2) More complex webpage layout. I've never seen it actually done, but it seems that SVG could be used to define arbitrarily-shaped regions in a webpage...up until now, the only regions designers have had to work with, the only thing they could flow text around, was rectangular regions
But I just explained how Mozilla handled it, which is, indeed, quite bad...:(
Despite the fact that Opera surely zooms images, they remain bitmaps, and thus, they are badly deformed when you go through 2 or 3 zooming.
This is, in my mind, what SVG is really supposed to adress (of course, this is not about pictures or real photographies, just for graphics, buttons, logos and the like...) : non-deformed images.
I may be mistaken on that, but full SVG support would help a lot to integrate graphics into extensible layout websites.
For people using their browser at non-standard font settings (and they often have a valid reason for that : some sight problems, for instance), your website would be far more consistent with pictures in SVG, which sizes are put in 'ems' instead of pixels.
Just try to resize your fonts (assuming that the website has not fixed-widths fonts ) (ctrl + in Mozilla). Ho! Where are your nice bitmap logos and graphics ? There, in the background, crushed by all the text at worse, overwhelmed by all the text at best.
SVG could just allow the same resize as text. And I guess a lot of people would appreciate that... Whether the implementation would be possible or not, as previously noticed in the thread, is another problem I'm not skilled enough to discuss.
I'd like to emphasize the fact that literature and movies are substantially different. Let me develop.
Tolkien, if my memory is correct, is not stressing the fact that orcs are 20 000 thousands, then 100 000 thousands, then one million. The reader is just notified once that battle will take a greater extent than before. So how do you know they are more numerous each time ? Because characters are more and more desperate. They just end crawling because they piss out in their pant, despite their courage. This is how you feel it.
But there is no literate equivalent for these fucking 3 minutes aerian travelings showing that really, orcs are coming in hordes, and maybe in hordes of hordes. At last, I just laughed out loud in the movie just thinking how fast should orc make children to come in *that* amount.
And there is nothing like it in the book. Or, at least, nothing that let such a bad taste in the mouth.
There is nothing like, um,... a parallellism.
There is, hum, a total, hum,... schism.
Am I the only one here to think it was not deserved ?
I mean, PJ made a good, but far from brilliant interpretation of the trilogy.
Am I the only one to be tired of being able to find a constant multiplicator for the number of orcish soldiers present at each successive battle ?
Am I the only one to be tired of evil soldiers that would look like zombies if only they had shotguns ?
Am I the only one to be tired of having to suffer 2 mins scenes with Sam desperatingly trying to catch Frodo at the Mont of Doom, with a pathetic church-like music in the background ?
Am I the only one to be tired of seeing a guy who transformed a really deep book, with consistent thoughts on mankind, into a simple epic movie (not saying epic is bad here, just that epic is not what makes this book so great) ?
Am I the only one to be tired of seeing fscking love scenes regularly, in a bad hollywoodish (maybe even bollywoodish) fashion, when this is not necessary (except maybe to lure desperate singles) ?
Am I the only one to be tired of having to suffer such over-simplistic characters (Oh! Denethor is bad ! Elrond is bad ! Gimli is stupid ! Legolas rulez !) ?
Am I the only one to be tired of having to faint suspense when they pretend to kill a hero once in every movie ? (oh no ! Will Aragorn be rescued by his horse ?)
Are you tired of having to suffer my repetitive question ? Yes ? It was exactly the same for me when watching the movies (mainly the second and third one).
PJ made a somewhat ok adaptation, but these awards are a pure confusion between the genius of Tolkien and the average craze for trilogies and epics.
IMHO, Clint Eastwood, as previously noticed, deserved at least the best director. And 11 oscars ? What kind of joke is that ? The embodiment of nuanced opinions ?
The official reason is that they bundle a default media player, just as they bundle a browser.
The non-official reason is that Microsoft is already decommoditizing madia files by implementing a file format that can only be red by WMP. If, as too many people here, you are sticking to the argument "Joe Average will need a media player and a browser, then let's MS do it", you should migrate back to Windows. Computers is not elitism. Everyone can understand. And, besides, MS could sign agreements with major retailers of free tools (browser, media players), but they don't. Why ? It deserves to be asked.
This is not because 99% of the population is accustomed to WMP that this is not a reason to change. Just letting it go will make the situation even worse. MS could then put some strong links between IE and WMP (further integration of WMP in IE interface for exemple), and why not make these software permanently present. oh wait...
Sometimes, when I'm too happy, I scare myself. "Just imagine how it would be if 99% of the world was suffering totalitarian regimes". Are you for freedom ? Or for your freedom ?
And yes, Mac should not come bundled with Quicktime. Apple is not a monopoly, it is a monopoly inside another monopoly, but with 4% market share. This is why nobody cares.
Morphine is so far the most popular (because effective, easily administered, and with the fewest side-effects) pain-killer, for big pains (not only in the ass).
Maybe they just didn't give you enough, though. A patient should *always* ask for pain-killers when he needs some. We live in societies where it shouldn't be normal to suffer anymore, with all the stuff we have at our disposal...
They just gave you aspirin, making you believe that it was morphin.
Too bad the placebo effect is not working of you.
More seriously, though, it is possible that, for some
reasons, it wasn't efficient on you. It also depends on the way it was administered (oral, muscular,...)
But I can guarantee you that morphine has a huge effect on pain relief. It even has *such* a huge effect that at some point, you will forget to breathe.
Disclaimer : if you think I am a troll, don't try it at home...
Try to light yourself on fire, and you then will see that even the strongest dependance to any kind of medicine will seem heavenly good compared to your fucking pain.
Those people just don't wonder. They want it.
Your reasonment is the one from a safe and non-burnt person.
You have *no* idea how these people suffer.
I personnally don't think being confused by the arab/muslim distinction. Georges Corm is dedicating a hundred pages of his masterpiece about this fundamental distinction, I found it really interesting, and I tried to integrate it.
When I speak about the arab world, I'm not speaking about Malaysia, nor Indonesia. And I might answer that the countries you are citing as willing for democracy -Turkey, Lebanon, Egype- went through laic processes (Turkey, Egypt), or are made of a deep multiculturalism (Lebanon), which explains some different point of views from such countries.
I'm not claiming that Arabs and Muslims are linked concepts. There are jewish arabs living in Jerusalem.
Whether to know if Iraq wants democracy or not is a question that deserves to be asked.
And I'm not saying that democracy shouldn't be supported. I'm just saying that trying to enforce it with the Western mind might not be a good idea, as it has been proved that it was not a good idea to do so in sub-saharian Africa.
I'm not talking about debt, I'm talking about the actual situation. Arabs and Persians have exchanged much knowledge and practices, and this is not my role to determine any precedence.
I don't want to mess with "Iranian identity hot-button issues". My first "rant" was not about Iran ; it was a "rant" about the common perceptions of the arab world, as it is seen (again, wrongly or not). The Iranian story was a good start for such a post. Again, I'm not speaking about Iran in the first post. Sorry if you saw it that way.
Nonetheless, I truly appreciate your corrections. I'm in favor of exchange, no matter its direction. Exactly like the Arab/Persian relationship.
This is strange, however, that my first post has been taken as a rant, and as a deep misconception of what Persian are, or are not. It was not my point.
You totally missed the point of my post. It's no big deal.
Your first point is already adressed. I don't see what your second is about. I never contested the third one. I don't see how your fourth point is contradictory with mine. I never said anything different that your fifth point. I'm glad for the sixth point. Looking at the seventh point, I can already tell that you are a zealot. I never said arabs/persians were terrorists. I didn't talk about religion in my post. Is your tenth point some kind of conclusion ?
it's kind of annoying that people draw conclusion like that. I didn't say that Iran was an arab country. I drew a general parallel. See my previous responses to previous posts criticizing this point.
Now, for your other commentaries.
Rubbish ! Well, it basically depends where and when you travelled, and who you met. I got a very good friend of mine, from Morocco, who's been living there for 18 years, and has been coming to France to study. Despite the fact that he is from a quite consensual arab country, and is from a well-educated country, and depiste the fact that he loves France and the Western world as much as I do, he is the first to tell that the Arab and Western worlds are, right now, on fundamentally different tracks, and that they hate each other, the more they diverge. I'm not speaking here about a daily hatred, like a guy slapping at your face because you are white and speaking american. One-on-one relationships are the most insightful things you can have with an individual, but the most deceptive insight you can have on collective mentalities and thinking schemes. This is debatable, of course. But we are here for that, I guess. What I wanted to underline is that Arabs hate the Western world in their boasting, contemptuous and overly ridiculous stance. And that's all ; I never said that each arab man hates each western man. Nor did I say that there is an unsolvable incompatibility between those two words. We have some examples where the two cultures have been living together. But this is a de facto fact we ca't ignore. And I didn't say that the arab people didn't want to incorporate what the west could possibly give to them.
But Arabs and Iranians have a lot to be proud of, and what they don't want is westerners coming in and tell them what to do. They appreciate help when they ask for it, but they mostly want to do things their own way, based on what they think are the best from their own culture and western culture.
It was basically my point. Seeing the Western World trying to enforce their history, with their way of thinking, with their political forms that are based on an historical process, this is what makes the Arabs so angry about us.
I've never been making some cultural differentialism. I love Arab people. I've been there a lot of times, enough to now that Arabs are kind, generous, friendly. But you can't embody a whole nation in a man, and the reverse is true too. You put my friend back in an Arab country, he would be ready to engage himself against the West, not in a terrorist fashion, but in an intellectual form that is everything but stupid...
Please refer to my previous response to the same critic.
My point is not whether Iran is an arab country, which is debatable, considering that the arab adjective is widely, and often wrongly, applied. My point is how we consider countries that are widely known as "arab" (wrongly or not).
And please stop demoting an entire post with arguing about a factual volountary negligence (debating that Iran is not an arab country would have allowed my post to roam around 0/-1 offtopic).
I know Iran is made of 60% of persians. I wouldn't dare writing about it without knowing it.
But I didn't imply that Iran was a part of the Arab world. It's just a common misconception I didn't argue because it was not the proper subject of my post.
Furthermore, even if 60% of the population is persian, the arab culture, religion (even if Sunni are in minority in the arab world), and language still play an important role in the common life of this country.
And the last elections is a good proof of that.
Sorry if I didn't make that point clear.
Nonetheless it remains the same in the absolute.
The mere fact that/. is a geek site, with, as a consequence, a huge majority of people that don't understand a thing about politics (something else than conspiracy theories, and republican-bashing ?), and even less to arab politics, and how this part of the world is internally structured, does not imply that the average/.er must boast about the fact that OSS will bring peace and social revolution in every fucking country in the world.
Don't get me wrong : there are geeks everywhere, with every kind of habits. And this is a good thing if Iran sees a bit of its computer field using OSS. After all, why not ? The enligthenment of one is worth the indiference of a thousand.
But having posts claiming that OSS wil bring the "free as in freedom" concept, please let me laugh. When you got half of the OSS community raging at the FSF for denouncing the new XFree license, which is a blatant and dangerous derivative from the free software spirit, do you really think that being involved in the OSS/FS movement really tells a thing about how you consider freedom ? I personnally don't think so.
It's just like the Iraqi LUG (a good thing IMHO), triggering +5 questions like "Do you think Linux will radically change the Iraqi's way of considering freedom ?".
Let all us laugh at this nombrilistic perspective.
Despite the moderation that some posts suffered, it is good to remind two useful things.
The Arab world is really hating the Western world. Mod me down if you want, this is true in 90% of situations. And countries building MacDonals's don't mean a thing. What we have to really understand is that the Arab people are feeling like naked people, with their culture rejected, forgotten. If I were Arab, attending an history course in France (from what I know) telling that the Renaissance comes from Italy, I would be fucking angry, because the Renaissance has its very roots in the Arab culture. Having to suffer people telling the invention of medicine without (or very quickly) mentionning Avicenna would make my blood turn blue. Having to suffer people explaining that democracy is good for Arab countries, without even taking the time to assess individual countries situations would obviously irritate me. The fact that Western countries are, on a daily, institutionna, historical, cultural basis, denying the Arab heir is just a part of what make them hate us *so much*.
In this particular context, adopting OSS would not change a thing. What is really important in free software ? It is the freedom credo. And nothing else. Performance is nothing, stability is nothing, freedom is everything. If you ask for people to adopt OSS, then the logical consequence (despite the fact that it should be a prerequisite) would be to ask them to free their Peace Nobel Prize. And it won't happen, at least not now (for your information, the latest elections were the most repressive that Iran witnessed since the beginning of Khomeyni's reign).
The arab world is on a phase of transition, the one that suffered every major religion before losing momentum. Catholic church had to go through the Inquisition, for example, as a last try to retain a losing grasp on people's faith. Waving the fanatic/terrorist flag is not helping, because it just reinforce their feeling of marginalization, and also because this is not representative of the vast majority of arab people.
And Arab people won't choose something that is not a natural evolution in their way of thinking. Enforcing democracy there is the best way of making them hate democracy : and, not surprisingly, this is what's happening right now.
The end of my post was quite offtopic, but it is just a reminder : don't think of the Arab world in western terms. Read academic works about the Arab world instead of the NYT, or every other newspaper that don't know a thing about these countries (especially after the blinding powder of the post 9/11 assaults). Do it ; it's worth a check. Georges Corm provides excellent insights.
This was bound to happen : any major innovation which radically changes everyday's life is supposed to suffer a backlash, one day or another.
Now, from my biased point of view, I strongly agree with this initiative. I just browsed through the nice thread initiated by the "fortune 50" troll (kudos to you, guy, you know how to turn on geeks) : rest assured, there is no more risk that someone will come and jam your very important call than having a huge crowd coming to interrupt your meeting. Furthermore, if you freak out already, it surely is because you do something *not* that ethical (MS/SCO drone, someone ?)...
Anyway.
Those people are jamming phones in places where phones should not be. I'm sure almost everyone experienced a fucking moron answering his phone in a theater... I've been personnaly working in a public library for a year, and guess what ? they just set up a place exclusively dedicated for cellphones. I say : fuck all that.
What you need to understand is that those people are not against the very use of cellphones, but against the overuse that's been commonly done with it.
Ho, did I receive a call ?
No, I didn't receive a call...
Maybe I should call him to know whether or not he tried to call me...
and so on...
In Italy, people are sending text messages just to tell other peoples they're thinking about them. In Vietnam, friends are droning during entire evenings on their brand-new phones. In every fucking country in the world, people are speaking OUT LOUD (the auditive disturbance is far higher THAN SEEING ENTIRE WORDS PRINTED IN CAPS, FOR INSTANCE).
What really bothers those people I fully support because I used to have a cellphone jammer in France is that cellphones are used far beyond their primitive goal, ie the ability of being contacted or to contact people when this is important (I forgot to call you for your birthday, here is an opportunity ; car crash in the street, another opportunity). I don't use a cellphone, and you know what ? i feel *free*. I just make appointments, and I am always on time (people having cellphones feel well reassured because they can call 5 minutes before saying they will be late, which gives me the hardly resistible desire to put their fucking phones in their throats). I join people when I am at home, and I exactly determine when I want to be joined. And my life is exactly the same as what people having cellphones get (except maybe that I don't throw rabbits at my appointments).
Don't get me wrong : I'm not an anti-cellphone activist. I know people that cut off their phones when it is supposed to, ie not letting the phone on when you are drinking a coffee with a friend, being called, and spend 30 minutes on the phone -. But what needs to be aknowledged is that most of the time, cellphones are used in an evil way.
And this is why they encounter resistance.
Well done guys, keep going !:)
Slashdot Mirror
Go take a look there
The problem you conjure up can already be tackled with pure CSS...
Hope it will help.
Regards,
jdif
my point was browser-independant.
But I just explained how Mozilla handled it, which is, indeed, quite bad... :(
Despite the fact that Opera surely zooms images, they remain bitmaps, and thus, they are badly deformed when you go through 2 or 3 zooming.
This is, in my mind, what SVG is really supposed to adress (of course, this is not about pictures or real photographies, just for graphics, buttons, logos and the like...) : non-deformed images.
Regards,
jdif
For people using their browser at non-standard font settings (and they often have a valid reason for that : some sight problems, for instance), your website would be far more consistent with pictures in SVG, which sizes are put in 'ems' instead of pixels.
Just try to resize your fonts (assuming that the website has not fixed-widths fonts ) (ctrl + in Mozilla). Ho! Where are your nice bitmap logos and graphics ? There, in the background, crushed by all the text at worse, overwhelmed by all the text at best.
SVG could just allow the same resize as text. And I guess a lot of people would appreciate that... Whether the implementation would be possible or not, as previously noticed in the thread, is another problem I'm not skilled enough to discuss.
But if it is possible, then sure, let's do it.
Regards,
jdifool
Tolkien, if my memory is correct, is not stressing the fact that orcs are 20 000 thousands, then 100 000 thousands, then one million. The reader is just notified once that battle will take a greater extent than before. So how do you know they are more numerous each time ? Because characters are more and more desperate. They just end crawling because they piss out in their pant, despite their courage. This is how you feel it.
But there is no literate equivalent for these fucking 3 minutes aerian travelings showing that really, orcs are coming in hordes, and maybe in hordes of hordes. At last, I just laughed out loud in the movie just thinking how fast should orc make children to come in *that* amount.
And there is nothing like it in the book. Or, at least, nothing that let such a bad taste in the mouth.
There is nothing like, um, ... a parallellism.
... schism.
There is, hum, a total, hum,
Regards,
jdif
So your comment doesn't really bother me.
Regards,
jdif
I mean, PJ made a good, but far from brilliant interpretation of the trilogy.
Am I the only one to be tired of being able to find a constant multiplicator for the number of orcish soldiers present at each successive battle ?
Am I the only one to be tired of evil soldiers that would look like zombies if only they had shotguns ?
Am I the only one to be tired of having to suffer 2 mins scenes with Sam desperatingly trying to catch Frodo at the Mont of Doom, with a pathetic church-like music in the background ?
Am I the only one to be tired of seeing a guy who transformed a really deep book, with consistent thoughts on mankind, into a simple epic movie (not saying epic is bad here, just that epic is not what makes this book so great) ?
Am I the only one to be tired of seeing fscking love scenes regularly, in a bad hollywoodish (maybe even bollywoodish) fashion, when this is not necessary (except maybe to lure desperate singles) ?
Am I the only one to be tired of having to suffer such over-simplistic characters (Oh! Denethor is bad ! Elrond is bad ! Gimli is stupid ! Legolas rulez !) ?
Am I the only one to be tired of having to faint suspense when they pretend to kill a hero once in every movie ? (oh no ! Will Aragorn be rescued by his horse ?)
Are you tired of having to suffer my repetitive question ? Yes ? It was exactly the same for me when watching the movies (mainly the second and third one).
PJ made a somewhat ok adaptation, but these awards are a pure confusion between the genius of Tolkien and the average craze for trilogies and epics.
IMHO, Clint Eastwood, as previously noticed, deserved at least the best director. And 11 oscars ? What kind of joke is that ? The embodiment of nuanced opinions ?
Regards,
jdif
It's also worth noting that Slashdot's RSS feed will have more article contents for subscribers in a few weeks
/. editors.
Or how to make a little bit of advertising with an innocent story.
Very professional : kudos to
Regards,
jdif
WTF are all these ads ? /. needs more ads right now, when nothing could let think that there are some financial issues ?)
(I mean, how come that
Regards,
jdif
You are not the good one, period.
Go back to your PC, and stop making grand statements like that.
jdif
Does it remind you of something ?
The official reason is that they bundle a default media player, just as they bundle a browser.
The non-official reason is that Microsoft is already decommoditizing madia files by implementing a file format that can only be red by WMP. If, as too many people here, you are sticking to the argument "Joe Average will need a media player and a browser, then let's MS do it", you should migrate back to Windows. Computers is not elitism. Everyone can understand. And, besides, MS could sign agreements with major retailers of free tools (browser, media players), but they don't. Why ? It deserves to be asked.
This is not because 99% of the population is accustomed to WMP that this is not a reason to change. Just letting it go will make the situation even worse. MS could then put some strong links between IE and WMP (further integration of WMP in IE interface for exemple), and why not make these software permanently present. oh wait...
Sometimes, when I'm too happy, I scare myself. "Just imagine how it would be if 99% of the world was suffering totalitarian regimes". Are you for freedom ? Or for your freedom ?
And yes, Mac should not come bundled with Quicktime. Apple is not a monopoly, it is a monopoly inside another monopoly, but with 4% market share. This is why nobody cares.
Regards,
jdif
Morphine is so far the most popular (because effective, easily administered, and with the fewest side-effects) pain-killer, for big pains (not only in the ass).
Maybe they just didn't give you enough, though. A patient should *always* ask for pain-killers when he needs some. We live in societies where it shouldn't be normal to suffer anymore, with all the stuff we have at our disposal...
Regards,
jdif
They just gave you aspirin, making you believe that it was morphin.
Too bad the placebo effect is not working of you.
More seriously, though, it is possible that, for some reasons, it wasn't efficient on you. It also depends on the way it was administered (oral, muscular, ...)
But I can guarantee you that morphine has a huge effect on pain relief. It even has *such* a huge effect that at some point, you will forget to breathe.
Disclaimer : if you think I am a troll, don't try it at home...
Regards,
jdif
Those people just don't wonder. They want it.
Your reasonment is the one from a safe and non-burnt person.
You have *no* idea how these people suffer.
No offense to you, BTW.
Regards,
jdif
Hatred may not be the good word for Iran, but I'm pretty sure it's kind of appropriate in many other countries in that area.
But generelazing is always false at some point.
Nonetheless you perfectly got my point. And you didn't seem to think that I implied that Iran was Arab, which I never thought, and still don't think.
Thanks for that.
jdif
I personnally don't think being confused by the arab/muslim distinction. Georges Corm is dedicating a hundred pages of his masterpiece about this fundamental distinction, I found it really interesting, and I tried to integrate it.
When I speak about the arab world, I'm not speaking about Malaysia, nor Indonesia. And I might answer that the countries you are citing as willing for democracy -Turkey, Lebanon, Egype- went through laic processes (Turkey, Egypt), or are made of a deep multiculturalism (Lebanon), which explains some different point of views from such countries.
I'm not claiming that Arabs and Muslims are linked concepts. There are jewish arabs living in Jerusalem.
Whether to know if Iraq wants democracy or not is a question that deserves to be asked.
And I'm not saying that democracy shouldn't be supported. I'm just saying that trying to enforce it with the Western mind might not be a good idea, as it has been proved that it was not a good idea to do so in sub-saharian Africa.
Regards,
jdif
I don't want to mess with "Iranian identity hot-button issues". My first "rant" was not about Iran ; it was a "rant" about the common perceptions of the arab world, as it is seen (again, wrongly or not). The Iranian story was a good start for such a post. Again, I'm not speaking about Iran in the first post. Sorry if you saw it that way.
Nonetheless, I truly appreciate your corrections. I'm in favor of exchange, no matter its direction. Exactly like the Arab/Persian relationship.
This is strange, however, that my first post has been taken as a rant, and as a deep misconception of what Persian are, or are not. It was not my point.
Friendly,
jdif
Your first point is already adressed.
I don't see what your second is about.
I never contested the third one.
I don't see how your fourth point is contradictory with mine.
I never said anything different that your fifth point.
I'm glad for the sixth point.
Looking at the seventh point, I can already tell that you are a zealot.
I never said arabs/persians were terrorists.
I didn't talk about religion in my post.
Is your tenth point some kind of conclusion ?
Regards,
jdif
it's kind of annoying that people draw conclusion like that. I didn't say that Iran was an arab country. I drew a general parallel. See my previous responses to previous posts criticizing this point.
Now, for your other commentaries.
Rubbish ! Well, it basically depends where and when you travelled, and who you met. I got a very good friend of mine, from Morocco, who's been living there for 18 years, and has been coming to France to study. Despite the fact that he is from a quite consensual arab country, and is from a well-educated country, and depiste the fact that he loves France and the Western world as much as I do, he is the first to tell that the Arab and Western worlds are, right now, on fundamentally different tracks, and that they hate each other, the more they diverge. I'm not speaking here about a daily hatred, like a guy slapping at your face because you are white and speaking american. One-on-one relationships are the most insightful things you can have with an individual, but the most deceptive insight you can have on collective mentalities and thinking schemes. This is debatable, of course. But we are here for that, I guess. What I wanted to underline is that Arabs hate the Western world in their boasting, contemptuous and overly ridiculous stance. And that's all ; I never said that each arab man hates each western man. Nor did I say that there is an unsolvable incompatibility between those two words. We have some examples where the two cultures have been living together. But this is a de facto fact we ca't ignore. And I didn't say that the arab people didn't want to incorporate what the west could possibly give to them.
But Arabs and Iranians have a lot to be proud of, and what they don't want is westerners coming in and tell them what to do. They appreciate help when they ask for it, but they mostly want to do things their own way, based on what they think are the best from their own culture and western culture.
It was basically my point. Seeing the Western World trying to enforce their history, with their way of thinking, with their political forms that are based on an historical process, this is what makes the Arabs so angry about us.
I've never been making some cultural differentialism. I love Arab people. I've been there a lot of times, enough to now that Arabs are kind, generous, friendly. But you can't embody a whole nation in a man, and the reverse is true too. You put my friend back in an Arab country, he would be ready to engage himself against the West, not in a terrorist fashion, but in an intellectual form that is everything but stupid...
Regards,
jdif
I indeed confused the two, arabs are sunni, and Iran is in majority Shiite. The rapid growth of critic made me *so* shaky... :)
Second, I didn't say Persians did speak Arabic.
Finally, I don't see what this has to do with my first post. And yes, I know that too, thank you.
Friendly,
jdif
My point is not whether Iran is an arab country, which is debatable, considering that the arab adjective is widely, and often wrongly, applied. My point is how we consider countries that are widely known as "arab" (wrongly or not).
And please stop demoting an entire post with arguing about a factual volountary negligence (debating that Iran is not an arab country would have allowed my post to roam around 0/-1 offtopic).
I know Iran is made of 60% of persians. I wouldn't dare writing about it without knowing it.
Regards,
jdif
Iran is a persian country, I totally agree.
But I didn't imply that Iran was a part of the Arab world. It's just a common misconception I didn't argue because it was not the proper subject of my post.
Furthermore, even if 60% of the population is persian, the arab culture, religion (even if Sunni are in minority in the arab world), and language still play an important role in the common life of this country.
And the last elections is a good proof of that.
Sorry if I didn't make that point clear.
Nonetheless it remains the same in the absolute.
Regards,
jdif
Thanks.
The mere fact that /. is a geek site, with, as a consequence, a huge majority of people that don't understand a thing about politics (something else than conspiracy theories, and republican-bashing ?), and even less to arab politics, and how this part of the world is internally structured, does not imply that the average /.er must boast about the fact that OSS will bring peace and social revolution in every fucking country in the world.
Don't get me wrong : there are geeks everywhere, with every kind of habits. And this is a good thing if Iran sees a bit of its computer field using OSS. After all, why not ? The enligthenment of one is worth the indiference of a thousand.
But having posts claiming that OSS wil bring the "free as in freedom" concept, please let me laugh. When you got half of the OSS community raging at the FSF for denouncing the new XFree license, which is a blatant and dangerous derivative from the free software spirit, do you really think that being involved in the OSS/FS movement really tells a thing about how you consider freedom ? I personnally don't think so.
It's just like the Iraqi LUG (a good thing IMHO), triggering +5 questions like "Do you think Linux will radically change the Iraqi's way of considering freedom ?".
Let all us laugh at this nombrilistic perspective.
Despite the moderation that some posts suffered, it is good to remind two useful things.
The arab world is on a phase of transition, the one that suffered every major religion before losing momentum. Catholic church had to go through the Inquisition, for example, as a last try to retain a losing grasp on people's faith. Waving the fanatic/terrorist flag is not helping, because it just reinforce their feeling of marginalization, and also because this is not representative of the vast majority of arab people.
And Arab people won't choose something that is not a natural evolution in their way of thinking. Enforcing democracy there is the best way of making them hate democracy : and, not surprisingly, this is what's happening right now.
The end of my post was quite offtopic, but it is just a reminder : don't think of the Arab world in western terms. Read academic works about the Arab world instead of the NYT, or every other newspaper that don't know a thing about these countries (especially after the blinding powder of the post 9/11 assaults). Do it ; it's worth a check. Georges Corm provides excellent insights.
Regards, jdif
Now, from my biased point of view, I strongly agree with this initiative. I just browsed through the nice thread initiated by the "fortune 50" troll (kudos to you, guy, you know how to turn on geeks) : rest assured, there is no more risk that someone will come and jam your very important call than having a huge crowd coming to interrupt your meeting. Furthermore, if you freak out already, it surely is because you do something *not* that ethical (MS/SCO drone, someone ?)...
Anyway.
Those people are jamming phones in places where phones should not be. I'm sure almost everyone experienced a fucking moron answering his phone in a theater... I've been personnaly working in a public library for a year, and guess what ? they just set up a place exclusively dedicated for cellphones. I say : fuck all that.
What you need to understand is that those people are not against the very use of cellphones, but against the overuse that's been commonly done with it.
Ho, did I receive a call ?
No, I didn't receive a call...
Maybe I should call him to know whether or not he tried to call me...
and so on...
In Italy, people are sending text messages just to tell other peoples they're thinking about them. In Vietnam, friends are droning during entire evenings on their brand-new phones. In every fucking country in the world, people are speaking OUT LOUD (the auditive disturbance is far higher THAN SEEING ENTIRE WORDS PRINTED IN CAPS, FOR INSTANCE).
What really bothers those people I fully support because I used to have a cellphone jammer in France is that cellphones are used far beyond their primitive goal, ie the ability of being contacted or to contact people when this is important (I forgot to call you for your birthday, here is an opportunity ; car crash in the street, another opportunity). I don't use a cellphone, and you know what ? i feel *free*. I just make appointments, and I am always on time (people having cellphones feel well reassured because they can call 5 minutes before saying they will be late, which gives me the hardly resistible desire to put their fucking phones in their throats). I join people when I am at home, and I exactly determine when I want to be joined. And my life is exactly the same as what people having cellphones get (except maybe that I don't throw rabbits at my appointments).
Don't get me wrong : I'm not an anti-cellphone activist. I know people that cut off their phones when it is supposed to, ie not letting the phone on when you are drinking a coffee with a friend, being called, and spend 30 minutes on the phone -. But what needs to be aknowledged is that most of the time, cellphones are used in an evil way.
And this is why they encounter resistance. :)
Well done guys, keep going !
Regards,
jdif
I should make this comment mine...
oh wait...
All your posts are belong to me.
Regards,
jdif
-All your offices are belong to us*
*with Aussie strong accent, plz.
Regards,
jdif