In point of fact, those articles are quite clearly right in the middle.
Define middle. Every article was critical of the US establishment. I bet more than 50% of the US populace would consider them very liberal. By definition, that's left of center.
It's a sad fact that the media in this country is slanted so far to the right
Which is why newspapers and TV back Democratic candidates 10 to 1?
For example, the whole gay marriage issue doesn't exist on the political spectrum. "We hold these truths to be self evident-- that all men are created equal."
That's your interpretation. While I support gay marriage. "equal protection" could be interpreted to mean that even gay men have the same right to marry women that straight men do. Gay marriage is most certainly a liberal agenda, even though I support it.
Unless you consider Democrats AND Repulblicans, for whom 95+% of Americans vote, to be right of center, then you're off your rocker. And at that point, I'd say your definition of center is egocentric, because it contains only you.
You may remember, way back two or three messages ago, your dismissing the idea of this story as "liberal propaganda." Please write Pat and let him know how he's fallen into sin and error. How surprised he's going to be!
;) No, in that case, it's good old-fashioned revenge. Particularly since Pat's turned a 180 since leaving the Rep. party. I never heard anything like that in 92 when he was running for president as a republican.
Where's the evidence for any of this junk? So you have a few articles from some nutball conservatives who wants America to take over the world. I can introduce you to a schizophrenic who thinks he's Jesus. Does that make it newsworthy? No! These guys aren't in power. I could point to some scary-assed Democrats too, but I expect the DNC doesn't want them speaking for it, either.
If they have Bush or Rumsfeld on the hook for this, that's one thing. But quoting one nutjob and assuming that he speaks for anyone but himself is stupid.
Also, I notice that article was by Pat Buchanan. Do you want to set a precedent of taking that lunatic as gospel? You may recall he was once the most extreme Republican candidate until he broke off. Sounds like some pot and kettle to me.
I find it funny what most USians seem to consider "being miles left of center". Most of those stories / ideas are not considered "ultra left" in the rest of the world.
If the "rest of the world swallows that paranoid-delusional evidence-less crap, that's not my problem.
And you might not want to speak for 5 billion people.
Let's see some evidence where American money or military has gone to Rwanda since the start of this civil war.
Do something constructive in Africa even if it doesn't have any oil.
What country do you live in, and what is it doing?
Personally I think it's pretty bloody obvious that there are some countries that cannot control themselves when guns are lying around.
I'd agree, but that 1.5 billion dollar figure to all of africa between 1950 and 1989 amounts to $40million per year for the entire continent. First, that's ancient history. Second, you can't fight a war on $40M divided however many ways. The "evidence" for this claim is ridiculous. Perhaps you can provide us with better.
I would argue it is the most slanted stories that most deserve reporting, because they challenge us to really examine both the facts and the motivations of the parties making the news.
Well that's an interesting take. I'd agree assuming that 1) said stories possess actual evidence, and 2) they at least *balance* the net direction of the slant. Not, for example, like the one in question.
What is interesting to me is how the middle-of-the-road media so effectively avoids stirring the intellects of their readers/listeners/viewers
Problem is that most viewers lack intellect. People like seeing the weather, car chases (I'm in LA), pointless feel-good bullshit, and crime. That's it. Oh, and sports.
by shying away from stories with a hint of slant (unless of course it's to get on their high and mighty about "partisan politics")
Believe it or not, most news sources (TV networks not called Fox) are fairly left (as in Democrat). They just don't go extremist liberal. I read a book by Bernard Goldberg (former newscaster at CBS) called "Bias." He's a card-carrying Democrat, but did a good job showing how the networks were consistently left-biased. Gets a bit repetitive after the first 100 pages, but he makes his point. He lost his job for blowing that whistle, too (before he wrote the book, just for a WSJ op-ed).
Out of curiosity, can you point me to 25 similarly underreported stories that would compose an Ultra-Conservatism 101?
Not being ultra-conservative, I doubt it. I've heard some damn strange conspiracy theories from them, I just ignore and forget.;)
A recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report giving field measurements taken around selected impact sites in Kosovo (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) indicates that contamination by DU in the environment was localized to a few tens of metres around impact sites. Contamination by DU dusts of local vegetation and water supplies was found to be extremely low. Thus, the probability of significant exposure to local populations was considered to be very low.
I'm not seeing any significant danger from your evidence. I expect there would be more risk had lead been used for the bullets instead. I suspect there are more things to worry about than the extremely minimal toxicity of depleted U. The only people with an even measurable risk are those actually mining the stuff over a period of years.
So? Most people used to support slavery. (I know that's a strawman):)
Yeah, a pretty bad strawman too. The gparent was probably a troll, but that said, since moral compasses are by definition subjective, morals by democracy is the best way to get a reading.
When your proud army finds all the WMD that George and Tony lied about, then you can lecture me
They won't be found. I don't know 100% that they ever were there, though given Sadaam's character I suspect they were. However, the idiotic UN gave Sadaam enough time that he would have to have been retarded not to have been able to destroy them or get them out of the country.
Depleted uranium is not radioactive, but it is toxic.
In what way? Haven't heard anything about that.
If you think it's a great idea to spray the environment with these bullets, then by all means, please allow me to dump a box of spent ammo into your water supply.
I'd be more afraid of said bullet's kinetic energy than toxicity. Persumably, what the bullets are removing (ie, assholes) is more of a threat than the uranium. If not, the US military shouldn't be there anyway.
I didn't realize that being liberal was equivalent with being interested in the what actually happens in the world, instead of what gets filtered through the short attention span, J-Lo and Ben sieve.
No, but when EVERY one of those "censored" stories clearly have the same agenda (ie, being miles left of center), it is fair to assume that the site's reporting is pretty highly slanted. Every one of those was an attack piece with damned shady "evidence". That's not news, that's propaganda.
I mean honestly, that stuff was up there with the conservative AIDS conspiracies from a few years ago. Would you agree that they were just people who were "interested in what happens in the world" ? I doubt it very much.
There's nothing wrong with being liberal, but this site gives non-paranoid-delusional liberals a bad name.
Don't tell Apple that! They're using KHTML as the core of Safari.
First, I'm not a Machead, but I honestly think they've done a better job of integrating it so it's somewhat transparent. I think it should be lower-level and be designed to take "skins" better so it can feel like different things. But, again, a matter of taste I suppose. I'll at least concede that KDE's gotten mileage out of their browser.
Then I guess you haven't heard about the OpenOffice KDE kpart component. It's going to be dog slow, just because OOo is dog slow, but it's happening, and it will probably be a standard KDE component once it stabilizes.
No, that is news to me. Good for them. I think. I also shudder at the prospect of using OO.
In KDE 3.0 I got a few core KDE apps to crash. But I've never seen one later than kde-3.1.
I'll have to check to see what version I'm using. Could be upgrade time anyway.
This is not true. If you subscribe to a service, and submit a press release, the wire services will pick it up. When I had a small company, we issued press releases. We paid our couple hundred bucks, our press release got out.
Tree in the forest with no one around, my friend. No one reads the AP wire. No paper will pick it up. No one will read your story.
Slander? Libel?
on
Back To SCO
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· Score: 4, Informative
Slander is spoken. Libel is written. He's guilty of libel.
But a web browser is a slightly different thing. I hate to give kudos to Microsoft, but integrating the browser into the desktop is a damned good idea.
Matter of taste I suppose, but even if this were the goal, I don't see why one has to develop a *completely* new browser, guts and all. If they're going to do a new one, alternatively, it could be actually *better* integrated into the environment so it's seamless. To me, it just acts like a web browser regardless of what I want it to do, and it seems a bit "jack of all trades, master of none" to me. It seems like the worst of all worlds - a kludgely file manager, web browser, viewer, etc.
p.s. KOffice is not a part of the KDE desktop. It's a separate project.
This is true, but one wouldn't know it from the way that KDE comes default with KOffice fairly integrated. There are better options, but KDE seems rather stuck on KOffice, for some reason.
p.p.s. The KDE environment is rock solid.
First, I beg to differ. I get KDE crashes, if not frequently, at least too often. Previously, every time I shut down VMWare, KDE had a DCOM crash and the toolbar disappeared. KDE's good, but it's not "rock solid" by any reasonable estimation, and it's certainly not as polished as it could be.
I'm sorry, but have you ever seen an action movie before? They aren't very good when the protagonist avoids all conflict...
First, I'll disclose that I'm not a matrix freak. That said, I really agree with the notion that pointless, prolonged fight scenes really kill a movie. That's not to say fight scenes aren't cool - but when they don't make sense they detract from the plot.
I'm not saying Agent Smith and Neo should have sat and talked about their feelings. The script just should have been better so that scene made more sense as something Neo would have done.
Have you stopped to consider that most open source developers who are working on their own time want to work on whatever they want to work on? You can't force them to work on something else to suit tech gurus (like yourself, most likely), who have a different agenda to push "Linux to the masses."
Sure I have. Free country (world), certainly. I just can't see why one wouldn't rather put all that work into something people will actually use.
Also, I'm actually not in IT - I'm a chemist - so this rant isn't because crappy KDE is hurting me in the wallet. It's just frustrating from the standpoint of knowing that those little unpolished aspects of it *could* be much better. I'd work on it myself if I had the skills.
I'm sure many KDE developers would love to see that happen, but I think most of them are working on whatever for fun.
That's true, but the KDE organization does have structure. And I think the leadership is actually pushing the suite, hence its prominent placement in the default toolbar. That's why I think they could benefit from having some focus. I think it would ultimately be a better product. And I think these people *do* take pride in their work. That's why I don't understand the decision-making process.
Not to destory microsoft or whatever many Linux zealots^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husers want to do.
There is that component of the linux crowd, unfortunately. I could actually care less if software is "open" or "closed" if it works. Personally, for me, it's more that I'm a bit frustrated with all the linux desktop choices. I hate windows because it crashes all the time. But the common linux window managers are almost as buggy as windows at times. Naturally, they doesn't take down the whole box with a crash, but it's still frustrating. I don't think it's wrong to want linux on the desktop to approach the quality of the command line. Again, I think it's a matter of focus and priorities.
zealots^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husers
You're writing on a terminal, aren't you? I don't think those ^H's got turned into backspaces.;)
Koffice was around before OpenOffice ever existed.
How sad, then, that it's as bad as it is? Perhaps they should consider abandoning it? No point in keeping it on life support for the sake thereof. Besides, it wasn't the first word processor or spreadsheet for linux, even if it beat OpenOffice. At some point, they decided to make a superfluous piece of software. KOffice isn't original. It's an uninspired and feature-poor clone, by today's standards or those of 5 years ago.
(ever saw the abomination that was StarOffice 5.1?).
Yep. It was horrible. KOffice now is worse.
Koffice has pretty much had less then 10 developers working part time on it as a hobby for 5 years
Then why make it a prominent part of KDE? First, it's a credibility thing - do you want your name associated with crappy software? Second, one would think those talented people could be used elsewhere on the KDE project. Or, if you *want* to make an office suite, devote people to it and *do it right*!
while SO/OOo has had many full time developers working on various parts of it since 1989.
Right, but you don't get to handicap the match. Users don't care. Bottom line is SO/OO has always been better than KOffice, and it still is. Furthermore, KOffice isn't narrowing the gap. It's a waste of time and effort that could be spent elsewhere.
There are obviously reasons to keep it around,
Not obvious to me. What reasons? Nostalgia? Humor? To make crappy programmers like me feel better?
in the same fashion that there are keep Epiphany or GNOME-office aroumd.
Now that's definitely nuts. That's the whole point - linux on the desktop might not be the fractured pile of crap that it is if we could get past the argument of "It couldn't hurt to devote a half-assed effort at this overly ambitious but impossibly undermanned project." It does hurt. It hurts the core project that doesn't improve at the rate it could.
Like gparent said, could we suspend work on another browser or office suite until PRINTING works right?
I know it's been mentioned before, but it bears repeating: by purchasing used music, you are increasing the demand for used music. This makes it easier for people who buy new music from the RIAA to resell their music when they are done with it, thus indirectly increasing their new music consumption.
That occurred to me too, but I convinced myself the effect is minimal. I mean, it's not a new car where you're worrying about resale value - no one says "And when I get tired of this candy-coated tripe, I can still get $3 for it!" when buying a CD.
I think the secondary market helps the RIAA little or not at all. Although I do still favor the theory of spending money on vid games.;)
I'm sorry, but this is part of the force that is killing desktop acceptance in the open-source community. Everyone, their dog, and their 2-bit Saturday whore thinks they need to develop another web browser to share with the community. Suddenly we now have, what, 40ish browsers to choose from?
It's just chic. The problem is that everybody (being Gnome and KDE) won't be satisfied with a good operating environment. No, they have to do an entire user experience. In other words, they each want to be responsible for 95% of the graphical software used by any linux user. And that's just not rational. Case in point: KOffice, KDE's abominable attempt at an Office suite. As you say, why spend so much time making something that sucks so bad?
For what it's worth, never let it be said that open source developers are above reinventing the wheel. When profit is not a consideration, there's no boss to point you toward making things that have a market. We definitely need a greater degree of specialization.
I want to get the KDE and Gnome devs in two separate rooms, and lock them there until they swear never to make another browser, office suite, or useless widget again until they have the basic environment rock-solid.
Do you really expect to be able to distinguish between sounds of a second duration that are 2 millionths of a second apart? For all human-hearable frequencies you'll simply get reinforcement (which explains why sound travels so well over water).
Sorry, misinterpreted you there. Thought you were going for a muffling argument instead of reflection. As far as that goes, you're right, there's nothing in a duck's environment at a reasonably low angle to provide decent reflection.
As far as water, it can carry sound extremely well across the surface, largely because water is just a better conductor of anything (sound, heat, etc) than is air. Sitting on a fishing boat at night when it's fairly quiet, you can hear conversations near a mile away. So if the angle were right, I expect it might be possible, if you were far away from the duck, to hear its echo first (through water) before you hear the original through air. At that point, you would get the delay not through the slightly longer path length through water, but rather from faster transmission .
Finally, there's one time when you certainly can hear a duck's echo - when it's flying (I didn't say I wasn't above cheating!). Then it definitely reflects off water.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Define middle. Every article was critical of the US establishment. I bet more than 50% of the US populace would consider them very liberal. By definition, that's left of center.
It's a sad fact that the media in this country is slanted so far to the right
Which is why newspapers and TV back Democratic candidates 10 to 1?
For example, the whole gay marriage issue doesn't exist on the political spectrum. "We hold these truths to be self evident-- that all men are created equal."
That's your interpretation. While I support gay marriage. "equal protection" could be interpreted to mean that even gay men have the same right to marry women that straight men do. Gay marriage is most certainly a liberal agenda, even though I support it.
Unless you consider Democrats AND Repulblicans, for whom 95+% of Americans vote, to be right of center, then you're off your rocker. And at that point, I'd say your definition of center is egocentric, because it contains only you.
;) No, in that case, it's good old-fashioned revenge. Particularly since Pat's turned a 180 since leaving the Rep. party. I never heard anything like that in 92 when he was running for president as a republican.
If they have Bush or Rumsfeld on the hook for this, that's one thing. But quoting one nutjob and assuming that he speaks for anyone but himself is stupid.
Also, I notice that article was by Pat Buchanan. Do you want to set a precedent of taking that lunatic as gospel? You may recall he was once the most extreme Republican candidate until he broke off. Sounds like some pot and kettle to me.
If the "rest of the world swallows that paranoid-delusional evidence-less crap, that's not my problem.
And you might not want to speak for 5 billion people.
michael. How else? Really, man, take your damn politics elsewhere.
That or diversify the political bent of the editing crew to balance things out. I could do without the daily indoctrination, thanks.
Let's see some evidence where American money or military has gone to Rwanda since the start of this civil war.
Do something constructive in Africa even if it doesn't have any oil.
What country do you live in, and what is it doing?
Personally I think it's pretty bloody obvious that there are some countries that cannot control themselves when guns are lying around.
I'd agree, but that 1.5 billion dollar figure to all of africa between 1950 and 1989 amounts to $40million per year for the entire continent. First, that's ancient history. Second, you can't fight a war on $40M divided however many ways. The "evidence" for this claim is ridiculous. Perhaps you can provide us with better.
Text said that Prez has pissed off the Arab world. Duh! That's not a "Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance."
So we have mistagging evidence and spinning of facts. Not surprising. But equating an unpopular president to some conspiracy is a tad irrational.
Well that's an interesting take. I'd agree assuming that 1) said stories possess actual evidence, and 2) they at least *balance* the net direction of the slant. Not, for example, like the one in question.
What is interesting to me is how the middle-of-the-road media so effectively avoids stirring the intellects of their readers/listeners/viewers
Problem is that most viewers lack intellect. People like seeing the weather, car chases (I'm in LA), pointless feel-good bullshit, and crime. That's it. Oh, and sports.
by shying away from stories with a hint of slant (unless of course it's to get on their high and mighty about "partisan politics")
Believe it or not, most news sources (TV networks not called Fox) are fairly left (as in Democrat). They just don't go extremist liberal. I read a book by Bernard Goldberg (former newscaster at CBS) called "Bias." He's a card-carrying Democrat, but did a good job showing how the networks were consistently left-biased. Gets a bit repetitive after the first 100 pages, but he makes his point. He lost his job for blowing that whistle, too (before he wrote the book, just for a WSJ op-ed).
Out of curiosity, can you point me to 25 similarly underreported stories that would compose an Ultra-Conservatism 101?
Not being ultra-conservative, I doubt it. I've heard some damn strange conspiracy theories from them, I just ignore and forget. ;)
From the site you cited:
A recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report giving field measurements taken around selected impact sites in Kosovo (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) indicates that contamination by DU in the environment was localized to a few tens of metres around impact sites. Contamination by DU dusts of local vegetation and water supplies was found to be extremely low. Thus, the probability of significant exposure to local populations was considered to be very low.
I'm not seeing any significant danger from your evidence. I expect there would be more risk had lead been used for the bullets instead. I suspect there are more things to worry about than the extremely minimal toxicity of depleted U. The only people with an even measurable risk are those actually mining the stuff over a period of years.
Yeah, a pretty bad strawman too. The gparent was probably a troll, but that said, since moral compasses are by definition subjective, morals by democracy is the best way to get a reading.
When your proud army finds all the WMD that George and Tony lied about, then you can lecture me
They won't be found. I don't know 100% that they ever were there, though given Sadaam's character I suspect they were. However, the idiotic UN gave Sadaam enough time that he would have to have been retarded not to have been able to destroy them or get them out of the country.
In what way? Haven't heard anything about that.
If you think it's a great idea to spray the environment with these bullets, then by all means, please allow me to dump a box of spent ammo into your water supply.
I'd be more afraid of said bullet's kinetic energy than toxicity. Persumably, what the bullets are removing (ie, assholes) is more of a threat than the uranium. If not, the US military shouldn't be there anyway.
No, but when EVERY one of those "censored" stories clearly have the same agenda (ie, being miles left of center), it is fair to assume that the site's reporting is pretty highly slanted. Every one of those was an attack piece with damned shady "evidence". That's not news, that's propaganda.
I mean honestly, that stuff was up there with the conservative AIDS conspiracies from a few years ago. Would you agree that they were just people who were "interested in what happens in the world" ? I doubt it very much.
There's nothing wrong with being liberal, but this site gives non-paranoid-delusional liberals a bad name.
He will once SCO's stock dips below his option threshold.
First, I'm not a Machead, but I honestly think they've done a better job of integrating it so it's somewhat transparent. I think it should be lower-level and be designed to take "skins" better so it can feel like different things. But, again, a matter of taste I suppose. I'll at least concede that KDE's gotten mileage out of their browser.
Then I guess you haven't heard about the OpenOffice KDE kpart component. It's going to be dog slow, just because OOo is dog slow, but it's happening, and it will probably be a standard KDE component once it stabilizes.
No, that is news to me. Good for them. I think. I also shudder at the prospect of using OO.
In KDE 3.0 I got a few core KDE apps to crash. But I've never seen one later than kde-3.1.
I'll have to check to see what version I'm using. Could be upgrade time anyway.
Tree in the forest with no one around, my friend. No one reads the AP wire. No paper will pick it up. No one will read your story.
Darl also does interviews.
Matter of taste I suppose, but even if this were the goal, I don't see why one has to develop a *completely* new browser, guts and all. If they're going to do a new one, alternatively, it could be actually *better* integrated into the environment so it's seamless. To me, it just acts like a web browser regardless of what I want it to do, and it seems a bit "jack of all trades, master of none" to me. It seems like the worst of all worlds - a kludgely file manager, web browser, viewer, etc.
p.s. KOffice is not a part of the KDE desktop. It's a separate project.
This is true, but one wouldn't know it from the way that KDE comes default with KOffice fairly integrated. There are better options, but KDE seems rather stuck on KOffice, for some reason.
p.p.s. The KDE environment is rock solid.
First, I beg to differ. I get KDE crashes, if not frequently, at least too often. Previously, every time I shut down VMWare, KDE had a DCOM crash and the toolbar disappeared. KDE's good, but it's not "rock solid" by any reasonable estimation, and it's certainly not as polished as it could be.
First, I'll disclose that I'm not a matrix freak. That said, I really agree with the notion that pointless, prolonged fight scenes really kill a movie. That's not to say fight scenes aren't cool - but when they don't make sense they detract from the plot.
I'm not saying Agent Smith and Neo should have sat and talked about their feelings. The script just should have been better so that scene made more sense as something Neo would have done.
Sure I have. Free country (world), certainly. I just can't see why one wouldn't rather put all that work into something people will actually use.
Also, I'm actually not in IT - I'm a chemist - so this rant isn't because crappy KDE is hurting me in the wallet. It's just frustrating from the standpoint of knowing that those little unpolished aspects of it *could* be much better. I'd work on it myself if I had the skills.
I'm sure many KDE developers would love to see that happen, but I think most of them are working on whatever for fun.
That's true, but the KDE organization does have structure. And I think the leadership is actually pushing the suite, hence its prominent placement in the default toolbar. That's why I think they could benefit from having some focus. I think it would ultimately be a better product. And I think these people *do* take pride in their work. That's why I don't understand the decision-making process.
Not to destory microsoft or whatever many Linux zealots^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husers want to do.
There is that component of the linux crowd, unfortunately. I could actually care less if software is "open" or "closed" if it works. Personally, for me, it's more that I'm a bit frustrated with all the linux desktop choices. I hate windows because it crashes all the time. But the common linux window managers are almost as buggy as windows at times. Naturally, they doesn't take down the whole box with a crash, but it's still frustrating. I don't think it's wrong to want linux on the desktop to approach the quality of the command line. Again, I think it's a matter of focus and priorities.
zealots^H^H^H^H^H^H^Husers
You're writing on a terminal, aren't you? I don't think those ^H's got turned into backspaces. ;)
...with the next Duke Nukem and Doom 4.
I'm dead serious. It sucks.
Koffice was around before OpenOffice ever existed.
How sad, then, that it's as bad as it is? Perhaps they should consider abandoning it? No point in keeping it on life support for the sake thereof. Besides, it wasn't the first word processor or spreadsheet for linux, even if it beat OpenOffice. At some point, they decided to make a superfluous piece of software. KOffice isn't original. It's an uninspired and feature-poor clone, by today's standards or those of 5 years ago.
(ever saw the abomination that was StarOffice 5.1?).
Yep. It was horrible. KOffice now is worse.
Koffice has pretty much had less then 10 developers working part time on it as a hobby for 5 years
Then why make it a prominent part of KDE? First, it's a credibility thing - do you want your name associated with crappy software? Second, one would think those talented people could be used elsewhere on the KDE project. Or, if you *want* to make an office suite, devote people to it and *do it right*!
while SO/OOo has had many full time developers working on various parts of it since 1989.
Right, but you don't get to handicap the match. Users don't care. Bottom line is SO/OO has always been better than KOffice, and it still is. Furthermore, KOffice isn't narrowing the gap. It's a waste of time and effort that could be spent elsewhere.
There are obviously reasons to keep it around,
Not obvious to me. What reasons? Nostalgia? Humor? To make crappy programmers like me feel better?
in the same fashion that there are keep Epiphany or GNOME-office aroumd.
Now that's definitely nuts. That's the whole point - linux on the desktop might not be the fractured pile of crap that it is if we could get past the argument of "It couldn't hurt to devote a half-assed effort at this overly ambitious but impossibly undermanned project." It does hurt. It hurts the core project that doesn't improve at the rate it could.
Like gparent said, could we suspend work on another browser or office suite until PRINTING works right?
That occurred to me too, but I convinced myself the effect is minimal. I mean, it's not a new car where you're worrying about resale value - no one says "And when I get tired of this candy-coated tripe, I can still get $3 for it!" when buying a CD.
I think the secondary market helps the RIAA little or not at all. Although I do still favor the theory of spending money on vid games. ;)
It's just chic. The problem is that everybody (being Gnome and KDE) won't be satisfied with a good operating environment. No, they have to do an entire user experience. In other words, they each want to be responsible for 95% of the graphical software used by any linux user. And that's just not rational. Case in point: KOffice, KDE's abominable attempt at an Office suite. As you say, why spend so much time making something that sucks so bad?
For what it's worth, never let it be said that open source developers are above reinventing the wheel. When profit is not a consideration, there's no boss to point you toward making things that have a market. We definitely need a greater degree of specialization.
I want to get the KDE and Gnome devs in two separate rooms, and lock them there until they swear never to make another browser, office suite, or useless widget again until they have the basic environment rock-solid.
Sorry, misinterpreted you there. Thought you were going for a muffling argument instead of reflection. As far as that goes, you're right, there's nothing in a duck's environment at a reasonably low angle to provide decent reflection.
As far as water, it can carry sound extremely well across the surface, largely because water is just a better conductor of anything (sound, heat, etc) than is air. Sitting on a fishing boat at night when it's fairly quiet, you can hear conversations near a mile away. So if the angle were right, I expect it might be possible, if you were far away from the duck, to hear its echo first (through water) before you hear the original through air. At that point, you would get the delay not through the slightly longer path length through water, but rather from faster transmission .
Finally, there's one time when you certainly can hear a duck's echo - when it's flying (I didn't say I wasn't above cheating!). Then it definitely reflects off water. ;)
You know, the term "guys" can have a gender-neutral connotation...