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Perens Pushes "Sincere Choice" for Software
jalefkowit writes "Looks like Bruce Perens has found something to keep him occupied, now that he's parted ways with HP: the Register is covering his launch of a new political platform, "Sincere Choice", which he wrote to clarify the distinctions between the values of the open-source community and the Microsoft-funded Institute for Software Choice. Sincere Choice addresses several issues in critical to open software, including interoperability, competition by merit, open standards, and copyright."
Isn't it funny how the call for "open standards" always translates into "our version doesn't have half the features, so let's compete on what we have in common"?
You can forget Microsoft ever taking part in THIS initiative...
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
One thing I really like is the whole file format issue. Already OpenOffice is great with m$ office files. If the govt and other institutions were able to settle on open file formats then that basically knocks one leg out from m$. m$ will probably try their hardest not to have this happen , obviously.
I'm not so big on forcing the govt (even tho i am helping to foot the bill) use this or that. As long as there is no file format lock in, then Linux and other non-m$ os's have a better than good chance getting business. Spread the wealth again. If adopted somehow or thise gains wide attention, then there will be more of the pie for others. Good approach.
"Bruce Perens writes: "At the San Francisco Chronicle's SF Gate, Hal Plotkin points to Sincere Choice as the right compromise for an IT renaissance in Government including both Open Source and proprietary software. The article is extremely flattering to yours truly, but a good push in the right direction from a well-respected commentator." "
Hmmm ... reminds me of Tobacco Research Institute founded by guess whom? For years they've been claiming that the smoke is good for you. Expect the same level of integrity from Institute for Software Choice.
The menu links work fine for me in Mozilla 1.1 in win xp prof., but Moz messes up the location of the menu on subpages.
Why should MS have to change? It is after all their product, and they know that even with shitty proprietary standards, they can still dominate the market, so why should they open up those standards and let all the *nix people in? Personally, I like the idea of open standards. But, keep in mind, if someone wrote a proprietary *nix file format and it ended up being widely used, MS is going to come saying "Oh, that should be an open standard, give it to us!". Now, since everyone wants MS's monopoly to die, they would more than likely say 'no'. Same thing, shoe is just on the other foot.
No, I'm not on MS's payroll.
Can all fish swim?
...but never will. I'm no Microsoft fan, but there are a few things they've done right (!) - Office and DirectX come to mind. I like Office. Sure, it's bloated, but it works pretty damn well for most people. I like DirectX because I like games, and they all seem to be coded around it. So while I may never use a Microsoft OS, I'd love to see some real software choice. I'd love to be able to run a native install of Office on Mandrake. I'd love to be able to play linux versions of more games. If MS would realize that they can sell software without selling you the whole OS I'm sure they could sell some apps for other OS's and still sell Windows. That's all I want.
do not read this line twice.
From the "Institute for Software Choice" news page, they provide a link entitled "ISC response to SF Gate, Perens Article" (/. discussion of that article here).
Their link? A Microsoft Word document.
ISC: If you are an organisation claiming to promote open standards, why in the world are you releasing data in the very, very closed DOC format?
MORTAR COMBAT!
Has he been hit with trademark infringement yet?
Any other ideas?
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
They should have to change because they are a monopoly. Monopolies, because they can change greater than the marginal cost of their product (including what economists call a normal profit to compensate for the opportunity cost of pursuing other ventures), should not not subject to the same laissez-faire rules as truly competitive enterprises, else market distortion occur (this is what is happening right now).
Okay, I haven't hit the website because it appears to be /.'d already, but I think you're misreading the quote.
.doc format...
How I read that is that just because company X uses software A, company Y shouldn't have to use software A as well just to talk to company X. Instead, there should be clearly documented standards for talking to each other (whether that be via file, socket, carrier pigeon, etc) so that company Y can use software B and both A and B will blindly think that the other side is using the same software.
It's not about letting employees run rampant installing software willy-nilly. It's about having the choice on what you want installed -- and not forced on you because you have to read file X, and it's format is undefined. This is why virtually all companies use MS Office - without it you're screwed when someone sends you a Word document that has data in it you need.
The company I work for is currently integrating systems with several other companies - sending data back and forth. We're writing the specs for that interface and laying them out very explicitly. Our end is a C++ backend, Java frontend, all running on Unix servers. But I don't give a crap what freaking system you're running on your end, just that you can read and write the data in the specified format.
Of course, the irony is that these documents are being exchanged in Word
They claimed that they would respond to my request shortly, and I'll be sure to post an update if one should arrive.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Depends on your granularity in defining "user". If a "user" can be a corporation, then his statement makes plenty of sense. Only if you look down into the individuals inside any given corporate (or governmental) entity does this become an issue.
That's right, they will help you out with the tough choices for todays business needs. Like should I stay with windows 2000? or move to XP? or the choice between Windows 98 and Me is always nice to have. Or when you buy a new computer they give you the choice of Windows xp home edition or Pro. Now your having trouble's decieding, aren't cha? becuase there are just too many choices.
> ... and government should all be free to set their own policies regarding what sorts of software they will acquire and use.
I'd object to this. Governments should be required to use only software that is amenable to public examination. Otherwise the citizens will have no control over or access to their government's data.
We can see this clearly in the new voting equipment that's being installed in parts of Florida. They've bought equipment that contains closed, proprietary software. Citizens can't validate the outcome of elections using this software. Attempting to do so may even be illegal, under the DMCA. So anyone who can bribe the software vendors can control the election.
In general, people should be free but governments shouldn't. Governments should be accountable to their citizens. Proprietary software would be a major barrier to such accountability.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Wow! Did you totally miss the point, or what!
The idea is that the IT department should be able to pick whatever application best suits their needs based on features, price, etc, rather than having to use a particular app because it's the only one that supports a particular file format.
That seems like a pretty good idea to me, but perhaps you're too lazy and/or stubborn and/or religious to see the benefits of it?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
OK, reading it again, I agree with your assessment and that my interpretation was wrong. I think it could be phrased a lot better, however. In fact, it's really a pretty useless paragraph. This is simply redundantly arguing again for "Open Standards", which is his first paragraph.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
-
Validate www.softwarechoice.org
-
Validate sincerechoice.com
Well, I think it's clear who stands for open standards and interoperability.If you'd like to know more about how to use validators to make your websites interoperable, read my article Use Validators and Load Generators to Test Your Web Applications.
Thank you for your attention.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
this irony will be lost on the 90% of the world that has Word installed and can read .doc documents
.txt ones.
.txt document.
.doc (we have a bit more leeway with MS Office products in my department than most do).
.doc format attachment do not even warrant a reply, other than a form letter requesting that they present the information in another format, if they want me to read it.
.doc format. You're missing out on the input of hundreds of very, very talented SUN and other UNIX software engineers.
not even 90% of the world even own computers, let alone computers powerful enough to run the latest versions of Word (which are incompatible with earlier versions).
as easily as
If I walked down the halls of the building I work in, I would pass the offices of over 500 software developers, and less than 10% would be able to read Word documents. 100% of them could read a
If I went to the next building at my complex, and did the same thing, there would be even fewer who could read
If I walked through my neighborhood, less than 10% of the people even own a computer.
Most people who send me a
Shrug, keep sending your
MORTAR COMBAT!
Word is a nightmare for any complex document. As your document gets larger it degrades -- strange lockups, images jumping around, strange inconsistencies (the document looks different on win98 then it does on win2k, oh shit, what is our publisher using?), and things that just don't work right because you cant edit the codes by hand.
Similarly, the DirectX API is a mess, which to MS's credit they are working on fixing (lots of positive changes in DX8), but it's still a mess. You also have to remember anytime you use DirectX or Word, MS has you exactly where they want you - using their products on their OS ... so they didn't really do the world a favor. Overall DirectX did some good though as modern games just wouldn't be possible without it (imagine the development costs/times for writing drivers for every 3d accelerator).
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Bruce seems to be the kind of guy who is prepared to stand up for his principles, and the principles embodied in his work on the Open Source movement.
I'm sure many of us would not be prepared to quit our day-jobs because our employers were infringing on our ability to advocate our beliefs.
Many thanks Bruce, for not compromising your position and selling out to HP, and I hope Sincere Choice is well-recieved the world over.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
It boggles the mind why OSS/FS word processors keep developing new formats. Who cares if the format is "open" if no one uses it? MS Word .Doc files are insufficent as a standard because they're undocumented, which is why converters are still flakey in many cases.
RTF, on the other hand, does almost everything you need. It's missing OLE (99.999% of don't people need that), and it's missing VB Macros (100% of people don't need that), but it covers everything that most people are going to do. It's fully and completely documented. It's Word-compatible. It's WordPerfect-compatible. It's compatible with most OSS word processors. Heck, with the right software it's Palm OS compatible!
Yet some OSS word processors (read: KWord) still don't support it. And they all invent their own formats. How does that encourage progression away from Ubiquitous MS Word?
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
But buried deep in this particular notion of interoperability is the following thought: a single format should be sufficient for all applications written for a specific domain. This thought suffers in two important ways:
- To differentiate their product, corporations must add new features; new features very often impose new requirements on persistence format and hence break interoperability.
- Standards bodies move far slower than the companies implementing said standards, often making true interoperability difficult.
I'm not really sure how to avoid these problems. For example, it is not sufficient to add (as has been suggested) a "generic app-specific XML container" to a given standard format. To properly reproduce a document, knowledge of the content in said container might be required.And as for problems with standards bodies: is it any wonder that Microsoft embraces and extends? Look, for example, at the current disaster of XML Schema, a standard wrought at the hands of academics. Anyone who has used XML Schema in a sophisticated manner can report that the standard lacks a coherent notion of cardinality. Should a company wait until this is repaired by committee, or should it simply embrace what has been done and extend it to meet current needs?
I agree that I misinterpreted what he said, but to your point, personally I would much rather have the Visio source file that I can further modify rather than a PDF that's completely static.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Matbe "Real Choice" or "True Choice" would be better.
Pretty fast turnaround on response, but I would have appreciated, oh, a "yes" or "no" or "we'll think about it"!
MORTAR COMBAT!
If only he were using an open-source format for his letters....
Microsoft has been convicted of abusing monopoly power under the Sherman Antitrust Act. Of course they are playing by different rules.
(Reality reasserts itself sooner or later.)
No it isn't every bit as reasonable. The Office Document readers are still platform dependant, and thus, not nearly as available as a pdf.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
No. More likely, you see a week of "We haven't heard about that declaration, so we can't comment..." followed by a couple weeks of "we're discussing our options..." followed by a "Of course, we'll publish our specs as soon as we have them ready..." followed by several months of "they're not ready yet, but you can be sure we will meet the deadline..." right up to the deadline. At that point, M$ will refuse to publish the spec and see who blinks.
So let me ask you this: Pretend you are the CTO of a sizable organization. You've been given the authority to issue such an untimatium to M$: publish your specs or we will refuse to use your software, any you have the authority to back up that threat. Up until the point of the deadline, you were assured that M$ would be publishing their spec. But now the deadline is here and you have to either blink (and continue to use M$ products even though you said you wouldn't) or call their bluff and declare that their products cannot be used within the organization you lead; all employees must find some other way to get their jobs done without creating any new documents in M$-proprietary format, without accessing any documents previously stored in a M$ proprietary format, without using any M$ tools, without communicating with any customer except through open protocols (if they send you a .doc document, you have to send it back and ask them to comvert it), without bidding on any job which ways "submit bids in M$Word
format...", etc.
Who do you think would blink?
Large organizations are more addicted to Microsoft than they care to admit to themselves. CTO's have spent half a decade getting high on Microsoft at the company's expense. I have yet to hear any kind of viable corporate-level Microsoft exit strategy which did not involve a half-decade of planning and lead time. Fact it, most large organizations will never break their Microsoft dependence. Instead, they'll continue paying the Microsoft tax and doing things the Microsoft way (as if no other way exists) until they are bankrupt, or swallowed-up by a leaner and more flexible organization which has no tolerance for their Microsoft addiction.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Since this entire argument is about computer stored files, anyone without a computer is pretty damn SOL. Maybe we should store all the data on paper. In Esperanto. After all, that's the official universal language, right?
.doc, and I guarantee further than not even 90% of Californians, by a great, great margin have that capability.
That is exactly one of the points of the Peruvian and Argentinian arguments against proprietary software. If they are going to be running their government on-line, then every citizen must have access. Thus, every citizen must have access to a computer capable of communicating with the government software. Thus, if the government wants to run itself on-line, it has to provide these computers.
It is much, much cheaper for the Peruvian government to set out terminals running free software than running Office XP.
The point is, the Peruvian government isn't going to make 90% of its people buy Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, and neither should the United States government. As more and more government services are offered on-line, is it fair to continue distributing those services in Microsoft Word format? Or is it more fair to ensure that the format is open, so that free software can be used?
Wow, way to take things out of context!
That is the context we are talking about. Specifically, the ISC's challenge to the governments of Peru, Columbia, Italy, and others, and the State of California requiring the use of open standards in all government computing services, and Bruce Parens' rebuke of that challenge. I guaranteee you that 90% of the people of Peru do not own computers capable of viewing
Thus, as I said, the state then has to provide the means to access, and it can either buy 1 million PCs running Windows XP, and Office XP, and "hope" that there are no surprses in licensing down the line, or it can run software built on open standards.
Of the personal computers in the US, the vast majority (90% or more I'd be willing to bet) are capable of reading a Word document.
Yes, technically my computer is "capable" of reading a Microsoft Word Document. I could go out and buy a copy of Office XP for $400 dollars, or whatever it costs nowadays. I could take the hours to download OpenOffice. But neither is a good solution to the problem, which is the closed format itself.
Shrug, keep your holier-than-thou attitude
Sorry if I came off that way, I am quite aware that I am a loser.
MORTAR COMBAT!
How come for me, the titles are sitting directly on top of the navigation bar? The site isn't complicated. I could hand-code that in five minutes. There's no excuse for it not working on any browser that wants to view it.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
No, it isn't. (And if you'll excuse my saying so, you're letting your prejudice show...)
PDF-format files are stored in an open format. You can get a viewer for PDF-format files for just about any hardware and operating system ever invented, and if there isn't one available for the hardware and operating system you want to read it on, you can create your own. You don't even need Adobe's permission to create it.
More to the point, you could create a reader for a computer and operating system invented tomorrow, even if Adobe were to cease to exist today. Even if the resulting viewer resulted in a negative impact to Adobe's profits (if, for example, it served a market they would otherwise profit by serving).
Compare to the collection of Microsoft Office Document Readers available from the web site you cite. Those are provided by Microsoft only for the operating systems they choose, and only supported to the extent they deem necessary. I couldn't locate any which were for an operating system other than MacOS or 16/32bit Windows, are there any? Unless Microsoft finds it profitable to invest the time and resources into supporting a hardware/OS you wish to use, it will not be supported. This also presupposes that Microsoft remains able to offer such support; a sudden Enron-style bankrupcy could kill support for even the profitable ones.
Basic communication tenets stipulate that both sides negotiate communication parameters to the greatest common denominator. Since the open PDF format can be supported on any platform, and Microsoft's format cannot, then a sender who does not otherwise know the receivers capabilities should assume the PDF is more acceptable than the alternative you suggest.
Not everyone runs on x86 (or even PPC). Even those who do are not always running a Microsoft (or other supported) operating system. You seem to be under the impression that Windows is the only thing which matters?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
An anonymous MicroSerf writes: However, how are we to know that this "Sincere Choice" initiative isn't simply a front for those who would want to force software of inferior quality upon an organization or government just because it is open source, while downplaying the advantages of more mature and/or feature-rich closed source products?
How about going to the web site and reading about their goals and principles? And how about presenting any misgivings you may have about the actual content of the web site, rather than questioning the personalities involved?
I don't think it was quite intended this way. He's not saying that IT departments should have no control over what their users install. He's more saying IT departments *should* have control over what software they are able to decide to standardize on. That way you can choose the slick Microsoft tools if your company does't need things customized or supported much, or you can choose Free Software tools if you need to be able to modify your toolchain to support your needs and have the resources to do so.
...new features very often impose new requirements on persistence format and hence break interoperability.
This does not necessarily follow - new features are usually additional features, implying that their persistent form will be an extension or compatible subtype of the existing format. Adding elements to well-formed (but not DTD-valid) XML file is a straightforward example.
Standards bodies move far slower than the companies implementing said standards, often making true interoperability difficult
This is a good realist position - interoperability is one thing, exact semantic equivalence allowing round-trip transfer of documents between MS Word, StarOffice, KDE Word etc. is quite another.
I suspect most people would put up with a lowest-common-denominator format such as RTF, as long as the bar wasn't set too low.
Why should MS have to change?
Because they are a convicted monopolist that uses their technology to illegally crush their competition.
even with shitty proprietary standards, they can still dominate the market
You seem to be implying that their proprietary file formats are a hindrance to their continued domination of the market..
In fact, it's because of their "shitty proprietary standards" that they still dominate the market. Think about it: If someone wants to compete with them, they change the format, which prevents their competition from interoperating with their new software.
You wrote: ``Just because I'm not a hard line FSF zealot doesn't mean that I work for Microsoft PR or anything of the sort."
I'm not a hard-line FSF zealot either -- in fact I think RMS is a obsessive jerk. However, everything you have so far posted convinces me at least one of the following is true:
(1) You work for Microsoft, either as a direct employee, a contractor, or a consultant with MSCE after your name;
(2) You have bought entirely into the myth that MS has created the Personal Computer, & does nothing but good for humanity;
(3) You idolize one or more of MS's employees, & think that they walk on water.
Let this thread end, before you prove any further that you are a distributor of FUD.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Jesus Christ, it's the same Slashbot BS 50,000 comments over. It's not done to lock people out. That "junk" you mention includes embedded pictures, and other embedded objects. XML can't do that. DOC is more of an object container than anything else.
Will you Linux freaks grow the eff up, or just admit you're jealous? Thanks.
What you said would probably not make an economist agree.
If you have open standards and interoperability, you lower the barrier to changing products. That tends to *help* superior products come out on top.
May we never see th
In my experience, RTF is no more compatible than cross platform DOC filters. It works most of the time, but it's still unreliable. An RTF created by one program may not work with another, even on the same platform. Your chances are a lot better if you stick to mainstream fonts, etc., but few people know which ones those are. If you can get everyone to agree which programs, versions, and fonts to use, RTF is workable, but it's still a big pain.
But I suppose everyone would rather use browsers that "support web site enhancing features" like screwing around with your browsing environment.
May we never see th
...if the DOC file got infected with a macro virus.
May we never see th
How about requiring government-purchased software to use only open protocols and formats? That would reduce vendor lock-in, and would make it possible for Microsoft to make a bid (they'd just have to open .doc).
May we never see th
Also, shouldn't an initial communication consist of a standard information format, (I suggest plain text), and then fork into proprietary formats only if both parties agree to standardize on that format?
But who wants to live in that world? I agree that open formats would be an improvement, but having a standard format is arguable more important. I like being able to send a document that 99% of the world can read without having to go through some negotiation process. I mean, what if we all had to call each other on the phone to ask what "plain text" format they used, ASCII or EBCDIC? Standards are good.
As for Visio, I agree that before sending a format where it's possible/probable that the recipient can't read, someone should check.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
OTOH... OpenOffice 1.0.1 is pretty damn impressive, too. There's really nothing you can do in Microsoft Office you can't do in OpenOffice, and OpenOffice is free. It's your call.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
You obviously have a twisted view of how the business world works. They designed it, with their resources, and built a worldwide infrastructure around it. Why the f**k should you automatically get rights to it? That's absurd, and so is 100% of this bullshit that Perens and RMS and company babble on about 24 hours a day. That's like saying Panasonic builds a radio and you should automatically get rights to their firmware (excluding the obvious reverse engineering). If it's someone else's product, guess what? You're dealing with a black box... there is absolutely no fucking reason in the world that they should give you the specs on a silver platter. That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard in my whole life, and so is all this bitching and whining that goes on constantly in the open source community. Let's see if I have this straight:
1) Company X invests millions of dollars designing and developing product Y.
2) Product Y succeeds immensely, costs money to buy (who would have thought?), and makes company X lots of money.
3) The GNU Crew comes along and wants to release a free clone of product Y, but demands that company X give them specs to product Y. (WTF?) They cite blah, blah, blah.
Listen, buddy. If you're so worried about the "Microsoft tax," I invite you to go draft and write up your own file format. And guess what? If it doesn't succeed (it won't) you're SOL. They beat you to it. If you actually think that they owe you something, like say, details of their designed product, well, you can eat my ass. Try approaching Ford and saying that you demand that they give you the designs/blueprints/schematics/secret design processes to their Explorer or Taurus. They will tell you to eff off, I guarantee it.
> Am I the only one
> reminded of the part in American History X where the skinhead girl starts screaming "NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER!"
> when she finds out that her ex-boyfriend is no longer a Nazi?
No further comment is needed.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Run "strings" on the file. It's at the end. A few people's names.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
There is always Alladin Ghostscript or the OS Ghostscript that trails a version or two behind the Alladin version (which is still effectively free). It still isn't easy to use and you have to still create the Postscript with the right info in it (the cpd file in an Adobe driver).
I used Visio commercially, hated it, and switched to Dia, which is IMHO one of the few pieces of open source software that beats the commercial alternatives (actually, haven't tried Rational Rose, which some people there seemed to like).
It takes *forever* to enter info into Visio.
May we never see th
SLIP was done on a napkin.
May we never see th
Well, after browsing his web site - I sure won't be signing up as a "member" of his political platform on software.
While much of what he says is fine, I take issue with the idea that there should be some sort of political pressure placed on any software firm to "avoid lock-in type licensing agreements".
Part of being a free country is allowing people to put together whatever type of sales contract they please. As it has been pointed out so many times before, nobody is placing a gun to the heads of I.T. purchasers, saying "Sign up on these terms, or else!" Vendors willfully agree to Micrsoft's "lock-in" agreements because they think the value for the dollar is there.
The proper way to fight these types of agreements is to offer competitive and compelling alternatives! As much as most of us here love Linux and other Unix OS's, they've not usually been compelling enough to home PC workstation vendors to choose them over Microsoft's offerings. Instead of taking a "sour grapes" attitude about this situation, it's much more productive to accept this fact and keep working on improving the alternatives.
Think: Less legislation and more innovation!
Sure, we all typically find common file formats useful.... I don't think there's much question of that. Fact is though, software companies will *always* invent proprietary file formats. For starters, they may wish to offer functionality that the competition doesn't yet offer. By using some "common file format", they might lose the ability to build the new features into the saved files.
.GIF, .JPG, .BMP, .TIFF or many other formats. You don't have to use Adobe's proprietary .PSD format. Same with the MS Office products. People can save their documents as ASCII text if they want, or a multitude of other formats (like WordPerfect). Not only that, but MS does offer freely downloadable document viewers for their Access databases, Excel spreadsheets, and Word documents. Someone running Windows (or likely even WINE in Linux) could at least view what they get in email with one of those viewer utilities - without spending another dime to license Office itself.
In my experience, the most commonly-used packages always provide alternatives. In Photoshop, for example, you can save your file as
The argument that a company is "required to buy MS software because another company uses it" just doesn't seem to hold a lot of water.
Good suggestion, and it might work... don't know that RTF can handle document revision markup though, and that's one of the needs. Along with embedded tables (which Word2000 rather sucks with) and cross-references (which Word also sucks with beyond the absolute basics).
After writing a mere 40 page doc speccing a new file format I've become more familiar with Word's limitations and how to work around some of them, but it's still the best tool for the job right now. We (meaning the new developers) are trying to move toward open standards and open source tools, but it's tough to bludgeon people who are used to the status quo.
What planet do you guys live on? On the one that I inhabit, all cars come with full shop manuals. You can simply order them, and for a few bucks you get one. They contain full schematics for the car. Ask your local mechanic; they'll show you a shelf of them.
Whereever did you get the idea that cars are "closed" or that it would take something special for the government to get shop manuals? Government fleets order the shop manuals as a matter of course. Nobody would ever consider doing otherwise.
The same thing would be a VERY good idea for computer hardware. It's not at all unusual for circuitry to contain undocumented sections that can be enabled or disabled in some subtle manner that's only documented in the diagrams.
IBM is notorious for this, and I've personally seen it in all sorts of equipment from many vendors. Usually it's an innocent omission, or something that is only used for hardware diagnostics. But sometimes real functionality can be and is masked this way.
If you don't believe this, you are incredibly innocent and naive.
I would personally be very surprised if the proprietary voting equipment being used in Florida didn't have such hidden capabilities that can only be discovered by examining the circuit diagrams. This is VOTING hardware, folks. Biasing the results can determine the election. If you trust them, you might as well not bother voting.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
... because the RTF Spec is published by ... (wait for it) ... Microsoft! There is a new "revision" of the spec for each new version of Word, and subsequent versions of the spec include new tags for old functions and depreciate old tags.
The current spec (1.8 I beleieve) does address embeded images and OLE objects, but not macros.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Personally I now see no reason to use M$, I do everything at home under Linux and don't futz with my box that often. Last time I did any configuration chage was when 2.4.19 came out and that change was basically patch and make. Who really needs the 10 million features in word anyway?
Only 'flamers' flame!
I NEVER said OpenGL == DirectX. I merely said that OpenGL is an alternative to DirectX, and is more portable. OpenGL is open, while DirectX is a Microsoft-created "standard" (according to them.) OpenGL is portable across Linux, Windows, and other operating systems, while DirectX is Windows only. Please read my posts more carefully before flaming me.
/usr/games/fortune
I don't agree with that.
You have to protect some of the people who will be doing some dumb things some of the time. Yeah, there's a limit, but you're saying it should never be done at all. I disagree. Strongly. And if you feel like you can be 100% rational all the time, you must be a hell of an annoying dude ;)
I think this must be a Gecko bug, because it gets it wrong but as soon as I start to resize the window it repositions it correctly. (This is Mozilla 1.1 in Win2k, at least.)
From tinkering a bit, the problem appears to be when there's not enough text on the page to fill the entire browser window. If there's a vertical scroll bar the menu works, otherwise the it breaks.
Chris, I'm not saying *any* of us can be 100% rational all the time. Of course we aren't.
However, when people make poor choices, they need to suffer the consequences of their decisions. That's called "life's hard knocks".
In my opinion, one of society's weaknesses/problems is our perceived need to pass blame. We always want to point the finger anyplace but back at ourselves when we screw up.
Sometimes, you need to get hurt by your poor choices before you're motivated to change your ways. From the time we're little kids and our parents keep warning us not to touch the hot stove, some of us are going to do so anyway, *once*. After that, we're pretty certain not to make that mistake a second time.