First of all, I don't think 148+ IQ people are nearly as common as you make them sound. You're not going by those horribly inaccurate on-line IQ tests that inflate your score to try to get you to pay for something, are you? I've scored as high as 159 on an on-line IQ test, and I'm smart enough to know that I'm not nearly that smart.;)
Secondly, people with IQs below 70 (two standard deviations below the mean, and the cut-off point for being considered "mentally retarded") are far more common than you make it sound. Just because they are kept out of your schools and hidden away doesn't mean that they aren't there. (At least it's not as bad now as it was when they were systematically institutionalized.)
And, while IQ scores may not form a _perfect_ bell curve, they are pretty close to it. 100 is roughly the median as well as the mean.
Now, what the original poster could have said, that I would completely agree with, is that the average intelligence is unfortunately lower than it should/could be.
Frankly, I'm a little surprised that some of the "but it only runs on Windows" complaints aren't addressed with either a dual-boot machine or a cheapy 500mhz machine running Windows. I'm sorry the Linux users out there can't do everything they wantbecause of an inconsiderate decision by a company providing a service, but life's like that all over the place.
First of all, those of us who have been using Linux for a while generally don't like booting into Windows, and we certainly don't want to monetarily support a company that forces us to do it in order to use their product.
Secondly, I think you misunderstand the attitude behind the "but it only runs on Windows" (and only IE, and only in the US..) posts. Nobody's crying and getting upset about it. Instead, everyone seems to be saying "Oh well, I'm going back to bittorrent."
That argument is ridiculous. Even in direct elections the guy from Peoria still has a vote with the same value as the guy from New York.
Furthermore, even though New York has more people than Peoria, and will thus be pandered to more, there are still a lot more Peorias than there are New Yorks. Politicians would still have to address issues important to people in small towns and rural areas, even if they didn't spend much time in any one single small town.
I find it interesting that Badnarik finds popular vote more disenfranchising than our current system, where a State could have, for example, something like a 45%/43%/12% split (where the 12% represents all third party candidates put together), and thus 55% of the voters from that State are completely ignored.
And that's not to mention how disenfranchised voters already are in States with few electoral votes; and the urban vs. rural problem Badnarik describes already happens just as easily (if not more easily) on a State level than it would on a national level.
If you want to see the last really successful 3rd party I think it was Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive/Bull Moose party. Interestingly enough it sprung out of an era where the very wealthy and corporate monopolies were massively abusing the majority of Americans and the tax system was taxing working people in to the ground while and encouraging wealth concentration in the hands of the lucky few, a situation very similar to the one we have today.
Of course, nowadays, each party has its supporters convinced that if only they could get that pesky _other_ party out of the way, they could fix everything and we'd all be happy.
As long as both parties continue to exist (which it seems they will for the forseeable future), they can keep scapegoating each other for all of our problems, and they can keep reconvincing people to vote for them (instead of "throwing away" their votes on a third party) in a vain attempt to finally beat the evil other party and set things right.
Those of us who know they're both full of crap and not much different from each other are far too small of a minority to stop it (not to mention the fact that we're divided on many issues ourselves). Nope, I don't think the near future looks bright for third parties in the U.S.
Here's another "me too" response. I grabbed a pair of Gravis Gamepad Pros off of E-bay to play emulated SNES games, and I found that the "can't go straight without hitting a diagonal" problem made most of the games I wanted to play virtually unplayable. It's annoying to play Streetfighter 2 and find yourself JUMPING when you just wanted to walk straight forward, or to be running in a Mario game and find yourself randomly ducking down.
So I got a standard PS2 controller and an adapter, which works wonderfully.
The idea of trying to stick Trey and Matt into some political category is ridiculous. They make fun of everything and clearly show that they don't find anything beyond reproach.
Yes, I know they make fun of everybody--geez, I started my original post by saying that. Matt and Trey are cool enough that they can make fun of all sides of an issue, but that doesn't mean they don't have their own views.
As for sticking them into political categories--the only category I would stick them into is the category that at least one of them has already admitted to: http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0105/parker.html
South Park does a great job of making fun of everybody--which is good, because every side of our political system deserves to be made fun of relentlessly.
However, if you pay close attention, despite South Park episodes happily making fun of both sides of an issue, they often end up agreeing with the more conservative side (think Libertarian-conservative, not necessarily Republican-conservative).
Take the Cripple Fight episode (the one where Big Gay Al gets kicked out of Boy Scouts for being gay). While the episode relentlessly makes fun of those who would keep gay people out of Boy Scouts, in the end, Big Gay Al himself proclaims that as a private organization, Boy Scouts has a right to not hire him because of his sexual orientation.
And then there's the Underpants Gnomes episode (with the Starbucks knockoff) you mention, which ends up giving us the message that big businesses are successful because of smart business practices and because they serve consumers better than little businesses, and it's thus okay when they trample little businesses that can't compete.
I got the impression that by "overpriced" he really meant "more money than I can reasonably afford." It's not like he was making some thorough criticism of the iPod's cost/value ratio in comparison to other mp3 players or something.
Personally, I don't care about the "style" of the graphics--what bothered me was just Link looking like a little kid.
I know Link has always been conceptualized in the games as young, but on NES & SNES the graphics were non-detailed enough for it to not be irritating. I hadn't played any Zelda games in a while, partly because I liked the top-down (Zelda) and side-scrolling (Mario) games better than the everything-must-be-3D-now style of the current platformers.
But I walked into an EB Games one day with money to spare and the full intention of buying Windwalker. I took one look at the graphics on the back of the box, gagged in disgust, and bought something else. My girlfriend, who was with me at the time, had the same reaction. I don't want my game character to so clearly look like a 5 year-old! I realize games require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, but the feel of the game is ruined for me if the graphics make me imagine that my badass sword-and-bow wielding, monster-impaling, princess-saving superhero is barely out of his diapers.
I think broadening the appeal of their games will be a good move for Nintendo. I suspect there are other adults (hell, even teenagers... I would have put Windwalker down for the same reason even when I was 14) who refused to buy Windwalker for the same reason. On the other hand, I've never seen kids turn down a game because of the character being depicted as an adult.
Re:LSD vs. Lucid Dreaming
on
Lysergically Yours
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
My experience is somewhat similar to yours. I've had many lucid dreams (though none recently... maybe _I_ should whip out the dream journal soon), and I've also had what I believe were real out-of-body experiences. I've had some other spiritual experiences that went along with all that.
I suspect that LSD does put your mind basically in a waking dream state. I suspect that, on a chemical level, it flips whatever switch that normally keeps your dream hallucinations off while you're awake. I haven't tried LSD, though, so I can't compare the actual experience to lucid dreaming.
Like you, I feel like taking drugs for that kind of experience is cheating. (No offense to anyone who feels differently--that's a decision I make for myself and I don't judge others who decide differently.) Of course, I also very rarely drink caffeine (I figure something is seriously wrong with me if I have to _depend_ on a stimulant to function normally), likewise I don't drink alcohol and certainly wouldn't do it just to make socializing easier (if I'm being overly shy, then maybe that's something I need to work on instead of covering it up with chemicals), and when I need to drop a few pounds, I do it through eating healthy and exercising rather than popping stimulant-laced diet pills. Achieving goals through intelligent, persistant effort gives me a sense of accomplishment that would be seriously lacking if I had the goal handed to me by a drug.
So, while I can't compare the actual experience of tripping on LSD with lucid dreaming (I suspect the primary difference is the "you're trapped in the altered state for a while" quality another responder mentioned), I _can_ compare the lasting effects on my personality and happiness that I've gained from my non-drug-induced altered states of consciousness, with what others have said here about what they've gained from having used LSD.
And I find those lasting effects to be quite similar. People are talking about having gained new insights into themselves and the world, and overcoming significant personality flaws as a result of LSD experiences. I feel like I have had the same benefit from meditation (and other spiritual experiences) and a strong desire to improve myself and overcome my flaws. I went from very shy, anxious, unmotivated, and depressive to being very confident, motivated, and happy, in a relatively short period of time. My outlook on life and my place in it changed rather drastically. Most of that change happened in a relatively short period of time (a few months, perhaps).
That sounds all well and good, and is what we all want, but this--
Let me use that song in any way I see fit (as long as I'm not trading it around like a joint at a frat party)
--is where the conflict lies. How do they give us the songs in a way that lets us do whatever we want with them, without people making copies for everyone? If there are no restrictions, the copying will continue. Any technological restrictions on copying will inevitably also restrict legitimate uses too.
If the point is to teach children proper behavior, then why not talk to them for ten minutes rather than do ten minutes of time-out?
You are right to suggest to that it is absolutely vital for parents to explain to the child why a punishment is occuring, and to both explain and model preferred behaviors, but you, like most others in this thread, are misunderstanding the purpose that time-outs can serve for certain children at appropriate times.
The problem is that for a lot of children, bad behaviors are a way of getting attention. A kid acts up in class, and suddenly the attention is on him. It is reinforcing because, for him, negative attention is better than no attention.. This is a ridiculously common scenario.
To solve this problem, two things need to happen. Most importantly, the child needs to receive positive attention when he's not misbehaving, so that behaving appropriately will be reinforced. This is harder than it sounds because it doesn't come naturally to most people, but it's important to do; the fact that reinforcing good behaviors is more effective than punishing bad behaviors is something many people in this thread are forgetting (and unfortunately most parents don't bother keeping that in mind either). Anyway, the other thing that needs to happen is that the punishment needs to be something that will actually be a deterrent for the child. Yes, the parents should have a talk with the child about what is and isn't okay, and why, but you can't have this talk 20 times a day--aside from being exasperating, it reinforces the bad behavior.
That's where time-outs are appropriate. It's a way of taking away the attention and stimulation that the child is seeking. It's not much of a punishment for the typical Slashdot introvert, but it is for the hyperactive, attention-seeking types.
There are way more heterosexual pedophiles. The only reason some people think there are more homosexual than heterosexual pedophiles is because the moral majority has decided in the past to persecute homosexual pedophiles more stringently.
There's also the issue of how the people are categorized in the first place. There are large groups of men out there who consider themselves "boy lovers". Most people would automatically categorize them as gay without giving it much thought, but many (maybe most) "boy lovers" are not attracted to adults of either sex--only to boys. It is therefore rather misleading that they often get classified as gay.
Assuming your mouse is optical, maybe there's something about your table surface that's messing with it?
I have a Logitech optical mouse (not wireless), which always worked perfectly fine for me. Then I went home (from college, where I was living on campus) for a summer and suddenly found that at seemingly random intervals, my mouse pointer would make sudden erratic movements. I figured that it was just something that happened to optical mice when they get old.
Then I went back to school and the problem went away. After a couple more breaks spent at home, I realized that the problem was my computer desk at home--it only has that problem on that desk. At school, and now in my new apartment (with a new desk), the mouse has never had any problems.
I suspect your post was moderated as a troll because the complaint you made already gets made several times in every vaguely KDE-related thread. It's getting old.
The continued, annoying repetition makes the "I'm sick of all the K's!" posts feel like trolls even when they aren't meant that way.
Re:Frankly this is butt ugly
on
Aethera 1.0
·
· Score: 1
You FUDding troll! Linux E-mail programs are not all ugly--I use mutt and it looks beautiful!
Yeah, I found it kind of strange that theKompany's web site doesn't make Aethera's license entirely clear. On the other hand, when you click on a download link and get sent to Sourceforge without having to buy it, it becomes pretty obvious that it's at least free-as-in-beer.
And if you download and untar the source code (as I did, because I was curious about this as well), you'll see from the COPYING and COPYING.GPL files that it's apparently licensed under the GPL.
Yay.
Re:Adds to the confusion
on
Aethera 1.0
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Well, to be fair to Aethera, it has been in development for a long time--it didn't just pop up out of nowhere. If I recall correctly, it began as a KDE-based Outlook-clone called Magellan. I think development of Magellan started back around the time development of Evolution started, if not earlier. Aethera was theKompany's fork of Magellan (I don't know for sure, but I think they forked it because they had an interest in Magellan and were sick of it being developed at a snail's pace). Of course, work on Aethera didn't seem to happen much faster... do a search for "Aethera" on Slashdot and you'll see "Aethera Beta 1 Released" back in January... 2001. Maybe changing from KDE to just QT slowed them down a bit.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, I don't think 148+ IQ people are nearly as common as you make them sound. You're not going by those horribly inaccurate on-line IQ tests that inflate your score to try to get you to pay for something, are you? I've scored as high as 159 on an on-line IQ test, and I'm smart enough to know that I'm not nearly that smart. ;)
Secondly, people with IQs below 70 (two standard deviations below the mean, and the cut-off point for being considered "mentally retarded") are far more common than you make it sound. Just because they are kept out of your schools and hidden away doesn't mean that they aren't there. (At least it's not as bad now as it was when they were systematically institutionalized.)
And, while IQ scores may not form a _perfect_ bell curve, they are pretty close to it. 100 is roughly the median as well as the mean.
Now, what the original poster could have said, that I would completely agree with, is that the average intelligence is unfortunately lower than it should/could be.
Yeah, it's been around for years and nothing happened to it. Maybe that was his point.
Frankly, I'm a little surprised that some of the "but it only runs on Windows" complaints aren't addressed with either a dual-boot machine or a cheapy 500mhz machine running Windows. I'm sorry the Linux users out there can't do everything they wantbecause of an inconsiderate decision by a company providing a service, but life's like that all over the place.
First of all, those of us who have been using Linux for a while generally don't like booting into Windows, and we certainly don't want to monetarily support a company that forces us to do it in order to use their product.
Secondly, I think you misunderstand the attitude behind the "but it only runs on Windows" (and only IE, and only in the US..) posts. Nobody's crying and getting upset about it. Instead, everyone seems to be saying "Oh well, I'm going back to bittorrent."
That argument is ridiculous. Even in direct elections the guy from Peoria still has a vote with the same value as the guy from New York.
Furthermore, even though New York has more people than Peoria, and will thus be pandered to more, there are still a lot more Peorias than there are New Yorks. Politicians would still have to address issues important to people in small towns and rural areas, even if they didn't spend much time in any one single small town.
I find it interesting that Badnarik finds popular vote more disenfranchising than our current system, where a State could have, for example, something like a 45%/43%/12% split (where the 12% represents all third party candidates put together), and thus 55% of the voters from that State are completely ignored.
And that's not to mention how disenfranchised voters already are in States with few electoral votes; and the urban vs. rural problem Badnarik describes already happens just as easily (if not more easily) on a State level than it would on a national level.
If you want to see the last really successful 3rd party I think it was Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive/Bull Moose party. Interestingly enough it sprung out of an era where the very wealthy and corporate monopolies were massively abusing the majority of Americans and the tax system was taxing working people in to the ground while and encouraging wealth concentration in the hands of the lucky few, a situation very similar to the one we have today.
Of course, nowadays, each party has its supporters convinced that if only they could get that pesky _other_ party out of the way, they could fix everything and we'd all be happy.
As long as both parties continue to exist (which it seems they will for the forseeable future), they can keep scapegoating each other for all of our problems, and they can keep reconvincing people to vote for them (instead of "throwing away" their votes on a third party) in a vain attempt to finally beat the evil other party and set things right.
Those of us who know they're both full of crap and not much different from each other are far too small of a minority to stop it (not to mention the fact that we're divided on many issues ourselves). Nope, I don't think the near future looks bright for third parties in the U.S.
Here's another "me too" response. I grabbed a pair of Gravis Gamepad Pros off of E-bay to play emulated SNES games, and I found that the "can't go straight without hitting a diagonal" problem made most of the games I wanted to play virtually unplayable. It's annoying to play Streetfighter 2 and find yourself JUMPING when you just wanted to walk straight forward, or to be running in a Mario game and find yourself randomly ducking down.
So I got a standard PS2 controller and an adapter, which works wonderfully.
The idea of trying to stick Trey and Matt into some political category is ridiculous. They make fun of everything and clearly show that they don't find anything beyond reproach.
Yes, I know they make fun of everybody--geez, I started my original post by saying that. Matt and Trey are cool enough that they can make fun of all sides of an issue, but that doesn't mean they don't have their own views.
As for sticking them into political categories--the only category I would stick them into is the category that at least one of them has already admitted to: http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0105/parker.html
South Park does a great job of making fun of everybody--which is good, because every side of our political system deserves to be made fun of relentlessly.
However, if you pay close attention, despite South Park episodes happily making fun of both sides of an issue, they often end up agreeing with the more conservative side (think Libertarian-conservative, not necessarily Republican-conservative).
Take the Cripple Fight episode (the one where Big Gay Al gets kicked out of Boy Scouts for being gay). While the episode relentlessly makes fun of those who would keep gay people out of Boy Scouts, in the end, Big Gay Al himself proclaims that as a private organization, Boy Scouts has a right to not hire him because of his sexual orientation.
And then there's the Underpants Gnomes episode (with the Starbucks knockoff) you mention, which ends up giving us the message that big businesses are successful because of smart business practices and because they serve consumers better than little businesses, and it's thus okay when they trample little businesses that can't compete.
I got the impression that by "overpriced" he really meant "more money than I can reasonably afford." It's not like he was making some thorough criticism of the iPod's cost/value ratio in comparison to other mp3 players or something.
Personally, I don't care about the "style" of the graphics--what bothered me was just Link looking like a little kid.
I know Link has always been conceptualized in the games as young, but on NES & SNES the graphics were non-detailed enough for it to not be irritating. I hadn't played any Zelda games in a while, partly because I liked the top-down (Zelda) and side-scrolling (Mario) games better than the everything-must-be-3D-now style of the current platformers.
But I walked into an EB Games one day with money to spare and the full intention of buying Windwalker. I took one look at the graphics on the back of the box, gagged in disgust, and bought something else. My girlfriend, who was with me at the time, had the same reaction. I don't want my game character to so clearly look like a 5 year-old! I realize games require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, but the feel of the game is ruined for me if the graphics make me imagine that my badass sword-and-bow wielding, monster-impaling, princess-saving superhero is barely out of his diapers.
I think broadening the appeal of their games will be a good move for Nintendo. I suspect there are other adults (hell, even teenagers... I would have put Windwalker down for the same reason even when I was 14) who refused to buy Windwalker for the same reason. On the other hand, I've never seen kids turn down a game because of the character being depicted as an adult.
My experience is somewhat similar to yours. I've had many lucid dreams (though none recently... maybe _I_ should whip out the dream journal soon), and I've also had what I believe were real out-of-body experiences. I've had some other spiritual experiences that went along with all that.
I suspect that LSD does put your mind basically in a waking dream state. I suspect that, on a chemical level, it flips whatever switch that normally keeps your dream hallucinations off while you're awake. I haven't tried LSD, though, so I can't compare the actual experience to lucid dreaming.
Like you, I feel like taking drugs for that kind of experience is cheating. (No offense to anyone who feels differently--that's a decision I make for myself and I don't judge others who decide differently.) Of course, I also very rarely drink caffeine (I figure something is seriously wrong with me if I have to _depend_ on a stimulant to function normally), likewise I don't drink alcohol and certainly wouldn't do it just to make socializing easier (if I'm being overly shy, then maybe that's something I need to work on instead of covering it up with chemicals), and when I need to drop a few pounds, I do it through eating healthy and exercising rather than popping stimulant-laced diet pills. Achieving goals through intelligent, persistant effort gives me a sense of accomplishment that would be seriously lacking if I had the goal handed to me by a drug.
So, while I can't compare the actual experience of tripping on LSD with lucid dreaming (I suspect the primary difference is the "you're trapped in the altered state for a while" quality another responder mentioned), I _can_ compare the lasting effects on my personality and happiness that I've gained from my non-drug-induced altered states of consciousness, with what others have said here about what they've gained from having used LSD.
And I find those lasting effects to be quite similar. People are talking about having gained new insights into themselves and the world, and overcoming significant personality flaws as a result of LSD experiences. I feel like I have had the same benefit from meditation (and other spiritual experiences) and a strong desire to improve myself and overcome my flaws. I went from very shy, anxious, unmotivated, and depressive to being very confident, motivated, and happy, in a relatively short period of time. My outlook on life and my place in it changed rather drastically. Most of that change happened in a relatively short period of time (a few months, perhaps).
Because:
A. iTunes (like most things) doesn't work in Wine.
and
B. I have little desire to patronize a company that doesn't think I'm worth selling to in the first place.
Maybe I *COULD* give it a try if Apple ever bothers to release a Linux client (same goes for Napster).
That sounds all well and good, and is what we all want, but this--
Let me use that song in any way I see fit (as long as I'm not trading it around like a joint at a frat party)
--is where the conflict lies. How do they give us the songs in a way that lets us do whatever we want with them, without people making copies for everyone? If there are no restrictions, the copying will continue. Any technological restrictions on copying will inevitably also restrict legitimate uses too.
If the point is to teach children proper behavior, then why not talk to them for ten minutes rather than do ten minutes of time-out?
You are right to suggest to that it is absolutely vital for parents to explain to the child why a punishment is occuring, and to both explain and model preferred behaviors, but you, like most others in this thread, are misunderstanding the purpose that time-outs can serve for certain children at appropriate times.
The problem is that for a lot of children, bad behaviors are a way of getting attention. A kid acts up in class, and suddenly the attention is on him. It is reinforcing because, for him, negative attention is better than no attention.. This is a ridiculously common scenario.
To solve this problem, two things need to happen. Most importantly, the child needs to receive positive attention when he's not misbehaving, so that behaving appropriately will be reinforced. This is harder than it sounds because it doesn't come naturally to most people, but it's important to do; the fact that reinforcing good behaviors is more effective than punishing bad behaviors is something many people in this thread are forgetting (and unfortunately most parents don't bother keeping that in mind either). Anyway, the other thing that needs to happen is that the punishment needs to be something that will actually be a deterrent for the child. Yes, the parents should have a talk with the child about what is and isn't okay, and why, but you can't have this talk 20 times a day--aside from being exasperating, it reinforces the bad behavior.
That's where time-outs are appropriate. It's a way of taking away the attention and stimulation that the child is seeking. It's not much of a punishment for the typical Slashdot introvert, but it is for the hyperactive, attention-seeking types.
There are way more heterosexual pedophiles. The only reason some people think there are more homosexual than heterosexual pedophiles is because the moral majority has decided in the past to persecute homosexual pedophiles more stringently.
There's also the issue of how the people are categorized in the first place. There are large groups of men out there who consider themselves "boy lovers". Most people would automatically categorize them as gay without giving it much thought, but many (maybe most) "boy lovers" are not attracted to adults of either sex--only to boys. It is therefore rather misleading that they often get classified as gay.
But not for corperations. People are free to not buy you products.
Can you explain, then, why some of the most hated corporations in America (Microsoft, record companies, etc.) are also the richest?
Re:Evesham did this ages ago... (Score:5, Informative)
:O
Bugger! - so all my kick ass funny posts which get 80% Funny 20% Overrated are actually BURNING Karma
If only I had something informative to say!
Wow, that worked just as well as starting a post with "I'm going to get modded down for this, but..."
If I were one of them and received a judgement for $50k, I'd be quite tempted to move to Cancun and just forget about it. :)
Yeah, I'm sure moving to Cancun is exactly what you would do if you were one of those broke college or high school students.
Assuming your mouse is optical, maybe there's something about your table surface that's messing with it?
I have a Logitech optical mouse (not wireless), which always worked perfectly fine for me. Then I went home (from college, where I was living on campus) for a summer and suddenly found that at seemingly random intervals, my mouse pointer would make sudden erratic movements. I figured that it was just something that happened to optical mice when they get old.
Then I went back to school and the problem went away. After a couple more breaks spent at home, I realized that the problem was my computer desk at home--it only has that problem on that desk. At school, and now in my new apartment (with a new desk), the mouse has never had any problems.
See the KDE Women page for more psychological manipulation.
I suspect your post was moderated as a troll because the complaint you made already gets made several times in every vaguely KDE-related thread. It's getting old.
The continued, annoying repetition makes the "I'm sick of all the K's!" posts feel like trolls even when they aren't meant that way.
You FUDding troll! Linux E-mail programs are not all ugly--I use mutt and it looks beautiful!
Yeah, I found it kind of strange that theKompany's web site doesn't make Aethera's license entirely clear. On the other hand, when you click on a download link and get sent to Sourceforge without having to buy it, it becomes pretty obvious that it's at least free-as-in-beer.
And if you download and untar the source code (as I did, because I was curious about this as well), you'll see from the COPYING and COPYING.GPL files that it's apparently licensed under the GPL.
Yay.
Well, to be fair to Aethera, it has been in development for a long time--it didn't just pop up out of nowhere. If I recall correctly, it began as a KDE-based Outlook-clone called Magellan. I think development of Magellan started back around the time development of Evolution started, if not earlier. Aethera was theKompany's fork of Magellan (I don't know for sure, but I think they forked it because they had an interest in Magellan and were sick of it being developed at a snail's pace). Of course, work on Aethera didn't seem to happen much faster... do a search for "Aethera" on Slashdot and you'll see "Aethera Beta 1 Released" back in January... 2001. Maybe changing from KDE to just QT slowed them down a bit.