1. Have you ever gone over the speed limit in a car? Do you want to be monitored 24/7 so if you do, the government can simply issue you a remote fine?
2. Do you mind having government cameras in your home 24/7? How about in your bedroom, shower or toilet? After all, you have nothing to hide. Right? If you don't want cameras in your home, you must be conspiring against the government. Right?
3. Why is it that it's ok to have citizens watched 24/7, yet you can't see the footage and for some reason, no politicians seem to be surveilled?
4. Why shouldn't the insurance companies know about your entire medical, driving and social records, all the time, so they can dynamically adjust your risk status and increase payments as necessary?
5. Why do you need a secret ballot to vote for your politicians?
6. Shouldn't the politicians be doing your bidding, not ruling you?
I worked in Papua New Guinea for a couple of years, and while you say that in jest, some of the locals who had come from the bush to the "city" could often be seen standing just outside the range of an automatic door, wondering why it would open for some people but not for them. They really didn't understand the technology at all. To them it was some sort of magic.
It really shows the maxim that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistiguishable from magic.
To a highlands national who has never been outside his village 5,000ft above sea level in dense jungle, technology you and I take for granted can be a frightening and amazing thing. You and I are already so comfortable with such technology that we automatically read your post as humour.
Now try to imagine what sort of technology would be so advanced relatively, to make you and I feel frightened and amazed....
Will it beat the Simpsons version?
on
A Sound of Thunder
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The episode is called "Time and Punishment" and features Homer repairing a toaster which then sends him back and forth through time. Each time he comes back he's messed things up worse than the last.
"I've gone back in time to when dinosaurs weren't just confined to zoos." - Homer
Well, I downloaded it just to see how it would cope opening various documents. It opened Word documents no problem, but choked badly when fed OpenOffice.org documents (.sxw) even though their site lists OpenOffice.org document support.
I'm sure they will get there, especially considering OOo's open document format, but for now it is not capable of being a true document agnostic replacement.
Not everyone agrees with my policy directions, but that's ok too. I often tell them to start their own party if they are passionate about their stance, and make it genuinely easy to do so - our Constitution and documents are open source, so they are welcome to take them and reuse them for their own party.
Perhaps you know someone who might want to be the Tasmanian candidate for Net Effect at the federal level? Not for this election, but maybe by the time the next one rolls around we may have gained enough recognition to be a viable party and field candidates all across Australia. That's really all it takes - enough people to be interested to actually do something about it and rally around a common cause.
I have started my own political party. I have 16 members. I do not have the money to buy traditional media exposure, so very few people are likely to hear about my party.
With all that, I still REFUSE to spam Australians to let them know the party exists, and if I catch one of our members doing it I'll do my best to revoke their membership (a democratic process - I cannot arbitrarily revoke a membership myself).
Spam is the scourge of the internet and there is no good reason for ANYONE to send unsolicited email in the hopes of getting something in return (be it donations for a charity, political stuff or anything else currently covered by loopholes).
Feel free to discuss this in our forum if you like - we're open to all and welcome all input, for or against any subject. See sig for more.
I've started my own party (see sig) because quite frankly, I am not enamoured with the policies of most current parties (Greens are probably most along my lines of thought and are probably the exception to this).
I've started small, and won't have the numbers to contest this election, but at least I'm trying to sincerely change the system for something better.
To those Australians who feel let down by current parties - why not drop by and say hi in our forums (which are a bit quiet at the moment), and have YOUR say on what you'd fix. If enough people did this we'd have a viable party and be able to change things for the better.
"So start your own party, I think just about all democracies allow this:)"
Exactly. That's just what I've done (see sig). People, the way to defeat bad laws is not to bitch and moan that it's impossible to change because you have to vote for one of the big two, it's to vote for one of the OTHER alternatives or form your own. If enough people did this then maybe you'd see more than two "major" parties and have some REAL choice in policy formation.
Well, according to John Titor CERN will allow humans to create the first localised black hole in 2007. This leads to new scientific breakthroughs, eventually leading to limited time travel (around 30 to 60 year jumps max).
Of course, if that happens, along with how the US is currently regressing as a society, you can be reasonably certain that in 2015 the US will be devastated by a short but horrific nuclear war.
So, if CERN does indeed create a black hole around 2007, you'd be well advised to move away from the US permanently before 2015.
Right now I AM still operating from home, but since the party structure is based online right now that's the easiest way to be anyway. To answer your dot points:
1. No donations have been received so far. When we have 500 members I will begin collecting donations and membership fees. This will all be placed in the Forum section to be completely open.
2. Email comms probably aren't the best things to keep completely online and open. People have an expectation that their communications with someone are reasonably private unless they've consented to having them made public.
3. Fully agreed. The best person SHOULD get the job. In the forums I have stated this several times.
Basically, the website doesn't have a huge volume of info - that is reserved for the Forum area which is after all how politics should be run. All posts are public there and give others full viewing into how we operate.
As for your wiki/mailing list idea for policy formation, that's precisely what the Forum is set up to do. Have a look and you'll see exactly how policy is being formed, and why it isn't all detailed on the main site.
In short, the forums really are the heart of the party, not the main website.
Thanks for your criticism anyway - feel free to register in the forums and add your voice if you wish. You don't need to be a member to post there and every extra voice will add to the good ideas and directions the party should be adopting.
Turning up gamma and brightness settings on your computer won't help, and nor are they meant to. You see, as I have discovered, id has deliberately made this game so that the above won't work. Why? Because that would destroy the best part of the fear factor that makes this game so great.
In layman's terms, what they have done is set black 0,0,0 as absolute darkenss, and then set anything in shadow to that same colour. So unless something is actually lit up by a proper light source, YOU WON'T SEE IT even if you bump your brightness etc to max. That's the beauty of using a real lighting engine instead of fake lighting as every other game before it has done. Now you NEED to use the flashlight to get around. Yes, it freaks you out when a creature jumps out at you and you need to fumble for your shotgun etc. But that's the point! It's a fear factor game. Enjoy it for what it is, don't try to game the system (which you can't do anyway).
Why not get involved in a new political party (see sig) that has no prior baggage and will fight for our rights, not hand them over for a few crumbs from the US?
Seriously, take a look. I started Net Effect precisely because I felt the same way you do, but thought "Why not do something about it?"
I've made a party that is completely open, has an online forum to assist in policy creation, and has the interests of Australians at heart, not the interests of the US.
I have 15 members, but if neough people were willing to commit to trying to change for the better, I think we could be a new type of politics in Australia.
Incidentally, for all non-Australians, the party's Constitution etc are all open to be taken and used in your own party - build on it, change it, submit changes back to our own if you have ideas that you htink could make it better. In short, the party's set up to be a type of open source politics, in the hope that we get a party that is actually structured the way it should be!
I don't know if you're interested, but I have begun my own political party here in Oz, Net Effect, whose ideals are left leaning but with a sound basis in understanding technology and best of all, we're proponents of open source and making more flexible rules instead of clamping down. Personally I'd abolish copyright and patents, but for the party stance it would be up to a member vote. I'd settle for a ten year copyright term:)
See my sig for more info, and consider becoming a member (there's only 15 right now so you'll be in at the ground floor and have a real say in matters).
I've tried to start my own party as well - see my sig. I'm not hoping to convert you, but I simply mention it to present you with another party whose ideals are left wing, but tech savvy. I'm not going to get 500 members for this election, but each member brings me one step closer to getting a campaign up for the next one.
http://www.prillaman.net/starwarsdvdreviews.html It seems the best ones are the Definitive versions - I have Version B and it's pretty average, but it IS original trilogy, not bastardised special edition.
I have a friend on permanent lookout for the Definitive Edition set whenever he travels via Bangkok...
I'm not buying the new DVD set. I have the original trilogy on bootleg DVD, purchased overseas. They're not great quality, but they are widescreen and have been pulled from the original trilogy Laserdiscs by the looks of them.
I also owned the VHS trilogy at one point, as well as the Special Edition Laserdisc trilogy when they came out.
Since Lucas has told everyone the original trilogy is dead, and since I have shelled out more than once for them, I figure it's carte blanche to copy them onto DVD for future generations to have a good quality record of how the originals looked.
I for one fervently hope that someone such as yourself who has the original trilogy on Laserdisc or better, and has high grade digital restoration equipment, can re-encode the original trilogy on DVD for all those of us who consider them to be much better than the new editions.
Create a DVDR set with just the movies and DD5.1 sound (with new digitally created subtitles for alien voices etc) and put them up on BitTorrent, and I guarantee you'll be famous among a large proportion of Star Wars fans (of the originals) and can sleep at night knowing you have preserved one of the most influential trilogies ever produced from being consigned to the dustbin of history.
"The premise of censorship is that offensive content contaminates the hearts and minds of people. But you can only have censorship if someone can judge content without himself being contaminated. This contradicts the premise of censorship, which alleges that these contaminating powers exist inherently in the offensive material. On the other hand, if a censor can censor without being contaminated, that implies that offensive content does not automatically contaminate the mind or heart of a person. In that case, you would be admitting that censorship is unnecessary. That is the contradiction of censorship."
I don't know the original author of that quote (post here if you do), but it is very appropriate to this discussion and your point in particular.
If it is illegal to view child pornography, then why does Internet Watch (or whoever) have an exemption? Does BT have workers who check to see if a site is "illegal"?
Mabel - "So Fred, what do you do at BT?"
Fred - "Oh, I look up kiddie pron all day to keep you safe from it."
Mabel - "You MONSTER!! You're sick!"
Hence the censorship paradox. How do you know that child porn is a problem unless you can see the evidence for yourself? To give you another dangerous parallel, look at the secrecy surrounding the "terrorists" at Guantanamo - all information is censored from the public, so you effectively get the situation where you must trust your government to tell you that they are in fact terrorists as opposed to poor schmucks caught up in the US dragnet as it swept through Afghanistan.
Child pron is the first refuge of people who want to restrict your rights, because it is the easiest target (although in the US terrorists are catching up fast). As most people here have already pointed out, those who want it already know where to get it. Those who don't want it, don't look in the first place so never know whether it exists in anywhere near the amount government is always crowing about, and can't or won't verify the info because of the illegality clause (convenient huh?). Thus it becomes the bogeyman under the bed that the government will "protect" you from, by taking away your rights, and if you speak out against it, you're labelled as one of the bad guys.
The only way to prevent this slippery slope is to stand against ALL censorship, regardless of how distasteful some parts of society seem to you personally.
" that's not the new theme, that's the old theme."
Except that it lists the changes for 0.9 which IS the upcoming version number. Not that I am sure at this point given that it's the first I've heard of a complete theme change, AND that mozillazine has been slashdotted thanks to this article (I'm active on the forum BTW).
I hate the new theme that someone linked to above, and think it's 10 steps backward in terms of quick visual recognition of icon function. I'm quietly hoping it's someone trying to promote their own upcoming theme, and that Firefox developers are wise enough not to completely change the look at 0.9 when it is only just beginning to achieve critical mass with new users.
I provide it to ALL my clients and they all think it is by far the best browser they've used. The theme linked as being the upcoming official looks miles less professional, and will hurt Firefox tremendously, regardless of its technical merit.
Agreed that Proxomitron is the best blocker ever. It sounds to me from your post that you aren't using one of the updated filter sets floating around.
Why not try JD5000's filter set (his latest alpha build rocks) at http://www.jd5000.net and you'll find that in the top left corner of a page resides a hidden proxomitron icon which reveals when moused over, giving you instant bypass for that page and many other options. That way you don't bypass proxomitron and forget to re-enable it afterwards.
The short/long click stuff is used throughout OpenOffice.org on its icons. I wonder if this isn't a way to try to break one of the functionality features of OOo by hitting it with patent violations if they get too much market share.
"No, but it shows the mindset of the so called "people" we are facing. If they din't want to be treated as animals, they might quit acting like them."
And they could say the same of Americans. They aren't "so-called people", they ARE people. When Iraqis see a US sniper put a bullet through their relatives' heads, do you think they consider that sniper a hero? Or do you think they would call them the animals, callously butchering their loved ones like dogs?
My point is this - always, ALWAYS beware of demonising your enemy. The truth is that there are people on BOTH sides who enjoy killing, and neither represents the motives of the vast majority. When you've travelled extensively you come to realise that all peoples of the world have similar goals - raise a good family, live in peace, be allowed to do their own thing without being persecuted. Americans want this just as much as Iraqis.
But also consider how you would feel if your country was invaded, and the invaders said one thing and practiced another. You would fight back, wouldn't you? I know I would. Well, so do the Iraqis. They cannot beat the US at its own game, so they do it on their own terms. That doesn't make the vast majority "sub-human monsters" or any other derogatory term.
Yes, the beheading brought home the cold blooded murder aspect of it. I don't condone it in the slightest and having seen the full video, was disgusted by it. However, I also watched the disgusting video of an Apache crew gunning down unarmed men and shooting the wounded one as he crawled away. Is that any more moral?
Slashdot Mirror
Here are a few questions to ask them:
1. Have you ever gone over the speed limit in a car? Do you want to be monitored 24/7 so if you do, the government can simply issue you a remote fine?
2. Do you mind having government cameras in your home 24/7? How about in your bedroom, shower or toilet? After all, you have nothing to hide. Right? If you don't want cameras in your home, you must be conspiring against the government. Right?
3. Why is it that it's ok to have citizens watched 24/7, yet you can't see the footage and for some reason, no politicians seem to be surveilled?
4. Why shouldn't the insurance companies know about your entire medical, driving and social records, all the time, so they can dynamically adjust your risk status and increase payments as necessary?
5. Why do you need a secret ballot to vote for your politicians?
6. Shouldn't the politicians be doing your bidding, not ruling you?
I worked in Papua New Guinea for a couple of years, and while you say that in jest, some of the locals who had come from the bush to the "city" could often be seen standing just outside the range of an automatic door, wondering why it would open for some people but not for them. They really didn't understand the technology at all. To them it was some sort of magic.
It really shows the maxim that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistiguishable from magic.
To a highlands national who has never been outside his village 5,000ft above sea level in dense jungle, technology you and I take for granted can be a frightening and amazing thing. You and I are already so comfortable with such technology that we automatically read your post as humour.
Now try to imagine what sort of technology would be so advanced relatively, to make you and I feel frightened and amazed....
Treehouse of Horror V
The episode is called "Time and Punishment" and features Homer repairing a toaster which then sends him back and forth through time. Each time he comes back he's messed things up worse than the last.
"I've gone back in time to when dinosaurs weren't just confined to zoos." - Homer
Well, I downloaded it just to see how it would cope opening various documents. It opened Word documents no problem, but choked badly when fed OpenOffice.org documents (.sxw) even though their site lists OpenOffice.org document support.
I'm sure they will get there, especially considering OOo's open document format, but for now it is not capable of being a true document agnostic replacement.
Thanks!
Not everyone agrees with my policy directions, but that's ok too. I often tell them to start their own party if they are passionate about their stance, and make it genuinely easy to do so - our Constitution and documents are open source, so they are welcome to take them and reuse them for their own party.
Perhaps you know someone who might want to be the Tasmanian candidate for Net Effect at the federal level? Not for this election, but maybe by the time the next one rolls around we may have gained enough recognition to be a viable party and field candidates all across Australia. That's really all it takes - enough people to be interested to actually do something about it and rally around a common cause.
I have started my own political party. I have 16 members. I do not have the money to buy traditional media exposure, so very few people are likely to hear about my party.
With all that, I still REFUSE to spam Australians to let them know the party exists, and if I catch one of our members doing it I'll do my best to revoke their membership (a democratic process - I cannot arbitrarily revoke a membership myself).
Spam is the scourge of the internet and there is no good reason for ANYONE to send unsolicited email in the hopes of getting something in return (be it donations for a charity, political stuff or anything else currently covered by loopholes).
Feel free to discuss this in our forum if you like - we're open to all and welcome all input, for or against any subject. See sig for more.
I've started my own party (see sig) because quite frankly, I am not enamoured with the policies of most current parties (Greens are probably most along my lines of thought and are probably the exception to this).
I've started small, and won't have the numbers to contest this election, but at least I'm trying to sincerely change the system for something better.
To those Australians who feel let down by current parties - why not drop by and say hi in our forums (which are a bit quiet at the moment), and have YOUR say on what you'd fix. If enough people did this we'd have a viable party and be able to change things for the better.
"So start your own party, I think just about all democracies allow this :)"
Exactly. That's just what I've done (see sig). People, the way to defeat bad laws is not to bitch and moan that it's impossible to change because you have to vote for one of the big two, it's to vote for one of the OTHER alternatives or form your own. If enough people did this then maybe you'd see more than two "major" parties and have some REAL choice in policy formation.
Well, according to John Titor CERN will allow humans to create the first localised black hole in 2007. This leads to new scientific breakthroughs, eventually leading to limited time travel (around 30 to 60 year jumps max).
Of course, if that happens, along with how the US is currently regressing as a society, you can be reasonably certain that in 2015 the US will be devastated by a short but horrific nuclear war.
So, if CERN does indeed create a black hole around 2007, you'd be well advised to move away from the US permanently before 2015.
Right now I AM still operating from home, but since the party structure is based online right now that's the easiest way to be anyway. To answer your dot points:
1. No donations have been received so far. When we have 500 members I will begin collecting donations and membership fees. This will all be placed in the Forum section to be completely open.
2. Email comms probably aren't the best things to keep completely online and open. People have an expectation that their communications with someone are reasonably private unless they've consented to having them made public.
3. Fully agreed. The best person SHOULD get the job. In the forums I have stated this several times.
Basically, the website doesn't have a huge volume of info - that is reserved for the Forum area which is after all how politics should be run. All posts are public there and give others full viewing into how we operate.
As for your wiki/mailing list idea for policy formation, that's precisely what the Forum is set up to do. Have a look and you'll see exactly how policy is being formed, and why it isn't all detailed on the main site.
In short, the forums really are the heart of the party, not the main website.
Thanks for your criticism anyway - feel free to register in the forums and add your voice if you wish. You don't need to be a member to post there and every extra voice will add to the good ideas and directions the party should be adopting.
Turning up gamma and brightness settings on your computer won't help, and nor are they meant to. You see, as I have discovered, id has deliberately made this game so that the above won't work. Why? Because that would destroy the best part of the fear factor that makes this game so great.
In layman's terms, what they have done is set black 0,0,0 as absolute darkenss, and then set anything in shadow to that same colour. So unless something is actually lit up by a proper light source, YOU WON'T SEE IT even if you bump your brightness etc to max. That's the beauty of using a real lighting engine instead of fake lighting as every other game before it has done. Now you NEED to use the flashlight to get around. Yes, it freaks you out when a creature jumps out at you and you need to fumble for your shotgun etc. But that's the point! It's a fear factor game. Enjoy it for what it is, don't try to game the system (which you can't do anyway).
I feel the same way. See my sig for what I'm doing about it.
Why not get involved in a new political party (see sig) that has no prior baggage and will fight for our rights, not hand them over for a few crumbs from the US?
Seriously, take a look. I started Net Effect precisely because I felt the same way you do, but thought "Why not do something about it?"
I've made a party that is completely open, has an online forum to assist in policy creation, and has the interests of Australians at heart, not the interests of the US.
I have 15 members, but if neough people were willing to commit to trying to change for the better, I think we could be a new type of politics in Australia.
Incidentally, for all non-Australians, the party's Constitution etc are all open to be taken and used in your own party - build on it, change it, submit changes back to our own if you have ideas that you htink could make it better. In short, the party's set up to be a type of open source politics, in the hope that we get a party that is actually structured the way it should be!
I don't know if you're interested, but I have begun my own political party here in Oz, Net Effect, whose ideals are left leaning but with a sound basis in understanding technology and best of all, we're proponents of open source and making more flexible rules instead of clamping down. Personally I'd abolish copyright and patents, but for the party stance it would be up to a member vote. I'd settle for a ten year copyright term :)
See my sig for more info, and consider becoming a member (there's only 15 right now so you'll be in at the ground floor and have a real say in matters).
I've tried to start my own party as well - see my sig. I'm not hoping to convert you, but I simply mention it to present you with another party whose ideals are left wing, but tech savvy. I'm not going to get 500 members for this election, but each member brings me one step closer to getting a campaign up for the next one.
http://www.prillaman.net/starwarsdvdreviews.html
It seems the best ones are the Definitive versions - I have Version B and it's pretty average, but it IS original trilogy, not bastardised special edition.
I have a friend on permanent lookout for the Definitive Edition set whenever he travels via Bangkok...
I'm not buying the new DVD set. I have the original trilogy on bootleg DVD, purchased overseas. They're not great quality, but they are widescreen and have been pulled from the original trilogy Laserdiscs by the looks of them.
I also owned the VHS trilogy at one point, as well as the Special Edition Laserdisc trilogy when they came out.
Since Lucas has told everyone the original trilogy is dead, and since I have shelled out more than once for them, I figure it's carte blanche to copy them onto DVD for future generations to have a good quality record of how the originals looked.
I for one fervently hope that someone such as yourself who has the original trilogy on Laserdisc or better, and has high grade digital restoration equipment, can re-encode the original trilogy on DVD for all those of us who consider them to be much better than the new editions.
Create a DVDR set with just the movies and DD5.1 sound (with new digitally created subtitles for alien voices etc) and put them up on BitTorrent, and I guarantee you'll be famous among a large proportion of Star Wars fans (of the originals) and can sleep at night knowing you have preserved one of the most influential trilogies ever produced from being consigned to the dustbin of history.
Remove spaces (not linked to save Slashdotting):
x 0_ 9/bookmarksftp/
Saving file types to various locations:
http://downloadstatusbar.mozdev.org/downsort/
Portable Bookmarks:
http://cgi29.plala.or.jp/~mozzarel/addon/firefo
It isn't freeware, and if someone wants to clone it as a freeware, Firefox-aware app that'd be great, but it does just what you are asking for.
It narrows the bookmarks as you type, based on title, URL, and keyword fields.
http://www.kaylon.com/power.html
If Firefox had this built in via a search bar or some such it'd be awesome.
It's probably to appeal to the market segment most interested in this technology - women who work in the city and only ever get to see men in suits!
Don't forget, sex sells as well to women as it does to men.
"The premise of censorship is that offensive content contaminates the hearts and minds of people. But you can only have censorship if someone can judge content without himself being contaminated. This contradicts the premise of censorship, which alleges that these contaminating powers exist inherently in the offensive material. On the other hand, if a censor can censor without being contaminated, that implies that offensive content does not automatically contaminate the mind or heart of a person. In that case, you would be admitting that censorship is unnecessary. That is the contradiction of censorship."
I don't know the original author of that quote (post here if you do), but it is very appropriate to this discussion and your point in particular.
If it is illegal to view child pornography, then why does Internet Watch (or whoever) have an exemption? Does BT have workers who check to see if a site is "illegal"?
Mabel - "So Fred, what do you do at BT?"
Fred - "Oh, I look up kiddie pron all day to keep you safe from it."
Mabel - "You MONSTER!! You're sick!"
Hence the censorship paradox. How do you know that child porn is a problem unless you can see the evidence for yourself? To give you another dangerous parallel, look at the secrecy surrounding the "terrorists" at Guantanamo - all information is censored from the public, so you effectively get the situation where you must trust your government to tell you that they are in fact terrorists as opposed to poor schmucks caught up in the US dragnet as it swept through Afghanistan.
Child pron is the first refuge of people who want to restrict your rights, because it is the easiest target (although in the US terrorists are catching up fast). As most people here have already pointed out, those who want it already know where to get it. Those who don't want it, don't look in the first place so never know whether it exists in anywhere near the amount government is always crowing about, and can't or won't verify the info because of the illegality clause (convenient huh?). Thus it becomes the bogeyman under the bed that the government will "protect" you from, by taking away your rights, and if you speak out against it, you're labelled as one of the bad guys.
The only way to prevent this slippery slope is to stand against ALL censorship, regardless of how distasteful some parts of society seem to you personally.
" that's not the new theme, that's the old theme."
Except that it lists the changes for 0.9 which IS the upcoming version number. Not that I am sure at this point given that it's the first I've heard of a complete theme change, AND that mozillazine has been slashdotted thanks to this article (I'm active on the forum BTW).
I hate the new theme that someone linked to above, and think it's 10 steps backward in terms of quick visual recognition of icon function. I'm quietly hoping it's someone trying to promote their own upcoming theme, and that Firefox developers are wise enough not to completely change the look at 0.9 when it is only just beginning to achieve critical mass with new users.
I provide it to ALL my clients and they all think it is by far the best browser they've used. The theme linked as being the upcoming official looks miles less professional, and will hurt Firefox tremendously, regardless of its technical merit.
Agreed that Proxomitron is the best blocker ever. It sounds to me from your post that you aren't using one of the updated filter sets floating around.
Why not try JD5000's filter set (his latest alpha build rocks) at http://www.jd5000.net and you'll find that in the top left corner of a page resides a hidden proxomitron icon which reveals when moused over, giving you instant bypass for that page and many other options. That way you don't bypass proxomitron and forget to re-enable it afterwards.
The short/long click stuff is used throughout OpenOffice.org on its icons. I wonder if this isn't a way to try to break one of the functionality features of OOo by hitting it with patent violations if they get too much market share.
"No, but it shows the mindset of the so called "people" we are facing. If they din't want to be treated as animals, they might quit acting like them."
And they could say the same of Americans. They aren't "so-called people", they ARE people. When Iraqis see a US sniper put a bullet through their relatives' heads, do you think they consider that sniper a hero? Or do you think they would call them the animals, callously butchering their loved ones like dogs?
My point is this - always, ALWAYS beware of demonising your enemy. The truth is that there are people on BOTH sides who enjoy killing, and neither represents the motives of the vast majority. When you've travelled extensively you come to realise that all peoples of the world have similar goals - raise a good family, live in peace, be allowed to do their own thing without being persecuted. Americans want this just as much as Iraqis.
But also consider how you would feel if your country was invaded, and the invaders said one thing and practiced another. You would fight back, wouldn't you? I know I would. Well, so do the Iraqis. They cannot beat the US at its own game, so they do it on their own terms. That doesn't make the vast majority "sub-human monsters" or any other derogatory term.
Yes, the beheading brought home the cold blooded murder aspect of it. I don't condone it in the slightest and having seen the full video, was disgusted by it. However, I also watched the disgusting video of an Apache crew gunning down unarmed men and shooting the wounded one as he crawled away. Is that any more moral?