However, they should have a "real investigation" to find out:
Why on earth did it rebound the way it did and remain stable the rest of the day ?
Why are their reports that traders were locked out their systems during the entire 10-15 minutes of the drop ?
What effects the "Working Group on Financial Markets" aka Plunge Protection Team have on the markets. This entity has absolutely no oversight and can pretty much manipulate the markets how it wishes. The "conspiracy theorist" in me think that they might have done this on purpose to send a message to certain Senators to drop support for the "Audit the Fed" Bill, which quite a few did shortly afterwards.
If it was caused by a typo, how can someone entering a "B"illion instead of a "M"illion cause this, normally wouldn't you have to enter 1,000,000,000 into the computer program instead of "Million" ? I guess unless they were using Microsoft Bob for Day Traders.
Does that mean Bush and his mates can monitor all Democratic email traffic?
The question here is not Democrats vs. Republicans, they are both evil and against a free society. For instance: Pres. Clinton authorized un-constitutional Phone Taps during his presidency.
The "American Political" system is not about choice, it does not matter if a "Republican" or a "Democrat" is in office, the result is the same. It is simply smoke and mirrors to portray to the American People that we are a free society that elects its officials - nothing could be further from the truth.
Stop being a good Democrat - Stop be a good Republican - Start being a good American
Not 100% sure though (the easiest way to find out if you are using the ooo-build version or the "official" version is to see if the "greyed out" icons are just not displayed ("official version") or are actually "greyed out" (ooo-build version). Also the oo-build version does have a zoom drop-down on the task bar.
This is not an official "fork" of OpenOffice.org. This is simply a way for Windows user's to get a nice "Development version" of the office suite similar to what is deployed on most GNU/Linux Distributions. Of course if you don't want to use a "Development Version" on your workstations, you can get a stable version of the OOO-Build service with Novell's version of OpenOffice.org for Windows (which is what I prefer).
If you ARE a Linux SysAdmin then you should know that they totally hosed over Vista running on a network.
MS decided to go with using "User Profiles Version 2", which totally messes up roaming profiles and Folder Redirection (without really gaining any improvements).
MS also decided to not apply NTConfig.POL policy files when connected to a Domain, which means that you cannot apply any System Policies when using Samba Servers (until version 4 is stable enough).
These 2 things alone will make Vista a "Dead on Arrival" product for many companies, and if you get past these to problems, just try to figure out Microsoft's new "Network Connections" crap.
If any admins out there would like to mass deploy OOo 2.3 onto their Windows Workstations, I created a "Mass Install Utility" that enables you to deploy it with a few mouse clicks.
Note that I do recommend Novell's OOo version, but I do create the installer for the standard version as well (which I just updated to 2.3). To download the complete versions of the Installation Utility (which includes all files necessary) you must use Bittorrent and get the files from my tracker here.
Since well over a year now, Firefox by default has been automatically checking for updates and downloading the new version when available on nearly every install. On networks this can be compounded because even if you are not an "Administrator" Firefox will still install download the update although the user cannot install the program. These download numbers are still probably counted.
On the upside, Mozilla does not count the number of installations on GNU/Linux systems (which would probably easily overtake the amount of "false downloads" that may be counted).
Anyway, to combat this on the networks I manage (and because I am a lazy SOB) I created a "Network Installation Utility" that remotely installs Firefox on the Domain Computers (or A.D. computers if you aren't using Samba). If anyone wants it you can find it at: http://www.pcc-services.com/kixtart/firefox-script.html. (I adjusted the default behavior of Firefox to not check for updates.)
But of course using this utility will totally mess up Mozilla's numbers since you can install Firefox on a few hundred computers in a few minutes (depending upon network speed) without even downloading Firefox once.
This move is a non-story because regardless of what the ISO approves or disapproves, Microsoft will continue to go the way they want to go and the 90% of the Office customer base will follow them, just as will the pre-install bundled customers. Other office suites are advised to ignore the upcoming de facto standard at their own peril.
It has begun. People are already starting to send Word 2007 documents in droves. These documents will not open in anything but Office 2007, Office 2003 (with an installed MS Plugin) or Novell's version of OpenOffice.org (with the odfconverter installed).
The pathetic thing is that these documents do not have a ".docx" extension as I believed they would. They still have the ".doc" extension (which gives no warning except they won't open properly) and are apparently compressed archives similar to the OpenDocument Format (".odt") - i.e. you can unzip them into quite a few files/directories.
If you are in the computer support business, expect calls soon !
Which is why most distros support POSIX ACLs...they are just not widely used. Ext2, Ext3, JFS, XFS, and ReiserFS all support ACLs (extended attributes). I believe NFS version 3 and 4 also support ACLs. why most distros support POSIX ACLs...they are just not widely used. Ext2, Ext3, JFS, XFS, and ReiserFS all support ACLs (extended attributes). I believe NFS version 3 and 4 also support ACLs.
True, but until most GNU/Linux applications fully support ACLs, I highly recommend not using them and sticking with controlling access through Groups instead. Similar results to ACLs can eaily be obtained through groups by changing the umask of your users to 002, creating a directory to share, change the group ownership, then make it writable and setgid (chmod g+ws) for the group.
I also have some experience with switching users over to OOo from Microsoft Office. Here are some pointers:
* Nearly all female users will refuse to switch and complain at every little difference. At a school, we decided that the school would provide OpenOffice.org on all teacher computers, if the teacher wanted to use MS Office they would have to come up with the funds somewhere else beside the Technology related budgets. All of the Male teachers (except 1) happily switched to OOo. All of the Female teachers (except the handful that had no experience with MS Office) chose to purchase MS Office on their own.
* Most people use a word processor by typing something in, highlighting text and changing fonts, spacing, etc. A well instructed lesson in Styles will lessen the impact people have when switching to OOo. It will probably increase productivity once they learn to use styles instead of micro-managing their documents.
* If you are seriously planning a deployment, test out users on a Linux Distribution. In my experience OOo works much better (and much faster) within Linux than it does in Windows. Also, I have (surprisingly) found that many people find Linux easier to use than Windows (using Novell's SLED 10).
* Show your users how to use the Help Documentation. It actually works with OOo.
If you are considering a switch, do not be too high strung. People will complain, but that is human nature. Also be sure to keep at least a few workstations that run MS Office, not for compatibility issues, but to have the user's show you how they do something within MS Office that they cannot figure out in OpenOffice.org (Most people think they are experts in Word, but usually aren't and this will weed out the idiotic problems).
In a perfect world, there would be no software patents (and binary only software would be prohibited), unfortunately there currently are laws "protecting" software patents in the United States, and the U.S. court systems will uphold them. For any (U.S.) business, especially a publicly traded company, their responsibility (to it's shareholders, or simply the want to stay in business) is to avoid being sued by anyone.
Once Microsoft started making threats (and these threats have only now become in the public eye), these companies needed to devise a strategy in order to protect itself from litigation. Even though Microsoft has not gone ahead and filed suit against anyone, the threat is there and needs to be taken seriously by these companies.
Granted some companies (i.e. Red Hat) have (so far) tried to avoid such litigation in other ways, such as creating a "patent pool" from various other companies, but not many companies can do that (have the resources or popularity to).
I am not saying that the backlash that the community is giving these companies is wrong, but how about redirecting this backlash to the actual cause of the problem (not the side effect) - Software Patents. (Especially since some of these companies do contribute quite a bit of code back to the community)
advancing educational programs 'that teach the value of strong copyright.'
What exactly are they going to teach. Most laws do not remotely cover what is needed with today's technology. For instance, if you start teaching about copyright "infingement" someone will ask if it is an infringement if you rip a CD or copy a movie for personal use. The current problem is that NO ONE KNOWS 100%. These issues have not been hammered out in a court of law and the current statues have no opinion either way.
The first thing that really needs to be done (besides possibly shortening copyright) is to define what exactly can and cannot be done with an existing work. Until then, whatever anyone attempts to teach about copyright is 100% opinion and speculation.
As a side note: The really pathetic thing about copyright is that it was initiated to promote the science and arts, but has since been hijacked by what I believe to be the lowest benefit to our society - the Entertainment Industry.
Free Software is over hyar, Microsoft is over thyar. The only acceptable compromise is for Microsoft to surrender; we have nothing to gain by moving towards them.
So, are you saying there is some sort of conspiracy between music player makers and the fraunhofer institute to keep ogg support off players? For me there can be no doubt that ogg is more expensive to support, or all players would support it.
Then what other reason do you give why ipods, sansas, gigabeats, etc. don't support OGG files out of the box (while rockbox happily runs on these devices) ? It would be very minimal (price wise and man-power wise) for these companies to support OGG files as their hardware is more than powerful enough and their are large amounts of code readily available to reference so implementation would be extremely easy.
Add to this the fact that it does cost licensing fees to support the MP3, WMA,.... formats, while the OGG format does not have these fees. So yes, I really believe their is something fishy about the lack of OGG support on these consumer devices, it may or not be the fraunhofer institute, but someone of "power" is trying to keep OGGs from catching on.
Because it's currently very expensive (or impossible?) to get chip decoders for OGG Vorbis, because of lack of demand.
That may have been true a few years ago, but most of the current Portable Media Players are more than capable of handling the decoding of OGG files and would be pretty trivial to add support to their players. I really think their is a more of a "politcal" reason for not supporting OGG files anymore (not sure what it is, but for some reason companies don't want OGG files catching on).
BTW: I just purchased a Sandisk Sansa e260 series player to be used with my entire collection of OGG Vorbis files - the trick is to simply install Rockbox on it to use instead of the crap firmware it comes with.
On top of that, it's still not 100% compatible with MS Office... I frequently have to slightly adjust things converting between OO's.odf and Office's.doc and have had some features of Excel spreadsheets not work in OO. That alone is going to make it unacceptable for use on projects for school or work which are then going to probably be used in MS Office.
Stop Using the Proprietary MS Formats - The vast majority of people complaining about OOo complain that it doesn't open MS Documents 100% Accurately. If you would simply start to use the default file format - ODF you won't have this problem.
At a local school we decided to have the teachers use OpenOffice.org, or if they wanted Microsoft Office - to have the teachers find the funding for it themselves. Most chose OpenOffice.org and the #1 complaint was that it did not open Word Documents 100% accurately - mostly drawings wouldn't show up correctly. Once everyone transitioned to use the ODF format - all complaints stopped, and once they started using OOo most found it better than MS Office - Especially once they learned how to utilize styles.
This story scares me ! I am an network administrator for a few places including a school. I have been struggling to keep unlicensed software off of our computer network - unfortunately some teachers take it upon themselves to install software, say Microsoft Office, because they cannot waste the 5 minutes it takes to get used to OpenOffice.org.
I have given them lots of software options on their computer: All computers dual boot Windows XP (licensed!) and SLED10. All computers have lots of Free Software to do just about any task and most programs are very easy to learn. Unfortunately we have a few programs the teachers have to run that require Administrator rights, this opens the door for them to install any software. I have had to remove quite a few programs: MS Office, Adobe software, Hallmark Card software, etc.
If I am the Network Admin, under U.S. Law, am I LEGALLY responsible if the school comes up having unlicensed software installed during an Audit ??
I have had this discussion with the Superintendent and he is seriously requiring all our Vendors to have their programs run under Linux within 2 years (as if they actually would care to lose us as a customer), which would allow us to destory the Windows partitions on all of our computers. Needless to say, I have a feeling within the next year or so I will have to become a WINE expert.
Web developers should love this. A single box that you can test your web sites with just about every Internet Explorer version in use today.
Granted most technical people use Firefox, but the world is full of un-informed users that use IE because it was pre-installed on their computer when they bought it.
'Would you sue your own customers? I wouldn't and I don't believe Microsoft will ever do it,"...
I think he is giving Microsoft too much credit, like any other large corporation that is facing struggling sales (cough,RIAA,cough), Microsoft has proven they will do *anything* they can to get a sale (including threatening their own customers).
For those paying attention, the clues are all around that Microsoft has in fact already played their patent card with some companies. Anyone thinking of deploying a large (1000+) installation using Samba instead of a Windows server will probably get a call/letter from a MS lawyer (once they get wind of it) stating that if you proceed you will be in violation of several Microsoft patents - even though they won't say what patents are involved!
Those of you who are not quite paying attention, just check out the interview with Stallman, Allison and Waugh at http://questionsplease.org/.
I give links to all the software I built for SLED10 - for free, the CD is there as a way for people to donate to me.
I am trying somehow to recoup the cost of
- Bandwidth - I only get about 1% of my total bandwith cost in Ads
- My time for building these - and yes I do submit bugfixes and am a part-time programmer
Just because I am trying not to go broke in being part of the Free Software Community by offering an easy way for people to donate to me, I am being branded a spammer ? Nice.
So again, if you want RPMs for SLED10 I provide some of the best ones - all custom built and nicely integrated into the default GNOME Desktop. All available FOR FREE, with the option of buying a CD from me.
This is for all the Network Admins for Windows Networks.
If you do not want Automatic Updates to Install IE7 when it is released then just set the following registry key on every workstation:
Registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\7.0 Key value name: DoNotAllowIE70
* When the key value name is not defined, distribution is not blocked. * When the key value name is set to 0, distribution is not blocked. * When the key value name is set to 1, distribution is blocked.
NOTE: This is highly recommended as everytime I dealt with any Major release from Microsoft things started getting trashed. Microsoft should NOT Automatically deploy this in this way.
For lazy/Proficient Admins here is a Kixtart Script to do this on a list of computers over the network:
NoAutoIE7.txt
Lately the only thing the United States Government cares about is the "State of the Economy" (and terrorists). We are constantly being bombarded with news stories on why such and such law would stimulate the economy or this and that could be bad for the economy.
Whatever happened to the government "For the people, by the people"?
Wait, let me answer that - it has been replaced by the government "For the Corporations, (paid for) by the Corporations".
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
-----
If you want to learn more about the United States Constituion while you are learning about OpenOffice.org Writer styles check out my OpenOffice.org Styles Tutorial at
Slashdot Mirror
However, they should have a "real investigation" to find out:
Why on earth did it rebound the way it did and remain stable the rest of the day ?
Why are their reports that traders were locked out their systems during the entire 10-15 minutes of the drop ?
What effects the "Working Group on Financial Markets" aka Plunge Protection Team have on the markets. This entity has absolutely no oversight and can pretty much manipulate the markets how it wishes. The "conspiracy theorist" in me think that they might have done this on purpose to send a message to certain Senators to drop support for the "Audit the Fed" Bill, which quite a few did shortly afterwards.
If it was caused by a typo, how can someone entering a "B"illion instead of a "M"illion cause this, normally wouldn't you have to enter 1,000,000,000 into the computer program instead of "Million" ? I guess unless they were using Microsoft Bob for Day Traders.
Anyway, that is my "Two Cents"
It is not 21%, it is more like 67%
http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/
Does that mean Bush and his mates can monitor all Democratic email traffic?
The question here is not Democrats vs. Republicans, they are both evil and against a free society. For instance: Pres. Clinton authorized un-constitutional Phone Taps during his presidency.
The "American Political" system is not about choice, it does not matter if a "Republican" or a "Democrat" is in office, the result is the same. It is simply smoke and mirrors to portray to the American People that we are a free society that elects its officials - nothing could be further from the truth.
Stop being a good Democrat - Stop be a good Republican - Start being a good American
I am pretty sure Debian/Ubuntu uses the oo-build version as per this interview with Michael Meeks:
http://www.tuxdeluxe.org/node/184
Not 100% sure though (the easiest way to find out if you are using the ooo-build version or the "official" version is to see if the "greyed out" icons are just not displayed ("official version") or are actually "greyed out" (ooo-build version). Also the oo-build version does have a zoom drop-down on the task bar.
This is not an official "fork" of OpenOffice.org. This is simply a way for Windows user's to get a nice "Development version" of the office suite similar to what is deployed on most GNU/Linux Distributions. Of course if you don't want to use a "Development Version" on your workstations, you can get a stable version of the OOO-Build service with Novell's version of OpenOffice.org for Windows (which is what I prefer).
If you ARE a Linux SysAdmin then you should know that they totally hosed over Vista running on a network.
MS decided to go with using "User Profiles Version 2", which totally messes up roaming profiles and Folder Redirection (without really gaining any improvements).
MS also decided to not apply NTConfig.POL policy files when connected to a Domain, which means that you cannot apply any System Policies when using Samba Servers (until version 4 is stable enough).
These 2 things alone will make Vista a "Dead on Arrival" product for many companies, and if you get past these to problems, just try to figure out Microsoft's new "Network Connections" crap.
If any admins out there would like to mass deploy OOo 2.3 onto their Windows Workstations, I created a "Mass Install Utility" that enables you to deploy it with a few mouse clicks.
Check it out here.
Note that I do recommend Novell's OOo version, but I do create the installer for the standard version as well (which I just updated to 2.3). To download the complete versions of the Installation Utility (which includes all files necessary) you must use Bittorrent and get the files from my tracker here.
Since well over a year now, Firefox by default has been automatically checking for updates and downloading the new version when available on nearly every install. On networks this can be compounded because even if you are not an "Administrator" Firefox will still install download the update although the user cannot install the program. These download numbers are still probably counted.
On the upside, Mozilla does not count the number of installations on GNU/Linux systems (which would probably easily overtake the amount of "false downloads" that may be counted).
Anyway, to combat this on the networks I manage (and because I am a lazy SOB) I created a "Network Installation Utility" that remotely installs Firefox on the Domain Computers (or A.D. computers if you aren't using Samba). If anyone wants it you can find it at: http://www.pcc-services.com/kixtart/firefox-script.html. (I adjusted the default behavior of Firefox to not check for updates.)
But of course using this utility will totally mess up Mozilla's numbers since you can install Firefox on a few hundred computers in a few minutes (depending upon network speed) without even downloading Firefox once.
This move is a non-story because regardless of what the ISO approves or disapproves, Microsoft will continue to go the way they want to go and the 90% of the Office customer base will follow them, just as will the pre-install bundled customers. Other office suites are advised to ignore the upcoming de facto standard at their own peril.
It has begun. People are already starting to send Word 2007 documents in droves. These documents will not open in anything but Office 2007, Office 2003 (with an installed MS Plugin) or Novell's version of OpenOffice.org (with the odfconverter installed).
The pathetic thing is that these documents do not have a ".docx" extension as I believed they would. They still have the ".doc" extension (which gives no warning except they won't open properly) and are apparently compressed archives similar to the OpenDocument Format (".odt") - i.e. you can unzip them into quite a few files/directories.
If you are in the computer support business, expect calls soon !
Which is why most distros support POSIX ACLs...they are just not widely used. Ext2, Ext3, JFS, XFS, and ReiserFS all support ACLs (extended attributes). I believe NFS version 3 and 4 also support ACLs. why most distros support POSIX ACLs...they are just not widely used. Ext2, Ext3, JFS, XFS, and ReiserFS all support ACLs (extended attributes). I believe NFS version 3 and 4 also support ACLs.
True, but until most GNU/Linux applications fully support ACLs, I highly recommend not using them and sticking with controlling access through Groups instead. Similar results to ACLs can eaily be obtained through groups by changing the umask of your users to 002, creating a directory to share, change the group ownership, then make it writable and setgid (chmod g+ws) for the group.
I also have some experience with switching users over to OOo from Microsoft Office. Here are some pointers:
* Nearly all female users will refuse to switch and complain at every little difference. At a school, we decided that the school would provide OpenOffice.org on all teacher computers, if the teacher wanted to use MS Office they would have to come up with the funds somewhere else beside the Technology related budgets. All of the Male teachers (except 1) happily switched to OOo. All of the Female teachers (except the handful that had no experience with MS Office) chose to purchase MS Office on their own.
* Most people use a word processor by typing something in, highlighting text and changing fonts, spacing, etc. A well instructed lesson in Styles will lessen the impact people have when switching to OOo. It will probably increase productivity once they learn to use styles instead of micro-managing their documents.
* If you are seriously planning a deployment, test out users on a Linux Distribution. In my experience OOo works much better (and much faster) within Linux than it does in Windows. Also, I have (surprisingly) found that many people find Linux easier to use than Windows (using Novell's SLED 10).
* Show your users how to use the Help Documentation. It actually works with OOo.
If you are considering a switch, do not be too high strung. People will complain, but that is human nature. Also be sure to keep at least a few workstations that run MS Office, not for compatibility issues, but to have the user's show you how they do something within MS Office that they cannot figure out in OpenOffice.org (Most people think they are experts in Word, but usually aren't and this will weed out the idiotic problems).
In a perfect world, there would be no software patents (and binary only software would be prohibited), unfortunately there currently are laws "protecting" software patents in the United States, and the U.S. court systems will uphold them. For any (U.S.) business, especially a publicly traded company, their responsibility (to it's shareholders, or simply the want to stay in business) is to avoid being sued by anyone.
Once Microsoft started making threats (and these threats have only now become in the public eye), these companies needed to devise a strategy in order to protect itself from litigation. Even though Microsoft has not gone ahead and filed suit against anyone, the threat is there and needs to be taken seriously by these companies.
Granted some companies (i.e. Red Hat) have (so far) tried to avoid such litigation in other ways, such as creating a "patent pool" from various other companies, but not many companies can do that (have the resources or popularity to).
I am not saying that the backlash that the community is giving these companies is wrong, but how about redirecting this backlash to the actual cause of the problem (not the side effect) - Software Patents. (Especially since some of these companies do contribute quite a bit of code back to the community)
advancing educational programs 'that teach the value of strong copyright.'
What exactly are they going to teach. Most laws do not remotely cover what is needed with today's technology. For instance, if you start teaching about copyright "infingement" someone will ask if it is an infringement if you rip a CD or copy a movie for personal use. The current problem is that NO ONE KNOWS 100%. These issues have not been hammered out in a court of law and the current statues have no opinion either way.
The first thing that really needs to be done (besides possibly shortening copyright) is to define what exactly can and cannot be done with an existing work. Until then, whatever anyone attempts to teach about copyright is 100% opinion and speculation.
As a side note: The really pathetic thing about copyright is that it was initiated to promote the science and arts, but has since been hijacked by what I believe to be the lowest benefit to our society - the Entertainment Industry.
Free Software is over hyar, Microsoft is over thyar. The only acceptable compromise is for Microsoft to surrender; we have nothing to gain by moving towards them.
Only the Sith think in Absolutes
So, are you saying there is some sort of conspiracy between music player makers and the fraunhofer institute to keep ogg support off players? For me there can be no doubt that ogg is more expensive to support, or all players would support it.
Then what other reason do you give why ipods, sansas, gigabeats, etc. don't support OGG files out of the box (while rockbox happily runs on these devices) ? It would be very minimal (price wise and man-power wise) for these companies to support OGG files as their hardware is more than powerful enough and their are large amounts of code readily available to reference so implementation would be extremely easy.
Add to this the fact that it does cost licensing fees to support the MP3, WMA, .... formats, while the OGG format does not have these fees. So yes, I really believe their is something fishy about the lack of OGG support on these consumer devices, it may or not be the fraunhofer institute, but someone of "power" is trying to keep OGGs from catching on.
Because it's currently very expensive (or impossible?) to get chip decoders for OGG Vorbis, because of lack of demand.
That may have been true a few years ago, but most of the current Portable Media Players are more than capable of handling the decoding of OGG files and would be pretty trivial to add support to their players. I really think their is a more of a "politcal" reason for not supporting OGG files anymore (not sure what it is, but for some reason companies don't want OGG files catching on).
BTW: I just purchased a Sandisk Sansa e260 series player to be used with my entire collection of OGG Vorbis files - the trick is to simply install Rockbox on it to use instead of the crap firmware it comes with.
On top of that, it's still not 100% compatible with MS Office... I frequently have to slightly adjust things converting between OO's .odf and Office's .doc and have had some features of Excel spreadsheets not work in OO. That alone is going to make it unacceptable for use on projects for school or work which are then going to probably be used in MS Office.
Stop Using the Proprietary MS Formats - The vast majority of people complaining about OOo complain that it doesn't open MS Documents 100% Accurately. If you would simply start to use the default file format - ODF you won't have this problem.
At a local school we decided to have the teachers use OpenOffice.org, or if they wanted Microsoft Office - to have the teachers find the funding for it themselves. Most chose OpenOffice.org and the #1 complaint was that it did not open Word Documents 100% accurately - mostly drawings wouldn't show up correctly. Once everyone transitioned to use the ODF format - all complaints stopped, and once they started using OOo most found it better than MS Office - Especially once they learned how to utilize styles.
This story scares me ! I am an network administrator for a few places including a school. I have been struggling to keep unlicensed software off of our computer network - unfortunately some teachers take it upon themselves to install software, say Microsoft Office, because they cannot waste the 5 minutes it takes to get used to OpenOffice.org.
I have given them lots of software options on their computer: All computers dual boot Windows XP (licensed!) and SLED10. All computers have lots of Free Software to do just about any task and most programs are very easy to learn. Unfortunately we have a few programs the teachers have to run that require Administrator rights, this opens the door for them to install any software. I have had to remove quite a few programs: MS Office, Adobe software, Hallmark Card software, etc.
If I am the Network Admin, under U.S. Law, am I LEGALLY responsible if the school comes up having unlicensed software installed during an Audit ??
I have had this discussion with the Superintendent and he is seriously requiring all our Vendors to have their programs run under Linux within 2 years (as if they actually would care to lose us as a customer), which would allow us to destory the Windows partitions on all of our computers. Needless to say, I have a feeling within the next year or so I will have to become a WINE expert.
Web developers should love this. A single box that you can test your web sites with just about every Internet Explorer version in use today.
Granted most technical people use Firefox, but the world is full of un-informed users that use IE because it was pre-installed on their computer when they bought it.
'Would you sue your own customers? I wouldn't and I don't believe Microsoft will ever do it,"...
I think he is giving Microsoft too much credit, like any other large corporation that is facing struggling sales (cough,RIAA,cough), Microsoft has proven they will do *anything* they can to get a sale (including threatening their own customers).
For those paying attention, the clues are all around that Microsoft has in fact already played their patent card with some companies. Anyone thinking of deploying a large (1000+) installation using Samba instead of a Windows server will probably get a call/letter from a MS lawyer (once they get wind of it) stating that if you proceed you will be in violation of several Microsoft patents - even though they won't say what patents are involved!
Those of you who are not quite paying attention, just check out the interview with Stallman, Allison and Waugh at http://questionsplease.org/.
Thanks for the information (won't do it again). Next time I will simply link directly to the RPMs :-)
Democracy RPMPython Gnome Extras RPM - which had to be fixed so it would build pygtkmozembed (which Democracy needs).
Both should work on SLED10 as well as OpenSUSE 10.1
I give links to all the software I built for SLED10 - for free, the CD is there as a way for people to donate to me.
I am trying somehow to recoup the cost of
- Bandwidth - I only get about 1% of my total bandwith cost in Ads
- My time for building these - and yes I do submit bugfixes and am a part-time programmer
Just because I am trying not to go broke in being part of the Free Software Community by offering an easy way for people to donate to me, I am being branded a spammer ? Nice.
So again, if you want RPMs for SLED10 I provide some of the best ones - all custom built and nicely integrated into the default GNOME Desktop. All available FOR FREE, with the option of buying a CD from me.
http://www.pcc-services.com/sled10_rpms.htmlAlso, I should be updating all the applications within a few days to co-incide with the software on the CD.
This is for all the Network Admins for Windows Networks.
If you do not want Automatic Updates to Install IE7 when it is released then just set the following registry key on every workstation:
NOTE: This is highly recommended as everytime I dealt with any Major release from Microsoft things started getting trashed. Microsoft should NOT Automatically deploy this in this way.
For lazy/Proficient Admins here is a Kixtart Script to do this on a list of computers over the network: NoAutoIE7.txt
Lately the only thing the United States Government cares about is the "State of the Economy" (and terrorists). We are constantly being bombarded with news stories on why such and such law would stimulate the economy or this and that could be bad for the economy.
Whatever happened to the government "For the people, by the people"?
Wait, let me answer that - it has been replaced by the government "For the Corporations, (paid for) by the Corporations".
Amendment IV
t yles/page1.html
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
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If you want to learn more about the United States Constituion while you are learning about OpenOffice.org Writer styles check out my OpenOffice.org Styles Tutorial at
http://www.pcc-services.com/tutorials/OOo/basic_s
Maybe you will learn a thing or two about Freedom (in reguards to both Society and Software).