No, they are just using apple as a great example of system integration, and I can't say I disagree.
The interface of gnome is still quite unique in comparison to GNUstep which is a blatent NEXTstep rippoff so much so that they don't even bother denying it.
Gnome has been setting itself ambitious goals in system integration and I think that it is good that they have OSX so that they can aspire to reach its level of integration, though not its methods.
Since when could gnats force a slow beast to work twice as hard and even threaten its very existence?
Free Software developers arn't gnats, they are a swarm of killer bees, wasps, tetse flys and mosquitoes carrying Ross River Fever and Malaria.
The analogy is even better when you realise that a heterogeneous swarm of poisonous and infectious insects would spend more time attacking each other than attacking the beast, just like real open source developers. That leads me to another question: Does human society mock nature or does nature mock human society? All I know for sure is everyone likes to mock computer nerds.
It would seem that OpenPDA is a Metrowerks derivitive of Qtopia. Every time I see a pda that runs Qtopia I worry about the future of Linux pdas.
Qtopia is a finely engeneered environment, and I have nothing but praise for what I see in screenshots and technical documents about it. However I see the same problems with Qtopia being accepted as the de-facto standard for linux PDAs and I have with those who would make QT the de-facto standard in desktop linux GUIs.
Qtopia like its parent QT is written in C++, a farily controversial language amongst linux developers, it also uses Meta Objects which are an even more controversial addition to the language. This threatens to isolate many developers who would not use such a tool because of personal preference, with no fallback into an ISO standard complient c++ environment or a c environment.
Qtopia is also licenced under the same licence scheme as QT, dual licenced under the GPL and QPL. This sceme allows development of open source applications using the GPL and proprietary applications using the QPL after per-developer fees have been payed. This is however sub-optimal in comparison to a simple LGPL or BSD licences in which similar libarys of this type have been licenced for numerous reasons. First and least importantly it seems silly that to develop a graphical progam under Palm OS is free, yet for a linux PDA (the so called free OS) eqivalent one must pay a licence fee. Secondly, the QPL also misses out on multiple consumer protection clauses regarding binary distributed software noted in the LGPL. Thirdly in order to port the application to another platform, an activity in-keeping with the Free Software spirit, licence fees must be payed even for an open application. I am sure Trolltech would be happy to arrange an exemption for a bona fide OSS project, however this type of special arrangement is not in keeping with the principles of Free Software.
This post is not intended to insite a flamewar, I have made no value judgments about the actual performance or technical elements of either Qtopia or QT, I havn't commented on the legitimacy of KDE, which I belive is a fine project, probably exceding gnome in power and usability. However I urge people to consider these aspects when they choose which projects to support. Remember, in the future it will be possible to unify the desktop by making QT dependant on GNUStep, GTK+ or whatever comes out in front in a similar way to what Trolltech has done with MacOS and Windows interfaces, but the reverse is impossible due to both licence and structual incompatibilites.
Australian gaols are very good by world standards (far better than the US, not as good as a few in Europe, I'm not sure about Canada or New Zealand). They tend to not be overcrowded, tend not to be as violent as some in other countries and the inmates seem to be treated fairly well.
In a minimum security prison (where non-violent offenders like music pirates are usually sent) there is a compartivly low chance of rape or violence.
That said, Australia's gaols are still very awful places and I would judge the effect of an institution like that on a university student with no criminal history involved in a minor crime, would be far from positive.
By the way: Gaol is how we Australians spell Jail if anyone's wondering what on earth I am talking about
If something can be dismissed as not prior art because it is not specific to the web, what is to stop a clever lawyer to ask for the patant itself to be ruled inapplicable in a particular instance because it is not specific to something else?
This could include things like PHP or ASP or apache CGI. Or maybe it could be argued that it is specific to the delivary system of Amazon or particular types of merchandise. Possibly one could even integrate a third party service into it such as Paypal or MS Passport and claim that it is a totally different business model and therefore not covered by the patent.
The possibilities of dodging the patent are opened up much wider by the patent being able to continue. This should be exploited
My prediction is that you didn't actually read it yourself.
This is because if you did, you would realise that it was very well written and not hugely technical. I wouldn't be supprised if 95%+ of the slashdot crowd did understand it.
As a general rule, slashdotters seem to get very zealous and have a habit of not RTFAing, but they generally have good comprehension skills and I don't think you give them the credit they deserve.
Sorry, I was just arguing semantics. It's just that I had a cool example relating to a previous poster and I thought I should mention it because it was funny.
There is a pattern with most engineers I have met. If someone works for weeks to improve something, specially if they are not forced to, distroying it is unthinkable.
And by the way, Russia is not "third world". Russia is "second world" by definition. The term "third world" was created as a reference to the fact that while the US and Russia were competing to be the richest, most advanced, most successful country in the world (the "first world"), much of the planet was being completely ignored. This is the "third world".
Theres a distinct difference between mandating technology that spys on you and banning a device who's only use is to manipulate traffic conditions in an effort to cheat others for your own advancement.
To put this in slashdot terms, this is same as the difference between banning Music piracy and enforcing DRM, one is preventing you from doing what you shouldn't do through legal means, the other is implementing something that watches you as you do things that you should be doing.
Some time ago, just after the dicovery of X-rays in the late nineteenth century, X-ray goggles were banned by congress after intensive lobbying by public decency activists due to conserns of them being used to see through women's clothing.
X-ray googles have however never been created, and their usage to see through clothing to see naked skin is utturly rediculous, yet they are still illegal. I don't know if this law is still valid, however I doubt if it has been overturned. This is an example however of a technology that never was legal.
It's funny, I never made a single value judgement about the reason for invasion of Iraq yet your entire reply seems to a rebuttal this comment I didn't make. The quote you are refering to was simply about the US government expecting the UN to pay for cleaning up for the war that they advised against. As for France and Germany, I never mentioned either of them. I agree with you about France's questionable stance towards it, although I assert that I cannot see anything wrong with Germany's behavior.
You state that France and Germany both invaded other countries. This is true, however German invaions were carried out by a reigeme that was distroyed by force then systematically tried condemned and executed then zelously denounced by govenment policy for fifty years. The Last large scale French invasion was carried out by Napolion two hundred years ago. You cannot hold Nazi indiscressions or Napolionic ambition against Germany of France any more than one can blame the Italians for sacking Jerusalem or invading Gaul. However at the same time Napoleon was attacking Russia, America was attacking Canada and Mexico while conducting the wholesale slaughter of natives, yet I don't hold that against America because it was two hundred years ago.
You later call me a lier, because of my non-existant statements refering to France and Germany. They could have been a responce to my comment about arming Saddam but surely one cannot deny this simply because France also participated. You then mention terrorists being a threat with a lot of rhetoric about women and children, bombs and the like which are frightning but wholly irrelevent in the context of Iraq. As far as I know no links between Iraq and Al Quida have been found, Saddam Hussain was a very secular leader in contrast to the religeous nutcases that lead the bordering countries. Saddam Hussain also had a repution as a cold hearted, ruthless destroyer of religeous extremists, many terrorists and terrorist supporters have been slaughtered in very nasty ways by him and his leftenants yet you consider leaving him in power would have threatened our women and children with terrorism more than distroying his regime and letting the country decay into a crazy theocracy like Iran or Afghanistan who have a grudge against western countries for invading them? If someone wanted to distroy a bastion of religeous extremism, human rights abuses and a haven for terrorism they would be attacking Saudi Arabia instead.
As for Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill stood against a huge foe, the Third Reich, an empire that had thousends of dedicated troops, superior tanks and aircraft, balistic missiles, a huge fleet of submarines and some of the best generals in the world. This army was bombing Churchill's country every night, building up and invasion force at his border, and taking over all of Europe, all with the Americans staying out of it because they didn't believe it conserned them until they themselves were attacked. If Winston Chirchill was alive to hear an American claming to carry on his legacy by invading a third world country with a pathetic military of antiquated machinary just because it has a highly doubtable link to a terrorist organisation that bombed the US once, he would laugh in your face.
As for myself. I am proud of my country's involvement in real wars where my country's or other country's liberty is at stake. If however you continue to associating trifling matters of superstition and parranoia with defending human rights, stopping terrorism, and ending oppression you make a mockery of those who actually fought and died to achieve these things. With people like you around, I fear for my children as well.
Sorry if I gave the impression that I thought that all americans supported current US foreign policy. I know there are many Americans who think George W is a stupid moron who is going to distroy the planet, but I didn't want to mention you guys lest I alert the authorities to your existance and you be denounced as the "fift column of evil" or something similarly inane.
Not to stick up for DMCA, but didn't it say they were fleeing the EU? When the US is wrong it's wrong, but why doesn't anyone ever regonize when the EU or Oz or any other nation makes a gaff? We even gripe more about the US than China.
George W. Bush and Hu Jintao both came to Australia a few weeks ago, and both offered a free trade agreement. The Chineese one was a simple "We'll buy your stuff if you sell it to us" agreement, the American one however was "We'll buy your stuff, if you change your laws to the way we want them". This includes DMCA like laws and increased copyright time.
China was made famous by their invasion of Tibet and their treatment of Taiwan (although to be fair, Taiwan did split from China to begin with). Yet most of the time China treats other countries sovereignty and their right to make up their own laws with far more respect than Uncle Sam.
I am asuming that you are from America so this might come as a shock to you, but apart from South Korea and small pockets of teenagers in eastern Canada, almost everyone outside the US hates the US. This is why you have heard so much bitching over the interent, because 5.9 Billion people are pissed off.
The US goes around invading countries and then refusing to pay for their restoration to even pre-war standards (let alone pre-embargo), instead trying to dump the bill on the UN. The US goes around changing people's laws with threat of ecconomic or military action. The US uses the CIA to play around with people's religeons by using fake Imams to preach Islam that suits the US foreign policy. The US frequently gets involved in other people's civil wars such as Vietnam. The US arms such nutcases as Saddam Husain and Osama Bin Laden in attempts to settle petty disputes with countries such as Iran and Russia.
In a barely related comment, did anyone notice that one of the sites about the Diebold mess was a.NZ site pretty much dedicated to bashed US conservatives? Does that mean US politicians are now more interesting than the Royals? (Common on, you know which Royals I mean.)
Queen Elizabeth although the head of the British armed forces including the British Nuclear arsonal has very little power. Therefore the only thing interesting about her is to be able to laugh at her and her family when her granson smokes pot or her son commits adultary or her late daughter in law's butler publishes embarassing and possibly false information. The american conservatives do the same amount of things that are stupid, its just when they do, people die. Learning about republican stupidity when you are outside the US is all part of the movement towards reality TV, because when you hear that George W does something stupid, you get up the next morning and find your city bombed.
If one was to release their works under the BSD licence and the GPL licence, people wanting to "embrace and extend" would simply use the BSD licence, and we wouldn't get any of the protection that the GPL offers.
How is that a compromise? It sounds more like total acceptance of the BSD licence and usage of the GPL for show.
However Madhatter is largely based on GPLed software. GPL is (despite our BSD loving friends' statements to the contrary) an assurance that pretty much all of Madhatter will be free and "the rest of us" therefore will be able to enjoy any contribution that Sun Makes to Gnome or mozilla.
And it of course goes without saying that we will be able to enjoy the advancements in java that will occur when Sun integrates it more with the Linux desktop. (including the usage of GTK in java's UI allowing java programs to work better with GTK programs and even slightly better with QT based programs.
If I was doing something like this, I would make the security deliberatly crappy. Imagine if a week after it got created, it got 0wn3d and someone used it to deliver a funny message. This would give it great (albeit humiliating) media coverage and cause people to watch it day and night in the hope of seeing something like that again. And of course all this attention would bring int millions in advertising dollars.
OK, why can't every one shut up about the sheriff thing. That is by no means the Australian attitude, nor is it even Bush's attitude. Bush simply meant to say that he does not consider Australia to be inferior to the US, he just messed it up in the delivery like he allways does.
Bush just missunderestimated (sic) the impact that would have on Australia's neighbours. If leaders reacted in the same way every time bush said something stupid then we would have worldwide chaos.
Most people all around the world know that Bush is an idiot yet many of them still take it personally when Bush says something dumb, that to me is a mark of immaturity.
But getting back to the topic, this is not about patents. This issue is about copyright, a different principle entirely. I am however still going to write to my local member in Canberra about it, and you can write to your member in Canberra too after we put on our six shooter and sherrif star and annex your pitiful country.
Well, there are far fewer linux zealots than terrorists. I have many linux lovin' friends and I have only met one person who if one was to use this article as a criterion would one would classify as a zealot (many of my fellow priests have been called zealots quite often but simply by MS dark priests as an insult).
Terrorists however are a small subset of a larger group of religeous and political fundimentalists who deal with issues of history and eternity, salvation and damnation, blood and death. These are issues that one can get far more passionant about than one can simply about how ones operating system is structured which in the scheme of things is pretty meaningless.
As a result of this difference, there are only a few million linux users about half a million of them are commited to linux as an ideal, there are however two billion christians and one billion moslems with about half a billion of each group practicing their religeon. Out of those probably 20% of each would be considered fundimentalists.
These fundimentalists are not neccisarily violent of course, but it would be safe to say that all would kill for their religeon if they had a good reason, possibly 1% of Christian fundimentalists, and 20% of Islamic fundimentalists consider that their god actually does want people to kill some people, about 1 in 10 thinks their god would want them to kill civilians, it is those people would would be called terrorist sympathisers and even potential terrorists, sort of the religeous equivilent of linux zealots. That leads me to a figure of 2100000 people who would consider killing innocent civilians in god's name as a justifyable act.
If however you assume that there are 1 million people who use linux because they like it, I have about 20 friends who like linux, one of which is a zealot nutcase like the article discribes. That is only 50000 nutjobs, 1/42nd of the number of religeous wackjobs
When you consider how few terrorist acts are committed per year (about ten major attacks average, excluding attacks on soldiers in occupied territory, vigilante actions targeted against individuals and other disciminatry attacks), Linux zealots, to maintain the same per-person average would only need to commit one major terrorist action every four years, and since the cause was very small in the past there is no reason one should assume that just beacause there were no terrorist actions in the last four years by the linux zealots that the linux zealots are any less dangerous than any religeous zealots.
Whoever modded this guy up deserves an extra 5 mod points to spread their magic elsewhere on slashot for showing that wineing AC parent who the lame unfunny one is by modding this one up.
It makes me think that if "anonymous coward" was an actual user, not a special case: the user would have a huge negative karma and would never be able to post on slashdot again.
Well, in a closing remark, just to bring this post back on-topic so I don't get modded myself, I congratulate the makers of that pole for making such tremendous nominations. If I were asked to vote I would be overwhelmed like a child on a candy store by how many I wanted to vote for in the same list.
Back in the old days two armies would just take their swords, spears and sheilds to a field outside the disputed city and cut the crap out of each other until one side lost about a quater of their men, in which case they would either retreat for a few kilometers or let the other side have a few boxes of gold so the winner would go home.
Shortly before the first world war new technologies like exploding artilery shells, amunition with integrated powder and slugs, guns that could fire these shells hundreds of times per minutes, devices that could shoot flaming fuel at enemys and poisons that could be spreyed over long distances. These weapons facilitated the killing of much more people and so countires had to start taking wars far too personally, their soldiers held themselves up in trenches in battles that would take months, have tens of thousends of casualties and would be no fun for anyone in the slightest.
It was probably during the second world war when people just realised "damn these soldiers are getting too hard to kill, civilians are far easier!" so they used their new toys: aeroplanes and high explosives to kill them instead.
Now real war (not just invasion of third world countires) is something that if it was ever to occur again would clearly be the end of our species. We now have hydrogen bombs, intercontenental balistic missiles and germ bombs and one would have to be a fool to suggest that a country armed with these weapons would not employ them.
I know that these lazers are not as bad as nutron bombs, napalm and other things that were invented last century but the more of these new toys we invent, the further we get from those fun battles we used to have three thousend years ago with swords and bows and absolutely no civilian casualtys, the battles that made one into a man, not a radioactive ember.
NetBSD was clearly the winner because for
Sure it went nuts and through the roof after that, but who really cares? >4000 connections are rarely used by anyone.
I am not in anyway a NetBSD appologist, I have never used it, the only BSD I have really used (installed and ran locally) was OpenBSD and I didn't like that much, so don't give me none of that "making up excuses for a dying OS 'cause I am a zealot" crap, I just think that NetBSD deserves the credit for kicking huge amounts of arse in that feild.
Personally, as the guy who stated that the sears tower would be the second heighest if aerials were included I am happy to be corrected and I acknowledge that the Ostankino Tower would be indeed be taller nomatter what implication that would have in the comparison between Russia and the United States. I am a citizen of neither so I don't really care.
I am an Australian, a member of a nation that doesn't really have a huge number of "biggests" and "firsts" (we still have a quite a few for a country with a small population). It may supprise some people to know that we Australians don't even have the largest steel arch bridge, the French hold that record with the Bayonne Arch, which was built before ours and is a meter longer. But then again, many more people know about and can recognise the Sydney Harbour Bridge than any bridge in France despite the fact that ours is not the biggest so who cares?
We Australians have great beer, foreign chicks dig our macho stigma and we will kick anyones arse in cricket. Maybe that whole cold war dick measuring contest you seem so intent on continuing in slashdot could have been solved if the US and the USSR got drunk together, played some cricket, and got laid by a whole lot of hot chicks.
According to the criteria that are used to judge the height of the world's tallest buildings, only real floorspace and "architectural spires" are able to be counted in the total height. Aerials, flagpoles, lightning rods and other such utilitarian additions are not included. If that were not the case, the massive CN tower in Toronto would still be the tallest building after 30 years, with the Sears tower in Chicago coming second with it's Aerial sticking far above the top of the actual measured region.
If however architectural spires were not included in the height either, the Sears tower (excluding aerial) would be far taller than the Peronas towers (I am not sure about Taipei 101 however).
So in answer to your question, adding a pole to the top of a building doesn't make it a bigger building. To improve your buildings height you must add a spire (i.e. a real fat pole that serves no particular purpose apart from aesthetics). The rules are stupid, I know, but then again, I didn't make them up, and at least they stop people from using carbon fiber rods to cheat.
I am not sure whether you actually prefer AMSN to gaim (in which case keep it and ignore the rest of my message), but if you were to upgrade GAIM to the latest version (0.71 AFAIK) it would all work fine and dandy
Slashdot Mirror
The interface of gnome is still quite unique in comparison to GNUstep which is a blatent NEXTstep rippoff so much so that they don't even bother denying it.
Gnome has been setting itself ambitious goals in system integration and I think that it is good that they have OSX so that they can aspire to reach its level of integration, though not its methods.
Free Software developers arn't gnats, they are a swarm of killer bees, wasps, tetse flys and mosquitoes carrying Ross River Fever and Malaria.
The analogy is even better when you realise that a heterogeneous swarm of poisonous and infectious insects would spend more time attacking each other than attacking the beast, just like real open source developers. That leads me to another question: Does human society mock nature or does nature mock human society? All I know for sure is everyone likes to mock computer nerds.
Qtopia is a finely engeneered environment, and I have nothing but praise for what I see in screenshots and technical documents about it. However I see the same problems with Qtopia being accepted as the de-facto standard for linux PDAs and I have with those who would make QT the de-facto standard in desktop linux GUIs.
Qtopia like its parent QT is written in C++, a farily controversial language amongst linux developers, it also uses Meta Objects which are an even more controversial addition to the language. This threatens to isolate many developers who would not use such a tool because of personal preference, with no fallback into an ISO standard complient c++ environment or a c environment.
Qtopia is also licenced under the same licence scheme as QT, dual licenced under the GPL and QPL. This sceme allows development of open source applications using the GPL and proprietary applications using the QPL after per-developer fees have been payed. This is however sub-optimal in comparison to a simple LGPL or BSD licences in which similar libarys of this type have been licenced for numerous reasons. First and least importantly it seems silly that to develop a graphical progam under Palm OS is free, yet for a linux PDA (the so called free OS) eqivalent one must pay a licence fee. Secondly, the QPL also misses out on multiple consumer protection clauses regarding binary distributed software noted in the LGPL. Thirdly in order to port the application to another platform, an activity in-keeping with the Free Software spirit, licence fees must be payed even for an open application. I am sure Trolltech would be happy to arrange an exemption for a bona fide OSS project, however this type of special arrangement is not in keeping with the principles of Free Software.
This post is not intended to insite a flamewar, I have made no value judgments about the actual performance or technical elements of either Qtopia or QT, I havn't commented on the legitimacy of KDE, which I belive is a fine project, probably exceding gnome in power and usability. However I urge people to consider these aspects when they choose which projects to support. Remember, in the future it will be possible to unify the desktop by making QT dependant on GNUStep, GTK+ or whatever comes out in front in a similar way to what Trolltech has done with MacOS and Windows interfaces, but the reverse is impossible due to both licence and structual incompatibilites.
In a minimum security prison (where non-violent offenders like music pirates are usually sent) there is a compartivly low chance of rape or violence.
That said, Australia's gaols are still very awful places and I would judge the effect of an institution like that on a university student with no criminal history involved in a minor crime, would be far from positive.
By the way: Gaol is how we Australians spell Jail if anyone's wondering what on earth I am talking about
This could include things like PHP or ASP or apache CGI. Or maybe it could be argued that it is specific to the delivary system of Amazon or particular types of merchandise. Possibly one could even integrate a third party service into it such as Paypal or MS Passport and claim that it is a totally different business model and therefore not covered by the patent.
The possibilities of dodging the patent are opened up much wider by the patent being able to continue. This should be exploited
This is because if you did, you would realise that it was very well written and not hugely technical. I wouldn't be supprised if 95%+ of the slashdot crowd did understand it.
As a general rule, slashdotters seem to get very zealous and have a habit of not RTFAing, but they generally have good comprehension skills and I don't think you give them the credit they deserve.
Sorry, I was just arguing semantics. It's just that I had a cool example relating to a previous poster and I thought I should mention it because it was funny.
And by the way, Russia is not "third world". Russia is "second world" by definition. The term "third world" was created as a reference to the fact that while the US and Russia were competing to be the richest, most advanced, most successful country in the world (the "first world"), much of the planet was being completely ignored. This is the "third world".
To put this in slashdot terms, this is same as the difference between banning Music piracy and enforcing DRM, one is preventing you from doing what you shouldn't do through legal means, the other is implementing something that watches you as you do things that you should be doing.
X-ray googles have however never been created, and their usage to see through clothing to see naked skin is utturly rediculous, yet they are still illegal. I don't know if this law is still valid, however I doubt if it has been overturned. This is an example however of a technology that never was legal.
You state that France and Germany both invaded other countries. This is true, however German invaions were carried out by a reigeme that was distroyed by force then systematically tried condemned and executed then zelously denounced by govenment policy for fifty years. The Last large scale French invasion was carried out by Napolion two hundred years ago. You cannot hold Nazi indiscressions or Napolionic ambition against Germany of France any more than one can blame the Italians for sacking Jerusalem or invading Gaul. However at the same time Napoleon was attacking Russia, America was attacking Canada and Mexico while conducting the wholesale slaughter of natives, yet I don't hold that against America because it was two hundred years ago.
You later call me a lier, because of my non-existant statements refering to France and Germany. They could have been a responce to my comment about arming Saddam but surely one cannot deny this simply because France also participated. You then mention terrorists being a threat with a lot of rhetoric about women and children, bombs and the like which are frightning but wholly irrelevent in the context of Iraq. As far as I know no links between Iraq and Al Quida have been found, Saddam Hussain was a very secular leader in contrast to the religeous nutcases that lead the bordering countries. Saddam Hussain also had a repution as a cold hearted, ruthless destroyer of religeous extremists, many terrorists and terrorist supporters have been slaughtered in very nasty ways by him and his leftenants yet you consider leaving him in power would have threatened our women and children with terrorism more than distroying his regime and letting the country decay into a crazy theocracy like Iran or Afghanistan who have a grudge against western countries for invading them? If someone wanted to distroy a bastion of religeous extremism, human rights abuses and a haven for terrorism they would be attacking Saudi Arabia instead.
As for Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill stood against a huge foe, the Third Reich, an empire that had thousends of dedicated troops, superior tanks and aircraft, balistic missiles, a huge fleet of submarines and some of the best generals in the world. This army was bombing Churchill's country every night, building up and invasion force at his border, and taking over all of Europe, all with the Americans staying out of it because they didn't believe it conserned them until they themselves were attacked. If Winston Chirchill was alive to hear an American claming to carry on his legacy by invading a third world country with a pathetic military of antiquated machinary just because it has a highly doubtable link to a terrorist organisation that bombed the US once, he would laugh in your face.
As for myself. I am proud of my country's involvement in real wars where my country's or other country's liberty is at stake. If however you continue to associating trifling matters of superstition and parranoia with defending human rights, stopping terrorism, and ending oppression you make a mockery of those who actually fought and died to achieve these things. With people like you around, I fear for my children as well.
Sorry if I gave the impression that I thought that all americans supported current US foreign policy. I know there are many Americans who think George W is a stupid moron who is going to distroy the planet, but I didn't want to mention you guys lest I alert the authorities to your existance and you be denounced as the "fift column of evil" or something similarly inane.
George W. Bush and Hu Jintao both came to Australia a few weeks ago, and both offered a free trade agreement. The Chineese one was a simple "We'll buy your stuff if you sell it to us" agreement, the American one however was "We'll buy your stuff, if you change your laws to the way we want them". This includes DMCA like laws and increased copyright time.
China was made famous by their invasion of Tibet and their treatment of Taiwan (although to be fair, Taiwan did split from China to begin with). Yet most of the time China treats other countries sovereignty and their right to make up their own laws with far more respect than Uncle Sam.
I am asuming that you are from America so this might come as a shock to you, but apart from South Korea and small pockets of teenagers in eastern Canada, almost everyone outside the US hates the US. This is why you have heard so much bitching over the interent, because 5.9 Billion people are pissed off.
The US goes around invading countries and then refusing to pay for their restoration to even pre-war standards (let alone pre-embargo), instead trying to dump the bill on the UN. The US goes around changing people's laws with threat of ecconomic or military action. The US uses the CIA to play around with people's religeons by using fake Imams to preach Islam that suits the US foreign policy. The US frequently gets involved in other people's civil wars such as Vietnam. The US arms such nutcases as Saddam Husain and Osama Bin Laden in attempts to settle petty disputes with countries such as Iran and Russia.
In a barely related comment, did anyone notice that one of the sites about the Diebold mess was a .NZ site pretty much dedicated to bashed US conservatives? Does that mean US politicians are now more interesting than the Royals? (Common on, you know which Royals I mean.)
Queen Elizabeth although the head of the British armed forces including the British Nuclear arsonal has very little power. Therefore the only thing interesting about her is to be able to laugh at her and her family when her granson smokes pot or her son commits adultary or her late daughter in law's butler publishes embarassing and possibly false information. The american conservatives do the same amount of things that are stupid, its just when they do, people die. Learning about republican stupidity when you are outside the US is all part of the movement towards reality TV, because when you hear that George W does something stupid, you get up the next morning and find your city bombed.
How is that a compromise? It sounds more like total acceptance of the BSD licence and usage of the GPL for show.
However Madhatter is largely based on GPLed software. GPL is (despite our BSD loving friends' statements to the contrary) an assurance that pretty much all of Madhatter will be free and "the rest of us" therefore will be able to enjoy any contribution that Sun Makes to Gnome or mozilla.
And it of course goes without saying that we will be able to enjoy the advancements in java that will occur when Sun integrates it more with the Linux desktop. (including the usage of GTK in java's UI allowing java programs to work better with GTK programs and even slightly better with QT based programs.
Who said hackers were bad for buisiness?!
Bush just missunderestimated (sic) the impact that would have on Australia's neighbours. If leaders reacted in the same way every time bush said something stupid then we would have worldwide chaos.
Most people all around the world know that Bush is an idiot yet many of them still take it personally when Bush says something dumb, that to me is a mark of immaturity.
But getting back to the topic, this is not about patents. This issue is about copyright, a different principle entirely. I am however still going to write to my local member in Canberra about it, and you can write to your member in Canberra too after we put on our six shooter and sherrif star and annex your pitiful country.
Terrorists however are a small subset of a larger group of religeous and political fundimentalists who deal with issues of history and eternity, salvation and damnation, blood and death. These are issues that one can get far more passionant about than one can simply about how ones operating system is structured which in the scheme of things is pretty meaningless.
As a result of this difference, there are only a few million linux users about half a million of them are commited to linux as an ideal, there are however two billion christians and one billion moslems with about half a billion of each group practicing their religeon. Out of those probably 20% of each would be considered fundimentalists.
These fundimentalists are not neccisarily violent of course, but it would be safe to say that all would kill for their religeon if they had a good reason, possibly 1% of Christian fundimentalists, and 20% of Islamic fundimentalists consider that their god actually does want people to kill some people, about 1 in 10 thinks their god would want them to kill civilians, it is those people would would be called terrorist sympathisers and even potential terrorists, sort of the religeous equivilent of linux zealots. That leads me to a figure of 2100000 people who would consider killing innocent civilians in god's name as a justifyable act.
If however you assume that there are 1 million people who use linux because they like it, I have about 20 friends who like linux, one of which is a zealot nutcase like the article discribes. That is only 50000 nutjobs, 1/42nd of the number of religeous wackjobs
When you consider how few terrorist acts are committed per year (about ten major attacks average, excluding attacks on soldiers in occupied territory, vigilante actions targeted against individuals and other disciminatry attacks), Linux zealots, to maintain the same per-person average would only need to commit one major terrorist action every four years, and since the cause was very small in the past there is no reason one should assume that just beacause there were no terrorist actions in the last four years by the linux zealots that the linux zealots are any less dangerous than any religeous zealots.
Cute pun, but I don't think you can get anywhere in legal argument relying on puns, if we did the law would be a joke!
And you thought the assembly pun was bad!
It makes me think that if "anonymous coward" was an actual user, not a special case: the user would have a huge negative karma and would never be able to post on slashdot again.
Well, in a closing remark, just to bring this post back on-topic so I don't get modded myself, I congratulate the makers of that pole for making such tremendous nominations. If I were asked to vote I would be overwhelmed like a child on a candy store by how many I wanted to vote for in the same list.
Shortly before the first world war new technologies like exploding artilery shells, amunition with integrated powder and slugs, guns that could fire these shells hundreds of times per minutes, devices that could shoot flaming fuel at enemys and poisons that could be spreyed over long distances. These weapons facilitated the killing of much more people and so countires had to start taking wars far too personally, their soldiers held themselves up in trenches in battles that would take months, have tens of thousends of casualties and would be no fun for anyone in the slightest.
It was probably during the second world war when people just realised "damn these soldiers are getting too hard to kill, civilians are far easier!" so they used their new toys: aeroplanes and high explosives to kill them instead.
Now real war (not just invasion of third world countires) is something that if it was ever to occur again would clearly be the end of our species. We now have hydrogen bombs, intercontenental balistic missiles and germ bombs and one would have to be a fool to suggest that a country armed with these weapons would not employ them.
I know that these lazers are not as bad as nutron bombs, napalm and other things that were invented last century but the more of these new toys we invent, the further we get from those fun battles we used to have three thousend years ago with swords and bows and absolutely no civilian casualtys, the battles that made one into a man, not a radioactive ember.
I am not in anyway a NetBSD appologist, I have never used it, the only BSD I have really used (installed and ran locally) was OpenBSD and I didn't like that much, so don't give me none of that "making up excuses for a dying OS 'cause I am a zealot" crap, I just think that NetBSD deserves the credit for kicking huge amounts of arse in that feild.
I am an Australian, a member of a nation that doesn't really have a huge number of "biggests" and "firsts" (we still have a quite a few for a country with a small population). It may supprise some people to know that we Australians don't even have the largest steel arch bridge, the French hold that record with the Bayonne Arch, which was built before ours and is a meter longer. But then again, many more people know about and can recognise the Sydney Harbour Bridge than any bridge in France despite the fact that ours is not the biggest so who cares?
We Australians have great beer, foreign chicks dig our macho stigma and we will kick anyones arse in cricket. Maybe that whole cold war dick measuring contest you seem so intent on continuing in slashdot could have been solved if the US and the USSR got drunk together, played some cricket, and got laid by a whole lot of hot chicks.
If however architectural spires were not included in the height either, the Sears tower (excluding aerial) would be far taller than the Peronas towers (I am not sure about Taipei 101 however).
So in answer to your question, adding a pole to the top of a building doesn't make it a bigger building. To improve your buildings height you must add a spire (i.e. a real fat pole that serves no particular purpose apart from aesthetics). The rules are stupid, I know, but then again, I didn't make them up, and at least they stop people from using carbon fiber rods to cheat.
I am not sure whether you actually prefer AMSN to gaim (in which case keep it and ignore the rest of my message), but if you were to upgrade GAIM to the latest version (0.71 AFAIK) it would all work fine and dandy