SCIENTISTS examining the first dust samples collected from a comet have found complex carbon molecules, supporting the theory that ingredients for life on Earth originated in space.
Groklaw has a piece by a member of COSPA on their experience in migrating several thousands of desktops to OpenOffice.org (v1) in many sites across Europe.
Sorry, I remember the transition from stand-alone MS apps to the all-inclusive office suite and my opinion remains that it was marketing driven. Microsoft still didn't have complete market dominance in every app and it was a way of snaring customers into using the other included apps. Users were sucked in by the idea of getting more for less. I doubt few were sold on the fact that they could embed a spreadsheet into a word doc.
Let's face it - how many users make use of this functionality? My guess would be a lot less than 5%. Hardly justifies the overhead.
For ppl who do want to throw a few images or spreadsheets into a textual doc I don't really think you need dynamic updating. And if you're creating a large document with a large number of these inserts you really shouldn't be doing it in a WYSIWYG editor anyway.
My suggestion is just to follow the mozilla phoenix/firebird/firefox approach and break the suite up and develop the components separately.
Break off the wordprocessor and strip it back to essential functionality as was done with phoenix 0.1. Go for a rapid release cycle again as happened with phoenix with new updates at least every month. This will reinject vitality into the project. The full office suite will still be available as Mozilla is to this day.
The essential thing that Mozilla had was the gecko rendering engine and XUL. None of this was lost in moving to single app development. The essential thing that OpenOffice has is its well-developed ability to read/write MS office file formats and its own OpenDoc format. This also would not be lost by splitting off the wordprocessor.
The Office suite as a monolithic application was really a marketing innovation, not something that was user driven. Let's free ourselves of the unwieldy bloat it has given us.
Your argument is based on purely technical usability grounds. Whatever side you take it is only relevant as an argument against the inherent superiority/inferiority of Open Source software production. For those of us who don't want to be enslaved by the software we use yr argument is completely irrelevant.
Think about it - how many times have you taken pictures at a party with your digicam, and your friends ask you, "I want a copy of that pic!" Now you can without batting an eye!
Ah, the eye-batting protocol, with its Bardot rate, IRIS interface and open flirtation technologies. Sad to see that one go.
The Rocky Mountain Institute has published a number of papers on hydrogen and the hydrogen economy. This page contains links to papers (as pdf) including Twenty Hydrogen Myths and A Strategy for the Hydrogen Transition amongst others. They also have a separate website for one of their book publications called Winning the Oil Endgame.
One thing that the mozilla development community needs badly right now is a php.net, wiki-style website to encourage anyone and everyone to frequently update documentation easily and in small pieces
The software exists - now it's just up to you and other ppl with the same need to scratch your own itch.
Sorry to break up the wise-cracking fun but the latest update at the impact risk page now has the asteroid at 0 on the Torino scale and the impact odds at 1 in 56,000.
mathematics in the kama sutra
on
Mathematics and Sex
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Reading from the Kama Sutra, Chapter 1
Oh beautiful maiden with beaming eyes, tell me, since you understand the method of inversion, what number multiplied by 3, then increased by three-quarters of the product, then divided by 7, then diminished by one-third of the result, then multiplied by itself, then diminished by 52, whose square root is then extracted before 8 is added and then divided by 10, gives the final result of 2?
This excerpt came up in an interview with this book's author which you can read here
China, Japan and Korea working together is no mean feat either - they are historically incredibly bitter enemies. Think a nice English/Irish/French cooperative linux distribution and you might get the idea.
The China - Japan - Korea analogy to France - England - Ireland works rather well (with the pairings given in order).
China ~= France : both are continental powers with traditions of strong central government, conservative status-based culture and elite-focussed education
Japan ~= England : both are island/archipelago powers with each being the first to industrialise in their own hemisphere. Different to China/France they show learned interest in distant regions of the globe.
Korea ~= Ireland : both colonised by Japan/England. Koreans are often called the 'Irish of Asia' based on their capacity to drink and their emotional natures.
Of course, as with any analogising these pairings fall down if you take them too far or even examine them too closely. But as a broad brush portrait I think it's a fun one to muse on.
Malayalam is the major language of the state of Kerala, in southern India. It is one of the 17 official languages of India, spoken by around 30 million people. A person who speaks Malayalam is called a "Malayalee" and rarely, a "Keralite".
It belongs to the family of Dravidian languages. Both the language and its writing system are closely related to Tamil. Malayalam has a script of its own. Malayalam is the longest language name in English which is a palindrome.
Not sure you've got your definition of atheism correct. The 'a' prefix at the start of the word means 'not'. Thus atheism believes there is or are no 'gods'. The problem with this is that negation itself is a kind of recognition of a concept i.e. you accept the concept by negating it.
Agnosticism just considers the question of exitence of god(s) as unknowable. Again it has the 'a' prefix but here the negation is of 'gnosis' i.e. knowledge.
The difference between the two can be shown by the different answers they give to the question 'Do you believe in [insert deity/s here]?'
Atheist: No Agnostic: An answer to such a question is unknowable.
I was factually wrong in the parent comment. Beijing is the Hanyu Pinyin romanization, but Peking is not the Wade-Giles romanization. Instead it is the Postal system Pinyin romanization.
Also there has been sound change in the pronunciation of the name of the city in recent times.
So, I should have checked my facts before posting. Good information on this issue can be found on the Wikipedia page for Beijing
Funny and also etymologically astute. The word dandelion is from the french dent de lion. This means lion's teeth and refers to the plant's serrated leaf edges.
I wonder if the Microsoft maps have "Peking" or "Beijing"? That alone would put a lot of Chinese in an offended state.
Perhaps not. These are simply two romanisations of the chinese capital using different systems. "Peking" is the Wades-Giles romanisation, "Beijing" is the pinyin romanisation. If you know how the systems work and don't try to pronounce the letters with their english values then they both give the same pronunciation of the name of the chinese capital. For example the very first sound in the name is an unaspirated voiceless bilabial stop which is sort of half-way between English "B" and "P".
"Beijing" is the preferable romanisation simply because it uses the now official romanisation system. I think it was made official sometime in the 80's. But because in the west we tend to pronounce the name using our English sound representations many people have the misapprehension that the actual name was changed in China. It was not and has remained the same for the last however many hundreds of years.
> Of course, Austrailia has many fewer total over the air TV stations than the USA does thanks in part to its smaller geographic size, so this service is much more practical there than it is here.
>> Spoken like someone who has no idea where Australia is or has the slightest idea how big it is.
Australia is geographically the same size as the United States, even though it has 1/10th of the population. The fewer number of television stations (3 commercial, 2 government-owned and in some places 1 community)is driven in part by govenment regulation and in part by economics. A country of ~20 million people cannot support the same number of commercial stations as a country of ~200 million.
~ ~ ~
If you are going to correct someone, make sure you get your facts completely straight. The original poster said Australia is smaller than the U.S.A. They are correct: Australia is slightly smaller than the 48 contiguous states, with Alaska, their largest state, adding significantly to the margin.
U.S.A. : 9,631,418 sq km Australia : 7,686,850 sq km
More glaringly, your estimation of the United States of America's population is out by nearly 50%. Their population is currently 293 million rather than the ~200 million you give.
I'm an Australian too by the way, and I find that most foreigners don't underestimate the size of Australia (it's pretty evident by looking at a globe) but are surprised by it's low population.
My source for population and nation size : CIA World Fact Book, 2004.
Otherwise, I found your argument against the original comment insightful.
Actually I have read about fibs and it sounds great. In fact it sounds so good that I have decided to stay away, based on my previous debillitating experience. I congratulate you if you are able to keep yourself under control with an always-on-tap pool of really good players just waiting for a game. I know I can't.
Slashdot Mirror
A great collection of articles on Social Change in Japan on japanfocus.org.
Some articles relevant to the present discussion:
Groklaw has a piece by a member of COSPA on their experience in migrating several thousands of desktops to OpenOffice.org (v1) in many sites across Europe.
Quote from the interview:
MP: In your view, what is the most significant thing about OpenOffice.org 2.0?
LSP: Our use of the OpenDocument format--the ODF--is the most significant thing.
Sorry, I remember the transition from stand-alone MS apps to the all-inclusive office suite and my opinion remains that it was marketing driven. Microsoft still didn't have complete market dominance in every app and it was a way of snaring customers into using the other included apps. Users were sucked in by the idea of getting more for less. I doubt few were sold on the fact that they could embed a spreadsheet into a word doc.
Let's face it - how many users make use of this functionality? My guess would be a lot less than 5%. Hardly justifies the overhead.
For ppl who do want to throw a few images or spreadsheets into a textual doc I don't really think you need dynamic updating. And if you're creating a large document with a large number of these inserts you really shouldn't be doing it in a WYSIWYG editor anyway.
My suggestion is just to follow the mozilla phoenix/firebird/firefox approach and break the suite up and develop the components separately.
Break off the wordprocessor and strip it back to essential functionality as was done with phoenix 0.1. Go for a rapid release cycle again as happened with phoenix with new updates at least every month. This will reinject vitality into the project. The full office suite will still be available as Mozilla is to this day.
The essential thing that Mozilla had was the gecko rendering engine and XUL. None of this was lost in moving to single app development. The essential thing that OpenOffice has is its well-developed ability to read/write MS office file formats and its own OpenDoc format. This also would not be lost by splitting off the wordprocessor.
The Office suite as a monolithic application was really a marketing innovation, not something that was user driven. Let's free ourselves of the unwieldy bloat it has given us.
Your argument is based on purely technical usability grounds. Whatever side you take it is only relevant as an argument against the inherent superiority/inferiority of Open Source software production. For those of us who don't want to be enslaved by the software we use yr argument is completely irrelevant.
Google market capitalisation: 55 Billion. Microsoft market capitalisation: 265 Billion.
The market appears to disagree with you.
Ah, the eye-batting protocol, with its Bardot rate, IRIS interface and open flirtation technologies. Sad to see that one go.
The Rocky Mountain Institute has published a number of papers on hydrogen and the hydrogen economy. This page contains links to papers (as pdf) including Twenty Hydrogen Myths and A Strategy for the Hydrogen Transition amongst others. They also have a separate website for one of their book publications called Winning the Oil Endgame.
The software exists - now it's just up to you and other ppl with the same need to scratch your own itch.
Just wanted to mention Wikimedia Commons which is an alternative to this site you might want to consider.
They aim to serve as a central resource to all the Wikimedia projects which includes the highly successful Wikipedia projects.
Sorry to break up the wise-cracking fun but the latest update at the impact risk page now has the asteroid at 0 on the Torino scale and the impact odds at 1 in 56,000.
Reading from the Kama Sutra, Chapter 1
This excerpt came up in an interview with this book's author which you can read here
The China - Japan - Korea analogy to France - England - Ireland works rather well (with the pairings given in order).
China ~= France : both are continental powers with traditions of strong central government, conservative status-based culture and elite-focussed education
Japan ~= England : both are island/archipelago powers with each being the first to industrialise in their own hemisphere. Different to China/France they show learned interest in distant regions of the globe.
Korea ~= Ireland : both colonised by Japan/England. Koreans are often called the 'Irish of Asia' based on their capacity to drink and their emotional natures.
Of course, as with any analogising these pairings fall down if you take them too far or even examine them too closely. But as a broad brush portrait I think it's a fun one to muse on.
Wikipedia article:
Malayalam is the major language of the state of Kerala, in southern India. It is one of the 17 official languages of India, spoken by around 30 million people. A person who speaks Malayalam is called a "Malayalee" and rarely, a "Keralite".
It belongs to the family of Dravidian languages. Both the language and its writing system are closely related to Tamil. Malayalam has a script of its own. Malayalam is the longest language name in English which is a palindrome.
If that translates to "Infant speech cracks you" then congrats for keeping an old joke fresh.
Made me laugh anyway.
Blake Ross's minimal website reveals that November 9 is the day we "take back the web" i.e. the launch date for Firefox 1.0.
Not sure you've got your definition of atheism correct. The 'a' prefix at the start of the word means 'not'. Thus atheism believes there is or are no 'gods'. The problem with this is that negation itself is a kind of recognition of a concept i.e. you accept the concept by negating it.
Agnosticism just considers the question of exitence of god(s) as unknowable. Again it has the 'a' prefix but here the negation is of 'gnosis' i.e. knowledge.
The difference between the two can be shown by the different answers they give to the question 'Do you believe in [insert deity/s here]?'
Atheist: No
Agnostic: An answer to such a question is unknowable.
I was factually wrong in the parent comment. Beijing is the Hanyu Pinyin romanization, but Peking is not the Wade-Giles romanization. Instead it is the Postal system Pinyin romanization.
Also there has been sound change in the pronunciation of the name of the city in recent times.
So, I should have checked my facts before posting. Good information on this issue can be found on the Wikipedia page for Beijing
Funny and also etymologically astute. The word dandelion is from the french dent de lion. This means lion's teeth and refers to the plant's serrated leaf edges.
I wonder if the Microsoft maps have "Peking" or "Beijing"? That alone would put a lot of Chinese in an offended state.
Perhaps not. These are simply two romanisations of the chinese capital using different systems. "Peking" is the Wades-Giles romanisation, "Beijing" is the pinyin romanisation. If you know how the systems work and don't try to pronounce the letters with their english values then they both give the same pronunciation of the name of the chinese capital. For example the very first sound in the name is an unaspirated voiceless bilabial stop which is sort of half-way between English "B" and "P".
"Beijing" is the preferable romanisation simply because it uses the now official romanisation system. I think it was made official sometime in the 80's. But because in the west we tend to pronounce the name using our English sound representations many people have the misapprehension that the actual name was changed in China. It was not and has remained the same for the last however many hundreds of years.
>
Of course, Austrailia has many fewer total over the air TV stations than the USA does thanks in part to its smaller geographic size, so this service is much more practical there than it is here.
>>
Spoken like someone who has no idea where Australia is or has the slightest idea how big it is.
Australia is geographically the same size as the United States, even though it has 1/10th of the population. The fewer number of television stations (3 commercial, 2 government-owned and in some places 1 community)is driven in part by govenment regulation and in part by economics. A country of ~20 million people cannot support the same number of commercial stations as a country of ~200 million.
~ ~ ~
If you are going to correct someone, make sure you get your facts completely straight. The original poster said Australia is smaller than the U.S.A. They are correct: Australia is slightly smaller than the 48 contiguous states, with Alaska, their largest state, adding significantly to the margin.
U.S.A. : 9,631,418 sq km
Australia : 7,686,850 sq km
More glaringly, your estimation of the United States of America's population is out by nearly 50%. Their population is currently 293 million rather than the ~200 million you give.
I'm an Australian too by the way, and I find that most foreigners don't underestimate the size of Australia (it's pretty evident by looking at a globe) but are surprised by it's low population.
My source for population and nation size : CIA World Fact Book, 2004.
Otherwise, I found your argument against the original comment insightful.
Thanks for that help towards self-destruction.
Actually I have read about fibs and it sounds great. In fact it sounds so good that I have decided to stay away, based on my previous debillitating experience. I congratulate you if you are able to keep yourself under control with an always-on-tap pool of really good players just waiting for a game. I know I can't.