Your comments sound too optimistic to be taken seriously. Really, really wishing something to be true doesn't make it so.
Perhaps more importantly, I notice certain trends in Apple that, though not that bad now, could be pretty terrible if they end up in a winning position (their tendency to lock out any DAPs other than their own iPods, for instance). Honestly, if they end up beating out Microsoft, that will not usher in a brand new utopian Heaven-on-Earth. It will not be Kingdom Come. If they replace Microsoft, all that will mean is that they'll become the new Microsoft. Even accepting the terribly optimistic view that this prophesied "OS-X for all x86" will simply sweep Windows away, well, you can mark me down on the list of enemies right now in advance if you're so sure, 'cause I'll be a part of the resistance.
Fuckit, I'm tempted to make that my sig, as much as I (a) don't want a sig, and (b) know that it's liable to get every single post of mine from now on modded "flamebait"!
Not extinction and re-evolution, but swings in population levels can be quite severe even in 'undisturbed' nature.
Like another poster mentioned, unless this gets much, much worse natural selection will simply start choosing bears better at swimming, or that find an alternate method for moving.
Interesting thing about evolution: it's not a perfect upwards slope. Indeed, in many ways biodiversity has been on a downwards slope for long before humans came onto the scene. Furthermore, consider that introducing a new way for animals to die doesn't happen in a vacuum; this is one of many examples of shrinking habitats and increasingly hostile situations that animals in the world (including humans, but we're good at changing our immediate environment to offset the overall environment) are finding themselves in.
To go back to what I was nudging towards initially, though: 'natural selection' is not another name for 'all-powerful god', that is to say, just because a new method is needed doesn't mean that this 'natural selection' thing will magically provide it; natural selection is just trimming combined with chaos, there are severe limits to what it can do, and I can't think of many methods that the bears could use other than swimming (I do realize that you said "unless this gets much, much worse", but really, there aren't that many alternate methods of moving, it's not like they'll suddenly develop wings). And anyways, I would think that after so much time, Polar Bears as a species would be pretty damn good at swimming. I doubt it's merely the few weaker ones that are drowning. The article notes that ALL the bears are being forced to swim further from the shore, and some of the deaths noted were from storms that arose; so whether they're good swimmers or not isn't even going to make that much of a difference, it's an extra bonus to the death rate period.
Hmm, in some ways I'm sortof making a straw man out of your argument. But really now, just think about it for a moment. As you mentioned, population levels can swing quite dramatically in rather 'natural' situations, yes. Now say that one of those swings happens for some random reason, combined with the problems noted in the article. It's not that hard to imagine entire populations of polar bears dipping dangerously low. The article mentions increases in the rate of cannibalism due to the lack of food sources, so for many populations there may be a tipping point that would create a downward spiral. Consider also that this is just one of many examples of the effect of humans on the environment that hurts wild populations, so I might agree with you if this was all that was going on in the world (ie. if the only thing that polar bears had to deal with was having to swim further), but it's the combination of many harmful factors that puts species at risk.
Plus, just from an empathic perspective, I'm not exactly going "hurrah! animals are dieing!". I'd rather they, umm, not die when they shouldn't be.
...but it's why I'm still on SP1 myself. Everything I have on my machine (including some graphics-intensive Win95/98 era stuff) runs beautifully. Many, many of the things I use often (like the old UnrealEd for Unreal1, UT99, and Deus Ex) refuse to work on any of the computers my friends have. On the other hand, Freespace always seems to work, but admittedly, that's due to a weird thing with the way-too-damn-many fonts installed on my machine. Also, doesn't SP2 refuse to allow more than 10 outgoing connection attempts at a time? I know Azureus mentions such in the settings.
Also, more seriously, XP SP2 broke the ability of my parents' virus scanner to keep an active monitor running. Which in turn quickly led to the near-total destruction of the computer before I came home for the holidays last year and fixed it (it arose again like a Phoenix, though key things in Windows are still missing . . . nothing important, actually, mainly stuff that was annoying and unable to be removed with any ease before, so in a way that's kindof a plus!)
Alot more stuff is broken, I just don't recall quite what. Hmm, maybe a quick google search will clarify:
I could go on, but you get the idea. There are some serious drawbacks to SP2. I could go on about how the supposed security features don't exactly impress me (and honestly, all the third-party security programs on my computer have never had to do much, since I run it very securely anyways, and they could handle it even if I didn't), but again, you can probably elaborate on your own.
My point, really, is just that parent is being truthful! Hell, it doesn't even matter if you argue that SP2 doesn't break anything worth fretting about, the perception, with enough evidence to hold sway, still exists, so it's still a huge reason for lack of adoption. Maybe parent is flamebait as well, but sometimes truth == flamebait!
Though Firefox and other browser supporters (of which I am one) would like to push that the way to solve this is to switch, a lot of larger companies aren't at the point where they're ready to do so.
You make it sound as if it's a major systems overhaul that has to be done, with methods and practices being restructured and files reformatted and babble babble babble. We're not talking changing Word Processors here, where you might have a sudden incompatability between the reports and records and etc. In theory a browser switch should be pretty damn transparent.
I repeat, it's not like you're using IE to create any files, it's just a passive browsing system with which to interact with online information and objects . . . unless your company has some sort of foolish web-app they use internally that is based heavily on something quirkily Microsoft-made like ActiveX, then I'd think using a browser that complies better with, yaknow, the standards (among all the other issues, like security) would be an easy simple change with non-trivial benefits.
Sorry, I must be bordering a bit on sardonic. I really don't mean to be, I'm curious. Incredulous, yes, but not mockingly. I just can't quite fathom it, what the hell is the big apocalyptic deal?
indeed, but to be both traditional & slashdott
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In Winter: Profit
Oh come now, it isn't the media's fault. They were simply misled by (insert Democrats or Republicans depending on your politics).
Hey, Democrats and Republicans aren't your only options. It could, for example, be the fault of the Tories, or the Reform Party, Zionist Conspiracy, or People Being Cruel To Animals, or Microsoft, or Satan, or The Capitalists. Actually, okay, that last one isn't all that unfounded. Personally though, I'm going to go for the classic "ironic twist" version and blame Nader somehow.
All this said though, I live in Canada and I would welcome an extra 5C from October through May.
Thing is, it's not a pure temperature increase. It's just an average. The influx of energy into the system will (and this is the more troublesome aspect of global warming) make it far more volatile. More swings of weather, more extremes. Compared to the problems of the schizophrenic weather, the extra 5 degrees celsius won't seem like such a good deal. This is also why even a few degrees increase has some major drastically bad effects, while people wouldn't exactly be going around saying "Gee! The average 2 degree increase is pretty nice, isn't it?". This average temperature increase will, for everyday means, be somewhat below the radar, it's only the effects (ice caps melting, increase in likelihood and severity of storms, etc) that are so noticable.
Plus, hey, I'm living in Canada right now too. And let me tell you, during the winter months, even an extra 5 degrees isn't really going to make a difference. On the other hand, the wishy-washy ups and downs of temperature tend to mean there is less and less snow each winter, as the likelihood of a single day which happens to be warm enough to melt it goes up. The average isn't much changed, so the cold still sucks about as much overall, but there isn't much snow to play around with. (Hell, even hot tubs just aren't the same when there isn't snow on the ground). All cold and no fun! You see the problem here?
It was much more a general feeling of resentment over the dominion of Great Britain over the colonies, and the people in what was to become the United States of America growing dissatisfied with (and alienated from) the powers in charge of them. The revolution was fought not in the name of religious freedom per se; in fact, as far as religion goes, the Declaration of Independence is fairly Christian in undertones and then otherwise very inspecific about matters of religion: "all men are...endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and etc. It goes on to list grievances against the king to justify the revolution, and not one of them is anything at all to the tune of "and he's messing with our choices of religion!"
Furthermore, the whole idea of "religious freedom" isn't as simple as it seems at first glance. Yes, people did come to North America to escape persecution and to have the freedom to excercise their own religious views and practices. But this did not constitute freedom pure and simple. In some cases this inverted itself and became a form of terror and oppression, ex. the witch hunts (a fine western tradition!). Hooray, we have the religious freedom to make decisions based on our religion that affect the lives of people! By ending them, we mean . . .
Now, you could argue "hey, there's limits to religious freedom. You can't let people get away with harming others," but that's exactly the point of the "less free" practices you are maligning. It's a judgement call. Freedom isn't limitless in expansion. One of the reasons that the early United States were so "rah rah freedom!" was because of all the space to live in, you could easily find a place away from others to practice whateverthehell you wanted to do. Your freedom didn't need impinge upon others. However, in tightly woven and close-knit societies, nearly any freedom is going to impinge to one degree or another on other freedoms. We don't have the freedom to drive wherever we want because, well, it takes alot of freedom away when people are dead, and the restrictions of roads and traffic laws and so forth really help cut down on those deaths (though this is a pretty complex issue, let's not get into it too deeply, you can at least see my abstract point).
Often these examples of lack-of-freedom are pragmatic choices. For example, we could let people preach neo-nazi teachings, and only crack down if they start actually being violent . . . but these kinds of teachings will make things uncomfortable at least in certain social interactions, and will lead to unofficial persecution which creates a lack of freedom; more severely, it will probably lead to violence eventually, and it's a decision whether it's more valuable to respect the freedom of people to teach these things or the rights of those that will be harmed later as a slightly indirect result. In places like the States, maybe it leans more towards freedom for the skinheads. In places that have a volitile history of inbred racism, where any tolerance of racist teachings causes a very disproportionate blossoming of intolerance, it is arguably more respectful of freedom in general to cut off some of those freedoms.
I'm going on a bit too long (I wonder if any mods will even bother to read through this far enough to do anything other than skip to the next comment, heh), but I think my point is at least semi-clear. It's all nice to say in theory that we can easily measure where the most freedom is by what is restricted by the government, but pragmatically the actual distribution of freedom doesn't end with just merely what is and what isn't allowed by the officials at the top. So saying that a place restricts people's rights to preach neo-nazi beliefs doesn't so clearly mean that said place is less free than it would be without those restrictions . . . simple theory and complex pragmatic reality clash quite heavily, to the eternal dismay of philosophers looking for neat, tidy and sweeping principles.
While some students chose to share copyrighted files, a lot of others uses I2hub for legitimate and semi-scholarly purposes. I can't tell you how many times I've helped kids with their C++ and Java questions, found good game competitors, and reconnected with old friends.
I actually met some people from my own university on it, heh. By bringing people together, even for an "illegal" purpose (alas, they should have had the server here in Canada, it might still be up then . . . 'course, cross-border action is not exactly unprecedented) it certainly encouraged people, yaknow, meeting eachother. I know several people on my own campus that I wouldn't have met at all, even just online, if it wasn't for it. Certainly makes use of the term "hub".
Oh well. This year it wasn't that good as far as selection went, anyways; since people were allowed to get away with sharing nothing or close to such, the majority of users weren't really contributing (all together now, p2p brethren: damn leechers!). I actually had introduced one of the people I met on i2hub (who messaged me randomly since he was having problems setting up the client and was just looking for help from anyone of the same university, and I just walked over to the other dorm) to the normal version of DC++ (which, for those of you that don't know, was what i2hub used as a client, albeit in a slightly customized way) and he was quick to use other hubs.
And that, I guess, is where we leave off noting about the fate of i2hub. It was really nice for actual communication, since it was a set selection of places that it culled people from, people were forced to specify where in particular they were hailing from, and the hub itself was a single place with many people . . . but it's too easy to shut something like that down. Meanwhile, you rarely (if ever) hear of any other direct-connect hubs being shut down like this (has it even ever happened?). The distributed method, with many many different hubs one can connect to, is much more resilient to attacks by forces like the *AA's.
And then other moderly successful forms of P2P take this to an extreme (the example in mind being bittorrent); the problem is, the most successful against attempts to shut them down are also the most faceless with the least actual human interaction (generally, that is; this is not always true, ex. small bittorrent communities like demonoid). So we have P2P being shut down because it can (and often) is used for illegal activities, and as a result, as the winning strategy to fight back, it crystalizes this! It hones off the edges, becomes little more than the pure extracted essence of that illegal part! So in fighting P2P apps and methods, all that has really been accomplished it the destruction of anything attached to them.
In other words, the MPAA and RIAA are just causing the refinement of Peer-To-Peer. It makes sense, though it's a bit of a tragedy: these faceless organizations and forces are fighting against the interaction of individual people, and the response via evolution is the creation of opposing organizations and forces. At each turn the expense is any humanity in the interactions between people. Now on every side people face inhuman constructs, and their actions are merely diluted and propagated in distorted forms though these constructs.
Err, okay, I'm going to stop ranting now. Sorry 'bout all that, everyone;)
It's not really about free speech here. It's just the chinese goverment protecting it's profits.
Well.. guess that's why the corporations seem to get so well along with these guys.
At this rate, Communist China is going to be one of the most devoutly Capitalist countries in no time. And here I thought the term "Communism" couldn't become more corrupted, being applied for decades (hell, nearly a century now) to corrupt oppresive regimes serving only themselves with no regard for any of the humanistic principles that Marx stood for . . . then we get a corrupt, opressive regime that manages to implement capitalism on top of all that counter-Marxism, and they still spout the hollow propaganda!
Hmm, this is a bit of a late response. Sorry about that, maybe you'll never see this. Anyways, there are quite a few ways in which Kubuntu is weird, other than a few superficial oddities caused by how KDE is a bit disjointed from the underlying distro (not to over-emphasize that: it's pretty well integrated, just not perfectly, but I read recently about commitments by the main Ubuntu people to making Kubuntu a full equal in quality, which is definitely a ringing endorsement and a good sign for future development).
Firstly, the lack of a root access (this of course comes from the original Ubuntu). Everything instead has to be done with sudo or kdesu. Okay, yes, you can still add a root user and then log into root, but then is when things start to get really odd and weird. Once a root exists, alot of the system settings (which all require then typing in a password) will not work, regardless of whether you type in the user's password (which is in theory what one has to do, since it's a sudo) or whether you type in the root. This goes on a bit, but the general point is that the overall behavior of the user and permissions is a bit odd. Actually, much of the stranger behaviour was fixed in the last round of updates, etc, but the point remains that the way that one is expected to work is different from most distros. I mean, the idea of not touching root and running everything from other users? Not necessarily bad practice, but quite different from most Linux distros and thus could be weird for some people.
There are a few other things (like how it automatically uses IPv6 by default when installing, so if you don't use the expert install you don't even know that it's using IPv6 . . . but there was a bug with Kubuntu until recently, or maybe still (I'm not sure if it has been fixed yet or not) that made IPv6 screw up things like incoming packets on port 80, hmm, I wonder what that might create issues with . . . a friend of mine had some issues there, let me tell ya) which are pretty much all trivial but also fall under a kind of strangely consistent quirkyness.
I hate to be repeating myself so much, but: don't get me wrong. I'm quite in love with it. Maybe all the quirks, and the quality time spent ironing them out, are helping the attraction?;)
Personally, I've had quite a few problems with it. However, this isn't to say it's buggy. Actually, most of the problems were entirely my own fault. But the fact of the matter is, Kubuntu is a kindof weird derivation of a kindof weird distro. Not a bad derivation of a bad distro, just an odd one. So, firstly, it takes a bit of getting used to. Secondly, there are some things for which it's a bit more complicated to set up than you'd expect (a friend of mine is having some rather inexplicable problems setting up a website running from a copy of Kubuntu, for example).
That being said, even though I've personally been having some rather strange problems myself, I've stuck with it since overall it's one of the most attractive KDE-based distros out there right now. The Ubuntu base is pretty solid, and alot of the design decisions are kindof cool . . . just, yaknow, odd.
Believe it or not, the gaming business isn't about giving you and your friends fun games to play, it's about making money. That's why it's hard to qualify the XBox as a success. The XBox lost more money than any other console in history. Microsoft has lost billions of dollars on the XBox. Heck, it's still losing money on a quarterly basis as Microsoft readies the 360. If the XBox 360 is as big a financial disaster as the XBox then Microsoft investors are almost certainly going to wonder what they are doing throwing their money down a hole.
Now, I have to slightly disagree with you there. Firstly, was it actually a "disaster"? Is Microsoft in financial troubles because of it? I couldn't claim to have anything near to exact figures, but I'm nonetheless quite sure that the answer is no, it is not in bad financial shape now because of the X-Box. Just because it didn't make money doesn't make Microsoft instantly broke, and investors know that . . .
Now, I'm usually the first to lambast the system for the encouragement of short-term quarterly gains instead of long-term goals, but I think in this case Microsoft (or, since this is slashdot after all, I should say "M$") has been pretty clear with its goals and the investors are on board with it. The fact that Microsoft is making so much money in every other area is exactly why it needs to go into this area even if it means losing a fraction (perhaps a sizable fraction, even) of that profit; there really isn't much room for growth where it is now. Already with a virtual monopoly, what is "M$" left to do? So what if some money is lost in the short term. It's a sacrifice to get a foothold in an industry that is quite difficult to break through into. But the X-Box is a success because it does show a widespread adoption. It was certainly never intended to make money, it was meant to be successful in the "screw the monetary consideration!.....for now" way. And a foothold in the video-game industry gives the Redmondians a stepping stone for access into the vague but promising directions that digital entertainment is always threatening to soar off into.
The company has grown, and growth is nearly synonymous with success. The profit part can come later. If Microsoft had less of a seriously impressive disposable income, then it would be another story, but the company has the luxury of such (relatively) grand planning.
Naturally, if anyone has facts to back up my arguement (or alternatively, to dismantle it) please do elaborate!
I, too, have recently gotten my first Slashdot "Freak". We should totally form a 1-freak club. Admittedly, that might draw attention, and in doing so the likelihood that others will become objectionable and register their distaste will increase, so I suppose it should be a "1+ freak club" or something . . . yada yada. Actually, I think I'm going to go and write my first ever slashdot journal about this.
Heh. Point well taken (and I hadn't known some of those details, so thanks for the interesting info), and actually, maybe this will be a return to the original usage of the term. With all the personal computers being soon based vaguely on the same architecture, the term "PC" might again mean literally personal computer again. As it stands it often gets used as the equivalent of the Apple-user's derogetory "Wintel" term, which is another blurring of the lines since even under the restricted definition of PC, it could mean someone running something like Linux on a AMD system; no Windows or Intel need be involved.
Ironic that moving away from the PowerPC architecture might bring Apple computers back under the PC umbrella term, yaknow?
But equally importantly, buying things on dvd requires me to either physically travel to a store just to do so, or to order it and wait days or weeks for it to be delivered....I then have to putz around with physical discs....So I have to dig out the box of dvds, open up the ginormous packaging, pull out the booklet in the back, and look through it to figure out which disc that's on, then put that in, and remember to take it out and put it away later....
All very true. However, the same reasons are why I simply downloaded all of Buffy . . . and proper dvd-rips result in far better quality than the ones that iTMS offers, and then I have all the extras and commentary tracks . . . but you're right, DVDs are inconvenient. Which is why I still have DVD rips of the shows I actually own on DVD (whether I downloaded them before, or made them myself afterwards).
I'll add some things to the list of inconveniences of DVDs: load times and random pauses/silences when I'd rather things just be playing already (once you go through the motions of popping in the DVD, you have to wait while the menu loads, then go to the episode in question, then click "play" or etc depending exactly on the DVD), and stuff like having to start an episode/movie over again most of the time if you want to switch to the commentary track.
But there you have it: some sort of completely on-computer (should I just say PC? Apple'll be Intel soon anyways, will we get to simplify things then?) version works better for accessing than the rather clumsy setup of DVDs, but with the iTMS versions you don't get all the extras and you don't get the quality. Personally, since it's usually all the extras on the DVDs that push me over the edge into buying them (I've usually seen the TV show or movie before already), I would never bother buying the costs-as-much-or-more-but-is-stripped-down iTMS versions, but at the same time I would probably buy many more DVDs if it was less of a pain to rip them to my computer for easy access (it's a price one has to pay to be able to do something like, say, queue up a slew of episodes at once, but still, it's annoying that companies are so gung-ho on restricting what legitimate customers can do with their purchases... yeah, I understand the fear of piracy, but it doesn't hamper pirates much at all, there's always someone out there willing to take the time and effort to copy them (and no protections have worked forever yet, nor ever really will) and then they just spread everywhere from there to anyone feeling like downloading them, the customer is inconvenienced far out of proportion with any actual piracy-prevention).
Don't get me wrong, there are certainly some big advantages (as you note, good parent, you can get the shows the day after it airs, and can download them quickly without ever leaving home), but in the name of convenience it does leave some things behind, some of the things that are big selling points for DVDs (extras, quality, etc).
I won't bother going into any "actually having packaging" arguments, since that's all personal preference (and I don't always buy into it anyways), but it IS nice having copies that aren't on your computer already, I should point out . . . even with 600GBs, I certainly don't have unlimited space here on my computer, and it's nice to be able to just store away high-quality copies somewhere else if you're not going to be watching it for awhile or something.
So I guess my arguments can be summed up with the following: iTMS vids miss out on some things, DVDs are inconvenient, it would be better if there was legal ways to download something more akin to scene retail rips and/or copy legitimately owned DVDs without the disks acting as if you're a criminal every step of the way. But towards getting to this (probably somewhat naive, definitely idealistic) state of media, yeah, I'll give you that iTMS videos are a good step in the right direction. They're just not for me, at least not yet.
If only to get parent modded up, yaknow, 'cause parent, you really should be, but I suppose many people might just go "bah, no link? That's no use" and just walk away, but a quick google search confirms that this little script rather directly takes on the problem CmdrTaco was noting with people not knowing who one is . . . so, here's the script for prefixing comments in WoW so people know what character you're an alt of; technically not the situation here, but obviously the solution would work exactly the same.
In other words, mod parent up. I mean, he may be wrong about Curse Gaming being down, but anyone reading parent and feeling like getting the mod will find it pretty much immediately through all-knowing (oh, if only that were true, one wouldn't even have to type the search parameters!) google, so again I reiterate, mod parent up!
The only downside is that you don't get those trendy earbuds and...
Oh god, those earbuds. I cannot explain how much I loathe them. What is it that people find so aesthetic about them? Personally, I've taken to wearing the earbuds that came with my Samsung YP-MTetc-etc instead of my normal headphones just so that the blackness and more, shall we say, professional looking design of them can contrast with all the oddly cheap-looking white ones everyone else has attatched to their iPods.
At least the newer stuff since the minis have been partially-coloured (they still look like someone just put a plastic plate of colored plastic overtop of a fundamentally white iPod, though the nanos finally overcome that). Before, with the all-pure-white ones, it really showed off the mass-production monopoly thing. It felt like early Ford Motors inverted; I can just imagine Steve Jobs saying "They can have any color, as long as it's white."
guys deep down don't want the smart witty girl - unless she also happens to be totally hot.
Well, maybe that's true. But that doesn't make everything else bullshit; there are a lot of girls that could be considered "hot"; the subset that is equally outstandingly smart and witty is much smaller. Actually, I've personally found that the two categories do seem to often coincide (as in, the smartest and wittiest ones are also the most attractive), and I think it's the non-physical factors casting an extra flattering light on the already formidible physical ones.
(and hell, there are ugly, poor, uncharismatic people with spouses, so there's gotta be something else at work sometimes, whatever it is).
"Why do we keep thinking that Gaim's so '1999-2000' tools are good enough?"
Thus, gaim-vv is a counter example; as in, no, people don't think it's enough, they're working on improving things--which is a very different picture than the one that the article paints.
Actually, I became rather enamoured with gaim after I was running Knoppix for a month (long story), and it was one of my bigger incentives to actually get around to installing a distro of Linux. Unfortunately, I seem to have mucked up something and I keep getting problems with su and sudo, the kinds that make it pretty hard to actually install the gtk+ libraries that one needs to get gaim to actually compile . . . I suppose it wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't gone with Kubuntu 5.10 preview, indeed just going with pure Ubuntu probably would have been far smoother (there were various other problems), but I feel reluctant to give up KDE! Maybe I should just repent and embrace gnome.
Whatever, point is that I can certainly nod my head to problems with gaim, though mine were with installing instead of upgrading, but just consider that an addition to the same body of objections. On the other hand, though yeah there are some things that gaim can't do, I would firstly second parent's example of how gaim can actually be much simpler for the common user (the example of the parents--hmm, conflict of terms here), and honestly, don't anyone try to argue that simplicity doesn't affect the average young user as well. One of the reasons so many younger people use MSN is 'cause, hell, they don't even have to install it at first for the most part, and then it beats them over the head with links to download updates and everything. The "tech-savvy" generation isn't actually that tech-savvy, they're just really used to memorizing instructions without understanding them, so they figure out how these IM clients work in very linear fashions.
And TFA. Sheesh. In my experience gaim worked great with pictures, and surprisingly flawlessly with file transfers (which trumps Trillian, which seems to be off-and-on depending on the update and the specific protocol). And why complain about this lack of "modern tools" keeping gaim in "1999-2000", when things like gaim-vv being merged with the main gaim codebase are happening? TFA sounds like whining to me, and parent is the only one that seems to have good objections to linux IM clients that I've seen today.
Tsk tsk. And then your sig says "Support open source software." But you're sellin' out to the man!
Actually, no, to be serious here: what exactly is it that makes it important for it to be ported to OS X? Is the interface in OS X so important to you, or is it that you're already doing everything in OS X so it'd be a pain to have to start up a second OS for a single app? Or other reasons?
I mainly ask 'cause most of my Mac-using friends often make the biggest argument for their cult;) by pointing out all the cool apps for the OS (perhaps normally the argument made is over interface, but my own personal preferences lead me to despise the setup on Macs; nothing I don't claim is merely my own aethetics, but it's useful since it seems to counteract most of whatever they keep putting in my Kool-Aid!). So with this potential app as a Linux one, where does that stand as to desire for having it on OS X? (err, please don't misread my tone, people, I may not be Steve Jobs' #1 fan but neither am I meaning any of this at all as apple-bashing or anything of the sort, it just brings up an opportunity for explanation, and I figure on slashdot there's gonna be at least SOMEONE who'll give a good in-depth explanation as to why people would be so happy for this to be ported).
After all, any port is going to be at least a semi-step behind the development of the purebred Open Source original, so why the hassle? (I can think of some reasons, but I'll leave the question dangling anyways)
Slashdot Mirror
Your comments sound too optimistic to be taken seriously. Really, really wishing something to be true doesn't make it so.
Perhaps more importantly, I notice certain trends in Apple that, though not that bad now, could be pretty terrible if they end up in a winning position (their tendency to lock out any DAPs other than their own iPods, for instance). Honestly, if they end up beating out Microsoft, that will not usher in a brand new utopian Heaven-on-Earth. It will not be Kingdom Come. If they replace Microsoft, all that will mean is that they'll become the new Microsoft. Even accepting the terribly optimistic view that this prophesied "OS-X for all x86" will simply sweep Windows away, well, you can mark me down on the list of enemies right now in advance if you're so sure, 'cause I'll be a part of the resistance.
Fuckit, I'm tempted to make that my sig, as much as I (a) don't want a sig, and (b) know that it's liable to get every single post of mine from now on modded "flamebait"!
Not extinction and re-evolution, but swings in population levels can be quite severe even in 'undisturbed' nature.
Like another poster mentioned, unless this gets much, much worse natural selection will simply start choosing bears better at swimming, or that find an alternate method for moving.
Interesting thing about evolution: it's not a perfect upwards slope. Indeed, in many ways biodiversity has been on a downwards slope for long before humans came onto the scene. Furthermore, consider that introducing a new way for animals to die doesn't happen in a vacuum; this is one of many examples of shrinking habitats and increasingly hostile situations that animals in the world (including humans, but we're good at changing our immediate environment to offset the overall environment) are finding themselves in.
To go back to what I was nudging towards initially, though: 'natural selection' is not another name for 'all-powerful god', that is to say, just because a new method is needed doesn't mean that this 'natural selection' thing will magically provide it; natural selection is just trimming combined with chaos, there are severe limits to what it can do, and I can't think of many methods that the bears could use other than swimming (I do realize that you said "unless this gets much, much worse", but really, there aren't that many alternate methods of moving, it's not like they'll suddenly develop wings). And anyways, I would think that after so much time, Polar Bears as a species would be pretty damn good at swimming. I doubt it's merely the few weaker ones that are drowning. The article notes that ALL the bears are being forced to swim further from the shore, and some of the deaths noted were from storms that arose; so whether they're good swimmers or not isn't even going to make that much of a difference, it's an extra bonus to the death rate period.
Hmm, in some ways I'm sortof making a straw man out of your argument. But really now, just think about it for a moment. As you mentioned, population levels can swing quite dramatically in rather 'natural' situations, yes. Now say that one of those swings happens for some random reason, combined with the problems noted in the article. It's not that hard to imagine entire populations of polar bears dipping dangerously low. The article mentions increases in the rate of cannibalism due to the lack of food sources, so for many populations there may be a tipping point that would create a downward spiral. Consider also that this is just one of many examples of the effect of humans on the environment that hurts wild populations, so I might agree with you if this was all that was going on in the world (ie. if the only thing that polar bears had to deal with was having to swim further), but it's the combination of many harmful factors that puts species at risk.
Plus, just from an empathic perspective, I'm not exactly going "hurrah! animals are dieing!". I'd rather they, umm, not die when they shouldn't be.
...but it's why I'm still on SP1 myself. Everything I have on my machine (including some graphics-intensive Win95/98 era stuff) runs beautifully. Many, many of the things I use often (like the old UnrealEd for Unreal1, UT99, and Deus Ex) refuse to work on any of the computers my friends have. On the other hand, Freespace always seems to work, but admittedly, that's due to a weird thing with the way-too-damn-many fonts installed on my machine. Also, doesn't SP2 refuse to allow more than 10 outgoing connection attempts at a time? I know Azureus mentions such in the settings.
Also, more seriously, XP SP2 broke the ability of my parents' virus scanner to keep an active monitor running. Which in turn quickly led to the near-total destruction of the computer before I came home for the holidays last year and fixed it (it arose again like a Phoenix, though key things in Windows are still missing . . . nothing important, actually, mainly stuff that was annoying and unable to be removed with any ease before, so in a way that's kindof a plus!)
Alot more stuff is broken, I just don't recall quite what. Hmm, maybe a quick google search will clarify:
Microsoft's own list of broken apps
Also,
SP2 removes the ability of users to send raw TCP segments
It also breaks Captive-NTFS
It can break the Group Policy Object Editor
And as mentioned above, it limits TCP to 10 outgoing attempts (link also includes methods of disabling this; more detailed information on the issue can be found here.
Here's a forum in which people describe a few of the more technical problems and their solutions for SP2
I could go on, but you get the idea. There are some serious drawbacks to SP2. I could go on about how the supposed security features don't exactly impress me (and honestly, all the third-party security programs on my computer have never had to do much, since I run it very securely anyways, and they could handle it even if I didn't), but again, you can probably elaborate on your own.
My point, really, is just that parent is being truthful! Hell, it doesn't even matter if you argue that SP2 doesn't break anything worth fretting about, the perception, with enough evidence to hold sway, still exists, so it's still a huge reason for lack of adoption. Maybe parent is flamebait as well, but sometimes truth == flamebait!
I can't seem to find where the post you're making fun of even mentions Apple Dashboard.
I see it just fine. Thing is, the post being replied to has been moderated "troll", and I assume then that that's why you don't see it.
Remember boys and girls, for the full slashdot experience, browse at -1!
One thing I've never really gotten.
Though Firefox and other browser supporters (of which I am one) would like to push that the way to solve this is to switch, a lot of larger companies aren't at the point where they're ready to do so.
You make it sound as if it's a major systems overhaul that has to be done, with methods and practices being restructured and files reformatted and babble babble babble. We're not talking changing Word Processors here, where you might have a sudden incompatability between the reports and records and etc. In theory a browser switch should be pretty damn transparent.
I repeat, it's not like you're using IE to create any files, it's just a passive browsing system with which to interact with online information and objects . . . unless your company has some sort of foolish web-app they use internally that is based heavily on something quirkily Microsoft-made like ActiveX, then I'd think using a browser that complies better with, yaknow, the standards (among all the other issues, like security) would be an easy simple change with non-trivial benefits.
Sorry, I must be bordering a bit on sardonic. I really don't mean to be, I'm curious. Incredulous, yes, but not mockingly. I just can't quite fathom it, what the hell is the big apocalyptic deal?
Soviet Russia
"Season mention" comments you
In Winter: Profit
Oh come now, it isn't the media's fault. They were simply misled by (insert Democrats or Republicans depending on your politics).
Hey, Democrats and Republicans aren't your only options. It could, for example, be the fault of the Tories, or the Reform Party, Zionist Conspiracy, or People Being Cruel To Animals, or Microsoft, or Satan, or The Capitalists. Actually, okay, that last one isn't all that unfounded. Personally though, I'm going to go for the classic "ironic twist" version and blame Nader somehow.
All this said though, I live in Canada and I would welcome an extra 5C from October through May.
Thing is, it's not a pure temperature increase. It's just an average. The influx of energy into the system will (and this is the more troublesome aspect of global warming) make it far more volatile. More swings of weather, more extremes. Compared to the problems of the schizophrenic weather, the extra 5 degrees celsius won't seem like such a good deal. This is also why even a few degrees increase has some major drastically bad effects, while people wouldn't exactly be going around saying "Gee! The average 2 degree increase is pretty nice, isn't it?". This average temperature increase will, for everyday means, be somewhat below the radar, it's only the effects (ice caps melting, increase in likelihood and severity of storms, etc) that are so noticable.
Plus, hey, I'm living in Canada right now too. And let me tell you, during the winter months, even an extra 5 degrees isn't really going to make a difference. On the other hand, the wishy-washy ups and downs of temperature tend to mean there is less and less snow each winter, as the likelihood of a single day which happens to be warm enough to melt it goes up. The average isn't much changed, so the cold still sucks about as much overall, but there isn't much snow to play around with. (Hell, even hot tubs just aren't the same when there isn't snow on the ground). All cold and no fun! You see the problem here?
It was much more a general feeling of resentment over the dominion of Great Britain over the colonies, and the people in what was to become the United States of America growing dissatisfied with (and alienated from) the powers in charge of them. The revolution was fought not in the name of religious freedom per se; in fact, as far as religion goes, the Declaration of Independence is fairly Christian in undertones and then otherwise very inspecific about matters of religion: "all men are...endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights...among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and etc. It goes on to list grievances against the king to justify the revolution, and not one of them is anything at all to the tune of "and he's messing with our choices of religion!"
Furthermore, the whole idea of "religious freedom" isn't as simple as it seems at first glance. Yes, people did come to North America to escape persecution and to have the freedom to excercise their own religious views and practices. But this did not constitute freedom pure and simple. In some cases this inverted itself and became a form of terror and oppression, ex. the witch hunts (a fine western tradition!). Hooray, we have the religious freedom to make decisions based on our religion that affect the lives of people! By ending them, we mean . . .
Now, you could argue "hey, there's limits to religious freedom. You can't let people get away with harming others," but that's exactly the point of the "less free" practices you are maligning. It's a judgement call. Freedom isn't limitless in expansion. One of the reasons that the early United States were so "rah rah freedom!" was because of all the space to live in, you could easily find a place away from others to practice whateverthehell you wanted to do. Your freedom didn't need impinge upon others. However, in tightly woven and close-knit societies, nearly any freedom is going to impinge to one degree or another on other freedoms. We don't have the freedom to drive wherever we want because, well, it takes alot of freedom away when people are dead, and the restrictions of roads and traffic laws and so forth really help cut down on those deaths (though this is a pretty complex issue, let's not get into it too deeply, you can at least see my abstract point).
Often these examples of lack-of-freedom are pragmatic choices. For example, we could let people preach neo-nazi teachings, and only crack down if they start actually being violent . . . but these kinds of teachings will make things uncomfortable at least in certain social interactions, and will lead to unofficial persecution which creates a lack of freedom; more severely, it will probably lead to violence eventually, and it's a decision whether it's more valuable to respect the freedom of people to teach these things or the rights of those that will be harmed later as a slightly indirect result. In places like the States, maybe it leans more towards freedom for the skinheads. In places that have a volitile history of inbred racism, where any tolerance of racist teachings causes a very disproportionate blossoming of intolerance, it is arguably more respectful of freedom in general to cut off some of those freedoms.
I'm going on a bit too long (I wonder if any mods will even bother to read through this far enough to do anything other than skip to the next comment, heh), but I think my point is at least semi-clear. It's all nice to say in theory that we can easily measure where the most freedom is by what is restricted by the government, but pragmatically the actual distribution of freedom doesn't end with just merely what is and what isn't allowed by the officials at the top. So saying that a place restricts people's rights to preach neo-nazi beliefs doesn't so clearly mean that said place is less free than it would be without those restrictions . . . simple theory and complex pragmatic reality clash quite heavily, to the eternal dismay of philosophers looking for neat, tidy and sweeping principles.
Hate speech certainly does not seem to impede a free and democratic society...
Err, I hate to go all Godwin on this discussion, but the words "Weimar Republic" spring to mind . . .
While some students chose to share copyrighted files, a lot of others uses I2hub for legitimate and semi-scholarly purposes. I can't tell you how many times I've helped kids with their C++ and Java questions, found good game competitors, and reconnected with old friends.
;)
I actually met some people from my own university on it, heh. By bringing people together, even for an "illegal" purpose (alas, they should have had the server here in Canada, it might still be up then . . . 'course, cross-border action is not exactly unprecedented) it certainly encouraged people, yaknow, meeting eachother. I know several people on my own campus that I wouldn't have met at all, even just online, if it wasn't for it. Certainly makes use of the term "hub".
Oh well. This year it wasn't that good as far as selection went, anyways; since people were allowed to get away with sharing nothing or close to such, the majority of users weren't really contributing (all together now, p2p brethren: damn leechers!). I actually had introduced one of the people I met on i2hub (who messaged me randomly since he was having problems setting up the client and was just looking for help from anyone of the same university, and I just walked over to the other dorm) to the normal version of DC++ (which, for those of you that don't know, was what i2hub used as a client, albeit in a slightly customized way) and he was quick to use other hubs.
And that, I guess, is where we leave off noting about the fate of i2hub. It was really nice for actual communication, since it was a set selection of places that it culled people from, people were forced to specify where in particular they were hailing from, and the hub itself was a single place with many people . . . but it's too easy to shut something like that down. Meanwhile, you rarely (if ever) hear of any other direct-connect hubs being shut down like this (has it even ever happened?). The distributed method, with many many different hubs one can connect to, is much more resilient to attacks by forces like the *AA's.
And then other moderly successful forms of P2P take this to an extreme (the example in mind being bittorrent); the problem is, the most successful against attempts to shut them down are also the most faceless with the least actual human interaction (generally, that is; this is not always true, ex. small bittorrent communities like demonoid). So we have P2P being shut down because it can (and often) is used for illegal activities, and as a result, as the winning strategy to fight back, it crystalizes this! It hones off the edges, becomes little more than the pure extracted essence of that illegal part! So in fighting P2P apps and methods, all that has really been accomplished it the destruction of anything attached to them.
In other words, the MPAA and RIAA are just causing the refinement of Peer-To-Peer. It makes sense, though it's a bit of a tragedy: these faceless organizations and forces are fighting against the interaction of individual people, and the response via evolution is the creation of opposing organizations and forces. At each turn the expense is any humanity in the interactions between people. Now on every side people face inhuman constructs, and their actions are merely diluted and propagated in distorted forms though these constructs.
Err, okay, I'm going to stop ranting now. Sorry 'bout all that, everyone
It's not really about free speech here. It's just the chinese goverment protecting it's profits.
Well.. guess that's why the corporations seem to get so well along with these guys.
At this rate, Communist China is going to be one of the most devoutly Capitalist countries in no time. And here I thought the term "Communism" couldn't become more corrupted, being applied for decades (hell, nearly a century now) to corrupt oppresive regimes serving only themselves with no regard for any of the humanistic principles that Marx stood for . . . then we get a corrupt, opressive regime that manages to implement capitalism on top of all that counter-Marxism, and they still spout the hollow propaganda!
Wow. What a two-faced world we live in . . .
Hmm, this is a bit of a late response. Sorry about that, maybe you'll never see this. Anyways, there are quite a few ways in which Kubuntu is weird, other than a few superficial oddities caused by how KDE is a bit disjointed from the underlying distro (not to over-emphasize that: it's pretty well integrated, just not perfectly, but I read recently about commitments by the main Ubuntu people to making Kubuntu a full equal in quality, which is definitely a ringing endorsement and a good sign for future development).
;)
Firstly, the lack of a root access (this of course comes from the original Ubuntu). Everything instead has to be done with sudo or kdesu. Okay, yes, you can still add a root user and then log into root, but then is when things start to get really odd and weird. Once a root exists, alot of the system settings (which all require then typing in a password) will not work, regardless of whether you type in the user's password (which is in theory what one has to do, since it's a sudo) or whether you type in the root. This goes on a bit, but the general point is that the overall behavior of the user and permissions is a bit odd. Actually, much of the stranger behaviour was fixed in the last round of updates, etc, but the point remains that the way that one is expected to work is different from most distros. I mean, the idea of not touching root and running everything from other users? Not necessarily bad practice, but quite different from most Linux distros and thus could be weird for some people.
There are a few other things (like how it automatically uses IPv6 by default when installing, so if you don't use the expert install you don't even know that it's using IPv6 . . . but there was a bug with Kubuntu until recently, or maybe still (I'm not sure if it has been fixed yet or not) that made IPv6 screw up things like incoming packets on port 80, hmm, I wonder what that might create issues with . . . a friend of mine had some issues there, let me tell ya) which are pretty much all trivial but also fall under a kind of strangely consistent quirkyness.
I hate to be repeating myself so much, but: don't get me wrong. I'm quite in love with it. Maybe all the quirks, and the quality time spent ironing them out, are helping the attraction?
Personally, I've had quite a few problems with it. However, this isn't to say it's buggy. Actually, most of the problems were entirely my own fault. But the fact of the matter is, Kubuntu is a kindof weird derivation of a kindof weird distro. Not a bad derivation of a bad distro, just an odd one. So, firstly, it takes a bit of getting used to. Secondly, there are some things for which it's a bit more complicated to set up than you'd expect (a friend of mine is having some rather inexplicable problems setting up a website running from a copy of Kubuntu, for example).
That being said, even though I've personally been having some rather strange problems myself, I've stuck with it since overall it's one of the most attractive KDE-based distros out there right now. The Ubuntu base is pretty solid, and alot of the design decisions are kindof cool . . . just, yaknow, odd.
Believe it or not, the gaming business isn't about giving you and your friends fun games to play, it's about making money. That's why it's hard to qualify the XBox as a success. The XBox lost more money than any other console in history. Microsoft has lost billions of dollars on the XBox. Heck, it's still losing money on a quarterly basis as Microsoft readies the 360. If the XBox 360 is as big a financial disaster as the XBox then Microsoft investors are almost certainly going to wonder what they are doing throwing their money down a hole.
Now, I have to slightly disagree with you there. Firstly, was it actually a "disaster"? Is Microsoft in financial troubles because of it? I couldn't claim to have anything near to exact figures, but I'm nonetheless quite sure that the answer is no, it is not in bad financial shape now because of the X-Box. Just because it didn't make money doesn't make Microsoft instantly broke, and investors know that . . .
Now, I'm usually the first to lambast the system for the encouragement of short-term quarterly gains instead of long-term goals, but I think in this case Microsoft (or, since this is slashdot after all, I should say "M$") has been pretty clear with its goals and the investors are on board with it. The fact that Microsoft is making so much money in every other area is exactly why it needs to go into this area even if it means losing a fraction (perhaps a sizable fraction, even) of that profit; there really isn't much room for growth where it is now. Already with a virtual monopoly, what is "M$" left to do? So what if some money is lost in the short term. It's a sacrifice to get a foothold in an industry that is quite difficult to break through into. But the X-Box is a success because it does show a widespread adoption. It was certainly never intended to make money, it was meant to be successful in the "screw the monetary consideration!.....for now" way. And a foothold in the video-game industry gives the Redmondians a stepping stone for access into the vague but promising directions that digital entertainment is always threatening to soar off into.
The company has grown, and growth is nearly synonymous with success. The profit part can come later. If Microsoft had less of a seriously impressive disposable income, then it would be another story, but the company has the luxury of such (relatively) grand planning.
Naturally, if anyone has facts to back up my arguement (or alternatively, to dismantle it) please do elaborate!
I, too, have recently gotten my first Slashdot "Freak". We should totally form a 1-freak club. Admittedly, that might draw attention, and in doing so the likelihood that others will become objectionable and register their distaste will increase, so I suppose it should be a "1+ freak club" or something . . . yada yada. Actually, I think I'm going to go and write my first ever slashdot journal about this.
Heh. Point well taken (and I hadn't known some of those details, so thanks for the interesting info), and actually, maybe this will be a return to the original usage of the term. With all the personal computers being soon based vaguely on the same architecture, the term "PC" might again mean literally personal computer again. As it stands it often gets used as the equivalent of the Apple-user's derogetory "Wintel" term, which is another blurring of the lines since even under the restricted definition of PC, it could mean someone running something like Linux on a AMD system; no Windows or Intel need be involved.
Ironic that moving away from the PowerPC architecture might bring Apple computers back under the PC umbrella term, yaknow?
But equally importantly, buying things on dvd requires me to either physically travel to a store just to do so, or to order it and wait days or weeks for it to be delivered....I then have to putz around with physical discs....So I have to dig out the box of dvds, open up the ginormous packaging, pull out the booklet in the back, and look through it to figure out which disc that's on, then put that in, and remember to take it out and put it away later....
All very true. However, the same reasons are why I simply downloaded all of Buffy . . . and proper dvd-rips result in far better quality than the ones that iTMS offers, and then I have all the extras and commentary tracks . . . but you're right, DVDs are inconvenient. Which is why I still have DVD rips of the shows I actually own on DVD (whether I downloaded them before, or made them myself afterwards).
I'll add some things to the list of inconveniences of DVDs: load times and random pauses/silences when I'd rather things just be playing already (once you go through the motions of popping in the DVD, you have to wait while the menu loads, then go to the episode in question, then click "play" or etc depending exactly on the DVD), and stuff like having to start an episode/movie over again most of the time if you want to switch to the commentary track.
But there you have it: some sort of completely on-computer (should I just say PC? Apple'll be Intel soon anyways, will we get to simplify things then?) version works better for accessing than the rather clumsy setup of DVDs, but with the iTMS versions you don't get all the extras and you don't get the quality. Personally, since it's usually all the extras on the DVDs that push me over the edge into buying them (I've usually seen the TV show or movie before already), I would never bother buying the costs-as-much-or-more-but-is-stripped-down iTMS versions, but at the same time I would probably buy many more DVDs if it was less of a pain to rip them to my computer for easy access (it's a price one has to pay to be able to do something like, say, queue up a slew of episodes at once, but still, it's annoying that companies are so gung-ho on restricting what legitimate customers can do with their purchases... yeah, I understand the fear of piracy, but it doesn't hamper pirates much at all, there's always someone out there willing to take the time and effort to copy them (and no protections have worked forever yet, nor ever really will) and then they just spread everywhere from there to anyone feeling like downloading them, the customer is inconvenienced far out of proportion with any actual piracy-prevention).
Don't get me wrong, there are certainly some big advantages (as you note, good parent, you can get the shows the day after it airs, and can download them quickly without ever leaving home), but in the name of convenience it does leave some things behind, some of the things that are big selling points for DVDs (extras, quality, etc).
I won't bother going into any "actually having packaging" arguments, since that's all personal preference (and I don't always buy into it anyways), but it IS nice having copies that aren't on your computer already, I should point out . . . even with 600GBs, I certainly don't have unlimited space here on my computer, and it's nice to be able to just store away high-quality copies somewhere else if you're not going to be watching it for awhile or something.
So I guess my arguments can be summed up with the following: iTMS vids miss out on some things, DVDs are inconvenient, it would be better if there was legal ways to download something more akin to scene retail rips and/or copy legitimately owned DVDs without the disks acting as if you're a criminal every step of the way. But towards getting to this (probably somewhat naive, definitely idealistic) state of media, yeah, I'll give you that iTMS videos are a good step in the right direction. They're just not for me, at least not yet.
If only to get parent modded up, yaknow, 'cause parent, you really should be, but I suppose many people might just go "bah, no link? That's no use" and just walk away, but a quick google search confirms that this little script rather directly takes on the problem CmdrTaco was noting with people not knowing who one is . . . so, here's the script for prefixing comments in WoW so people know what character you're an alt of; technically not the situation here, but obviously the solution would work exactly the same.
In other words, mod parent up. I mean, he may be wrong about Curse Gaming being down, but anyone reading parent and feeling like getting the mod will find it pretty much immediately through all-knowing (oh, if only that were true, one wouldn't even have to type the search parameters!) google, so again I reiterate, mod parent up!
The only downside is that you don't get those trendy earbuds and...
Oh god, those earbuds. I cannot explain how much I loathe them. What is it that people find so aesthetic about them? Personally, I've taken to wearing the earbuds that came with my Samsung YP-MTetc-etc instead of my normal headphones just so that the blackness and more, shall we say, professional looking design of them can contrast with all the oddly cheap-looking white ones everyone else has attatched to their iPods.
At least the newer stuff since the minis have been partially-coloured (they still look like someone just put a plastic plate of colored plastic overtop of a fundamentally white iPod, though the nanos finally overcome that). Before, with the all-pure-white ones, it really showed off the mass-production monopoly thing. It felt like early Ford Motors inverted; I can just imagine Steve Jobs saying "They can have any color, as long as it's white."
I mean, hey, lets look at the great track record for say....countries on the committees for things like "Human Rights"
you are aware that one of those countries is the united states, right?
Maybe that's part of his point?
guys deep down don't want the smart witty girl - unless she also happens to be totally hot.
Well, maybe that's true. But that doesn't make everything else bullshit; there are a lot of girls that could be considered "hot"; the subset that is equally outstandingly smart and witty is much smaller. Actually, I've personally found that the two categories do seem to often coincide (as in, the smartest and wittiest ones are also the most attractive), and I think it's the non-physical factors casting an extra flattering light on the already formidible physical ones.
(and hell, there are ugly, poor, uncharismatic people with spouses, so there's gotta be something else at work sometimes, whatever it is).
My point depends on TFA, alas. So to quote it:
"Why do we keep thinking that Gaim's so '1999-2000' tools are good enough?"
Thus, gaim-vv is a counter example; as in, no, people don't think it's enough, they're working on improving things--which is a very different picture than the one that the article paints.
Actually, I became rather enamoured with gaim after I was running Knoppix for a month (long story), and it was one of my bigger incentives to actually get around to installing a distro of Linux. Unfortunately, I seem to have mucked up something and I keep getting problems with su and sudo, the kinds that make it pretty hard to actually install the gtk+ libraries that one needs to get gaim to actually compile . . . I suppose it wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't gone with Kubuntu 5.10 preview, indeed just going with pure Ubuntu probably would have been far smoother (there were various other problems), but I feel reluctant to give up KDE! Maybe I should just repent and embrace gnome.
Whatever, point is that I can certainly nod my head to problems with gaim, though mine were with installing instead of upgrading, but just consider that an addition to the same body of objections. On the other hand, though yeah there are some things that gaim can't do, I would firstly second parent's example of how gaim can actually be much simpler for the common user (the example of the parents--hmm, conflict of terms here), and honestly, don't anyone try to argue that simplicity doesn't affect the average young user as well. One of the reasons so many younger people use MSN is 'cause, hell, they don't even have to install it at first for the most part, and then it beats them over the head with links to download updates and everything. The "tech-savvy" generation isn't actually that tech-savvy, they're just really used to memorizing instructions without understanding them, so they figure out how these IM clients work in very linear fashions.
And TFA. Sheesh. In my experience gaim worked great with pictures, and surprisingly flawlessly with file transfers (which trumps Trillian, which seems to be off-and-on depending on the update and the specific protocol). And why complain about this lack of "modern tools" keeping gaim in "1999-2000", when things like gaim-vv being merged with the main gaim codebase are happening? TFA sounds like whining to me, and parent is the only one that seems to have good objections to linux IM clients that I've seen today.
I hope someone manages to port it onto OS X too.
;) by pointing out all the cool apps for the OS (perhaps normally the argument made is over interface, but my own personal preferences lead me to despise the setup on Macs; nothing I don't claim is merely my own aethetics, but it's useful since it seems to counteract most of whatever they keep putting in my Kool-Aid!). So with this potential app as a Linux one, where does that stand as to desire for having it on OS X? (err, please don't misread my tone, people, I may not be Steve Jobs' #1 fan but neither am I meaning any of this at all as apple-bashing or anything of the sort, it just brings up an opportunity for explanation, and I figure on slashdot there's gonna be at least SOMEONE who'll give a good in-depth explanation as to why people would be so happy for this to be ported).
Tsk tsk. And then your sig says "Support open source software." But you're sellin' out to the man!
Actually, no, to be serious here: what exactly is it that makes it important for it to be ported to OS X? Is the interface in OS X so important to you, or is it that you're already doing everything in OS X so it'd be a pain to have to start up a second OS for a single app? Or other reasons?
I mainly ask 'cause most of my Mac-using friends often make the biggest argument for their cult
After all, any port is going to be at least a semi-step behind the development of the purebred Open Source original, so why the hassle? (I can think of some reasons, but I'll leave the question dangling anyways)