Americans (and I speak this with citizenship and with no regret as to holding that citizenship) would rather the problems be glossed over with their nation, thus it's great to criticize the UN and other powers and nations when they do things that are wrong or just plain morally reprehensible, but America? Doing something wrong? You leftist, freedom hating bastard!
Actually, living in Canada right now, it's kindof the same issue as far as America-bashing goes; people go "god-damned Americans, screwing up the world and not taking any responsibility, and why the fuck are they so dumb as to elect that fascist blah blah blah blah", Canadians basically define themselves by the fact that they're not Americans, and the general lack of achievements in recent years are glossed over by a constant tirade against all the things that the States does wrong, and everything percieved to be wrong with americans.
When it comes down to it, people just can't bring themselves to believe that the place they live isn't the best; it's hard to justify not doing anything about it otherwise (fixing it, moving, anything, people would rather just live their lives lazily and pretend that they're living it as best as they can). Hence Americans bashing the UN, hence Canadians bashing Americans, hence people bashing other things and people in general.
(As a further note, I actually have Canadian citizenship as well, I've had both since birth . . . it gives me an odd measure of both affinity to both, and a lack of commitment to either; it has upsides and downsides . . . I write this for the benefit of anyone flaming me, so that they can flame with their facts straight;).
China isn't quite so communist anymore (well, of course, they were never really "communist" just non-capitalist and authoritarian, but that's pretty much been what passes for communism in the actual world). They've been moving bits and pieces towards a free-ish market (ie. free but still can be subject to every whim of the government if they felt like it) for quite some time now, and of course Hong Kong, where this occurred, only returned to Chinese hands recently in history (1997), so we have the legacy of British corporate freedoms to blame for this kind of incident for the most part . . . but what they hell, easier to blame China.
Actually, come to think of it, China gets the best of both worlds. Since the government is all-powerful but lets corporations operate, people get to be oppressed by the Dictatorship Of The We're-Proletariat-We-Swear, AND by the Corporate Pig Dog Capitalists! So when people ask for freedoms they can be persecuted as bourgeois swine, and when they steal movies they can be likewise persecuted for being dirty communists. Brilliant!
We created the khtml-cvs list for Apple, they got CVS accounts for KDE CVS. What did we get? We get periodical code bombs in the form of them releasing WebCore. Many of us wanted to even sign NDA's with Apple to at least get access to the history of their internal vcs and be able to be merging the changes incrementally, the way they can right now. Nothing came out of it. They do the very, very minimum required by LGPL.
And you know what? That's their right. They made a conscious decision about not working with KDE developers. All I'm asking for is that all the clueless people stop talking about the cooperation between Safari/Konqueror developers and how great it is. There's absolutely nothing great about it. In fact "it" doesn't exist. Maybe for Apple - at the very least for their marketing people. Clear?
Don't believe everything Steve Jobs tells you, so to speak.
Indeed, the upgrade to SP2 broke the anti-virus program that my parents' computer was using. The story does not end well . . . I'm still somewhat pissed at Microsoft for breaking something so vital.
THX-1138 was an admirable piece of work. Despite the fact that seemingly few even know of it, it's nonetheless managed to influence the interesting side of popular culture.
I find it interesting that, having watched the original version and then the directors cut when it recently came out, THX-1138 actually benefitted from the modern additions; it helps smooth over the production values (and is a treat to see widescreen), instead of, I dunno, changing details to make characters more kid-friendly and less edgy (*cough*).
Lucas started out with talent and vision; but mainstream audiences wanted none of that. Somewhat bitter, he created a little fantasy movie. Audiences loved it! He had learnt his lesson, and continued along those lines . . . but it would be nice if the old Lucas could safely come out now. It's not like spending lots of money on something that doesn't quite succeed will make all that much of a dent in his absurdly large bank account balance.
it's easier to resist when you'll, oh, get shot for resisting. Really, France surrendering to Germany is something that we criticize them far too much for. If Germany had, say, bordered the States . . . remember that at the time the U.S. didn't even really have a military force to speak of, compared especially to the German Reich's forces. Nearly anyone could have been steamrolled.
Furthermore, while we make a big deal of our sacrifices in WWI, we did it from the safety of distance; soldiers went over, but the threat to North America was never there. Meanwhile, the horror of war was literally in the backyards at best of the countries in Europe. The French especially had a rough time of it, and just in general Europe was pretty much experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome.
The German forces just overwhelmed them; the military might was just too much to bear (and, it would be quite some time before American production and conscription raised enough military force to be able to help even if it had been the popular opinion). No, France, though admittedly acting with much defeatism, was outmatched, outgunned, and outmaneuvered. The strategic reserve, which had saved France in the First World War, was nonexistent. General de Gaulle managed to forestall the fate of Paris for quite some time, but eventually the crushing weight of German reinforcements.
And if we're going to berate France, then berate Britain at the same time; great friends that they are, they hastily pulled their forces out of the continent as France was being overrun (of course, this was strategically the only sane option at the time, but since when did logic and historical accuracy have anything to do with these kinds of accusations?).
The bottom line is that the causes aren't so straightforward as to just be "oh, those French pansies". It seems to me almost as if the current trend of "belittle the French" might stem more from modern annoyance in the States with France's political opposition to current administrative doctrine than any historical accuracy or fairness. This whole meme is quite suspect.
You game on linux. Instead of OS X? Because? OS X has 10 times the number of gaming offerings that linux does. You really sound like a troll, but maybe you are just misguided. Here at work I use a powerbook, as does about half the company. We write software to run on the really expensive special purpose servers we sell. What exactly is it that you do on x86 hardware that you can't do from your mac?
Umm, there are a lot more games for x86 architechture than for Macs. And alot of games that can run on Macs can run just fine on Linux; take UT2004, for example. And . . . umm, you're accusing grandparent of trolling? He said "I have to game on windows or linux." . . . it's quite understandable if the games he wants to play only run on Windows or Linux; you're the one doing troll-like things, like ignoring part of his statement and pretending he was setting up a dichotomy between Linux and OSX, when in reality he was talking about Windows and Linux, which can of course work in concert, installed even on the same computer. You, dear sir, appear to be the misguided one.
Serious question, though I do admit I hate it, I'm willing to put that aside to ask: why? From what I've experienced, other programs such as Eudora can easily do everything Outlook does, often in ways that work far better for the user. Indeed, I have one friend that runs into endless little problems with Outlook on her brand-new Dell. I've even installed Eudora 5.02 on her comp, it works fine and does a few things that she was quite impressed with . . . and yet she still sticks with Outlook.
To put it in one word: WTF?
Can anyone here enlighten me? Where does Outlook dispense the crack cocaine from? What am I missing here?
Not to flame, but #2 is a tad misleading. While OO supports.doc, exporting to the Microsoft.doc format isn't there, meaning people who only have MS Office (i.e. most people) can't open your document.
The default swx format can't be opened by MS Office either, which means there will be some trouble viewing student/teacher documents unless the defaults were changed (or if one was to teach everyone to export to some cross-office compatible format, but that's boiling the ocean...)
And your statement is a tad misleading too. Actually, entirely misleading, unless I'm reading you wrong. I don't know what crazy version of OO you're using, maybe I'm terribly misinformed, but my version has no problem saving into.doc, several different flavours of it being expressly supported.
I'd hate to accuse you of FUD, since it doesn't sound intentional, but . . . really, now. Especially since it takes about 7 seconds, if you're really goddamned slow at moving the mouse around, to change the default document format to something else (I mean, it's "tools -> options -> load/save -> general", how much more intuitive can you get? Voice recognition?). And since this is what the school will be using, I'd assume that it's going to be, umm, installed by someone associated with the school . . . even if they were just upgrading Word, they'd have to have someone install it that at least vaguely knew what they were doing, this should be easily within their abilities.
In other words, I declare those problems trivial. True, a few other things (macros, loading docs with jpegs embedded, etc) remain, but these are statistically trivial in a school environment as well. And, skipping any of the overarching arguments (increased and sustained dependency on one single app accentuates the problems of formats more and more anyways, so it's trading short-term inconvenience for long-term nightmares), I've personally had terrible luck with interoperability with Word documents . . . between versions of word. Between the same versions sometimes! Maybe it's something with my local school system, I don't know. Sometimes WordPerfect8 was able to open docs when none of my versions of Word on any of my family's computers could!
Meanwhile, I've never encountered any problems with Open Office . . . okay, at the time I was in high school I never used it, but for my university purposes nowadays I find it always spot-on, and my younger sister, who was forced to "learn" Open Office (quotations due to the simplicity of the task) has found it working perfectly for her uses in High School, even creating PowerPoint presentations, etc.
And, besides, we can't just all say "well, people use proprietary formats, so let's just bow to the masses" . . . they use them because the people that are supposed to know what they're doing supply them with those tools. As I've outlined above, Open Office has worked excellently for compatiblity as far as I've experienced and noticed, better in many cases than Word (Microsoft just loves breaking compatibility, but Open Office has a vested intrest in being able to view as many types as possible). I think people are too scared of alternatives in general; hell, for years I used WordPerfect8 as mentioned above. What happened? Well, if I took a report from home, still saved in.wpd, and tried to print it at school with Word . . . it stripped out textart and clipart. Boo-hoo.
So to sum up; Open Office's downsides are mainly technical nitpicks, unless you're quite unlucky and find yourself in a very specific set of circumstances. And alternatives are not as scary as people say, nor as hard to set up as people seem to believe.
And really, I'd far rather have the money in our education system go towards things other than making Microsoft a few more bucks. The kids need it more than they do, our education system can't really afford to play liberally with money simply for the sake of playing it as safe as possible in the short term.
That seems to happen quite a bit. Okay, I'm going to get modded offtopic, but too bad, these are things that actually matter in life; isn't it interesting how it's the push to go to a further level that often ends with people dissolving relationships entirely (the romantic side of the equation, I mean)?
I suppose I'm making assumptions I don't really know about your situation, but it does seem to be a motif in life, those final few pushes shake things apart instead of being the final glue. Interesting note on human interaction, is it not?
[insert snide and dismissive comment on levels of human interaction on slashdot]
I think we've established our grounds here, but I think I should at least clarify one point: I DID mention the advertising thing. When I said personal communication, I meant something more "peer to peer" . . . anything like advertising is regulated, yes. In the same way that it's regulated nearly everywhere else for content . . . in the case of Quebec, these regulations include the restriction that all advertisements must be in French, but they do not prohibit other languages like English, they just can't be the only language. Much of the time this results in little things, like advertisements all throughout Canada which have both French and English. In Quebec, they're just very obsessive about their language. In the States or most countries, it's no problem, the predominate language has no fear of being overrun (or at least, no readily visible threat is present), Quebec is in a very unique set of circumstances. Most countries don't need to restrict things like advertising as far as languages go; if someone advertised in French in Ohio, they'd find it quite ineffective. These kinds of situations don't arise many places (though France itself is, as much as it differs from and looks down upon Quebec, doing some of the same things from my knowledge. Must be a french-speaking thing).
And other than that, as I pointed out, Quebec is very left-wing. See, that's the thing. Where something falls in the political spectrum can't just be decided by one single part of its politics, the spectrum is a pretty over-simplified way of looking at it anyways. And furthermore, it's quite possible for parties and peoples and countries to be all over the map in different areas (thus, you could argue that Quebec is ultra-right in its language laws, but that doesn't stop all of it's progressive policies from being astonishingly left-wing even compared to NDP-run provinces in Canada).
And, err, I hope you were just making a joke and knew what I meant by homosexual unions . . .
Anyways, whatever; the idea of the political spectrum is so hilariously at odds with the actual complexity of the world, I can only feel terribly foolish for establishing it as part of my line of argument originally.
as tongue-in-cheek as it is, it's quite true (though not exclusive to porn, more in internet media in general) . . . someone mod parent up! I evision 50% Insightful, 50% Funny.
Quebec doesn't have any laws banning personal communications, it's a public-domain law that insists that you must have French in a vast range of types of advertisement, signs, etc . . . it certainly doesn't ban other languages, merely insists (somewhat arrogantly, I won't deny) that for any official/commericial kinds of communication (storefronts, etc) you have to include French. Other languages are optional. A bit draconian, but they're holding on as tight as they can to a culture that's been slipping out from under them for hundreds of years now . . . and, might I point out, other than that Quebec is very left-wing. Talk about welfare state, wow. And all the other little things, like acceptence of homosexual unions, rights for minors, and so forth.
The others I can talk about less; for the Netherlands, it's usually more the decision to stop treatment/support, not actual execution; other than that it's generally consentual (not necessarily from the person, more from legal guardians . . . you can still argue it's wrong, yes, but the way you put it gives an incorrect impression of the specific nature of it, as if there was some sort of systemic execution of those who are disabled. All this being said, there is severe objections within the Netherlands; here's a link to a paper, written in and for the Netherlands but hosted on a Right-To-Life website in the states . . . note how the sides are set, however). As for France, many idiots does not a cultural identity make . . . and Europe, alas, has a terrible history of anti-semitism (we've managed to mostly shake it here in the new world, but we too still carry some of the baggage). And Austia is actually rather Right-Wing; furthermore, there's recently been quite the resurgence of that side of the political spectrum in many places in Europe, despite the American view of Europe as flower-child hippy liberals.
Feel free to bring up more concrete examples, though; the discussion of societal biases is always something valuable to debate.
really now, before modding him as a Troll . . . first, someone point out how he isn't entirely correct? (Don't just mod down anyone who disparages Apple, think for a minute whether he has a point or not).
This should probably be phrased as: "Can this possibly be used to show that evolution is more than just a theory?"
What more is there to be than "just" a theory?
Evolution is "just" a theory because, although a theory is a statement of what we think something to be like, that includes in itself an inherent understanding that we can't know more than that, that we could always possibly be wrong . . . so evolution has trouble standing up to things like Creationism and it's masquerade/reinvention as "Intelligent Design", which offer eternal and proclaimed truths at their core. They have the gift of certainty; and unreal concreteness is often more persuasive than truthful equivocation.
You are betraying your own extremism. In reality, there is no ultra anything that has a foothold in politics. For another, free speech is not abuse. To make a false claim that it is is usually part of a call for censorship.
If the spectrum is relative to inside of the states, yeah, certainly, there aren't any extreme groups with vast political power. However, in a wider context of ideologies, the States is very Right-Wing, and far from moderate. At least, that's the spectrum from my vantage point.
In other words, I'm defending his claim that they're ultra-rightwing, with my claim, substatiated from my point of view but far too hard to go into right here, that the organizations and people you're both referring to as "left-wing" are hardly as left-wing as they may relatively seem in the context of American politics.
But of course, my comments smack of idealism. And that's unacceptable when discussing politics, unless it's coupled with a rabid opinion . . . as you've pointed out, in your way, but I'm saying even your impartiality betrays a tremendous bias.
I guess I'm just finding it difficult to imagine what I would ever need, say, 32Ghz for, other than gaming--which would be what my ultra-hip game console would be for.
Thing is, computers are still advancing at a rate that console have a problem catching up with, due to the fact that every aspect of the hardware has to be released at once and, of course, that they can't come in pieces developed seperately and be interoperable between wildly different hardware (all for obvious reasons due to the nature of consoles; I'm really just imperfectly repeating the obvious).
So, for truely impressive games media-wise (alas, the more complex they are technically the less time is able to be spent directly on gameplay and etc, but that's another issue) computers have for quite some time been far better, and probably will remain so for quite some time hence. Consoles sometimes nowadays seem nearly comparable, at least in some cases, but then you look at the abysmal resolutions and you realize that they're cheating performance-wise.
Other than that, I enjoy my rather fast computer (far beyond any console currently available) for many things, for example quick encoding, compression, and reformatting of video and audio (usuallly for entirely legitimate purposes, oddly enough!). As media types are advancing, it's nice to have the hardware to keep up. And to be able to digitally record, edit, and redistribute a movie "filmed" (a misnomer now) by myself, at quality certainly below DVD but superior to VHS and anything concievable at a lower level of technology . . . no, I'm glad that computers are advancing at the pace that they are, and I certainly do find the use.
That being said . . . about two years ago, I became unable to really use the computer that my family was using, a state of the art machine but it was constantly under use by my other family members. Being still in high school at the time, I certainly needed a computer. Especially for chatting and browsing late at night, and at those times I wouldn't be able to make my way through my unbelievably creaky house all the way to the downstairs anyways. So I dug out an old computer of mine, a Pentium-S 100-mHz if I recall correctly, with a massive 8MB of ram or something equally woeful.
And you know what? Armed with programs made in the era it was from (which was a bit tricky to find old ones that would interoperate with the state of things nowadays, but it's possible), it performed quite adequately. I even abused it with programs that should have been far beyond it's ken, but it still trotted along fine (until one day I accidentally destroyed the HDD, but that's another story). And so this computer from the mid-ninetys was easily good enough and functional in the modern age.
In other words . . . I disagree with parent. And then, on further reflection, I completely agree. I hold two conflicting opinions.
It IS legal to tape a TV program for a friend and share it with them them . . . err, at least in the country I currently live in, Canada. It has certainly been legal for quite some time in the States to tape TV programs for yourself, so it's a grey area as to whether you can distribute them afterwards . . . yes, in the case of downloading TV programs it's currently considered illegal, however, enough various legislation that it would be a tough case to call, if someone downloaded a program that they missed and it went to court.
There are strong legal arguments to be made on either side; of course, our current society being corporate-minded and money-fuelled, it probably would end up falling on the side of Big Business. (Call me a left-wing liberal if you will, but try disputing that current law and judicial decisions tend to heavily favor corporations over individual consumers' rights -- whether you think that's okay or not is another question, naturally, as was noted in reverse of sorts by parent).
As you may not have noticed, the idea was to install it in his router/gateway, for the sake of playing around with it.
This means that:
[1] He already has the computer.
[2] A Mac Mini or iMac would simply not be viable from the hardware side of things.
Now, points for noting the FreeBSD livecds, but, really now, you shouldn't just take any opportunity you can to tout your pet OS, it doesn't really seem applicable here.
And sometimes that key with the funny looking square flag that has a cross in the middle. It's right next to the Alt button.
Keyboards which don't have that button seem to have far fewer problems with viral infections. You can buy computers with these obviously superior keyboards at www.apple.com
Better yet, you can get keyboards without that key by hunting around anywhere that has older electronics; the dumpster out back of an office, for example. And, as I've found out, these old keyboards, with a blank space where that unfathomable flag-windows thingy normally is and often a label with the letters "I", "B" and "M" on it . . . well, from my trials they seem to smash those fruity ones with that fruit-key to pieces! Now that is an obviously superior keyboard, they seem to win the deathmatch every time.
Slashdot Mirror
Americans (and I speak this with citizenship and with no regret as to holding that citizenship) would rather the problems be glossed over with their nation, thus it's great to criticize the UN and other powers and nations when they do things that are wrong or just plain morally reprehensible, but America? Doing something wrong? You leftist, freedom hating bastard!
;).
Actually, living in Canada right now, it's kindof the same issue as far as America-bashing goes; people go "god-damned Americans, screwing up the world and not taking any responsibility, and why the fuck are they so dumb as to elect that fascist blah blah blah blah", Canadians basically define themselves by the fact that they're not Americans, and the general lack of achievements in recent years are glossed over by a constant tirade against all the things that the States does wrong, and everything percieved to be wrong with americans.
When it comes down to it, people just can't bring themselves to believe that the place they live isn't the best; it's hard to justify not doing anything about it otherwise (fixing it, moving, anything, people would rather just live their lives lazily and pretend that they're living it as best as they can). Hence Americans bashing the UN, hence Canadians bashing Americans, hence people bashing other things and people in general.
(As a further note, I actually have Canadian citizenship as well, I've had both since birth . . . it gives me an odd measure of both affinity to both, and a lack of commitment to either; it has upsides and downsides . . . I write this for the benefit of anyone flaming me, so that they can flame with their facts straight
free but still can be subject to every whim of the government if they felt like it
And that differs from the US-model in what way...?
US Government: Microsoft, stop that.
Microsoft: Make us!
long legal battle ensues
????
Microsoft: Profit!!!
China isn't quite so communist anymore (well, of course, they were never really "communist" just non-capitalist and authoritarian, but that's pretty much been what passes for communism in the actual world). They've been moving bits and pieces towards a free-ish market (ie. free but still can be subject to every whim of the government if they felt like it) for quite some time now, and of course Hong Kong, where this occurred, only returned to Chinese hands recently in history (1997), so we have the legacy of British corporate freedoms to blame for this kind of incident for the most part . . . but what they hell, easier to blame China.
Actually, come to think of it, China gets the best of both worlds. Since the government is all-powerful but lets corporations operate, people get to be oppressed by the Dictatorship Of The We're-Proletariat-We-Swear, AND by the Corporate Pig Dog Capitalists! So when people ask for freedoms they can be persecuted as bourgeois swine, and when they steal movies they can be likewise persecuted for being dirty communists. Brilliant!
LGPLed actually, but Apple is usually pretty good about contributing stuff back.
Umm, not quite. Pointing towards a link made by someone ealier here:
We created the khtml-cvs list for Apple, they got CVS accounts for KDE CVS. What did we get? We get periodical code bombs in the form of them releasing WebCore. Many of us wanted to even sign NDA's with Apple to at least get access to the history of their internal vcs and be able to be merging the changes incrementally, the way they can right now. Nothing came out of it. They do the very, very minimum required by LGPL.
And you know what? That's their right. They made a conscious decision about not working with KDE developers. All I'm asking for is that all the clueless people stop talking about the cooperation between Safari/Konqueror developers and how great it is. There's absolutely nothing great about it. In fact "it" doesn't exist. Maybe for Apple - at the very least for their marketing people. Clear?
Don't believe everything Steve Jobs tells you, so to speak.
Better be careful, though, she's got pop-ups.
Indeed, the upgrade to SP2 broke the anti-virus program that my parents' computer was using. The story does not end well . . . I'm still somewhat pissed at Microsoft for breaking something so vital.
THX-1138 was an admirable piece of work. Despite the fact that seemingly few even know of it, it's nonetheless managed to influence the interesting side of popular culture.
Nine Inch Nail's "The Downward Spiral" album, for example, opens with a sample from the movie even. On the other hand the Star Wars films have at times had a deleterious effect (the original---and actually Asimov approved--- I, Robot screenplay was trashed by the studio to a large part due to Star Wars . And for that alone, Star Wars actually robbed us of good sci-fi, not the opposite).
I find it interesting that, having watched the original version and then the directors cut when it recently came out, THX-1138 actually benefitted from the modern additions; it helps smooth over the production values (and is a treat to see widescreen), instead of, I dunno, changing details to make characters more kid-friendly and less edgy (*cough*).
Lucas started out with talent and vision; but mainstream audiences wanted none of that. Somewhat bitter, he created a little fantasy movie. Audiences loved it! He had learnt his lesson, and continued along those lines . . . but it would be nice if the old Lucas could safely come out now. It's not like spending lots of money on something that doesn't quite succeed will make all that much of a dent in his absurdly large bank account balance.
it's easier to resist when you'll, oh, get shot for resisting. Really, France surrendering to Germany is something that we criticize them far too much for. If Germany had, say, bordered the States . . . remember that at the time the U.S. didn't even really have a military force to speak of, compared especially to the German Reich's forces. Nearly anyone could have been steamrolled.
Furthermore, while we make a big deal of our sacrifices in WWI, we did it from the safety of distance; soldiers went over, but the threat to North America was never there. Meanwhile, the horror of war was literally in the backyards at best of the countries in Europe. The French especially had a rough time of it, and just in general Europe was pretty much experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome.
The German forces just overwhelmed them; the military might was just too much to bear (and, it would be quite some time before American production and conscription raised enough military force to be able to help even if it had been the popular opinion). No, France, though admittedly acting with much defeatism, was outmatched, outgunned, and outmaneuvered. The strategic reserve, which had saved France in the First World War, was nonexistent. General de Gaulle managed to forestall the fate of Paris for quite some time, but eventually the crushing weight of German reinforcements.
And if we're going to berate France, then berate Britain at the same time; great friends that they are, they hastily pulled their forces out of the continent as France was being overrun (of course, this was strategically the only sane option at the time, but since when did logic and historical accuracy have anything to do with these kinds of accusations?).
The bottom line is that the causes aren't so straightforward as to just be "oh, those French pansies". It seems to me almost as if the current trend of "belittle the French" might stem more from modern annoyance in the States with France's political opposition to current administrative doctrine than any historical accuracy or fairness. This whole meme is quite suspect.
You game on linux. Instead of OS X? Because? OS X has 10 times the number of gaming offerings that linux does. You really sound like a troll, but maybe you are just misguided. Here at work I use a powerbook, as does about half the company. We write software to run on the really expensive special purpose servers we sell. What exactly is it that you do on x86 hardware that you can't do from your mac? Umm, there are a lot more games for x86 architechture than for Macs. And alot of games that can run on Macs can run just fine on Linux; take UT2004, for example. And . . . umm, you're accusing grandparent of trolling? He said "I have to game on windows or linux." . . . it's quite understandable if the games he wants to play only run on Windows or Linux; you're the one doing troll-like things, like ignoring part of his statement and pretending he was setting up a dichotomy between Linux and OSX, when in reality he was talking about Windows and Linux, which can of course work in concert, installed even on the same computer. You, dear sir, appear to be the misguided one.
Serious question, though I do admit I hate it, I'm willing to put that aside to ask: why? From what I've experienced, other programs such as Eudora can easily do everything Outlook does, often in ways that work far better for the user. Indeed, I have one friend that runs into endless little problems with Outlook on her brand-new Dell. I've even installed Eudora 5.02 on her comp, it works fine and does a few things that she was quite impressed with . . . and yet she still sticks with Outlook.
To put it in one word: WTF?
Can anyone here enlighten me? Where does Outlook dispense the crack cocaine from? What am I missing here?
Not to flame, but #2 is a tad misleading. While OO supports .doc, exporting to the Microsoft .doc format isn't there, meaning people who only have MS Office (i.e. most people) can't open your document.
.doc, several different flavours of it being expressly supported.
.wpd, and tried to print it at school with Word . . . it stripped out textart and clipart. Boo-hoo.
The default swx format can't be opened by MS Office either, which means there will be some trouble viewing student/teacher documents unless the defaults were changed (or if one was to teach everyone to export to some cross-office compatible format, but that's boiling the ocean...) And your statement is a tad misleading too. Actually, entirely misleading, unless I'm reading you wrong. I don't know what crazy version of OO you're using, maybe I'm terribly misinformed, but my version has no problem saving into
I'd hate to accuse you of FUD, since it doesn't sound intentional, but . . . really, now. Especially since it takes about 7 seconds, if you're really goddamned slow at moving the mouse around, to change the default document format to something else (I mean, it's "tools -> options -> load/save -> general", how much more intuitive can you get? Voice recognition?). And since this is what the school will be using, I'd assume that it's going to be, umm, installed by someone associated with the school . . . even if they were just upgrading Word, they'd have to have someone install it that at least vaguely knew what they were doing, this should be easily within their abilities.
In other words, I declare those problems trivial. True, a few other things (macros, loading docs with jpegs embedded, etc) remain, but these are statistically trivial in a school environment as well. And, skipping any of the overarching arguments (increased and sustained dependency on one single app accentuates the problems of formats more and more anyways, so it's trading short-term inconvenience for long-term nightmares), I've personally had terrible luck with interoperability with Word documents . . . between versions of word. Between the same versions sometimes! Maybe it's something with my local school system, I don't know. Sometimes WordPerfect8 was able to open docs when none of my versions of Word on any of my family's computers could!
Meanwhile, I've never encountered any problems with Open Office . . . okay, at the time I was in high school I never used it, but for my university purposes nowadays I find it always spot-on, and my younger sister, who was forced to "learn" Open Office (quotations due to the simplicity of the task) has found it working perfectly for her uses in High School, even creating PowerPoint presentations, etc.
And, besides, we can't just all say "well, people use proprietary formats, so let's just bow to the masses" . . . they use them because the people that are supposed to know what they're doing supply them with those tools. As I've outlined above, Open Office has worked excellently for compatiblity as far as I've experienced and noticed, better in many cases than Word (Microsoft just loves breaking compatibility, but Open Office has a vested intrest in being able to view as many types as possible). I think people are too scared of alternatives in general; hell, for years I used WordPerfect8 as mentioned above. What happened? Well, if I took a report from home, still saved in
So to sum up; Open Office's downsides are mainly technical nitpicks, unless you're quite unlucky and find yourself in a very specific set of circumstances. And alternatives are not as scary as people say, nor as hard to set up as people seem to believe.
And really, I'd far rather have the money in our education system go towards things other than making Microsoft a few more bucks. The kids need it more than they do, our education system can't really afford to play liberally with money simply for the sake of playing it as safe as possible in the short term.
That seems to happen quite a bit. Okay, I'm going to get modded offtopic, but too bad, these are things that actually matter in life; isn't it interesting how it's the push to go to a further level that often ends with people dissolving relationships entirely (the romantic side of the equation, I mean)?
I suppose I'm making assumptions I don't really know about your situation, but it does seem to be a motif in life, those final few pushes shake things apart instead of being the final glue. Interesting note on human interaction, is it not?
[insert snide and dismissive comment on levels of human interaction on slashdot]
I think we've established our grounds here, but I think I should at least clarify one point: I DID mention the advertising thing. When I said personal communication, I meant something more "peer to peer" . . . anything like advertising is regulated, yes. In the same way that it's regulated nearly everywhere else for content . . . in the case of Quebec, these regulations include the restriction that all advertisements must be in French, but they do not prohibit other languages like English, they just can't be the only language. Much of the time this results in little things, like advertisements all throughout Canada which have both French and English. In Quebec, they're just very obsessive about their language. In the States or most countries, it's no problem, the predominate language has no fear of being overrun (or at least, no readily visible threat is present), Quebec is in a very unique set of circumstances. Most countries don't need to restrict things like advertising as far as languages go; if someone advertised in French in Ohio, they'd find it quite ineffective. These kinds of situations don't arise many places (though France itself is, as much as it differs from and looks down upon Quebec, doing some of the same things from my knowledge. Must be a french-speaking thing).
And other than that, as I pointed out, Quebec is very left-wing. See, that's the thing. Where something falls in the political spectrum can't just be decided by one single part of its politics, the spectrum is a pretty over-simplified way of looking at it anyways. And furthermore, it's quite possible for parties and peoples and countries to be all over the map in different areas (thus, you could argue that Quebec is ultra-right in its language laws, but that doesn't stop all of it's progressive policies from being astonishingly left-wing even compared to NDP-run provinces in Canada).
And, err, I hope you were just making a joke and knew what I meant by homosexual unions . . .
Anyways, whatever; the idea of the political spectrum is so hilariously at odds with the actual complexity of the world, I can only feel terribly foolish for establishing it as part of my line of argument originally.
as tongue-in-cheek as it is, it's quite true (though not exclusive to porn, more in internet media in general) . . . someone mod parent up! I evision 50% Insightful, 50% Funny.
All the info can pretty much be found on this thread about it, including some people hosting sites of the remixes, etc.
point by point:
Quebec doesn't have any laws banning personal communications, it's a public-domain law that insists that you must have French in a vast range of types of advertisement, signs, etc . . . it certainly doesn't ban other languages, merely insists (somewhat arrogantly, I won't deny) that for any official/commericial kinds of communication (storefronts, etc) you have to include French. Other languages are optional. A bit draconian, but they're holding on as tight as they can to a culture that's been slipping out from under them for hundreds of years now . . . and, might I point out, other than that Quebec is very left-wing. Talk about welfare state, wow. And all the other little things, like acceptence of homosexual unions, rights for minors, and so forth.
The others I can talk about less; for the Netherlands, it's usually more the decision to stop treatment/support, not actual execution; other than that it's generally consentual (not necessarily from the person, more from legal guardians . . . you can still argue it's wrong, yes, but the way you put it gives an incorrect impression of the specific nature of it, as if there was some sort of systemic execution of those who are disabled. All this being said, there is severe objections within the Netherlands; here's a link to a paper, written in and for the Netherlands but hosted on a Right-To-Life website in the states . . . note how the sides are set, however). As for France, many idiots does not a cultural identity make . . . and Europe, alas, has a terrible history of anti-semitism (we've managed to mostly shake it here in the new world, but we too still carry some of the baggage). And Austia is actually rather Right-Wing; furthermore, there's recently been quite the resurgence of that side of the political spectrum in many places in Europe, despite the American view of Europe as flower-child hippy liberals.
Feel free to bring up more concrete examples, though; the discussion of societal biases is always something valuable to debate.
really now, before modding him as a Troll . . . first, someone point out how he isn't entirely correct? (Don't just mod down anyone who disparages Apple, think for a minute whether he has a point or not).
This should probably be phrased as: "Can this possibly be used to show that evolution is more than just a theory?"
What more is there to be than "just" a theory?
Evolution is "just" a theory because, although a theory is a statement of what we think something to be like, that includes in itself an inherent understanding that we can't know more than that, that we could always possibly be wrong . . . so evolution has trouble standing up to things like Creationism and it's masquerade/reinvention as "Intelligent Design", which offer eternal and proclaimed truths at their core. They have the gift of certainty; and unreal concreteness is often more persuasive than truthful equivocation.
You are betraying your own extremism. In reality, there is no ultra anything that has a foothold in politics. For another, free speech is not abuse. To make a false claim that it is is usually part of a call for censorship.
If the spectrum is relative to inside of the states, yeah, certainly, there aren't any extreme groups with vast political power. However, in a wider context of ideologies, the States is very Right-Wing, and far from moderate. At least, that's the spectrum from my vantage point.
In other words, I'm defending his claim that they're ultra-rightwing, with my claim, substatiated from my point of view but far too hard to go into right here, that the organizations and people you're both referring to as "left-wing" are hardly as left-wing as they may relatively seem in the context of American politics.
But of course, my comments smack of idealism. And that's unacceptable when discussing politics, unless it's coupled with a rabid opinion . . . as you've pointed out, in your way, but I'm saying even your impartiality betrays a tremendous bias.
I guess I'm just finding it difficult to imagine what I would ever need, say, 32Ghz for, other than gaming--which would be what my ultra-hip game console would be for. Thing is, computers are still advancing at a rate that console have a problem catching up with, due to the fact that every aspect of the hardware has to be released at once and, of course, that they can't come in pieces developed seperately and be interoperable between wildly different hardware (all for obvious reasons due to the nature of consoles; I'm really just imperfectly repeating the obvious).
So, for truely impressive games media-wise (alas, the more complex they are technically the less time is able to be spent directly on gameplay and etc, but that's another issue) computers have for quite some time been far better, and probably will remain so for quite some time hence. Consoles sometimes nowadays seem nearly comparable, at least in some cases, but then you look at the abysmal resolutions and you realize that they're cheating performance-wise.
Other than that, I enjoy my rather fast computer (far beyond any console currently available) for many things, for example quick encoding, compression, and reformatting of video and audio (usuallly for entirely legitimate purposes, oddly enough!). As media types are advancing, it's nice to have the hardware to keep up. And to be able to digitally record, edit, and redistribute a movie "filmed" (a misnomer now) by myself, at quality certainly below DVD but superior to VHS and anything concievable at a lower level of technology . . . no, I'm glad that computers are advancing at the pace that they are, and I certainly do find the use.
That being said . . . about two years ago, I became unable to really use the computer that my family was using, a state of the art machine but it was constantly under use by my other family members. Being still in high school at the time, I certainly needed a computer. Especially for chatting and browsing late at night, and at those times I wouldn't be able to make my way through my unbelievably creaky house all the way to the downstairs anyways. So I dug out an old computer of mine, a Pentium-S 100-mHz if I recall correctly, with a massive 8MB of ram or something equally woeful.
And you know what? Armed with programs made in the era it was from (which was a bit tricky to find old ones that would interoperate with the state of things nowadays, but it's possible), it performed quite adequately. I even abused it with programs that should have been far beyond it's ken, but it still trotted along fine (until one day I accidentally destroyed the HDD, but that's another story). And so this computer from the mid-ninetys was easily good enough and functional in the modern age.
In other words . . . I disagree with parent. And then, on further reflection, I completely agree. I hold two conflicting opinions.
It IS legal to tape a TV program for a friend and share it with them them . . . err, at least in the country I currently live in, Canada. It has certainly been legal for quite some time in the States to tape TV programs for yourself, so it's a grey area as to whether you can distribute them afterwards . . . yes, in the case of downloading TV programs it's currently considered illegal, however, enough various legislation that it would be a tough case to call, if someone downloaded a program that they missed and it went to court.
There are strong legal arguments to be made on either side; of course, our current society being corporate-minded and money-fuelled, it probably would end up falling on the side of Big Business. (Call me a left-wing liberal if you will, but try disputing that current law and judicial decisions tend to heavily favor corporations over individual consumers' rights -- whether you think that's okay or not is another question, naturally, as was noted in reverse of sorts by parent).
As you may not have noticed, the idea was to install it in his router/gateway, for the sake of playing around with it.
This means that:
[1] He already has the computer.
[2] A Mac Mini or iMac would simply not be viable from the hardware side of things.
Now, points for noting the FreeBSD livecds, but, really now, you shouldn't just take any opportunity you can to tout your pet OS, it doesn't really seem applicable here.
And sometimes that key with the funny looking square flag that has a cross in the middle. It's right next to the Alt button.
Keyboards which don't have that button seem to have far fewer problems with viral infections. You can buy computers with these obviously superior keyboards at www.apple.com
Better yet, you can get keyboards without that key by hunting around anywhere that has older electronics; the dumpster out back of an office, for example. And, as I've found out, these old keyboards, with a blank space where that unfathomable flag-windows thingy normally is and often a label with the letters "I", "B" and "M" on it . . . well, from my trials they seem to smash those fruity ones with that fruit-key to pieces! Now that is an obviously superior keyboard, they seem to win the deathmatch every time.
There legicies are dumber than our legacies.
Ahem. "Their legacies". I take it you're not part of the American Chinese 30%.
I've got good enough Karma for my uses anyways; I felt like just laying on the irony as heavy as I could slosh it out.