To be fair, my university's IT staff is incompetent. They thought that it was a good idea to set up a firewall to block SSL access to POP3, leave open unencrypted POP3 access, and then actually ADVISE people who had problems with the VPN (which is another disaster born from their incompetence) to just use the unencrypted port. I reported this problem, then reported it again with an explanation of why it is a problem, and they have refused to fix it.
In my original post, I should have emphasized that any competent IT staff could keep a mail server up and running.
"I would definitely recommend using Google to host school email (not all business for other reasons) as it can save a lot of money and provide much better end user experience."
I would recommend against it, and I would be adamant about it. GMail's service is terrible; every few days, I get IMAP errors, usually along the lines of, "Cannot open mailbox," and occasionally a login failure (despite the fact that my username and password are stored and reused by my email client). School email can require the same level of reliability and availability as business email, at least at the college level: financial aid notices, graduate school applications, job applications, etc. Being unable to access your email can be a serious problem, and frankly, Google's service has not shown itself to be reliable enough for anything beyond irrelevant personal emails.
There are free-as-in-beer email servers, even for very high volumes of mail, that any competent IT staff could maintain with minimal effort and better reliability than GMail. How much money do you think GMail would save? Is that amount of money actually worth the hassle of dealing with GMail?
Who said anything about encoding? I was talking about content delivery, and all I said was that SOME downloadable or non-web based alternative should have been provided, as well as listing scenarios in which such an alternative would be necessary.
YouTube's terms of service prohibit that sort of activity. For some people, the terms of service actually matter -- for example, an activist who wants to obtain a digital copy of the proceedings to be published later. The last thing that activist needs is a cease and desist order cropping up in the middle of their political movement. Yes, they can use the TV broadcast for the time being, but that may not be the case in future -- more likely than not, within a decade, TV recordings will only be made possible with paid "DVR services," which will be locked down to prevent a user from retaining a personal copy (and publishing such a copy). If nobody bothers with unencumbered streams anymore, it will eventually become difficult to retain a copy of these proceedings, which is more of a backwards step.
Which is a point I keep bringing up: some people do not have up-to-date computers. They are a minority, but there are still a lot of them, and they are mostly in the older generation. The funny thing is that Windows 98 has built in streaming video support -- just not through browser plugins. Why is nobody posting a streaming MPEG, OGG, or even WMV?
I actually am a swfdec user, but swfdec on my PS3 fails really hard. I have tried watching YouTube videos using Fedora 10 on my PS3, which is more or less bleeding edge, and the video is not redrawn on the screen (but forcing a window redraw works). Also, FLV decoders are in a patent minefield, and YouTube videos require such decoders.
Gnash is an epic fail, mostly because of lack of developer interest -- last I checked, most gnash developers switched to the swfdec team, and gnash still was not working for Youtube (this was 18 months ago; have things changed?).
Personally, I do not understand the obsession with Flash for streaming video. Desktop operating systems have had built in support for streaming video since...1995? If you count Linux, I guess that should be since 1998~. Why is nobody planning to offer streaming ogg or, encumbered as it may be, streaming mpg?
You are misleading as well. The Obama team has been heavily focused on using the Internet, and their choice Internet deliver methods is very important. The choice to use Silverlight 2, and offer no alternative for users who cannot use that platform (PowerPC users, people with out of date computers, etc.), and to offer no non-streaming alternative (for people without reliable Internet connections, or who want a copy on their hard drive without worrying about copyright issues), indicates something about their "tech savvy campaign." The outsourced their content deliver to some company that sounds like the 2009 equivalent of a dot-com, and gave no consideration to any tech issues beyond what the latest buzzword is (hint: web enabled streaming media).
Yes, the TV option is still available, but this team has not given it much attention. This team is setting a precedent in streaming the proceedings, and future presidents will follow this example. My biggest concern is that, over the next decade, the ability to record a TV program will only be available to those who pay for "DVR service," likely locked down to prevent users from keeping copies without paying, and that if that happens, and these proceedings are streamed by websites like YouTube, people will lose their ability to keep personal copies of government proceedings. Most people will just shrug, but for some activists, the ability to record the government is important and should not be lost because of misguided efforts to be "tech savvy."
"whereas YouTube and many others will be showing it in Flash video."
Which is still not truly available to everyone. Where is that Flash plugin for my PPC system? Where is the non-patent-risk FLV codec for my PPC system? What do people who do not have an up to date computer do (yes, there are still a lot of them, and their computers can play an.ogv or.mpg just fine but fail on flash)? Why is there no talk of making an ogv available, even as a streaming video? Why the focus on browser plugins?
You ridicule us for being a tiny community, but keep in mind that this tiny community of people who care about "free ideals" represents a substantial proportion of people who care about politics, substantially more than the proportion of people who use computers. Beyond that, there are a lot of people who want to maintain their own copy of these proceedings, who should not be legally barred from doing so by the use of streaming video websites whose TOS forbids non-streaming downloads. This is a historic proceeding, if a bit hyped, and there should be no copyright or patent issues when it comes to videos of the event.
First of all, having a deal with Microsoft is not necessarily a bad thing. All the doomsday predictions of the Novell deal were just hot air, and Novell remains an important player in the Linux world. The Ubuntu team certainly has no problem using the patches that Novell sends upstream, or benefiting from projects like Mono.
Secondly, I just checked, and you can download a free copy of Mandriva. You can even go to Red Hat's FTP server can get a free copy of RHEL. Guess what you cannot get for free from Canonical? Support that does not involve an IRC channel or message board. Canonical also charges more for a single support license than Red Hat or Novell.
Fedora is Red Hat's declared desktop strategy, and the latest edition (Fedora 10) is excessively easy to install and use, and *just works,* under the same definition of "just works" that the Ubuntu fans use. Fedora is as suitable for "regular users" as Ubuntu is; in fact, beyond using the same desktop environment, the Ubuntu team uses a lot of the Fedora team's code. No to be a flame, but the reason I stated that as a one-way relationship is that the Ubuntu team does not send very much code upstream, at least compared with Fedora (and to be fair, Novell and Mandriva).
So your argument basically amounts to this: Novell and anything they sponsor is bad, because they have a deal with Microsoft, except when you need something they put a lot of work into like Mono, in which case it is OK, Mandriva is bad because they used to charge for some packages, and Fedora is not suitable for end users because you said so. But Ubuntu is OK because it is free, not involved in a Microsoft deal, and never mind the fact that they just rebrand the work of everyone else.
"Your suggestion is basically this: MS is really successful. Like, really really successful. If we were to just give a little bit of that success to other companies, many other companies would be successful as well. To achieve this distribution of success, we should break up Microsoft. Basically, you're advocating punishing success!"
Microsoft is not successful because they were selling the best software, or even the second best software. They are successful because of a good business strategy (regardless of the legality of it). Why should we care if that good business strategy is punished? A good business strategy does not improve our society; in fact the effect of Microsoft's monopoly position was to stagnate technological growth, especially in the operating systems, web browser, and office markets (not coincidentally, the three markets where Microsoft was most successful). It is not inherent to monopolies to cause that sort of stagnation, but when a company reaches the dominant position by selling middle or low-tier products, that is generally the effect.
Beyond that, Microsoft also used its success in one market -- operating systems -- to create a dominant position in other markets, killing competing, higher quality products. Why should we be afraid to punish this kind of behavior? The purpose of antitrust laws is not to punish successful companies, but to ensure that success is gained by being the best.
"Modesty and sexual conservatism, which are not unique to the Chinese culture, but rather understood and appreciated by almost all [organized] societies."
*cough*
Not sure which organized society you are from, by here in western civilization, sex is by no means modest or conservative. Maybe it is "supposed" to be, according to the evangelicals, but it is not. Nor is sexual conservatism appreciated, except by a small but vocal minority composed mainly of puritans.
In all likelihood, Microsoft would not actually remove IE, they would just create a registry key that enabled or disabled the web browser functionality. Such a key might already exist, put in place just in case the US government demanded that they remove IE from Windows.
Part of the problem is that people are not really guided by anyone. They hear quips hear and there about "Linux is secure," and have no idea what that means or why. They also hear things like, "Ubuntu is easy, you don't have to be an expert," again, not knowing what that means, and then they think to themselves, "I'll go for the secure approach with Ubuntu!" and install it.
It is difficult to blame them, since they really do not know what Linux is, what Ubuntu is, or even what Windows is. They should have done more research, but did not.
All modern desktop distros are as functional and easy to use as Ubuntu. We have moved past the days of dicking about with autoconf and makefiles for hours just to get X11 to start up. Ubuntu is not really special; the Ubuntu team just got lucky, because Mandriva was on the verge of collapse right at the time when Ubuntu was getting started, so they rushed in to fill the void of "easy desktop linux." Fedora also works out of the box now (and yes, before someone gives me an Ubuntu-worked-Fedora-didn't story, I have plenty of stories of Ubuntu not working when Fedora did; so what?), Mandriva is back on its feet, OpenSUSE is less of a pain, etc. Seriously, why do people focus on Ubuntu?
Except that TV is a hell of a lot better for broadcast. Why do people assume that computers are automagically better for every possible task? Sometimes, computers are not better. Not yet. Some day, maybe, but not in January 2009.
"Whereas film could be re-mastered to higher quality"
Only to a point. The particles on the film that actually compose the picture are effectively pixels, and you can only attempt to remaster to some maximum quality before the limitation becomes apparent.
"As we move towards digital photography, the limitations of the format are going to become apparent as the technology progresses to the point where today's 16MP shots simply don't have enough detail to compete with 8x10 sheets of Kodachrome."
Except that digital photography can and does compete with film quality. The film photographers I know do not dispute that, they have moved on to claiming that there are things that can be done to photographs with film that cannot be done digitally; while they are correct, the techniques they describe are not common needed, and are not technologically impossible with a digital camera.
Digital formats will prevail in the end, simply because they are more versatile. It is easy to store digital photographs, easier to make copies, easier to print, and altogether less expensive and less polluting. This is not like film-vs.-tape, this is more like film-vs.-painting.
Everything about him is historic! He has darker skin than any other president, and look: he is being photographed with a digital camera! No presidential portrait has ever been digitally produced before! No presidential portrait has ever featured a person with his skin tone!
Re:Yeah but KDE doesn't work.
on
Qt Becomes LGPL
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· Score: 1
Yes I know, but 4.2 is still not officially released. Also, the GP said that 4.1 was almost feature complete compared with 3.5.x, so there was no reason to bring up 4.2. Anyway, I am looking forward to 4.2, hopefully the Fedora guys package it quickly when it is released.
The only way this will change is if someone is held to account for it. Who better than the leader of the executive branch? Future Presidents will need to be even more aware of technology, and this would serve as a good reminder of that. Obama should ensure that he has a competent IT staff running the white house computers, and that proper backup and archival processes are put in place; Bush should have done so as well, but did not.
libintl is part of GNU. KDE is not part of GNU and never claimed to be. Qt has its own method of handling l10n/i18n.
LANG is not standardized, just common. Blaming a project for not respecting a vaguely defined part of the standard does not solve anything.
Locales do not provide translations. An application can set a different locale without being translated. Locales specify date, time, and money formats a few details about how capitalized letters work. Locale names are not part of any standard.
This is a problem with freedesktop.org not specifying how l10n and i18n should be handled on Linux systems, not the fault of KDE. There is no more reason to blame KDE than to blame GNOME for not respecting language settings from KDE.
That is what I am worried about. It is a good thing CSPAN is still around, so that we can record this stuff on our DVRs, but if CSPAN is taken off the air one day because of the availability of things like YouTube...
"YouTube Service to a user's device in such a manner that the data is intended for real-time viewing and not intended to be copied, stored, permanently downloaded, or redistributed by the user. Accessing User Videos for any purpose or in any manner other than Streaming is expressly prohibited."
That is from the TOS. There is no mention, anywhere in that clause (Section 5, subsection B), of copyrights or the public domain. It is literally against the law to try to save videos from YouTube on your hard disk drive. It is particularly troubling that the government is using YouTube to distribute videos, because it means that either they are preventing you from storing a permanent copy of the content, or encouraging you to ignore the TOS in order to save a copy (which means the government is telling you to break the law). I would not be surprised if, when put this way, members of congress would be troubled by it; I doubt, however, that they view it in this light. More likely, our elected officials view YouTube as an Internet version of broadcast TV, which is a very misguided view of the service.
Furthermore, look at things like HDCP, the move to digital cable and now digital broadcasts, and "broadcast flag" technologies. Some day in the future, CSPAN might be un-recordable, or un-recordable without special DVR services from a cable, satellite, or TiVo-style company, which are limited and prevent truly permanent storage. It probably will not be a deliberate thing, but simply a result of politicians who are not experts in technology and do not realize the implications of digital media and broadcasts.
Which is unfortunate but true. Most people do not care about their government.
Even more unfortunate is that I cannot download these videos, at least not without violating the TOS, and so I cannot store my own copies of those proceedings.
It has nothing to do with packaging. He had the Dutch i18n packages installed, but the package manager does not (and should not) go into a user's home directory and start messing with their settings. The problem was that after setting his l10n in GNOME, the change is not reflected for KDE/Qt; the original system install was in the US-en locale, he made the change afterward, which is not uncommon.
Re:Yeah but KDE doesn't work.
on
Qt Becomes LGPL
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· Score: 1
"4.1 is nearly just as featureful as the 3.5.x line ever was."
It is? Funny, I am using it right now, and really, it is not. ArK4 is not even close to ArK3, Konqueror4 is nowhere near Konqueror3 (unless you count functionality that doesn't even work), there is no global configuration for adding SSL certificates and the only configuration that has anything to do with that is broken and hidden in Konqueror, and half the KParts components that were embeddable in KDE3 are either nonexistent or not embeddable in KDE4.
Don't get me wrong, I like KDE a lot, I think it beats GNOME in terms of usefulness. But KDE 4.1 has a LONG way to go before catching up with the 3.5 branch.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, my university's IT staff is incompetent. They thought that it was a good idea to set up a firewall to block SSL access to POP3, leave open unencrypted POP3 access, and then actually ADVISE people who had problems with the VPN (which is another disaster born from their incompetence) to just use the unencrypted port. I reported this problem, then reported it again with an explanation of why it is a problem, and they have refused to fix it.
In my original post, I should have emphasized that any competent IT staff could keep a mail server up and running.
"I would definitely recommend using Google to host school email (not all business for other reasons) as it can save a lot of money and provide much better end user experience."
I would recommend against it, and I would be adamant about it. GMail's service is terrible; every few days, I get IMAP errors, usually along the lines of, "Cannot open mailbox," and occasionally a login failure (despite the fact that my username and password are stored and reused by my email client). School email can require the same level of reliability and availability as business email, at least at the college level: financial aid notices, graduate school applications, job applications, etc. Being unable to access your email can be a serious problem, and frankly, Google's service has not shown itself to be reliable enough for anything beyond irrelevant personal emails.
There are free-as-in-beer email servers, even for very high volumes of mail, that any competent IT staff could maintain with minimal effort and better reliability than GMail. How much money do you think GMail would save? Is that amount of money actually worth the hassle of dealing with GMail?
Who said anything about encoding? I was talking about content delivery, and all I said was that SOME downloadable or non-web based alternative should have been provided, as well as listing scenarios in which such an alternative would be necessary.
YouTube's terms of service prohibit that sort of activity. For some people, the terms of service actually matter -- for example, an activist who wants to obtain a digital copy of the proceedings to be published later. The last thing that activist needs is a cease and desist order cropping up in the middle of their political movement. Yes, they can use the TV broadcast for the time being, but that may not be the case in future -- more likely than not, within a decade, TV recordings will only be made possible with paid "DVR services," which will be locked down to prevent a user from retaining a personal copy (and publishing such a copy). If nobody bothers with unencumbered streams anymore, it will eventually become difficult to retain a copy of these proceedings, which is more of a backwards step.
Which is a point I keep bringing up: some people do not have up-to-date computers. They are a minority, but there are still a lot of them, and they are mostly in the older generation. The funny thing is that Windows 98 has built in streaming video support -- just not through browser plugins. Why is nobody posting a streaming MPEG, OGG, or even WMV?
I actually am a swfdec user, but swfdec on my PS3 fails really hard. I have tried watching YouTube videos using Fedora 10 on my PS3, which is more or less bleeding edge, and the video is not redrawn on the screen (but forcing a window redraw works). Also, FLV decoders are in a patent minefield, and YouTube videos require such decoders.
Gnash is an epic fail, mostly because of lack of developer interest -- last I checked, most gnash developers switched to the swfdec team, and gnash still was not working for Youtube (this was 18 months ago; have things changed?).
Personally, I do not understand the obsession with Flash for streaming video. Desktop operating systems have had built in support for streaming video since...1995? If you count Linux, I guess that should be since 1998~. Why is nobody planning to offer streaming ogg or, encumbered as it may be, streaming mpg?
You are misleading as well. The Obama team has been heavily focused on using the Internet, and their choice Internet deliver methods is very important. The choice to use Silverlight 2, and offer no alternative for users who cannot use that platform (PowerPC users, people with out of date computers, etc.), and to offer no non-streaming alternative (for people without reliable Internet connections, or who want a copy on their hard drive without worrying about copyright issues), indicates something about their "tech savvy campaign." The outsourced their content deliver to some company that sounds like the 2009 equivalent of a dot-com, and gave no consideration to any tech issues beyond what the latest buzzword is (hint: web enabled streaming media).
Yes, the TV option is still available, but this team has not given it much attention. This team is setting a precedent in streaming the proceedings, and future presidents will follow this example. My biggest concern is that, over the next decade, the ability to record a TV program will only be available to those who pay for "DVR service," likely locked down to prevent users from keeping copies without paying, and that if that happens, and these proceedings are streamed by websites like YouTube, people will lose their ability to keep personal copies of government proceedings. Most people will just shrug, but for some activists, the ability to record the government is important and should not be lost because of misguided efforts to be "tech savvy."
"whereas YouTube and many others will be showing it in Flash video."
.ogv or .mpg just fine but fail on flash)? Why is there no talk of making an ogv available, even as a streaming video? Why the focus on browser plugins?
Which is still not truly available to everyone. Where is that Flash plugin for my PPC system? Where is the non-patent-risk FLV codec for my PPC system? What do people who do not have an up to date computer do (yes, there are still a lot of them, and their computers can play an
You ridicule us for being a tiny community, but keep in mind that this tiny community of people who care about "free ideals" represents a substantial proportion of people who care about politics, substantially more than the proportion of people who use computers. Beyond that, there are a lot of people who want to maintain their own copy of these proceedings, who should not be legally barred from doing so by the use of streaming video websites whose TOS forbids non-streaming downloads. This is a historic proceeding, if a bit hyped, and there should be no copyright or patent issues when it comes to videos of the event.
First of all, having a deal with Microsoft is not necessarily a bad thing. All the doomsday predictions of the Novell deal were just hot air, and Novell remains an important player in the Linux world. The Ubuntu team certainly has no problem using the patches that Novell sends upstream, or benefiting from projects like Mono.
Secondly, I just checked, and you can download a free copy of Mandriva. You can even go to Red Hat's FTP server can get a free copy of RHEL. Guess what you cannot get for free from Canonical? Support that does not involve an IRC channel or message board. Canonical also charges more for a single support license than Red Hat or Novell.
Fedora is Red Hat's declared desktop strategy, and the latest edition (Fedora 10) is excessively easy to install and use, and *just works,* under the same definition of "just works" that the Ubuntu fans use. Fedora is as suitable for "regular users" as Ubuntu is; in fact, beyond using the same desktop environment, the Ubuntu team uses a lot of the Fedora team's code. No to be a flame, but the reason I stated that as a one-way relationship is that the Ubuntu team does not send very much code upstream, at least compared with Fedora (and to be fair, Novell and Mandriva).
So your argument basically amounts to this: Novell and anything they sponsor is bad, because they have a deal with Microsoft, except when you need something they put a lot of work into like Mono, in which case it is OK, Mandriva is bad because they used to charge for some packages, and Fedora is not suitable for end users because you said so. But Ubuntu is OK because it is free, not involved in a Microsoft deal, and never mind the fact that they just rebrand the work of everyone else.
"Your suggestion is basically this: MS is really successful. Like, really really successful. If we were to just give a little bit of that success to other companies, many other companies would be successful as well. To achieve this distribution of success, we should break up Microsoft. Basically, you're advocating punishing success!"
Microsoft is not successful because they were selling the best software, or even the second best software. They are successful because of a good business strategy (regardless of the legality of it). Why should we care if that good business strategy is punished? A good business strategy does not improve our society; in fact the effect of Microsoft's monopoly position was to stagnate technological growth, especially in the operating systems, web browser, and office markets (not coincidentally, the three markets where Microsoft was most successful). It is not inherent to monopolies to cause that sort of stagnation, but when a company reaches the dominant position by selling middle or low-tier products, that is generally the effect.
Beyond that, Microsoft also used its success in one market -- operating systems -- to create a dominant position in other markets, killing competing, higher quality products. Why should we be afraid to punish this kind of behavior? The purpose of antitrust laws is not to punish successful companies, but to ensure that success is gained by being the best.
"Modesty and sexual conservatism, which are not unique to the Chinese culture, but rather understood and appreciated by almost all [organized] societies."
*cough*
Not sure which organized society you are from, by here in western civilization, sex is by no means modest or conservative. Maybe it is "supposed" to be, according to the evangelicals, but it is not. Nor is sexual conservatism appreciated, except by a small but vocal minority composed mainly of puritans.
In all likelihood, Microsoft would not actually remove IE, they would just create a registry key that enabled or disabled the web browser functionality. Such a key might already exist, put in place just in case the US government demanded that they remove IE from Windows.
Part of the problem is that people are not really guided by anyone. They hear quips hear and there about "Linux is secure," and have no idea what that means or why. They also hear things like, "Ubuntu is easy, you don't have to be an expert," again, not knowing what that means, and then they think to themselves, "I'll go for the secure approach with Ubuntu!" and install it.
It is difficult to blame them, since they really do not know what Linux is, what Ubuntu is, or even what Windows is. They should have done more research, but did not.
All modern desktop distros are as functional and easy to use as Ubuntu. We have moved past the days of dicking about with autoconf and makefiles for hours just to get X11 to start up. Ubuntu is not really special; the Ubuntu team just got lucky, because Mandriva was on the verge of collapse right at the time when Ubuntu was getting started, so they rushed in to fill the void of "easy desktop linux." Fedora also works out of the box now (and yes, before someone gives me an Ubuntu-worked-Fedora-didn't story, I have plenty of stories of Ubuntu not working when Fedora did; so what?), Mandriva is back on its feet, OpenSUSE is less of a pain, etc. Seriously, why do people focus on Ubuntu?
Except that TV is a hell of a lot better for broadcast. Why do people assume that computers are automagically better for every possible task? Sometimes, computers are not better. Not yet. Some day, maybe, but not in January 2009.
"Whereas film could be re-mastered to higher quality"
Only to a point. The particles on the film that actually compose the picture are effectively pixels, and you can only attempt to remaster to some maximum quality before the limitation becomes apparent.
"As we move towards digital photography, the limitations of the format are going to become apparent as the technology progresses to the point where today's 16MP shots simply don't have enough detail to compete with 8x10 sheets of Kodachrome."
Except that digital photography can and does compete with film quality. The film photographers I know do not dispute that, they have moved on to claiming that there are things that can be done to photographs with film that cannot be done digitally; while they are correct, the techniques they describe are not common needed, and are not technologically impossible with a digital camera.
Digital formats will prevail in the end, simply because they are more versatile. It is easy to store digital photographs, easier to make copies, easier to print, and altogether less expensive and less polluting. This is not like film-vs.-tape, this is more like film-vs.-painting.
Everything about him is historic! He has darker skin than any other president, and look: he is being photographed with a digital camera! No presidential portrait has ever been digitally produced before! No presidential portrait has ever featured a person with his skin tone!
Yes I know, but 4.2 is still not officially released. Also, the GP said that 4.1 was almost feature complete compared with 3.5.x, so there was no reason to bring up 4.2. Anyway, I am looking forward to 4.2, hopefully the Fedora guys package it quickly when it is released.
The only way this will change is if someone is held to account for it. Who better than the leader of the executive branch? Future Presidents will need to be even more aware of technology, and this would serve as a good reminder of that. Obama should ensure that he has a competent IT staff running the white house computers, and that proper backup and archival processes are put in place; Bush should have done so as well, but did not.
This is a problem with freedesktop.org not specifying how l10n and i18n should be handled on Linux systems, not the fault of KDE. There is no more reason to blame KDE than to blame GNOME for not respecting language settings from KDE.
http://www.youtube.com/t/terms
That is what I am worried about. It is a good thing CSPAN is still around, so that we can record this stuff on our DVRs, but if CSPAN is taken off the air one day because of the availability of things like YouTube...
"YouTube Service to a user's device in such a manner that the data is intended for real-time viewing and not intended to be copied, stored, permanently downloaded, or redistributed by the user. Accessing User Videos for any purpose or in any manner other than Streaming is expressly prohibited."
That is from the TOS. There is no mention, anywhere in that clause (Section 5, subsection B), of copyrights or the public domain. It is literally against the law to try to save videos from YouTube on your hard disk drive. It is particularly troubling that the government is using YouTube to distribute videos, because it means that either they are preventing you from storing a permanent copy of the content, or encouraging you to ignore the TOS in order to save a copy (which means the government is telling you to break the law). I would not be surprised if, when put this way, members of congress would be troubled by it; I doubt, however, that they view it in this light. More likely, our elected officials view YouTube as an Internet version of broadcast TV, which is a very misguided view of the service.
Furthermore, look at things like HDCP, the move to digital cable and now digital broadcasts, and "broadcast flag" technologies. Some day in the future, CSPAN might be un-recordable, or un-recordable without special DVR services from a cable, satellite, or TiVo-style company, which are limited and prevent truly permanent storage. It probably will not be a deliberate thing, but simply a result of politicians who are not experts in technology and do not realize the implications of digital media and broadcasts.
Which is unfortunate but true. Most people do not care about their government.
Even more unfortunate is that I cannot download these videos, at least not without violating the TOS, and so I cannot store my own copies of those proceedings.
It has nothing to do with packaging. He had the Dutch i18n packages installed, but the package manager does not (and should not) go into a user's home directory and start messing with their settings. The problem was that after setting his l10n in GNOME, the change is not reflected for KDE/Qt; the original system install was in the US-en locale, he made the change afterward, which is not uncommon.
OpenOffice.org, at least version 2.x, is GTK+...
"4.1 is nearly just as featureful as the 3.5.x line ever was."
It is? Funny, I am using it right now, and really, it is not. ArK4 is not even close to ArK3, Konqueror4 is nowhere near Konqueror3 (unless you count functionality that doesn't even work), there is no global configuration for adding SSL certificates and the only configuration that has anything to do with that is broken and hidden in Konqueror, and half the KParts components that were embeddable in KDE3 are either nonexistent or not embeddable in KDE4.
Don't get me wrong, I like KDE a lot, I think it beats GNOME in terms of usefulness. But KDE 4.1 has a LONG way to go before catching up with the 3.5 branch.