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Italian Military To Switch To LibreOffice and ODF
jrepin writes: The Italian military is transitioning to LibreOffice and the Open Document Format (ODF). The Ministry of Defense will over the next year-and-a-half install this suite of office productivity tools on some 150,000 PC workstations — making it Europe's second largest LibreOffice implementation.
Truthfully, I wasn't entirely cognizant of the existence of an Italian military.
It's kind of like the Canadian Navy. If you think about it; well sure they would exist. But did you actually realize that they exist?
Handing a black briefcase to Clippy, "Get these free Office licenses to the Italian Ministry of Defense by any means necessary."
Wasn't there just a slashdot article a couple weeks ago about how Italian government is switching from LibreOffice back to MS?
Considering that libre is a Latin word, I'm surprised that this wasn't done years ago.
The article was about how the city of Pesaro, Italy was switching back to MS.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
Italy had a powerful military when Americans were crapping on the ground and worshiping buffalo.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh, you means the guys who didn't need boats to get to America, before the guys who did need boats to get there got there... Gotcha :)
Of course Italy has an army. It gives the Italian designers something to practice on.
Apparently even Armani has had a hand in their uniform designs.
http://www.styleite.com/news/r...
...Sabayon Linux, baby! (And if you don't like it, vaffanculo!!)
Italy had a powerful military when Americans were crapping on the ground and worshiping buffalo.
What, Florence and Venice?
Florence, Venice and the Vatican all relied on a private military known as Condottieri; was that what you were referring to?
The last actual thought I had about the Italian military is that they had recently decommissioned their ancient Lockheed F-104 Starfighters. Being thin is the natural state of the poor.
There are 16 countries without a military, and Italy is not one of them. There are about 175,000 people in the Italian Armed Forces, and according to TFA, 150,000 of them produce documents. I believe that the last time they won a war, was their invasion of Albania.
Way before Florence and Venice. You know, there was this thing called Roman Empire, which basically amounted to 90% of the civilized world 2K years ago. If we look at more recent times, Italy was part of 3 wars over the last century, it won two of them (one against the Ottoman Empire and WWI). It lost WWII only because it was driven by an idiotic dictator who entered the war after a 3 month preparation. As for the US, the last three wars it was part of were in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the recent "proxy war" with Russia in the Donbass region: the brilliant results speak for themselves.
But probably in US high schools History is not cool enough to be taught, they teach you "courses" like rollerblading and "home economics" instead, and at night you might enjoy the katrashians.
You mention that Italy HAD a powerful military. The GP asks if Italy HAS a military. :P
1939. Which was just 6 years before the US won its last war, in 1945.
Unless you consider what happened in Iraq a "victory" (is ISIS your ally?), let alone Afghanistan, that is still today largely controlled by the Talibans.
Italy had a powerful military when Americans were crapping on the ground and worshiping buffalo.
Never live in the past, man.
I thought I would post something, you know, on topic .... as strange and possibly inappropriate as that concept might sound.
It appears that when something like this happens, Microsoft picks its moment, finds the moment of maximum chaos (all radical transitions have such moments) and offers a "deal" like cheap Office 365 (or is it 360, or 666, or some other number?) licenses, and some panic-stricken execs go for it rather than wait until the chaos dies down and a stable operating state is achieved.
I'm as anti-Microsoft as it gets, but no denying that marketing is something they are good at. This is not the same thing as pleasing the customer --- witness the forced Windows 10 downloads --- but they sure can sell things despite everything. They wouldn't be where they are if they weren't such a powerful marketing force.
I hope this works out for the Italian military but I'm not overly optimistic.
It seems that your views of daily American life are just as wrong and skewed as you think ours is of yours.
> It's kind of like the Canadian Navy. If you think about it; well sure they would exist.
Technically they exist, and they do serve a role, a role similar in some ways to the US Coast Guard.
Canada's navy operates 1 destroyer, 12 frigates, 4 patrol submarines, 12 coastal defense vessels and 8 unarmed patrol/training vessels. They have about 8,000 sailors.
Each US carrier battle group includes about eight surface warships like those of the RCN, and typically two submarines. Plus a carrier. With 70 planes on it. Each carrier battle group has about 7,500 sailors - roughly the same size as the entire Royal Canadian Navy.
It's good to be close friends with the country who has 10 such carrier groups - Canada doesn't really need much of a navy when they're buddies with the US. That's an an under-appreciated benefit to the US of having a navy roughly as powerful as all other navies combined. Sure, we can defend ourselves materially, but we get just as much benefit from the fact that friendly nations enjoy our protection, and therefore want to be our close allies.
Va bene cosi.
Well if your army is so great and superior to the US then by all means show us how to do it. Go ahead and walk right into Iraq and Afghanistan and show us all how it's done. History tells this American born citizen that the Russians had the same problems in Afghanistan so we aren't the only ones who had "lost" battles there. In Iraq against Sadam's military, we wipe the floor with their best tank divisions in what a week or two? And the Iraq airforce was defeated the US how fast? Go ahead and explain to all of us how you defeat the war we currently have where the bad guys wear the same clothes as the good guys?
I'll wait for your genius response.
Go ahead and walk right into Iraq and Afghanistan and show us all how it's done
Why should I? And why should Italy? Saddam Hussein didn't do anything wrong to Italy, he was a pretty good leader, he kept its country stable, I don't remember any refugees coming here when he was in power. I wouldn't have attacked him in the first place, just like Khadafi in Lybia, just like Assad in Syria, two other pretty good leaders. And there wouldn't be massive amounts of refugees coming to Italy and several other european countries as a result. As for the Talibans, sorry, but Bin Laden was harbored by Pakistan, not Afghanistan, as events eventually proved. But Pakistan has nukes, so you were afraid to bomb it, right?
Basically everywhere you go you make a massive mess, just like the obese kid in the class when he tries to decorate the christmas tree: many kilograms on the belly, zero neurons inside the head. Except that the damages of your mess are paid for by somebody else.
wouldn't canada (or anybody) be safer without a friend who goes around the world stirring shit at every possible opportunity?
i.e. if they had United States of South Canada for a neighbor, i'd imagine the south canadian (mounted) navy wouldn't just run around the world rattling guns and meddling in people's shit.
You mean WWII? When the Americans waited in Sicily for three years for the Germans to leave Italy?
Give it a rest; no one really gives a shit.
You know, there was this thing called Roman Empire, which basically amounted to 90% of the civilized world 2K years ago.
If you somehow failed to know about China.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Well if your army is so great and superior to the US then by all means show us how to do it. Go ahead and walk right into Iraq and Afghanistan and show us all how it's done.
History tells us that "walking into Afghanistan" is how it is not done
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Indeed. One does not simply "walk" into Afghanistan.
Company CTOs or equivalent need to understand the needs of their company before they pick a product. Here's a list that shows the products side by side:
https://wiki.documentfoundatio...
Ok, the expression "civilized world" might be offensive because China was already "civilized", but only the most desperate sinofiles would really claim that 2K years ago China was on par with Rome, especially considering that Rome also enjoyed the cultural, artistic, scientific and technological progress of the civilizations that it had conquered, some of the most advanced in the world at that time (especially the Greeks and the Egyptians).
> wouldn't canada (or anybody) be safer
Well, we've seen the results . Has Canada been invaded since the US Navy was formed? Have they had any need for their own Navy? (Other than for Coast Guard type operations).
Liberal:
One who is full of their own ideas, and refuses to learn from historical facts about those ideas.
And Persia, Britannia, Egypt and bunch of others.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion. -- Spazmania (174582)
This is going to quickly become a trend as more and more foreign governments realize MS can't be trusted.
How to do it is to not do it. Simple. It is not possible to conquer a complex country like Afghanistan. If you really want the territory where the Afghans are living, than you have to kill them all, just like the Romans did in their prime time when tribes didn't want to join the empire. But a war to spread democracy and liberty in Afghanistan? It can't be done.
Iraq? It's easy to kill a dictator, but it was not the solution to the non existing problem. It was a dictator with blood on his hands, that is something we all know. But there flows even more blood without that dictator. Iraq is a country that shouldn't exist. It should be divided in different nations or it should be part of a pan-Arabian state with a part joining a Shiite empire and another part joining a Sunni empire, where all other religions have to pay their taxes or convert to Islam. Or again, if you just want the territory, commit genocide. Hunt down the people, village after village. Scare them with brutal executions. IS shows the way. They don't even have to kill everyone, most people are on the run. But a war to spread democracy and liberty in Iraq? It can't be done.
So many empires in history have failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, many have won battles, but nobody ever won a war. Just leave them alone in their misery. Maybe they become enlightened some day. Maybe the genocide by IS is what is needed to stabilize the region? Maybe this apocalyptic end of Syria and Iraq is the plow that prepares the land to plant the seeds for a successful and peaceful society that has turned its back to this awful religion?
Now Europe is planning to also start dropping bombs on Syria. So both the US and the EU will be dropping bombs on both Iraq and Syria. But to what purpose? What bloodthirsty minority are we going to help this time? Do you really think that removing Assad or IS from those deserts will all of the sudden bring peace to those countries? It was rather calm over there when the dictators where still in power. The Arab spring didn't bring democracy, it only made it clear to me that Islam is a religion that wants total control of the world. Moderate or not, it's what Islam is all about. Islam is not just a religion, it's a complete way of live including laws, politics and culture. Islam is not competing with Christianity, but with Globalism and liberalism.
Look at Egypt. There was democracy when the previous dictator was gone but the majority chose to live in a totalitarian theocracy. Egypt would have been a totalitarian theocracy if the new dictator didn't take action. This is what the current Islam is all about. Once it might have been a tolerant religion that brought peace over a large region and brought prosperity and scientific progress. But something went wrong when some theologists started to reinterpret the holy scriptures and demanded total submission to Islam and only to Islam. That's why the crusades where necessary back in those days. Europeans still have to apologize for the crusades, but the region was rather peaceful under the Crusader states. To protect the 'moderate' people in the 'holy lands', the crusaders had to become ruthless killers themselves. Islam has radicalized again, and only a small percentage of radicals in a sea of moderate Muslims is needed to bring terrorism and this horrible IS.
Do you want to stop this? Kill everyone who doesn't want to submit to your authority and place someone of your own kind as the local leader. Don't want to just randomly kill people because that is an unethical thing? Than stay out of that area, you can't solve their problem without bloodshed.
And Italian army has some specialized forces, like Alpini, Carabinieri, Granadieri, which are not found in any other army.
For example Alpini are trained on the alps, they have specific training for mountainous and high elevation terrain, they can operate where cars, and helicopters have problems. They were explicitly requested for operation in Afghanistan.
Carabinieri are the only military police which operates ordinarily as a civil police, they have a specific know how in the sector, they were requested for operations in Iraq by the US. Many died there and there was a terrorist attack on their base there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Nasiriyah_bombing
To the OP:
Please remember that the US isn't the only country paying with their military lives in the conflicts around the world.
Egypt was conquered by Rome, just like most of Britannia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You might want to open a history book sometimes, ignorant idiot.
Throw an Unsigned italian sausage up your ass...
Britannia and Egypt were both part of the Roman Empire. And London itself was literally founded by the Romans. Finally, the Persian dynasties lost many of their western territories to the Romans, especially in the 2nd century AD.
You must have attended elementary schools either in the USA or in the fourth world.
I had a friend who claimed the the Italians had never lost a war, even if it meant they had to change sides to make sure of it.
He was Italian, BTW.
As far as I know, Alpini have a specific training only for drinking grappa.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Not trying to take away from Italian special forces here, but are you seriously saying that they have roles/forces not found in any other army? The 10th mountain division has existed in the US army since WW2. Hell they served specifically in Italy. The US military has 4 mountain training facilities. As to the Carabinieri, well they are basically a mixture of MPs and the FBI. They aren't unique either. The French Gendarmerie are the identical (national police as part of the army). The Dutch and Portugese have one too.
As for the Talibans, sorry, but Bin Laden was harbored by Pakistan, not Afghanistan, as events eventually proved.
He was harbored by both. In the ten years before he was caught, he had a lot of time to move around. He was in Tora Bora when the US invaded Afghanistan, but managed to evade capture, at which point intelligence agencies lost track of him.
But Pakistan has nukes, so you were afraid to bomb it, right?
You may have missed the part where once the US tracked down Bin Laden, they invaded without telling the Pakistani government. Caused a bit of a stir.
What do do, guard against an invasion from the Visigoths?
That was gonna be my question as well. Ever since the end of the Cold War and the open-border approach of all European countries, it's a wonder that any of them have militaries at all. In Italy's case, who do they defend themselves against? Austria? France? Switzerland? Croatia? The only people invading them are refugees from Libya, and they don't even have the balls to turn them away w/o needing a military. So what good does it do Italy to have a military?
You have to go back pretty far to get to the time that Italy had a decent military. In the Middle Ages, it was a part of the Austrian Empire.
The US won a war against Iraq in 1991, unless you consider the non-removal of Saddam as a stale-mate
The Maritime Republic of Venice was actually a pretty fearsome military power during the medieval and renaissance ages, they fought a lot against the hungarians (hun ogres) both at sea and on land. At the Lepanto battle of 1572 that broke ottoman turkish sea power forever, venets provided 2/3rd of the christian coalition's ships and manpower, alongside the Pope and the Spanish Kingdom. Venetian galleys didn't use slaves or prisoners at all, so in CQB even their oarsmen would take up arms to fight, which gave them the upper hand.
Venetian power was actually broken by two huge pestilence epidemics in 1574 and 1630, which killed 35% and 40% of the city state's population, respectively. After that, both their demographics and morals remained permanently broken, catholicism having been replaced by 6 month carnevale, freemasonry and gambling. By the time of Casanova, even their nuns became prostitutes.
Completely wrong. Only northeastern Italy - and not even all of it - fell under austrian control, and only for some decades between the 18th and 19th centuries (definitely not in the middle ages), and not even continuously. Plus, Italy defeated the Turkish Empire in 1912 (conquering Lybia) and was among the winners of WWI.
This discussion is becoming ridiculous, pure american ignorance at its best.
> they had recently decommissioned their ancient Lockheed F-104 Starfighters
Huh? They had decommissioned their Starfighters a LONG time ago. Because the Eurofighter wasn't ready at that time, italians actually leased a few dozen F-16 from the USA to fill the gap. Those F-16 have also been returned last year and now Italy uses the EFA-2000 Eurofighter for air to air combat, with the Panavia Tornado and the AMX doing the air-to-ground attacks (and soon the Macchi M346 as well). In fact, last week Italy has seen the first flight of their first F-35 JSF fighterjet prototype, which american aircraft type is made in Japan and Italy to a large degree (carbon reinforced carbon parts making). Italians have B-767 aerial refuelling tankers to support their Eurofighters and Tornados, a rare capability in Europe. Italy is world's third manufacturer of helicopters (Augusta Westland) behind Kochbrotheristan and Putinistan and of the three, Italy has the most advanced, highly carbon based designs, although they are still more problematic than legacy dural sheetmetal builds.
He was harbored by both.
That's what you say. There's no proof the Taliban government actively "harbored" him. While it is blatantly clear that Pakistan did, since he was "hiding" near a Pakistani military academy.
You may have missed the part where once the US tracked down Bin Laden, they invaded without telling the Pakistani government.
You may have missed the part when the USA fought a 10-year war with Afghanistan, while it didn't do the same with Pakistan even once it knew Bin Laden was really being harbored there. A one-night "invasion" doesn't cause a nuclear war, but only a diplomatic incident. It's easier to only bully the shortest kid in the classroom, right?
Just today the North Korean leader threatened the US with nuclear war, however for some strange reason you don't really feel like "exporting democracy" there, right? Last time it didn't go very well, and they didn't even have nukes yet.
Just for the record, USA/UK couldn't break through Italy to the north and reach Austria (then annexed Volks-Deutsch lands of the Reich) before WW2 ended. The nazi troops and their italian fascist comrades (the so-called Salo Republic led by the rescued Benito Mussolini) put up really big resistance. The USA was very desperate, they even tried aerial terror bombings, razing Monte Cassino, Padova, etc. but the Axis frontline wouldn't budge and the anglo-americans could only watch the soviets march into Austria ending the war.
I've slated LibreOffice in the past for constant crashes and formatting problems.
They've done a great job of fixing bugs, it no longer crashes regularly and I haven't noticed any formatting issues with 5.0.x
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
The middle ages ended with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. Venice was still powerful. Occasionally the French and the Holy Roman Empire got involved as did lots of mercenaries from northern europe. The City States of Italy were very rich and powerful the Renaissance started there as well as double entry book keeping the beginnings of modern finance and capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQhwNtY3N2k
Follow this modded down comment... see how far the rabbit hole goes.
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8000075&cid=50511399
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kickstarter-ceo-fccs-fast-lane-internet-plan-threatens-free-exchange-of-ideas/2014/07/04/a52ffd2a-fcbc-11e3-932c-0a55b81f48ce_story.html
And they'll switch back to Microsoft Office. Who the fuck cares?
It lost WWII only because it was driven by an idiotic dictator who entered the war after a 3 month preparation.
The oh-so-clever democratic rulers made less progress fighting the mafia in decades than Mussolini in just a few years. He was not stupid.
There are many reasons the war was lost, but blaming the country with the fewer troops makes little sense. Even if every Italian fought for two there wouldn't be anywhere close to enough men to hold the line.
Are you nut? It was about "90% of the civilized world 2K years ago." which is of course false unless he was only counting western world. And you are saying that if roman empire "enjoyed the cultural, artistic, scientific and technological progress of the civilizations that it had conquered", it means it is 90%?? You can go all nut.
The war that Garibaldi fought was against foreign powers who colonized Italy - namely the Austrians and the French. And that was during the post Napoleonic period
What I really want to know is what kind of toilet paper they use.
"wouldn't canada (or anybody) be safer without a friend who goes around the world stirring shit at every possible opportunity?"
Well, it depends. Our current world is only big enough for a limited set of military bullies, and it can be argued that the current set has a cardinality of one. So, if you happen not to be friend of the bully... what do you think is the alternative?
He like the Italians, and learned to speak Italian quite well, so that he could order wine for his unit. His take was that Italians pretty much wanted everyone to go home, they generally had no interest in fighting.
His view may have been coloured by the fact that his unit, (the New Zealand Division Signal Corps, so not front line troops) took a lot of Italian prisoners during the Middle East campaign.
You're an idiot and clearly ignoring basic things, like China in relation to North Korea and why would USA start war with ally AFTER killing Bin Laden?
Your logic is busted.
Not being a native English speaker I clearly did not make myself perfectly clear. What I meant is that those special forces were specifically requested for certain situations in international missions. There are a few details about the training of some of those forces which are said to be unique by experts, but I don't know the details and can't speak about it.
In the end what I was trying to show is that Italy does have a military, and they do have proficiencies and expertise. Italy definitely has a military force.
As a side note Italy constitution forbids Italy to levy war to another country, we can only take part to international peace missions and defend ourself (and no, attack as defense does not count). So Italian military force isn't structured for attack.
Dilegua, o Lotus Notes!
Tramontate, MS Office!
Tramontate, MS Word!
Con la LibreOffice io vincerò!
Vincerò! Vincerò!
Ok, so, to sum up:
- The post Napoleonic period has nothing to do with the Middle Ages
- Austria controlled just a small part of Italy (Lombardia and Veneto, and not even all of them) and only for a few decades
- Actually France HELPED Italy to regain its independence. It backed the Kingdom of Piedmont and Sardinia (whose military was directed by Garibaldi) that re-unified all of Italy for the first time since the Roman era. You're probably confusing "France" with a branch of the Bourbon dynasty who ruled a kindgom in southern Italy and who happened to have french origin, but it was not backed by France
- You forgot to mention that Italy won a war vs. the Turkish Empire in 1912, and was among the winners of WWI. So you don't really have to go back to the Roman times, or to Venice, or Florence in the Renaissance, etc... to find and era when Italy had a great army
Hopefully your IT skills are better than your knowledge of history.
Are YOU nut? Do you really want to compare the degree of civilization, scientific and technological progress of the Roman Empire, with China in the same period? It's like two alien civilizations in two different planets. This is how Rome looked like 17 centuries ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And several of those buildings are still standing today, the Pantheon is even used as a normal church every week (!).
Now show me how Beijing looked like in that era...
Oh, reality bites, huh? So why was the Afghan war fought even after Bin Laden was killed?
The crude truth is that when your obese camouflaged tourists face a serious military they get regularly wiped out, as it happened in Vietnam and partly in Afghanistan as well. So no wonder Pakistan is free to harbor Bin Laden without any consequences and North Korea to threaten a nuclear war on a weekly basis.
There are many reasons the war was lost, but blaming the country with the fewer troops makes little sense. Even if every Italian fought for two there wouldn't be anywhere close to enough men to hold the line.
The same reasoning could be made about the war between Italy and the Austrian empire during WW1, as well as the war between Italy and the Turkish empire in 1912: but Italy won both. So it's just wrong.
Plus, the better option for Italy was to stay out of WW2 and become a neutral country, like Switzerland: now it would be fully sovereign, without Nato and american bases, and probably richer than Switzerland itself (who the hell would have ever placed the headquarters of several international organizations in the ugly Geneva if they could have put them in Rome, Venice or Florence instead?).
Mussolini was not only a dictator and a criminal, but also a world class idiot who chose the wrong ally and took the wrong choices at the wrong time.
Unfortunately the 10th "Mountain" Division carries this title only in name. They are simply another IBCT and conduct no specialized mountaineering training. They are located at Fort Drum, NY which is flat as a pancake and much closer to the Great Lakes than any mountains. In fact, there is no large formation in the US military with that capability. As far as training facilities/schools go, I am only aware of the Army Mountain Warfare School and the USMC Mountain Warfare Training Center. The former is located in Vermont (and both NY and Vermont's mountains are a joke compared to say.. the Alps or the mountains of Afghanistan) and I have never met anyone in 11 years of Army service that has attended the school (seems to be mostly a "fun" school for Vermont National Guardsmen and ROTC Cadets). The latter Marine Corps school seems to take things a little more seriously, located in the Sierra Nevadas and offering some pretty advanced training. I can't speak for Marine attendance at this school but the Corps is small and mostly concerned with the ocean. I would imagine the school gets some patronage from Special Operations Forces, for example the Army maintains a number of Special Forces mountaineering teams. Again, that is very small though. So no, unfortunately the US military has very little mountain capability. The days of the 10th Mountain skiing down the slopes in the Rockies is long gone.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. -- Mussolini
Allied invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, was a major World War II campaign, ... began on the night of 9/10 July 1943, and ended on 17 August.
Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied landing on mainland Italy on 3 September 1943. How much wronger can you be?
Roughly the same period as the Jin dynasty (265–420) in China.
Population around 22 million, maybe a third of the population of the Roman empire at its greatest.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Oh, reality bites, huh? So why was the Afghan war fought even after Bin Laden was killed?
Because the United States was not at war with Bin Laden, it was at war with Al Qaeda, of whom Bin Laden was the head. Killing Bin Laden does not kill his terrorist networks.