In another move to spread more FUD, now they're trying to hide the UGLY part of the specification. But, what use is hiding it? They claim the deprecated features will be used only for the migration of old binary formats, and that they should not be used by new documents... But considering that the whole point of this document format standardization effort is to be able to open any document in 20 or 30 years time, and if the old binary format documents will be converted using deprecated features, that just means that any software implementing the standard will have to support the deprecated features anyway...
Although they keep manipulating, manipulating, and manipulating more, I still think their format stinks, they're only using it to spread FUD over other formats, and I really hope they can't pull this stunt.
Manitoba is in Canada. As in the rest of the civilized world, we use the metric system over here.
the 650's CPU was 1.52m by 91cm by 1.83m and weighed 892kg, and rented for $3200 per month. The power unit was 1.52x0.91x1.83m and weighed 1348kg. The card reader/punch weighed 587kg and rented for $550/month.
Try backwards compatabiltiy and then on top of that inspection and maintaining of it's own integrity.
Strange, considering everything I read about Vista, and my current experiences (problems installing Adobe Reader, impossible to run PDFCreator, some hardware that didn't work well), Vista broke much of backwards compatibility. So as XP broke it too, by not running DOS programs anymore. Therefore, the idea that Vista is bloated because of backwards compatibility sounds strange to me.
On the other hand, I recall reading something about network traffic problems on Vista when copying files, and IIRC it was related to it doing some fiddling on the network stack to make it more difficult to copy media files, that is, DRM related.
I actually tend to believe that more of Vista's bloat is due to DRM than it's due to backwards compatibility, of which it actually has very few.
The more articles I read about FOSS vs. MS, the more I start to realise what MS's war tactics: to redirect the enemy's effort so that MS wins time.
I mean, that's the only possible explanation for:
The MOOXML standards effort and all the nastiness that happened involving bribes, etc.
The Classmate project with Intel, and now trying to run Windows on the OLPC itself.
The supposed patents that Linux infringes, and the Novell deal.
Silverlight &.NET, and having MS shills in Novell develop Moonlight & Mono.
It all seems so absurd, but most people tend to think that MS's end objectives are to win those battles (the ISO standard, Windows in schools, or to sue RH for patents).
In fact, I think that they realised that their software cannot compete in quality with FOSS, even more now after Vista, that they gave up on improving their software quality, and decided to try to make lots of random absurd statements that will enrage FOSS community, and have them (us) all engaging in forums, political discussion, standards organizations...
Eventually, they'll get the last of us to stop coding to engage on the war against them.
And who will lose? The users, of course.
The saddest part is that their tactics are working. The hope is that, so far, I think FOSS is showing that it's stronger that MS not only in coding ability and software quality, but in politics as well.
Maybe it wasn't that good an idea to appeal. It was pretty obvious to me that it would end like this. It just strenghtened the RIAA. However, not appealing could be interpreted as an acknowledgment from JT and the lawyers that the RIAA was right as well... This whole RIAA thing is very unfair in general, and the fact that the government not only allows it but even encourages makes it still more miserable.
Hey but looking at other people comments i see: "as long it is odf SCREW FREE CHOICE".
"Free choice" should be considered at the time of adopting a standard. "Free choice" of the standard that anyone wants to use means no standard at all, means chaos. It's like saying "standards are so great that everyone should have its own".
We're right now in a particular moment where we're trying to break from proprietary formats and going to open formats. The choice has to be made now. As I see it, ODF seems to be the choice that was made freely, by organizations discussing the technical merits of the standard.
M$, on the other hand, is bribing organizations and sabotaging the standards process to impose the choice they want. Does that seem like a "free choice" to you?
AFAIK, you need motherboard support if you want to do hardware RAID. For software RAID all you need is OS support, and both Linux and FreeBSD have it built-in.
Well, if they wanted to send all the programmers away, they just did it. With all the outsourcing to India and out of US, it was already a problem to keep a job before that, now that they introduced taxes, it's just got a lot harder.
When a browser starts to edge near to consuming 500MB of RAM on a regular basis, something is wrong.
And all the screenshots are done in Windows Vista!? So, apparently the guy doesn't think there's anything wrong when an OS consumes more than 500MiB of RAM just to boot, right?
In my opinion, CentOS actually helps Red Hat. I work as Linux admin, and in all the companies I've worked so far, we usually choose to run RHEL for the Oracle machines and CentOS for all the others.
We choose RHEL for the Oracle machines because it's the platform Oracle supports, and the cost of RHEL is insignificant near to the cost of Oracle, so it's not worth to install CentOS and then have a support request dismissed from Oracle because it's running on a non-supported platform.
On the other hand, for everything else, we basically support it ourselves, or google for answers when we have problems. Although the Red Hat support is very good, we actually don't need it, we're really OK on our own.
But Red Hat actually benefits from we using CentOS, because as we can use CentOS for most of our machines, we'll turn to Red Hat when we need a supported platform, as we do with Oracle machines, and we don't even look at SuSE or others because we're already using (more or less) Red Hat, so we mostly know it well already.
In any way, if CentOS weren't there, for the non-Oracle machines we would probably use Fedora, or even try Ubuntu. Yes, it would be different, but we'd prefer to do that than pay for RHEL licenses. And if we started looking to the other side, say, Ubuntu, or even OpenSuSE, as soon as we saw that we could get good Oracle support with Ubuntu or even buy SuSE, we would probably switch from RHEL, because then we would be able to unify (more or less) the platform.
So, in the long term, I guess CentOS actually helps Red Hat, in allowing people to get used to Red Hat and deploy it without spending much in licenses, and then turning to Red Hat whenever they have the need to buy licenses to a supported OS.
Personally, I think that Less is More. We don't need more standards. We don't need more complex standards either. We don't need more pages. We need less.
The point of standards is that they should encourage the maximum number of implementations, and the best way to do it is by not being a burden on the implementation. If the implementation has to implement two different standards, it will be double the burden, and to what benefit?
I agree that the specification should be clear and in some cases that would mean adding more pages to it, but what you're saying seems to me you're encouraging adding complexity, you're advocating "adding more pages" when in fact you should advocate specifying some things better without compromising its simplicity and conciseness.
-- "Standards are so great that everyone should have its own."
Slashdot Mirror
In another move to spread more FUD, now they're trying to hide the UGLY part of the specification. But, what use is hiding it? They claim the deprecated features will be used only for the migration of old binary formats, and that they should not be used by new documents... But considering that the whole point of this document format standardization effort is to be able to open any document in 20 or 30 years time, and if the old binary format documents will be converted using deprecated features, that just means that any software implementing the standard will have to support the deprecated features anyway...
Although they keep manipulating, manipulating, and manipulating more, I still think their format stinks, they're only using it to spread FUD over other formats, and I really hope they can't pull this stunt.
Manitoba is in Canada. As in the rest of the civilized world, we use the metric system over here.
Sorry about the rant, but I'm fed up about these brain dead measurement units used by only a minority of only three unimportant countries around the world. Time to wake up.
The prices should be in Canadian Dollars as well, then it's a little cheaper than what TFA says. :-)
Before the deadline, but after the announcement (...and to report her findings by 15 January 2007).
Actually, recently Wikipedia announced that it's going to change its license to be compatible with Creative Commons.
Strange, considering everything I read about Vista, and my current experiences (problems installing Adobe Reader, impossible to run PDFCreator, some hardware that didn't work well), Vista broke much of backwards compatibility. So as XP broke it too, by not running DOS programs anymore. Therefore, the idea that Vista is bloated because of backwards compatibility sounds strange to me.
On the other hand, I recall reading something about network traffic problems on Vista when copying files, and IIRC it was related to it doing some fiddling on the network stack to make it more difficult to copy media files, that is, DRM related.
I actually tend to believe that more of Vista's bloat is due to DRM than it's due to backwards compatibility, of which it actually has very few.
The more articles I read about FOSS vs. MS, the more I start to realise what MS's war tactics: to redirect the enemy's effort so that MS wins time.
I mean, that's the only possible explanation for:
It all seems so absurd, but most people tend to think that MS's end objectives are to win those battles (the ISO standard, Windows in schools, or to sue RH for patents).
In fact, I think that they realised that their software cannot compete in quality with FOSS, even more now after Vista, that they gave up on improving their software quality, and decided to try to make lots of random absurd statements that will enrage FOSS community, and have them (us) all engaging in forums, political discussion, standards organizations...
Eventually, they'll get the last of us to stop coding to engage on the war against them.
And who will lose? The users, of course.
The saddest part is that their tactics are working. The hope is that, so far, I think FOSS is showing that it's stronger that MS not only in coding ability and software quality, but in politics as well.
SumatraPDF for Windows is really lightweight.
Maybe it wasn't that good an idea to appeal. It was pretty obvious to me that it would end like this. It just strenghtened the RIAA. However, not appealing could be interpreted as an acknowledgment from JT and the lawyers that the RIAA was right as well... This whole RIAA thing is very unfair in general, and the fact that the government not only allows it but even encourages makes it still more miserable.
Smells like M$ trying desesperately to throw more FUD on the OLPC project... it's not like they haven't bribed companies in Nigeria before.
"Free choice" should be considered at the time of adopting a standard. "Free choice" of the standard that anyone wants to use means no standard at all, means chaos. It's like saying "standards are so great that everyone should have its own".
We're right now in a particular moment where we're trying to break from proprietary formats and going to open formats. The choice has to be made now. As I see it, ODF seems to be the choice that was made freely, by organizations discussing the technical merits of the standard.
M$, on the other hand, is bribing organizations and sabotaging the standards process to impose the choice they want. Does that seem like a "free choice" to you?
AFAIK, you need motherboard support if you want to do hardware RAID. For software RAID all you need is OS support, and both Linux and FreeBSD have it built-in.
Well, if they wanted to send all the programmers away, they just did it. With all the outsourcing to India and out of US, it was already a problem to keep a job before that, now that they introduced taxes, it's just got a lot harder.
From TFA:
And all the screenshots are done in Windows Vista!? So, apparently the guy doesn't think there's anything wrong when an OS consumes more than 500MiB of RAM just to boot, right?
In my opinion, CentOS actually helps Red Hat. I work as Linux admin, and in all the companies I've worked so far, we usually choose to run RHEL for the Oracle machines and CentOS for all the others.
We choose RHEL for the Oracle machines because it's the platform Oracle supports, and the cost of RHEL is insignificant near to the cost of Oracle, so it's not worth to install CentOS and then have a support request dismissed from Oracle because it's running on a non-supported platform.
On the other hand, for everything else, we basically support it ourselves, or google for answers when we have problems. Although the Red Hat support is very good, we actually don't need it, we're really OK on our own.
But Red Hat actually benefits from we using CentOS, because as we can use CentOS for most of our machines, we'll turn to Red Hat when we need a supported platform, as we do with Oracle machines, and we don't even look at SuSE or others because we're already using (more or less) Red Hat, so we mostly know it well already.
In any way, if CentOS weren't there, for the non-Oracle machines we would probably use Fedora, or even try Ubuntu. Yes, it would be different, but we'd prefer to do that than pay for RHEL licenses. And if we started looking to the other side, say, Ubuntu, or even OpenSuSE, as soon as we saw that we could get good Oracle support with Ubuntu or even buy SuSE, we would probably switch from RHEL, because then we would be able to unify (more or less) the platform.
So, in the long term, I guess CentOS actually helps Red Hat, in allowing people to get used to Red Hat and deploy it without spending much in licenses, and then turning to Red Hat whenever they have the need to buy licenses to a supported OS.
http://www.apple.com/appletv/
Personally, I think that Less is More. We don't need more standards. We don't need more complex standards either. We don't need more pages. We need less.
The point of standards is that they should encourage the maximum number of implementations, and the best way to do it is by not being a burden on the implementation. If the implementation has to implement two different standards, it will be double the burden, and to what benefit?
I agree that the specification should be clear and in some cases that would mean adding more pages to it, but what you're saying seems to me you're encouraging adding complexity, you're advocating "adding more pages" when in fact you should advocate specifying some things better without compromising its simplicity and conciseness.
--
"Standards are so great that everyone should have its own."
Real Men(tm) use the shell.