Open-Source books and more broadly free educational (Internet-based) information are a blessing for developing countries.
I would lie when I would say that teachers are not needed anymore because of those free resources of knowledge.But in future, once when our teaching staff will have itself adjusted to the Internet revolution, more of our usually large poor population will be able to enjoy basic education because the task of teachers on higher level will be reduced (partly overtaken by the Internet) so those teachers will become available for basic education.
Of course a condicio sine qua non is that (old, 2nd hand) computers find their way to the 3rd world. But I am optimistic.
Sometimes typosquatting is good
on
Typosquatting
·
· Score: 1
e.g. when the framing website adds something to the site: an extra thematical index or a thorough search engine.
I for instance miss a search engine on Slashdot which would be able of searching through ***all*** submissions and comments ever posted (I don't even know whether Slashdot keeps all submissions and comments). It would also be cool if the search engine would have multiple options like threshold for comments etc.
Try to avoid using or buying Sun hardware unless you are clearly free riding on their budget.
Repair that hole in the GPL
Give respect to idealist work by using and improving as much as possible Linux and other GPL'ed software (spend more effort on the GPL'ed software than on [brand name] hardware).
Especially try to use/build GPL'ed alternatives to commercial Sun solutions for which they charge a lot of $$$.
... that he will be fighting for the small people against the big industries.
But I am from Europe and we sometimes do understand things differently: I always thought Mr. Al Gore was the Mr. Internet and subsequently Mr. Clinton followed Mr. Gore in Internet issues.
Mr. Gore should know that Napster is just a realisation of peer to peer technology similarly as a car is a means of terrestrial transport. Stealing by means of Napster is comparable to robbing a bank by means of a car. Needless to say that banning all cars is not the right strategy in the fight against bank robberies.
More statistically: there may be a high correlation between music piracy and the use of Napster but probability of the event of the causal relation between the two is much lower than the correlation. It is like blowing up an entire city to catch a few drug trafficers.
I am astonished that the original poster does not use comparative shopping agents. Here you have some "international" ones. Most countries have their own ones which take shipping charges better into account.
Could someone enlighten me with her or his knowledge about the availability of this, let's call it, "promotion" in other parts of the world than the US of A.
In particular Europe: do we have to trip to the New World?
The new Apple needs to make an enormous effort in order to win back disappointed once Mac-sectarians from the PC (Linux and Windows) camp.
Personally I think they better succeed into keeping the public enthousiastic for their products in the US than elsewhere, in particular on the Old Continent.
Their sales and service network is comparable to the bunch of protectionists we, Europeans, were in the 70ies and 80ies. No competition and as a consequence no competitive prices either. Their service is bloody expensive and incompetent. In short: Apple Europe is rotten!
This discussion raises interesting issues, certainly for people new to open source software, Linux in particular, who in many cases would like to start with teaching themself the best product available at the moment.
Hence my question: Is there a website which provides comparative reviews of open source software or more simply put, which says which freely distributed software, not necessarily open source, is the crème de la crème for the Linux/FreeBSD platforms?
Before one could find such reviews on the LinuxWorld website. Right now there is a terribly expensive and I do not know whether very objective, monthly publication called Linux Format (its website just contains Slashdot-like news).
I work in a corp. which imperatively standardises on Windo$$$e and MS Office crap.
From time to time those corporate morons have their ass kicked by a sweet Windoze-only virus or hack.
In our spare time we, *nix addicts and Mac faithfull, think of a Win-only apocalyps.
Here comes our version of the almost perfect Win virus (=Winrus?).
Imagine a virus similar to I Love You but which replies everyone who mailed the given Windows looser. Replying simply with the standard RE: [original subject] and in the body "Conclusions" or something similar. Every time another short body text (out of a range of possibilities) can be produced in order to make the simple protection by spreading the word not to open an attachment entitled X or Y or Z or etc. more difficult. Anyway you get the picture: those "Conclusions" or whatever are clickable and after spreading the word to other users wipe out some crucial registries or other files.
Teaching children computer skills certainly does not do any harm. However, the question is which operating system and which brand of applications is on the menu.
In most countries of Europe (and I am afraid of the rest of the world too) all classroom computers are *standardised* on MS Windows and dito Office. I do not want to spit on MS once again, but knowledge taught at school whether it is on primary or academic level should be universal. Therefore it would be better if a more theoretical system would be used which would illustrate the fundamentals on which *all* systems are based (=/ click "Start" in order to "Shut Down").
The same is true for apps: there should be an educational office suite which would show the *universal* logic behind every brand of office. I know this is very very wishfull thinking, but the situation now, every year a new Office requiring new, more powerful PCs is unsustainable for the tight education budgets in most of the countries. And students acquire knowledge which is already outdated at the moment of the lecture.
This was another right opinion of John C. Drashcan
advances like this are why I advocate laws to protect fair use of copyrighted materials -- sooner or later a successful crypto-system to prevent all non-permitted use of materials will be developed, complete with tamper-proof hardware in your PC, and then where will we be?
Sorry pal, you just as the musick industry completely miss the point. There is NO protection possible against artificially high kept prices, whether for music or marihuana. People always will try to smuggle, grow/make/copy it themselves etc.
Remember: there still exists digital to analog to digital conversion which certainly does not yield worse results than MP3.
As long as the musick industry treats everyone as bandits while pretending to be poor innocent lambs itself, nothing will change.
And if they want to crack down on us, I would say: "Enjoy" Not all apps are as easy to halt as mp3.com or Naster and there are still places as Russia.
Open sourcing ERP systems is not just nice to have or a hype. Let me explain why it will become more and more a life necessity:
1. ERP systems have the ambition to automate as much as possible the operations of a company. In fact they can be seen as an extension of the general and analytical (cost) accounting systems to computer systems which also fulfill management information functions in other areas than just accounting (human resources, production, customer relations, supply chain etc). Most large companies make use of different computer platforms, whether because of the evolution of technology (there are still lots of legacy systems which one would not install nowadays if one would be faced with the same problem as in the mainframe age - these systems need integration in order to make all kinds of previsions through data mining, OLAP etc.) or because of different specialities of every platform (Wintel PCs maybe good for the secretaries, whereas the technical departements may prefer *nix based Alpha workstations and the marketing girls and boys swear by iBooks etc.) One immediately sees: there is a lot of diversity in hardware and software.
What is the right answer on this problem? Force everyone to use NT Workstation/Win 2000?
I do not think so. Instead: let every departement use the system they prefer at that moment and standardise the company wide automation -that's the "mission" of ERP- on web based clients and servers which are as open as possible. And what supports more open standards or has the perspective of supporting them in the future than a system which provides you with access to its code so you can build links between departemental etc. systems yourself?
2. Second argument in favour of open source ERP systems: purely economically practical. The only economic accomplishment of Internet technology we can already nowadays be sure of is business to business integration. Not just through electronic marketplaces which promiss cost savings in the area of parts & raw material (etc.) acquisition, but in the first place by standardising the document flow in company transactions. Internet technology succeeds where SGML (remember?) has failed. And in order to have different company computer systems understand each other there exists no better choice than open source. Again with open source one can create his/her own "open standards" even if there aren't any yet.
3. Thirdly: companies are linking up more and more whether because of joint-venturing or just sheer mergers. Again, if ERP systems are open source, it is a piece of cake to link them up as well.
What is your opinion?
JK junior from a small country in the EU which lost the selections in European Soccer Championship. Guess which:-)?
Moderators: his comment deserves funny (or rather "hilarious"). No flame but Linux Reliability (alter ego of Linuxstart.com) is (temporarily?) laying flat on its belly.
>Throw LinuxPPC on that thing and you're ready to >rock and roll.
Without being disrespectful of LinuxPPC but these (and coming) upgrades are especially interesting in the perspective of the advent of MacOS X. Don't forget: it will offer the stability and technical quality of a *nix system (FreeBSD) combined with probably the most user-friendly interface (Apple's Aqua) and a bunch of apps (including the "indispensable" MS Office)
1. the difference in licence between KDE and Gnome 2. the state of the "market" (I am convinced that the freer Gnome would get an overall boost over the less free KDE if the plan/rumour would become reality)
make me doubt the good intentions. Although I am slightly in favour of KDE because of practical reasons, I would love it if the freer Gnome took the lead.
Ladies, Gentlemen, fellas who cannot get a wink of sleep before having at least a lightning fast look at this new object of obsession and desire,
Could someone be so kind to setup a mirror for the Windoze and Mac version of Terminus?
I know I should be ashamed to use the system of the evil empire (MS; not the fruit). But I promis to better my life in July and August, adopt an all mighty pinguin and regurarly feed him (and others) with some self prepaired Open Source codes.
>Apple doesn't bundle it any more (?!) for their own inscrutable reasons.
Wanna know why? Because MS ported Office to the MacOS. And every penny of extra revenue counts (especially if you (=Jobs) are offered a jet as fringe benefit) so you are forced to bundle only the stuff which is really of utmost importance or for which they pay you an immoral amount of money.
"once that infrastructure exists, then socialism can take root"...
Could you provide an example. In Europe there definitely are none (nor Sweden, nor Danemark, nor Swiss, nor Belgium which, depending which stats you consult, overall offer the highest standard of living and have a developed economic infrastructure are not socialist countries). We tried in the kibbutzim we tried in communities in South America. You can call these ones limited successes. All the others were/are sheer inhuman disasters.
You are clearly not from a place were those "experiments" (catastrophies is a better word) took place. If you want to know how the system really works, throw out those text books and experience it yourself.
Small mistake over here. Socialism says: everything to the state. A strict socialist view on the economy is: "Nationalise everything", therefore MS:= state company. By the way, this would be even worse: in a strict socialist economy MS would be allowed to keep its monopoly, although as a state company. Read an annotated version of 'Das Kapital' of Karl Marx if you want to know more.
A capitalist, supposing he is acting in a democracy, is normally (from the theoretical standpoint) a free market liberal. Of course he keeps his hands off of the market (businesses) as long as his capitalist system is not in danger. A monopoly endangers that system since in the long run it can lead to an economic dictature. And an economic dictature, which by the way also implies a social one, leads to less free market. So we end up with a dictature, in the "economically speaking" best case with a little capitalist flavour (Chile under Pinochet for example). A true believer in free market liberalism should also be for a minimum of market regulation, against too high concentrations of economic power. Remember: capitalism/free market liberalism says you can move up on the social scale (that is/was its eternal argument against socialism which states the opposite - that's why to achieve mobility an "all overthrowing revolution" is required). Allowing monopolies would automatically mean a denial of this mobility.
Now comes the paradox: although the democratic (Clinton) administration is a little bit (for European standards it is) more left wing than a republican one its stance in the MS case is more capitalist/free market oriented than that of many republicans who are in favour of a hands off approach to this MS case.
I do not know whether Dave Winer's 'What the Web Wants' has been Slashdotted already, but it is, in my opinion, one of the best analyses/comments about the (solution to) the case.
Personally I believe some Canadian wet beavers did it. By the end of the week they will be crossing the border. Eat less turkey so they could be deployed as border patrol. Electric fences, CCTV and laser guns are outdated.
Another prob: for who are those disks? The Chinese? No, they got already all the info from Clinton and since Bush is going to win the elections they do not have to do an effort anymore. He will give them everything for free, on a serving plate.
Last question: what is the top secret on these hard disks? They contain 25 years of Tetris high scores. This is outrageous. The greatest loss in time. Let's immediately declare a world war!
Alright, let's add my reasonable views on everything.
This is really an absolutely redundant, pedant discussion. Just add in the description of the installation packs "GPL", "com", etc. so the users can decide themselves upon install. OK, Debian may have the most principle minded following and the majority of the big 10 or so distros may consist of rocket scientists but still we are not Linux-obsessed. After all it is just a tool.
Slashdot Mirror
What about MS DOS???
... from now on only non-programmable calculators allowed: +, -, *, /, ln, some geometric functions and no memory registers!
I would lie when I would say that teachers are not needed anymore because of those free resources of knowledge.But in future, once when our teaching staff will have itself adjusted to the Internet revolution, more of our usually large poor population will be able to enjoy basic education because the task of teachers on higher level will be reduced (partly overtaken by the Internet) so those teachers will become available for basic education.
Of course a condicio sine qua non is that (old, 2nd hand) computers find their way to the 3rd world. But I am optimistic.
I for instance miss a search engine on Slashdot which would be able of searching through ***all*** submissions and comments ever posted (I don't even know whether Slashdot keeps all submissions and comments). It would also be cool if the search engine would have multiple options like threshold for comments etc.
Just an idea
the skunk
According to my experiments Lernout and Hauspie Speech Products does a much better job than Babelfish.
One day us, Little Skunks, will RULE!!!
l0N3ly 5KuNk
But I am from Europe and we sometimes do understand things differently: I always thought Mr. Al Gore was the Mr. Internet and subsequently Mr. Clinton followed Mr. Gore in Internet issues.
Mr. Gore should know that Napster is just a realisation of peer to peer technology similarly as a car is a means of terrestrial transport. Stealing by means of Napster is comparable to robbing a bank by means of a car. Needless to say that banning all cars is not the right strategy in the fight against bank robberies.
More statistically: there may be a high correlation between music piracy and the use of Napster but probability of the event of the causal relation between the two is much lower than the correlation. It is like blowing up an entire city to catch a few drug trafficers.
Could someone enlighten me with her or his knowledge about the availability of this, let's call it, "promotion" in other parts of the world than the US of A.
In particular Europe: do we have to trip to the New World?
The new Apple needs to make an enormous effort in order to win back disappointed once Mac-sectarians from the PC (Linux and Windows) camp.
Personally I think they better succeed into keeping the public enthousiastic for their products in the US than elsewhere, in particular on the Old Continent.
Their sales and service network is comparable to the bunch of protectionists we, Europeans, were in the 70ies and 80ies. No competition and as a consequence no competitive prices either. Their service is bloody expensive and incompetent. In short: Apple Europe is rotten!
the lonely skunk
Hence my question: Is there a website which provides comparative reviews of open source software or more simply put, which says which freely distributed software, not necessarily open source, is the crème de la crème for the Linux/FreeBSD platforms?
Before one could find such reviews on the LinuxWorld website. Right now there is a terribly expensive and I do not know whether very objective, monthly publication called Linux Format (its website just contains Slashdot-like news).
Singing Skunk, singing false, so lonely!
From time to time those corporate morons have their ass kicked by a sweet Windoze-only virus or hack.
In our spare time we, *nix addicts and Mac faithfull, think of a Win-only apocalyps.
Here comes our version of the almost perfect Win virus (=Winrus?).
Imagine a virus similar to I Love You but which replies everyone who mailed the given Windows looser. Replying simply with the standard RE: [original subject] and in the body "Conclusions" or something similar. Every time another short body text (out of a range of possibilities) can be produced in order to make the simple protection by spreading the word not to open an attachment entitled X or Y or Z or etc. more difficult.
Anyway you get the picture: those "Conclusions" or whatever are clickable and after spreading the word to other users wipe out some crucial registries or other files.
Isn't Windows wonderfull?
The Singing Skunk
In most countries of Europe (and I am afraid of the rest of the world too) all classroom computers are *standardised* on MS Windows and dito Office. I do not want to spit on MS once again, but knowledge taught at school whether it is on primary or academic level should be universal. Therefore it would be better if a more theoretical system would be used which would illustrate the fundamentals on which *all* systems are based (=/ click "Start" in order to "Shut Down").
The same is true for apps: there should be an educational office suite which would show the *universal* logic behind every brand of office. I know this is very very wishfull thinking, but the situation now, every year a new Office requiring new, more powerful PCs is unsustainable for the tight education budgets in most of the countries. And students acquire knowledge which is already outdated at the moment of the lecture.
This was another right opinion of John C. Drashcan
1. ERP systems have the ambition to automate as much as possible the operations of a company. In fact they can be seen as an extension of the general and analytical (cost) accounting systems to computer systems which also fulfill management information functions in other areas than just accounting (human resources, production, customer relations, supply chain etc). Most large companies make use of different computer platforms, whether because of the evolution of technology (there are still lots of legacy systems which one would not install nowadays if one would be faced with the same problem as in the mainframe age - these systems need integration in order to make all kinds of previsions through data mining, OLAP etc.) or because of different specialities of every platform (Wintel PCs maybe good for the secretaries, whereas the technical departements may prefer *nix based Alpha workstations and the marketing girls and boys swear by iBooks etc.) One immediately sees: there is a lot of diversity in hardware and software.
What is the right answer on this problem? Force everyone to use NT Workstation/Win 2000?
I do not think so. Instead: let every departement use the system they prefer at that moment and standardise the company wide automation -that's the "mission" of ERP- on web based clients and servers which are as open as possible. And what supports more open standards or has the perspective of supporting them in the future than a system which provides you with access to its code so you can build links between departemental etc. systems yourself?
2. Second argument in favour of open source ERP systems: purely economically practical. The only economic accomplishment of Internet technology we can already nowadays be sure of is business to business integration. Not just through electronic marketplaces which promiss cost savings in the area of parts & raw material (etc.) acquisition, but in the first place by standardising the document flow in company transactions. Internet technology succeeds where SGML (remember?) has failed. And in order to have different company computer systems understand each other there exists no better choice than open source. Again with open source one can create his/her own "open standards" even if there aren't any yet.
3. Thirdly: companies are linking up more and more whether because of joint-venturing or just sheer mergers. Again, if ERP systems are open source, it is a piece of cake to link them up as well.
What is your opinion?
JK junior :-)?
from a small country in the EU which lost the selections in European Soccer Championship. Guess which
Moderators: his comment deserves funny (or rather "hilarious"). No flame but Linux Reliability (alter ego of Linuxstart.com) is (temporarily?) laying flat on its belly.
For once it is not Multiple Sclerosis' fault.
A post from Jack from the old continent.
Without being disrespectful of LinuxPPC but these (and coming) upgrades are especially interesting in the perspective of the advent of MacOS X. Don't forget: it will offer the stability and technical quality of a *nix system (FreeBSD) combined with probably the most user-friendly interface (Apple's Aqua) and a bunch of apps (including the "indispensable" MS Office)
Drashcan
1. the difference in licence between KDE and Gnome
2. the state of the "market" (I am convinced that the freer Gnome would get an overall boost over the less free KDE if the plan/rumour would become reality)
make me doubt the good intentions. Although I am slightly in favour of KDE because of practical reasons, I would love it if the freer Gnome took the lead.
John C. Drashcan
Sorry, no more time, have to defend the Universe this night,
Drashcan
Could someone be so kind to setup a mirror for the Windoze and Mac version of Terminus?
I know I should be ashamed to use the system of the evil empire (MS; not the fruit). But I promis to better my life in July and August, adopt an all mighty pinguin and regurarly feed him (and others) with some self prepaired Open Source codes.
Thank You in Advance,
Sincerely,
John C. Drashcan
Wanna know why? Because MS ported Office to the MacOS. And every penny of extra revenue counts (especially if you (=Jobs) are offered a jet as fringe benefit) so you are forced to bundle only the stuff which is really of utmost importance or for which they pay you an immoral amount of money.
The dangerously sick tarantula
Could you provide an example. In Europe there definitely are none (nor Sweden, nor Danemark, nor Swiss, nor Belgium which, depending which stats you consult, overall offer the highest standard of living and have a developed economic infrastructure are not socialist countries). We tried in the kibbutzim we tried in communities in South America. You can call these ones limited successes. All the others were/are sheer inhuman disasters.
You are clearly not from a place were those "experiments" (catastrophies is a better word) took place. If you want to know how the system really works, throw out those text books and experience it yourself.
Capitain Flam
(tu n'est pas de notre galaxie)
Small mistake over here. Socialism says: everything to the state. A strict socialist view on the economy is: "Nationalise everything", therefore MS := state company. By the way, this would be even worse: in a strict socialist economy MS would be allowed to keep its monopoly, although as a state company. Read an annotated version of 'Das Kapital' of Karl Marx if you want to know more.
A capitalist, supposing he is acting in a democracy, is normally (from the theoretical standpoint) a free market liberal. Of course he keeps his hands off of the market (businesses) as long as his capitalist system is not in danger.
A monopoly endangers that system since in the long run it can lead to an economic dictature. And an economic dictature, which by the way also implies a social one, leads to less free market.
So we end up with a dictature, in the "economically speaking" best case with a little capitalist flavour (Chile under Pinochet for example). A true believer in free market liberalism should also be for a minimum of market regulation, against too high concentrations of economic power.
Remember: capitalism/free market liberalism says you can move up on the social scale (that is/was its eternal argument against socialism which states the opposite - that's why to achieve mobility an "all overthrowing revolution" is required). Allowing monopolies would automatically mean a denial of this mobility.
Now comes the paradox: although the democratic (Clinton) administration is a little bit (for European standards it is) more left wing than a republican one its stance in the MS case is more capitalist/free market oriented than that of many republicans who are in favour of a hands off approach to this MS case.
The PIG One
no-dioxine Chicken Frier
Another prob: for who are those disks? The Chinese? No, they got already all the info from Clinton and since Bush is going to win the elections they do not have to do an effort anymore. He will give them everything for free, on a serving plate.
Last question: what is the top secret on these hard disks? They contain 25 years of Tetris high scores. This is outrageous. The greatest loss in time. Let's immediately declare a world war!
Pirate parrot
This is really an absolutely redundant, pedant discussion. Just add in the description of the installation packs "GPL", "com", etc. so the users can decide themselves upon install.
OK, Debian may have the most principle minded following and the majority of the big 10 or so distros may consist of rocket scientists but still we are not Linux-obsessed. After all it is just a tool.
Captain Iglo