It's hard enough for me accept the name "Ubuntu", let alone their release names.
You should listen to this FLOSS weekly then. Apparently they have a dance for each release (Dapper, Edgy, Feisty etc.), the dance for the Breezy Badger release was taken directly from badgerbadgerbadger.com
Shuttleworth and crew got up in front of a cinema full of people to do their Badger Dance. Anyone got links to them performing any of these dances? I found the Warty Warthog dance, but it's a bit lame.
Europe virtually ignored the tech industry for decades
Yes, Tim Berners-Lee completely ignored technology when inventing the Web (whilst working at CERN) preferring to use homing pigeons instead of a packet-switching network.
Just because the EC is taking a known monopolist to task--and going the right way about it--doesn't mean there is some sort of European conspiracy going on. Microsoft have got a massive percentage (a bit out of date, can't seem to find anything current) of desktop market share and are using that to unfairly hamper competition. They use bundling and their API to stop people from developing for other platforms. They put the brakes on IE for as long as possible because they realised their API was (and still is) threatened by web based applications.
Coward: one man may toast his muffins before the fine fireplace of privilege, whilst another contracts pnuemonia in the knackers of non-entity. Get back to non-entity coward.
What is this pro-Microsoft peice doing on Slashdot?! There's nothing slamming Vista, nothing on DRM, there isn't even a flying chair or mention of upgrading to Ubuntu instead. I'm disgusted!
From the artice:
I tested Microsoft's way of handling that exact situation, and it works fine.
What?! 'Works fine', isn't this sort of language explicitly disallowed by the Slashdot terms of service? I also did a search of the article and there's not a single instance of the string: 'Linux'.
'I've had audio tape come into the archives, for example, that had been submerged in water in floods and the tape was so swollen it went off the reel, and yet we were able to recover that. We were able to take that off and dry it out and play it back.
From an earlier/. article:
No problem. You reach for your back up tapes only to find out that the information on the tapes is unreadable.
Quick someone tell the author of: 'So You've Lost a $38 Billion File' that everything is alright! New Brunswick had data that was submerged in water, tape so swollen it was off the reel; they still managed to recover it.
And don't come out with that: 'Polar Bear ate the backup tape' excuse again!
Certainly not! Although I have nothing to hide, the idea of having my private/business documents on a server under Google's control is not pleasant. Having my documents where Google will be able to rifle through them at will, or turn them over to the US goverment under the auspices of protecting the world from 'terror' fills me with dread.
And it would be nice if there was a non-proprietary Publisher
Have you tried Scribus? It's more professional than Publisher in my opinion, closer to Quark or Pagemaker. Give it a go (in this case it's probably best to get the source and compile it yourself, worth it for the bug fixes and impoved SVG import filters). Scribus and Inkscape are a great combo for graphics and pagesetting.
I do use OpenOffice, but find it feels bloated. It's not, but their weird practice of having all the applications in one massive executable instead of seperate applications and libraries makes no sense (so when loading oowriter, for example, it actually loads oocalc, ooimpress etc as well). Perhaps someone wiser than I could explain this weird design practice? OpenOffice draws a lot of criticism for it's slow startup and apparent bloat.
That's great, but can it run the OpenMoko software? From the license:
...This device may only be used with Trolltechs Qtopia Software. You may not use this device in any other hardware/software combination other than in the combination of hardware and software that was delivered to you...
Oh, I suppose not. Sorry, but if I spent USD695 on a phone I'd want the freedom to do what I liked with it! That is a stupid restriction Trolltech cannot hope to enforce (although this does make me think of Trusted Computing).
Also, someone should tell this chap to get hold of an OpenMoko to review. They hold far more promise, in my opinion, and seem much more 'community driven'.
Glad you're contributing today. Perhaps you could, I don't know, Google for what it is.
I have no intention of getting into a flame war with you, just wanted to point out that Googling for Groove returns nothing but dross, from the Microsoft site:
Office Groove 2007 is a collaboration software program that helps teams work together dynamically and effectively, even if team members work for different organizations, work remotely, or work offline. Working in Groove workspaces saves time, increases productivity, and strengthens the quality of team deliverables. Office Groove 2007 is just one example of how the 2007 Microsoft Office system helps teams and organizations collaborate more effectively.
Ummmm, right.
I had the same problem when wanting to find out what Sharepoint actually does (eventually had to take the online test drive). Same problem with this product, why would we Google for the marketdroid speak when we have the near-unique opportunity of hearing it from the people who're using it?!
Honestly, brow-beating people for not searching on Google is not often helpful.
As someone who is currently looking into creating an ODF Document Portal I would be very interested in hearing about the features of Groove that real users find useful.
Is there a way, when the user is browsing the WebDAV repo, that the unzipped document could still be shown as a single file? Is there some useful hook in SVN, or a way to keep both the zipped document and the directory in SVN at the same time (whilst hiding the directory)?
Thanks for the suggestions though, another avenue to explore!
I'd actually like to steer clear of too many comparisons with Sharepoint, a clone will always be directly compared to Sharepoint, always living in it's shadow. Although most of your points are important though, a FLOSS product must provide an easy transition from any other system. Working with MS Office will be essential (although to get a feel for how the workflow will operate I thought OpenOffice would be best).
The current working title is: OpenDocumentPortal, how does that sound?
For the backend I've been looking at WebDAV with SVN and autocommit, for the frontend I'd like to create a Drupal Mod. The ideas here a great food for thought of course, I'm very interested to hear how others would do this project.
Canada seems pretty reasonable. I'm going through the immigration process as have married a Canadian. As you're probably an American (judging by the reaction to that article!) you'll be able to integrate very well up here. In many ways the countries are very similar (the kinds of shops, the cars people drive etc.) Europe and the UK were a big culture shock for my wife and probably would be for you too (I'm from the UK). More importantly: in a study on privacy rights Germany then Canada were the top two.
To immigrate you may want to consider refugee status, sounds bad but the description fits quite well:
A Convention refugee is a person who is outside of their country of nationality or habitual residence and who is unable or unwilling to return to that country because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, political opinion, nationality or membership in a particular social group.
(Emphasis mine)
If you are seriously that scared of this project, and can prove it when you get here, then do it. There are more conventional routes of course: skilled worker for example.
Assimilating,
Reasoning,
Statistical,
Enhancement,
Highlighting,
Online,
Linkage and
Encryption
Luckily no-one cared about our version as we've already got CCTV everywhere.
Welcome to the surveillance society. Come on in, just don't say anything that might result in your arrest. Things like: 'I'm not too fond of our current administration, I may vote for someone different next time,' are a definite no-no. Just stay on-message, never have anything to hide and you will be fine!
Aren't all the news service sites jumping on stories about big manufacturers possibly providing GNU/Linux? Whilst it would be great to see OEMs pre-installing GNU/Linux it's advisable to not get excited until you can see proof, e.g. the machines are advertised on their respective web sites. As a real alternative to Windows too, not hidden in the depths of the site as a token gesture, so their marketing department can claim that they, 'tried Linux but there was no demand.'
From TFA:
HP has preloaded PCs with Linux in previous years, but the market acceptance wasn't there to do that on a broader scale, according to Small. "Frankly, we did that in the past and didn't see the results for it," he said.
My argument to Mr Small would be that he didn't take a sufficient risk. If they did provide a mass-market GNU/Linux desktop, not many people heard about it. This is why it's important to put any offering on an equal footing with Windows (as difficult as that may be considering their contracts).
The other mistake is with marketing departments making this assumption: 'Linux == Cheap. So people who want Linux, want cheap PC's!' Then they only offer it on some low-end model no discerning geek would ever buy. Had they actually bothered to ask the community they would have found that most want Freedom, not free beer. I believe Wal-Mart and other large US shops rolled-out some rather pitiful offerings recently.
He added that HP also plans some enhancements to its channel programs to help in the delivery of Linux solutions, but he didn't give details.
What does this mean exactly? To a layman such as myself it sounds like they are considering doing the same as Dell and getting their hardware certified with some GNU/Linux providers. A step in the right direction, but hardly the Holy-grail of pre-installed GNU/Linux this article is trumpeting.
Perhaps you'd care to read an article on how Vista is less intuitive than previous versions? Perhaps a simple Google search would sway your opinion on Vista being slow? What about one of the countless articles on the net advising that Office 2007 has no added value, just a steep learning curve?
No? Didn't think so.
The reason, Mr Shill (and I hope you're getting paid for this), all these companies are refusing to upgrade is that all this won't actually give them any greater functionality, or improve their workflow (due to the learning curve). Especially when you take into consideration how much this softwarecosts! Even considering the heavy discounts these organisations will doubtless get, Microsoft should not expect money for nothing.
OpenOffice might be bloated, but at least it uses a file format that's open and supported by many other office suites. Unlike that binary bilge Microsoft keep peddling and trying to force through standards agencies. My hope is that the DOT realise that before they get labotomised and start speaking like Microsoft drones: 'in order to leverage interoperable cross-markets, we're standardising on Microsoft Bullshit Ultimate Shill Server Lazy-Wanking-Bastards Edition'.
Should be a giant "shove off" , "get lost" , "stuff it", etc....
The problem is that the response wont be. Steven Harper has a reputation for being a lap-dog of the US/UK.
The only way to stop Canadian copyright laws being perverted is by taking action. Send letters to your MP, if this becomes a bill in Parliament then see if there's a peaceful protest you can attend. Make the government clearly realise that voters do not want a Canadian DMCA and that current copyright laws (particularly the clauses for 'fair use' this threatens) are good enough.
There is no compelling reason to have a Canadian DMCA. Harper has been deterred from ditching Kyoto, he can be deterred from this too.
Microsoft attempt to compete with GNU/Linux via conventional methods: reducing cost (releasing free--as in beer--versions of products), advertising that TCO is higher for Linux than Windows (it's a lie, but what else should we expect them to say?)
Conventional methods fail so Microsoft falls-back to good old fashioned dirty tricks: making spurious allegations about 'intellectual property'.
...
Profit!
Google
Microsoft attempts to compete with Google via conventional methods: producing a competingservices with similar capabilities. Then advertise the services as usual, and throw in a bit of IE7 integration in the name of 'choice'.
Conventional methods fail so Microsoft falls-back to good old fashioned dirty tricks: making spurious allegations about 'intellectual property'.
Throw chair across room
...
Profit!
Personally am getting a feeling of: 'same bilge, different day' from Microsoft.
strongly believe that doing it the baby steps way is good because it allows me to smoothly transition from MS to linux instead of sitting in front of the computer with a huge question mark over my head trying to not only figure out how the OS works but not even knowing how to do a simple "hello world" page, let alone a complete web site.
Whilst this doesn't suite the impatience of most/. readers (we expect you to spend five minutes switching away from Microsoft, for you to be productive immediately, and a to write a nice note here telling all the people that replied to your question how wonderful they are) it does seem like a very sensible policy.
There are a couple of things you need to know about Mono and Ubuntu in general:
The Mono Project is developed by Novell, they have a patent cross-license agreement with The Evil Empire. This has resulted in a lot of FUD and sabre-rattling, which could have a some effect (I am not a lawyer, so don't know what that effect might be) on the Mono project.
When you want to download mono etc. don't think like a Windows user and get it directly from the Web site. Open up 'Synaptic Package Manager' and install from there. It's in the Sytem menu (I believe, am not a GNOME user:) )
Mono has a small webserver that comes with it. This will be good to get you started and for testing, but for production applications you should use the 'mod_mono' module for Apache. Again, all this juicy goodness can be found by searching in Synaptic.
All configuration files for this stuff can be found in the/etc directory--making changes without a GUI might seem strange at first, but believe me it makes much, much more sense than GUI + Registry. For a start think how easy it is to backup settings, or even clone your server configuration.
OOXML is not open, see the list of objections. Also ask yourself: if Microsoft wanted to use an open file format, why didn't they use ODF? They had plenty of time to implement it within Office 2007 and were asked to be part of ODF's development. Firstly the ignored it, now that it's gaining traction they're trying to destroy it with a competing 'standard'.
the specs for these formats are going to be so complicated that nobody will be able to open the file in a text editor and just read through it.
I have untarred several documents from the ODF family and found them easy to understand. I would suggest you do the same as the software to create these files is Free. If you can't be arsed to do that, then stop writing inane commentary.:)
The specification for ODF is available online. Since that is the case, please attempt to read it before spouting-off about it being unreadable. It is 722 pages long, I've had a brief look at it and it seems very readable (better than that: it looks implementable!)
In my opinion Microsoft's format is neither XML, or open. It's binary, patentable cruft in an XML wrapper. So it's best not to describe it as an 'XML Format' at all. The specification for this is reportedly 6,000 pages long. This is also available online.
The advantages of XML file formats are:
Increased Robustness
Document Archiving
Version Interoperability
Documented and Transparent File Content
Standards Based
Easy Import and Export of Other File Formats
Search Engines / Knowledge Management Systems
All of these were copied from the OpenOffice Web Site, explanation of the items in that list can be found there.
Slashdot Mirror
Coward: one man by circumstance is in splendour set, whilst another irons pants in a laundrette. Go and iron my pants Coward.
You should listen to this FLOSS weekly then. Apparently they have a dance for each release (Dapper, Edgy, Feisty etc.), the dance for the Breezy Badger release was taken directly from badgerbadgerbadger.com
Shuttleworth and crew got up in front of a cinema full of people to do their Badger Dance. Anyone got links to them performing any of these dances? I found the Warty Warthog dance, but it's a bit lame.
But what about Blade Runner? That's about as serious as Sci-Fi gets and was made later than Star Wars.
I believe the problem is more with Hollywood studios not wanting to take any risks, always sticking to the same formula. The genre is irrelevant.
Yes, Tim Berners-Lee completely ignored technology when inventing the Web (whilst working at CERN) preferring to use homing pigeons instead of a packet-switching network.
Just because the EC is taking a known monopolist to task--and going the right way about it--doesn't mean there is some sort of European conspiracy going on. Microsoft have got a massive percentage (a bit out of date, can't seem to find anything current) of desktop market share and are using that to unfairly hamper competition. They use bundling and their API to stop people from developing for other platforms. They put the brakes on IE for as long as possible because they realised their API was (and still is) threatened by web based applications.
Unfortunately the US government failed to prosecute Microsoft fully so the EC are being forced to do it. It's sad but quite simple.
Coward: one man may toast his muffins before the fine fireplace of privilege, whilst another contracts pnuemonia in the knackers of non-entity. Get back to non-entity coward.
Tag this 'slownewsday'
What is this pro-Microsoft peice doing on Slashdot?! There's nothing slamming Vista, nothing on DRM, there isn't even a flying chair or mention of upgrading to Ubuntu instead. I'm disgusted!
From the artice:
What?! 'Works fine', isn't this sort of language explicitly disallowed by the Slashdot terms of service? I also did a search of the article and there's not a single instance of the string: 'Linux'.
Chappies in New Brunswick:
From an earlier /. article:
Quick someone tell the author of: 'So You've Lost a $38 Billion File' that everything is alright! New Brunswick had data that was submerged in water, tape so swollen it was off the reel; they still managed to recover it.
And don't come out with that: 'Polar Bear ate the backup tape' excuse again!
Senator Ted Stevens remarked that they should have sent it in an Internet, apparently tubes are much more reliable than tape.
What a coincidence.
Certainly not! Although I have nothing to hide, the idea of having my private/business documents on a server under Google's control is not pleasant. Having my documents where Google will be able to rifle through them at will, or turn them over to the US goverment under the auspices of protecting the world from 'terror' fills me with dread.
Have you tried Scribus? It's more professional than Publisher in my opinion, closer to Quark or Pagemaker. Give it a go (in this case it's probably best to get the source and compile it yourself, worth it for the bug fixes and impoved SVG import filters). Scribus and Inkscape are a great combo for graphics and pagesetting.
I do use OpenOffice, but find it feels bloated. It's not, but their weird practice of having all the applications in one massive executable instead of seperate applications and libraries makes no sense (so when loading oowriter, for example, it actually loads oocalc, ooimpress etc as well). Perhaps someone wiser than I could explain this weird design practice? OpenOffice draws a lot of criticism for it's slow startup and apparent bloat.
That's great, but can it run the OpenMoko software? From the license:
Oh, I suppose not. Sorry, but if I spent USD695 on a phone I'd want the freedom to do what I liked with it! That is a stupid restriction Trolltech cannot hope to enforce (although this does make me think of Trusted Computing).
Also, someone should tell this chap to get hold of an OpenMoko to review. They hold far more promise, in my opinion, and seem much more 'community driven'.
I have no intention of getting into a flame war with you, just wanted to point out that Googling for Groove returns nothing but dross, from the Microsoft site:
Ummmm, right.
I had the same problem when wanting to find out what Sharepoint actually does (eventually had to take the online test drive). Same problem with this product, why would we Google for the marketdroid speak when we have the near-unique opportunity of hearing it from the people who're using it?!
Honestly, brow-beating people for not searching on Google is not often helpful.
As someone who is currently looking into creating an ODF Document Portal I would be very interested in hearing about the features of Groove that real users find useful.
Is there a way, when the user is browsing the WebDAV repo, that the unzipped document could still be shown as a single file? Is there some useful hook in SVN, or a way to keep both the zipped document and the directory in SVN at the same time (whilst hiding the directory)?
Thanks for the suggestions though, another avenue to explore!
Thanks for the excellent answer.
I'd actually like to steer clear of too many comparisons with Sharepoint, a clone will always be directly compared to Sharepoint, always living in it's shadow. Although most of your points are important though, a FLOSS product must provide an easy transition from any other system. Working with MS Office will be essential (although to get a feel for how the workflow will operate I thought OpenOffice would be best).
The current working title is: OpenDocumentPortal, how does that sound?
For the backend I've been looking at WebDAV with SVN and autocommit, for the frontend I'd like to create a Drupal Mod. The ideas here a great food for thought of course, I'm very interested to hear how others would do this project.
Canada seems pretty reasonable. I'm going through the immigration process as have married a Canadian. As you're probably an American (judging by the reaction to that article!) you'll be able to integrate very well up here. In many ways the countries are very similar (the kinds of shops, the cars people drive etc.) Europe and the UK were a big culture shock for my wife and probably would be for you too (I'm from the UK). More importantly: in a study on privacy rights Germany then Canada were the top two.
To immigrate you may want to consider refugee status, sounds bad but the description fits quite well:
(Emphasis mine)
If you are seriously that scared of this project, and can prove it when you get here, then do it. There are more conventional routes of course: skilled worker for example.
We've got something similar to this, it's called:
Assimilating,Reasoning,
Statistical,
Enhancement,
Highlighting,
Online,
Linkage and
Encryption
Luckily no-one cared about our version as we've already got CCTV everywhere.
Welcome to the surveillance society. Come on in, just don't say anything that might result in your arrest. Things like: 'I'm not too fond of our current administration, I may vote for someone different next time,' are a definite no-no. Just stay on-message, never have anything to hide and you will be fine!
Aren't all the news service sites jumping on stories about big manufacturers possibly providing GNU/Linux? Whilst it would be great to see OEMs pre-installing GNU/Linux it's advisable to not get excited until you can see proof, e.g. the machines are advertised on their respective web sites. As a real alternative to Windows too, not hidden in the depths of the site as a token gesture, so their marketing department can claim that they, 'tried Linux but there was no demand.'
From TFA:
My argument to Mr Small would be that he didn't take a sufficient risk. If they did provide a mass-market GNU/Linux desktop, not many people heard about it. This is why it's important to put any offering on an equal footing with Windows (as difficult as that may be considering their contracts).
The other mistake is with marketing departments making this assumption: 'Linux == Cheap. So people who want Linux, want cheap PC's!' Then they only offer it on some low-end model no discerning geek would ever buy. Had they actually bothered to ask the community they would have found that most want Freedom, not free beer. I believe Wal-Mart and other large US shops rolled-out some rather pitiful offerings recently.
What does this mean exactly? To a layman such as myself it sounds like they are considering doing the same as Dell and getting their hardware certified with some GNU/Linux providers. A step in the right direction, but hardly the Holy-grail of pre-installed GNU/Linux this article is trumpeting.
Was the labotomy painful?
Perhaps you'd care to read an article on how Vista is less intuitive than previous versions? Perhaps a simple Google search would sway your opinion on Vista being slow? What about one of the countless articles on the net advising that Office 2007 has no added value, just a steep learning curve?
No? Didn't think so.
The reason, Mr Shill (and I hope you're getting paid for this), all these companies are refusing to upgrade is that all this won't actually give them any greater functionality, or improve their workflow (due to the learning curve). Especially when you take into consideration how much this software costs! Even considering the heavy discounts these organisations will doubtless get, Microsoft should not expect money for nothing.
OpenOffice might be bloated, but at least it uses a file format that's open and supported by many other office suites. Unlike that binary bilge Microsoft keep peddling and trying to force through standards agencies. My hope is that the DOT realise that before they get labotomised and start speaking like Microsoft drones: 'in order to leverage interoperable cross-markets, we're standardising on Microsoft Bullshit Ultimate Shill Server Lazy-Wanking-Bastards Edition'.
The problem is that the response wont be. Steven Harper has a reputation for being a lap-dog of the US/UK.
The only way to stop Canadian copyright laws being perverted is by taking action. Send letters to your MP, if this becomes a bill in Parliament then see if there's a peaceful protest you can attend. Make the government clearly realise that voters do not want a Canadian DMCA and that current copyright laws (particularly the clauses for 'fair use' this threatens) are good enough.
There is no compelling reason to have a Canadian DMCA. Harper has been deterred from ditching Kyoto, he can be deterred from this too.
GNU/Linux
Google
Personally am getting a feeling of: 'same bilge, different day' from Microsoft.
Whilst this doesn't suite the impatience of most /. readers (we expect you to spend five minutes switching away from Microsoft, for you to be productive immediately, and a to write a nice note here telling all the people that replied to your question how wonderful they are) it does seem like a very sensible policy.
There are a couple of things you need to know about Mono and Ubuntu in general:
Hope this helps.
What you're failing to take into account is that Microsoft have a paid shill editing Wikipedia for them.
OOXML is not open, see the list of objections. Also ask yourself: if Microsoft wanted to use an open file format, why didn't they use ODF? They had plenty of time to implement it within Office 2007 and were asked to be part of ODF's development. Firstly the ignored it, now that it's gaining traction they're trying to destroy it with a competing 'standard'.
I have untarred several documents from the ODF family and found them easy to understand. I would suggest you do the same as the software to create these files is Free. If you can't be arsed to do that, then stop writing inane commentary. :)
The specification for ODF is available online. Since that is the case, please attempt to read it before spouting-off about it being unreadable. It is 722 pages long, I've had a brief look at it and it seems very readable (better than that: it looks implementable!)
In my opinion Microsoft's format is neither XML, or open. It's binary, patentable cruft in an XML wrapper. So it's best not to describe it as an 'XML Format' at all. The specification for this is reportedly 6,000 pages long. This is also available online.
The advantages of XML file formats are:
All of these were copied from the OpenOffice Web Site, explanation of the items in that list can be found there.