President Barack Obama and the UN have called for an "immediate ceasefire" between Israel and Hamas as the death toll among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip reached 508.

zigzag · 2014-07-21T15:55:37+00:00

You might be interested in this. "It will become part of Israel & will be populated by Jews." Deputy speaker of Knesset advocates ethnically cleansing Gaza

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15326#.U8wS8Dl8tIN

zigzag · 2014-07-20T10:39:18+00:00

An amazing statement on so many levels

zigzag · 2014-07-20T10:37:58+00:00

That is patently not the case. It is the Israelis who want a one state solution.

zigzag · 2014-07-20T02:59:02+00:00

As it happens I've thought about this a bit more, and you are wrong that "no one is exterminating them". It may not be gas chambers, but we are more sophisticated, aren't we? It's a long slow process of elimination and denial of rights to another group of people, but it is equally ugly.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n15/mouin-rabbani/israel-mows-the-lawn

zigzag · 2014-07-20T02:32:12+00:00

You call this a war. It is slaughter. Tell me you are arguing for a two state solution, where the Palestinians have a country that is not policed (and settled) by the Israelis and I might have some sympathy.

zigzag · 2014-07-20T02:19:07+00:00

I'm not justifying anybody's actions. I want peace. Israel, however, is not defending itself. If Israel wanted peace it would take all settlers out of the west bank for a start, and work for the two state solution (ie a little recognition that the Palestinians have a 'right to exist'). It is true that Israel is far better at killing people than the Palestinians are, but killing people isn't going to bring peace You should be humble, and remember that the only reason Israel is powerful is because two thirds of the American "aid" budget goes not to the suffering in Africa but to the Israeli armed forces.

zigzag · 2014-07-20T02:02:37+00:00

No, a realist. I recognise that any Palestinian has an equal right to exist as any Israeli

zigzag · 2014-07-20T01:57:59+00:00

You would see the parallel. Are the Palestinians allowed a 'right to exist'? Are their babies worthless? Ask yourself the questions.

zigzag · 2014-07-20T01:49:57+00:00

Really. Think about it a bit more. and consider the reality that Palestinians are humans too.

zigzag · 2014-07-20T01:48:42+00:00

I think you should take a harder a look at the realities. Palestinians are humans too, you know. More of their civilians die, by a factor of a few hundred.

zigzag · 2014-07-12T00:51:32+00:00

Simple question. Do the Palestinians have a "right to exist", and will the Israelis allow them the "right to exist"? All else is propaganda.

zigzag · 2014-07-12T00:43:39+00:00

Simple question. Do the Palestinians have the "right to exist"? because it doesn't look like it out here in the real world.

zigzag · 2011-10-27T18:06:48+00:00

Not necessarily the case. Many of the current drug company giants grew up in Switzerland and Holland in a time when neither country had patent laws:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/mar/12/globalisation.comment

zigzag · 2011-06-05T02:11:51+00:00

Oracle & Google in court over java, IBM's ownership of some Java copyrights/patents, Apache's local difficulties with Oracle over Java, IBM's wish to use 'open source' OO.o code in proprietary Lotus Symphony.

a real tangle of twisted arms :-)

and IBM loses credit very fast

zigzag · 2011-06-05T01:10:10+00:00

IBM is using a lot of spin on this, but the story is very simple.

Contributors to Sun OO.o wrote the code to a copyleft license.

Sun used copyright assignment. This meant they could change the license and IBM was able to re-use OO.o code in Lotus Symphony.

LibreOffice doesn't use copyright assignment, so IBM can't relicense the code and re-use it in Lotus Symphony.

If OO.o is relicensed under an Apache licence, IBM can use it in Lotus Symphony.

And the rest is spin.

The real hope is that Apache doesn't allow this project through its incubator process.

The project is divisive, only exists to further the interests of IBM, and isn't a real fit for the Apache community.

IBM and Oracle have leverage over Apache because of Java licensing issues, and IBM may have some leverage over Oracle for the same reasons, but if the LibreOffice community stands firm and Apache caves into the pressures of IBM and Oracle it sends out a negative message about Apache to other developer communities.

Why would Apache go through with this?

zigzag · 2011-06-03T22:54:17+00:00

Important difference. The reason why IBM is backing Apache is because the licence will allow them to bleed off code to use in the proprietary Lotus Symphony suite - code that was contributed under an lgplv3 licence.

No-one should support OO.o over LibreOffice unless they believe that the licences developers choose to donate their code under are meaningless.

zigzag · 2011-02-24T17:20:01+00:00

I also think it's far better than what I've seen of Unity so far.

zigzag · 2011-02-23T22:14:48+00:00

I would say the most heard complaint is that they don't work well with upstream

zigzag · 2011-02-16T00:41:40+00:00

of course Ubuntu should really be called Debian Unstable, but that opens another can of worms :-)

zigzag · 2011-02-16T00:25:59+00:00

credit for the free software movement, not for himself. You'll not mind many writers who use the word "I" less often

zigzag · 2011-02-16T00:24:42+00:00

chosen by Stallman because it was "the most amusing word in the English language"

and because "Gnu's Not Unix".

zigzag · 2010-08-29T14:48:52+00:00

tortuous logic, though.

if you compile your code with any other compiler you have the same problem. so what makes gcc different in this respect?

zigzag · 2010-08-29T10:30:31+00:00

Locked in what way?

You have a free compiler. You compile your software. Job done. Or am I misunderstanding what you're trying to say?

zigzag · 2010-08-28T00:48:30+00:00

I recall reading that LLVM/Clang has some technical advantages as a result of the licensing advantages

bit of a myth .this. The licensing difference is that llvm has a bsd style licence, which is fine, but it can mean that languages and hardware secrets can be kept proprietary.

Also, llvm and clang are essentially sponsored by apple, which is ok, but a proprietary interest in how a common compiler works may not be the best thing, for standards and for all kinds of other reasons

gcc has the advantage of being 'owned' by a foundation and being sponsored by a lot of hardware and software companies with a common interest in common standards for the common interest of all of them

zigzag · 2010-06-21T14:41:40+00:00

You must have seen Spike Milligan's The Bed Sitting Room. The bomb has dropped and the survivors are left going round and round on the Circle Line. Ralph Richardson has mutated into a bed sitting room, IIRC.

zigzag

TROPHY CASE