Yep. So why wouldn't people buy it retail? Because it wasn't valuable enough to them.
Not to be harsh but, what magical fairy kingdom do you live in? People generally don't buy any OS's retail. Most people don't know what the fudge an "OS" is. They buy computers. OS's are required parts of computers to be useful and there is no significant market for retail boxed copies compared to the desktop OS market as a whole. It is akin the the number of people who buy cars without engines. If one monopolist was able to prevent any car company from shipping a competitor's engine in any cars made, they would have killed the ability of that engine manufacturer to do business and doing so by abusing a monopoly is both illegal and an economic death sentence.
There is no way Apple will agree on agreeing with anyone else - especially if it's some pesky open-source distributors or Sun, who are not in the desktop, but the server market (mostly).
Actually, Apple frequently adopts technologies and standards from both Sun and Linux distros. The thing is, Apple also is not willing to compromise on all things and will sometimes roll their own when they think they can do it better and cleaner (sometimes just better for them). They are less interested in being just like everyone else than they are in doing what is right for their developers and users. I think LaunchD is one example of this and Webkit is another. In the first case they created a new solution that was more elegant than the existing ones and offered it as open source... which none of the Linux distros even seriously considered. In the other case they adopted a technology created by the KDE people and made it much better, and eventually their version merged with and became the standard which is in use by many other projects today.
They are a) going to buy the stuff (cups, khtml) b) or completely ignore everyone else and roll their own, like they always did.
Umm, Apple bought KHTML? I thought Apple adopted it and made a lot of contributions to it. As far as I know they simply used the existing license without contributing any cash, just code. As for CUPS, Apple adopted it first, then several years later hired the main developer, then bought the codebase so they could ship a compatible printing system in closed source hardware devices (while keeping all their changes available via GPL).
Now I'm not trying to defend Apple here. I like and use many of their products, but I also use Linux, OpenBSD, and Windows... I'm just trying to clarify things. One thing, however, that I have noted is that Linux distros tend to ignore features in OS X that they are lacking, even when the code is there for the taking. I attribute this to a few factors. One is that people that care about having a featureful desktop OS tend to switch to OS X as their primary system, so they don't have a lot of incentive to work on those same features for a desktop Linux distro. Second, Linux desktop developers I know, rarely have used OS X and tend to not even know about the features/technologies they are missing, or if they do know, don't care because they are focused on power users. Finally, a huge feature of any Linux distro is compatibility with other Linux distros. Any feature that makes a real, architectural change to Linux has to overcome enormous resistance as it breaks compatibility with other distros and because Linux on the server developers don't want any more "bloat" or any changes that will cause potential instability without benefitting Linux as a server OS.
What's coming now are the Standards Wars... Let them fight, I'll stand aside and look, trying one or the other and fixing bugs for the one I like the most. In a year's time we'll probably have a winner... or, let them be two years.
I guess this comes down to capitalism versus socialism. Will multiple competing offerings result in all of them improving and one or two real, well done solutions arising, or will the duplication of effort and failure to cooperate retard innovation and annoy us for years to come (while Microsoft snickers)? Personally, I think we'd be better off with standardized technologies that are cleanly implemented, powerful, and universally adopted via a standards committee, than by head-to-head competing standards which may result in a "winner" that is not the best technological solution, but is paired with other technologies that are winning for other reasons. Oh well, I guess I'm a silly utopian idealist or something.
If those same Christian extremists claimed they were committing horrific crimes in the name of Christianity and this kept on happening over and over again then yes I would attribute it to Christianity, especially if the so-called moderates did not crack down on them.
Did you even read my post? Bush did claim we went to war because of his religious beliefs as a christian. Throughout history, both long ago and in recent years many violent acts have been committed by people claiming that they were justified because they were christians saving the souls of poor, dumb heathens. Some of these acts were committed by catholic priests using their position to send their "flock" to commit atrocities. In fact, slavery was justified by the catholic church because they claimed africans were all cannibals without souls and that made enslaving them just.
In any case, you've failed to present evidence that all or even the majority of violence committed by muslims is claimed as a religious act.
...and the so-called moderates are either dead quiet or excuse their behavior in one form or another.
Let me guess, you think Fox is actually a news program? Did you miss the video of muslim clerics forcing themselves bodily between the Danish embassy and an angry mob who were throwing stones at it, all the while the clerics were preaching nonviolence? Did you miss the hundreds of clerics speaking in interfaith councils around the world and denouncing all violent acts as against the will of allah? Maybe you should try the BBC, or any real news program.
When Christians, Jews or whomever else do something wrong, we stick them in jail immediately.
I see, so all the army pilots that dropped bombs on Baghdad are in jail now for the civilians they killed? And the Blackwater employees that drunkenly murdered Iraqi civilians for fun and then shipped out of the country are now in jail too? Oh, and the interrogators who tortured people are in jail to? Oh, and Bush who intentionally deceived the whole country and started a war based upon an outright lie, was impeached and put in jail? Oh, and the rednecks who murdered homosexuals last month weren't ignored by the equally redneck police who did not bother looking for them or really trying to find them since they were happy to see homosexuals killed, they're all in jail too?
Sorry, but that's a line of bullshit. The US doesn't lock up everyone who does something wrong and they often lock up people who haven't done anything wrong. There is plenty of blame to go around. Trying to paint muslims as any more violent and dangerous than christians is just your bigotry showing. Violence comes from fear and anger and whatever the religion, it will be used as an excuse and a way to justify whatever violent acts are done. Christians do this just as much as muslims and that has been the case throughout history.
Whereas what I suggest is to respect a fundamental "sensitivity." It would change no facts to put off two small images to a third part site and provide links.
The problem is, that makes the information dependent upon a third party resource. Wikipedia is periodically copied to disk and shipped as a resource for people without internet access, like educational projects. This would require them to periodically make sure those links still worked, and find a third party that is a reliable host and make a special procedure. And what happens when another special interest is offended and would like, say a subset of the copyrighted material to be linked to from their "official" site? I just don't see this as being worthwhile as a special case. Nothing forces those sects of muslims to visit this particular page.
Perhaps "watered down" ever-so-slightly, but not censored. The trade-off is becoming and acceptable resource to another billion human beings.
If people will really refuse to use wikipedia because they object to images on one page, well I'd say maybe they should bear the consequences of such an insular decision. People around the world are offended by one or more wikipedia pages. Dealing with the free expression of others is part of dealing with other cultures, regardless of whether they make evil gestures at you that might be magical curses or if they tell you you deserve to die or any other expression they make. If some members of the muslim community do not want to deal with the rest of the world on even footing, well they don't really have to, they can just connect to some intranet that is safe and censored for their delicate sensibilities, just as some christians do now.
Not quite. Porn is quite legal in the US. The choose to sensor porn in order to be taken seriously, and to maintain a good reputation within the student community.
Actually, no, porn is quasi-legal. Technically to comply with state laws they would have to make an effort to determine the age of every person viewing a page with "pornographic content" and warn them before it loads and the definition of "pornographic" is poorly defined at best, being something that offends the average viewer in a given location.
I respect your opinion. I simply wish to respectfully hold a different opinion.
I understand where you're coming from. I'm glad you are willing to respect the opinions of others. The problem comes when people say wikipedia should be made to alter their content, abridging their basic human right to free expression... and that is exactly what some of the protesters were trying to make happen. I value freedom, the freedom of the wikipedia group to put the pictures up or not without fear of reprisals or legal threats. I hope others like yourself are willing to value this freedom, above and beyond what they personally would like to have on the wikipedia pages.
Severely insulting one billion people is not the same thing as free speech.
Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. For example, when I write "I fucked your parents up the ass then shat into their mouths," most people are offended, and it is my freedom of speech that prevents the law from stopping me.
The US outlaws hate speech, and many western countries outlaw promotion of Nazi-ism, as examples. Wiki and its editors will now remove pornography, threats, copyright violations and libel.
You said it yourself, they censor things they are required to censor by law, where their servers are located.
Images of Muhammed are every bit as offensive in much of world as those types of material are to western eyes.
But the law does not require them to remove them so they don't. Personally, I'd like it if they put their servers somewhere more permissive where they could post porn or subsets of copyrighted works without legal restrictions.
Wikipedia clearly wants to appeal to as many people on the planet as possible.
Wikipedia clearly wants to appeal to a mass audience and not kowtow to censorship from and subset they don't have to for legal reasons. They don't let the Scientologists whitewash their pages, or the televangelist christians remove potentially negative facts about them either. Why should they remove factual information that Muslims don't like?
There is no need. Wikipedia could simply provide links to those images on a third party site, explaining precisely why they are doing so. (Or more correctly, an editor could do this.)
Again, I don't see why they should. Their mission is to host accurate information, not information that has been watered down and censored so it won't offend any special interest. There are plenty of people who have complained about facts on wikipedia they don't like and tried using technological or legal means to change it. Wikipedia is pretty clear in their policy on these matters. Sorry, if you don't like it, start a competitor or just don't go out of your way to go to their pages. Freedom of speech trumps freedom to not be offended when hearing someone else's speech.
Now whether or not individual Muslims believe this themselves is a completely different matter: I'm not suggesting that those who pick up a Quran and confess that it may have value are about to go hijack a plane and fly it into another skyscraper.
I actually read the Quran completely for the first time, while waiting in an airport shortly after 9/11. It does have value, but in truth I found it both more tedious and repetitive than the christian Bible, and philosophically less enlightening.
But let's not fall into the delusion that there is any moral equivalency between the Bible and the Quran, simply because you either are a believer in the illusion of multiculturalism or think anyone who is religious is axiomatically a nutbar and morally equivalent to the other God-fearing nutbars out there.
On this point, I disagree. I'd say people who self identify as christian and people who self identify as muslim regard their holy works in the same way, a way to find justification for whatever it is they want to do for whatever irrational reason. The mainstream religious organizations are also about equivalent, most of them trying to enlighten and encourage positive behaviors, while a few mainstream elements use them as a way to capitalize on people's fear and anger as a road to wealth and power. You can use either work to justify violence and intolerance if that is how you want to interpret it and that is how some do... with little interest in translational or historical accuracy. The relative levels of violence in each culture probably have more to do with quality of life, political realities, and geographical happenstance... and I won't go into which religion's adherents has caused more violence historically or in recent years.
Heh. The thing is, most christians I know, like most muslims I know are not "bad" people. You can't prejudge all people of a religion based upon a few violent wackos, or even a large number of violent wackos. Most christians I know, know a whole lot less about their religion than I do. They don't know it started as a doomsday cult among jewish people who eventually converted gentiles when doomsday did not come right away. It is the same thing with mormons. Sure they wear super-secret underwear (Why has no one asked Romney about his underwear yet? Come on Daily Show!) but for the most part their churches focus on trying to accentuate positive social behavior, charity, and tolerance, and they tend to be fairly good contributors to society as a whole. Besides, they provide us with hours of fascinating mythology and torturous rationalizations to read.
The problem is that when some nutjob says "let's kill Joe Smith because our religion says so", other people agree with the nutjob.
Yeah, if some religious nutjob in the US, for example claimed to have secret information that some other country was secretly attacking ours (information that was too secret for the public) and wanted to invade said country... and did... and later said that it was "god's will" that we invade them when it turned out he had no proof, well we'd arrest/inmpeach him or at least not re-elect him here in the US, where religious nutjobs are scorned. (thus endeth the sarcasm-athon)
Article 34 of the current Constitution of Afghanistan (2004) protects freedom of expression:
Yeah, if only the laws in the US weren't directly contradicting our constitution too. I mean just because we have some amendment that says we have freedom of speech doesn't mean it can't be illegal to say "fuck" on broadcast TV. That would be crazy or something.
The soviet union was no better. People are people everywhere and most of them react emotionally and use reason as a way to justify what they decided. Most people are assholes, and religion makes them religious assholes instead of atheist assholes. Just look at the Church of Satan, a bunch of selfish, asshole, atheists who perform "satanic" rituals just to piss off christians because they can't be productive and do things to actually help society in their free time.
Another thing: Joseph Stalin in a red herring. Being atheist doesn't necessarily make a good person, but it takes away a ton of excuses for being a bad person.
I don't know about that. It also removes the need to find justification for being a "bad" person, since that is wholly subjective.
Knowing that my faith in God is irrational, and that I'm aware of that fact; how does that make me any less intelligent compared to an atheist?
He didn't say you were less intelligent. He said you're more likely to make an irrational choice in the future. I think that might be a bit of an oversimplification as it does not address how accurate a predictor your past behavior will be for your future behavior and he does not address that it requires an irrational decision to act violently against others. Despite this, he does make a valid point to some degree and you have not yet addressed it.
Well, given that homosexuality is not illegal and punishable by death in the US, and the murderers are in general brought to justice, I'd say a fuck of a lot less than in many islamic countries today.
I don't even know what the hell you think you're responding to. Either use the "quote" tag or have a real subject in your sentence. What is "a fuck of a lot less?"
As to the iraq issue, my sandbox analogy...
Umm, this doesn't address the issues I was responding to at all. We're talking about why people feel the way they do and if countries are being judged on the same criteria, i.e. "christian extremists" from a muslim point of view, compared to "muslim extremists" as viewed by christians.
You neglect to mention that those acts were by individuals, not the government.
Umm, what government do you think it is that has committed most of the acts considered to be "muslim extremism?" Whether it was enacted by an individual or a government does not matter, since acts committed by the US government and our army and by individuals are being compared to acts by both individuals (like the one this story is about if you RTFA) and by middle eastern governments.
You also purposely spin it to sound like US society condoned it, when those individuals were sought and tried as criminals.
Parts of our society do condone it, mostly the extremist parts. I just saw a clip from the daily show where a man they interviewed in Texas about the building of a mosque there advocated getting a rope and hanging them. Do you really believe the majority of muslims agree with the violent acts committed by muslim extremists? Did you miss the hundreds of interfaith councils and muslim clerics that have been arguing against violence constantly?
Your comparison is bad. In the US, individuals enacting murder in the name of religion are considered criminals.
They are in muslim countries as well, unless it is a condoned killing according to the law, just like the execution of mentally disabled people in the US who committed murder, who would be institutionalized an rehabilitated in civilized countries. My comparison is quite apt. Is it really so hard for you to see things from someone else's perspective?
Yes, I agree. Socialized medicine is an abomination. Here in the US, it's law that hospitals treat people regardless of income.
You are factually incorrect. They are only required to treat emergencies. For example, I have one of the better healthcare plans available in the US, yet I am right now very ill, to ill to work. I've spent more than $10,000 out of my own pocket in medical expenses above and beyond what my healthcare plan covers. Because my illness is a slow, wasting one, hospitals will not treat me as an emergency, just keep me for a few hours to stabilize me and keep me overnight for observation, but without my healthcare plan they would not even try to find the cause of my illness of perform diagnostic procedures designed to cure me in the long term. Did you miss the big news story in California a few weeks back where a young girl died waiting for her healthcare provider to approve a procedure designed to help her?
Like the Iraqis? By a majority of 68%, they don't want US forces leaving before a year. That was 2006, the numbers are now in favor (by 57%) of the US leaving only as security improves.
Yeah, and I bet they had large numbers of people voting there? Sorry I don't believe polls conducted by an organization whose mandate is to provide misinformation to the enemy and who last year expressed concern because so much of their misinformation was being presented as fact in US news reports. In any case, that is irrelevant. Answer my question. Is it fair to judge christians as a whole based upon the acts performed by the US military who is made up of people who mostly call themselves christians despite violating the primary tenant against killing? That is, after all, how the previous poster advocated judging muslims, from the actions of a violent subset who are acting against the religious scriptures they self identify with.
While I agree and understand your position, it's certainly the case that the "few" is actually "a great many". Furthermore, it's also there to a greater degree.
If you attribute all violent acts by muslims as "muslim extremism," but do not count all violent acts by christians as "christian extremism" then you get a very skewed picture of what is happening. If muslim soldiers invaded the US and the people fought against them for their own freedom and for vengeance for the slain, would all those acts of violence qualify as "christian extremism" in the eyes of the invaders? Do the people of Iraq consider all the people killed by the US military in Iraq to be victims of "christian extremism"? Is the reason we invaded Iraq that we're mostly christians? Is the reason people are setting bombs to kill the invaders that they are muslims?
I mean, sure, christianity has its share of nuts, but for the most part those nuts are rather lame... Whereas the nuts in Islam seem to be the ones in charge.
So the violent, christian extremists named George Bush and Dick Cheney are lame and have not managed to create a lot of pain and suffering? Bush stated that he believes it is "god's will" that we invade Iraq and a lot of death has resulted from that. Should people of other religions around the world consider christianity to be dangerous cult because of this?
Only occasionally does somebody try to kill an abortion doctor or some such nastiness. And when they're caught at it (and they usually are), then they're arrested and put in a small room and looked at for the rest of their lives.
I think you're missing the point. In well ordered societies with reasonable qualities of living people are murdered a lot less than in the US, but in places with even more stable governments and even better quality of life people are killed less than in the US. Why then, would you consider religion to be an important causative factor?
When you have women being stoned to death for... well, does it really fucking matter what it's for? It's barbaric and ridiculous.
Every society has its taboos. In the US, a few miles from where I am now and a few months ago, three men were tortured and murdered because they were suspected of being homosexual. In Ohio a man had his penis cut off and then was beaten to death because he had briefly exposed his naked body to high school girls... who were not really harmed in any meaningful way. These are not rare occurrences compared to the rate of violence in our society as a whole. The US has been reviled by countries around the world for executing or imprisoning for life, people who were only children when they committed a crime. Likewise for people with mental problems. In fact many countries consider any execution to be barbaric and ridiculous, especially when we have such a high rate of error in our court system. Many countries consider letting people suffer and die of curable diseases, because they don't have enough money to be barbaric. Many countries consider forcing people to suffer from painful and incurable ailments by forcibly preventing them from committing suicide; to be barbaric.
Cultural beliefs differ in different parts of the world. I don't see that differences in religion correlate very accurately with the violence in society.
Sure, you can claim that these nuts are not "true muslims" or what have you, but that doesn't change the fact that they claim they are and so me, being an outsider, will judge them as such and judge the religion as a whole based on their actions.
Just as the people of the middle east judge christians and Americans based upon the actions of George Bush and the US military?
I'm no christian either, but even I can see that its crazy people are far less crazy (and far less dangerous) than those of the islamic faith(s).
Really? You objective, scientific analysis has concluded that r
I can assure you that "Muslims" who bomb people they think are repressing them and picket actors'/soldiers' deaths because of whatever sexual orientation they might be- are hardly Muslims at all... I, however, take great offense at Islam being likened to Christianity.
That is pretty subjective. The new testament and teachings of Jesus are also very clearly and repetitively advocating nonviolence even in the face of violence. The sad truth is most people are assholes, regardless of what religion they claim to follow. Most people don't bother to learn or understand and will find an excuse for what they want to do. Fundamentally, christianity and islam are not all that different and people aren't all that different. Sad but true.
I'm not even Christian, but I'm growing weary of hearing people pull out the crusades to try and change the topic away from Muslim extremism.
I don't think that is changing the topic so much as trying to show what the topic should be. The problem isn't violent muslim extremists, it is violent extremists of any religion or creed, be they buddhist, scientologist, christian, or muslim. Using the crusades as an example is valid, but I agree that it is not a good example, simply because there are better, more recent examples for comparison.
Let's talk about what's going on in the modern world.
Yes, lets. In the last year how many people have been beaten, injured, and killed by christian extremists in the US for being homosexual or over the issue of abortion? There was an incident only 4 months ago where three men were murdered about a mile from here, because they were suspected of being homosexual. Is that an example of christian extremism and should all christians be suspect as a result?
The point the previous poster did not express clearly enough for you is simply that most people of any religion are assholes; but most people of any religion are not violent extremists. People bringing up the reaction of some muslims to the published cartoons of Mohammed are also failing to see all the reaction, because only the negative made Fox "news." I saw in several foreign news programs Muslim clerics intervening between an angry mob and a Danish embassy physically blocking people from throwing rocks and preaching to them that their religion commands them to be peaceful. To put this in context read the following hypothetical situation:
Imagine a world where the US military has ben weakened and out gunned by troops from Saudi Arabia. Now imagine Saudi Arabia invaded and conquered Mexico using intelligence they now admit was wrong and their leaders knew was wrong at the time. Imagine they then built numerous military bases to maintain a permanent force there. Imagine you see hundreds of canadian refugees who fled across the border and who are telling stories of the carpet bombings and the dead children. Imagine that Saudi Arabia then made comment about how they may have to use military force against the US as well and you're living day to day with the worry that they will invade and kill you or your family and impose their religious and moral beliefs with new laws and a puppet government. Now further imagine that Iran published a series of cartoons portraying Americans and Christians as violent and dangerous echoing the justification used to invade Canada. Finally, imagine the scared and angry rednecks in Missouri gathering together and throwing rocks at the Iranian embassy. Do you think the local baptist preacher would be placing himself in harms way by trying to stop the mob from being violent? I'd like to think so, but honestly I really doubt it in most cases.
And in the modern world it's indisputable that Muslim extremism is claiming more lives/doing more damage then Christian extremism.
I think your claim is misleading in the extreme. The religion does not matter. People act violently when they are afraid and when they are threatened. The fact that the predominant religion of the middle east is muslim is not really relevant. What is relevant is that it is different from that of the people invading and that will always make religion an excuse for violence.
The dark past of Christianity is not a free pass for other religions to do the same in modern times.
We're supposed to be learning from history. The crusades are a great example that any religion can be used as an excuse for violence when conditions are right. It makes it easy for people to develop an "us against them" attitude. Sadly, too many people on both the US and middle east will rant about what the muslims are doing or what the christians are doing as though those religions were a natural way to separate people, as though
Americans, as you describe, are using the word communism correctly. They are not messed up:) 'Communism' is a calque of a german word from Marx's manifesto.
I think you might be living in the past. Marxist communism is a political ideology that espouses working towards a flavor of socialism as an economic policy. There are, however, numerous economic and political theories that are branches of socialism and communism, which are differentiated from socialism. It is just fine to refer to the political theory of Marx as "communism" right up until you start comparing it to an economic model like "capitalism" (as the original poster had done) instead of other political ideologies like democracy or maoism.
To be clear, communism can be compared to maoism and the meaning is clearly that of the political ideology. Communism can also be compared to socialism, at which point you are better be talking about economic models, otherwise it makes no sense because the two are very different things.
What?! Should we try Communism ONE MORE TIME because THIS TIME we'll "do it right"? Ha. Come on.;)
You should be careful about such comments. One would think you were talking about "communism" the economic model since you are comparing it to capitalism, instead of "communism" the political ideology. This is important because "communism" the political ideology generally tries to apply extreme "socialism" as economic policy and has basically nothing to do with "communism" the economic model aside from the political parties that misleadingly stole the name. This is also important because "communism" the economic model is alive and well for those who apply it to small communist cell sizes. The most common example of this would be the family unit, which comprises a communist cell by buying and selling goods and services collectively (although these cell sizes are shrinking in the US). Other applications of communism that have stood the test of time are monasteries, co-op housing, co-op stores, credit unions, municipalities, etc.
Most Americans seem to have some messed up ideas about communism and socialism, both as political ideologies and as economic models. For example, public schools are an example of socialism, although those schools seem to have failed to educate their students as to that fact. Most people with an even cursory education in economics, however, will tell you that communism, socialism, and capitalism are all present in every economy in the world and what usually leads to disaster is when an economy becomes extremist and failing to balance these aspects. Extreme capitalism is just as unstable and disastrous as extreme socialism or extreme communism... that is the lesson we all should have learned from history.
You are incorrect. Godwin's law states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." This was not a comparison to Nazis or Hitler, just a statement of the fact that he was in a Nazi organization; and is not an instance of the letter of Godwin's law being proved true. Nor is it a violation of the spirit of the law by being a logical fallacy (reductio ad Hitlerum).
More simply, calling a Nazi a Nazi is not a fallacy.
- I don't think the FBI can "blackhole" an IP address by clicking a button...
Actually, I used to work for a company that sold products that did just that... sort of. I haven't seen the movie and don't plan to, but for traffic on their own enterprise network our goal was to give users a "big red button" they can hit to blackhole traffic that matches a given signature. This could be an IP, or it could be traffic from a given IP, to another IP on a specific port, or even matches packet content. We had another product for big ISPs that allows them to do the same (but I think it only went as specific as/24's for source address). Both of these products are widely deployed and see regular use. The ISP version even let them create accounts for given customers that allowed them to block traffic heading to their network while not showing any traffic that was heading to other customers' networks. Our products were commercially available. I bet the NSA had something along the same lines. I guess what I'm saying is, maybe that isn't as far-fetched as you think.
Is KDE's cross-platform approach going to backfire?
I doubt it. First, the core QT developers are probably always going to be Linux people. Maybe that will change and the KDE people can start to worry, but I don't see it happening. The way things are now, these are apps that are Linux native, and will now mostly work on other OS's (but never perfectly or with all the benefits of native apps). Rather, the main advantage here is that there may be support from Windows and OS X developers who will contribute to KDE based projects when they don't have a good and fully native OSS project. It also can serve to give users of other OS's a preview of what they can expect if they switch to Linux and give large organizations using or considering a missed environment an easier way to keep or make Linux an option.
Imagine you run a government agency and you occasionally consider Linux as a way to cut costs. You're currently using Windows, but you figure you could switch 80% of your systems without any real problems. Unfortunately, you have another project coming up where you're developing a custom application internally and you don't have the budget to build native versions for Windows and Linux. If you're in that place, this is an answer (as is Java). Move internal projects to KDE and target Windows and Linux and you can also use it for those graphics people on Macs who currently have two computers. The real question is, will this be a better cross-platform solution than Java is?
We can bicker all day about what's "native" and what's not, but it really doesn't make one bit of difference. If an app does a job I need it to with an interface that doesn't get in the way then it's an asset.
The problem is not how an app is developed, but what that means to the end functionality. For example, will KOffice via QT support system services. None of the versions of OpenOffice on OS X are a good solution and none yet support system services the way native applications do. If I can't use my custom dictionary and thesaurus that I've spent considerable time training and which work with all my other applications, I'll look elsewhere. If I can't use my custom bibliography auto-formatter, my grammar checker, my text manipulation services, and my text analysis package; then "native" or "not native" doesn't matter because the apps aren't functional because they don't interoperate with other applications and the OS using the standard services.
Think of it this way. Would you run a command line program that was using some intermediate layer from another OS that did not support pipes or std in/out?
KDE has innovative and powerful apps to offer, and being able to run them as first-class apps on OS X is a Very Good Thing(TM).
I agree it is a good thing to be able to run KDE apps on OS X. I do it right now by running Kubuntu in a VM and a smaller footprint way to do that might be a better solution for me. But I think it is mistake to assume these apps will be "first-class" because I at least am not convinced they will be fully functional. Rather, I suspect these applications will always be second class, lacking the ability to leverage OS X technologies that so far Linux has failed to replicate. Will it be trivial, for example, for Krita to apply any of the Quartz composer filters the way Pixelmator can? I somehow doubt it. Being able to target multiple platforms including OS X is great and I hope it works well. But let's not go overboard. I suspect for many types of applications, this method of implementation will never be as good as a truly native port. This is more of a step up from third-class applications to second class.
Well sort of, but it is also licensed to only run on Apple hardware, so unless you're planning on breaking the license you don't have a problem. DRM on media attempts to apply licensing to content, which is a slightly different matter. As a Linux supporter I object to users modifying Linux and redistributing it without the source as that violates the license. I don't see why Apple should not only object but take measures to prevent people from violating their license. (Especially given that they are in a bad place economically as their crown jewels is a desktop OS and the desktop OS market is monopolized, which means if they can't bundle their OS with a complete system, there is no long-term way to stay in business unless the courts act effectively against MS... and we all know our court system is way too corrupt for that.)
Look I admit it would be nice if Apple unbundled their OS and hardware, but I'm also smart enough to know that would quickly lead to Apple having to stop developing their OS altogether. I'm also smart enough to see how much collateral damage that would do to open standards and Linux as it would change the market from, 8% OS X and 1% Linux and 80% Windows to 98% Windows in a hurry. MS doesn't need more power to break the market and that is exactly what we'd have if Apple dropped their hardware and OS bundling as a license requirement.
Another question is will file transfers finally work?
Do you mean, will file transfers over Jabber work? Yes. My girlfriend sent me file to proof for her yesterday via Jabber. (As an aside, it is awfully nice to have xmmp and zeroconf auto-discovering people on the LAN and allowing us to chat and transfer files. Sure, I have a file server, but it is a lot easier to tell her to drop the file into our chat session than is is to explain how to find the file share.)
And then you still have AOL, MSN, or Google logging your chats, if you're talking to someone on one of their networks.
Not always. You see the only time I really care if my IMs are logged or harvested is when I'm exchanging messages with coworkers. Since work has their own Jabber server up already, this means when I chat at work I don't have to use a different account to talk to friends using AIM or some other protocol. This means I can ditch Adium since I no longer need the cross protocol pieces and just use iChat, which has Jabber support and video and voice chat support working beautifully.
Unless you can convince your friends to use your chat server (messaging.homenetwork.net) rather than AOL's/Google's, you're not getting any additional privacy.
This isn't quite true. They don't have to use my server, just so long as they're using any server that doesn't do logging (like their own server or their work server or a server hosted by someone they trust).
If you want privacy, get OTR encryption (the easiest way is just to use Adium on the Mac)
I do enjoy OTR and using a proxy to get it working with iChat was annoying. The problem is, that only helps if the person on the other end is using it, which frankly is pretty rare, except for my coworkers anyway.
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Not to be harsh but, what magical fairy kingdom do you live in? People generally don't buy any OS's retail. Most people don't know what the fudge an "OS" is. They buy computers. OS's are required parts of computers to be useful and there is no significant market for retail boxed copies compared to the desktop OS market as a whole. It is akin the the number of people who buy cars without engines. If one monopolist was able to prevent any car company from shipping a competitor's engine in any cars made, they would have killed the ability of that engine manufacturer to do business and doing so by abusing a monopoly is both illegal and an economic death sentence.
Actually, Apple frequently adopts technologies and standards from both Sun and Linux distros. The thing is, Apple also is not willing to compromise on all things and will sometimes roll their own when they think they can do it better and cleaner (sometimes just better for them). They are less interested in being just like everyone else than they are in doing what is right for their developers and users. I think LaunchD is one example of this and Webkit is another. In the first case they created a new solution that was more elegant than the existing ones and offered it as open source... which none of the Linux distros even seriously considered. In the other case they adopted a technology created by the KDE people and made it much better, and eventually their version merged with and became the standard which is in use by many other projects today.
They are a) going to buy the stuff (cups, khtml) b) or completely ignore everyone else and roll their own, like they always did.Umm, Apple bought KHTML? I thought Apple adopted it and made a lot of contributions to it. As far as I know they simply used the existing license without contributing any cash, just code. As for CUPS, Apple adopted it first, then several years later hired the main developer, then bought the codebase so they could ship a compatible printing system in closed source hardware devices (while keeping all their changes available via GPL).
Now I'm not trying to defend Apple here. I like and use many of their products, but I also use Linux, OpenBSD, and Windows... I'm just trying to clarify things. One thing, however, that I have noted is that Linux distros tend to ignore features in OS X that they are lacking, even when the code is there for the taking. I attribute this to a few factors. One is that people that care about having a featureful desktop OS tend to switch to OS X as their primary system, so they don't have a lot of incentive to work on those same features for a desktop Linux distro. Second, Linux desktop developers I know, rarely have used OS X and tend to not even know about the features/technologies they are missing, or if they do know, don't care because they are focused on power users. Finally, a huge feature of any Linux distro is compatibility with other Linux distros. Any feature that makes a real, architectural change to Linux has to overcome enormous resistance as it breaks compatibility with other distros and because Linux on the server developers don't want any more "bloat" or any changes that will cause potential instability without benefitting Linux as a server OS.
What's coming now are the Standards Wars... Let them fight, I'll stand aside and look, trying one or the other and fixing bugs for the one I like the most. In a year's time we'll probably have a winner... or, let them be two years.I guess this comes down to capitalism versus socialism. Will multiple competing offerings result in all of them improving and one or two real, well done solutions arising, or will the duplication of effort and failure to cooperate retard innovation and annoy us for years to come (while Microsoft snickers)? Personally, I think we'd be better off with standardized technologies that are cleanly implemented, powerful, and universally adopted via a standards committee, than by head-to-head competing standards which may result in a "winner" that is not the best technological solution, but is paired with other technologies that are winning for other reasons. Oh well, I guess I'm a silly utopian idealist or something.
Did you even read my post? Bush did claim we went to war because of his religious beliefs as a christian. Throughout history, both long ago and in recent years many violent acts have been committed by people claiming that they were justified because they were christians saving the souls of poor, dumb heathens. Some of these acts were committed by catholic priests using their position to send their "flock" to commit atrocities. In fact, slavery was justified by the catholic church because they claimed africans were all cannibals without souls and that made enslaving them just.
In any case, you've failed to present evidence that all or even the majority of violence committed by muslims is claimed as a religious act.
...and the so-called moderates are either dead quiet or excuse their behavior in one form or another.Let me guess, you think Fox is actually a news program? Did you miss the video of muslim clerics forcing themselves bodily between the Danish embassy and an angry mob who were throwing stones at it, all the while the clerics were preaching nonviolence? Did you miss the hundreds of clerics speaking in interfaith councils around the world and denouncing all violent acts as against the will of allah? Maybe you should try the BBC, or any real news program.
When Christians, Jews or whomever else do something wrong, we stick them in jail immediately.I see, so all the army pilots that dropped bombs on Baghdad are in jail now for the civilians they killed? And the Blackwater employees that drunkenly murdered Iraqi civilians for fun and then shipped out of the country are now in jail too? Oh, and the interrogators who tortured people are in jail to? Oh, and Bush who intentionally deceived the whole country and started a war based upon an outright lie, was impeached and put in jail? Oh, and the rednecks who murdered homosexuals last month weren't ignored by the equally redneck police who did not bother looking for them or really trying to find them since they were happy to see homosexuals killed, they're all in jail too?
Sorry, but that's a line of bullshit. The US doesn't lock up everyone who does something wrong and they often lock up people who haven't done anything wrong. There is plenty of blame to go around. Trying to paint muslims as any more violent and dangerous than christians is just your bigotry showing. Violence comes from fear and anger and whatever the religion, it will be used as an excuse and a way to justify whatever violent acts are done. Christians do this just as much as muslims and that has been the case throughout history.
The problem is, that makes the information dependent upon a third party resource. Wikipedia is periodically copied to disk and shipped as a resource for people without internet access, like educational projects. This would require them to periodically make sure those links still worked, and find a third party that is a reliable host and make a special procedure. And what happens when another special interest is offended and would like, say a subset of the copyrighted material to be linked to from their "official" site? I just don't see this as being worthwhile as a special case. Nothing forces those sects of muslims to visit this particular page.
Perhaps "watered down" ever-so-slightly, but not censored. The trade-off is becoming and acceptable resource to another billion human beings.If people will really refuse to use wikipedia because they object to images on one page, well I'd say maybe they should bear the consequences of such an insular decision. People around the world are offended by one or more wikipedia pages. Dealing with the free expression of others is part of dealing with other cultures, regardless of whether they make evil gestures at you that might be magical curses or if they tell you you deserve to die or any other expression they make. If some members of the muslim community do not want to deal with the rest of the world on even footing, well they don't really have to, they can just connect to some intranet that is safe and censored for their delicate sensibilities, just as some christians do now.
Not quite. Porn is quite legal in the US. The choose to sensor porn in order to be taken seriously, and to maintain a good reputation within the student community.Actually, no, porn is quasi-legal. Technically to comply with state laws they would have to make an effort to determine the age of every person viewing a page with "pornographic content" and warn them before it loads and the definition of "pornographic" is poorly defined at best, being something that offends the average viewer in a given location.
I respect your opinion. I simply wish to respectfully hold a different opinion.I understand where you're coming from. I'm glad you are willing to respect the opinions of others. The problem comes when people say wikipedia should be made to alter their content, abridging their basic human right to free expression... and that is exactly what some of the protesters were trying to make happen. I value freedom, the freedom of the wikipedia group to put the pictures up or not without fear of reprisals or legal threats. I hope others like yourself are willing to value this freedom, above and beyond what they personally would like to have on the wikipedia pages.
Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. For example, when I write "I fucked your parents up the ass then shat into their mouths," most people are offended, and it is my freedom of speech that prevents the law from stopping me.
The US outlaws hate speech, and many western countries outlaw promotion of Nazi-ism, as examples. Wiki and its editors will now remove pornography, threats, copyright violations and libel.You said it yourself, they censor things they are required to censor by law, where their servers are located.
Images of Muhammed are every bit as offensive in much of world as those types of material are to western eyes.But the law does not require them to remove them so they don't. Personally, I'd like it if they put their servers somewhere more permissive where they could post porn or subsets of copyrighted works without legal restrictions.
Wikipedia clearly wants to appeal to as many people on the planet as possible.Wikipedia clearly wants to appeal to a mass audience and not kowtow to censorship from and subset they don't have to for legal reasons. They don't let the Scientologists whitewash their pages, or the televangelist christians remove potentially negative facts about them either. Why should they remove factual information that Muslims don't like?
There is no need. Wikipedia could simply provide links to those images on a third party site, explaining precisely why they are doing so. (Or more correctly, an editor could do this.)Again, I don't see why they should. Their mission is to host accurate information, not information that has been watered down and censored so it won't offend any special interest. There are plenty of people who have complained about facts on wikipedia they don't like and tried using technological or legal means to change it. Wikipedia is pretty clear in their policy on these matters. Sorry, if you don't like it, start a competitor or just don't go out of your way to go to their pages. Freedom of speech trumps freedom to not be offended when hearing someone else's speech.
I actually read the Quran completely for the first time, while waiting in an airport shortly after 9/11. It does have value, but in truth I found it both more tedious and repetitive than the christian Bible, and philosophically less enlightening.
But let's not fall into the delusion that there is any moral equivalency between the Bible and the Quran, simply because you either are a believer in the illusion of multiculturalism or think anyone who is religious is axiomatically a nutbar and morally equivalent to the other God-fearing nutbars out there.On this point, I disagree. I'd say people who self identify as christian and people who self identify as muslim regard their holy works in the same way, a way to find justification for whatever it is they want to do for whatever irrational reason. The mainstream religious organizations are also about equivalent, most of them trying to enlighten and encourage positive behaviors, while a few mainstream elements use them as a way to capitalize on people's fear and anger as a road to wealth and power. You can use either work to justify violence and intolerance if that is how you want to interpret it and that is how some do... with little interest in translational or historical accuracy. The relative levels of violence in each culture probably have more to do with quality of life, political realities, and geographical happenstance... and I won't go into which religion's adherents has caused more violence historically or in recent years.
Heh. The thing is, most christians I know, like most muslims I know are not "bad" people. You can't prejudge all people of a religion based upon a few violent wackos, or even a large number of violent wackos. Most christians I know, know a whole lot less about their religion than I do. They don't know it started as a doomsday cult among jewish people who eventually converted gentiles when doomsday did not come right away. It is the same thing with mormons. Sure they wear super-secret underwear (Why has no one asked Romney about his underwear yet? Come on Daily Show!) but for the most part their churches focus on trying to accentuate positive social behavior, charity, and tolerance, and they tend to be fairly good contributors to society as a whole. Besides, they provide us with hours of fascinating mythology and torturous rationalizations to read.
Yeah, if some religious nutjob in the US, for example claimed to have secret information that some other country was secretly attacking ours (information that was too secret for the public) and wanted to invade said country... and did... and later said that it was "god's will" that we invade them when it turned out he had no proof, well we'd arrest/inmpeach him or at least not re-elect him here in the US, where religious nutjobs are scorned. (thus endeth the sarcasm-athon)
Article 34 of the current Constitution of Afghanistan (2004) protects freedom of expression:Yeah, if only the laws in the US weren't directly contradicting our constitution too. I mean just because we have some amendment that says we have freedom of speech doesn't mean it can't be illegal to say "fuck" on broadcast TV. That would be crazy or something.
The soviet union was no better. People are people everywhere and most of them react emotionally and use reason as a way to justify what they decided. Most people are assholes, and religion makes them religious assholes instead of atheist assholes. Just look at the Church of Satan, a bunch of selfish, asshole, atheists who perform "satanic" rituals just to piss off christians because they can't be productive and do things to actually help society in their free time.
Another thing: Joseph Stalin in a red herring. Being atheist doesn't necessarily make a good person, but it takes away a ton of excuses for being a bad person.I don't know about that. It also removes the need to find justification for being a "bad" person, since that is wholly subjective.
He didn't say you were less intelligent. He said you're more likely to make an irrational choice in the future. I think that might be a bit of an oversimplification as it does not address how accurate a predictor your past behavior will be for your future behavior and he does not address that it requires an irrational decision to act violently against others. Despite this, he does make a valid point to some degree and you have not yet addressed it.
I don't even know what the hell you think you're responding to. Either use the "quote" tag or have a real subject in your sentence. What is "a fuck of a lot less?"
As to the iraq issue, my sandbox analogy...Umm, this doesn't address the issues I was responding to at all. We're talking about why people feel the way they do and if countries are being judged on the same criteria, i.e. "christian extremists" from a muslim point of view, compared to "muslim extremists" as viewed by christians.
Umm, what government do you think it is that has committed most of the acts considered to be "muslim extremism?" Whether it was enacted by an individual or a government does not matter, since acts committed by the US government and our army and by individuals are being compared to acts by both individuals (like the one this story is about if you RTFA) and by middle eastern governments.
You also purposely spin it to sound like US society condoned it, when those individuals were sought and tried as criminals.Parts of our society do condone it, mostly the extremist parts. I just saw a clip from the daily show where a man they interviewed in Texas about the building of a mosque there advocated getting a rope and hanging them. Do you really believe the majority of muslims agree with the violent acts committed by muslim extremists? Did you miss the hundreds of interfaith councils and muslim clerics that have been arguing against violence constantly?
Your comparison is bad. In the US, individuals enacting murder in the name of religion are considered criminals.They are in muslim countries as well, unless it is a condoned killing according to the law, just like the execution of mentally disabled people in the US who committed murder, who would be institutionalized an rehabilitated in civilized countries. My comparison is quite apt. Is it really so hard for you to see things from someone else's perspective?
Yes, I agree. Socialized medicine is an abomination. Here in the US, it's law that hospitals treat people regardless of income.You are factually incorrect. They are only required to treat emergencies. For example, I have one of the better healthcare plans available in the US, yet I am right now very ill, to ill to work. I've spent more than $10,000 out of my own pocket in medical expenses above and beyond what my healthcare plan covers. Because my illness is a slow, wasting one, hospitals will not treat me as an emergency, just keep me for a few hours to stabilize me and keep me overnight for observation, but without my healthcare plan they would not even try to find the cause of my illness of perform diagnostic procedures designed to cure me in the long term. Did you miss the big news story in California a few weeks back where a young girl died waiting for her healthcare provider to approve a procedure designed to help her?
Like the Iraqis? By a majority of 68%, they don't want US forces leaving before a year. That was 2006, the numbers are now in favor (by 57%) of the US leaving only as security improves.Yeah, and I bet they had large numbers of people voting there? Sorry I don't believe polls conducted by an organization whose mandate is to provide misinformation to the enemy and who last year expressed concern because so much of their misinformation was being presented as fact in US news reports. In any case, that is irrelevant. Answer my question. Is it fair to judge christians as a whole based upon the acts performed by the US military who is made up of people who mostly call themselves christians despite violating the primary tenant against killing? That is, after all, how the previous poster advocated judging muslims, from the actions of a violent subset who are acting against the religious scriptures they self identify with.
While I agree and understand your position, it's certainly the case that the "few" is actually "a great many". Furthermore, it's also there to a greater degree.
If you attribute all violent acts by muslims as "muslim extremism," but do not count all violent acts by christians as "christian extremism" then you get a very skewed picture of what is happening. If muslim soldiers invaded the US and the people fought against them for their own freedom and for vengeance for the slain, would all those acts of violence qualify as "christian extremism" in the eyes of the invaders? Do the people of Iraq consider all the people killed by the US military in Iraq to be victims of "christian extremism"? Is the reason we invaded Iraq that we're mostly christians? Is the reason people are setting bombs to kill the invaders that they are muslims?
I mean, sure, christianity has its share of nuts, but for the most part those nuts are rather lame... Whereas the nuts in Islam seem to be the ones in charge.
So the violent, christian extremists named George Bush and Dick Cheney are lame and have not managed to create a lot of pain and suffering? Bush stated that he believes it is "god's will" that we invade Iraq and a lot of death has resulted from that. Should people of other religions around the world consider christianity to be dangerous cult because of this?
Only occasionally does somebody try to kill an abortion doctor or some such nastiness. And when they're caught at it (and they usually are), then they're arrested and put in a small room and looked at for the rest of their lives.
I think you're missing the point. In well ordered societies with reasonable qualities of living people are murdered a lot less than in the US, but in places with even more stable governments and even better quality of life people are killed less than in the US. Why then, would you consider religion to be an important causative factor?
When you have women being stoned to death for... well, does it really fucking matter what it's for? It's barbaric and ridiculous.
Every society has its taboos. In the US, a few miles from where I am now and a few months ago, three men were tortured and murdered because they were suspected of being homosexual. In Ohio a man had his penis cut off and then was beaten to death because he had briefly exposed his naked body to high school girls... who were not really harmed in any meaningful way. These are not rare occurrences compared to the rate of violence in our society as a whole. The US has been reviled by countries around the world for executing or imprisoning for life, people who were only children when they committed a crime. Likewise for people with mental problems. In fact many countries consider any execution to be barbaric and ridiculous, especially when we have such a high rate of error in our court system. Many countries consider letting people suffer and die of curable diseases, because they don't have enough money to be barbaric. Many countries consider forcing people to suffer from painful and incurable ailments by forcibly preventing them from committing suicide; to be barbaric.
Cultural beliefs differ in different parts of the world. I don't see that differences in religion correlate very accurately with the violence in society.
Sure, you can claim that these nuts are not "true muslims" or what have you, but that doesn't change the fact that they claim they are and so me, being an outsider, will judge them as such and judge the religion as a whole based on their actions.
Just as the people of the middle east judge christians and Americans based upon the actions of George Bush and the US military?
I'm no christian either, but even I can see that its crazy people are far less crazy (and far less dangerous) than those of the islamic faith(s).
Really? You objective, scientific analysis has concluded that r
That is pretty subjective. The new testament and teachings of Jesus are also very clearly and repetitively advocating nonviolence even in the face of violence. The sad truth is most people are assholes, regardless of what religion they claim to follow. Most people don't bother to learn or understand and will find an excuse for what they want to do. Fundamentally, christianity and islam are not all that different and people aren't all that different. Sad but true.
In principal, yes they should. In practice, however, this could be difficult because of the laws enforced in the location they have their servers.
I'm not even Christian, but I'm growing weary of hearing people pull out the crusades to try and change the topic away from Muslim extremism.
I don't think that is changing the topic so much as trying to show what the topic should be. The problem isn't violent muslim extremists, it is violent extremists of any religion or creed, be they buddhist, scientologist, christian, or muslim. Using the crusades as an example is valid, but I agree that it is not a good example, simply because there are better, more recent examples for comparison.
Let's talk about what's going on in the modern world.
Yes, lets. In the last year how many people have been beaten, injured, and killed by christian extremists in the US for being homosexual or over the issue of abortion? There was an incident only 4 months ago where three men were murdered about a mile from here, because they were suspected of being homosexual. Is that an example of christian extremism and should all christians be suspect as a result?
The point the previous poster did not express clearly enough for you is simply that most people of any religion are assholes; but most people of any religion are not violent extremists. People bringing up the reaction of some muslims to the published cartoons of Mohammed are also failing to see all the reaction, because only the negative made Fox "news." I saw in several foreign news programs Muslim clerics intervening between an angry mob and a Danish embassy physically blocking people from throwing rocks and preaching to them that their religion commands them to be peaceful. To put this in context read the following hypothetical situation:
Imagine a world where the US military has ben weakened and out gunned by troops from Saudi Arabia. Now imagine Saudi Arabia invaded and conquered Mexico using intelligence they now admit was wrong and their leaders knew was wrong at the time. Imagine they then built numerous military bases to maintain a permanent force there. Imagine you see hundreds of canadian refugees who fled across the border and who are telling stories of the carpet bombings and the dead children. Imagine that Saudi Arabia then made comment about how they may have to use military force against the US as well and you're living day to day with the worry that they will invade and kill you or your family and impose their religious and moral beliefs with new laws and a puppet government. Now further imagine that Iran published a series of cartoons portraying Americans and Christians as violent and dangerous echoing the justification used to invade Canada. Finally, imagine the scared and angry rednecks in Missouri gathering together and throwing rocks at the Iranian embassy. Do you think the local baptist preacher would be placing himself in harms way by trying to stop the mob from being violent? I'd like to think so, but honestly I really doubt it in most cases.
And in the modern world it's indisputable that Muslim extremism is claiming more lives/doing more damage then Christian extremism.
I think your claim is misleading in the extreme. The religion does not matter. People act violently when they are afraid and when they are threatened. The fact that the predominant religion of the middle east is muslim is not really relevant. What is relevant is that it is different from that of the people invading and that will always make religion an excuse for violence.
The dark past of Christianity is not a free pass for other religions to do the same in modern times.
We're supposed to be learning from history. The crusades are a great example that any religion can be used as an excuse for violence when conditions are right. It makes it easy for people to develop an "us against them" attitude. Sadly, too many people on both the US and middle east will rant about what the muslims are doing or what the christians are doing as though those religions were a natural way to separate people, as though
I think you might be living in the past. Marxist communism is a political ideology that espouses working towards a flavor of socialism as an economic policy. There are, however, numerous economic and political theories that are branches of socialism and communism, which are differentiated from socialism. It is just fine to refer to the political theory of Marx as "communism" right up until you start comparing it to an economic model like "capitalism" (as the original poster had done) instead of other political ideologies like democracy or maoism.
To be clear, communism can be compared to maoism and the meaning is clearly that of the political ideology. Communism can also be compared to socialism, at which point you are better be talking about economic models, otherwise it makes no sense because the two are very different things.
You should be careful about such comments. One would think you were talking about "communism" the economic model since you are comparing it to capitalism, instead of "communism" the political ideology. This is important because "communism" the political ideology generally tries to apply extreme "socialism" as economic policy and has basically nothing to do with "communism" the economic model aside from the political parties that misleadingly stole the name. This is also important because "communism" the economic model is alive and well for those who apply it to small communist cell sizes. The most common example of this would be the family unit, which comprises a communist cell by buying and selling goods and services collectively (although these cell sizes are shrinking in the US). Other applications of communism that have stood the test of time are monasteries, co-op housing, co-op stores, credit unions, municipalities, etc.
Most Americans seem to have some messed up ideas about communism and socialism, both as political ideologies and as economic models. For example, public schools are an example of socialism, although those schools seem to have failed to educate their students as to that fact. Most people with an even cursory education in economics, however, will tell you that communism, socialism, and capitalism are all present in every economy in the world and what usually leads to disaster is when an economy becomes extremist and failing to balance these aspects. Extreme capitalism is just as unstable and disastrous as extreme socialism or extreme communism... that is the lesson we all should have learned from history.
You are incorrect. Godwin's law states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." This was not a comparison to Nazis or Hitler, just a statement of the fact that he was in a Nazi organization; and is not an instance of the letter of Godwin's law being proved true. Nor is it a violation of the spirit of the law by being a logical fallacy (reductio ad Hitlerum).
More simply, calling a Nazi a Nazi is not a fallacy.
Actually, I used to work for a company that sold products that did just that... sort of. I haven't seen the movie and don't plan to, but for traffic on their own enterprise network our goal was to give users a "big red button" they can hit to blackhole traffic that matches a given signature. This could be an IP, or it could be traffic from a given IP, to another IP on a specific port, or even matches packet content. We had another product for big ISPs that allows them to do the same (but I think it only went as specific as /24's for source address). Both of these products are widely deployed and see regular use. The ISP version even let them create accounts for given customers that allowed them to block traffic heading to their network while not showing any traffic that was heading to other customers' networks. Our products were commercially available. I bet the NSA had something along the same lines. I guess what I'm saying is, maybe that isn't as far-fetched as you think.
I doubt it. First, the core QT developers are probably always going to be Linux people. Maybe that will change and the KDE people can start to worry, but I don't see it happening. The way things are now, these are apps that are Linux native, and will now mostly work on other OS's (but never perfectly or with all the benefits of native apps). Rather, the main advantage here is that there may be support from Windows and OS X developers who will contribute to KDE based projects when they don't have a good and fully native OSS project. It also can serve to give users of other OS's a preview of what they can expect if they switch to Linux and give large organizations using or considering a missed environment an easier way to keep or make Linux an option.
Imagine you run a government agency and you occasionally consider Linux as a way to cut costs. You're currently using Windows, but you figure you could switch 80% of your systems without any real problems. Unfortunately, you have another project coming up where you're developing a custom application internally and you don't have the budget to build native versions for Windows and Linux. If you're in that place, this is an answer (as is Java). Move internal projects to KDE and target Windows and Linux and you can also use it for those graphics people on Macs who currently have two computers. The real question is, will this be a better cross-platform solution than Java is?
The problem is not how an app is developed, but what that means to the end functionality. For example, will KOffice via QT support system services. None of the versions of OpenOffice on OS X are a good solution and none yet support system services the way native applications do. If I can't use my custom dictionary and thesaurus that I've spent considerable time training and which work with all my other applications, I'll look elsewhere. If I can't use my custom bibliography auto-formatter, my grammar checker, my text manipulation services, and my text analysis package; then "native" or "not native" doesn't matter because the apps aren't functional because they don't interoperate with other applications and the OS using the standard services.
Think of it this way. Would you run a command line program that was using some intermediate layer from another OS that did not support pipes or std in/out?
KDE has innovative and powerful apps to offer, and being able to run them as first-class apps on OS X is a Very Good Thing(TM).I agree it is a good thing to be able to run KDE apps on OS X. I do it right now by running Kubuntu in a VM and a smaller footprint way to do that might be a better solution for me. But I think it is mistake to assume these apps will be "first-class" because I at least am not convinced they will be fully functional. Rather, I suspect these applications will always be second class, lacking the ability to leverage OS X technologies that so far Linux has failed to replicate. Will it be trivial, for example, for Krita to apply any of the Quartz composer filters the way Pixelmator can? I somehow doubt it. Being able to target multiple platforms including OS X is great and I hope it works well. But let's not go overboard. I suspect for many types of applications, this method of implementation will never be as good as a truly native port. This is more of a step up from third-class applications to second class.
Well sort of, but it is also licensed to only run on Apple hardware, so unless you're planning on breaking the license you don't have a problem. DRM on media attempts to apply licensing to content, which is a slightly different matter. As a Linux supporter I object to users modifying Linux and redistributing it without the source as that violates the license. I don't see why Apple should not only object but take measures to prevent people from violating their license. (Especially given that they are in a bad place economically as their crown jewels is a desktop OS and the desktop OS market is monopolized, which means if they can't bundle their OS with a complete system, there is no long-term way to stay in business unless the courts act effectively against MS... and we all know our court system is way too corrupt for that.)
Look I admit it would be nice if Apple unbundled their OS and hardware, but I'm also smart enough to know that would quickly lead to Apple having to stop developing their OS altogether. I'm also smart enough to see how much collateral damage that would do to open standards and Linux as it would change the market from, 8% OS X and 1% Linux and 80% Windows to 98% Windows in a hurry. MS doesn't need more power to break the market and that is exactly what we'd have if Apple dropped their hardware and OS bundling as a license requirement.
That isn't a monopoly. Buy a dictionary.
Do you mean, will file transfers over Jabber work? Yes. My girlfriend sent me file to proof for her yesterday via Jabber. (As an aside, it is awfully nice to have xmmp and zeroconf auto-discovering people on the LAN and allowing us to chat and transfer files. Sure, I have a file server, but it is a lot easier to tell her to drop the file into our chat session than is is to explain how to find the file share.)
Not always. You see the only time I really care if my IMs are logged or harvested is when I'm exchanging messages with coworkers. Since work has their own Jabber server up already, this means when I chat at work I don't have to use a different account to talk to friends using AIM or some other protocol. This means I can ditch Adium since I no longer need the cross protocol pieces and just use iChat, which has Jabber support and video and voice chat support working beautifully.
Unless you can convince your friends to use your chat server (messaging.homenetwork.net) rather than AOL's/Google's, you're not getting any additional privacy.This isn't quite true. They don't have to use my server, just so long as they're using any server that doesn't do logging (like their own server or their work server or a server hosted by someone they trust).
If you want privacy, get OTR encryption (the easiest way is just to use Adium on the Mac)I do enjoy OTR and using a proxy to get it working with iChat was annoying. The problem is, that only helps if the person on the other end is using it, which frankly is pretty rare, except for my coworkers anyway.