The problem is that the person wrote "but so far all the terrorists have been Muslim" and they quite clearly did not intend that condemnation to apply to every terrorist act in the recorded history of civilization. It was quite obvious what the poster intended despite the lazy rhetorical action.
What he wrote was similar to saying "all criminals are black", and then later explaining that you meant the criminals who attacked the pet shop in Harlem last night.
When you're using such loaded statements, like "so far, ALL the terrorists have been Muslim", then you are encouraging bigotry and ethnic hatred and there is a good reason why you should be careful with your words.
I personally think that "the person" said exactly what he/she wanted to say.
Was it because you've an arab-sounding name? Or because you travel a lot, including eastern europe, and you're young enough that it's unlikely you're a CEO who needs to travel a lot?
It was almost certainly a combination of all those. In any case, it wasn't random.
The vast majority of all terrorist acts (over 80%) are domestic in nature. This is another thing you don't learn if your only source of information is Ann Coulter on FOX, like the poster I was replying to.
Those who spout statements like "all terrorists are Muslim" deserve to get ridiculed by everyone with an elementary school education.
Ahh, but so far all the terrorists have been Muslim.
ETA. IRA. Ulster Unionists. Tamil Tigers. Aum Shinrikyo. RAF. Clinic bombers. Unabomber. Hate groups like Nazis attacking immigrants in some parts of Europe. KKK. FARC. Jewish Defense League.
That's just off the top of my head.
I think that you have a reality distortion field. It's common among racist idiots.
I flew over to the US from Europe a few weeks ago. Six flights overall, three to California and three back.
I got "randomly" selected three times out of these six flights. In addition to this, my (checked-in) bag was "accidentally" delayed before being loaded onto the plane, and the flight attendant had to come and ensure that I was onboard before the "delayed" bag was brought onboard, just before landing (which was delayed due to my bag).
I'm mid-20s, with an Arab-sounding name, not married, travel a lot (including Eastern Europe), didn't carry a lot of baggage (I was only visiting for a couple of days).
Every time they told me they "randomly" selected me for inspection, I smiled and let them do their thing.
"Random" selection is profiling under a PC name. Of course they profile people. And of course they won't tell you that they do. Before travelling to the US, I was thinking about how suspicious I may appear and how many times they would search me, dig through my luggage and ask me questions. Surprise, surprise, they did it. Three times.
But obviously he could learn more from human visual cortex. So why not experiment on humans?
Honest question.
If there is no torture, why not use human volunteers?
I'm sure we could find hundreds here on Slashdot who would do it for free, right?
At least humans can sign a contract and know what they are getting into. A primate is simply maimed and used as an object.
Now, I don't approve of violence (like the one done by some activist groups), but if this testing is such an enjoyable walk in the park like some posters claim, why don't we do them on human volunteers? Why do we rely on this "our species is superior, so others have to suffer" logic?
Perhaps they weren't trying to firebomb the house, but send a warning. At least that was the impression I got.
Perhaps they should have kidnapped the family, drugged them, and stuck electrodes in their brains against their will.
Then they would have the support of Slashdot, heh.
I'll be modded down by groupthink zombies, but it's really sad that this terrorism craze has made it acceptable to TORTURE animals. I don't approve of assault on scientists, but I don't approve of animal testing either.
People with depression don't have a full spectrum of emotions. Someone mod this ignorant fucker down.
Actually, you are completely right. People "with depression" can NEVER feel anything else, ever.
I've lived with a clinically depressed person, who cut herself regularly, and now that I think about it, she was depressed all the time. She was never ever ever happy, or scared, or ever had any other emotion other than depression. She woke up, and was immediately depressed. You gave her a rose, and she was depressed. When she was laughing, I could have sworn that she was happy, at least for a little while, but now I know that I was wrong.
You must be a psychologist. The way you made your point without any discussion, any evidence, explanation, but with the gratuitous use of the word "fucker" is truly impressive and showcases great intelligence.
The fact that Serbs and Croats speak very similar languages does not make them one and the same. Otherwise, Ukranians and Russians would also be the same. What a stupid argument.
Although I know far more about both Serbian and Croatian than you do, I have absolutely no problems with claiming they are the same language. I have absolutely no problem saying that Tesla is a Serb, or that the best Croatian football player in the last few years is a Serb, or that the most popular young footballer in the team is half Muslim, or that even the Croatian national anthem was composed by a Serb.
The reason for this is that I honestly don't give a fuck one way or another, as I despise nationalists. Tesla said he was a Serb. He also said that Croatia was his homeland. That's good enough for me, and you can keep your chauvinist bigotry for yourself, since you obviously don't know anything about the topic and are just trolling.
Tesla was clearly a Serb. A Serb from Croatia. Just like a Turk from Germany is not from Turkey.
I'll give you an example: Fatih Yakin is a famous German Turk film director. Germans AND Turks are both proud of his movies.
As a greek i can assure you that "nationality" is the latin translation of the greek oriented word "ethnicity" (ethnos = nation).
This is irrelevant, since both ethnicity and nation are very well defined terms in other languages, including English, which we are using for discussion here. Tesla was a Serb, born and raised in a place which has been known as Croatia for at least a thousand years. You're the only one who has a problem with this concept. He is a Croatian Serb, and as I wrote before, it's perfectly OK for both Croats and Serbs to claim him and feel proud about him.
Damn why these croats struggle so hard to look different than serbs....
Guys admit, you speak the SAME language, you live in the SAME land, and you will have to work very hard to become something else than you trully are.
Same goes to (supposedly) muslim bosnians.
Why do you try so hard to look different from Turks.... You look the same, live in the same land......
What if there were people that already had this genetic difference naturally. Are they somehow less than human?
Of course not. But I'm still not sold on genetically engineering other people to be like them. I mean, we are not talking about some horrible condition.
It's like genetically engineering everybody to have blue eyes. Is it really necessary?
I'm all for medical advances and improving people's lives, but something just doesn't sit well with genetically engineering happy people.
I mean, call me old-fashioned, but we are people exactly because we have the full spectrum of emotions, all of which have influenced our society and creativity.
Sure, a society full of happy people is a nice goal to strive towards, but isn't the right way to approach this actually improving society, to make it more suitable for humans, and a happier environment to live in? Like Fromm argued long ago.
Something about this just reeks of genetically engineering efficient workers who don't complain instead of fixing some of societies underlying problems. Sure, it could help some clinically depressed patients, but I can't help but think of Lucas' THX 1138 if this gets out of hand.
You sure this guy isn't the president of the Croatian Microsoft User Group?
Vlatko Kosturjak is a good guy, and he has been instrumental in maintaining a high profile for Linux and FLOSS in Croatia in the last 10 years. He has also administered the Croatian LUG website for years, helped organise numerous talks by OSS/Free Software speakers, install fests, and worked on translations. In fact, the work that HULK has done on promoting FLOSS in Croatia (including complete translations of OpenOffice, KDE, GNOME and Fedora into Croatian), despite their low activity levels is amazing. So don't jump to conclusions.
He is simply skeptical that this is the ultimate victory for us just yet. There are real issues in getting FLOSS implemented on a large scale, especially when Windows is as entrenched as it is in Croatia, and where shady dealings secure deals for big companies far too often.
When we see FLOSS deployed at a large scale in Croatia, we can open the champagne. Until then, it's just a blurb from a politician, possibly trying to get a better price from MS. It's not like we haven't seen this in other countries already...
Nikola Tesla was not Serbian. He was a Serb. From Croatia. So both the Croats and Serbs make a claim on him, which is fine. Like when an ethnically Chinese person born in the US makes a great discovery, both the Chinese and Americans feel proud.
Don't get ethnicity (Serb, Croat) mixed up with nationality (Serbian, Croatian). Tesla himself said that he was proud both of his Serb ancestry and Croatian homeland. The area where he was born has never been a part of Serbia.
ps... if he people in Croatia have any extra politicians available I would like to borrow 1 or 2 (dozen) for a few years. Rent or lease options possible.
Iraq's current oil production is 2,900,000 barrels per day. At $70 a barrel, the value of Iraq's entire daily production is $203,000,000. The total cost of your "War Against Middle East" (so far) is $65,000,000,000 and is expected to top $300,000,000,000. If today the war magically became free and we magically got all $203 million in revenue (not profit) each day, it would take a year to "break even" on the war.
You are making a big logical mistake here by assuming that the same people who pay for the war are going to profit for it.
The sad truth is that the taxpayers are going to pay the cost of this war (and any war, for that matter) with their hard-earned taxes and liberties. At the same time, the oil companies and their executives will reap the profits with virtually no loss.
Yes. The parts where they left the industry in private hands, crushed the workers unions and sent anyone who mentioned socialism or communism into concentration camps. Also the part where they forced Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, retarded people and dissidents to work as slaves.
Sorry, but I can't take any argument which states that these policies were "socialist" seriously. All such arguments, like the one from von Mises) take the point that, since Nazis didn't implement pure stateless laissez faire capitalism, they must have been socialists.
And I've never heard of a single socialist who has supported Nazis, or their regime, though there are still plenty who speak highly of the deceased Soviet Union. In fact, millions of socialists throughout Europe lost their lives fighting Hitler. Saying Hitler was a socialist is nothing but some extreme right-wing babble, and it's a shame people are falling for it.
Yeah, sorry about the ad-hominem, it's just a pet peeve of mine. Too often I see people who really haven't a clue about any type of socialism just throw the "Nazis were socialists" line.
There are several definitions of "socialism", you're right. But neither of the commonly used definitions can describe what the Nazis did. They didn't give the industry to the workers (which was the common goal of socialists throughout the history, and especially in early 20th century), they didn't institute a social-democratic state (a la Sweden), they didn't abandon wage labour, and they certainly didn't allow for a grasroots democracy like libertarian socialists were pushing for (think Orwell or Einstein).
If you really stretch the meaning of "socialism" and allow people like Von Mises Institute to define it, then yeah, you could say some of their policies could be called socialist. But then you could also say that just as many were quite capitalist. Especially if you use an extreme definition of capitalism used by communists and some anarchists.
However, a blanket statement like "Nazis were socialists", when Nazis used slaves for their labour force, brutally destroyed all worker unions and killed millions of communists, socialists, left-wing thinkers, and assisted in killing the socialist uprising in Spain, that reeks of serious bias and lack of perspective.
Actually, no they were not, although there seem to be many poorly educated people in the US who think they were.
Hitler took over a small party which started his rise to power, and this party had socialist elements in it. But nothing Nazis did after getting into power had anything to do with socialism.
Because you don't have to add the ~x86, it's implicit (just like ~amd64 would be for amd64). Just copy and paste that file into package.keywords. Alternatively, open that file and try this in vim:
^[ggqfA ~x86^[jq294@f
, where ^[ is, of course, the Esc key.....and then they say that vim is not user friendly! Ha!
Repository based installation is NOT the way to go. Autopackage is just a pretty frontend around the same problem. Until we can install and remove applications as easily as OSX users can, we don't stand a chance.
People are a bit confused about this "KOffice is only KDE" business.
A modern office suite needs to build on top of a really solid foundation in terms of widgets and supporting library.
OpenOffice (and StarOffice before it) chose to design everything from scratch. Every menu, every window, every pixel is hand-drawn by the program itself. They have a very powerful toolkit in VCL which DUPLICATES all that a toolkit should do. They coded all their dialogs from scratch, font handling from scratch, print support from scratch. Skins and themes - from scratch.
Basically, OpenOffice folks wrote half an operating system to make their office suite. Mozilla did something very similar. And then people wonder where the bloat is coming from!
There is another way to write applications. You look around, and see that there is a very very powerful library foundations out there. You get menus for free. Dialogs. Font handling. Network transparency. Buttons. Canvas. Printing. Image input/output. Sound. This set of libraries is called KDE, although you could use GNOME to a similar extent.
Why on Earth should KOffice people reinvent the wheel yet another time, when there is a very powerful library that does all of this already?
If you download OpenOffice.org, in its 300 MB, you download a whole toolkit plus half an operating system in bloat.
If you download KOffice, just download kdelibs while you're at it. You don't need the rest of KDE! Just look at it as another library providing functionality.
We shouldn't go back in time and recode each menu pixel-for-pixel in every single application. StarOffice did this out of legacy reasons and now we're stuck with it. But in this day and age, people use libraries which take care of this stuff, so you can concentrate on functionality.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that the person wrote "but so far all the terrorists have been Muslim" and they quite clearly did not intend that condemnation to apply to every terrorist act in the recorded history of civilization.
It was quite obvious what the poster intended despite the lazy rhetorical action.
What he wrote was similar to saying "all criminals are black", and then later explaining that you meant the criminals who attacked the pet shop in Harlem last night.
When you're using such loaded statements, like "so far, ALL the terrorists have been Muslim", then you are encouraging bigotry and ethnic hatred and there is a good reason why you should be careful with your words.
I personally think that "the person" said exactly what he/she wanted to say.
Was it because you've an arab-sounding name? Or because you travel a lot, including eastern europe, and you're young enough that it's unlikely you're a CEO who needs to travel a lot?
It was almost certainly a combination of all those. In any case, it wasn't random.
The vast majority of all terrorist acts (over 80%) are domestic in nature. This is another thing you don't learn if your only source of information is Ann Coulter on FOX, like the poster I was replying to.
Those who spout statements like "all terrorists are Muslim" deserve to get ridiculed by everyone with an elementary school education.
Ahh, but so far all the terrorists have been Muslim.
ETA. IRA. Ulster Unionists. Tamil Tigers. Aum Shinrikyo. RAF. Clinic bombers. Unabomber. Hate groups like Nazis attacking immigrants in some parts of Europe. KKK. FARC. Jewish Defense League.
That's just off the top of my head.
I think that you have a reality distortion field. It's common among racist idiots.
I flew over to the US from Europe a few weeks ago. Six flights overall, three to California and three back.
I got "randomly" selected three times out of these six flights. In addition to this, my (checked-in) bag was "accidentally" delayed before being loaded onto the plane, and the flight attendant had to come and ensure that I was onboard before the "delayed" bag was brought onboard, just before landing (which was delayed due to my bag).
I'm mid-20s, with an Arab-sounding name, not married, travel a lot (including Eastern Europe), didn't carry a lot of baggage (I was only visiting for a couple of days).
Every time they told me they "randomly" selected me for inspection, I smiled and let them do their thing.
"Random" selection is profiling under a PC name. Of course they profile people. And of course they won't tell you that they do. Before travelling to the US, I was thinking about how suspicious I may appear and how many times they would search me, dig through my luggage and ask me questions. Surprise, surprise, they did it. Three times.
But obviously he could learn more from human visual cortex. So why not experiment on humans?
Honest question.
If there is no torture, why not use human volunteers?
I'm sure we could find hundreds here on Slashdot who would do it for free, right?
At least humans can sign a contract and know what they are getting into. A primate is simply maimed and used as an object.
Now, I don't approve of violence (like the one done by some activist groups), but if this testing is such an enjoyable walk in the park like some posters claim, why don't we do them on human volunteers? Why do we rely on this "our species is superior, so others have to suffer" logic?
Babies cannot agree to a set of minimum behavioural norms that define a civil society either.
So why not do research on babies?
It's not appeal to emotion, BTW, it's appeal to how stupid your argument is.
Maybe a "minimum set of behavioural norms that define a civil society" includes not torturing animals?
Perhaps they weren't trying to firebomb the house, but send a warning. At least that was the impression I got.
Perhaps they should have kidnapped the family, drugged them, and stuck electrodes in their brains against their will.
Then they would have the support of Slashdot, heh.
I'll be modded down by groupthink zombies, but it's really sad that this terrorism craze has made it acceptable to TORTURE animals. I don't approve of assault on scientists, but I don't approve of animal testing either.
Actually, you are completely right. People "with depression" can NEVER feel anything else, ever.
I've lived with a clinically depressed person, who cut herself regularly, and now that I think about it, she was depressed all the time. She was never ever ever happy, or scared, or ever had any other emotion other than depression. She woke up, and was immediately depressed. You gave her a rose, and she was depressed. When she was laughing, I could have sworn that she was happy, at least for a little while, but now I know that I was wrong.
You must be a psychologist. The way you made your point without any discussion, any evidence, explanation, but with the gratuitous use of the word "fucker" is truly impressive and showcases great intelligence.
The fact that Serbs and Croats speak very similar languages does not make them one and the same. Otherwise, Ukranians and Russians would also be the same. What a stupid argument.
Although I know far more about both Serbian and Croatian than you do, I have absolutely no problems with claiming they are the same language. I have absolutely no problem saying that Tesla is a Serb, or that the best Croatian football player in the last few years is a Serb, or that the most popular young footballer in the team is half Muslim, or that even the Croatian national anthem was composed by a Serb.
The reason for this is that I honestly don't give a fuck one way or another, as I despise nationalists. Tesla said he was a Serb. He also said that Croatia was his homeland. That's good enough for me, and you can keep your chauvinist bigotry for yourself, since you obviously don't know anything about the topic and are just trolling.
I think since croatia was a later invention
I think you need a history lesson.
that effectively Tesla was clearly serb.
Tesla was clearly a Serb. A Serb from Croatia. Just like a Turk from Germany is not from Turkey.
I'll give you an example: Fatih Yakin is a famous German Turk film director. Germans AND Turks are both proud of his movies.
As a greek i can assure you that "nationality" is the latin translation of the greek oriented word "ethnicity"
(ethnos = nation).
This is irrelevant, since both ethnicity and nation are very well defined terms in other languages, including English, which we are using for discussion here. Tesla was a Serb, born and raised in a place which has been known as Croatia for at least a thousand years. You're the only one who has a problem with this concept. He is a Croatian Serb, and as I wrote before, it's perfectly OK for both Croats and Serbs to claim him and feel proud about him.
Damn why these croats struggle so hard to look different than serbs....
Guys admit, you speak the SAME language, you live in the SAME land,
and you will have to work very hard to become something else than you trully are.
Same goes to (supposedly) muslim bosnians.
Why do you try so hard to look different from Turks.... You look the same, live in the same land......
What if there were people that already had this genetic difference naturally. Are they somehow less than human?
Of course not. But I'm still not sold on genetically engineering other people to be like them. I mean, we are not talking about some horrible condition.
It's like genetically engineering everybody to have blue eyes. Is it really necessary?
I'm all for medical advances and improving people's lives, but something just doesn't sit well with genetically engineering happy people.
I mean, call me old-fashioned, but we are people exactly because we have the full spectrum of emotions, all of which have influenced our society and creativity.
Sure, a society full of happy people is a nice goal to strive towards, but isn't the right way to approach this actually improving society, to make it more suitable for humans, and a happier environment to live in? Like Fromm argued long ago.
Something about this just reeks of genetically engineering efficient workers who don't complain instead of fixing some of societies underlying problems. Sure, it could help some clinically depressed patients, but I can't help but think of Lucas' THX 1138 if this gets out of hand.
You sure this guy isn't the president of the Croatian Microsoft User Group?
Vlatko Kosturjak is a good guy, and he has been instrumental in maintaining a high profile for Linux and FLOSS in Croatia in the last 10 years. He has also administered the Croatian LUG website for years, helped organise numerous talks by OSS/Free Software speakers, install fests, and worked on translations. In fact, the work that HULK has done on promoting FLOSS in Croatia (including complete translations of OpenOffice, KDE, GNOME and Fedora into Croatian), despite their low activity levels is amazing. So don't jump to conclusions.
He is simply skeptical that this is the ultimate victory for us just yet. There are real issues in getting FLOSS implemented on a large scale, especially when Windows is as entrenched as it is in Croatia, and where shady dealings secure deals for big companies far too often.
When we see FLOSS deployed at a large scale in Croatia, we can open the champagne. Until then, it's just a blurb from a politician, possibly trying to get a better price from MS. It's not like we haven't seen this in other countries already...
Nikola Tesla was not Serbian. He was a Serb. From Croatia. So both the Croats and Serbs make a claim on him, which is fine. Like when an ethnically Chinese person born in the US makes a great discovery, both the Chinese and Americans feel proud.
Don't get ethnicity (Serb, Croat) mixed up with nationality (Serbian, Croatian). Tesla himself said that he was proud both of his Serb ancestry and Croatian homeland. The area where he was born has never been a part of Serbia.
ps... if he people in Croatia have any extra politicians available I would like to borrow 1 or 2 (dozen) for a few years. Rent or lease options possible.
:D
Trust me man, no you wouldn't. Really.
Sincerely,
A Croatian
Truth. But you are making a mistake in assuming that they are profiting from it. A 6% net profit doesn't lend much to the theory of:
Truth, they aren't profiting that much (well, apart from Halliburton). But not for lack of trying: http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html.
The US administration tried to basically GIVE the entire Iraqi oil production over to a few lucky companies. That's what I call profit.
Iraq's current oil production is 2,900,000 barrels per day. At $70 a barrel, the value of Iraq's entire daily production is $203,000,000. The total cost of your "War Against Middle East" (so far) is $65,000,000,000 and is expected to top $300,000,000,000. If today the war magically became free and we magically got all $203 million in revenue (not profit) each day, it would take a year to "break even" on the war.
You are making a big logical mistake here by assuming that the same people who pay for the war are going to profit for it.
The sad truth is that the taxpayers are going to pay the cost of this war (and any war, for that matter) with their hard-earned taxes and liberties. At the same time, the oil companies and their executives will reap the profits with virtually no loss.
You pay $200, I get $100, it's good business.
Parts of it were successfully implemented.
Yes. The parts where they left the industry in private hands, crushed the workers unions and sent anyone who mentioned socialism or communism into concentration camps. Also the part where they forced Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, retarded people and dissidents to work as slaves.
Sorry, but I can't take any argument which states that these policies were "socialist" seriously. All such arguments, like the one from von Mises) take the point that, since Nazis didn't implement pure stateless laissez faire capitalism, they must have been socialists.
And I've never heard of a single socialist who has supported Nazis, or their regime, though there are still plenty who speak highly of the deceased Soviet Union. In fact, millions of socialists throughout Europe lost their lives fighting Hitler. Saying Hitler was a socialist is nothing but some extreme right-wing babble, and it's a shame people are falling for it.
Yeah, sorry about the ad-hominem, it's just a pet peeve of mine. Too often I see people who really haven't a clue about any type of socialism just throw the "Nazis were socialists" line.
There are several definitions of "socialism", you're right. But neither of the commonly used definitions can describe what the Nazis did. They didn't give the industry to the workers (which was the common goal of socialists throughout the history, and especially in early 20th century), they didn't institute a social-democratic state (a la Sweden), they didn't abandon wage labour, and they certainly didn't allow for a grasroots democracy like libertarian socialists were pushing for (think Orwell or Einstein).
If you really stretch the meaning of "socialism" and allow people like Von Mises Institute to define it, then yeah, you could say some of their policies could be called socialist. But then you could also say that just as many were quite capitalist. Especially if you use an extreme definition of capitalism used by communists and some anarchists.
However, a blanket statement like "Nazis were socialists", when Nazis used slaves for their labour force, brutally destroyed all worker unions and killed millions of communists, socialists, left-wing thinkers, and assisted in killing the socialist uprising in Spain, that reeks of serious bias and lack of perspective.
Nazis were SOCIALISTS
Actually, no they were not, although there seem to be many poorly educated people in the US who think they were.
Hitler took over a small party which started his rise to power, and this party had socialist elements in it. But nothing Nazis did after getting into power had anything to do with socialism.
Slave labour has nothing to do with socialism.
Because you don't have to add the ~x86, it's implicit (just like ~amd64 would be for amd64). Just copy and paste that file into package.keywords. Alternatively, open that file and try this in vim:
....and then they say that vim is not user friendly! Ha!
^[ggqfA ~x86^[jq294@f
, where ^[ is, of course, the Esc key.
(coming from a long-time vim user)
Repository based installation is NOT the way to go. Autopackage is just a pretty frontend around the same problem. Until we can install and remove applications as easily as OSX users can, we don't stand a chance.
We can do this already: Klik
The problem is that you end up with 200 versions of the same libraries, and the resulting memory and disk space overhead.
That's why this sort of installation is generally used for easy testing of things instead of a sane installation procedure.
It will when version 2.0 (built on KDE 4 and Qt4) comes out.
People are a bit confused about this "KOffice is only KDE" business.
A modern office suite needs to build on top of a really solid foundation in terms of widgets and supporting library.
OpenOffice (and StarOffice before it) chose to design everything from scratch. Every menu, every window, every pixel is hand-drawn by the program itself. They have a very powerful toolkit in VCL which DUPLICATES all that a toolkit should do. They coded all their dialogs from scratch, font handling from scratch, print support from scratch. Skins and themes - from scratch.
Basically, OpenOffice folks wrote half an operating system to make their office suite. Mozilla did something very similar. And then people wonder where the bloat is coming from!
There is another way to write applications. You look around, and see that there is a very very powerful library foundations out there. You get menus for free. Dialogs. Font handling. Network transparency. Buttons. Canvas. Printing. Image input/output. Sound. This set of libraries is called KDE, although you could use GNOME to a similar extent.
Why on Earth should KOffice people reinvent the wheel yet another time, when there is a very powerful library that does all of this already?
If you download OpenOffice.org, in its 300 MB, you download a whole toolkit plus half an operating system in bloat.
If you download KOffice, just download kdelibs while you're at it. You don't need the rest of KDE! Just look at it as another library providing functionality.
We shouldn't go back in time and recode each menu pixel-for-pixel in every single application. StarOffice did this out of legacy reasons and now we're stuck with it. But in this day and age, people use libraries which take care of this stuff, so you can concentrate on functionality.