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  Wed Feb 17

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  Protect your freedom!

  
  
  
  

• Small print in big fat letters

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
  
  Cartoon artwork created with Stripgenerator; dialogue copy/pasted from #ubuntu-offtopic on Freenode.
  

  ---

What is the Web 2.0? Friending, voting, and above all, comments! In the first installation of the new decade of tales from the offtopic, meet the luddite gord, and 2.0 enthusiasts Pici, rww, and mc44.

Yesterday, I announced my official approval of the “inverted” Clearlooks theme to be included in the list of usable things. Everyone was happy, no doubt. I hope the theme creators are recovering from the resulting party nicely. Always concerned with the quality of Ubuntu’s IRC services, elky inquired about the certification status of #ubuntu-offtopic. I hope this installation of tales from the offtopic clears everything out, and everyone can continue enjoying their time on the channel!

Edit: I guess you’re probably thinking, “pffft there’s no such thing as a topyli starburst sticker of approval!” Guess again! Of course there is one, kindly (and 100% officially) created by mc44.

Note to self: when organizing a debate, pick a subject on which some of the participants disagree.

The supposedly big news yesterday was Skype suggesting that their Linux client will be liberated shortly. However, I feel that in communications, open, standard protocols are more important than client implementations, so the news did not make all that big an impression.

The correct way to handle VoIP calls is using open protocols such as SIP or XMPP, no matter how the client side is arranged. Gizmo and Google have gotten this right: both have their own respective desktop and mobile clients, while the protocols are standard enough to allow us to hack together our own client implementations such as Empathy or Ekiga.

I wanted to see how our distinguished community feels about this and decided to start a debate on #ubuntu-offtopic. I failed miserably, and the discussion ended up being rather short. Please allow topyli and gord to demonstrate, if you will.

In a group effort of humanist logic, I’m pretty sure our team made everyone on #ubuntu-offtopic feel a bit less insecure and much more comfortable about ourselves. Bugs in our logic are not welcome, but we accept donations. Beer, cookies and hugs would be nice.

This intellectual achievement brought to you by magnetron, pantsman, netyire, aprilhare and topyli.

In real life, is the chase really better than the catch? Fortunately we have cartoon art that mirrors real life! I know there’s a gord around, which may break the spirit of a few international treaties, but I assure you no snuxolls were seriously harmed.

I suggest everyone makes up their own mind :-)

Traditionally, people in Finland (and elsewhere too, I would imagine) are pretty stupid about handling of fireworks on New Year’s Eve. It’s not ignorance – we all know how that blowing up stuff in your face can be hazardous to your health. We simply have enormous amounts of faith in nothing bad ever possibly happening to our own person. We set a new record of sadness this year by having two (documented) accidents even the day before :-(

We on #ubuntu-offtopic naturally care a lot about the welfare of our youth. After all, they are the future of #ubuntu-offtopic! Our discussion started off on a rather pessimistic tone, but perhaps there is something to learn here.

Then again, perhaps not. Who knows! Featuring topyli and zaapiel:

Have fun but keep your head, kids. Happy New Year!

Today, nickspoon was unhappy about the fact that the last installation of tales was published so long ago. I guess regular releases would be better since Ubuntu users are used to them! Sorry about that, but like LjL noted, quality matters as well. (Ubuntu does get good quality regularly because they’re supported by such an awesome community quality assurance, but alas, great art such as tales from the offtopic can only be achieved by lonely geniuses.)

Like any respectable author however, I do take notes continuously, which means that when being tied to the Whipping Post, as i was today, I was able to search my trusty Tomboy archive for worthwile discussions I had thought funny in the past.

Here’s one from December 2, 2007 then! mc44 advocates Web apps, but will still give IRC to Chatzilla since while it’s not a Web application, at least it comes from Mozilla. He can also back his opinion up with evicence. wobblywu is suspicious, topyli is confused as ever.

Our desktops still rely on many very old technologies and ideas. Motif is not even a very old tookit if you look at the age of the whole WIMP metaphor (windows, icons, menus, pointer). As Pici, genii and TiredWolf reminded us today, this is in fact true of most, if not all technology.

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