Right, in this particular case it's much like theft. However it's MS that actively sets up a mechanism such as to make it theft, not the nature of software copying itself.
Indeed who is copying Vista by using keys that are then inactivated are directly harming an innocent user just like them, so I agree in this case is an ethically disputable behaviour. But it's MS that built this kind of moral blackmail (with concrete and arguably sensible motivations, I agree).
There is no one like a software thief. There may be someone that shares software with his neighbours, by copying it, but it is not what I'd call strictly "theft". More "disregarding copyright limits".
As a sidenote, patronage and sponsorships wouldn't be bad ways to finance artists. It would surely be no more humiliating than subsiding to the tastes of the public. A good taste patron could decide to support a new Franz Kafka or a new Johnny Cash instead of a new Stephen King and a new Britney Spears. If not an improvement, it wouldn't be worse than now, IMHO.
Kafka, no. But I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to create in silence with the fragile hope that maybe, if they are really lucky, they will get recognition *after they die.* That drives tormented geniuses, but not the more ordinary artists who are responsible for most of our creative output.
Ehm. Do you care about ordinary artists? I'd care more for talented people that believe in art anyway, not in talent-less crap-makers, thanks. Maybe it would become a good filter.
Of course, neither of them had to work nearly as hard as your ordinary worker does today. I know that I am not ready to create consistently after working a full day at any full-time job I've ever had.
I fully agree. So perhaps what's wrong is the kind of society we have -that drains out our resources until we are unable to do anything else just to be able to survive. Perhaps we should look for a society where this kind of brain-drain is not so hard. It is possible -after all, it was possible for them, so why not for us? I know the feeling, I have a full time job too, and I too feel drained and tired after a full day of work. And this is what is bad, not only for artists, but for everyone.
Bach, like most composers from the beginning of recorded music until Beethoven, was paid by the state or by nobility (depending on the phase of his career). He was expected to generate a certain number of works as a condition of his employment. He did compose on the side as well, but certainly that was much easier for him since he had the apparatus of a professional composer (and church musician) at his disposal.
I had the notion that Bach was paid as an organist, not as a composer, however it seems you are right. Thanks, I'll remember it.
because someone else could have just claimed the works as his own
But I don't want that -I want full attribution. I already stated it more than once, so don't use examples devoid of meaning.
To the extent things do get done at all, I think that many open-source programmers are motivated at least partially by career rewards that may follow from participation in a project or from name recognition.
So, why this shouldn't work anymore?
but relying on them to sustain innovation in society is foolhardy.
Talented people don't create to make money. Talented people just create because they love to, they "need" to inside (I know it when *I* create). Now we have a system that also provides them (a few) money. Fine, but that's just a plus they have. I'm happy they have a plus, but the downside is that this "plus" comes to a cost to us all -the cost not being able to freely share their output. I guess other kinds of marketings could happen -for example, an artist could ask for a fixed amount of money to release a new work. After the release, the work would be released freely for anyone. Not that I'm proposing this specific kind of mechanism, it's just an example that different mechanisms are possible.
I don't understand how your non-commercial but attributive system of distribution will enforce itself. If a thief steals your ideas and distributes them without attribution, but isn't making money off them (only recognition), how are you planning to recover damages (even assuming you can bring some form of legal action)? No lawyer would take your case.
Good point. I tell you how it works in Italy -the concept of "suing" someone works differently than in the USA. Since he/she would be breaking the law anyway -and I agree that attribution would have to be lawfully enforced, if you bring the case to the police, they *have* to proceed about it -you usually don't need a lawyer to actively denounce a law infringment, you need a lawyer only to help you in your defense if you are found suspected for this (the other "lawyer" is a state official, Pubblico ministero in Italian).
English is not my native language, so sorry for the mistake -is "one work" the correct grammar? As for the pun, well, take your satisfaction from it. I'd love to know the software that built it, anyway.:)
Um...Yeah. Meanwhile, look at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal, particularly definition 2. My goodness. It's sad when you have to break out a flippin' dictionary when talking to a supposed PhD student.
My fault. I'm Italian, in my language "to steal" is usually translated with "rubare", that has the meaning I referred to. You can say "rubare un'idea" - "steal an idea" would be the translation, but it's a metaphor, not an actual meaning.
However OK, you can call it "stealing" if you like, but this doesn't hurt the bottom of my argument -that we can rewrite this way: it is not about "stealing" as in breaking a window and taking a good his previous owner cannot more benefit of, it is about "stealing" as in copying information to another party so that both parties can benefit about it. If you build a car, and someone has some magic wand to copy your car 1:1, would you call it "stealing your car"? Maybe yes, but you agree these are two completely different events.
So the bottom line is that you don't want people from stealing from you but you gladly steal from others. What a hypocrite.
No, no. I am perfectly fine with people "stealing" from me in that sense. If someone gives me attribution and doesn't profit, I'm perfectly OK. That's what I want (I already said it repetitiously, but...): free *non-profit* *with attribution* sharing. If you want to take my ph.d. thesis (when I'll write it, next year) and give it to your friends, provided there is my name on it and you don't sell it, I'm perfectly fine with it, and I'd be glad if you ask a copy (it will be about protein biophysics -wonderful for sleeping, probably).
Hey, you sure are a silent retard. What, have you no responses to the well-worded replies to your gibberish? Debate skills not up to snuff? Can't handle someone using some logic with you?
I'm just a guy with 1)a life 2)a girlfriend 3)a work, sorry if I didn't reply immediately.
Generally speaking, though, if you limit the definition of the word theft to "taking, without permission, the physical property which belongs to someone else", then that means nothing intangible can be stolen.
Yes, right.
In making that statement you are confining the word "stealing" to a definition that is quite limited, and that shows a disregard for modern technology.
I'm confining it to the right definition according to dictionaries and common use. You can always create a new word defining what you mean.
Just as technology has introduced new ways to distribute music, it also introduces new ways to steal things.
This is an absurd non-sequitur like the following: "Just as technology has introduced new ways to do virtualization in hardware, it also introduces new ways to steal things".
Suppose I got my hands on an electronic copy of your dissertation, published it, and made lots of money from the sales. According to your definition, I stole nothing, I just copied.
Right, you are not stealing at all. You are doing profit on something you didn't produce -it's different. However I don't want it to be legal -I want to be legal *non profit* sharing of information. Commercial use should be protected, I agree on this.
I guess this should suffice: if you belive that *all* information should be free, then give me your credit card number, name, and ssn. Are you cheating on your wife|girlfriend? That should be free information, too.
This is involving privacy, not copyright. It's a completely different issue (okay, it is a limit on free information sharing, I agree, but for completely different reasons).
If you expect that artists will take the time and effort to create when there is neither financial return nor any guarantee of recognition (in a copyright-less system, the best publicizer, not the inventor, will wind up with credit for new ideas), then you're ignoring both basic human nature and all of artistic history.
Was Homer being paid for his works? Was Kafka? Was Pessoa? Was Bach? It's you that are ignoring artistic history and human nature. How is that there are tons of people doing something "uncool" like programming open source software for free and in your opinion there should be no one playing music?
And I'm all for giving credit. What I want is that a "CC non commercial-attribution-share alike" kind of redistribution being always turned on for every kind of information.
But it sounds like you are arguing, not against DRM, but for piracy.
I hate the word "piracy", but right, it's what I'm doing.
Say yes, and you don't care about the artists; you just want free music.
Basically yes. The point is not about "free music": is about (note: my own POV following) the free, no-profit redistribution of information as a new, fundamental human right (admittedly a minor one in respect with other basic ones, but still a right). About the artists, well, 1)the poster I replied to clearly made the case for artists thriving without copyright, and even benefiting from it 2)that's not the problem: artists always worked *without* direct monetary compensation. The fact that we think artists just want money to make art is a cultural twist of the latest 150 years, not an obvious fact. Please stop that "thinkoftheartists" whining, it just doesn't make sense anymore.
Why should they not be protected from theft?
Because it is not theft. Theft is when you take something from someone and that someone has no more that thing. Copying doesn't take away anything.
Having DRM-free music to download is nice. But practically all music on so-called "piracy" file-sharing is DRM-free. So what?
What we need is not to find workarounds and be okay with the crumbs that fall from the mouth of **AA. We need instead to stop actively all this "piracy" demonization, and to make sure that the free, non-profit sharing of information (bits) becomes absolutely legal. I hope one day "piracy" will be a word reminescent of a primitive, embarrassing past just like "nigger" is today.
Obligatory Richard Dawkins quote: "As my colleague, the physical chemist Peter Atkins, puts it, we must be equally agnostic about the theory that there is a teapot in orbit around the planet Pluto. We can't disprove it. But that doesn't mean the theory that there is a teapot is on level terms with the theory that there isn't."
Oh no, I'm not "intolerant" with religion because I am a victim of intolerance too.
I'm "intolerant" (that is, I think religion is 100% moronic -not that I harm a single hair of religious people, of course) because it's purely believing in fairy tales, no more, no less. It's a problem of philosophical judgement, not a problem of "not sharing my beliefs". It's you that have beliefs to share with other -I simply don't have beliefs of this kind.
Check out LMMS ( http://lmms.sourceforge.net/ ), it's quite similar to FL. Very immature, but has (wine-based, but overall good) support for VST instrument plugins, and it is damn easy to get to work. Still, I wouldn't call it professional.
I never understood this "I like app X but it's for desktop A and I run desktop B so it's bad". Not in the last 2 years, at least. I run a Gentoo desktop with XFCE (based on GTK), I run GTK based browser and mail client (firefox+thunderbird), but most other apps I use are KDE apps (Konqueror, amaroK, K3b, Kate) etc. - they all play nice with each other. At work I have a Kubuntu KDE desktop where I use GTK apps (firefox,thunderbird,synaptic,inkscape,gimp) inside the KDE desktop. Seriously, where is the problem?
The stance of refusing to believe is an active stance, and requires a conscious choice to believe in something you cannot prove
This is a subtle fallacy. I don't have the active stance of refusing to believe in God more than I have the active stance of refusing to believe in green-bearded nazi unicors thriving on Charon. Both are entities whose existence I would have happily ignored before the imagination of men created both (I created the latest just now; but now, how can you say they don't exist? Bet your life on it, if you dare!)
However, always beware the law of unintended consequences. It seems likely to me that the costs for this will be passed on to us, one way or another. The mobile manufacturers aren't just going to redesign and retool for free.
Yes, but it's a market with prices dropping (albeit slowly, in the last years), so it's not that much a hassle.
I would personally rather see more features, better battery life or enhanced reception than plug standardization.
As far as I'm concerned, cell phones have already too much features. Standardization is the only essential one we don't have.
I've found them not to be all that durable, especially if you have to plug/unplug items frequently - like one will likely do with a phone charger.
You are probably right, but most cell phone plugs totally suck in this sense. You can be sure that USB is not worse than most of them. And the advantage of having standard USB cables to pass data is good too.
If only they standardize data protocol...sigh.
Using free code that links/attaches into GPL-ed code is the license _requirement_
No. The license requirement is that I cannot _redistribute_ GPL-ed code with binary code mixed. But if I pick up proprietary code, I mix it by myself on my machine, I compile it and I use it, I'm perfectly GPL-compliant, provided I don't redistribute it.
Salaries are quite low. An entry salary is about 28k in the IT sector - BEFORE taxes (that's 30% off).
Probably more than in Italy, surely not less.
A visit to the dentist is not free, a checkup would cost you 40-50.
Here in Italy you can theorically have a 30-euro visit to a public dentist. Much better avoiding it. A private (i.e. serious) dentist is about 90-100 euros for a checkup.
Did I mention the weather?
I NEED cold places. I hate the constant heat of Mediterranean countries. I hate it, it's 25 October and I have a t-shirt. It's devastatingly hot. And worse of all, air is *wet*, making the climate even worse. Everytime I go to Northern Europe I feel at home -bitter cold winds, that's what I need to awake! No kidding.
Do they as fully support MSN as amsn? (no, having my 60+ contacts change protocol is NOT an option)
kopete (if you can stand looking at a "kde" app)
I actually love KDE, but the Kopete interface is quite too much cluttered in my opinion. However I sometimes try it and the latest versions are not as bad as the old ones.
Gaim will not ever have voice or video support in the 2.0 series. It will just not happen. The move was made to gstreamer for future support for these features, but it just won't happen in 2.0.
Sigh. I will have to fall back to amsn still for another couple of years or so.
I am informed. It's actually higher than the social salary in Italy, that AFAIK is about zero. In the meantime, my Ph.D. salary is 820 Euro/month: life cost is probably lower here, but that's sad anyway (Scientific research is very much underpaid in Italy,sigh). Thanks to my parents I have a small apartment of mine, if I had to pay rent I'd be in real troubles.
Yeah, I made some pretty nasty remarks and it was done off as a joke. In the US, I'd have lost my job and ended up in prison for the same remark. I'd tell about the situation, but the USies here would be too schocked;-)
I find the notion that 'Americans are destroying world food culture' with demonstrations destroying McDonaldses quite interesting - if you want to burn a store for infringing on your country, burn a kebab store. Except that would be racist, of course.
Applause. Really. I have never thought it this way, but it is damn true -and I'm not American.
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Right, in this particular case it's much like theft. However it's MS that actively sets up a mechanism such as to make it theft, not the nature of software copying itself.
Indeed who is copying Vista by using keys that are then inactivated are directly harming an innocent user just like them, so I agree in this case is an ethically disputable behaviour. But it's MS that built this kind of moral blackmail (with concrete and arguably sensible motivations, I agree).
There is no one like a software thief. There may be someone that shares software with his neighbours, by copying it, but it is not what I'd call strictly "theft". More "disregarding copyright limits".
As a sidenote, patronage and sponsorships wouldn't be bad ways to finance artists. It would surely be no more humiliating than subsiding to the tastes of the public. A good taste patron could decide to support a new Franz Kafka or a new Johnny Cash instead of a new Stephen King and a new Britney Spears. If not an improvement, it wouldn't be worse than now, IMHO.
Kafka, no. But I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to create in silence with the fragile hope that maybe, if they are really lucky, they will get recognition *after they die.* That drives tormented geniuses, but not the more ordinary artists who are responsible for most of our creative output.
Ehm. Do you care about ordinary artists? I'd care more for talented people that believe in art anyway, not in talent-less crap-makers, thanks. Maybe it would become a good filter.
Of course, neither of them had to work nearly as hard as your ordinary worker does today. I know that I am not ready to create consistently after working a full day at any full-time job I've ever had.
I fully agree. So perhaps what's wrong is the kind of society we have -that drains out our resources until we are unable to do anything else just to be able to survive. Perhaps we should look for a society where this kind of brain-drain is not so hard. It is possible -after all, it was possible for them, so why not for us? I know the feeling, I have a full time job too, and I too feel drained and tired after a full day of work. And this is what is bad, not only for artists, but for everyone.
Bach, like most composers from the beginning of recorded music until Beethoven, was paid by the state or by nobility (depending on the phase of his career). He was expected to generate a certain number of works as a condition of his employment. He did compose on the side as well, but certainly that was much easier for him since he had the apparatus of a professional composer (and church musician) at his disposal.
I had the notion that Bach was paid as an organist, not as a composer, however it seems you are right. Thanks, I'll remember it.
because someone else could have just claimed the works as his own
But I don't want that -I want full attribution. I already stated it more than once, so don't use examples devoid of meaning.
To the extent things do get done at all, I think that many open-source programmers are motivated at least partially by career rewards that may follow from participation in a project or from name recognition.
So, why this shouldn't work anymore?
but relying on them to sustain innovation in society is foolhardy.
Talented people don't create to make money. Talented people just create because they love to, they "need" to inside (I know it when *I* create). Now we have a system that also provides them (a few) money. Fine, but that's just a plus they have. I'm happy they have a plus, but the downside is that this "plus" comes to a cost to us all -the cost not being able to freely share their output. I guess other kinds of marketings could happen -for example, an artist could ask for a fixed amount of money to release a new work. After the release, the work would be released freely for anyone. Not that I'm proposing this specific kind of mechanism, it's just an example that different mechanisms are possible.
I don't understand how your non-commercial but attributive system of distribution will enforce itself. If a thief steals your ideas and distributes them without attribution, but isn't making money off them (only recognition), how are you planning to recover damages (even assuming you can bring some form of legal action)? No lawyer would take your case.
Good point. I tell you how it works in Italy -the concept of "suing" someone works differently than in the USA. Since he/she would be breaking the law anyway -and I agree that attribution would have to be lawfully enforced, if you bring the case to the police, they *have* to proceed about it -you usually don't need a lawyer to actively denounce a law infringment, you need a lawyer only to help you in your defense if you are found suspected for this (the other "lawyer" is a state official, Pubblico ministero in Italian).
English is not my native language, so sorry for the mistake -is "one work" the correct grammar? As for the pun, well, take your satisfaction from it. I'd love to know the software that built it, anyway. :)
Um...Yeah. Meanwhile, look at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal, particularly definition 2. My goodness. It's sad when you have to break out a flippin' dictionary when talking to a supposed PhD student.
My fault. I'm Italian, in my language "to steal" is usually translated with "rubare", that has the meaning I referred to. You can say "rubare un'idea" - "steal an idea" would be the translation, but it's a metaphor, not an actual meaning.
However OK, you can call it "stealing" if you like, but this doesn't hurt the bottom of my argument -that we can rewrite this way: it is not about "stealing" as in breaking a window and taking a good his previous owner cannot more benefit of, it is about "stealing" as in copying information to another party so that both parties can benefit about it. If you build a car, and someone has some magic wand to copy your car 1:1, would you call it "stealing your car"? Maybe yes, but you agree these are two completely different events.
So the bottom line is that you don't want people from stealing from you but you gladly steal from others. What a hypocrite.
No, no. I am perfectly fine with people "stealing" from me in that sense. If someone gives me attribution and doesn't profit, I'm perfectly OK. That's what I want (I already said it repetitiously, but...): free *non-profit* *with attribution* sharing. If you want to take my ph.d. thesis (when I'll write it, next year) and give it to your friends, provided there is my name on it and you don't sell it, I'm perfectly fine with it, and I'd be glad if you ask a copy (it will be about protein biophysics -wonderful for sleeping, probably).
Hey, you sure are a silent retard. What, have you no responses to the well-worded replies to your gibberish? Debate skills not up to snuff? Can't handle someone using some logic with you?
I'm just a guy with 1)a life 2)a girlfriend 3)a work, sorry if I didn't reply immediately.
Generally speaking, though, if you limit the definition of the word theft to "taking, without permission, the physical property which belongs to someone else", then that means nothing intangible can be stolen.
Yes, right.
In making that statement you are confining the word "stealing" to a definition that is quite limited, and that shows a disregard for modern technology.
I'm confining it to the right definition according to dictionaries and common use. You can always create a new word defining what you mean.
Just as technology has introduced new ways to distribute music, it also introduces new ways to steal things.
This is an absurd non-sequitur like the following: "Just as technology has introduced new ways to do virtualization in hardware, it also introduces new ways to steal things".
Suppose I got my hands on an electronic copy of your dissertation, published it, and made lots of money from the sales. According to your definition, I stole nothing, I just copied.
Right, you are not stealing at all. You are doing profit on something you didn't produce -it's different. However I don't want it to be legal -I want to be legal *non profit* sharing of information. Commercial use should be protected, I agree on this.
I guess this should suffice: if you belive that *all* information should be free, then give me your credit card number, name, and ssn. Are you cheating on your wife|girlfriend? That should be free information, too.
This is involving privacy, not copyright. It's a completely different issue (okay, it is a limit on free information sharing, I agree, but for completely different reasons).
If you expect that artists will take the time and effort to create when there is neither financial return nor any guarantee of recognition (in a copyright-less system, the best publicizer, not the inventor, will wind up with credit for new ideas), then you're ignoring both basic human nature and all of artistic history.
Was Homer being paid for his works? Was Kafka? Was Pessoa? Was Bach? It's you that are ignoring artistic history and human nature. How is that there are tons of people doing something "uncool" like programming open source software for free and in your opinion there should be no one playing music?
And I'm all for giving credit. What I want is that a "CC non commercial-attribution-share alike" kind of redistribution being always turned on for every kind of information.
But it sounds like you are arguing, not against DRM, but for piracy.
I hate the word "piracy", but right, it's what I'm doing.
Say yes, and you don't care about the artists; you just want free music.
Basically yes. The point is not about "free music": is about (note: my own POV following) the free, no-profit redistribution of information as a new, fundamental human right (admittedly a minor one in respect with other basic ones, but still a right). About the artists, well, 1)the poster I replied to clearly made the case for artists thriving without copyright, and even benefiting from it 2)that's not the problem: artists always worked *without* direct monetary compensation. The fact that we think artists just want money to make art is a cultural twist of the latest 150 years, not an obvious fact. Please stop that "thinkoftheartists" whining, it just doesn't make sense anymore.
Why should they not be protected from theft?
Because it is not theft. Theft is when you take something from someone and that someone has no more that thing. Copying doesn't take away anything.
You are damn right.
Having DRM-free music to download is nice. But practically all music on so-called "piracy" file-sharing is DRM-free. So what?
What we need is not to find workarounds and be okay with the crumbs that fall from the mouth of **AA. We need instead to stop actively all this "piracy" demonization, and to make sure that the free, non-profit sharing of information (bits) becomes absolutely legal. I hope one day "piracy" will be a word reminescent of a primitive, embarrassing past just like "nigger" is today.
Obligatory Richard Dawkins quote: "As my colleague, the physical chemist Peter Atkins, puts it, we must be equally agnostic about the theory that there is a teapot in orbit around the planet Pluto. We can't disprove it. But that doesn't mean the theory that there is a teapot is on level terms with the theory that there isn't."
Oh no, I'm not "intolerant" with religion because I am a victim of intolerance too.
I'm "intolerant" (that is, I think religion is 100% moronic -not that I harm a single hair of religious people, of course) because it's purely believing in fairy tales, no more, no less. It's a problem of philosophical judgement, not a problem of "not sharing my beliefs". It's you that have beliefs to share with other -I simply don't have beliefs of this kind.
Check out LMMS ( http://lmms.sourceforge.net/ ), it's quite similar to FL. Very immature, but has (wine-based, but overall good) support for VST instrument plugins, and it is damn easy to get to work. Still, I wouldn't call it professional.
I never understood this "I like app X but it's for desktop A and I run desktop B so it's bad". Not in the last 2 years, at least. I run a Gentoo desktop with XFCE (based on GTK), I run GTK based browser and mail client (firefox+thunderbird), but most other apps I use are KDE apps (Konqueror, amaroK, K3b, Kate) etc. - they all play nice with each other. At work I have a Kubuntu KDE desktop where I use GTK apps (firefox,thunderbird,synaptic,inkscape,gimp) inside the KDE desktop. Seriously, where is the problem?
The stance of refusing to believe is an active stance, and requires a conscious choice to believe in something you cannot prove
This is a subtle fallacy. I don't have the active stance of refusing to believe in God more than I have the active stance of refusing to believe in green-bearded nazi unicors thriving on Charon. Both are entities whose existence I would have happily ignored before the imagination of men created both (I created the latest just now; but now, how can you say they don't exist? Bet your life on it, if you dare!)
What I would really drool for would be a ncurses port of WxWidgets.
I have confused memories someone tried it, but the project died. It would happily unite console and graphic programming.
However, always beware the law of unintended consequences. It seems likely to me that the costs for this will be passed on to us, one way or another. The mobile manufacturers aren't just going to redesign and retool for free.
Yes, but it's a market with prices dropping (albeit slowly, in the last years), so it's not that much a hassle.
I would personally rather see more features, better battery life or enhanced reception than plug standardization.
As far as I'm concerned, cell phones have already too much features. Standardization is the only essential one we don't have.
I've found them not to be all that durable, especially if you have to plug/unplug items frequently - like one will likely do with a phone charger.
You are probably right, but most cell phone plugs totally suck in this sense. You can be sure that USB is not worse than most of them. And the advantage of having standard USB cables to pass data is good too.
If only they standardize data protocol...sigh.
Using free code that links/attaches into GPL-ed code is the license _requirement_
No. The license requirement is that I cannot _redistribute_ GPL-ed code with binary code mixed. But if I pick up proprietary code, I mix it by myself on my machine, I compile it and I use it, I'm perfectly GPL-compliant, provided I don't redistribute it.
I guess it's a joke...
Salaries are quite low. An entry salary is about 28k in the IT sector - BEFORE taxes (that's 30% off).
Probably more than in Italy, surely not less.
A visit to the dentist is not free, a checkup would cost you 40-50.
Here in Italy you can theorically have a 30-euro visit to a public dentist. Much better avoiding it. A private (i.e. serious) dentist is about 90-100 euros for a checkup.
Did I mention the weather?
I NEED cold places. I hate the constant heat of Mediterranean countries. I hate it, it's 25 October and I have a t-shirt. It's devastatingly hot. And worse of all, air is *wet*, making the climate even worse. Everytime I go to Northern Europe I feel at home -bitter cold winds, that's what I need to awake! No kidding.
Or our culture?
What's wrong with Swedish culture?
nope. use jabbin (jabbin.com) or tapioca.
Do they as fully support MSN as amsn? (no, having my 60+ contacts change protocol is NOT an option)
kopete (if you can stand looking at a "kde" app)
I actually love KDE, but the Kopete interface is quite too much cluttered in my opinion. However I sometimes try it and the latest versions are not as bad as the old ones.
Gaim will not ever have voice or video support in the 2.0 series. It will just not happen. The move was made to gstreamer for future support for these features, but it just won't happen in 2.0.
Sigh. I will have to fall back to amsn still for another couple of years or so.
I am informed. It's actually higher than the social salary in Italy, that AFAIK is about zero. In the meantime, my Ph.D. salary is 820 Euro/month: life cost is probably lower here, but that's sad anyway (Scientific research is very much underpaid in Italy,sigh). Thanks to my parents I have a small apartment of mine, if I had to pay rent I'd be in real troubles.
Yeah, I made some pretty nasty remarks and it was done off as a joke. In the US, I'd have lost my job and ended up in prison for the same remark. I'd tell about the situation, but the USies here would be too schocked ;-)
Go and shock them :)
I find the notion that 'Americans are destroying world food culture' with demonstrations destroying McDonaldses quite interesting - if you want to burn a store for infringing on your country, burn a kebab store. Except that would be racist, of course.
Applause. Really. I have never thought it this way, but it is damn true -and I'm not American.
Kebabs are damn tasty, however :).