The biggest trouble I have with gnome is the designers constant push to force me using my computer their way 'for my own good'. No, sorry, I won't, thank you very much. I've used almost every other GUI / desktop manager around, none has tried so constantly to take away my freedom to organize the way I want to work. To add insult to injury, Gnome color schemes and icon design always seem to lag 10 years behind current fashion. Gnome reminds me of my childhood in the cold war era. Although I was born in western europe, it feels like soviets are rolling their tank divisions through my computer. You wait months in a line waiting for next release, just to hear : 'there's no more resize button, get away, and if you're not happy, praise tell me, comrade, why would you need one ? Didn't you know resize buttons are antisocial ?'. And you end up living in a concrete shack, decorated by shades of gray, praising the vision of the komintern. Just say no.

If you're thinking about the one I'm thinking, the answer is definitely YES, It's an old fashioned steamy pile of shit, face it and be a man about it. Wishful thinking and head burying in the sand won't change this. Neither will shouting while pounding with your little pink fists on your keyboard like a baby being weaned.

Linuxconf is what introduced me to the 'immutable' attribute of ext2fs. After being bitten a couple of time with a reset of my soundcard parameters (specific ones at that, it was an IBM laptop with strange all-in-one video+sound chip), I sought a solution, and I finally chattr'ed the config file to +i. End of the problem.

So in a way, I'm grateful to linuxconf for enticing me into learning more deeper and arcane knowledge of linux. But that's about all I found it useful for.

Linuxconf is what introduced me to the 'immutable' attribute of ext2fs. After being bitten a couple of time with a reset of my soundcard parameters (specific ones at that, it was an IBM laptop with strange all-in-one video+sound chip), I sought a solution, and I finally chattr'ed the config file to +i. End of the problem.

You saved me the hassle of torturing english to say the same thing, albeit with lot of spelling and grammar atrocities intermixed.

... is definitely Jeremy Bentham, in my book (if you're not in the know, go straight to the "auto-icon" section of the article).

I'm not so sure, but as I previously told I don't deal with US laws. The reason I have trouble to admit your opinion is because it's akin to what romans used to call a probatio diabolicum, that is to say an impossible proof to bring. The usual judiciary way to deal with such proofs is to gather evidence that the situation is abnormal - abrupt termination of service - and the given reason is too general to be satisfactory - 'breach of TOS' without specific motivation. Then the burden of proof is shifted on the shoulders of the defendant who is the only one in position to bring the proof to the court.

As of your first statement, it certainly depends upon it is considered a statutory question or a common law one, but I have no clue to answer that.

... but I have formal training in law science, and just because everyone here seems to think contract law applies, I would like to know if there are no other grounds to file such a suit upon. Namely, I personally wouldn't go the contract way, I'd rather fight on an undue and abrupt discriminatory situation. Going out of contract law in favor of a more general civil tort (is that the name ?).

I think it would be possible to prove that while a majority of person have equal access to the service, having one's account terminated for no apparent reason is a breach of equality of rights. That would leave the burden of the proof on FB shoulders to actually prove this breach of equality wasn't unlawful and based upon objective reasons.

Admittedly, this is just an hypothesis.

...When I need them ? You deserve at least "+6 insightful" on this one.

Not so bleak ?! Sir are you kidding ? 1/3 of the student have a proper scientific education, about 2/3 are taught that science and religion competes for truth, which is absolutely wrong at least from a scientific point of view, but also from a real religious point of view I suspect, and goes to Sunday school everyday. How can that be positive ?

Science and religion do not compete for truth, they don't oppose, they are completely orthogonal :

• Science, because "it just works, bitch !" don't care for fairy tales and has no patience nor reason to bend to the will of every loon out there. A science teacher should not either, or else lets change the job description to "philosophy teacher", but then, think about including every other cosmological mythologies from other nations in the curriculum for equity.
• Religion, on the other hand, is indeed very weak in the heart of those that can be unsettled by the beauty of the universe as it is unveiled every day by scientists. True believers I'm sure worship the creation even more when they understand the true depth and beauty of it : Self generating code, yeah baby !

Don't touch anything ! I love it !

I did a couple of anaglyphs myself for the thrill. Some landscapes in color, and some still lifes in black and white. Very easy with either Gimp or Photoshop : take 2 pictures slightly apart, decompose each into RGB, discard red layer of left picture and compose back with left pic GB + right pic red. Watch b&w anaglyphs through red and green color lens filters (which you must already have if you're half serious about b&w photography making anyway). Use blue filter instead of green if you have one, or you're watching some color pictures.

As a novelty, it's quite funny and interesting. But as a photographic device, it's way too formulaic to get mainstream. When I want to drive the onlooker eye to whatever I was interested in when I took the picture, I use depth of field and an opened diaphragm. A very narrow plane of focus going straight through the point of interest of the image with everything else ever so slightly blurred is much, much more easy on the eye and powerful on the mind.

3D still pictures are boring because they display almost unlimited sharpness and in the process the viewer gets lost into many uninteresting background details instead of feeling sympathy between his vision and the photographer's intent.

At first glance, I could understand our fellow english speakers being uneasy about the way to handle this french (and spanish) word, but I then I realized the proper french pronunciation is extremely close to the zodiacal sign "libra" ; one just need to cut short of the 'a' and jump straight into the 'O' of office, like 'librOffice' (in french, terminal 'e' are muted).

Not much to fuss about. And face it, the world of F(L)OSS software is not as much US centered as the computing world generally is. Europe contributes as much as north america to it, and the countries expanding the more rapidly upon FOSS softwares are in south america.

I'm personally quite happy for once to be given a software name I can understand, write and speak about without feeling a bit awkward.

You're thinking of Lavoisier ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier ). To paint him as a mere "tax collector" is mild understatement. He was one of the 26 shareholders of the french (partially private) "IRS", making him one of the wealthiest noble in France before the Revolution. This lead him to his tragic fate after the fall of the monarchy.

Right. Let's talk about gravity, now, shall we ? A little, easily reproduced experiment involving an apple, without much purpose except launching rockets in outer space and missiles on terrorists.

I'd really wish to hear your opinion on the physical cause of that little phenomenon.