Wrong! He definitely works on Emacs. Just read the mailing list sometime.

Israel is the aggressor here. They have continuously tried to provoke a response from Hamas. They are not stupid, they know that if they murder their leader, then they will retaliate with rocket attacks. That was what broke the cease fire being negotiated with Egypt. Israel does not want to negotiate, doesn't even recognize Hamas or that Palestine exists. If they want peace, then why are they so vehemently against Palestine getting observer status in the UN? Why are they hi-jacking aid ships going to Gaza on international water? Why are they expanding their settlements on the West Bank? You see, it most definitely is a numbers game as your opinions most definitely are shaped by how many dollars each side has to lobby politicians and buy propaganda for. Numbers do mean shit. If you can't by yourself deduce that if Israel manages 1200 kills in a month, Palestine 28 in 10 years, then that means that Israel hardly is an innocent victim. Good luck and continue deluding yourself.

There is something called "proportionality" too. Rocket attacks have taken exactly 28 lives since 2001. Compared to only the Christmas offensive in 2008 that killed over 1200 Palestinians. The planned attack is not because of rocket attacks, it is because there is an election coming up in Israel in about a month. Nothing improves the chances of an incumbent to be reelected as much as a fresh war to show he is tough on the "terrorists."

Developing a Linux distro isn't cheap. Even if they are mostly just assembling free software components, it still costs money to create a reasonably polished user experience. Canonical seem like a decent enough company and have sponsored lots of conferences for example. Back in the day you could request install cd:s from them which they sent you free of charge so that you could give to friends and family. So why not be nice back and let them have some small Amazon affiliate income? If that's what it takes to keep Ubuntu running, it's fine by me.

All operators log text messages so it would be trivial to see if his story checks out or not.

And why the hell wouldn't they be just as obsessed? Are Indian astronauts worth less than American ones? You seem prejudiced.

Here is the documentation for GObject. This is just some of the stuff you have to read up on because c doesn't have classes like every other modern language. Good luck writing abstract classes and interfaces in GObject. It's doable but you need to really know all the arcane details about the type system before you get it right. You'll need about 150 lines of boilerplate in one .c and one .h file, maybe 100 if your code is compact. Stuff that isn't funny at all to write because you could accomplish the same thing with about 10 lines of Python or C#. It's ok if you think I'm an unskilled programmer and that is why it takes me longer to code c. That is beside the point. The point is that most programmers either don't want to program in c (like me) or can't. They are not going to contribute to gnome.

That's exactly what I meant. Vala is one of those things that could, not "save" Gnome, but at least make it much more fun to develop for. If one has taken the time to compare the huge amount of boilerplate you need to implement basic GObjects in C compared to the equivalent Vala code, the huge benefits become obvious. Vala is even binary compatible with plain C code, yet it is treated as the unwanted step child of the Gnome project. It's stuff like that that could make Gnome so much attractive to developers, yet if the idea doesn't originate from within Redhat, former Sun or Novell the probability of it suceeding is close to nil.

Is C. GNOME is still 98% built using C which is crazy in this day and age. And not modern, pretty nice c99, but ancient c89 because the latest GNOME has to compile on some 20 year old Solaris workstation otherwise Sun wont support the project. Now Sun is gone and Oracle doesn't give a shit. Novell has given up on using GNOME as a way to push Mono and only Redhat remains. Maybe stuff will change now because previously gnome has been incredibly resistant to change that is not initiated from within one of those three companies.

I want to see more changes in Gnome not less. And I want them to finally realize that they are spending 10x as much effort writing gui components in C as they would have in C#, Java or any other managed language.

I dont think the parent is talking about the same kind of "ego" as you. Unfortunately, it is not only the arrogant jerks that are seen as having an "overinflated sense of ego," even the most humble developer can have that accusation thrown at him or her in the wrong environment. You may be very good at something, you may also be aware of it and that most of your peers aren't as good at it. That's all it takes to have an overinflated ego because people will sense that you know it and will feel inferior. Doesn't matter if you are as friendly and humble as can be. And that is why people like us want to work at Google.

Undoing mod

Great list of steps. But I'd like to point out that even if you are following all those rules to the letter, you can still get called a creep. The threshold for what is acceptable is much higher the more social skills you got. To take a relation forward you have to cross the line some way or the other. Preferably in the safest manner possible, when you have assured that she is ready for a kiss attempt and you have controlled every variable you can think of. But there is still the possibility that she is married and you misread all her signals totally. Which is a risk that has to be taken. So if you are to scared of ever doing anything for fear of being called a creep, then you will not get any chicks.

Come on.. Do you really think it is so bad that they are asking for some compension for, in your own words, their "awesome" software? If you can't stomach the ads, the premium version retails for $24.95. Damn cheapskates.

That's not an argument in favor of legalizing drugs, but an argument for restricting the access of tobacco and alcohol. Such as only selling it to adults, in bars, outlawing attempts to market it to children and so on.

Let's assume all other drugs are no more dangerous or costly for society than alcohol. Then if the cost for alcohol is X, and alcohol + N other drugs are legal, the total cost becomes (X+1)*N which is clearly much larger than X. It is a really stupid argument to say that "well other drugs aren't any more bad than alcohol, so they should be legal too!" because alcohol is bad enough.