In agreement with the parent and to address a number of points that have come up in the discussion so far:
Here in South Africa we use a system of paper ballots. You vote for a national party representative and a provincial party representative. We have 10+ different parties you can vote for depending on how many are registired in a given year or area.
We have 11 offical languages so all ballots are available in all 11 languages. The ballots are hand counted but tabulated and counted up using a computer system.
This is in a third world African country and yet we generally now the full results the next afternoon or evening (after the voting day which is a public holiday). While the elections aren't completely free of possible election fraud and shenannigans we manage to have a free, fair and timeous election.
It kinda boggles the mind that it can't be (or won't be) done in the USA.
This link might help:
http://www.csir.co.za/search/results.html?cx=009006605732737416133%3Apj_q-hl0be4&cof=FORID%3A11&q=ODF&sa=Go#581
It's a long one I know but it links to the CSIR (Counsel for Scientific and Industrial Research) search page. I typed in the sarch term "ODF" and this is what the results I got.
The Bob Jollife mentioned in the tectonic article is someone I know personally who works at the Meraka Insitute at the CSIR, focusing especially on the FLOSS.
Hope this helps.
OMW. It just awesome to see somebody I actually personally know featured on slashdot.
Anyway, as a South African its awesome to see we can at least get something right:)
And yes there is a major push to move to FLOSS in the South African government in general.
No saying it doesn't happen, but my limited experience has been the opposite.
I was creating a.doc file with a horde of screen shots in it. Something to do with the text layout made the screen shots disappear behind the text. All fine. But once I printed the document out the 'hidden' screen shots were visible, cluttering up my doc.
So I opened it up in OO, found the offending screen shots, deleted them and printed. No problem.:)
Having worked for a military contractor (not in the USA) developing what sounds like a relatively similar system, yes it was a GPS, a transceiver and a PDA.
And yes the heaviest part of the whole system was the battery.
Ok I've had it with this stupid "Fire in a movie theatre" example. I'm not American so maybe American theatres are highly flammable (I hear rubbish burns quite well) or there is some other reason for this example that escapes me, but I think it's daft.
What's going to happen if I scream fire in my backwards 3rd world African crowded Movie theatre? I get told to shut up and watch the fucking movie.
Wow... complicated right? How fucking paranoid are you people if you panic and storm out of a movie theatre if somebody yells "Fire"? No wonder you arrest people who wear a circuit board with LEDs on it at an airport.
Ever reused your own paper??? (i.e. picked a topic that you've written a paper on before...) By definition, that's not plagiarism because you own said work and you did all of that work...
Acutally that is still seen as plaigarism. Except of course if you quote your own work and even then only up to the same extent you are allowe to quote or reference another persons work.
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A lot of Universities do do this. I know the University I studied at and now work at does this. Hence the copyright of the paper/essay/assignment you hand in does not in fact belong to you anymore.
We accept immigrants. I think we protect privacy but that might just be government inefficiency. There's also the high crime rate and one of the highest (if not the highest) rate of HIV infections in the world.
But the women are lovely and the wine is good and the beer is cheap.
If Hollywood insists on making space-opera movies, perhaps they should adapt some of Iain M. Banks' books to the silver screen.
While Ian M. Bank's (sp?) books do feature some of the general traits of the space opera I would not necesarily classify them as such. Many of his stories are too dark to easy convert into a feel good space opera. Perhaps a better option would be Peter F. Hamilton's later books.
I think that's the issue with SL. From my limited experience with it its mostly non-geeky, but computer literate people who play SL. You're graphc designer with a good grip on Photoshop but not your typical alpha-geek.
It appears, entirely from anecdotal evidence, that it's more the artistic types that prefer SL. This might explain why it's such a weird place for us hard-core geeks (for any given value of hard-core).
It's actually quite scary to see the amount of large financial systems that are coded entirely in excel. Though I suspect the parent was being facetious it's an example of how shrinkwrap (in this case MS Excel e.g.) can be a stand in for multi-million dollar financial software.
However, same "Nubian Goddess" strapping on a rubber penis and moving toward some hapless individual tied, bent-over, to a table....now we have a problem here...don't we?
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Hmmm... yessiree IEDs all over the place here in South Africa. Luckily for me the elephant I ride to work knows how to avoid the worst of it. I doubt it'd be able to dodge an RPG though.
Slashdot Mirror
In agreement with the parent and to address a number of points that have come up in the discussion so far:
Here in South Africa we use a system of paper ballots. You vote for a national party representative and a provincial party representative. We have 10+ different parties you can vote for depending on how many are registired in a given year or area. We have 11 offical languages so all ballots are available in all 11 languages. The ballots are hand counted but tabulated and counted up using a computer system.
This is in a third world African country and yet we generally now the full results the next afternoon or evening (after the voting day which is a public holiday). While the elections aren't completely free of possible election fraud and shenannigans we manage to have a free, fair and timeous election.
It kinda boggles the mind that it can't be (or won't be) done in the USA.
Super utter nitpick but:
:)
Black Metal/Death Metal listeners are usually:
Type 1. Black Metal/Death Metal Fans(Cradle of Filth fans)
-------
Goth listeners are usually:
Type 1. Goths (Sisters of Mercy, The Cure etc. fans)
While goths might also listen to death metal thats not why they're called goths. Its more becuase they listen to music called, you guessed it, Goth!
This link might help: http://www.csir.co.za/search/results.html?cx=009006605732737416133%3Apj_q-hl0be4&cof=FORID%3A11&q=ODF&sa=Go#581 It's a long one I know but it links to the CSIR (Counsel for Scientific and Industrial Research) search page. I typed in the sarch term "ODF" and this is what the results I got. The Bob Jollife mentioned in the tectonic article is someone I know personally who works at the Meraka Insitute at the CSIR, focusing especially on the FLOSS. Hope this helps.
OMW. It just awesome to see somebody I actually personally know featured on slashdot. Anyway, as a South African its awesome to see we can at least get something right :)
And yes there is a major push to move to FLOSS in the South African government in general.
No saying it doesn't happen, but my limited experience has been the opposite. I was creating a .doc file with a horde of screen shots in it. Something to do with the text layout made the screen shots disappear behind the text. All fine. But once I printed the document out the 'hidden' screen shots were visible, cluttering up my doc.
So I opened it up in OO, found the offending screen shots, deleted them and printed. No problem. :)
Having worked for a military contractor (not in the USA) developing what sounds like a relatively similar system, yes it was a GPS, a transceiver and a PDA. And yes the heaviest part of the whole system was the battery.
Ok I've had it with this stupid "Fire in a movie theatre" example. I'm not American so maybe American theatres are highly flammable (I hear rubbish burns quite well) or there is some other reason for this example that escapes me, but I think it's daft.
What's going to happen if I scream fire in my backwards 3rd world African crowded Movie theatre? I get told to shut up and watch the fucking movie.
Wow... complicated right? How fucking paranoid are you people if you panic and storm out of a movie theatre if somebody yells "Fire"? No wonder you arrest people who wear a circuit board with LEDs on it at an airport.
Obviously she lives alone. This is Slashdot remember? She couldn't possibly have a girlfriend.
Acutally that is still seen as plaigarism. Except of course if you quote your own work and even then only up to the same extent you are allowe to quote or reference another persons work.
A lot of Universities do do this. I know the University I studied at and now work at does this. Hence the copyright of the paper/essay/assignment you hand in does not in fact belong to you anymore.
Gah! For mod points. Very funny thank you.
South Africa?
We accept immigrants. I think we protect privacy but that might just be government inefficiency. There's also the high crime rate and one of the highest (if not the highest) rate of HIV infections in the world.
But the women are lovely and the wine is good and the beer is cheap.
Oh yes, and on topic: paper ballots.
While Ian M. Bank's (sp?) books do feature some of the general traits of the space opera I would not necesarily classify them as such. Many of his stories are too dark to easy convert into a feel good space opera. Perhaps a better option would be Peter F. Hamilton's later books.
I think that's the issue with SL. From my limited experience with it its mostly non-geeky, but computer literate people who play SL. You're graphc designer with a good grip on Photoshop but not your typical alpha-geek.
It appears, entirely from anecdotal evidence, that it's more the artistic types that prefer SL. This might explain why it's such a weird place for us hard-core geeks (for any given value of hard-core).
Mod parent insightful (or funny depending).
It's actually quite scary to see the amount of large financial systems that are coded entirely in excel. Though I suspect the parent was being facetious it's an example of how shrinkwrap (in this case MS Excel e.g.) can be a stand in for multi-million dollar financial software.
Hmmm... yessiree IEDs all over the place here in South Africa. Luckily for me the elephant I ride to work knows how to avoid the worst of it. I doubt it'd be able to dodge an RPG though.