The argument is less over which one controls all of China than it is over which one is the "Real China". The current governing bodies of both refer to a "One China, Two Areas" rule which allows them to cooperate economically without fighting.

Having spent some time in Taiwan, the people there refer to themselves as Chinese, not Taiwanese. They don't speak Mandarin, they speak Chinese. Which is to say, their national identity is "Chinese" and that's what works for them. They also have a standing military that is completely independent of PRC.

That said, the only reason they can maintain that independence is because of how close they are tied to the US. RoC knows it, we know it, and Mainland China knows it.

Obligatory xkcd

I'm using a very me-centric definition of abrupt. I don't want it to stop and it's stopping before then, thus abrupt :-P

And counting back the years, you are correct. It was 05. It launched the same year I could buy beer.

The look of that one is instantly familiar, and I love it. I don't see a method of importing iGoogle settings though, and the widgets (gadgets on their site) look like it's using the ones hosted by Google. I would assume that Google's widget hosting is going away along with iGoogle.

I've taken Netvibes for a spin and it's working pretty well. There are a few things that make you aware it's an RSS reader and not a home page, but I think they'll clean those up )or give you the option to turn them off). Your iGoogle widgets won't transfer over when you import your settings, but they seem to have a pretty solid roster of widgets to pick from. All RSS feeds transferred properly, although I had to set the number of headlines to display again.

There are a couple of things I don't like about Netvibes so far. I don't want it to tell me how many stories are unread, especially in the title bar. I had to set the zoom level to 125% because the text was too small. And the widgets aren't as plentiful / don't work the same as the iGoogle widgets. That last one is to be expected. The first two should be fixable. It might be part of the "Refugee" theme I'm using? Not entirely sure yet.

Overall I'm happy with it though; it does update the RSS feeds much faster than iGoogle did.

With iGoogle shutting down in November as well, it's getting overlooked by all this talk of Google Reader. I've been using iGoogle since '04, and it coming to an abrupt end is unfortunate.

That said, it looks like Netvibes will import your iGoogle settings directly and supports the same interface. I'm going to sign up and try it out.

I've already installed and configured Feedly on my phone, tablet, and in Chrome, but it's not the experience I'm looking for. Feedly is all about being a newspaper. iGoogle was all about all of the headlines at a glance, sorted however you like, on one screen.

Other than Netvibes, has anybody found an alternative to iGoogle I should check out?

It's pretty bad, with all the "improvements" that they've made. I still get by here every once in a while - more, lately, in fact - but there's not much to see.

I hope things are well with you.

Glad to hear that she's doing well.

Sounds like she had a good share of luck. Glad to hear that she came through the surgeries ok. Hope that she makes a full recovery.

Likewise.

That's all. My best to you, and her, and her family.

Or in Irish: Lá breithe sona duit!

I hope that this day finds you well and happy. Best wishes for the coming year.

I do not get to Slashdot much these days, but some things are important. :-)

LiveJournal, hopefully just temporarily. There are about 45 of us on there now.

You're right about 2000. But it was never positioned as a consumer OS, and that's the line of reasoning. 98 -> ME -> XP -> Vista -> 7 -> 8. It breaks down if you include 95 or 98 SE, because neither of those truly sucked.

And yes, 7 is only decent compared to Vista. Not that I've used it much; I no longer own a Windows box (and my intention is never to have another one), and at work we use Server 2008. It is possible to turn off a lot of the nasty UI stuff, at least in the server OS.

That Windows 7 was pretty good, so Windows 8 will suck, in the tradition of Vista and ME.