If I was so off the mark with my reply to your post, would you mind being a dear and, oh, I don't know, elaborating on where you think I went wrong, rather than simply saying "YOU IDIOT YOU MISSED MY POINT". Let's see where I went wrong from the beginning, shall we?
Hmm, that's funny because Venezuela's democracy did just that. It stayed on the air for FIVE YEARS before it was shut down.
It wasn't shut down to begin with, it's merely not available over public airwaves anymore.
If it was illegal, how come no one was prosecuted for it? How come the station was allowed to continue broadcasting even though they were apparently a direct threat?
So here it seems like you come to the realization that this smear-campaign against Chavez over this incident is really nothing of substance?
It doesn't add up. If the station was as bad as those who are denouncing it claim, then it should have been closed down immediately. Why wasn't it?
Why does it matter whether the government lets their license for the public airwaves expire rather than attempt a forcible shutdown that would bring lots of international attention and criticism (From the same camps that are always attacking Chavez)? I would think that the route they opted for was, ultimately, the one that damages least.
Then we come to this point...
Then you flamed me, while the whole time still being too stupid to realize you were making MY points FOR ME.
I said:
Am I to apologize for your lack of reading comprehension skills?
If that's a flame then Jesus Christ are you a ninny, I said nothing else of you. You're the one flaming away with what seems to be your favorite term, the ever so hurtful stupid and merely attacking me rather than trying to clarify your point.
You play a very cute smartass, but really, fine, I'll roll with that.
Chavez is nothing more than a protodictator who will soon take Venezuela down the same path Castro took Cuba, into poverty and oppression.
...
We've been through this before folks, socialism/communism leads to nothing but bad things. The fact that he throws some heating oil at the Kennedys changes nothing.
First off, it seems like you really have no idea what kind of government is setup right now in Venezuela, because it hardly resembles something like Cuba. Do yourself a favour, go do some research on the topic at hand, realize that when you actually look at things Chavez has done more to help his country and his peoples than most world leaders can boast of these days.
By the way, just thought you'd like to know the station did not incite the coup, it merely became its puppet, along with a few others. I quote:
On April 11, 2002, the day of the coup, when military and civilian opposition leaders held press conferences calling for Chávez's ouster, RCTV hosted top coup plotter Carlos Ortega, who rallied demonstrators to the march on the presidential palace. On the same day, after the anti-democratic overthrow appeared to have succeeded, another coup leader, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, told a Venevisión reporter (4/11/02): "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."
What I find amazing is that you find anything to bitch about here since you seem like you'd be just as upset if the stations involved were immediately sacked, rather than allowed to function until the end of their run. Damned if you do and damned if you don't, people are always going to think Chavez and socialism are some big bogeyman.
Pretending there's a difference? I think it's a pretty important thing to note, personally, that this station that did what it did during the attempted coup was not immediately yanked off the air upon restoration of power. I think it's pretty important to note that this station had plenty of time to attempt to do something to minimize the damage brought upon itself through such a decision. I don't have sympathy for this station after researching the facts and finding that they weren't operating in the public interest on the public airwaves. I think it says a lot for the Venezuelan government that the station continued to operate as long as it did. They waited for the perfectly legal option to come to them instead of opting for what I can only imagine would be seized upon by other world governments to portray Chavez in an even worse light.
Nobody said anything about the station being incredibly dangerous. Everybody can see plainly through research that the license for this station was not renewed when the time came, it was not suddenly forced off the airwaves and I'd be willing to bed the people there knew the renewal wasn't going to happen.
Nothing you posted makes any sense, I'm upset at the time I wasted reading it.
Am I to apologize for your lack of reading comprehension skills? In any case, it's not like anyone is pretending the station was wielding some awesome power to topple the government. Is Chavez an even worse bad guy to some people simply because he decides to bide his time with punishing those who did what this station did back then? Because he'd rather just let things proceed smoothly? Only an idiot would think that a single station would be capable of leading a revolt, and only an even bigger idiot would think that it is something of the utmost urgency to deal with in any manner possible once the coup was effectively squashed when that nation has the problems it does.
Could you be any more of an arrogant ass saying "I thought for a moment that they would have some principals of some kind" when these people are simply trying to better themselves and their position in the world through a democratically elected government? I might be mistaken, but I think they have a little bit of a better grasp on their situation (and what can be done about it) than you.
It's not like Chavez is the one pissing everyone off internationally or even trying to make a big stink, this is all a distortion by the mass media to make Chavez look bad, as they are always set upon him to do by those who determine what makes it onto the news.
P.S. -- People like you are the ones that justify the seething hatred of America's pathetic understanding of the issues that are relevant to other nations. Give yourself a pat on the back.
I'll bite. Sure, if you think that having a deluded or completely obscured viewpoint means you have a valid viewpoint.
I would challenge most politicians to walk through South Central LA without adequate precautions.
Relevancy? I'm tempted to ask you if you've had the chance to compare first hand the differences between daily life in post-invasion Iraq and daily life in present-day SC LA. My bet would be no, but suffice to say that you're not going to find prominent politicians going anywhere in most of this country without some sort of security escort. It's stupid not to in a lot of areas and trivial to boot, but that's not to say you can compare a civil war with urban crime.
Some nut job in Iraq blows up 30 people and it's a civil war. Some nut job in VA kills 30 people and it's a nut job.
I really didn't think that the concept of motivation was something so difficult to grasp. The reason a nut job in VA is labeled a nut job for killing 30 people and not the beginnings (we're way past beginnings though) of a civil war is because we don't have nut jobs in VA killing 30 people a day for reasons like a holy war. It's a civil war because the factions and peoples of the area are *gasp* in open, armed conflict with each other.
For the most part the large majority of Iraqi territory is doing very well thank you. You don't hear about that on the evening news (see previous comments on this topic).
The large majority of the Iraqi territory is doing very well? Ah, well, that's good to know, but it would seem that their population centers are taking the full force of all this sectarian violence going on. This document says "Almost 75% of Iraq's population live in the flat, alluvial plain stretching southeast from Baghdad and Basrah to the Persian Gulf." Unless I'm mistaken that sounds just about right for where the news reports of violence are coming in from. The reason you don't hear your tidbit there on the evening news is because it fails to take into account that the violence is happening where the people are.
Yes, there is violence. But it is being perpetrated by a minority of the populace. The VAST majority just want to be left alone. But Islamofacists need to be in control, have everyone toe their line, so they kill to terrorize.
You pretty much described most armed conflicts in human history. When has there ever not been a power struggle, especially between the Biblical religions and their peoples? The fact of the matter, however, is that with our dropping the ball with Iraq after removing Saddam from power we made the situation much more grim and basically created a great divide at home between the people who want the troops home, the people who want Iraq to become America Jr, and the people who lament that this truly is a situation with no quick fix.
I'll pass on the chance of observing anymore childish comments from your history here at Slashdot in search of "previous comments on this topic", though, thanks. What I did see in my quick glance looks pretty close to the rantings of Michael Savage or Ann Coulter, both of whom are people I've had quite enough of for one lifetime. "Oh F**K Off", quite.
Sorry bud but your claim hasn't been true since 2002, as far as can be seen on the site you so proudly mention to prove your point. Maybe you should read up on the finer details again sometime.
no, but then i take my job seriously and i at least verified that the new timezone matched the correct data and that no deamons had crashed. instead of blindly pushing a potentially disruptive update to 2000 computers
Who has the time to effectively administer their systems though? Certainly not these fine examples of careful consideration, so thoughtfully risking throwing the whole network they're charged with keeping watch over into a funk.
Because nobody ever lies when they swear on something like a holy book, or say "I swear to God..." and proceed to lie. How about we do away with the damn thing entirely because it's bullocks to begin with.
Not worth anything? Well that's a peculiar way of looking at it... It's not like I put that at the end there to go "'sup bitches, shout out to all my agnostic homies!" I was simply stating that I don't commit to any particular dogma and god(s). It's called covering your ass and preventing people from assuming the wrong thing.
I don't know why I even bother to respond to Anonymous anymore...
Here's a rather quick follow-up after doing some Googling and reviewing of some expert opinions and analysis, etc... I wish I could retract my previous post because, quite frankly, the contradictions and muddied waters with regards to this topic make my head spin (No offense to those who've come to terms with their own interpretation). In any case, there seems to be some weight to the claim that Christians are to allow God to judge the unbelievers, and Christians are to judge other Christians by the same measurements they use for themselves.
How is it being judgmental to inform someone that they're ignoring one of the key tenets to the religion they profess to prescribe to? And if by some strange twisting of the English language you do manage to get me on a technicality here, I hope you don't consider it a negative judgment, just someone saying "You're doing it wrong!" It's not a debatable point that Jesus taught his followers to not mete out judgment because it is simply not their place. There's plenty that's up for debate and interpretation with regards to the Bible, but not that point. Too many people forget this.
China, communist? Hah, as if. China has been a totalitarian, oppressive and increasingly capitalistic nation for quite a long time now. It's called fascism, with Mussolini as the chief architect in the past and many world leaders the perfectors through time. Communism is an economic policy, nothing more. To pretend Communism has anything to do with throwing kids into rehab for "internet addiction" is quite silly. Thanks for playing though.
The U.S. Constitution forbids quite a lot of things, including religious tests to hold office. However, these are routinely violated in state or local laws.
Article 19, section 1 of the Arkansas Constitution: Atheists disqualified from holding office or testifying as witness.
No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court.
There's many many more, and you can find them all here. And people say that liberals have all these unconstitutional restrictions in place in order to keep God-fearing Christians from public office. Last time I checked, most elected representatives I read up on, especially Presidential candidates, identify themselves as Christians...
Disclaimer: Not that there's anything wrong with that...
This is basically what happens already on previous Windows versions. The difference here is that Windows Vista will prevent you from playing back DRM-protected content at full quality unless you have the proper licenses, regardless of hardware capability. It's a business decision made to appease the RIAA/MPAA, and it's one that won't affect people who don't pay money for DRM media.
Nice doomsday scenario, it's just too bad there's no way to substantiate this claim at all. Quite frankly, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. DRM protection schemes exist on system like Linux and XP. The difference is that DRM was implemented through the files themselves before, but now it's implemented through the OS in a "protected path" content providers can use. Both methods suck and ultimately fail at their goal, and DRM itself is no worse in Vista than any other OS, nor is it going to instantly lock down your computer and refuse to let your run your favorite hobby program.
In any case, all these anti-DRM rants are starting to make it sound like it's going to be a calamity on the scale of Peak Oil.
MySpace does not facilitate anything other than sending intra-site messages between people. I could just as easily say a site like DeviantART needs to have these nanny laws to prevent kids from talking to (and eventually meeting) someone. Furthermore, statistically MySpace and the rest are insignificant in terms of online predation. But I guess it's okay to ignore what's really going on and chant think of the children! What next? Pressing charges against someone running an IRC server because someone happened to run into trouble through it? After all, the admins can see everything going on with a standard IRC server, they should do some enforcing!
For your second paragraph, no, it's not, and good job on missing the point entirely, which is the government has no business creeping into this part of our lives and should not be allowed to do so. Stop shifting the responsibility of raising your children and realize that you're making a mountain out of a molehill with this.
If you were being at all serious, it's really rather frightening that you'd actually endorse bad laws simply because they scratch a personal itch of yours. MySpace is junk in my opinion, therefore, any legislation aimed at it (And likely to be detrimental to it, very much so) has my full support and praise. You've been deluded to the point of believing that the best way to eliminate a problem is to create a whole other host of 'em.
MySpace isn't the net negative for mankind, this brand of apathy is, and unfortunately it's too deeply ingrained in too many minds.
Not that this legislation has a snowball's chance in hell of being passed and upheld in court. It is not my job to police who views my website or utilizes it in any fashion. This applies just as much for personal websites as it does for larger projects like social networking sites. Does anyone know the last time a newspaper, for example, was held liable for similar situations as the ones being bemoaned in the media regarding MySpace? Never, that's when, and it should damn well stay that way. Raise your own damn kids and stop ballooning the already massive federal government.
Look no further than your extensions for any performance issues like that. A poorly written add-on can effectively trash your installation and leave it a memory leaking CPU hungry beast. Take it easy with the add-ons, use well-tested ones, and keep an eye out here as a general guideline when choosing extensions.
Furthermore, since it's OSS, people are hardly being forced to include extra functionality. Don't like the direction? Fork it, or ask other people with like interests but more ability to make things happen to take it on themselves. In the end, though, I doubt the spell checker or other new features are the cause of your woes, and it's infinitely easier to track down issues with popular parts of the browser when they're officially incorporated, instead of relying on the add-on manager to assure the product will continue to keep its users happy.
P.S. -- If you find a bug because of some exotic hardware/software configuration, be a good sport and issue a bug report. In my experiences you can be a complete noob with submitting bug reports yet developers are more than willing to track down an issue. If you don't think you have enough information to post a bug report, take to the forums! People need to be more proactive in ensuring their software works for them, and one thing I love about F/OSS is the ease and transparency of that process.
Second P.S. -- Flash is often my problem. Adobe sucks.
I'm not missing any point. However, people complaining about Vista and Aero while only looking at the requirements for a Vista Premium Ready PC are missing the point entirely. Since nobody really seems interested in Googling what you can get by with hardware-wise for a Vista + Aero experience, let me help you all.
Being honest, Windows Aero can be quite difficult to get. Firstly you need a compatible video card and then you need compatible WDDM drivers which work with that graphics card, and you need enough memory to be able to run it in the first place... remember that Windows Aero isn't just transparency within title bars of the active window... it's more like a technology in its own right.
The very minimum of requirements which need to be had on a system are:
128MB RAM
DirectX 9 Support with Pixel Shader 2 support
AGP 4x or better with compatible graphics card
WDDM/LDDM drivers for compatible graphics card
Screen resolution of 1024x768 at 32-bit colour
Let's compare that with the recommended settings for an XGL/AIGLX setup, courtesy of openSUSE:
The following graphics hardware is known to work well or recommended for use with XGL. Please add exceptions if there are any.
Intel All intel graphics chips need the newest packages of Xgl and compiz for running flawlessly.
i915, i945 Accelerated XVideo is broken on these cards. See Troubleshooting.
compiz --replace will most likely crash the Xserver due to a long standing DRI bug.
NVidia All NVIDIA cards need the proprietary driver for running Xgl. Currently you will need to uninstall and reinstall the xgl rpm after installing the proprietary NVidia driver.
GeForce 4xxx series XVideo is not accelerated on these cards.
GeForce FX 5xxx series, Quadro FX series Accelerated XVideo is hitting a slow path on these cards, it is under investigation.
GeForce 6xxx series
GeForce 7xxx series (GeForce 7600 = not all effects are available but mostly working)
Radeon X300: Xgl running with proprietary fglrx driver 8.23
If you are not sure what card you are using, you can run the following command (as root): hwinfo --gfxcard
If your card isn't listed then you can check out the Gentoo hardware list as well.
So basically, the hardware requirements are very similar, though Aero does require more because it simply does more, and if you don't believe me, take a real hard look at everything that it does. I'm not saying transparency and drop shadows are hard work, I'm saying Aero has much more functionality than you and a lot of people give it credit for. What does XGL/AIGLX bring to the table other than some slick animations and effects (Which I love, by the way) by rendering the screen and windows through OpenGL?
I'm not about to get sucked into a debate about why I said what I said about OS X, but I will say that it's pretty obvious you don't mind shelling out over a hundred dollars for an update to your OS every "1.5 years or so". Me, I'd rather they simply roll them up into a large update and charge the same price. You know, kind of like how Microsoft has been doing things. And if you think SP2 had no features, you really can't even notice something as obvious as the Security Center (Not that I'm saying it's the best example, but it's one of the most prominent ones). I'm not an apologist for bad software or anything because I feel they've
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, that was quite the internet smackdown. Someone must feel big now.
If I was so off the mark with my reply to your post, would you mind being a dear and, oh, I don't know, elaborating on where you think I went wrong, rather than simply saying "YOU IDIOT YOU MISSED MY POINT". Let's see where I went wrong from the beginning, shall we?
It wasn't shut down to begin with, it's merely not available over public airwaves anymore.
So here it seems like you come to the realization that this smear-campaign against Chavez over this incident is really nothing of substance?
Why does it matter whether the government lets their license for the public airwaves expire rather than attempt a forcible shutdown that would bring lots of international attention and criticism (From the same camps that are always attacking Chavez)? I would think that the route they opted for was, ultimately, the one that damages least.
Then we come to this point...
I said:
If that's a flame then Jesus Christ are you a ninny, I said nothing else of you. You're the one flaming away with what seems to be your favorite term, the ever so hurtful stupid and merely attacking me rather than trying to clarify your point.
You play a very cute smartass, but really, fine, I'll roll with that.
First off, it seems like you really have no idea what kind of government is setup right now in Venezuela, because it hardly resembles something like Cuba. Do yourself a favour, go do some research on the topic at hand, realize that when you actually look at things Chavez has done more to help his country and his peoples than most world leaders can boast of these days.
By the way, just thought you'd like to know the station did not incite the coup, it merely became its puppet, along with a few others. I quote:
What I find amazing is that you find anything to bitch about here since you seem like you'd be just as upset if the stations involved were immediately sacked, rather than allowed to function until the end of their run. Damned if you do and damned if you don't, people are always going to think Chavez and socialism are some big bogeyman.
Pretending there's a difference? I think it's a pretty important thing to note, personally, that this station that did what it did during the attempted coup was not immediately yanked off the air upon restoration of power. I think it's pretty important to note that this station had plenty of time to attempt to do something to minimize the damage brought upon itself through such a decision. I don't have sympathy for this station after researching the facts and finding that they weren't operating in the public interest on the public airwaves. I think it says a lot for the Venezuelan government that the station continued to operate as long as it did. They waited for the perfectly legal option to come to them instead of opting for what I can only imagine would be seized upon by other world governments to portray Chavez in an even worse light.
Nobody said anything about the station being incredibly dangerous. Everybody can see plainly through research that the license for this station was not renewed when the time came, it was not suddenly forced off the airwaves and I'd be willing to bed the people there knew the renewal wasn't going to happen.
Am I to apologize for your lack of reading comprehension skills? In any case, it's not like anyone is pretending the station was wielding some awesome power to topple the government. Is Chavez an even worse bad guy to some people simply because he decides to bide his time with punishing those who did what this station did back then? Because he'd rather just let things proceed smoothly? Only an idiot would think that a single station would be capable of leading a revolt, and only an even bigger idiot would think that it is something of the utmost urgency to deal with in any manner possible once the coup was effectively squashed when that nation has the problems it does.
The station wasn't shut down, its license was not renewed. That is why it took five years before they effectively went off the air.
Could you be any more of an arrogant ass saying "I thought for a moment that they would have some principals of some kind" when these people are simply trying to better themselves and their position in the world through a democratically elected government? I might be mistaken, but I think they have a little bit of a better grasp on their situation (and what can be done about it) than you.
It's not like Chavez is the one pissing everyone off internationally or even trying to make a big stink, this is all a distortion by the mass media to make Chavez look bad, as they are always set upon him to do by those who determine what makes it onto the news.
P.S. -- People like you are the ones that justify the seething hatred of America's pathetic understanding of the issues that are relevant to other nations. Give yourself a pat on the back.
I'll bite. Sure, if you think that having a deluded or completely obscured viewpoint means you have a valid viewpoint.
Relevancy? I'm tempted to ask you if you've had the chance to compare first hand the differences between daily life in post-invasion Iraq and daily life in present-day SC LA. My bet would be no, but suffice to say that you're not going to find prominent politicians going anywhere in most of this country without some sort of security escort. It's stupid not to in a lot of areas and trivial to boot, but that's not to say you can compare a civil war with urban crime.
I really didn't think that the concept of motivation was something so difficult to grasp. The reason a nut job in VA is labeled a nut job for killing 30 people and not the beginnings (we're way past beginnings though) of a civil war is because we don't have nut jobs in VA killing 30 people a day for reasons like a holy war. It's a civil war because the factions and peoples of the area are *gasp* in open, armed conflict with each other.
The large majority of the Iraqi territory is doing very well? Ah, well, that's good to know, but it would seem that their population centers are taking the full force of all this sectarian violence going on. This document says "Almost 75% of Iraq's population live in the flat, alluvial plain stretching southeast from Baghdad and Basrah to the Persian Gulf." Unless I'm mistaken that sounds just about right for where the news reports of violence are coming in from. The reason you don't hear your tidbit there on the evening news is because it fails to take into account that the violence is happening where the people are.
You pretty much described most armed conflicts in human history. When has there ever not been a power struggle, especially between the Biblical religions and their peoples? The fact of the matter, however, is that with our dropping the ball with Iraq after removing Saddam from power we made the situation much more grim and basically created a great divide at home between the people who want the troops home, the people who want Iraq to become America Jr, and the people who lament that this truly is a situation with no quick fix.
I'll pass on the chance of observing anymore childish comments from your history here at Slashdot in search of "previous comments on this topic", though, thanks. What I did see in my quick glance looks pretty close to the rantings of Michael Savage or Ann Coulter, both of whom are people I've had quite enough of for one lifetime. "Oh F**K Off", quite.
You'd be much less angry at Windows if you'd simply use Google or another resource to find out how to tell it to not do what you don't want it to.
Sorry bud but your claim hasn't been true since 2002, as far as can be seen on the site you so proudly mention to prove your point. Maybe you should read up on the finer details again sometime.
Who has the time to effectively administer their systems though? Certainly not these fine examples of careful consideration, so thoughtfully risking throwing the whole network they're charged with keeping watch over into a funk.
Because nobody ever lies when they swear on something like a holy book, or say "I swear to God..." and proceed to lie. How about we do away with the damn thing entirely because it's bullocks to begin with.
Not worth anything? Well that's a peculiar way of looking at it... It's not like I put that at the end there to go "'sup bitches, shout out to all my agnostic homies!" I was simply stating that I don't commit to any particular dogma and god(s). It's called covering your ass and preventing people from assuming the wrong thing.
I don't know why I even bother to respond to Anonymous anymore...
Here's a rather quick follow-up after doing some Googling and reviewing of some expert opinions and analysis, etc... I wish I could retract my previous post because, quite frankly, the contradictions and muddied waters with regards to this topic make my head spin (No offense to those who've come to terms with their own interpretation). In any case, there seems to be some weight to the claim that Christians are to allow God to judge the unbelievers, and Christians are to judge other Christians by the same measurements they use for themselves.
How is it being judgmental to inform someone that they're ignoring one of the key tenets to the religion they profess to prescribe to? And if by some strange twisting of the English language you do manage to get me on a technicality here, I hope you don't consider it a negative judgment, just someone saying "You're doing it wrong!" It's not a debatable point that Jesus taught his followers to not mete out judgment because it is simply not their place. There's plenty that's up for debate and interpretation with regards to the Bible, but not that point. Too many people forget this.
FWIW I'm an agnostic.
China, communist? Hah, as if. China has been a totalitarian, oppressive and increasingly capitalistic nation for quite a long time now. It's called fascism, with Mussolini as the chief architect in the past and many world leaders the perfectors through time. Communism is an economic policy, nothing more. To pretend Communism has anything to do with throwing kids into rehab for "internet addiction" is quite silly. Thanks for playing though.
Good book, by the way.
The U.S. Constitution forbids quite a lot of things, including religious tests to hold office. However, these are routinely violated in state or local laws.
There's many many more, and you can find them all here. And people say that liberals have all these unconstitutional restrictions in place in order to keep God-fearing Christians from public office. Last time I checked, most elected representatives I read up on, especially Presidential candidates, identify themselves as Christians...
Disclaimer: Not that there's anything wrong with that...
This is basically what happens already on previous Windows versions. The difference here is that Windows Vista will prevent you from playing back DRM-protected content at full quality unless you have the proper licenses, regardless of hardware capability. It's a business decision made to appease the RIAA/MPAA, and it's one that won't affect people who don't pay money for DRM media.
No, you're not.
Nice doomsday scenario, it's just too bad there's no way to substantiate this claim at all. Quite frankly, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. DRM protection schemes exist on system like Linux and XP. The difference is that DRM was implemented through the files themselves before, but now it's implemented through the OS in a "protected path" content providers can use. Both methods suck and ultimately fail at their goal, and DRM itself is no worse in Vista than any other OS, nor is it going to instantly lock down your computer and refuse to let your run your favorite hobby program.
In any case, all these anti-DRM rants are starting to make it sound like it's going to be a calamity on the scale of Peak Oil.
Ugh, modern day Luddites, how fun.
MySpace does not facilitate anything other than sending intra-site messages between people. I could just as easily say a site like DeviantART needs to have these nanny laws to prevent kids from talking to (and eventually meeting) someone. Furthermore, statistically MySpace and the rest are insignificant in terms of online predation. But I guess it's okay to ignore what's really going on and chant think of the children! What next? Pressing charges against someone running an IRC server because someone happened to run into trouble through it? After all, the admins can see everything going on with a standard IRC server, they should do some enforcing!
For your second paragraph, no, it's not, and good job on missing the point entirely, which is the government has no business creeping into this part of our lives and should not be allowed to do so. Stop shifting the responsibility of raising your children and realize that you're making a mountain out of a molehill with this.
If you were being at all serious, it's really rather frightening that you'd actually endorse bad laws simply because they scratch a personal itch of yours. MySpace is junk in my opinion, therefore, any legislation aimed at it (And likely to be detrimental to it, very much so) has my full support and praise. You've been deluded to the point of believing that the best way to eliminate a problem is to create a whole other host of 'em.
MySpace isn't the net negative for mankind, this brand of apathy is, and unfortunately it's too deeply ingrained in too many minds.
Not that this legislation has a snowball's chance in hell of being passed and upheld in court. It is not my job to police who views my website or utilizes it in any fashion. This applies just as much for personal websites as it does for larger projects like social networking sites. Does anyone know the last time a newspaper, for example, was held liable for similar situations as the ones being bemoaned in the media regarding MySpace? Never, that's when, and it should damn well stay that way. Raise your own damn kids and stop ballooning the already massive federal government.
Gee, which is pretty much what most people use it for...
Look no further than your extensions for any performance issues like that. A poorly written add-on can effectively trash your installation and leave it a memory leaking CPU hungry beast. Take it easy with the add-ons, use well-tested ones, and keep an eye out here as a general guideline when choosing extensions.
Furthermore, since it's OSS, people are hardly being forced to include extra functionality. Don't like the direction? Fork it, or ask other people with like interests but more ability to make things happen to take it on themselves. In the end, though, I doubt the spell checker or other new features are the cause of your woes, and it's infinitely easier to track down issues with popular parts of the browser when they're officially incorporated, instead of relying on the add-on manager to assure the product will continue to keep its users happy.
P.S. -- If you find a bug because of some exotic hardware/software configuration, be a good sport and issue a bug report. In my experiences you can be a complete noob with submitting bug reports yet developers are more than willing to track down an issue. If you don't think you have enough information to post a bug report, take to the forums! People need to be more proactive in ensuring their software works for them, and one thing I love about F/OSS is the ease and transparency of that process.
Second P.S. -- Flash is often my problem. Adobe sucks.
I'm not missing any point. However, people complaining about Vista and Aero while only looking at the requirements for a Vista Premium Ready PC are missing the point entirely. Since nobody really seems interested in Googling what you can get by with hardware-wise for a Vista + Aero experience, let me help you all.
Let's compare that with the recommended settings for an XGL/AIGLX setup, courtesy of openSUSE:
So basically, the hardware requirements are very similar, though Aero does require more because it simply does more, and if you don't believe me, take a real hard look at everything that it does. I'm not saying transparency and drop shadows are hard work, I'm saying Aero has much more functionality than you and a lot of people give it credit for. What does XGL/AIGLX bring to the table other than some slick animations and effects (Which I love, by the way) by rendering the screen and windows through OpenGL?
I'm not about to get sucked into a debate about why I said what I said about OS X, but I will say that it's pretty obvious you don't mind shelling out over a hundred dollars for an update to your OS every "1.5 years or so". Me, I'd rather they simply roll them up into a large update and charge the same price. You know, kind of like how Microsoft has been doing things. And if you think SP2 had no features, you really can't even notice something as obvious as the Security Center (Not that I'm saying it's the best example, but it's one of the most prominent ones). I'm not an apologist for bad software or anything because I feel they've