For a large proportion of those who use instant messenger technology, a protocol that doesn't support whiz-bang features like custom emoticons, buddy icons, A/V chat and all that crap is not going to be used.
The other problem of course is that until all your contacts are on a compatible network you can't transfer. I know jabber mitigates this with "transfers," but when considering protocol one (with whiz-bang features) and protocol two (without, requires resetting preferences + contacts) it's quite obvious they'll stick.
Unfortunately, for the moment there's very little reason for people to switch client.
Don't forget specific app support, such as games (N/A for Grannies) genealogical apps (N/A for gamers) and whatever the hell it is they want. Hardware support is actually pretty good in that it's possible to get pretty much anything that's 6 months/a year old to run, with a bit (or more) of hacking. With software, it either ports, it runs in Wine or it flops. Usually the latter.
While a universal type of package might be useful, it's probably unlikely. What's more likely, I expect, is a source "package," like the emerge system except universal. You download, say, "firefox.ins" which is a tar.gz/bz2 file including at the root something like an INSTALL file, except designed to be read by a package manager. It could just be a shell script, or something more like an xml file including instructions to hand to make,./configure and so on. When to ask for root passwords, perhaps define some kind of GUI for options to pass to the configure script.
Basically an installshield equivalent, that then becomes capable of installing on any distro. Sure, you still have the speed of installation being an issue what with compilation, but hopefully a system like this will be available in the not-too-distant future.
I think at least part of the problem with all of these "Linux isn't ready" arguments is that there is so much focus on getting "Joe Average" to switch over. I truly wonder whether Linux will ever be the right option for Joe Average - there's no doubt that with a system as customisable as Linux, there will be added complexity, and to reduce one is to reduce the other, at least at the surface level. The challenge for people like the GNOME guys has always been to balance user-friendliness against customisation.
However, would it not be better to ignore "Joe Average" or "Joe Beloe Average" at any rate, and focus on people who are better able to handle the technicalities? Of course, that doesn't mean a regression, nor ignoring Linux's current failings (such as dependencies) but it does mean moving the focus away from getting everyone and his grandmother to migrate.
I didn't hear much bias on the G8, and it was certainly somewhat eclipsed by the London bombings. I also regularly hear critical news reports and one only has to look at Paxman in campaign-season for at least some attempted floor-wiping.
The point is, the BBC, if controlled by the government, wouldn't even be able to do this. The so called "light comedy" or "blatant satire" seems to have inspired plenty of cynics in our neck-of-the-woods. They might be misinformed and merely folding to the idea that cynicism is in, but nonetheless it is there.
Well, I appreciate the sentiment, although the content was odd.
In the end, I suppose that the rule was designed for primary school (that's the time we were taught it) wherein children wouldn't know many of not most of the exceptions.
After a small amount of research, though, it becomes painfully obvious that whoever came up with the guideline was either batty or living with different spellings, not least because of the numerous bolt-ons one finds.
Incidentally, a sufficiency of the exceptions are caused by quirks of conjugation and inflection - seeing and apparently many of the -ient/ce words, which are derived from something latin.
You need to evaluate which ones carefully. As PDAs become more prevalent, a larger subset of customers will require access to websites with said device. If you ignore them, you'll lose revenue and at some point, it will be more than it would've cost to "port" the site.
Do it early and lose less money:)
With such a hefty supply of criticism for the government, anyone who thinks it's an extension of the gov't is very misinformed, and probably doesn't even watch or listen to the BBC. The BBC exercises its right and ability to act autonomously of the government to the extent that it gets complaints of bias against the government.
I suppose that explains the absence of satirical comedies and so on that are frequent on the BBC. Last I heard, HIGNFY, The Now Show, Dead Ringers, The News Quiz, Anything with "impression" in the title had all moved to... The BBC.
There are at least a few examples where this is not true; humans have managed to coexist peacefully for ages. By nature we are social, and hitting everyone is not good for social groups. Historically, look towards Orkney for examples of peaceful civilisation. No weapons found, and every house had the same floorplan, suggesting a flat community hierarchy.
Well the ideal at the least would be for this to be a ubiquitous system, whereby there would be a far larger age-mix in each class. If primary school were taught like high school, perhaps, then it could be possible to join school at the start of a term, according to age, and then you'd do the work appropriate to you. The difficult thing is that if you failed a module of maths, say, algebra, you'd have to do it all again. This would be tricky, as you'd already know a good proportion of what you were supposed to be doing.
But you're absolutely correct. If kids read enough well-written texts, then grammar is almost automatic. I guess the problem then occurs when they read someone else's stuff and they kick off because, to them, it is nigh on unreadable, or at least, very odd looking.
I disagree quite strongly with the flamebait mod. I think the stereotype is too pervasive to have no credence whatsoever.
I have a hunch that the problem is that females are a) not usually trained well in map reading or reversing, b) that the stereotype is already in place and c) something to do with spacial awareness, which is accepted by biology teachers so it must be right!
My mum can reverse parallel park like nobody's business. Namely because her mum went to a police driving course and passed on the knowledge.
FYI, can't is a contraction of cannot. I just thought it was obvious from usage though that won't was a contraction of will not, even if it's not derived immediately from that phrase.
Of course they have a learning disability; they're "disabled" from learning graphically. That's not to say it's impossible to learn in other ways, but it is fact, nonetheless.
I believe this is actually what happens. I've just undertaken an FSMQ (Additional Maths) and practically everything you do starts with examples, and you then derive a formula from that.
For example, we were taught differentiation by first taking the gradients of ever-smaller straight lines on curved graphs, and as the the length approached zero, spotting the pattern. The cosine rule is explained in our textbooks as being derived from the sine rule and pythagoras' theorem.
It is only after that that we are given the formula and told simply to learn the thing by rote.
For the most part, there was a minimum of mindless button pushing. In the end, practically everything we did on a calculator was complex multiplication and division. Obviously there is also square roots, exponentiation, trig and a bit of pascal's triangle thrown in for good measure. But I don't see how using slide rules to solve these first helps - we all know what's going on in the trig graphs, we know what powers are and what square roots are.
There are two words in said sig involving the letters "I," "T," and "S" in that order, with or without apostrophes. One requires an apostrophe, one does not.
My particular excitement as a teenager will be the ability to watch shows which aired years ago. I'd love to be able to grab the entirety of Python, Day Today, NNON and so on. Also the Vicar of Dibley, if that was on the Beeb, although I've seen a higher amount of that.
Unfortunately BBC will presumably not cover ITV, Granada, Channel 5 et al. Nonetheless, This move will probably spark of similar efforts from the other channels.
Negotiating means engaging in talks and coming to mutual agreement. Change in foreign policy needs no negotiation, it just requires the country whose policy it happens to be to change it.
You then say that the first world does not exploit the third. You must be so misinformed it is probably not possible to educate you here. Suffice to say that world trade rules are stacked against the third world. It is not a matter of raising prices, because firstly, they are taxed phenomenally when goods enter our countries and secondly, our farmers already receive subsidies in order to force our own prices down. There is absolutely no competition. The trade rules will not change without our countries intervening because the third world cannot afford to send enough delegates to change any policy.
Then we have the problems of aid and debt, and please don't say aid is useless because dictators and war-lords steal it all, because it is always possible to help the people. Money is not good aid. Food is good in the short term, but the aid I'm talking about is animals and drugs, and without strings, too. If you don't know of how we exploit the third world with aid, you should go get clued up.
If you look at how many countries have been invaded by both the UK and US that figure rises. I'm not just criticising one lot here. Besides, it's quite obvious the figure was an exaggeration - the fact is that the Iraq war plainly did not have enough backing. The reasoning given was potential WMDs. When they weren't found the reason was changed to an oppressive dictatorship. Hum.
I think you've also been misled when you think the Iraq war has been good for the country. Do you even read the news? It's as unstable as nitroglycerine - bombs going off nearly every week. War is never "good," although in some cases it may be the lesser of two evils, there are many things better then it.
From the point of view of Iraq's stability, and a lot of Iraq's people, the war was a very bad thing indeed.
I'm not talking about negotiating foreign policy with terrorists, or talking to them at all. That's ludicrous. But how about not invading every country that looks sideways at us, how about not exacerbating existing tensions, how about trading justly.
When people say stop being greedy, that last one is the BIG thing they mean, even if they don't realise it. That is how the first world exploits the third, and it ought to stop terrorism or none. However, I'm getting sidetracked.
The type of foreign policy you appear to be thinking of is basically war and violence. While violence ought to stop, and it would most likely prevent further violence, you also imply that what we do is somehow good for the countries we invade. Whatever your morals are, I think we approach imposing our views on people too lightly. Perhaps women are oppressed, perhaps Jews are murdered, but that doesn't mean all of our actions have been justified. We can't expect the whole world to be like the west, and it is very wrong to do so.
Seriously, they're two terms that mean exactly the same in all practical capacities. They're interchangeable. Even geeks/nerds scorn those who attempt to distinguish nomenclature that finely.
Slashdot Mirror
The other problem of course is that until all your contacts are on a compatible network you can't transfer. I know jabber mitigates this with "transfers," but when considering protocol one (with whiz-bang features) and protocol two (without, requires resetting preferences + contacts) it's quite obvious they'll stick.
Unfortunately, for the moment there's very little reason for people to switch client.
Don't forget specific app support, such as games (N/A for Grannies) genealogical apps (N/A for gamers) and whatever the hell it is they want. Hardware support is actually pretty good in that it's possible to get pretty much anything that's 6 months/a year old to run, with a bit (or more) of hacking. With software, it either ports, it runs in Wine or it flops. Usually the latter.
Basically an installshield equivalent, that then becomes capable of installing on any distro. Sure, you still have the speed of installation being an issue what with compilation, but hopefully a system like this will be available in the not-too-distant future.
However, would it not be better to ignore "Joe Average" or "Joe Beloe Average" at any rate, and focus on people who are better able to handle the technicalities? Of course, that doesn't mean a regression, nor ignoring Linux's current failings (such as dependencies) but it does mean moving the focus away from getting everyone and his grandmother to migrate.
I didn't hear much bias on the G8, and it was certainly somewhat eclipsed by the London bombings. I also regularly hear critical news reports and one only has to look at Paxman in campaign-season for at least some attempted floor-wiping.
The point is, the BBC, if controlled by the government, wouldn't even be able to do this. The so called "light comedy" or "blatant satire" seems to have inspired plenty of cynics in our neck-of-the-woods. They might be misinformed and merely folding to the idea that cynicism is in, but nonetheless it is there.
Thus proving the point that flash has its uses beyond movies. Interfaces can be designed successfully in it.
In the end, I suppose that the rule was designed for primary school (that's the time we were taught it) wherein children wouldn't know many of not most of the exceptions.
After a small amount of research, though, it becomes painfully obvious that whoever came up with the guideline was either batty or living with different spellings, not least because of the numerous bolt-ons one finds.
Incidentally, a sufficiency of the exceptions are caused by quirks of conjugation and inflection - seeing and apparently many of the -ient/ce words, which are derived from something latin.
You need to evaluate which ones carefully. As PDAs become more prevalent, a larger subset of customers will require access to websites with said device. If you ignore them, you'll lose revenue and at some point, it will be more than it would've cost to "port" the site. :)
Do it early and lose less money
With such a hefty supply of criticism for the government, anyone who thinks it's an extension of the gov't is very misinformed, and probably doesn't even watch or listen to the BBC. The BBC exercises its right and ability to act autonomously of the government to the extent that it gets complaints of bias against the government.
I suppose that explains the absence of satirical comedies and so on that are frequent on the BBC. Last I heard, HIGNFY, The Now Show, Dead Ringers, The News Quiz, Anything with "impression" in the title had all moved to... The BBC.
There are at least a few examples where this is not true; humans have managed to coexist peacefully for ages. By nature we are social, and hitting everyone is not good for social groups. Historically, look towards Orkney for examples of peaceful civilisation. No weapons found, and every house had the same floorplan, suggesting a flat community hierarchy.
People never remember the last part; it leaves very few exceptions.
Well the ideal at the least would be for this to be a ubiquitous system, whereby there would be a far larger age-mix in each class. If primary school were taught like high school, perhaps, then it could be possible to join school at the start of a term, according to age, and then you'd do the work appropriate to you. The difficult thing is that if you failed a module of maths, say, algebra, you'd have to do it all again. This would be tricky, as you'd already know a good proportion of what you were supposed to be doing.
But you're absolutely correct. If kids read enough well-written texts, then grammar is almost automatic. I guess the problem then occurs when they read someone else's stuff and they kick off because, to them, it is nigh on unreadable, or at least, very odd looking.
I have a hunch that the problem is that females are a) not usually trained well in map reading or reversing, b) that the stereotype is already in place and c) something to do with spacial awareness, which is accepted by biology teachers so it must be right!
My mum can reverse parallel park like nobody's business. Namely because her mum went to a police driving course and passed on the knowledge.
What can I say but, "ahem."
FYI, can't is a contraction of cannot. I just thought it was obvious from usage though that won't was a contraction of will not, even if it's not derived immediately from that phrase.
Of course they have a learning disability; they're "disabled" from learning graphically. That's not to say it's impossible to learn in other ways, but it is fact, nonetheless.
For example, we were taught differentiation by first taking the gradients of ever-smaller straight lines on curved graphs, and as the the length approached zero, spotting the pattern. The cosine rule is explained in our textbooks as being derived from the sine rule and pythagoras' theorem.
It is only after that that we are given the formula and told simply to learn the thing by rote.
For the most part, there was a minimum of mindless button pushing. In the end, practically everything we did on a calculator was complex multiplication and division. Obviously there is also square roots, exponentiation, trig and a bit of pascal's triangle thrown in for good measure. But I don't see how using slide rules to solve these first helps - we all know what's going on in the trig graphs, we know what powers are and what square roots are.
There are two words in said sig involving the letters "I," "T," and "S" in that order, with or without apostrophes. One requires an apostrophe, one does not.
My particular excitement as a teenager will be the ability to watch shows which aired years ago. I'd love to be able to grab the entirety of Python, Day Today, NNON and so on. Also the Vicar of Dibley, if that was on the Beeb, although I've seen a higher amount of that.
Unfortunately BBC will presumably not cover ITV, Granada, Channel 5 et al. Nonetheless, This move will probably spark of similar efforts from the other channels.
You then say that the first world does not exploit the third. You must be so misinformed it is probably not possible to educate you here. Suffice to say that world trade rules are stacked against the third world. It is not a matter of raising prices, because firstly, they are taxed phenomenally when goods enter our countries and secondly, our farmers already receive subsidies in order to force our own prices down. There is absolutely no competition. The trade rules will not change without our countries intervening because the third world cannot afford to send enough delegates to change any policy.
Then we have the problems of aid and debt, and please don't say aid is useless because dictators and war-lords steal it all, because it is always possible to help the people. Money is not good aid. Food is good in the short term, but the aid I'm talking about is animals and drugs, and without strings, too. If you don't know of how we exploit the third world with aid, you should go get clued up.
If you look at how many countries have been invaded by both the UK and US that figure rises. I'm not just criticising one lot here. Besides, it's quite obvious the figure was an exaggeration - the fact is that the Iraq war plainly did not have enough backing. The reasoning given was potential WMDs. When they weren't found the reason was changed to an oppressive dictatorship. Hum.
I think you've also been misled when you think the Iraq war has been good for the country. Do you even read the news? It's as unstable as nitroglycerine - bombs going off nearly every week. War is never "good," although in some cases it may be the lesser of two evils, there are many things better then it.
From the point of view of Iraq's stability, and a lot of Iraq's people, the war was a very bad thing indeed.
I'm not talking about negotiating foreign policy with terrorists, or talking to them at all. That's ludicrous. But how about not invading every country that looks sideways at us, how about not exacerbating existing tensions, how about trading justly.
When people say stop being greedy, that last one is the BIG thing they mean, even if they don't realise it. That is how the first world exploits the third, and it ought to stop terrorism or none. However, I'm getting sidetracked.
The type of foreign policy you appear to be thinking of is basically war and violence. While violence ought to stop, and it would most likely prevent further violence, you also imply that what we do is somehow good for the countries we invade. Whatever your morals are, I think we approach imposing our views on people too lightly. Perhaps women are oppressed, perhaps Jews are murdered, but that doesn't mean all of our actions have been justified. We can't expect the whole world to be like the west, and it is very wrong to do so.
Seriously, they're two terms that mean exactly the same in all practical capacities. They're interchangeable. Even geeks/nerds scorn those who attempt to distinguish nomenclature that finely.