There probably will be lawsuits (I am not a lawyer, but I do work at a disability advocacy organization and it looks to me like blocking access to e-books violates the ADA). For example, you might be interested in the Reading Rights Coalition (http://www.readingrights.org/), which is currently organizing against the Authors Guild and includes numerous organizations. I also recommend signing their petition insisting that everybody be given equal access to e-books.
My guess is that the Authors Guild will try to create a system in which you must be registered as blind or dyslexic, etc., in order to be given access to the screen reading software that is built into the Kindle for all books. However, in the long run I don't think that will hold up in court.
I tried using Hulu. It was designed not to let me press the pause button and let the entire show download over my cheap DSL (my usual practice with any flash videos that are higher bandwidth than my internet). It would only buffer the next several seconds, I assume to prevent me from downloading the entire file. I never went back and had to go back to using other sources of television that exist online...
There is always debate about Stallman and Freedom in these articles. However, if we just look at the suggestion it makes, this article is totally practical. It just says to make clear what license the (javascript) software is using, and if it is F/OSS to say where the code can be acquired. It also says to let the USER decide what to do based on that information. And the methods for doing those suggestions are simple and straightforward.
Really, I think this is an excellent pragmatic response to a situation of growing importance that in no way would mean a major burden to programmers, users, or anybody.
You know, I am not a lawyer, but I wonder how the Americans with Disabilities Act could affect this in the end? Essentially, Amazon.com was offering a reasonable accommodation permitting any blind person to read any of the e-books that they sell. As I understand it, businesses are required to provide reasonable accommodations for disabled customers. At this point, the publishers are basically making an unreasonable insistence on reducing accessibility. I think it unlikely that they will be able to successfully block the feature.
After all, programs like JAWS already make many major applications and the web accessible. Imagine if web pages started blocking access to their websites for screen readers? It would be ridiculous, and this is too.
I know this doesn't respond completely to the question, but I really recommend the default install that comes with the EEE Linux model. I got the EEE because I knew that I didn't like Windows and that I didn't like fussing with installing Linux on a laptop. It works great, it's very very very fast, it uses IceWM (which I have always liked), it is easy to configure (by editing a simple text file), and it is Debian based, which allows for easy software installation. The only significant negative is that it is based on a fairly old Debian, meaning that the default repositories are a bit outdated in their software.
Furthermore, it meant that I was encouraging a manufacturer to sell Linux pre-installed. I literally put my money where my mouth was. Now, it is too late for you to do that, so I recommend you go to the eeeuser.com forums, where you will find fairly knowledgable forum support for your question. Best of luck.
I have read over and over about unreliable software counting votes. Why not have each vote be counted by two programs? It seems like it would be fairly trivial to have them share the same interface, but the actual methods of counting votes and securing themselves would be completely independent. They would be written by two sources (whether free or not) and then could be used to test each other (in addition of course to humans counting the paper trail the two would print out).
I am sure that there will continue to be newer faster services. However, when AT&T raised my DSL price this year, it was the first time ever that my price for internet service went up without the service itself improving. In fact, over a period of 15 years (1993-early 2008), usually the price went down AND the service got faster and more reliable.
Those times have ended. It was pretty disappointing to get that bill with the price hike the day after seeing AT&T's profits reported as having gone up significantly. Of course, there is a relationship between the two...I expect that with the sellout of the governmental regulatory agencies, we will continue to see more advanced service, and that people will be forced to pay far more, just as they already do with cable TV.
"As a user of Free Software for about 10 years now I would just like to say that I really appreciate the efforts of the FSF. No matter how much RMS is bashed and doubted he sticks to his ethics and invariably the projections he makes seem to come true to at least some extent."
For what it's worth, the "give the LyX developers some feedback" comment is spot on. I have done so several times and there is a lot of development adding new features frequently. For instance, the 1.5 version has a new "view source" mode that lets you see how your changes using the gui actually affect the file.
That said, I am willing to let my LyX masters make most choices for me...
Whether or not the author(s) or the editor(s) are to blame, unclear language makes ideas harder to understand. The review was of the book and the ideas and information it conveys, and if those errors made the book harder to understand, then the complaints in the review are legitimate.
I think it is fair to say that the Gates family is not interested in changing the world economic power structure. That is what made them wealthy and that is what charitable foundations are based on. Think of the Fords, Carnegies, Rockefellers and their foundations. Their interest is in remaining at the top, but at least making the lives of those at the bottom more bearable. The Gates do do a good job in their effort to do so, and if the investments of their foundation are not what we would call socially positive, that is to be expected -- they LIKE the current world order.
Stallman is pretty openly in favor of changing the world economic order. For people who want major change, it is clear that he has done more good. If you think the current system is okay, but that the poorest need a bit of help, Gates has done better. Most Americans are probably in the latter group, as are most literate people throughout the world.
I don't think there is any contradiction in some people thinking Stallman has done far more good, while others maintaining that Gates has done more good.
Hey, I just bought the eeepc notebook. It was cheap with Linux and "it just works." They put real effort into making the software match the hardware, and that saves me a lot of time and energy. In that sense, they are making an effort to compete with Apple, as much as they are making an effort to compete with Microsoft or Dell. I have never had a computer run Linux so smoothly.
As for the US funding 25% of the UN, I'd point out that the US also has veto power over anything the UN does. Sure, four other countries also do, and they don't contribute as much to the budget, but nevertheless I think the US has a bargain when it comes to doing things the international community is totally opposed to and then being able to shut up that community.
Good accessible design benefits everybody. It does not take much extra effort to make a web page accessible. In fact, it takes more effort to make it inaccessible.
There are laws, like the ADA, which mandate accessibility. They should be respected. They give us good stuff like ramps and big bathrooms and closed captioning that all sorts of people use.
Furthermore, they are an economic stimulus because they allow more people to both work and consume. The problem is that some companies are so convinced that they need to limit all of us, that they exclude enormous numbers of people and in the end hurt themselves.
I am always struck by the people who say people don't read anymore, seeing as how the internet is dominated by reading and writing (compare that to the previous media revolution -- television). I think the reading and writing are fundamental to the nature of the internet because of the way they allow large amounts of detailed information to be transmitted and created in a way that is just slower with other types of interfaces (be it voice/audio or video). So, while we can expect more video stuff online (and alas, more Flash), I wouldn't bet on them becoming dominant paradigms.
Because of the Internet, I think that this generation will be the most literate there ever has been, and thus it will become progressively more natural to use reading and writing as the way of communicating, rather than other methods. I think the most likely solutions for the problem of typing on small devices and reading on small screens will be systems that replace the traditional keyboard and screen...twiddlers, projectors, public docking stations, or something else. People won't want to have to speak commands or watch movies instead of reading.
Thanks to Free Software, Tetris continues to be one of the most popular games around. Commercial companies would surely consider it to not be commercially viable because of its simplicity.
I love Tetris. I love the fact that there are so many versions of it available that I can choose my favorite. I loved the C64 version from 1987 (especially the music) and I love many of the versions available today (which tend to have better playability). I thank everybody who has worked on programming them.
I think it is also worthwhile to add two more items to the list:
6. The Democrats were complicit in the creation of a system that allowed the parent poster's points to be true.
7. The Democrats have done nothing to reform that system in such a way that the parent poster's points couldn't be repeated. In fact, they have been complicit in making that system stronger (corrupt electronic voting).
The Democrats are to blame if they don't win elections...that said, I hope they are able to win some elections this year. I also hope they realize that improving the election system will help both themselves and others.
I know you are replying to the issue of fiscal conservativeness, but there is no way that "If you like what McCain says, then you'll love Ron Paul's voting record." McCain is the biggest military hawk in the race. That is his main issue. On other issues he is consistently much different that Ron Paul (immigration, taxes, campaign finance, etc). You may like Ron Paul, but there is no reason to try to convince McCain fans that Ron Paul is an honest McCain. He isn't. He is nothing like McCain. If you like what McCain says, you probably won't like Paul, because they say and do totally different things.
a) the previous replies to calling him a waste of time are correct: your logic causes him to have low chances to win and the conversation is called "best presidential candidate", not "most likely to win."
b) more importantly, candidates who have low vote totals can be enormously influential. Ross Perot. Ralph Nader. Even Ron Paul, who is definitely affecting both results and positions in the Republican race, even though he won't win.
I am registered in the Green party and will vote for Cynthia McKinney. I listened to the Green presidential debate (yes we have primaries) and found every single candidate to have better positions on virtually every issue than any of the Democrats besides Kucinich. It's funny, a lot of Democrats hate us and tell us we are wasting our votes, but I don't think there is any coincidence that Al Gore has never criticized us and has in fact moved substantially to the left during the last 8 years.
Us people voting for candidates who don't win are influential. Don't discount our candidates or our beliefs. Don't take us for granted. We won't let you abuse us.
You said senators don't usually do well as presidents, while governors do. That is incorrect. Senators don't usually do well as presidential candidates, whereas governors do, but as presidents, there is no evidence they are any worse. That said, the only presidents whose senate experience was important during their presidency during the last 75 years (basically the current era of politics began with FDR) have been Truman, Kennedy and Johnson.* Were they our best presidents? Maybe not, but they certainly weren't our worst. A governor has been the worst...I will leave him unnamed.
Now that said, there are extremely few senators who have been senators while running for president and have one. We all can remember recent losers like Kerry and Dole, and many others who have lost during primaries. Indeed, the only person who has gone directly from the Senate to the presidency during the time period mentioned above was Kennedy. The two others only got in by suriviving the death of their leader. During that same period, off hand I can think of Roosevelt, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II as governors who went directly to the presidency. It is extremely unusual for us to be in a situation where it is almost guaranteed that we will have two major candidates who are both senators (barring Romney or Huckabee).
*Nixon was also a senator, but only for a couple of years and 16 years prior to being president. However, even he was better than you know who.
Henry Ford was famous for his model that was cheap enough for his employees to purchase (and conversely, paying his employees enough to buy the vehicle). Will this model fit that bill at Tata? That is probably the best way to just potential success in this case. If it is the first affordable new vehicle for many workers, we should expect success. If not, we should expect failure (note for instance that despite numerous automobile manufacturing plants in Mexico, there is not a huge new automobile market because the manufacturers don't pay their employees well).
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There probably will be lawsuits (I am not a lawyer, but I do work at a disability advocacy organization and it looks to me like blocking access to e-books violates the ADA). For example, you might be interested in the Reading Rights Coalition (http://www.readingrights.org/), which is currently organizing against the Authors Guild and includes numerous organizations. I also recommend signing their petition insisting that everybody be given equal access to e-books.
My guess is that the Authors Guild will try to create a system in which you must be registered as blind or dyslexic, etc., in order to be given access to the screen reading software that is built into the Kindle for all books. However, in the long run I don't think that will hold up in court.
I tried using Hulu. It was designed not to let me press the pause button and let the entire show download over my cheap DSL (my usual practice with any flash videos that are higher bandwidth than my internet). It would only buffer the next several seconds, I assume to prevent me from downloading the entire file. I never went back and had to go back to using other sources of television that exist online...
There is always debate about Stallman and Freedom in these articles. However, if we just look at the suggestion it makes, this article is totally practical. It just says to make clear what license the (javascript) software is using, and if it is F/OSS to say where the code can be acquired. It also says to let the USER decide what to do based on that information. And the methods for doing those suggestions are simple and straightforward.
Really, I think this is an excellent pragmatic response to a situation of growing importance that in no way would mean a major burden to programmers, users, or anybody.
You know, I am not a lawyer, but I wonder how the Americans with Disabilities Act could affect this in the end? Essentially, Amazon.com was offering a reasonable accommodation permitting any blind person to read any of the e-books that they sell. As I understand it, businesses are required to provide reasonable accommodations for disabled customers. At this point, the publishers are basically making an unreasonable insistence on reducing accessibility. I think it unlikely that they will be able to successfully block the feature.
After all, programs like JAWS already make many major applications and the web accessible. Imagine if web pages started blocking access to their websites for screen readers? It would be ridiculous, and this is too.
I know this doesn't respond completely to the question, but I really recommend the default install that comes with the EEE Linux model. I got the EEE because I knew that I didn't like Windows and that I didn't like fussing with installing Linux on a laptop. It works great, it's very very very fast, it uses IceWM (which I have always liked), it is easy to configure (by editing a simple text file), and it is Debian based, which allows for easy software installation. The only significant negative is that it is based on a fairly old Debian, meaning that the default repositories are a bit outdated in their software.
Furthermore, it meant that I was encouraging a manufacturer to sell Linux pre-installed. I literally put my money where my mouth was. Now, it is too late for you to do that, so I recommend you go to the eeeuser.com forums, where you will find fairly knowledgable forum support for your question. Best of luck.
I have read over and over about unreliable software counting votes. Why not have each vote be counted by two programs? It seems like it would be fairly trivial to have them share the same interface, but the actual methods of counting votes and securing themselves would be completely independent. They would be written by two sources (whether free or not) and then could be used to test each other (in addition of course to humans counting the paper trail the two would print out).
Maybe we're just evil (not stupid)?
Funny, I thought it was the Supreme Court that elected Bush.
I am sure that there will continue to be newer faster services. However, when AT&T raised my DSL price this year, it was the first time ever that my price for internet service went up without the service itself improving. In fact, over a period of 15 years (1993-early 2008), usually the price went down AND the service got faster and more reliable.
Those times have ended. It was pretty disappointing to get that bill with the price hike the day after seeing AT&T's profits reported as having gone up significantly. Of course, there is a relationship between the two...I expect that with the sellout of the governmental regulatory agencies, we will continue to see more advanced service, and that people will be forced to pay far more, just as they already do with cable TV.
"As a user of Free Software for about 10 years now I would just like to say that I really appreciate the efforts of the FSF. No matter how much RMS is bashed and doubted he sticks to his ethics and invariably the projections he makes seem to come true to at least some extent."
Ditto!
Thanks
For what it's worth, the "give the LyX developers some feedback" comment is spot on. I have done so several times and there is a lot of development adding new features frequently. For instance, the 1.5 version has a new "view source" mode that lets you see how your changes using the gui actually affect the file.
That said, I am willing to let my LyX masters make most choices for me...
Whether or not the author(s) or the editor(s) are to blame, unclear language makes ideas harder to understand. The review was of the book and the ideas and information it conveys, and if those errors made the book harder to understand, then the complaints in the review are legitimate.
I think it is fair to say that the Gates family is not interested in changing the world economic power structure. That is what made them wealthy and that is what charitable foundations are based on. Think of the Fords, Carnegies, Rockefellers and their foundations. Their interest is in remaining at the top, but at least making the lives of those at the bottom more bearable. The Gates do do a good job in their effort to do so, and if the investments of their foundation are not what we would call socially positive, that is to be expected -- they LIKE the current world order.
Stallman is pretty openly in favor of changing the world economic order. For people who want major change, it is clear that he has done more good. If you think the current system is okay, but that the poorest need a bit of help, Gates has done better. Most Americans are probably in the latter group, as are most literate people throughout the world.
I don't think there is any contradiction in some people thinking Stallman has done far more good, while others maintaining that Gates has done more good.
Hey, I just bought the eeepc notebook. It was cheap with Linux and "it just works." They put real effort into making the software match the hardware, and that saves me a lot of time and energy. In that sense, they are making an effort to compete with Apple, as much as they are making an effort to compete with Microsoft or Dell. I have never had a computer run Linux so smoothly.
As for the US funding 25% of the UN, I'd point out that the US also has veto power over anything the UN does. Sure, four other countries also do, and they don't contribute as much to the budget, but nevertheless I think the US has a bargain when it comes to doing things the international community is totally opposed to and then being able to shut up that community.
Good accessible design benefits everybody. It does not take much extra effort to make a web page accessible. In fact, it takes more effort to make it inaccessible.
There are laws, like the ADA, which mandate accessibility. They should be respected. They give us good stuff like ramps and big bathrooms and closed captioning that all sorts of people use.
Furthermore, they are an economic stimulus because they allow more people to both work and consume. The problem is that some companies are so convinced that they need to limit all of us, that they exclude enormous numbers of people and in the end hurt themselves.
I am always struck by the people who say people don't read anymore, seeing as how the internet is dominated by reading and writing (compare that to the previous media revolution -- television). I think the reading and writing are fundamental to the nature of the internet because of the way they allow large amounts of detailed information to be transmitted and created in a way that is just slower with other types of interfaces (be it voice/audio or video). So, while we can expect more video stuff online (and alas, more Flash), I wouldn't bet on them becoming dominant paradigms.
Because of the Internet, I think that this generation will be the most literate there ever has been, and thus it will become progressively more natural to use reading and writing as the way of communicating, rather than other methods. I think the most likely solutions for the problem of typing on small devices and reading on small screens will be systems that replace the traditional keyboard and screen...twiddlers, projectors, public docking stations, or something else. People won't want to have to speak commands or watch movies instead of reading.
Thanks to Free Software, Tetris continues to be one of the most popular games around. Commercial companies would surely consider it to not be commercially viable because of its simplicity.
I love Tetris. I love the fact that there are so many versions of it available that I can choose my favorite. I loved the C64 version from 1987 (especially the music) and I love many of the versions available today (which tend to have better playability). I thank everybody who has worked on programming them.
I think it is also worthwhile to add two more items to the list:
6. The Democrats were complicit in the creation of a system that allowed the parent poster's points to be true.
7. The Democrats have done nothing to reform that system in such a way that the parent poster's points couldn't be repeated. In fact, they have been complicit in making that system stronger (corrupt electronic voting).
The Democrats are to blame if they don't win elections...that said, I hope they are able to win some elections this year. I also hope they realize that improving the election system will help both themselves and others.
I know you are replying to the issue of fiscal conservativeness, but there is no way that "If you like what McCain says, then you'll love Ron Paul's voting record." McCain is the biggest military hawk in the race. That is his main issue. On other issues he is consistently much different that Ron Paul (immigration, taxes, campaign finance, etc). You may like Ron Paul, but there is no reason to try to convince McCain fans that Ron Paul is an honest McCain. He isn't. He is nothing like McCain. If you like what McCain says, you probably won't like Paul, because they say and do totally different things.
a) the previous replies to calling him a waste of time are correct: your logic causes him to have low chances to win and the conversation is called "best presidential candidate", not "most likely to win."
b) more importantly, candidates who have low vote totals can be enormously influential. Ross Perot. Ralph Nader. Even Ron Paul, who is definitely affecting both results and positions in the Republican race, even though he won't win.
I am registered in the Green party and will vote for Cynthia McKinney. I listened to the Green presidential debate (yes we have primaries) and found every single candidate to have better positions on virtually every issue than any of the Democrats besides Kucinich. It's funny, a lot of Democrats hate us and tell us we are wasting our votes, but I don't think there is any coincidence that Al Gore has never criticized us and has in fact moved substantially to the left during the last 8 years.
Us people voting for candidates who don't win are influential. Don't discount our candidates or our beliefs. Don't take us for granted. We won't let you abuse us.
I am going to quibble a bit.
You said senators don't usually do well as presidents, while governors do. That is incorrect. Senators don't usually do well as presidential candidates, whereas governors do, but as presidents, there is no evidence they are any worse. That said, the only presidents whose senate experience was important during their presidency during the last 75 years (basically the current era of politics began with FDR) have been Truman, Kennedy and Johnson.* Were they our best presidents? Maybe not, but they certainly weren't our worst. A governor has been the worst...I will leave him unnamed.
Now that said, there are extremely few senators who have been senators while running for president and have one. We all can remember recent losers like Kerry and Dole, and many others who have lost during primaries. Indeed, the only person who has gone directly from the Senate to the presidency during the time period mentioned above was Kennedy. The two others only got in by suriviving the death of their leader. During that same period, off hand I can think of Roosevelt, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II as governors who went directly to the presidency. It is extremely unusual for us to be in a situation where it is almost guaranteed that we will have two major candidates who are both senators (barring Romney or Huckabee).
*Nixon was also a senator, but only for a couple of years and 16 years prior to being president. However, even he was better than you know who.
I wish to be free and try to do what I can so that I will be free. Free software plays an important role in that.
Henry Ford was famous for his model that was cheap enough for his employees to purchase (and conversely, paying his employees enough to buy the vehicle). Will this model fit that bill at Tata? That is probably the best way to just potential success in this case. If it is the first affordable new vehicle for many workers, we should expect success. If not, we should expect failure (note for instance that despite numerous automobile manufacturing plants in Mexico, there is not a huge new automobile market because the manufacturers don't pay their employees well).
You need to learn about economic reality. Theory and reality in economics usually do not coincide, whether it be capitalism or communism.