Of course, anyone is free to fork GIMP and make it fully compliant with a GNOME desktop environment. It already uses the appropriate X toolkit, which is most of the battle, so it shouldn't be that difficult. Yet I don't see anyone doing it. It would seem as though the people who use or would use GIMP are sufficiently satisfied with the way it functions on a modern Linux desktop. This may change. And when it does, it does. That is the way OSS works.
You're right! Usability will win out in the end!;)
Or maybe, Blair and his cronies hung him out to dry to deflect from their troubles. Kelly's interview, recently aired on the BBC certainly doesn't tie up with Blair's spin.
Maybe. Then again, maybe not. The whole thing is now so obfuscated (in part due to the way the media covered it) that we'll probably never know the whole truth.
re: The Beeb link: Indeed. But isn't this just (another example of) the BBC continuing to argue its case in the court of public opinion long after the actual event?
I've lost all faith in the BBC clain of unbiased news reportage. Yes, the UK Government tries to meddle with and manipulate the corporation - as have all previous UK governments. However that's no justification for an anti-government editorial policy in an organisation which is supposed to be unbiased.
Just look at what happened to Dr. David Kelly for another example.
Kelly was cynically used by the BBC and Andrew Gilligan. They sucessfully made him into the issue to conceal the fact the ulterior motive behind spinning his word - namely to damage Blair.
I think there's a difference between using a source and misusing a source and then making him the fall guy for shoddy, dishonest journalism.
As you point out, there are times when it's legitimate to conceal sources and may be in the public interest to do so.
The main problems come from when journalists hide behind this as an excuse to print whatever they want. Agree 100%
Which carries more weight: the right of Apple to protect their trade secrets or the rights of journalists to protect their sources?"
An unpopular view on a site like/. , but I say Apples right to protect their trade secrets.
The media in general and the press in particular seem to believe that they have a sacred right to what they call the "freedom" to print / publish anything which sells a story without naming sources or providing a means for those sources to be independently verified/validated.
This "right" can and usually does amount to the right to invade the privacy of private individuals and (in the UK at least) to avoid regulation through their own willfully toothless watchdog, the Press Complaints Commission.
I concede, however, that there may be a fine line between commercial/trade secrets and the (genuine) public interest, in which case I'd side with the media.
For instance, a credible source within a large financial institution leaking details of how much profit that institution has made by misselling financial products would, in my view, be in the public interest. The same source leaking details of the CEOs extra-marital affairs to a "gutter" daily, IMHO would not be in the public interest.
Another off topic one, from Lenny Henry:
Man wakes up in a hospital bed, and sees a doctor. Doctor says, "We've got some bad news and some good news. Bad news is that we've had to amputate both of your legs" Man says, "what's the good news?". Doc says, "The man in the next bed wants to buy your shoes!"
It is "given" only in that it is freely available. Use it or don't use it. There is no expectation except maybe in your own mind.
No, we were discussing the implication of your statement in the context of your perception of the posters expectation - not mine.
As direct competition for MS Office, perhaps. But usable alternatives do exist. Personally, I wouldn't use any Linux application that compared directly to MS OFfice.
You wouldn't, maybe. Many people would - those pesky users, remember? Users and usability are at the heart of this, especially usability in the context of what has already be learned.
The current incarnation of The GIMP is far more complete and functional compared to Photoshop than Abisuite or KOffice are compared to MS Office. It is a bad analogy.
I disagree. You've already stated that you're not a "graphics designer" so I won't bore you with reasons for that disagreement. Needless to say, I think it's a good analogy.
I am confident that The GIMP could hold its own against a GPL'd older version of Photoshop. GIMP satisfies the needs of the majority of *nix users. The same users who have issues which you think shouldn't to be addressed, no doubt.
Most of the people complaining about GIMP are professional graphic designers
I doubt you could sunstantiate that, but you don't need to, because...
Need I remind you that the libraries on which GNOME is based were pretty much invented by the GIMP developers? Just so.The GIMP Tool Kit was created specifically to provide better software components (for the GIMP) than were available on X based systems at that time. The GNOME devs then decided to use that toolkit as the basis of a desktop environment and here we reach the core of the issue. When GIMP was originally created, GNOME didn't exist and if I'm correct, KDE didn't exist either. The typical OSS X window system of that era was a bare desktop with no file manager where apps were mainly started from a terminal. The concept of an environment hosting applications which provide a consistent user experience through look, feel, function and operation wasn't realised to the level that is the case now.
If GIMP were being written today as a GNOME app, I doubt it would look, feel or operate the way it does. We're talking the difference between Sodipodi (ironically) and Inkscape. Here's a slice of the inkscape FAQ:"inkscape was founded in 2003 by four Sodipodi developers with the mission of creating a fully compliant SVG drawing tool written in C++ with a new, HIG-compliant interface"
The happy context to this, of course, is that GNOME is fairly close to Windows so far as use goes (closer than to OSX, for example). So an app like Photoshop wouldn't be a million miles from user expectations.
I can't. But you implied that they were when you said; "These people are working for free to give you software"
I implied no such thing.
Hmmm. So, in the context of your original post, poster was supposed to stop "whineing" and be grateful to the people "working for free to give you software". Well, pray, why would someone give me software if they didn't expect me to use it?
Bullshit. The GIMP is a damn fine piece of software in its own right.
In your opinion maybe. Not in the opinion of the people who consistently and justifiably raise issues about the software. My point still stands - there is no viable alternative. That's why people who think they're above responding to the needs of those who use their software continue to get away with it.
Bullshit again. You have no idea what a GPL'd version of Photoshop woudl be like.
Neither do you, but it's likely to look and feel and operate the way it does now, which is like a pre-OSX Mac app.
Look at OpenOffice. That is one slow, bloated piece of crap that looks like hell and doesn't integrate into any common Linux desktop beccause it uses its own widgets and window management Yes but it's still the Great White Hope of OSS office software isn't it? A photoshop port may also suffer the same disadvantages, but be sufficiently tooled and usable in a way that's acceptable to the majority of users, that it would do to GIMP what OOo has done to Abisuite, the original Gnome Office , KOffice and yes, Wordperfect for Linux (which was an old style X/*nix app - just like GIMP)
It may be easier than trying to make Photoshop behave well in X Behave well in the X of the era when GIMP was first written or behave well in the typical X environment of today?
but show me where developers are explicitly saying "I want you to use this software."
I can't. But you implied that they were when you said; "These people are working for free to give you software"
Maybe they are not "serious" graphic artists, but they still prefer it. The GIMP is a pretty damn good piece of OSS despite teh criticism Perhaps, but the criticism exists for the reasons I've already pointed out. Maybe the GIMP would be "a pretty damm better piece of OSS" if some of the criticism was taken on board.
The GIMP is also a posterboy app for OSS Indeed it is - in the absence of any viable alternatives, as I've already pointed out. An old version of photoshop, released under the GPL and renamed would become the new OSS posterboy graphics manipulation app within a matter of months.
Wah, wah, wah! Quit whining. These people are working for free to give you software. You should be grateful.
I'm never grateful for stuff I can't use and if they want me to use it they should be open to feedback from me. And no, I can't specify who "they" are any more than to say that they're the same "These people" you're referring to.
There is plenty of interoperability. Maybe it isn't all polished and marketable as you would like, but there is interoperability galore in the form of starndard file formats, protocols
Think someone mentioned interop at the API level. Basic automation and so on.
Doesn't seem to be a problem with The GIMP or OSS in general. We wouldn't even be talking about The GIMP right now if nobody was using it. The fact is that The GIMP is extremely powerful and works well for those who want to use it. The only people I see complaining in this thread are users, not the developers.
Well, doh! Of course the users are complaining, and they're doing so legitimately too. The bottom line is this; Following your distinction, USERS (as opposed to developers) use the GIMP on Linux because there's no other realistic alternative. If,say, Adobe GPLed a linux version of Photoshop7, how many USERS do you think would continue using GIMP?
And therein lies the rub. The famous desktop OSS applications (OpenOffice, Moz) either started life as commercial products or currently have / have had some form of commercial backing. So somewhere in those products life the devs have had to take USER feedback and that's why they're OSS poster boy apps now.
You can argue until you're blue in the face about users needing to be grateful or users becoming devs or users using something else. These complaints won't go away until they're addressed or something better comes along.
I think there's a difference between learning to overlook idosyncrasities and learning an interface.
In the case of a tool like GIMP, you already learned how to use the interface - Gnome or KDE in the common case. You then have to learn how to overlook the idiosyncratic way that GIMP works which is non-standard to each of those environments.
when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?
I expect it to keep working forever - i.e. until some combination of hardware/OS change renders this impossible. I don't expect it to be supported for ever.
Neither do I expect any "Free Software" equivalents to necessarily provide all that I need, when I need it with decent paid for support.
and some of the projects that A9 and Ask.com have been working on
I want a search engine with a Genie-Jeeves.
Imagine:
I snap my fingers, smoke streams from my monitor, materialising into Jeeves, complete with tray, glass and a bottle of that beer I couldn't quite bring to mind when I clicked the search button...
I seem to remember, from my university days, being told that meaningful information (as opposed to "data") must be relevant, timely, structured and domain specific.
I agree, we are being buried in data but perhaps that's because the emphasis is on collecting data rather than managing information.
IT will continue to be a benefit so long as we focus on precisely what we're gathering and structuring data for.
My guess, the script will go a little something like this: Indiana Jones drives an antique wheelchair into the Taj Mahal after discovering that it contains some Al Queda Memorabila. He engages in an epic battle with Osama Bin Laden, who cuts off his beard. In a later scene, he goes to visit his father, who is on his deathbed, in an iron lung in a hospital. Between heavy breaths, George Bush Snr lets Ford know that Condi is actually his sister.... At this point the movie will end... gotta have material for a sequel, yknow.
"This patch caused the desktops to BSOD and made recovery rather tricky as they couldn't boot to pick any further patches or recalls. I gather that MS consultants have been flown in from the US to clear up the mess."
So, even more of the money I pay in tax is being diverted to M$ then...
The same goes for your idea that politicians are only ever driven by pure self-interest. If they were, they would have closed ranks by now, and we would all now be living in one-party states.
Politicians are driven by self-interest. You're in cloud cukoo land if you think that any politician has your particular interests at heart. When the interests of the electorate happen to coincide with their interests, then of course they'll happily represent your interests.
If you have a fundamental disagreement with your MP (your elected representative) I can gurantee that (s)he'll carefully listen to what you have to say, spin alot of words which can be interpreted as agreement and yet still fundamentally disagree. That's what politics is about - trying to change the world to suit yourself.
As for Iraq, I read a very interesting editorial in The European Business recently, which puts the findings of the Iraq Survey Group in a completely different light to that portrayed by Kennedy et al - mainly because it softens and detracts from their main critisms of Blair. If politicians can't be bothered telling the whole truth, I have to ask myself why - and the answer to that is usually because they're motivated by self interest.
The rest of your comment doesn't merit a response.
I don't think Kennedy would have gone to war against Iraq. Why would he? It would not be in Britain's interest, it would not be pro-European, and it would not be in line with general Lib Dem thinking. Several top members of the Labour cabinet would also not have gone to war in Iraq, and some of them said so. Nor would some prominent Tories (on the respectably Tory grounds that Britian's interest would not be furthered by doing so), and they also said so. It was Ian Duncan Smith who insisted that the Tories support Blair's call to arms. So, if there were people who were not only opposed to the war in the Labour and Tory camps, some to the extent that they were willing to risk their careers in their opposition, why would a Lib Dem politician not oppose the war with equal seriousness?
Sorry, I can't agree with that. Kennedy has the luxery - through being unelectable as the leader of a third party in a what amounts to a two party state - of attempting to put clear yellow water (to half coin a phrase!) between his party and the other two. He can play to the populist voice/vote and even be sincere in doing so. However, if he was burdened by the serious prospect of electability, I don't think he would be so keen to upset the Status Quo of the so-called "special relationship" between Britain and the US.
And that, in my view, is what makes him as fundamentally dishonest as Blair, Howard, IDS, Clair Short and all the rest of them. The stance these people take is dependent on their positions, and how much they have to gain or lose on a personal level.
If the public was massively pro the iraq war, I can gurantee that you wouldn't see Kennedy or any of the others taking the stance that they have taken.
It's this fundamental dishonesty which I find so sickening. Someone was once fond of quoting, "a half truth is as good as a lie". By that yardstick, and by your own admission, all politicians are liars, because they all spin the truth.
When you are in charge of a country and those agencies you are now claiming are the culprits for providing you with "False Information" ( referred to a either lies or mistakes in common English ) then there is no difference.
There is a difference. It's the difference between acting in the knowledge that the intelligence was false or acting in ignorance of that knowledge.
Everything I've seen a heard of Blair leads me to believe that he acted in ignorance. He's petrified of public opinion in the most shameless way - one of his biggest faults as Prime Minister - and I find it very difficult to believe that anyone that sensitive to public opinion would take the country into war unless he believed there was a good reason.
He expounded what he thought was that reason in a parlimentary debate where a majority of MPs also voted for this war.
The bottom line is that Michael Howard (or IDS at the time) would have done exactly the same if he was Prime Minister AND SO WOULD CHARLES KENNEDY!
Kennedy is only anti-war because he thinks (rightly) that he can pick up votes from being so - it's a clear distinction between his party and the other two main parties in UK politics.
All politicians are liars and the most dangerous politicians are the ones who pretend to be all things to all men while obsfucating the truth of their policies.
I regret this whole Iraq business. I didn't support it then and I don't support it now. However, I'm not going to support a fly-by-night single-issue opportunist who wants to gain power so that his party can repress me by increasing my taxes, forcing me to use inadequate public transport - which they consistently refuse to invest in - , collect my rubbish once every 4 weeks because - in their view - I don't recycle enough, and continue to waste the ever increasing tax bill they extort from me. That's the reality of the Lib Dems.
Blairs no liar - no more so than any other Bristish politician, anyway. I wonder when people are going to wake up to this fact.
Probably when that opportunist Kennedy is in No.10 busy implementing his tax-and-waste policies. As for Blunkett, I agree.
I thought no Home secretary could be worse than Michael Howard. Then Jack Straw came along. I thought no home secretary could be worse than Straw. Then "ID-Card, national database" Blunkett came along. Can anyone be worse than him? Menzies Campbell sounds like a good contender.
My experience of Lib Dems in local government has been that they're illiberal and undemoratic.
They're wasteful and authoritarian. A bunch of tax and spend social engineers. I fell out of love with the "Liberal" "Democrats" a long time ago.
That's why I'll be back to voting for Blair next time.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, anyone is free to fork GIMP and make it fully compliant with a GNOME desktop environment. It already uses the appropriate X toolkit, which is most of the battle, so it shouldn't be that difficult. Yet I don't see anyone doing it. It would seem as though the people who use or would use GIMP are sufficiently satisfied with the way it functions on a modern Linux desktop. This may change. And when it does, it does. That is the way OSS works.
;)
You're right! Usability will win out in the end!
Or maybe, Blair and his cronies hung him out to dry to deflect from their troubles. Kelly's interview, recently aired on the BBC certainly doesn't tie up with Blair's spin.
;)
Maybe. Then again, maybe not. The whole thing is now so obfuscated (in part due to the way the media covered it) that we'll probably never know the whole truth.
re: The Beeb link: Indeed. But isn't this just (another example of) the BBC continuing to argue its case in the court of public opinion long after the actual event?
I've lost all faith in the BBC clain of unbiased news reportage. Yes, the UK Government tries to meddle with and manipulate the corporation - as have all previous UK governments. However that's no justification for an anti-government editorial policy in an organisation which is supposed to be unbiased.
Then again, I may need a tinfoil hat!
Just look at what happened to Dr. David Kelly for another example.
Kelly was cynically used by the BBC and Andrew Gilligan. They sucessfully made him into the issue to conceal the fact the ulterior motive behind spinning his word - namely to damage Blair.
I think there's a difference between using a source and misusing a source and then making him the fall guy for shoddy, dishonest journalism.
As you point out, there are times when it's legitimate to conceal sources and may be in the public interest to do so. The main problems come from when journalists hide behind this as an excuse to print whatever they want.
Agree 100%
Which carries more weight: the right of Apple to protect their trade secrets or the rights of journalists to protect their sources?"
/. , but I say Apples right to protect their trade secrets.
An unpopular view on a site like
The media in general and the press in particular seem to believe that they have a sacred right to what they call the "freedom" to print / publish anything which sells a story without naming sources or providing a means for those sources to be independently verified/validated.
This "right" can and usually does amount to the right to invade the privacy of private individuals and (in the UK at least) to avoid regulation through their own willfully toothless watchdog, the Press Complaints Commission.
I concede, however, that there may be a fine line between commercial/trade secrets and the (genuine) public interest, in which case I'd side with the media.
For instance, a credible source within a large financial institution leaking details of how much profit that institution has made by misselling financial products would, in my view, be in the public interest. The same source leaking details of the CEOs extra-marital affairs to a "gutter" daily, IMHO would not be in the public interest.
Another off topic one, from Lenny Henry: Man wakes up in a hospital bed, and sees a doctor. Doctor says, "We've got some bad news and some good news. Bad news is that we've had to amputate both of your legs" Man says, "what's the good news?". Doc says, "The man in the next bed wants to buy your shoes!"
It is "given" only in that it is freely available. Use it or don't use it. There is no expectation except maybe in your own mind.
No, we were discussing the implication of your statement in the context of your perception of the posters expectation - not mine.
As direct competition for MS Office, perhaps. But usable alternatives do exist. Personally, I wouldn't use any Linux application that compared directly to MS OFfice.
You wouldn't, maybe. Many people would - those pesky users, remember? Users and usability are at the heart of this, especially usability in the context of what has already be learned.
The current incarnation of The GIMP is far more complete and functional compared to Photoshop than Abisuite or KOffice are compared to MS Office. It is a bad analogy.
I disagree. You've already stated that you're not a "graphics designer" so I won't bore you with reasons for that disagreement. Needless to say, I think it's a good analogy.
I am confident that The GIMP could hold its own against a GPL'd older version of Photoshop. GIMP satisfies the needs of the majority of *nix users.
The same users who have issues which you think shouldn't to be addressed, no doubt.
Most of the people complaining about GIMP are professional graphic designers
I doubt you could sunstantiate that, but you don't need to, because...
Need I remind you that the libraries on which GNOME is based were pretty much invented by the GIMP developers?
Just so.The GIMP Tool Kit was created specifically to provide better software components (for the GIMP) than were available on X based systems at that time. The GNOME devs then decided to use that toolkit as the basis of a desktop environment and here we reach the core of the issue. When GIMP was originally created, GNOME didn't exist and if I'm correct, KDE didn't exist either. The typical OSS X window system of that era was a bare desktop with no file manager where apps were mainly started from a terminal. The concept of an environment hosting applications which provide a consistent user experience through look, feel, function and operation wasn't realised to the level that is the case now.
If GIMP were being written today as a GNOME app, I doubt it would look, feel or operate the way it does. We're talking the difference between Sodipodi (ironically) and Inkscape. Here's a slice of the inkscape FAQ:"inkscape was founded in 2003 by four Sodipodi developers with the mission of creating a fully compliant SVG drawing tool written in C++ with a new, HIG-compliant interface"
The happy context to this, of course, is that GNOME is fairly close to Windows so far as use goes (closer than to OSX, for example). So an app like Photoshop wouldn't be a million miles from user expectations.
I can't. But you implied that they were when you said; "These people are working for free to give you software" I implied no such thing.
Hmmm. So, in the context of your original post, poster was supposed to stop "whineing" and be grateful to the people "working for free to give you software". Well, pray, why would someone give me software if they didn't expect me to use it?
Bullshit. The GIMP is a damn fine piece of software in its own right.
In your opinion maybe. Not in the opinion of the people who consistently and justifiably raise issues about the software. My point still stands - there is no viable alternative. That's why people who think they're above responding to the needs of those who use their software continue to get away with it.
Bullshit again. You have no idea what a GPL'd version of Photoshop woudl be like.
Neither do you, but it's likely to look and feel and operate the way it does now, which is like a pre-OSX Mac app.
Look at OpenOffice. That is one slow, bloated piece of crap that looks like hell and doesn't integrate into any common Linux desktop beccause it uses its own widgets and window management
Yes but it's still the Great White Hope of OSS office software isn't it? A photoshop port may also suffer the same disadvantages, but be sufficiently tooled and usable in a way that's acceptable to the majority of users, that it would do to GIMP what OOo has done to Abisuite, the original Gnome Office , KOffice and yes, Wordperfect for Linux (which was an old style X/*nix app - just like GIMP)
It may be easier than trying to make Photoshop behave well in X
Behave well in the X of the era when GIMP was first written or behave well in the typical X environment of today?
but show me where developers are explicitly saying "I want you to use this software."
I can't. But you implied that they were when you said; "These people are working for free to give you software"
Maybe they are not "serious" graphic artists, but they still prefer it. The GIMP is a pretty damn good piece of OSS despite teh criticism
Perhaps, but the criticism exists for the reasons I've already pointed out. Maybe the GIMP would be "a pretty damm better piece of OSS" if some of the criticism was taken on board.
The GIMP is also a posterboy app for OSS
Indeed it is - in the absence of any viable alternatives, as I've already pointed out.
An old version of photoshop, released under the GPL and renamed would become the new OSS posterboy graphics manipulation app within a matter of months.
Wah, wah, wah! Quit whining. These people are working for free to give you software. You should be grateful.
,say, Adobe GPLed a linux version of Photoshop7, how many USERS do you think would continue using GIMP?
I'm never grateful for stuff I can't use and if they want me to use it they should be open to feedback from me. And no, I can't specify who "they" are any more than to say that they're the same "These people" you're referring to.
There is plenty of interoperability. Maybe it isn't all polished and marketable as you would like, but there is interoperability galore in the form of starndard file formats, protocols
Think someone mentioned interop at the API level. Basic automation and so on.
Doesn't seem to be a problem with The GIMP or OSS in general. We wouldn't even be talking about The GIMP right now if nobody was using it. The fact is that The GIMP is extremely powerful and works well for those who want to use it. The only people I see complaining in this thread are users, not the developers.
Well, doh! Of course the users are complaining, and they're doing so legitimately too. The bottom line is this; Following your distinction, USERS (as opposed to developers) use the GIMP on Linux because there's no other realistic alternative. If
And therein lies the rub. The famous desktop OSS applications (OpenOffice, Moz) either started life as commercial products or currently have / have had some form of commercial backing. So somewhere in those products life the devs have had to take USER feedback and that's why they're OSS poster boy apps now.
You can argue until you're blue in the face about users needing to be grateful or users becoming devs or users using something else. These complaints won't go away until they're addressed or something better comes along.
I think there's a difference between learning to overlook idosyncrasities and learning an interface. In the case of a tool like GIMP, you already learned how to use the interface - Gnome or KDE in the common case. You then have to learn how to overlook the idiosyncratic way that GIMP works which is non-standard to each of those environments.
celebrating The Sims' fifth anniversary.
DNF is celebrating its seventh anniversary this year too. That's Seven years since it was announced.
What has this got to do with the Sims? Simply that I recall being very excited by screenshots of both upcoming products back in 2000...
when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?
I expect it to keep working forever - i.e. until some combination of hardware/OS change renders this impossible. I don't expect it to be supported for ever.
Neither do I expect any "Free Software" equivalents to necessarily provide all that I need, when I need it with decent paid for support.
I don't expect much.
and some of the projects that A9 and Ask.com have been working on
I want a search engine with a Genie-Jeeves. Imagine: I snap my fingers, smoke streams from my monitor, materialising into Jeeves, complete with tray, glass and a bottle of that beer I couldn't quite bring to mind when I clicked the search button...
I seem to remember, from my university days, being told that meaningful information (as opposed to "data") must be relevant, timely, structured and domain specific.
I agree, we are being buried in data but perhaps that's because the emphasis is on collecting data rather than managing information.
IT will continue to be a benefit so long as we focus on precisely what we're gathering and structuring data for.
What are some other worthy computing challenges?
;-)
Making Firefox on Linux as quick as Firefox on Windows...
Ok, here it it. The mini mac seems an expensive PC, for what it offers. But shit, it's a cheap mac! That's the point that people keep missing.
It may well not be the best specc'd machine, but it's a cheap Mac, man! That's why they'll sell like hotcakes. I want one!
Did he wear a hat with a little propeller on top which spun faster every time he touched the anti-static mat?
My guess, the script will go a little something like this: Indiana Jones drives an antique wheelchair into the Taj Mahal after discovering that it contains some Al Queda Memorabila. He engages in an epic battle with Osama Bin Laden, who cuts off his beard. In a later scene, he goes to visit his father, who is on his deathbed, in an iron lung in a hospital. Between heavy breaths, George Bush Snr lets Ford know that Condi is actually his sister....
At this point the movie will end... gotta have material for a sequel, yknow.
from the reg article;
"This patch caused the desktops to BSOD and made recovery rather tricky as they couldn't boot to pick any further patches or recalls. I gather that MS consultants have been flown in from the US to clear up the mess."
So, even more of the money I pay in tax is being diverted to M$ then...
Tell it to Japan and Germany.
Japan and Germany were the aggressors.
Bush has made the US the aggressors in Iraq.
And before you say that the 9/11 terrorists were the aggressors, there's no proven link between Iraq and Bin Laden.
The same goes for your idea that politicians are only ever driven by pure self-interest. If they were, they would have closed ranks by now, and we would all now be living in one-party states. Politicians are driven by self-interest. You're in cloud cukoo land if you think that any politician has your particular interests at heart. When the interests of the electorate happen to coincide with their interests, then of course they'll happily represent your interests. If you have a fundamental disagreement with your MP (your elected representative) I can gurantee that (s)he'll carefully listen to what you have to say, spin alot of words which can be interpreted as agreement and yet still fundamentally disagree. That's what politics is about - trying to change the world to suit yourself. As for Iraq, I read a very interesting editorial in The European Business recently, which puts the findings of the Iraq Survey Group in a completely different light to that portrayed by Kennedy et al - mainly because it softens and detracts from their main critisms of Blair. If politicians can't be bothered telling the whole truth, I have to ask myself why - and the answer to that is usually because they're motivated by self interest. The rest of your comment doesn't merit a response.
I don't think Kennedy would have gone to war against Iraq. Why would he? It would not be in Britain's interest, it would not be pro-European, and it would not be in line with general Lib Dem thinking. Several top members of the Labour cabinet would also not have gone to war in Iraq, and some of them said so. Nor would some prominent Tories (on the respectably Tory grounds that Britian's interest would not be furthered by doing so), and they also said so. It was Ian Duncan Smith who insisted that the Tories support Blair's call to arms. So, if there were people who were not only opposed to the war in the Labour and Tory camps, some to the extent that they were willing to risk their careers in their opposition, why would a Lib Dem politician not oppose the war with equal seriousness?
Sorry, I can't agree with that. Kennedy has the luxery - through being unelectable as the leader of a third party in a what amounts to a two party state - of attempting to put clear yellow water (to half coin a phrase!) between his party and the other two. He can play to the populist voice/vote and even be sincere in doing so. However, if he was burdened by the serious prospect of electability, I don't think he would be so keen to upset the Status Quo of the so-called "special relationship" between Britain and the US.
And that, in my view, is what makes him as fundamentally dishonest as Blair, Howard, IDS, Clair Short and all the rest of them. The stance these people take is dependent on their positions, and how much they have to gain or lose on a personal level.
If the public was massively pro the iraq war, I can gurantee that you wouldn't see Kennedy or any of the others taking the stance that they have taken.
It's this fundamental dishonesty which I find so sickening. Someone was once fond of quoting, "a half truth is as good as a lie". By that yardstick, and by your own admission, all politicians are liars, because they all spin the truth.
When you are in charge of a country and those agencies you are now claiming are the culprits for providing you with "False Information" ( referred to a either lies or mistakes in common English ) then there is no difference.
There is a difference. It's the difference between acting in the knowledge that the intelligence was false or acting in ignorance of that knowledge.
Everything I've seen a heard of Blair leads me to believe that he acted in ignorance. He's petrified of public opinion in the most shameless way - one of his biggest faults as Prime Minister - and I find it very difficult to believe that anyone that sensitive to public opinion would take the country into war unless he believed there was a good reason.
He expounded what he thought was that reason in a parlimentary debate where a majority of MPs also voted for this war.
The bottom line is that Michael Howard (or IDS at the time) would have done exactly the same if he was Prime Minister AND SO WOULD CHARLES KENNEDY!
Kennedy is only anti-war because he thinks (rightly) that he can pick up votes from being so - it's a clear distinction between his party and the other two main parties in UK politics.
All politicians are liars and the most dangerous politicians are the ones who pretend to be all things to all men while obsfucating the truth of their policies.
I regret this whole Iraq business. I didn't support it then and I don't support it now. However, I'm not going to support a fly-by-night single-issue opportunist who wants to gain power so that his party can repress me by increasing my taxes, forcing me to use inadequate public transport - which they consistently refuse to invest in - , collect my rubbish once every 4 weeks because - in their view - I don't recycle enough, and continue to waste the ever increasing tax bill they extort from me. That's the reality of the Lib Dems.
Blairs no liar - no more so than any other Bristish politician, anyway. I wonder when people are going to wake up to this fact.
Probably when that opportunist Kennedy is in No.10 busy implementing his tax-and-waste policies. As for Blunkett, I agree.
I thought no Home secretary could be worse than Michael Howard. Then Jack Straw came along. I thought no home secretary could be worse than Straw. Then "ID-Card, national database" Blunkett came along. Can anyone be worse than him? Menzies Campbell sounds like a good contender.
My experience of Lib Dems in local government has been that they're illiberal and undemoratic.
They're wasteful and authoritarian. A bunch of tax and spend social engineers. I fell out of love with the "Liberal" "Democrats" a long time ago.
That's why I'll be back to voting for Blair next time.
Nobody's reading here - they're all over at OSNews!!