2-3 weeks? Wow. How do you do the upgrade? Because it's one of the things I like about Linux compared to Windows: I can install a brand new system but as long as I keep my/home intact all applications just start up with exactly the same settings as before. No need to go through that very long process of re-configuring every application that I had installed.
Of course at times I notice that I'm missing an application I had before, but most of the time that's simply solved with Yum/apt/Smart (whatever suits you best, Smart in my case).
What might be important here is the word "upgrade", I never bother with that anymore, especially when I noticed that upgrades sometimes play safe and don't install/activate new features (I remember once upgrading to the new Redhat that introduced the graphical boot and being disappointed that it still booted using text mode). I just do a new install keeping a copy of the old system for a while in case I had made some changes to some config files (mostly in/etc) or if I forgot about that database in/var somewhere that I forgot to back up.
The way I do this might be a bit strange, prior to the install I'll boot into single user mode, make a folder in root, let's say "oldsystem" and do a "mv/*/oldsystem". I now have a completely fucked up system, but if something goes wrong in the install I just boot from the rescue disk, clear everything that was installed and move everything back again. After the install was successful I will remove all unneeded stuff from the backup (all/bin,/usr/bin,/lib,/usr/lib etc etc) but will leave things like/etc and/var alone. If I encounter settings that I forgot about most of the time I only need to copy the old config or compare it to the new one. After a couple of weeks without having needed anything from the backup folder I'll just delete it.
Sounds like a lot of work maybe, but so far I've been up and running within hours after an "upgrade" which I think is not bad (*). Of course in the week after that I might encounter the odd thing or two that I need to copy from the backup but it's there, easy to access so it doesn't take much time.
(*) The exception being FC6 which didn't want to boot to X. Turns out that I had to connect my monitor to the other output of my video card, something that FC5 hadn't cared about but the new auto-detection in FC6 did. Ah well, in the end I prefer spending time fixing strange problems than the mind-numbing task of reconfiguring each application after a reinstall of my system;-)
And have you reported these problems to the ATrpms mailing list? Axel Thimm is a nice guy and extremely patient when it comes to explaining countless times to people how to manage their packages or how to fix things if something has gone wrong (regardless if the mistake had something to do with ATrpms packages are not). Any problems with packages always get fixed ASAP.
Personally the first thing I do after a fresh install is add the ATrpms repo and do an upgrade. Has never gone wrong so far.
I do agree with something that was said before: don't mix Livna and ATrpms, I've had nothing but problems with that combination.
Re:I've been using vi for so long...
on
The Birth of vi
·
· Score: 1
I wrote it on an Amiga using an editor that was called "ged" if I recall correctly. (Yeah, the AmigaOS wasn't *NIX but I used several "compatible" POSIX libraries... problem was that they were supposed to be compatible but I never was able to get the damn thing to work on any of the systems at my university, so in the end I just accepted my fate and learned to operate vi;)
Re:I've been using vi for so long...
on
The Birth of vi
·
· Score: 5, Funny
No no, it's the perfect first obstacle to weed out the people who shouldn't be doing any programming/writing on a *NIX system! A bit like entrance exams for universities.
Of course, the first thing I did when I was confronted with vi back in the 80s was write my own editor.
And I think you might be overestimating the effect of all that integration because I yet have to encounter a company that uses all those features you mention. What I do see is a lot of companies that use it just for the email and calendar functions.
So why Exchange? Well let me put it the other way around: what else? What else is out there that does email and calendars and is easy enough to find, install, manage and use?
My current company still uses Lotus Notes, when I started working here one year ago it had been about 10 years since I last used it and my god it still sucked as bad as it did 10 years ago, they did not improve AT ALL! First thing lots of people do here is install Outlook with the Lotus connector to be able to use a user friendly client (hey, seems clients are important too). Luckily they have decided to move to Exchange which will be used for... email (being a Telco they do their own telephony and nobody here is interested in IM).
Women complaining about "that stupid game"? Man, it's the first game I know where the women are putting in more hours than their boyfriends/spouses and sometimes even their children!
If there is one amazing feat Blizzard has performed is that it has managed to somehow get entire families addicted to their game (yeah, my girlfriend actually has 3 lvl 60 chars, one of which is full tier 2 epic while I have 1 lvl 60 char who has epic boots;-).
NB, last movie I can remember seeing that involved toilet use: "Volver" that won a lot of international awards and is nominated for the Golden Globe shows La Cruz going to the toilet and going through all the motions (although I can't remember if she washed her hands afterwards).
Trackside adverts are not there for those driving the cars (like you are doing while playing) but for those people beside the track watching the race.
Those people are not constantly engaged because there are always those moments when you are waiting for the race to start or waiting for the next car to appear. And that's when you have time to look (consciously or not) at the adverts.
- Why would "hundreds" of shards be a problem for the original game? Although I think "hundreds" is a bit of an exaggeration I can imagine dozens of shards catering to different groups of players. How can that be bad? Surely you don't think that without those shards all those people would go play (and pay for) Ryzom? And again, if the original Ryzom is not fun enough to keep enough paying/playing users a company won't be able to safe it either. - I knew you were going to bring this up and yes a company will want to keep it's players happy, but who is to say it will want the CURRENT players? It's abvious there aren't enough of them. It has happened often enough in corporate history that a company changed its course 180 degrees after a buyout, so don't expect they will buy Ryzom just to keep YOU happy, expect them to want to earn money, if that means atracting an entirely different segment of gamers by changing the game in ways current players don't like: don't be surprised. - Freedom: you said it "if you don't include support", what do you think keeping a server running is called? If you don't need/want their support you can run your own server, of course people playing on your server have to understand that you might get bored with it all and shut it all down tomorrow. FLOSS is not about services, services are normally not free. It's a recurring cost. They can be donated, but then somebody else is paying for it. - You might be right that artists won't contribute as much when they have to allow other people to use their work. It's true there is not as mucho of a Free Artistic movement as there is a Free Software movement. Which is a pity, but which might be the very reason that a payed service for Ryzom is still needed: to pay artists to make new content. Being payed their works become property of the Ryzom organisation which can then do with it whatever they want. - Uniqueness, like I said before, I think you're hugely mistaken if you think a company is just going to buy Ryzom and keep it as-is. Ryzom went BROKE! There was a REASON it went broke, so the company will make changes, probably BIG changes. The judge is NOT going to think about any players, the judge will think about the people working for Ryzom, so if the company just wants to make an entirely different game but employing the current people the judge will probably be perfectly happy. - The promise of donations seem to be sufficient to at least be able to talk to the judge, if the judge accepts them as a serious contender they will probably have to show the money somehow. IF they ever get that far something will have to be worked out with respect to refunds etc. First see if it ever gets that far, but without those promises it would be useless to even try.
And finally
- "IF", and that is a very very BIG if, IF people can go to a shard and have the same amount of fun WITHOUT paying then what the heck are you complaining about? You'd rather pay to continue to play Ryzom even if somebody would find a way to continue the service for free?
Of course, it might fail horribly... but so might the next company.
On the other hand all the "research" being done on the TCO of Windows versus Linux always point out that training your entire workforce to use Linux is a large cost factor. If everybody would be using Linux at home (come on, just TRY to imagine it at least!) that would be one less reason not to introduce Linux in your company. Of course the very people that make those kind of decisions would be using Linux at home as well and would be far more amenable to the very idea of using Linux in the first place.
- if the game, all of it is free, people can go and do whatever they want, which includes finding a way to keep the current players happy. If there are enough people who are happy with the game there will be a way to continue it. If a company buys it you can be sure it won't be thinking first about keeping players happy, it will be thinking about making money. - why do you think it's "funny" that the server won't be free? Didn't you just say you wanted Ryzom to continue? How they heck do you see that happening without earning some money somehow? Of course, it _might_ work, like somebody mentioned before people have been operating networks of servers for things like IRC for ages. So _if_ somebody comes up with a way to run Ryzom in a way that doesn't cost any money you won't have to pay. Even so, you can do whatever you want, just run a server and offer your services for free! - I don't see what good it would do to restrict the graphics/sounds to Ryzom. You'd still have a project that is dying and no incentive from anyone to help fix the problem. I certainly won't put any time in a project if I can't do what I want with it. - It's when the company gets bought by another company that you can kiss your unique game goodbye because it's obvious that _something_ has to change, just throwing more money at it is not going to solve the problem when your competitor is a hugely successful game as World of Warcraft. Or it must be a company with very deep pockets whose CEO just loves playing Ryzom and wants to keep it just the way it is (improving it of course, but keeping the spirit). I just don't see that happening. - Yes you are lazy;-p - All there is now are PROMISES of donations, no refunds. When the judge says they can make a real offer they'll contact you to get your money.
I've played a while too and while it certainly isn't World of Warcraft it also certainly isn't bad. For example I found the resource system quite inventive and the fact that crafting things doesn't require exact ingredients like WoW but that the choice of ingredients affects the result makes things interesting. Of course it has a horribly complicated interface but I'm getting used to it;-)
And of course there are enough examples in everyday life that the success of something does not necessarily have any relation to its quality and in the Free Ryzom campaign that is the more important consideration: is the potential there? Is it worth it?
For me as a developer the answer is YES. If something like this becomes free software I'll be a happy camper. Personally not so much because of the software, although I'll probably take a look at it, but because finally I'll have some pretty neat graphics (more importantly: animated 3D models) to use for my own pet projects:-)
Yes and then they forget about the rest and you get situations like this (when asked to explain how a certain program works):
Q: So, where does this program start? A: [no answer but a face which is one big question mark]
Q: Well a program has to start somewhere doesn't it? A: It does?
Q: Well somebody told you how a computer works, didn't they? A: Uhhh yeah
Q: So they told you that a processor performs instructions one at a time? A: Yeah sorta
Q: So that means it has got to start somewhere, doesn't it? A: Uhhhhuh
So here I got a student that after 2 years knew how to design pretty class diagrams, could explain the meaning of inheritance, overloading, overriding, etc but basically didn't know that there is something like a program "flow"!
So I'm sure that nowadays you should start with objects and classes real soon, but I still doubt the wisdom of doing it before having explained the more basic building blocks of any language.
Of course we _do_ know we're not the center of our Solar system and we're not the center of our Milky Way but sure we can still use the fact that scientists can't tell if we're at the center of the universe or not to say that we're at the center of _something_!;-)
True, but it seemed to me that the status was stable and usefull but still missing some important things, like for example "significantly reduced battery life".
And buying an iPod just to see if rockbox works is a bit too much for my current financial situation.
And trying to get a friend to lend me his/hers to fool around with seems pretty unlikely:-)
But I had my eye on this project for some time yet and I'll definitely consider it!
"Why should I even finish reading your review if that's the first thing you say? "
No, why should I have to read the entire review to find out in the end that I shouldn't buy it?
And what's up with this whole unbiased review thing? I don't want a table with 5 pros vs 5 cons. What if the cons outweigh the pros by a large amount? That way your "unbiased" table suddenly becomes very biased because there's no way to show that in your table (or do we use big - signs and much smaller +-es?)
In the end when you think a product is really not worth the attention of a potential buyer why can't you just say so. Should a movie reviewer who thinks a certain movie does not merit any stars give 2 stars just for trying? No of course not, you give it 0 stars and say "don't see it! it will be a waste of your time!".
Yeah, me too. Actually bought a player that supported Ogg (even though it was not mentioned anywhere on their website nor in the manual! I knew about by reading some forums) but brought it back the next day.
What happened?
In the evening of the same day that I bought it a friend showed me her Video iPod... I was completely blown away, now THAT's how a music player should work! My brand new player just paled in comparison, even though it played all my Ogg files.
So now I'm waiting for the perfect combination iPod-friendliness + ogg support.
True, wasn't suggesting they we're angels. Don't change the fact that they weren't exactly on speaking terms, so the idea of protestants helping catholics to get rid of the inquisition seems highly unlikely.
"I wonder if many Protestant Europeans tried to help the Catholics in Catholic countries who spoke out publicly about the Catholic Church's Inquisition."
What are you talking about? Protestants were too busy staying alive from persecution by the Inquisition. You have to remember that the power of the Catholic Church at that time was immense and the Protestants were considered worse than heretics (heretics after all only have false beliefs than can be remedied by "education", Protestants actually thought the Church should not have the power it had which is a much more dangerous idea).
Not unless they change the license, SF requires the project to use one of the accepted OSS licenses and pine's license seems to be one of those IANAL-but-I-can-do-it-myself constructions.
I think that if you back your statements up by giving pointers to official reserach done by experienced scientists the appeal to authority would be more than justified IMO. A debate can not be done by itself, any information given has to come from somewhere and sometimes you have to admit that you don't know and others are more than quilified to fill in any blanks for you.
And of course if you disagree with those scientists somebody would be right in asking for your credentials, that's not argumentum ad hominem, that's just plain common sense: why should I believe you and somebody who has studied the subject for years?
Because, like I said, this is not a debating club. You don't score points for knowing the names of debating techniques.
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2-3 weeks? Wow. How do you do the upgrade? Because it's one of the things I like about Linux compared to Windows: I can install a brand new system but as long as I keep my /home intact all applications just start up with exactly the same settings as before. No need to go through that very long process of re-configuring every application that I had installed.
/etc) or if I forgot about that database in /var somewhere that I forgot to back up.
/* /oldsystem". I now have a completely fucked up system, but if something goes wrong in the install I just boot from the rescue disk, clear everything that was installed and move everything back again. After the install was successful I will remove all unneeded stuff from the backup (all /bin, /usr/bin, /lib, /usr/lib etc etc) but will leave things like /etc and /var alone. If I encounter settings that I forgot about most of the time I only need to copy the old config or compare it to the new one. After a couple of weeks without having needed anything from the backup folder I'll just delete it.
;-)
Of course at times I notice that I'm missing an application I had before, but most of the time that's simply solved with Yum/apt/Smart (whatever suits you best, Smart in my case).
What might be important here is the word "upgrade", I never bother with that anymore, especially when I noticed that upgrades sometimes play safe and don't install/activate new features (I remember once upgrading to the new Redhat that introduced the graphical boot and being disappointed that it still booted using text mode). I just do a new install keeping a copy of the old system for a while in case I had made some changes to some config files (mostly in
The way I do this might be a bit strange, prior to the install I'll boot into single user mode, make a folder in root, let's say "oldsystem" and do a "mv
Sounds like a lot of work maybe, but so far I've been up and running within hours after an "upgrade" which I think is not bad (*). Of course in the week after that I might encounter the odd thing or two that I need to copy from the backup but it's there, easy to access so it doesn't take much time.
(*) The exception being FC6 which didn't want to boot to X. Turns out that I had to connect my monitor to the other output of my video card, something that FC5 hadn't cared about but the new auto-detection in FC6 did. Ah well, in the end I prefer spending time fixing strange problems than the mind-numbing task of reconfiguring each application after a reinstall of my system
And have you reported these problems to the ATrpms mailing list? Axel Thimm is a nice guy and extremely patient when it comes to explaining countless times to people how to manage their packages or how to fix things if something has gone wrong (regardless if the mistake had something to do with ATrpms packages are not). Any problems with packages always get fixed ASAP.
Personally the first thing I do after a fresh install is add the ATrpms repo and do an upgrade. Has never gone wrong so far.
I do agree with something that was said before: don't mix Livna and ATrpms, I've had nothing but problems with that combination.
I wrote it on an Amiga using an editor that was called "ged" if I recall correctly. ;)
(Yeah, the AmigaOS wasn't *NIX but I used several "compatible" POSIX libraries... problem was that they were supposed to be compatible but I never was able to get the damn thing to work on any of the systems at my university, so in the end I just accepted my fate and learned to operate vi
No no, it's the perfect first obstacle to weed out the people who shouldn't be doing any programming/writing on a *NIX system! A bit like entrance exams for universities.
Of course, the first thing I did when I was confronted with vi back in the 80s was write my own editor.
And I think you might be overestimating the effect of all that integration because I yet have to encounter a company that uses all those features you mention. What I do see is a lot of companies that use it just for the email and calendar functions.
l utions-for-other-people.html
So why Exchange? Well let me put it the other way around: what else? What else is out there that does email and calendars and is easy enough to find, install, manage and use?
My current company still uses Lotus Notes, when I started working here one year ago it had been about 10 years since I last used it and my god it still sucked as bad as it did 10 years ago, they did not improve AT ALL! First thing lots of people do here is install Outlook with the Lotus connector to be able to use a user friendly client (hey, seems clients are important too). Luckily they have decided to move to Exchange which will be used for... email (being a Telco they do their own telephony and nobody here is interested in IM).
If I would have thought that there was a FLOSS alternative that would that would be good enough I would have pointed it out but you just can't if there are still comments like this from the community: http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2006/12/new-years-reso
Women complaining about "that stupid game"? Man, it's the first game I know where the women are putting in more hours than their boyfriends/spouses and sometimes even their children!
;-).
If there is one amazing feat Blizzard has performed is that it has managed to somehow get entire families addicted to their game (yeah, my girlfriend actually has 3 lvl 60 chars, one of which is full tier 2 epic while I have 1 lvl 60 char who has epic boots
NB, last movie I can remember seeing that involved toilet use: "Volver" that won a lot of international awards and is nominated for the Golden Globe shows La Cruz going to the toilet and going through all the motions (although I can't remember if she washed her hands afterwards).
European movie makers seems to agree with you and if you watch some of them you see a lot more "can moments" than in hollywood movies.
Disclaimer: this is just from personal experience, I'M Not A Movie Statistics Researcher
No, because you will still be too busy playing!
Trackside adverts are not there for those driving the cars (like you are doing while playing) but for those people beside the track watching the race.
Those people are not constantly engaged because there are always those moments when you are waiting for the race to start or waiting for the next car to appear. And that's when you have time to look (consciously or not) at the adverts.
- Why would "hundreds" of shards be a problem for the original game? Although I think "hundreds" is a bit of an exaggeration I can imagine dozens of shards catering to different groups of players. How can that be bad? Surely you don't think that without those shards all those people would go play (and pay for) Ryzom? And again, if the original Ryzom is not fun enough to keep enough paying/playing users a company won't be able to safe it either.
- I knew you were going to bring this up and yes a company will want to keep it's players happy, but who is to say it will want the CURRENT players? It's abvious there aren't enough of them. It has happened often enough in corporate history that a company changed its course 180 degrees after a buyout, so don't expect they will buy Ryzom just to keep YOU happy, expect them to want to earn money, if that means atracting an entirely different segment of gamers by changing the game in ways current players don't like: don't be surprised.
- Freedom: you said it "if you don't include support", what do you think keeping a server running is called? If you don't need/want their support you can run your own server, of course people playing on your server have to understand that you might get bored with it all and shut it all down tomorrow. FLOSS is not about services, services are normally not free. It's a recurring cost. They can be donated, but then somebody else is paying for it.
- You might be right that artists won't contribute as much when they have to allow other people to use their work. It's true there is not as mucho of a Free Artistic movement as there is a Free Software movement. Which is a pity, but which might be the very reason that a payed service for Ryzom is still needed: to pay artists to make new content. Being payed their works become property of the Ryzom organisation which can then do with it whatever they want.
- Uniqueness, like I said before, I think you're hugely mistaken if you think a company is just going to buy Ryzom and keep it as-is. Ryzom went BROKE! There was a REASON it went broke, so the company will make changes, probably BIG changes. The judge is NOT going to think about any players, the judge will think about the people working for Ryzom, so if the company just wants to make an entirely different game but employing the current people the judge will probably be perfectly happy.
- The promise of donations seem to be sufficient to at least be able to talk to the judge, if the judge accepts them as a serious contender they will probably have to show the money somehow. IF they ever get that far something will have to be worked out with respect to refunds etc. First see if it ever gets that far, but without those promises it would be useless to even try.
And finally
- "IF", and that is a very very BIG if, IF people can go to a shard and have the same amount of fun WITHOUT paying then what the heck are you complaining about? You'd rather pay to continue to play Ryzom even if somebody would find a way to continue the service for free?
Of course, it might fail horribly... but so might the next company.
On the other hand all the "research" being done on the TCO of Windows versus Linux always point out that training your entire workforce to use Linux is a large cost factor. If everybody would be using Linux at home (come on, just TRY to imagine it at least!) that would be one less reason not to introduce Linux in your company. Of course the very people that make those kind of decisions would be using Linux at home as well and would be far more amenable to the very idea of using Linux in the first place.
Think about it a bit more:
;-p
- if the game, all of it is free, people can go and do whatever they want, which includes finding a way to keep the current players happy. If there are enough people who are happy with the game there will be a way to continue it. If a company buys it you can be sure it won't be thinking first about keeping players happy, it will be thinking about making money.
- why do you think it's "funny" that the server won't be free? Didn't you just say you wanted Ryzom to continue? How they heck do you see that happening without earning some money somehow? Of course, it _might_ work, like somebody mentioned before people have been operating networks of servers for things like IRC for ages. So _if_ somebody comes up with a way to run Ryzom in a way that doesn't cost any money you won't have to pay. Even so, you can do whatever you want, just run a server and offer your services for free!
- I don't see what good it would do to restrict the graphics/sounds to Ryzom. You'd still have a project that is dying and no incentive from anyone to help fix the problem. I certainly won't put any time in a project if I can't do what I want with it.
- It's when the company gets bought by another company that you can kiss your unique game goodbye because it's obvious that _something_ has to change, just throwing more money at it is not going to solve the problem when your competitor is a hugely successful game as World of Warcraft. Or it must be a company with very deep pockets whose CEO just loves playing Ryzom and wants to keep it just the way it is (improving it of course, but keeping the spirit). I just don't see that happening.
- Yes you are lazy
- All there is now are PROMISES of donations, no refunds. When the judge says they can make a real offer they'll contact you to get your money.
Actually I read "OS" instead of "MMORPG" and thought the very same thing.
So Linus, just stop with the nonsense will you?
I've played a while too and while it certainly isn't World of Warcraft it also certainly isn't bad. For example I found the resource system quite inventive and the fact that crafting things doesn't require exact ingredients like WoW but that the choice of ingredients affects the result makes things interesting. Of course it has a horribly complicated interface but I'm getting used to it ;-)
:-)
And of course there are enough examples in everyday life that the success of something does not necessarily have any relation to its quality and in the Free Ryzom campaign that is the more important consideration: is the potential there? Is it worth it?
For me as a developer the answer is YES. If something like this becomes free software I'll be a happy camper. Personally not so much because of the software, although I'll probably take a look at it, but because finally I'll have some pretty neat graphics (more importantly: animated 3D models) to use for my own pet projects
Of course they are going to say that, otherwise who is going to buy the ones they have left in stock? ;-)
Yes and then they forget about the rest and you get situations like this (when asked to explain how a certain program works):
Q: So, where does this program start?
A: [no answer but a face which is one big question mark]
Q: Well a program has to start somewhere doesn't it?
A: It does?
Q: Well somebody told you how a computer works, didn't they?
A: Uhhh yeah
Q: So they told you that a processor performs instructions one at a time?
A: Yeah sorta
Q: So that means it has got to start somewhere, doesn't it?
A: Uhhhhuh
So here I got a student that after 2 years knew how to design pretty class diagrams, could explain the meaning of inheritance, overloading, overriding, etc but basically didn't know that there is something like a program "flow"!
So I'm sure that nowadays you should start with objects and classes real soon, but I still doubt the wisdom of doing it before having explained the more basic building blocks of any language.
Not really , but with the Hot Coffee mod you can at least project images of nubile young virgins on top of every person you see.
Of course we _do_ know we're not the center of our Solar system and we're not the center of our Milky Way but sure we can still use the fact that scientists can't tell if we're at the center of the universe or not to say that we're at the center of _something_! ;-)
True, but it seemed to me that the status was stable and usefull but still missing some important things, like for example "significantly reduced battery life".
:-)
And buying an iPod just to see if rockbox works is a bit too much for my current financial situation.
And trying to get a friend to lend me his/hers to fool around with seems pretty unlikely
But I had my eye on this project for some time yet and I'll definitely consider it!
"Why should I even finish reading your review if that's the first thing you say? "
No, why should I have to read the entire review to find out in the end that I shouldn't buy it?
And what's up with this whole unbiased review thing? I don't want a table with 5 pros vs 5 cons. What if the cons outweigh the pros by a large amount? That way your "unbiased" table suddenly becomes very biased because there's no way to show that in your table (or do we use big - signs and much smaller +-es?)
In the end when you think a product is really not worth the attention of a potential buyer why can't you just say so. Should a movie reviewer who thinks a certain movie does not merit any stars give 2 stars just for trying? No of course not, you give it 0 stars and say "don't see it! it will be a waste of your time!".
Yeah, me too. Actually bought a player that supported Ogg (even though it was not mentioned anywhere on their website nor in the manual! I knew about by reading some forums) but brought it back the next day.
What happened?
In the evening of the same day that I bought it a friend showed me her Video iPod... I was completely blown away, now THAT's how a music player should work! My brand new player just paled in comparison, even though it played all my Ogg files.
So now I'm waiting for the perfect combination iPod-friendliness + ogg support.
True, wasn't suggesting they we're angels. Don't change the fact that they weren't exactly on speaking terms, so the idea of protestants helping catholics to get rid of the inquisition seems highly unlikely.
"I wonder if many Protestant Europeans tried to help the Catholics in Catholic countries who spoke out publicly about the Catholic Church's Inquisition."
What are you talking about? Protestants were too busy staying alive from persecution by the Inquisition. You have to remember that the power of the Catholic Church at that time was immense and the Protestants were considered worse than heretics (heretics after all only have false beliefs than can be remedied by "education", Protestants actually thought the Church should not have the power it had which is a much more dangerous idea).
Not unless they change the license, SF requires the project to use one of the accepted OSS licenses and pine's license seems to be one of those IANAL-but-I-can-do-it-myself constructions.
I think that if you back your statements up by giving pointers to official reserach done by experienced scientists the appeal to authority would be more than justified IMO. A debate can not be done by itself, any information given has to come from somewhere and sometimes you have to admit that you don't know and others are more than quilified to fill in any blanks for you.
And of course if you disagree with those scientists somebody would be right in asking for your credentials, that's not argumentum ad hominem, that's just plain common sense: why should I believe you and somebody who has studied the subject for years?
Because, like I said, this is not a debating club. You don't score points for knowing the names of debating techniques.