Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Spinning Against OpenDocument Via Fox News
srwalter writes "As previously reported, Fox News previously ran an article by James Prendergast criticizing Massachussetts for switching to OpenDocument format. Today, Fox News has distanced itself from that article significantly. In a new front page story they post several emails in defense of Massachussetts and OpenDocument in general, as well as apologize for not acknowledging that Prendergast's organization is funded by Microsoft."
Good for them. For once they truly seem fair and balanced.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
"Jim Prendergast is executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership, a coalition of technology professionals, companies and organizations that supports limited government regulation of technology. An earlier version of this column failed to disclose that Microsoft Corporation is a founding member of ATL. Other founding members include Staples, Inc., CompUSA and Citizens Against Government Waste." So, IOW "we messed up, but not too badly because look at these other huge conglomerates who are in the group with MS"
~jennifer.k~
All I'm hearing is wah wah wah
Fair *and* Balanced.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Why is this in the politics section? Genuinely curious.
For the record, all my liberal friends tell me constantly that Fox News is oh-so-biased and CNN is oh-so-great, without EVER citing a single example for either case. It's just become conventional wisdom for them without question.
Heck, one could make the case that Slashdot is extremely biased and inaccurate every day.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Use openoffice 2 beta, and under save as choose ".doc" its funny how oftenly stupid government is about such things.
... there was a portmanteau kinda "Followups" place where such inconsequential follow-ups to old stories could go. You know, instead of a new thread rehashing the debate we had already.
We could call it "Slashback" or something.
I claim a patent on it!
Today during a recent survey funded by Micro$oft. Playstation 3 will give you brain tumors, and Nintendo Revolution gives you Cancer.
The State should be a reflection of the people governed, not a role model.
So, you're not an American, right?
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
So governments in red states should fire all gay people? All liberals? etc.?
Geez, Apple killed off OpenDoc years ago. Give it up Microsoft.
Now they should come up clean about Iraq war too..
"FUD"?
:D
"Microsoft has a long and well-documented history of not supporting standards."?
"embrace and extend practice"?
O.O OH boy, those ARE slashdotters' comments!
Guys, we're on FOXnews!
...FoxNews is reporting both sides of the story. It really does not matter why they would voice one opinion and then change it at a later date. All that really matters is that both views were reported. :)
oh wait... I do know. Because you have drunk the liberal MSM anti-FoxNews kool-aid and are busily jerking your knees in response to anything labeled "Fox News".
"from the strangest-thing-you'll-see-lately dept."?? Could you be any more self-importantly snide?
When is the last time you saw CNN, the New York Times, or CBS news print this many well-articulated reader responses to an article? Then own up to the author's bias and assert they made a mistake by not making it apparent?
Let me think, now. Ummmm..... NEVER???
If someone runs an article with a title "Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument" (which is a rather one-sided title) then I feel the correcting article should have a title like "Everyone should drop Microsoft"
While I agree that a government is not equal to a role model, saying that the OpenDocument standard is virtually ignored by the constituents of Massachusetts is ill-informed. Many of the individual communities in Massachusetts made the switch in advance of the Commonwealth itself; Saugus is probably the best example as it probably made the switch first and has a lot of info online:
There's more info buried within the various Saugus sites, too. This isn't a change decreed from on-high, it's got quite a bit of grassroots support as well.
They're not customers. Most everyone the state deals with wants something for free or wants to sell them something. They can use the format the state specifies or take a hike.
When the project required changes to our customers' standards, by State Decree, the costs ballooned.
It's a one-time cost. After the conversion is complete, everyone will save money because they can buy tools to work on documents on the free market, not from a single-source vendor.
Great for FoxNews to do this. But, this is not a front page story -- this is a story that has a link from the front page, which has the equivalent of a selective Table of Contents.
:). They don't even call it a correction.
I love the editor's note down at the bottom of the column -- they bury their corrections as well as print papers do
Also, in mentioning the founders of ATL, they don't mention that Citizens Against Government Waste is not a citizens' group -- it is an industry-funded group.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
So, if the state chooses to install OOo Writer, they can read and output not only the Open Document format, but all the legacy documents written in MSWord. For $0 per workstation. Seems like a no-brainer to this MA resident.
In this case, it would appear that someone in Massachusetts state government is trying to do the "right thing".
For another example of someone in MA state government with a clue, surf on over to http://www.mass.gov/mgis/mapping.htm and check out the free online mapping resources. I can't believe it. Usually you have to pay through the nose for current high resolution geo-referenced aerial photography. Here, MA has put it all online for free. Nice going!
This isn't something to be proud of. I mean, this is what any decent news organization should be doing constantly. They haven't done anything particularly outstanding in this case. This is what they should've been doing all along!
I don't think we should commend FOX News for the lone time they aren't negligent. I think we should rather focus on all of the times that the quality of their reporting has been suspect.
Just because the standards for corporate news agencies have dropped significantly doesn't mean that we should commend them when they don't obviously fuck up.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
In Bob Park's book Voodoo Science, he describes how Fox ran the 'Alien Autopsy' video as a quasi-news/documentary three times after which they ran a program that debunked the video as a fraud. They made money both times.
Fair *and* Balanced.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Hmmm... I tend to judge a publication on their stories where I know the topic well. That The Economist and the New York Times handle high-tech stories well makes me trust them more on other things. Is the rest of the Fox News tech coverage this dubious?
Hey, douche bag, choosing .doc has the same effect. In fact, it forces people to pay money for a particular product. Jeez, think a bit!
PDF is the format for communication with the public.
AFAIK, PDF is well supported, and the number ONE format for document interchange.
Oh, you mean vendors/interdeparment stuff/contractors?
Well, you're working of the state. Guess what; you play by their rules.
The state will interact with its consitutents, the public, in an extremely well supported format.
The state will handle its own affairs in an open format, so that these constituents will have access to the end of time. It's a record keep issue, and its done for their benefit.
Also, consider that you have to change formats anyways. It's either MS XML or OpenDocument XML.
OpenDocument is the better choice for a government.
dada21.... hmm... suspiscious, I suspect you of being a troll.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
"Seem" being the operative word. It's more like they got caught. Are you going to tell me with a straight face that Fox News didn't do the slightest checking on the guy's background? That editors were so incompetent, they did not check for conflicts of interest so simple they can be summed up in one line? Please. Even at Fox News, these people are professional journalists and editors. I don't buy the "whoops, silly us" excuse...the amount of incompetence required would be staggering. Sorry, this was willfull.
Worse, they were caught doing something their audience wouldn't really stand for; a corporate scandal. Call me crazy, but if Fox reported John Kerry was a space alien during the election and then it was later "discovered" that the source was a republican party staffer- Fox would do little more than shrug, because half their audience wouldn't care, and the other half would still think Kerry was an alien.
Please help metamoderate.
On the contrary, the New York Times does that routinely. I don't know why you say "NEVER" unless you have an axe to grind, but your statement is completely incorrect.
If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
The message FoxNews reprinted, from "Bob Halloran of Jacksonville, Fla", in their article, is a perfect example of how Slashdotters should reply to bad articles ourselves. It's strongly worded, but not hostile. Every sentence contains a fact or direct logical point. The counterexamples aren't sweeping worldview declarations, but clear alternatives that speak for themselves. The points are easily quotable by the editor in a followup article. It's brief.
;).
In short, Halloran's message makes it easy for the editor, and a followup reporter, to change their story. It doesn't require FoxNews to change anything else, or admit anything else (like the unprofessional journalism that saw the original astroturf article published). We rant among ourselves here on Slashdot, but when we mix it up with the normals, we must abide by their weasel ways. Because that's what works - for Halloran, for the many FoxNews consumers he's reached, and for us, who he represents (if mildly, and not all of us
--
make install -not war
So all the evils in the world *are* connected! Microsoft + Bush + Fox News + Dumpers + Giant Squid = EEEEVVIIIILLLLL!!!
Thank you, I'll be here all night.
"MY APOCALYPTIC TENOR HAS NOT BEEN DISPELLED!" - T-Rex, qwantz.com
Ballooned? Compared to the cost of generating a document, how the hell hard is it ti save it off in a different format? What am I missing?
"The impossible often has a certain integrity that the merely improbable lacks" - Dirk Gently
And to the parent, you are a fucking retard.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
I emailed them mentioning that the original article was an opinion piece, and really didn't seem to follow the we report, you decide motto.
They actually emailed a non-automated response, and mentioned that the article was in the Views section, which indicated it was like reading an opinion column in the newspaper.
While I'll let Fox slide on that, they really do not do a good job of indicating that the article is an opinion, or that you are in the views section, unless you look at the banner add looking header of the page. I was thinking of emailing them back and mentioning a site design update to further differentiate opinion articles of this type from the usual news propoganda.
--WooooHoooo--
Personally I like PBS, and get my news online through AP and Reuters. Does that matter at all? Where are you going with this?
This was a perfect example of a correction and editing. They not only owned up to the mistake, they also included an avalanche of opposing opinion. They noted that the author's connections were not properly identified and have appended a correction to the earlier version of the story.
This is a reader-friendly, no-bones-about-it correction, and the New York Times could actually take a lesson from Fox News on this one.
Of course, the best thing would have been to get it right in the first place.
I'm probably misreading the headline, but it seems to imply Microsoft is somehow doing something here. Spinning the OpenDocument using FOX, for instance. The article doesn't seem to have anything to do with that; even the text of the slashdot summary. Am I grossly misreading something, or what?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
but I think Microsoft forgot to p^Hsay thank you properly.
There seems to be this assumption that if you're a conservative, than you're in bed with MS and hostile to Linux, Open Source, yada yada.
This is, plainly spoken, bullshit.
Go to a place like FreeRepublic, and you'll find a good deal of Linux advocacy and Microsoft distrust.
The most prominent popular culture conservatives don't run Windows, nor are Microsoft cheerleaders. Rush Limbaugh and Tom Clancy are OSX users, and Clancy is a longtime critic of MS software.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It appears that you are getting downmodded for this simple, serious observation. The vandals, that are ./'s with mod points, are alive, well, and trying stifle real diversity of opinion. Sad.
an ill wind that blows no good
Have you had to write software to load an excel spreadsheet into a proprietary accounting package running on a mainframe in the basement of a fortune 500 company, using high-level programming languages that only the underfunded library has books on in their computer section?
..even the most open format is considerably more proprietary if your customers don't use it. Why should they have to donwload openoffice to look at the state documents when they can just look at them on the web? Or download a pdf? Or have it delivered to them on their phone? It's an open document format, but more importantly, it's XML. The presentation is up to the program that you use, not up to the author of the data. Data and formatting are separated. If every copy of Office dissappeared, where would we be? We'd have lost ten years of records.
Now, on to your second point, the
My comments may seem to be a troll, but you missed the point: Fox is notorious for broadcasting inflammatory or sensational programs as "news" only to broadcast retractions later - without admitting culpability - while still generating ad revenue on both programs.
If crediblity is an issue in news broadcasting or print journalism, then the marketplace has told Fox it doesn't care. The Alien Autopsy video, and the subsequent debunking programming, made Fox millions of dollars in ad revenue.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I absolutely agree that an open document format is necessary, un-avoidable and simply the right thing to do. In the long term.
My only reservation here is the question of timing. I think forcing this issue today is 3-5 years too early. The fact is, for better or worse, most people ARE using MS Office. And it would be a major inconvenience for them to exchange files in a non-native format. And that is for people who are technically adept.
Big changes come naturally and gradually. It would be wrong to build a web site today that shuts out MSIE users - no matter how poor and buggy MSIE may be. It will fail. There could not be an industrial revolution in early 1700's, no matter how obvious and inevitable it might have seemed to a small minority. Slowly build out infrastructure first, the revolution will follow.
"The State should be a reflection of the people governed, not a role model. Choosing to support a standard virtually ignored by the constituents is callous and ignorant."
Seems to me that it is a reflection of the people. The population of Massachusetts is more intelligent than the rest of the states. So much so that it has even filtered into government. It should be obvious that long term archives of state information be open and accessible. Duh.
It's no wonder Massachusetts is the home of M.I.T and other great educational institutions.
"The State should be a reflection of the people governed, not a role model. Choosing to support a standard virtually ignored by the constituents is callous and ignorant."
Can't one government be a role model for other governments? Whether or not the intent is to create a role model, governments are often role models.
The state should not necessarily be a reflection of the people governed. I'm not even going to bother mentioning all the terrible things that have been supported by government just because a majority of people have supported it. Plenty of times the unpopular decision is the best for the constituents, who may not understand the problem completely, or may have been misled about it.
"FWIW, My company has subcontracted for numerous projects that attracted State interest. When the project required changes to our customers' standards, by State Decree, the costs ballooned."
Yes, because everyone knows that short-term costs are all that matters -- I don't need to worry about longterm costs, I'm sure we'll find a way to pay for it later.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
When the project required changes to our customers' standards, by State Decree, the costs ballooned.
So you'd rather the costs balloon because of Market Decree? (and by "Market" I mean Monopoly, and by "Monopoly" I mean Microsoft)
The difference here is that the state is saying you must use a format that you can control and understand. Imagine that, the evil State is giving you more control! Whoda thunk it?
So go take your "I ain't gonna be controlled by the State" argument back to the hills, bubba. It doesn't apply here.
Sorry for the screwed up subject in the parent. Apparently I have yet to master the proper use of Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.
"Diversity of opinion" is not the same as posting something provably wrong. Posting "the sun rises in the west" is not diversity of opinion.
Not that I believe a government should dictate all of our "standards", but I don't think the government should always be a mere, "reflection of the people governed" either. If that were the case, there would have been far less social and civil progress. Do you really think integration happened because the majority of people wanted it in the 1950s? I'm not just talking about the South either - people up North may have been okay with it because there were (and in many suburban cases today still are) only one or two minority students in a class or school. Yes, don't impose "standards" on us, but also be bold enough to recognize when a "reflection of the people governed" would keep us in the same leaky boat.
It's "PLOAF," not "P-LOAF." Ask about it.
The MGIS program was not "online for free" by any means. In fact, its tragic that you applaud government for giving away something paid for by taxpayers when there are numerous companies out there providing a similar product (at a very reasonable price).
I tried to navigate Mass.gov's website to decipher the budget expended on the MGIS program, but that site is a mess of odd links.
As for the $0 per workstation, I'd like to see that happen. In reality, there will be a cost to implement the software (at taxpayer expense), handle the various compatibility problems that are sure to pop up, and enforce that the customers of the State can open the documents originated by the State.
I'm all for PDF being the standard by which we exchange documents, and I'm all for the free market implementing these changes as budgets and time constraints allow. I'm just against government telling making a mandate that doesn't reflect what the constituents of the State currently use.
a wolf in neo-con clothing, that is...
I believe you're wrong. The Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the documents that discuss the philosophies of the founding fathers make up a standard - the American government is in fact based on that standard, a 'Role Model'.
If government were a reflection of the people governed, ID would be taught in science class and attending church would be mandatory, and the will of the majority would reign - otherwise known as 'mob rule' - because we'd have a Democracy.
The US is a Republic - not a Democracy, and more and more people seem to misunderstand this basic fact. Yes, some officers are elected in a democratic process - but not a pure democratic process.
FoxNews is clearly scared that all their usual "anonymous sources" are getting indicted. They need to recruit new sources from the public, and not hew so closely to their favorite monopolists' propaganda.
--
make install -not war
Government employees will be exposed to Open Standards formats and likely Open Source software. This will have a spinoff effect in the buying decisions of some govt employees.
Likely, govt contractors, seeking uniformity with their potential employers, will adopt Open Standards in submission of their bids. Again, this will have a multiplier like effect in terms of employess and business associates.
Closed Source advocates are fighting to keep the stopper in genie's bottle.If she gets out the outcome is more likely to be a closed source nightmare.
In Canada there is, if IIRC, a principle of government that requires govt agencies to use the most widely available, least expensive format for it's citizens to interact with govt. There may even be some case law on this. Is it possible legal action could be launched in a effort to force govts to adopt the most open, least expensive venue?
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Bill: O f*#k fox refused to carry more stories for us citing public backlash.. Damn
Steve: really!! they did that! it must be 'cause of that slashdot crowd....
(throws around chairs, breaking a few windows....)
Steve: I will f#*king kill that site... get that damn nerd crowd annhilated...
(throws around the already broken chairs)
Steve: o yes.. I will kill!.... bill, wtf r u doing
Bill: errr, selling a few (thousand)M$ shares.. Melinda was pestering me for that new iMac with remote control... and Jeniffer (my daughter) badly wanted that iPod nano... heck.. life is more demanding than I tought it was
Bill: (on phone to stock broker)sell... sell....
Unless they apologize on the nightly news program, there likely won't be much of an overlap between demographics. It's like apologizing to the person on your left after stepping on the foot of the person to your right.
...
Actually, for some here, it is. Simply re-read the top post and the chain that follows.
I'm shocked! That never happens with Fox News! Absolutely Never!
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
People pay to subscribe to this shit at slashdot and to watch Bill Gates spin about making College Appearances....
For people claiming that "Fox News is biased" because they have Hannity and O'Reilly, and the "media" are balanced, because they include Rush Limbaugh.
*burying face in hands*
When people allege liberal bias, they're talking about news reporting, not commentary.
This is so important that I will say it again.
When people allege liberal bias, they're talking about news reporting, not commentary.
If anyone cites an opinion piece as evidence of bias or the lack thereof, they have revealed their analysis is not worth listening to.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
Well, we're surprised because this is a departure from FoxNews's typical behavior, independent of other networks.
Other networks with an online presence (& also print media) also do this. The difference is, they normally don't have errors so egregious that it requires such a big response.
The NYTimes does this in its opinion page. Recantments and corrections are also included in paper.
"When is the last time you saw CNN, the New York Times, or CBS news print this many well-articulated reader responses to an article?"
Well, one of the problems is that most of the dissenting responses are not well-articulated. This is not a stupid insult, this is truth. FoxNews happened to receive a ton of well-articulated responses because they were so clearly in the wrong.
CNN, CBS, the NYTimes have all owned up to their mistakes in the past.
Maybe you need to stop drinking the Neoconservative movement kool-aid and realize that if you think CNN, the NYTimes, and CBS are liberal, you're insane. Yes, they have certain columnists who are liberal -- but they also have conservative columnists. And if you want to read the liberal columnists online at NYTimes now, you have to pay $50 a year.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
My company has subcontracted for numerous projects that attracted State interest.
"Attracted state interest?" So, is your customer the state and you're whining that the state changed the spec just like every other fucking customer since the dawn of contracting? Because otherwise, the state's decision to use opendocument has nothing to do with your project, since your project has nothing to do with the state.
I forgot to add my commentary. I included that study just to illustrate my point that there is always a contradictory study against what might be accepted conventional wisdom. I'm not arguing that Fox News and Drudge Report are the most centrist. But I will say that I'm not politically biased toward either end, and I do read Drudge Report often, and I always see both pro-Bush and negative Bush stories (the site in fact links to other stories and doesn't write its own except for exclusives). So when someone tells me a site like Drudge Report is "right-wing," I'm curious as to what makes it that and why I'm not seeing it. Then I examine the person making the claims--they are almost always a Democrat, or at least left-leaning on the political spectrum. While it doesn't automatically invalidate their claims or make them not worth examining, it does suggest a reason for such a perception to be made.
I think the real truth is that the people who are always claiming "bias!" of various news media are the fringe left and fringe right, who have the time and energy to be the loudest and make it appear as though their claims are the norm, while we middle-ground people are too busy living our lives to argue with them.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Have you ever actually watched FOX and seen the ads for the news, and then watched the news? They skew everything so that they can get more viewers. "Government official wastes millions of dollars in taxpayer money!" as though it was something terribly unusual and vitally important. "School cafeteria fails health inspection" as though its the end of your children's lives. Thats the sort of reason people are against FOX News. Also, you never need to have more than one question mark in a row, and there's three periods in an elipsis (you had it right the first time), but you didn't need one in either place. In addition, you break your sentences with question marks in odd places, and nonquestion punctuation goes inside quotation marks. Perhaps if you worded yourself more seriously and didn't scream "NEVER???" then more people might take you seriously.
Well, just a clarification... You're right, most of the people the government deals with are not customers, they are CITIZENS. That means that the government can't tell them to take a hike. That said, if the state sends out documents in an electronic format, thay can include a reader application for free. A basic windows display app that simply opens up the document, formats it for display and, well, displays it can probibly be done in a few tens or hundres of KB. Tiny compared to a lot of documents that are sent around nowadays.
Fox News is the only news I watch. It is so obviously biased you do not need to watch other networks to guess what other perspectives might be. I think it is quite obvious that Fox News blindly supports Republicans. I refuse to provide an example. I ask you to provide a counterexample.
not sure how you got an offtopic
sorry man
oh wait... I do know. Because you have drunk the liberal MSM anti-FoxNews kool-aid and are busily jerking your knees in response to anything labeled "Fox News".
You can't really call The Daily Show "MSM" until it's carried by a major network.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Haha...I didn't add the "Avalon versus Quartz" in the subject line of the previous post. Apparently Safari did that automatically because of a past post. Disregard. Sorry.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Full interoperability will never be achieved without open standards. Look at the Web - even with open standards, there is only a very small handful of browsers that can reasonably render an acceptable percentage of pages, and that has been a massive effort spanning years.
No thanks. Every one of my customers is unwilling to change formats. Massachusetts will likely learn that even the most open format is considerably more proprietary if your customers don't use it.
FWIW, My company has subcontracted for numerous projects that attracted State interest. When the project required changes to our customers' standards, by State Decree, the costs ballooned.
Help me understand your point here...
Are you pretending that OpenOffice.org will somehow no longer be free?
Are you pretending that MicroSoft is going to make MS-Office available for free?
No?
I fail to see how "free" is a cost higher than the 3-digit prices MicroSoft charges for its "Office" product, not to mention the operating system, just so a customer can open a document produced by the government.
Oh by the way... it IS possible to have both installed at the same time - they're not mutually-exclusive.
And don't bother with the "but they'll have to download..." argument, as that's true of Adobe (FKA Acrobat) Reader for PDFs, Macromedia Flash for SWF, etc.
Forcing its people to purchase products from a single company is a horrifically bad idea and is effectively a corporate-sponsored/state-enforced tax. Its bad enough that some government websites require MS-IE to even use them.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
Choosing to support a standard virtually ignored by the constituents is callous and ignorant.
That is so fricking wrong I don't even know where to start. Hmmm ... most people ignored
seatbelts ... most people ignored the relation to drinking and driving ... most people
ignored smoking warnings ... let's just let all the ignorant fucks set the defacto standards
and those that know better pay the cost associated with ignorance.
The original piece was not an article, it was not written as a piece of news, but a piece of commentary by a columnist... as specified by the 'Views' header on the top of the page. If you need to understand the differences between a Columnist and a Reporter, click these links. In any case, the liberal fodder against Fox News is once again ablaze with insufficient facts and ignorant assholes. Note: Yes, this is flame, grade it as such. Thank you.
The Massachusetts IT Department has a FAQ about the decision.
The Massachusetts decision doesn't apply to anything other than documents produced by the Executive Department. Citizens can do whatever they want. Other departments can do whatever they want. Your customers can do whatever they want. The only burden on anybody else is that, if they want to read documents produced by the Executive Department, they'll need some way to read them. But this is always true, and you'll certainly have more choices for ways to read these documents in OpenDocument format than, for example, the new Microsoft XML format. For example, with OpenDocument and a free converter, you can read them in practically any version of Word; with Microsoft's, you need the latest Office to do anything with it.
Surely if you think that citizens and agencies should be free to use whatever format they want, the State shouldn't be restricted in what format it uses. It's decided that OpenDocument is what it wants to use.
yes
The column "Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument" that appeared on FOXnews.com Sept. 28 identified author James Prendergast as executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership, but failed to disclose that Microsoft is a founding member of that organization.
Omission of the 'most unimportant' information can sometimes baffle your readersThe MGIS program was not "online for free" by any means. In fact, its tragic that you applaud government for giving away something paid for by taxpayers when there are numerous companies out there providing a similar product (at a very reasonable price).
So... the residents of Mass. ought to fund the MGIS program via tax dollars, and then be required to pay again to get the results of what their tax dollars paid for?
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
You get your news from somewhere other than TV?
If a given person says that CNN is biased toward the left, then that person is a conservative.
If a given person says that CNN is biased toward the right, then that person is a liberal.
If a given person says that CNN is generally unbiased, then that person is a centrist.
Everything anyone says is biased. "Water is wet." Oh yeah? Why do you want me to know that? Do you have an anti water bias? A pro wetness bias? Anytime anyone communicates, they are doing so for a reason, that reason is their bias. That being said, some things I believe about the media:
1. Reporters are generally more liberal than the communities they serve.
2. Owners and editors are usually more conservative than the communities they serve.
3. The wealthy media owners have a vested interest in pushing a conservative agenda, as a conservative agenda serves the wealthy.
4. Media has a generally conservative bias because the interests of the owners trumps the liberal bias of the reporters.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Link
A study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, in the Winter 2003-2004 issue of Political Science Quarterly, reported that viewers of the Fox Network local affiliates or Fox News were more likely than viewers of other news networks to hold three views which the authors labeled as misperceptions.
67% of FOX viewers believed that the "US has found clear evidence in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was working closely with the al Qaeda terrorist organization" (Compared with 56% for CBS, 49% for NBC, 48% for CNN, 45% for ABC, 16% for both NPR and PBS). However, the belief that "Iraq was directly involved in September 11" was held by 33% of CBS viewers and only 24% of FOX viewers.
33% of FOX viewers believed that the "US has found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" "since the war ended". (Compared with 23% for CBS, 20% for both CNN and NBC, 19% for ABC and 11% for both NPR and PBS)
35% of FOX viewers believed that "the majority of people [in the world] favour the US having gone to war" with Iraq. (Compared with 28% for CBS, 27% for ABC, 24% for CNN, 20% for NBC, 5% for both NPR and PBS)
Fox viewers were unique in that those who paid greater attention to news were moderately more likely to have these misperceptions than those who paid less or no attention to news.
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I had to cut out some of the stats because of the lameness filter
Further proof that there is a direct correlation between the amount of FOX 'News' programming you watch and your level of ignorance. FOX News succeeds in the ratings because it tells people what they want to hear, it does not challenge the mindset of its viewers with facts or differing opinions. It merely presents a proverbial warm cozy blanket of facts blended seamlessly with opinion and outright fabrication.
CNN, CBS, ABC, et al are often accused of downplaying or not reporting stories because they are deathly afraid of losing access to the sources of information that they rely on. In recent years they have moved to emulate their 300lb gorilla competitor by simply swallowing the information they receive from the government and playing along with whatever policy directive has come down from the White House. The remarkable lack of investigative spirit and widespread complacency during the run up to the Iraq War was simply amazing - and utterly gutting - to witness.
None of them, however, have adopted the perfected formula devoid of credibility and objectivity that FOX News has. They are merely wannabes, as FOX has seemingly nailed it down to a science all its own.
I think Microsoft is on the opposite side of the continent, they are not a constituent of Massachusetts.
Yeah, I do know what you mean but I'm being facetious because I think that your statement is just as ludicrous as mine. The fact that the constituency for some time now has been forced into using a document format from a convicted monopolist does not mean they "virtually ignored" the open standard. If the public documents from their governement were only available in a proprietary format which required purchasing expensive software from a single vendor then they did not "virtually ignore" the open standard, they were forced into using a standard from a monopoly.
And please explain how saving 90% of taxpayers money on an IT budget is callous and ignorant. What is callous and ignorant is utilizing closed proprietary standards for government information which requires the constituency to spend additional money to purchase software so they can access the information from the government which they already paid for with tax dollars. For several years now there has been no excuse for the idiocy of government agencies setting up systems that require the purchase and continual upgrades of proprietary software when perfectly capable open standards have been available for years. The open document standard may be relatively new but open standards are not.
Perhaps you should be explaining to the constiuency why they should be paying taxes to their governement for services and then turn around and pay taxes to Microsoft to access those services.
Heh, we'll see. When your competitors start taking away all your business because you refuse to use an open standard available to everyone then I'm sure your tune will change fast.
I can understand how this could happen but you should be more specific about the details. Were they cases where it was an open stand rather than some custom standard from the customer? And were there already many software applications available you could utilize with the open standard? Or are we talking about from the ground up changes from one proprietary standard to some other proprietary standard?
I believe you're wrong. The Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the documents that discuss the philosophies of the founding fathers make up a standard - the American government is in fact based on that standard, a 'Role Model'. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were not philosophical by any means, and did not create a standard 'Role Model' by any means. The Constitution and its Amendments were created to enforce a Federalist Republic of Independent States by requiring that the Federal government be restrained from trampling on the rights of the people.
If government were a reflection of the people governed, ID would be taught in science class and attending church would be mandatory, and the will of the majority would reign - otherwise known as 'mob rule' - because we'd have a Democracy. This is possibly true at the state level, but not the federal level. Education enforcement/standardization and Religious enforcement/standardization are not explicit powers of the federal government. Therefore, ninth and tenth Amendments assures that these rights are kept by the people, or by the individual state if the citizens of that state want it that way. The Constitution was not intended to control the state governments, just the federal government.
The US is a Republic - not a Democracy, and more and more people seem to misunderstand this basic fact. Yes, some officers are elected in a democratic process - but not a pure democratic process. We WERE a Republic, until the 16th and 17th Amendments were created. The 16th Amendment allowed the federal government to lay taxes deemed unconstitutional without the Amendment. The 17th Amendment destroyed the 9th and 10th amendment providing for states' rights by making the Senate a democratically elected federal body, rather than one elected by the state itself. I believe that the 17th Amendment should be repealed immediately.
I believe you are right in saying that more people seem to misunderstand that our federal government is a Federalist Republic, but it seems to me as though you misunderstand what it means to be Federalist and a Republic.
Massachusetts (Constitutionally) does have the right to incur these standards, but I don't understand why they are needed when my business isn't affected at all by the Microsoft "monopoly." I haven't had one single problem opening one single file in almost 8 years.
Cheering on the govt in standardizing on Microsoft while screaming bloody murder when they try to standardize on an open format is just silly. They have to make a choice one way or the other. You've been spun.
I second this follow up. There should always be a drive in good governement to optimize the resources they require from us tax payers to get the job done.
In that respect, I feel that it should be a good idea if under the open information act, all governements should be required to split out the amount budgetted and spent on software licenses in their reports.
I wonder if the parent poster would still be trilled to not have open standards if he saw that a significant percentage of his hard earned money is going to making the Microsofts and Oracles of this world even ritcher.
Though I would rather have tax break, if I have to pay the money anyway let the government spend it on improving our community (i.e. better schools, etc.) than on feeding corporate greed!
Be careful. You just said something positive about FoxNews. Groupthink around here is that FoxNews is in bed with Satan. Waitaminute, groupthink around here holds religion to be bad, too.
At any rate, to go and point out that FoxNews corrected the actual news article in question and took full responsibility while also posting dissenting views flies in the face of all the posts above yours. Never mess with groupthink, man. Groupthink still holds to the belief that conservatives believe Sadam Hussein bombed the WTC. You go and confront groupthink with actual facts and you'll get it all grumpy and everything...
The Splintered Mind - Overcoming
a news organization that actually tells both sides of the story. Including the citizens that it supposedly sells too.
what a concept
Though I would rather have tax break, if I have to pay the money anyway let the government spend it on improving our community (i.e. better schools, etc.) than on feeding corporate greed! Ahh, so you'd rather have the money go towards union greed from a monopoly (the public education system) rather than go to a company that puts billions of dollars into the economy through no coercion like taxation?
My hard earned money comes from supporting products by Microsoft and Oracle (and Linux and OOo and others). I'm far happier with my customers that run MS products and don't have to call with problems than I am with the few customers who have implemented Open Source programs and consistently need support. That's just my experience (and no, I didn't implement those Open Source programs).
Yes, Fox News has the highest ratings, but that doesn't make it the most popular. Fox News actually has less unique viewers than CNN. Fox News' higher ratings are due to the fact that "Fox Fans" are much more likely to tune in and watch it for longer times (watch Bill O'Reilly etc), whereas CNN's viewers tune in for shorter durations. (source)
Of course there's always a contradictory study, because there's always someone who disagrees with the main study--and it's not hard to design a curriculum that will return an opposite result. That does not imply that the results are therefore equal.
There's a huge difference between the study you cite and the one cited in the GP. The U.Md. study was based on a rigorous survey of the public's perceptions of independently verifiable facts. The study you cite relies on citation frequency as a correlative for ideological agreement.
Frankly any study that uses the phrase "liberal bias" in their conclusion is highly, highly suspect, since the word "liberal," like conservative, is mostly subjectively defined.
Whereas the U.Md. study measures the truthfulness, or accuracy, of the ideas conveyed to the public. At a minimum it shows a correlation between those who are misinformed, and a tendency to watch Fox News. Perhaps one could argue that these people are watching Fox News because it is the MOST accurate outlet, and they wish to most efficiently correct their perceptions. But that seems unlikely to me.
The U.Md. (rightly) does not delve into ideological bias, as that is a political morass not a subject for objective study. It simply shows which viewship has a more accurate perception of certain realities.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The most important thing that seems to be ignored. Various cities around the country provide "Starter Kits" for their citizens that include such software as Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, etc.
What would stop Massachusets from providing a CD of OpenOffice.org for a minimal fee ($1.75 or something) for all citizens. You want to do business with MA and complain about not having the software to view their documents? Fine, just follow the download link on their website, or simply ask for the CD. This doesn't have to stop to office documents. Their map viewer (which is rather excellent) can also be bundled on the CD (along with data).
Imagine this. Want to open up a new store in MA? Here, grab this CD with maps of our demographics, major roads, excisting facilities. Many cities in Washington state have done something similar, on the web only currently. Then, the required forms are also included in the CD, as well as software to view and edit them. Just print them and bring them over to the closest state office.
Why should the state of Massachusets not do such a thing? Promote business, empower your citizens. Is that so wrong?
As a matter of fact, even the White House has already given up linking Hussein and al Qaeda. It was never a good link (Hussein was perhaps the most secular leader in the Middle East and had extreme allergy to all things fundamentalist - you're talking about the same guy who, in the 80's fought a proxy war for the USA against the fundamentalist Iran).
When you say Yet there seems be enough evidence of some ties to at least investigate the possibility. you leave the reader under the impression no investigation was conducted, when in fact a very extensive investigation was conducted and returned no evidence whatsoever. Hence, misperception. The same goes for the most impressive instance of misperception, the WMDs thing.
still waiting for a retractation about Iraq :
"Apparently, Iraq had no weapon of mass destruction and no link with Al Qaida. "
Then Fox News will start to do a fair and balanced job otherwise people will stop listening to them since they are decent people.
But afterall maybe the OpenDocument format is really a threat for national security. Maybe there are some report that suggest that there are links between the open source community and terrorist organizations. Stay tuned, decent people !
> When is the last time you saw CNN,
Yea, they fessed up instantly that Tailwind was a work of fiction and fired the commie bastard responsible for the lie. Oh wait, they didn't. But surely they fired the idiot exec who asserted as a fact that US forces target journalists. Wait, they didn't exactly do that either.
> the New York Times,
Well after four tries over a month or so they finally got a semi-complete correction into print about Paul Krugman's 'creative use of fact' regarding the Florida recounts. But seriously, considering how many times they have been caught lying, distorting, confusing the news and editorial sections and outright printing fiction as news (Jayson Blair ring a bell anymore?) the real question is why their circulation is still over a thousand copies a day.
> or CBS news
Yup, they fired Mapes and Rather the second their treason was uncloaked. Oh, wait they are STILL trying to hide behind the "factually false but we still stand behind the gist of the story' excuse.
> print this many well-articulated reader responses to an article?
Exactly. The got skunked by a Microsoft shill, got called on it by thousands and did the right thing. They put the retraction in basically the same spot on their homepage as the original, picked very good responses to print instead of the raving lunatics and denounced the original author along with stating for the record they should have at least did the background research to spot the PR flack and include that fact in the original story. In short I suspect it will be a while before they fall for this one again.
Democrat delenda est
Actually, the sad thing is, when shifts in something as large as document file formats, the Government almost has to be a role model.
For the past 3 years I have been using OpenOffice.org, and I switched to version 2.0 as soon as the beta was released. Guess how much that impacted the way society, the society I am a member of, views documents? Not at all. But, when a government body offering documents to the public shifts to a different file format, people are forced to change. While this would normally seem bad, this change is in a positive direction. This change brings equality to the table. I cannot afford, nor would I purchase if I could afford, Microsoft Office. On top of that, it does not run on my Operating System. By switching to something that makes electronic documents available to everyone with a computer, we are bringing society one step closer to the government, making the government less of a tryant capable of offering us documents we are entitled to with a large $300 string attached.
Now that they have decided on OpenDocument, any user can use any software that supports it. This is one of the few cases the government being a role model for society is going to benefit everyone (except Microsoft). It will only be a matter of time before OpenDocument format is viewable with a simple browser plugin, and I wouldn't be surprised to see an AJAX powered OpenDocument editor pop up on the web soon either.
I am currently working to change my university to OpenDocument, so we can become a role model to our community. Imagine trying to fill out a form for Financial Aid, or to apply for a job, but having that form require a piece of software that you can't afford. I understand OOo can read .doc files, as can other office suites, but what happens when Microsoft finally gets their patent on their file formats and does not allow 3rd party companies to reverse engineer their filetype? I for one would rather tie myself to a standard offered and accepted to the global community that is freely available to anyone than to tie myself to a format that is offered by a single company that is notorious for suing its customers and requiring new software to view new versions of its documents.
If governmental role models are required to shift us from .doc to .odt, then I welcome it with open arms. But I think we miss the point to say the government is trying to be a role model here, I think they are doing the exact opposite. They have realized they were being a role model, and imposing restrictions on the use of documents that are public domain, and they are now cutting those strings, meaning it is up to us, the end user, to choose what software to use.
If your software doesn't support the new format, then that isn't the government's fault, that is the software manufacturer's fault. Every developer is free to use the OpenDocument standard, including Microsoft. So why don't we yell at Microsoft for trying to be a role model instead?
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
I'm not quite sure what you are saying here, but either way, OO.org is still far cheaper than installing microsoft office, even at the price the government pays per seat.
Defence signals directorate has been using staroffice for at least 6 years now, and more recently openoffice - Microsoft largely takes a back seat unless you are an administrative weenie, not too many of those in the organisation though. Prior to that, applixware was the big thing, and before that, framemaker.
Sun on the other hand... They've made a fortune from defence. Many workstations are silently finding themselves installed with various flavours of linux these days. (SQ be damned)
What really ticks me off are the countless contractors charging upwards of AU $5000 per day, while the worker drones are told there is no outlay to upgrade that HP8566B with the clapped out CRT. It's a little inbred boys club up at the top. Always has been, always will be.
I have no idea what my point is though.
Which was at this link
It appears they do acknowledge their mistake at the bottom but it's not a major change.
However Fox News has always tried to maintain a fair and balanced version of the news, and it's good to see they did update the article, and has shown a good amount of the support for the move. Some of the points they make are more damming than the entire article (hell the fact they show it's 5 K to 50 K is impressive)
It's good to see one news company who doesn't mind admitting mistakes and actually getting both sides of a story.
Check out this interview that occured on CBC's The Fifth Estate. In an example of how Ann Coulter plays fast and loose with 'facts' she knows nothing about, in order to make her point, we see how she behaves when caught in her mistake:
...second World War of course. Korea. Yes. Vietnam No."
Coulter: "Canada used to be one of our most loyal friends and vice-versa. I mean Canada sent troops to Vietnam - was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?"
McKeown interrupts: "Canada didn't send troops to Vietnam."
Coulter: "I don't think that's right."
McKeown: "Canada did not send troops to Vietnam."
Coulter (looking desperate): "Indochina?"
McKeown: "Uh no. Canada
Coulter: "I think you're wrong."
McKeown: "No, took a pass on Vietnam."
Coulter: "I think you're wrong."
McKeown: "No, Australia was there, not Canada."
Coulter: "I think Canada sent troops."
McKeown: "No."
Coulter: "Well. I'll get back to you on that."
McKeown tags out in script:
"Coulter never got back to us -- but for the record, like Iraq, Canada sent no troops to Vietnam."
Yep, Coulter's a reporter with integrity, yessir...
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Joe Moore of New Zealand writes: '[Open standard] will provide a level playing field for all application developers to work towards, and will provide a standardized platform for all departments to adhere to. This will ensure that all systems, now and in the future can read the data recorded. That is a good thing, is it not?'
A very good thing!
Who at slashdot watches Fox News? Does it tend to insult your intelligence or do you think they are good at reporting?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
The whole list of emails made me so angry....then at the bottom of the rebuttal:
Mr. Prendergast's affiliation with Microsoft should have been stated clearly in the article.
GODDAMN FOX NEWS! WHY DO PEOPLE LISTEN TO THIS DRIVEL!
fair and balanced, my quarter-arab ass.
AccountKiller
I don't know where you live, but I live in Georgia. In my opinion, we have probably the most incompetent state government in the entire USA, although perhaps there are 1 or 2 that I don't know about that could give us a run for the money. This was true when the Democrats ran things and it hasn't changed now that the Repulicans are in control. Frankly, I trust my fellow citizens to pick a Senator a lot more than those bozos in our state legislature. I have to give you credit as this is the stupidest idea I've seen with regards to the Constitution since Prohibition was enacted.
Since you don't explain, and judging from the context, I assume it's probably "Ability to Deduce Abstractly". :)
It has nothing to do with Open Office - directly, and if you argue that way you are falling into Microsoft's trap. It is the OASIS Standard Open Document FORMAT , and any program or suite can support it, and many do, including KOffice, Star Office, AbiWord, and OpenOffice. Microsoft could support it also, if they wished to do so.
Now if we could only get Apple to support Open Document, we could probably get rid of this line of FUD mis-thinking all together.
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
About the only thing I've really noticed is that they're America-centric, but they report what everyone else reports
Of course they do. The claims of bias originate from the fact that everything they report has a conservative spin on it. They are pushing a conservative agenda, as opposed to trying to objectively report the news. Now you can make the claim that truly objective reporting is impossible, but most news orginazations get far closer to this ideal than FOX does.
FOX news is a propaganda organization more than a news agency. While they bring on liberal guests, rarely are they allowed to debate the topic in any effective way. Debates on FOX seem to be geared to create confusion on a topic, not clarirify the salient points.
I think you need to watch FOX, and think about the message that they are giving you more critically. They want you to think that they are only reporting the news, because then you lower your guard, and don't think about the underlying message.
Oh yeah, and my bias? I distrust both the Republican and Democrat agenda. They are all scum.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
While I like Fox News, and as another poster has already pointed out so well, they are centrist, and not right-biased (except when measured against much of the rest of the mainstream media), the Microsoft affiliation of the opinion columnist should have been pointed out at the top of the article -- not the bottom.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Fox is biased, your biased, I'm biased, everyone is biased. Just make sure you know where people are coming from and take everything with at least pinch of salt.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
To think such an upstanding and unbiased news organization would pander to anything or anyone is unthinkable! I simply don't believe it!
The Good Life
So the Commonwealth of Massachusetts exists to make your life easier?
There's a ton of good information on most state websites, but unless someone takes the time to look for it, they won't find it. having it bundled with software that they need to do business would be a serious boon.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
One post claims Fox News is fair and balanced. Someone replies with links to other new organizations pointing out their slogan is not correct. That's a troll? My guess is that whomever moderated the post as a "troll" is right-winger. Because right-wingers don't ever want to hear a different viewpoint. 'Support us or you're a terrorist'... or a troll perhaps.
I hear plenty of hate lobbed at Fox, but I certainly don't hear much praise being lobbed at CNN. IMO they're the same. The only difference is that I see a lot more coverage of murder/rape type shit on Fox. I guess they're counting on the "slack jawed rubber-necker" demographic.
useless sig advice - Read Nabokov.
Click here to read about it. (which is a link to an older Slashdot comment regarding this nonetheless) or just jump right straight to it.
They are in the business of debunking all the Whitehouse/GOP BS.
from the article
Comments made by the IT chief for the state said there would be costs to convert from the current office suite regardless of what was replacing it. The costs to convert to OpenDocument were estimated at $5 million; upgrading the current vendor's product would cost $50 million, both in license fees and upgraded PCs to support the newer product.
I could see a little ballooning in the price being possible, but I don't see it topping the cost for upgrading to the next version of MS Office.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
When Tom DeLay was indicted most big news sites ran a headling saying something to the effect of "DeLay Indicted." FoxNews' website had the slightly different headline that was something like "DeLay says 'Im innocent'". Now both headlines are true, he was indicted and he did claim innocence. The actual event that happened that day, the NEWS, if you will, was that he was indicted. DeLay's claim of innocence is his side of the story. It may seem minor but if you took a few thousand people (who knew nothing about Delay and didn't claim to be liberal or conservative) and showed half of them one headline and half the other and asked them if they thought he was guilty or innocent I'll bet that the people who saw the "I'm innocent" headline would respond more favorably to him than the "Delay Indicted" folks. Words matter.
Foxnews is as right-wing as NPR is left-wing. The only difference is that Foxnews claims to be balanced, which is total bullshit. At least NPR doesn't lie to their listeners about their "fairness".
They can't do that from a practical point of view. First, Mass mandates the use of open document formats, not the use of OOo. Second, document files are less and less things that people just save, they go into document management systems; those systems are going to use open document formats, not DOC, in Mass.
I don't know where you live, but I live in Georgia. In my opinion, we have probably the most incompetent state government in the entire USA, although perhaps there are 1 or 2 that I don't know about that could give us a run for the money.
You don't cross the Savannah River much, do you?
and it's okay to use tax dollars from people that have no interest in it to provide it free to anyone who wants it whether they paid any taxes towards it or not?
Dude, you are starting to sound like a shill. My hard earned money comes from supporting products by Microsoft and Oracle So your self-admitted area of expertise is on the commercial end of the spectrum but you will support Linux and OO if there is no other option.
I'm far happier with my customers that run MS products and don't have to call with problems than I am with the few customers who have implemented Open Source programs and consistently need support. That's just my experience (and no, I didn't implement those Open Source programs). Here is the dead give away. I am far happier with my customers that use X product (that I set up personally and have a strong familiarity with) than I am with my customers that use Y produce to which I have limited knowledge and never set up in the first place. Well, I'll be damned. Who would have thought that would work out that way.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
We should have know it al along: the story contains the word 'taxpayers' six times. That just has to be FUD!
Massachusetts has been a role model since 1775.
Also, the Free Software Foundation is located in Massachusetts. Shouldn't it get some reflection?
FoxNews is for knee-jerk reactionaries... nothing more than airwave pollution.
You are aware that it's the people of the state that elect their senators, right? The same people that elect the people that used to vote for senators are just doing the voting for senators themselves.
The rest of fox news is this dubious
LIVE, Love, die
GODDAMN FOX NEWS! WHY DO PEOPLE LISTEN TO THIS DRIVEL!
Some people don't. When I had cable, I was too lazy to bother deleting the shopping channel and channels in languages I didn't understand.
Fox 'News' was the *only* channel I bothered deleting -- probably because it lied about what it provided, right in the name.
Everyone who knew enough computer history to smile (or at least groan) gets another notch for their geek card.
Prendergast's group appears to be an opinion-for-hire crew a la ADTI, Enderle Research, etc. That they get the majority of their funding from MSFT was *not* disclosed in the original article. Fox's correction owned up to that, and I gather the crapstorm of letters from "viewers like us" to that effect prompted them printing some (including mine).
I didn't have to download Adobe Acroba Reader, it was included in SuSE 9.2 Pro. Oh wait, you meant Windows users.
If it's just for displaying, the government could probably convert it to PDF, HTML, rtf, .doc(?) on the fly. So indead, the problem is only when information needs to be entered in the forms.
The real cost introduced from a government point of view (and not the citizen) is that certain things to process the documents will have to be rewritten. If they were formerly using word macro's to process these documents, they will now need to switch to something a bit more robust. That will cost money, but I think they factored that in when they compared the cost with a new version of windows.
In any case, I think this is what the OP was referring to. But since the citizen will do no or little processing on the documents, I don't see how that actually could increase costs for them.
Fair and balanced.
Really?
There's a brilliant documentry Outfoxed that looks into just how 'fair and balanced' fox is.
Amongst a myriad of damming evidence some of the most startling is probably the internal memo's sent out advising on how to slant coverage to fit the conversative/right-wing agenda.
There's no doubt that they secretly manipulate the news and that in turn they wind up manipulating people's perception of the truth.
I suspect that your complaint with the Times is that they sometimes publish facts that reasonably lead to conclusions contrary to your own. And while it's true that they do select which stories to publish, and that those selections betray editorial bias, that is true of every news outlet (especially FOX). I realize this sort of comment is considered insightful among Dittoheads, but it's just utter nonsense.
"When I hear claims of bias, it's always important to examine the source of the claim."
Look I'm a middle-of-the-roader, whether you believe me or not. I'm morally pro-life, politically pro-choice. I love the idea of a free market economy, but I also see the need for some government intervention, lord knows what the US would look like without Roosevelt the 1st. Some of my more democratic views are I believe in a graduated tax, and good public schooling. However I also believe that there shouldn't be a bias against private schools religious or otherwise. I'm left and right on most issues, and that's where I'm coming from.
I don't watch TV news regularly, I hate "Hardball", and the "O'Reilly Factor" equally, I'm not here to comment on whether CNN, MSNBC, are liberal biased, I don't watch them. I'm here to call you out on your assertion that Fox News is unbiased, that's a load of B&HS
How you can sit there and tell me that after 4-5 years of watching Fox "News" you can't tell that it's "right" biased is beyond me. It would be like saying that John Stewart isn't a liberal, or that Rush Limbaugh, isn't sympathetic to the conservative agenda. The last time I watched Fox News (it was less than three weeks ago) I was tying my shoes about to head outside, and within less than 30 seconds I was listening to Bill O'Reilly and a guest literally talking about "what's wrong with liberals". And Bill that bastion of unbiased news discussion cuts off the guest mid-sentence and said something to the effect of:
Wait I know what they want. They want the government to take care of them, and not hold them morally responsible for their actions.
And the one and ONLY guest who was clearly as unbiased as Mr. O'Reilly vehemently agreed with his assessment, I laughed my a#$ off, finished tying my shoes and left.
If you don't see that kind of programming as biased I can't help you, and I'm not an expert in the area, but I'd venture a guess that no one can. When was the last time you saw Fox do a "what's wrong with conservatives segment"? Go ahead and mod me troll, PLEASE! If you believe that Fox News is unbiased you're either ignorant or lying, I'm leaning towards you're a lier. I'm not just saying that either, I can't believe that you could watch Fox News for more than an hour and not realize it. It's disgusting to think you'd lie on a public forum for no tangible benefit to yourself, and to the determent of those here. However it's hysterical to think that you may be so thick-headed as to honestly believe that Fox News is unbiased.
My sincerest apologies,
-manno
The thing is, as a strict boolean value, that is true.
At one point, troops found some artillery shells with trace values of sarin nerve gas. Now, there was very little of the stuff, sure, but there was in fact a non-zero amount. If the pollster interviewed me, I'd be in the "80% of conservative idiots" category, even though they never bothered to ask me how much was found.
Similarly, if a biased pollster asked me if space was empty, and I said no, I'd probably get lumped in with people who failed junior high, even though the reasons for my answer are completely different than those of many others.
It's a much better sound bite, though, to label me as a Fox-watching moron than to try to understand my thought processes.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
A statement from the bipartisan "National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States" (also known as the September 11 Commission):d ers/CommissionStatement15.pdf>PDF link - page 5, fourth paragraph: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."
d ers/CommissionStatement16.pdf>PDF link - page 8, second paragraph: "We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/shoul
Another statement from the bipartisan "National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States" (also known as the September 11 Commission):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/shoul
intelligence officer in Prague on April 9. Based on the evidence available--including
investigation by Czech and U.S. authorities plus detainee reporting--we do not believe
that such a meeting occurred"
George Bush, President of the United States, 31 Jan 2003, at a press conference with Tony Blair:
"[Adam Boulton, Sky News (London):] One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?
THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim." (White House transcript
I could go on, there are many more sources for this. But I believe this should be enough as public available evidence goes.
Can we ever, really, go back? There's the rub. If anyone doesn't know the definition of hysteresis..
a tIsHysteresis.html)
(Excerpted from http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/sethna/hysteresis/Wh
Hysteresis represent the history dependence of physical systems. If you push on something, it will yield: when you release, does it spring back completely? If it doesn't, it is exhibiting hysteresis, in some broad sense. The term is most commonly applied, as Webster implies, to magnetic materials: as the external field with the signal from the microphone is turned off, the little magnetic domains in the tape don't return to their original configuration (by design, otherwise your record of the music would disappear!) Hysteresis happens in lots of other systems: if you place a large force on your fork while cutting a tough piece of meat, it doesn't always return to its original shape: the shape of the fork depends on its history.
------
And this applies to the human mind as well, mi amigos!
A lot of right-wingers feel O'reilly is liberal.
O'Reilly is an old style conservative with a catholic issue bias set.
I like him because he's not mealy mouth and he's reasonable when he disagrees with people. I disagree with him on a few issues but at least he's CIVIL like people used to be 30-40 years ago.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Never mess with groupthink, man. Groupthink still holds to the belief that conservatives believe Sadam Hussein bombed the WTC. You go and confront groupthink with actual facts and you'll get it all grumpy and everything...
Facts are funny things.
It may not be the majority anymore, but it's still almost half of Americans (could that be the *conservative* half?), and considering that George W. Bush himself promoted the idea that Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, it's no wonder the rest of the country considers conservatives a bit... dim.
From all evidence, it seems conservatives are the fucking *worst* at groupthink. "What's that? Evidence that Iraq is *no threat whatsoever*? Evidence that President Bush fucking *lied* to us? Well, support the troops! And, ah, if you think bad of the President, you're a traitor! And a bed-wetter!"
To paraphrase "Get Fuzzy," do you want to be Pot, or Kettle for Hallowe'en?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The conservatives on Fox News are openly opinionated, while the liberal bias I see coming from the New York Times and Dan Rather and these types try to mask it behind a neutral face, or no face at all. I 'll read the Washington Post opinion pieces, which I typically don't agree with, but I wouldn't go to an openly liberal publication for my news because they have a track record of deception.
I like him because he's not mealy mouth and he's reasonable when he disagrees with people. I disagree with him on a few issues but at least he's CIVIL like people used to be 30-40 years ago.
WHAT? SHUT UP! No, SHUT UP!! LISTEN to ME! SHUT YOUR MOUTH! YOUR FATHER WOULD BE ASHAMED TO HAVE YOU AS HIS SON! CUT HIS MIC! CUT IT! CUT HIS MIC!!
Having listened to the forum, the state folks said a lot of that $50M would be upgrading thousands of PCs to to be able to run Vista and MS-Office 12. Much less slack in hardware prices. And the alternative suites would run fine on the existing boxes, removing that hardware expense. Very useful exchange with the MS guy.
That's not true.
Have you used the software any time recently?
I use it for simple and very complex word documents. The largest is about 250 pages long with many tables, lots of artwork and over 10 megabytes in size (7 megabytes when saved with word 6.0 or openoffice but 10 meg when saved by office XP- why the extra 3 megabytes???)
I use it for simple presentations (but animation and sound).
I use it for spreadsheets.
Everything works as long as I don't use microsoft visual basic to make "smart" forms.
I even use openoffice once to open OLD word documents and save them in new Word formats and to "fix" broken word documents that have become corrupted and crash Word.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I haven't seen this mentioned yet, so I'll do it. There is an excellent documentary on the right-wing bias present in Fox News, called Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. You can find out more about it here.
I recommend buying the DVD to support the work of director Robert Greenwald. And FWIW, the DVD is not region-coded -- I was able to play it without libdecss. Also of interest: all of the interviews in the film are licensed under the Creative Commons license.
Sounds like SOMEBODY is going for a perfect 100 ADA. Good luck man, though I don't envy you the years of pointless bittereness and isolation from the general populace that is your reward.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The State should be a reflection of the people governed, not a role model. Choosing to support a standard virtually ignored by the constituents is callous and ignorant. So governments in red states should fire all gay people? All liberals? etc.? The people being governed in most "red" states have demographics that are maybe 56% conservative and 44% liberal. So firing all liberals and gays wouldn't actually be a reflection of the people governed.
CNN and FOX NEWS are both biased. I'm Romanian, living in Romania so in a way I'm out of US mainstream news. And from my point of view - CNN is the official news channel of the White House and Fox News is the thing I watch when I want a good laugh and want to feel smart.
The thing I hate the most in media is the show and the hysteria. Just give me the fucking head lines and a head start and I'll look it on the Internet if want to know more. Don't you hate when they insert background music in the news?
Ta-da... today in the fucking no where there somthing out to get you... ta-da.
The only news I can swallow is Euronews, thought I can see glimpse of bias from time to time, but at least i don't get the loud music with it.
Actually that list makes Microsoft's relationship with ATL even more interesting. Microsoft is a supplier to both Staples and CompUSA, and CAGW has also come out against Massachusetts OpenDoc standard (allegedly also instigated by Microsoft).
We are the 198 proof..
the main way you can tell drudge is right wing is to get in a time machine ... drudge was VASTLY more anti-clinton than he is pro-bush; the second way you can tell is to look at the pictures on drudge ... you could do an interesting study by showing subjects the pictures from drudge to people with no knowledge of american politics and asking them questions like "is this person evil?" "is this person washed up?" the result i believe you would get would suggest that he selects flattering photos of right-wingers and VERY unflattering photos of left-wingers
I wrote a letter to Fox. I may not be a great letter writer, but I may have helped them reconsider. I asked if the piece was representative of the standards for which they would like to be recognized and why they would give free advertisment to MicroSoft. I want to encourage bloggers to take the next step after blogging on Slashdot. It might help!
I agree with you, except most of the good information also tends to be hidden from the so called 'search' features of state websites. If you know what to look for, and or where to find it on state websites, there is an extraordinary collection of useful data to be found.
I found this out myself yesterday. I can usually find almost anything online relatively quickly. I was asked to look for a specific highway reconstruction plan set that we submitted and had been modified and put up for contractor bidding from the state website and print them. Unless you knew to look under letting, and knew the date they put it out for letting, and the obscure naming conventions used there was no way to find it.
Tonights forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning
During integration (in the 60's and 70's), I remember seeing on the news more riots and general violence in Boston, Chicago, and New York than the entire South. I've still surprised today how easily people sallowed the propaganda that the South was more racial.
I'm surprised at how often I see the word "liberal" used as a slur/insult.
I really don't get it. A "liberal-minded" person is an open-minded and tolerant person. This is a bad thing why?
Sometimes it seems like my parents have invaded Slashdot. Damn hippies, why can't they just think/act/dress the same as I do?
For the record, I'm a Canuck. I absolutely loathe our Liberal party here, because they don't strike me as particularly "liberal", except when they're helping themselves to "liberal" amounts of my taxes. In fact, I'd consider myself a pretty right-wing person - except for some reason these days that means I have to hate homosexuals, and demand the Bible be taught in school.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
groupthink around here holds religion to be bad
Just the educated groups. Don't worry, another couple of centuries and we'll finally stop believing in astrology.
Groupthink still holds to the belief that conservatives believe Sadam Hussein bombed the WTC.
No, just that your president believes this. Or used to, anyway, based on the things he said leading up to Gulf War 2. I don't think he does any longer, but now that he's created Vietnam 2, I'm not sure exactly WHAT he could be thinking.
The funny thing is, I've seen people actually claim that Vietnam was anything but a complete and utter disaster. Pretty soon we're going to be hearing "we need to stay in Iraq, because look what happened after the liberals made us leave Vietnam".
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
You mean like this...
I guess in the world of Faux News FanBoys, exchanges like that one--which are not at all uncommon for O'reilly--are considered "reasonable" and "CIVIL".
We report you decide.
Shuffle the words around and add one letter and you get the truth.
We decide your report.
This, embeded within a screed decrying "group think". Priceless.
Julius Caesar - Act I, Scene i: "What mean'st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!"
firstly, can you post the FULL exchange, not just the snippet you picked. So, aside fromt he first comment of O'Reilly's (because you didn't want to show us what he was responding too) OR'Reilly was COMPLETELY civil - did you not read what you typed? O'Reilly kept getting interrupted and then finally decided to finish the interview. Incidently his exchanges can be sharp and to the point but he rarely cuts someones mic.
From the article:
"In addition to Microsoft, ATL's founding members include Staples, Inc., CompUSA, Citizens Against Government Waste, CompTIA, Small Business Survival Committee, Clarity Consulting, Cityscape Filmworks, Association for Competitive Technology and 60Plus Association."
I guess CompUSA is worried that less Microsoft software sold means less profits for them, but it's still sad. Fortunately every time I set foot in the place it's such a mess that I usually leave emptyhanded. The funniest part, though, is a group called "Citizens Against Government Waste" advocating the government buy expensive proprietary software and locking themselves into a vendor instead of free, open software that competes on an open market.
E pluribus unum
I work for a national news service that "competes" with Fox. There is an understanding that if you work for Murdoch, you have sold out any attempt at integrity for cash. Fox does not deliver news, they deliver opinion (and I'm risking flames here). Their standards are set so low and their "spinners" are part of the report that one cannot truly expect that their material is free enough of bias to allow the viewer or reader to come to any meaningful conclusion.
Fox reports on the national events just like everyone and that is why they are insidious. You'll see coverage of Katrina, of the horrible earthquake in Pakistan and India. You'll see sports scores and weather on the local Fox channels. But the spin cycle is fully on for political coverage and for coverage of big business. At Fox, big corporations can do no wrong and if they make a claim to a Fox reporter, those claims (and all the spin inherent in those claims) are never fact-checked. They're reported as if they were truth. Up until the very end, Fox did no reporting that questioned the accountability of the Enron chiefs, while ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS (yeah, those Commies) reported questionable bookkeeping and deals that were pretty nigh illegal on the surface on their books. Enron was sued by the State of California for artificially raising energy prices to "create a crisis." Fox did not report on those suits. Everyone else did.
Instead, Fox began an attack on then-Governor Gray Davis and how he was incorrectly handling an energy crisis that was probably not of his own making. I believe the Fox television network (at least) was partially responsible for the recall election and the subsequent replacement of Gray Davis with Arnold Schwarzenegger. If the court cases finally decide that this was all Enron's making, I'd have to say that this kind of manipulation is pretty insidious.
Of course, when Enron declared bankruptcy and was called to question, Fox joined the bandwagon and launched "investigative reports." But even now, they hold Kenneth Lay blameless. Why? Because Fox is the "pro-Bush network" and any friend of the Bush family is a friend of Murdoch and his network.
I have read extensively the history of our country, which started off on the premise that the Press should be free. I have read diatribes against our founding fathers, aspersions to the characters of George Washington, Ben Franklin, James Monroe, Mrs. Adams and her "pet President John," and so on. I defend Murdoch's right to broadcast and print opinion. He has a right to do so and he has created a media empire for that purpose.
But understand that what he does with his empire is not necessarily tell you the truth. Almost everything of consequence is spun. And what I find unfortunate is that the other networks and news outlets think that they have to "chase Fox" and be more like them. Which means, increasingly, almost all of the news you receive has bias and spin. Don't believe everything you read in the papers and don't believe most of what you see on television.
This is a report from inside a media giant.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Yes, Fox News did divulge that Mr. Prendergast was connected to Microsoft, and that that fact should have been noted in the original article .. but I fail to find any apology whatsoever in the link'd Fox addendum!
Arrogant? yes. Fair? also yes.
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
Wow, the same old rubbish recycled into yet another troll post. Don't you get tired of posting this utter garbage?
Remember, Microsoft is patenting parts of their next Office format, and refuses to support OpenDoc. Good luck converting when the only company allowed to use your input format won't touch your output format with a bargepole.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
After reading your first paragraph, I read your whole post and seriously considered your point. Even though I disagree, I wanted to know the truth. Hopefully you'll give me the same consideration here =)
Your argument here is that liberal polls are biased because they use deceptive questions, and that this is a clear example. You chose three questions to discuss, so presumably those are the strongest or most obviously biased questions in the poll. Let's go with that.
1. Pre-war Iraq / Al Qaeda terrorist links.
A: Court Rules: Al Qaida, Iraq Linked
The article clearly states that the Judge made this ruling on a technicality because the other side didn't show up to present a defence. You may recall that the Iraqi government was destroyed and that Saddam was in hiding. This is nonevidence. You should be ashamed for citing this, as your description and link are truely deceptive.
B: Saddam Hussein's Philanthropy of Terror
Although this site has QUITE a lot to say, the few things it says about the Iraqi government and Al Qaida are backed by very flimsy evidence. For example, the case that Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, a consul at a Czech embassy met with Mohamed Atta, is based on a diary entry. Specifically, "Al-Ani's diary lists an April 8, 2001, meeting with 'Hamburg student.' Maybe, in a massive coincidence, Al-Ani dined with a young scholar and chatted about Hegel and Nietzsche." Mohamed Atta is apparently a former Hamburg student. The presumption that it's "obvious" that this is the only possible Hamburg student he could have met with is rather ridiculous.
The rest of the article is either similarly flimsy, or simply doesn't support your point. For example, Palestinians are not the same as Al Qaeda. As much as I'd like to go through this point by point, even if no case is presented against the "evidence" in this article, it's really not very convincing at all. Further I have to say that the authors appear to have a conclusion in need of evidence.
Since your evidence that there was a link at all is so weak, your statement about "US troops" has no relevance.
2. Troops found weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq
This question is flawed and shouldn't have been part of any poll. The fact that a slight rephrasing, such as, "Troops found nontrivial amounts of WMD in Iraq" would have fixed the question is no excuse either.
Your speculation that the WMD was exported or destroyed just before the war is not backed by any evidence. Your linked article doesn't seem to have any relevance to this discussion.
3. World public opinion favored Washington's going to war with Iraq
Your argument here is that people are being "tricked" because they can't parse simple English. In effect, your argument is, "Fox viewers aren't misinformed, they're just stupid!".
Total: You really had no argument against two of the questions, but were right about one of them, although you didn't provide any evidence that the question was intentionally deceptive. That's a very poor score considering that you chose the questions to refute. Furthermore, you used very deceptive "evidence" and statements, and linked to quite a bit of irrelivant "evidence".
Not only did you fail to show that liberal polls, or even this one liberal poll, are deceptive and biased, but your post shows that you're guilty of exactly what you accuse the other side of doing.
This post won't stop me from reading what the opposition has to say, because I really do care to know the truth. However, I would greatly appreciate it if in the future you'd take the time to make a rational argument based on evidence. After all, if I can refute your statements without digging up any of my own evidence, you just aren't trying very hard.
Fox would do little more than shrug, because half their audience wouldn't care, and the other half would still think Kerry was an alien.
What...he's not!???
This study seems like an exercise in futility. It seems to me that an equally valid interpretation of this would be that Republicans, to a shocking degree, tend to cite reports from organizations judged to be unreliable by the world's biggest news organizations, almost across the board. Here's an example that might be relevant. Imagine looking at a sample of statements and articles about evolution. Say, for instance, that Democrats and the New York Time both tend to cite scientists and people who actually know shit about biology, while Republicans tend to cite Billy Graham and other people. Does this show a liberal bias in the news? Or does it show a bias towards science in the news, one that Republicans don't tend to share, being concerned more with appealing to their religious base. The study was extremely deceptive in its definitions of left/liberal bias, I think. But then, I also tend to believe that the Earth is over 6009 years old, which would probably not get me cited by many Republicans.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
FOX and the Republican organized crime family have tricked you into believing that all honest and quite deserved criticism of the Bush administration is just partisan, liberal attacks.
And therefore it is "fair" to "balance" Bush administration criticism with rabid attacks against those who attack the administration, and their willing co-conspiring with the Bush adminstration bullshit.
Witness the graphic at the bottom of the screen: "War On Terror" everytime they talk about the war in Iraq. And in case you're too brainwashed to get the point, the war in Iraq is the fucking DISTRACTION from the war on terror.
The writer of this article, whether consciously or unconsciously, focused on story details that fit into his view of the president.
To paraphrase Kramer, you are way way off. These aren't minor details, terminology or layout, this was reporting on exactly how the "interview" worked, and it makes it's own story over here at this ABC news article. The entire subject of the story is this "choreographed" event. This isn't bias, this is reporting the news. This is informative. Is it bias for the news to report that some news stories you see on your local news are infomercials produced by the government? To find that some of your favorite radio hosts, who support the "No Child Left Behind", were actually paid hundreds of thousands by the government to say that? Is it bias to be told that, in town meetings around the country where Bush speaks, only strong Bush supporters will be allowed in? That your favorite reporter, Jeff Gannon, who asks softball questions, actually has no credentials? This isn't bias, this is called journalism. The news media has been falling down on the job as of late, but they've picked themselves up a bit, and asked some tough questions to the Katrina officials. Bias is different. ABC news got both sides of the story, from the "choreographer" we hear that with the satellite connection, they need to choreograph things. The reader can make up their own judgement, about whether this was just a nice informal chat with the prez, or just another propaganda short, in the style of the great Soviet artists.
Hahaha. Insufficient facts. At least Bill O'Reilly drilled something into you kids, eh. Repeat the mantra: facts facts shut up shut up!
Sorry, but you just blew your post, and revealed yourself as the typical foul-mouthed Foxite
Anyway, Mr. Wingnut, the point is not whether this was a journalist (does anyone really believe Fox has *any* journalists?), or a columnist, but that the person was not identified as working for a company funded by Microsoft. I guess to a Foxite, that's a might hard to understand what the problem is so I'll couch it in Slashdot understandable terms. Company A publishes a report that Microsoft IIS is faster than Apache! Turns out Company A was funded by Microsoft! Do you see the problem with that? Good. Keep reading Slashdot, turn off Fox, you might learn something.
While some might think, 'well, Microsoft was just ONE of the contributors..'
That reminds me of Forrest Gump. "There's all kinds of shrimp...there's Pineapple Shrimp...Fried Shrimp...coconut shrimp...dead shrimp.....cajun shrimp...."
Ohhh that is quite the selection. Sounds like a variety, but its all SHRIMP.
Go back a couple of years and look at what Staples did with 'Microsoft approved only software' being sold through the stores. Each of the companies listed gets concessions in one way or another from Microsoft (in a MAJOR way). I am just surprised that Best Buy wasn't listed.
O'Reilly is not civil. he's a thug and bully who has to get his own way and be seen to "win" every argument on his show and can't stand it when someone stands up to him.
one word to sort this problem out: falafel.
BTW just about any day on http://mediamatters.org/ will point out his outrageous statements. sharp and civil it ain't, unless we're using very differnt definitions of the word.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
3a. Steal underpants
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
I said examples of the NYT cloaking opinion as a news item, not examples of right-wing loons cloaking half-baked conspiracy theories as research.
Pretty good quote.
And I looked up the original interview and it mostly supports your argument.
O'Reilly lost it a bit because he felt Glick was siding with the people who killed Glick's Dad. Do I find it a bit disappointing? Sure.
However, I watch O'Reilly a few times a month- catch him on the radio a couple days a month- and you know what? Prior to this quote, based on the 40-50 times I've heard him talking (perhaps 100 hours total over the last couple years) he seems reasonable, decent, and honest. I'm much more liberal than he is socially- tho about as conservative as he is fiscally. I do not agree with everything he says.
I'll forgive him a slip- but agree that he should have handled Glick a little better.
Finally, to me, the transcript showed that Glick was being pretty rude as well- talking over O'Reilly instead of talking with him. Pretty rude- but also silly since as O'Reilly showed, he controlled the mike and you can't just rant on overhim. That would irritate me too.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media"
I see you're getting your information from a very balanced website there. I'm sure you have a very non-skewed view of the world.
Due to licensing restrictions, the free ones don't carry Adobe Reader (or the older Acrobat), only the business-targeted "pay for support" distros do.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
Yeah, well, as a Mass. taxpayer who is curious about what my neighborhood looks like from the air, I sure appreciate MassGIS putting the data purchased with my tax dollars on a website where I can browse and download it. I do believe the data is only free for non-commercial use.
I'm betting my town and all the other towns in this state also appreciate the fact that the data's been paid for once, and is available to them. Why should *my* town pay *again* for the same data? The plane flew once, the company that made the photos (for the state) was paid for their time and made a healthy profit, and it only makes sense to share the data with other users and taxpayers. I think this is a case of a central archive being much cheaper to operate, and perhaps helping towns that would otherwise never be able to afford custom mapping costs to generate their own maps.
As to the cost of installing OpenOffice (or Star Office or whatever) on several thousand state workstations, I suspect the majority of the expense is going to be *un*-installing Microsoft Office. Last time I tried that, it wanted me to insert the original product CD before it would uninstall. I've been using OpenOffice at home and I haven't found it to be any more trouble than using MS Office at work. Install went quickly and smoothly. Do *you* enjoy being locked in to a single vendor with proprietary file formats? I commend my state for insisting on an open, standardized file format for electronic documents. Wonder why Microsoft is so against that?
According to Netcraft...
170.63.97.68 Linux Apache/2.0.46 Red Hat 26-Sep-2005
So they are correcting conservative misinformation, exactly as they set out to do. How about you point out what's wrong on that site? Who has a skewed view? O'Reilly hates it (he recommended that site on his show ;) because they tell the truth about him.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Buy do they include xpdf or kpdf?
Of course, but you're completely missing the whole point.
Having someone download something (free) in order to open a document is not something that would shock anyone who's used the web for more than a few weeks. It's very common.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -