I leave it to statisticians to work out the correlation, at first glance it certainly looks like a strong correlation to me. I mean, P members Cyprus at 37. on the list, Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan at 142.
On the other hand, P member Libya at place 106 on the list voted NO, as did China at 70.
Lund Energy points to a solution given on Microsoft's support pages. But for Annie Johansson who is starting her studies in Lund this fall, these directions did not help.
"It didn't make any difference, amd still internet works fine at home in Ljungby. Now I've got to borrow my kid brother's computer instead."
One very fuzzy data point. This one could of course be a problem between keyboard and chair. I guess someone will find out what the real problem in Lund is. (Does anybody know whether Ljungby and Lund have the same ISP?)
Yeah. I just found out that if I send a $ contribution to a US blogger, my Norwegian bank will have to send personal information about me to US authorities. DHS, I guess. Sigh. I would really like to visit Maine again some day, but at my present age of 65 I may not live long enough to make such a trip both enjoyable and in (relative) privacy. Oh well, "We'll always have Bath", I guess.
The following letter was sent to the Norwegian ISO member by 37 Microsoft customers and partners.
Look for the whole story on Groklaw soon.
To
Standard Norge
for the attention of JCT-1 SC34 committee
Declaration in support of ISO acceptance of Open XML
I have been made aware that Norway is going to vote on the ECMA-standard Open XML some time in
2007, and that the Norwegian position in the matter will be decided in the Norwegian ISO
committee (JCT-1 SC34) in Standard Norge. In this connection we feel that it is important that
Standard Norge has knowledge of the position to this standard in the undersigned's activity.
By signing this declaration we want to point out the following to Standard Norge:
an ISO standardization of Open XML has large positive spin-off effects for IT industry in
Norway, including our activity, our clients and business partners. Standardization will also
have a large effect on future document standards in Norway.
We base this assertion on the following considerations:
A standardization of Open XML will insure backward compatibility with billions of
existing documents — other existing formats do not satisfy this criterion.
Several coexisting standards are not unusual. For example, in imaging there are the
formats JPEG, GIF, PNG and TIFF. These exist side by side and serve different and overlapping
purposes to the advantage of users.
OpenXML does not rule out the use of other standards such as RTX, TXT, ODF, PDF etc.
ISO standardization will on the other hand benefit interoperability among these standards.
By making Open XML an internationally approved standard, it is ensured that the standard
can communicate with other standards.
Therefore we wish, hereby, to express our full support for Open XML as an
ISO standard.
Ah, Forbes, the fount of IT knowledge. "IBM, which failed in its attempt to market a proprietary operating system of its own,..." Last I looked, IBM had several proprietary operating systems:-)
Given the speed of development, it's likely that the kids in this family will use in their careers something completely different from what's on their school and home computers today.
You don't really believe that not using Microsoft products is skimping on software, do you?
Honestly, from the aspect of education, does it matter if the OS your kid is running in K-12 is from Microsoft? Give me a good reason.
I care that the school accepts assignment submissions in more than just Microsoft's format, I care that the school has taught my 10 year old granddaughter what a file is and how to download and upload using the school server (the system used is Class Fronter). I care that they use open standards that don't shut out students based on the OS they use on their home systems.
I wish that they didn't send any of my tax money to MS, though.
No - like Debian Edu, or K12LTSP.
Schools save money, but more important, sysadmin teachers can go back to teaching and stop running around ghosting the PCs at least once a week. Besides, at the 11-12 level many of the kids are already familiar with Linux.
Amen to your last paragraph.
To me, Microsoft is still irrelevant. That might change if they could in some weird twisted way force me to buy their products, which I don't need and don't want. (The Windows-only software I might want isn't made by Microsoft anyway.) I have no need or desire to attack Microsoft; however, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and I'm really happy that there are people like PJ out there working as sentinels.
Thanks for the link - the Wikipedia article
explains the effect and says that for materials with certain electromagnetic properties and configurations, the Casimir effect might result in a repulsive force instead of an attractive. Looks like somebody demonstrated that. Still, there's a long way from this to a macroscopic levitation system...
"The Microsoft Developer Network provides a set of online and offline services designed to help developers write applications using Microsoft products and technologies."
Not a word about open anything or even "interoperability". Color me unsurprised.
My personal experience is that women are much better bus drivers than men - at least from a passenger's POV. A female driver NEVER rattles her passengers around like beans in a tin can, unless there is an emergency.
The Norwegian blocking system doesn't give 404s, but redirects to e.g. http://kid.tele2.no/ which says that the page you are trying to access contains child pornography that violates 204a of the criminal code. It gives contact info to use if you believe the blocking is in error, and promises that no logs are kept. Still, the police regularly claims that 5000-6000 searches for child porn are blocked every day, a number that seems to be fetched out of thin air.
( Uh-oh - did I really post that URL on Slashdot? I found it on no.wikipedia.org... )
Norway does the same thing. Not that it slows down anyone who really want the stuff, of course, or really bothers anyone who hates censorship. Trivially easy to get around.
I don't know about other countries, but for a Norwegian mobile, caller pays as long as both phones are in Norway. If I'm in, say, Spain, and receive a call from Norway, caller pays as if calling a local phone, while I pay the Norway-to-Spain rate. (If the caller is also in Spain, as in my wife and I on holiday, I just don't know - since both phones automatically register with a Spanish phone network I think it's also treated as a local call.)
Then there's the problem of roaming in various countries. It's hard to keep up with the rules and prices, so it can be quite costly to take your mobile abroad.
They do post articles in English as well - give them a few days and you'll find their translation. Meanwhile, Linpro's announcement in ENglish in TFA is pretty good.
The deal was MS Windows licenses for all machines with cpu speeds above a low limit and memory sizes above another small limit. It had nothing whatsoever to do with CALS, and much to do with MS being incapable of understanding why anyone would not want to run Windows.
I saw similar shills on a blog claiming that Office 2003 and 2007 were perfectly compatible after a poster had shown his exact problem in going between the two versions. The replies from the fanbois were insulting, information-free and arrogant - much like normal MS output.
Full disclosure: I am a Norwegian, in a very small way involved privately in Skolelinux/Debian EDU and I do know about the deal.
I, for one, sometimes get e-mail advertising that I do not report as spam, because it is very well targeted and the sender has good reason to believe that I'm interested in the product he's selling. But the spam (even filtered and labelled) that comes through my ISP is getting to be too much - currently I'm running a Postfix server at home and seriously thinking about getting a static IP. cbl and spamcop helps me block almost all spam at the server.
:-) I signed up - after checking that Microsoft in this country has 1 patent granted - e-mail over SMS, 2 denied and about 130 "under consideration". OTOH, international conventions may make some other patents valid here anyway.
In the meantime I'm opening up 'Control Panel', selecting the little networky looking picture thingy and clicking some checkboxes it presents to me, and getting on with the rest of my life.
Guess what, Sparky? So can every Linux user who uses a GUI. The difference is that editing the config files by hand is lot easier and safer than editing the Windows registry.
But you're not alone - only now, 15 years after we switched from mainframe to Unix servers, do people in this company start to realize that there are in fact GUIs in the Unix world, too.
Check http://fronter.info/com/ It's a web service used by a large number of schools. Students and teachers communicate via rooms, students download assignments and upload files. It's OS agnostic, but proprietary and subscription-based. The schools seem happy with the solution.
In my house, three girls aged 7, 10 and 13 all use Fronter from our Linux systems. While the school is Windows-centric, they are enlightened enough to accept uploaded ODF files.
I am not affiliated with ClassFronter in any way, but slightly involved in Skolelinux/DebianEDU as a translator.
Slashdot Mirror
I leave it to statisticians to work out the correlation, at first glance it certainly looks like a strong correlation to me. I mean, P members Cyprus at 37. on the list, Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan at 142. On the other hand, P member Libya at place 106 on the list voted NO, as did China at 70.
Did anyone tell Linus Torvalds that his parents violated a trademark?
Well, I do read it:
Lund Energy points to a solution given on Microsoft's support pages. But for Annie Johansson who is starting her studies in Lund this fall, these directions did not help.
"It didn't make any difference, amd still internet works fine at home in Ljungby. Now I've got to borrow my kid brother's computer instead."
One very fuzzy data point. This one could of course be a problem between keyboard and chair. I guess someone will find out what the real problem in Lund is. (Does anybody know whether Ljungby and Lund have the same ISP?)
Yeah. I just found out that if I send a $ contribution to a US blogger, my Norwegian bank will have to send personal information about me to US authorities. DHS, I guess.
Sigh. I would really like to visit Maine again some day, but at my present age of 65 I may not live long enough to make such a trip both enjoyable and in (relative) privacy. Oh well, "We'll always have Bath", I guess.
Standard Norge
for the attention of JCT-1 SC34 committee
Declaration in support of ISO acceptance of Open XML
I have been made aware that Norway is going to vote on the ECMA-standard Open XML some time in 2007, and that the Norwegian position in the matter will be decided in the Norwegian ISO committee (JCT-1 SC34) in Standard Norge. In this connection we feel that it is important that Standard Norge has knowledge of the position to this standard in the undersigned's activity.
By signing this declaration we want to point out the following to Standard Norge:
an ISO standardization of Open XML has large positive spin-off effects for IT industry in Norway, including our activity, our clients and business partners. Standardization will also have a large effect on future document standards in Norway.We base this assertion on the following considerations:
A standardization of Open XML will insure backward compatibility with billions of existing documents — other existing formats do not satisfy this criterion. Several coexisting standards are not unusual. For example, in imaging there are the formats JPEG, GIF, PNG and TIFF. These exist side by side and serve different and overlapping purposes to the advantage of users. OpenXML does not rule out the use of other standards such as RTX, TXT, ODF, PDF etc. ISO standardization will on the other hand benefit interoperability among these standards. By making Open XML an internationally approved standard, it is ensured that the standard can communicate with other standards.Therefore we wish, hereby, to express our full support for Open XML as an ISO standard.
Ah, Forbes, the fount of IT knowledge. "IBM, which failed in its attempt to market a proprietary operating system of its own, ..." Last I looked, IBM had several proprietary operating systems :-)
Given the speed of development, it's likely that the kids in this family will use in their careers something completely different from what's on their school and home computers today.
You don't really believe that not using Microsoft products is skimping on software, do you?
Honestly, from the aspect of education, does it matter if the OS your kid is running in K-12 is from Microsoft? Give me a good reason.
I care that the school accepts assignment submissions in more than just Microsoft's format,
I care that the school has taught my 10 year old granddaughter what a file is and how to download
and upload using the school server (the system used is Class Fronter). I care that they use open standards
that don't shut out students based on the OS they use on their home systems.
I wish that they didn't send any of my tax money to MS, though.
No - like Debian Edu, or K12LTSP. Schools save money, but more important, sysadmin teachers can go back to teaching and stop running around ghosting the PCs at least once a week. Besides, at the 11-12 level many of the kids are already familiar with Linux.
That's what Omar Khayyam wished for, too.
Amen to your last paragraph. To me, Microsoft is still irrelevant. That might change if they could in some weird twisted way force me to buy their products, which I don't need and don't want. (The Windows-only software I might want isn't made by Microsoft anyway.) I have no need or desire to attack Microsoft; however, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and I'm really happy that there are people like PJ out there working as sentinels.
Thanks for the link - the Wikipedia article explains the effect and says that for materials with certain electromagnetic properties and configurations, the Casimir effect might result in a repulsive force instead of an attractive. Looks like somebody demonstrated that. Still, there's a long way from this to a macroscopic levitation system...
The sidebar with the Microsoft logo says,
"The Microsoft Developer Network provides a set of online and offline services designed to help developers write applications using Microsoft products and technologies."
Not a word about open anything or even "interoperability". Color me unsurprised.
My personal experience is that women are much better bus drivers than men - at least from a passenger's POV. A female driver NEVER rattles her passengers around like beans in a tin can, unless there is an emergency.
You missed this one - or perhaps it was too risqué to be on the website?
"Have you noticed how much they look like orchids? Lovely!"
The Norwegian blocking system doesn't give 404s, but redirects to e.g. http://kid.tele2.no/ which says that the page you are trying to access contains child pornography that violates 204a of the criminal code. It gives contact info to use if you believe the blocking is in error, and promises that no logs are kept. Still, the police regularly claims that 5000-6000 searches for child porn are blocked every day, a number that seems to be fetched out of thin air.
... )
( Uh-oh - did I really post that URL on Slashdot? I found it on no.wikipedia.org
Norway does the same thing. Not that it slows down anyone who really want the stuff, of course,
or really bothers anyone who hates censorship. Trivially easy to get around.
I don't know about other countries, but for a Norwegian mobile, caller pays as long as both phones are
in Norway. If I'm in, say, Spain, and receive a call from Norway, caller pays as if calling a local phone, while I pay the Norway-to-Spain rate. (If the caller is also in Spain, as in my wife and I on holiday, I just don't know - since both phones automatically register with a Spanish phone network I think it's also treated as a local call.)
Then there's the problem of roaming in various countries. It's hard to keep up with the rules and prices, so it can be quite costly to take your mobile abroad.
"Cheer up, Mrs Brown -"
... let's hope that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
"
'cause there's bugger-all down here on Earth!"
The agency involved has to do with consumer protection. No worries.
They do post articles in English as well - give them a few days and you'll find their translation. Meanwhile, Linpro's announcement in ENglish in TFA is pretty good.
The deal was MS Windows licenses for all machines with cpu speeds above a low limit and memory sizes above another small limit. It had nothing whatsoever to do with CALS, and much to do with MS being incapable of understanding why anyone would not want to run Windows.
I saw similar shills on a blog claiming that Office 2003 and 2007 were perfectly compatible after a poster had shown his exact problem in going between the two versions. The replies from the fanbois were insulting, information-free and arrogant - much like normal MS output.
Full disclosure: I am a Norwegian, in a very small way involved privately in Skolelinux/Debian EDU and I do know about the deal.
Get rid of the "almost" and you're doing fine.
I, for one, sometimes get e-mail advertising that I do not report as spam, because it is very well targeted and the sender has good reason to believe that I'm interested in the product he's selling. But the spam (even filtered and labelled) that comes through my ISP is getting to be too much - currently I'm running a Postfix server at home and seriously thinking about getting a static IP. cbl and spamcop helps me block almost all spam at the server.
:-) I signed up - after checking that Microsoft in this country has 1 patent granted - e-mail over SMS,
2 denied and about 130 "under consideration". OTOH, international conventions may make some other patents valid here anyway.
Guess what, Sparky? So can every Linux user who uses a GUI. The difference is that editing the config files by hand is lot easier and safer than editing the Windows registry.
But you're not alone - only now, 15 years after we switched from mainframe to Unix servers, do people in this company start to realize that there are in fact GUIs in the Unix world, too.
Check http://fronter.info/com/
It's a web service used by a large number of schools. Students and teachers communicate via rooms, students download assignments and upload files. It's OS agnostic, but proprietary and subscription-based.
The schools seem happy with the solution.
In my house, three girls aged 7, 10 and 13 all use Fronter from our Linux systems. While the school is Windows-centric, they are enlightened enough to accept uploaded ODF files.
I am not affiliated with ClassFronter in any way, but slightly involved in Skolelinux/DebianEDU as a translator.