sometimes.
And which is why I prefer currency backed by something other than a politician's signature.
All currency is backed by one thing, and one thing only: opinion. Gold only has value because people agree that it does. If opinion shifts, then value disappears. This is as true for gold or diamonds as it is for dollars or pesos.
Maybe you need to do a little reading on the rejection of the gold standard.
UCITA gives it all that 100%-All-American Bought and Paid For Congressional Stamp of Approval. Some democracy we have, huh?
Complain all you want about UCITA or whatever other laws, but keep your stinking paws off of democracy.
The lawmakers at the state and national levels who have voted for those laws you disagree with were all rightfully elected. They're doing their jobs: making difficult decisions for us. If you don't like the way those decisions were made, then, first, get educated. If you don't know as much about the issue-- all sides of it-- as your Senator or Congressman, then you need to read more. If you know all about it and you're still unhappy, join the other guy's campaign. Even better, put your own name down and run for election yourself.
Your post came across as pretty darned arrogant. If you're so sure you know what's right and what's wrong, maybe you should stop complaining and do something constructive, instead of just criticizing the system. Representative democracy works best when people actually participate in it.
I'm sorry your post was moderated down. I agree completely with what you said. The GPL is a commercial-hostile license, and there are a significant number of GPL advocates who also happen to be anti-business advocates. This makes developing commercial products that are based on Linux or any other GPL'd software an absolute minefield.
My company is currently selecting the next platform for our software. (You've never heard of it, so don't bother trying to guess.) Some of my staff (I'm the CTO) are lobbying for a Linux port, mostly for business reasons but also to support Linux as an alternative to Windows on the Intel architectures.
I have vetoed that proposal summarily. My reason is mostly based on technology-- Linux doesn't have very good support for some advanced hardware that we depend on-- but the last nail in the coffin was politics. I don't want to even dip a toe in the GPL pool as long as there are vocal and influential people out there trying to make life hard for for-profit businesses.
We're porting from IRIX to Solaris. Linux is just more trouble than it's worth.
I understand some people have trouble with the lookupd for OS X dropping out on them from time to time [though I haven't seen this myself yet.]
And you probably won't. I think that problem was fixed around 10.1. It was a pain while it lasted, though.
These days, I use Mac OS X. Sure, it's UI isn't perfect.
Speaking of which, the coolest thing about the whole OS X development process to date is the way things changed between the public beta and the first release, and so on heading into Jaguar.
Lots of stuff was different in the first public beta. There was no Apple menu. The Finder didn't support multiple windows. Other stuff that slips my mind at the moment.
Rather than releasing the public beta as a publicity stunt-- that is to say, solely as a publicity stunt-- Apple actually solicited, accepted, and acted on user feedback. The first release of OS X featured a dramatically different UI because of it.
I just think that's cool.
It sucks that font size is fixed.
Don't forget that OS X is still evolving rapidly. Lots of the stuff that people are bitching about-- including the inability to change font sizes in the Finder-- are already implemented in Jaguar.
If Apple had tried to implement every UI feature before shipping the first release... well, we'd still be waiting.