It must be a strange sort of democracy where someone with half as many votes could still be considered a potential winner.
For whatever reason, Romney is not just ahead, but miles and miles ahead in the democratic competition. Wouldn't it be some sort of travesty is someone that half as many voters voted for were to win?
Unity is a perfectly decent upgrade for Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It's just an absolutely awful upgrade for standard desktop Gnome 2.
On my 10" netbook I've kept Unity, and while "enjoying it" might be putting it a bit strong, it's doing its job fine. I'm looking forward, in that arena, to how they improve it in future versions. On my desktop, I've dropped it for Xubuntu.
I just can't understand what they were thinking when they made it their exclusive GUI, for all versions. I thought Ubuntu were trying to get their desktops into enterprise? It just makes no sense. I hope they realise their mistake and are busy working on a "Desktop Unity" version, but somehow I'm not optimistic.
It seems like it's been taken out of context to me.
This guy (who is a developer, not a lawyer) says "We've looked at the alternatives, and don't like them. Therefore we need to go with Java, so let the legal bods know so they can't start negotiating". That doesn't imply he's informing them, as a knowledgeable legal source, that they'll need to go and get a license. It's clear from the context that this developer doesn't care much about the legal side, and is just talking about technical desirability.
And that's completely ignoring the document attached to that email chain, which says:
Desire
Google would like to work with Sun to conceive of and agree to a license that enables Google to release to the Open Source community, under a license of it's own choosing, it's internally developed CLDC based JVM. Google would like to achieve this goal with Sun's blessing and cooperation.
Google does not foresee the necessity to license or redistribute any software from Sun.
Which seems pretty equivocal that the author of that document didn't believe they needed licensing from Sun of the sort that Oracle is now arguing for.
Not that any of that has any legal standing at all, it's just Google's internal opinion. But it certainly doesn't imply Google were wilfully deceiving anyone. Unless I've missed something else important (feel free to point it out); it's a pretty big PDF and I don't intend to read it through properly.
The Windows Phone advertisements have been great. I loved the one with the people so distracted by their phones, especially the chick in the black nighty.
Although I accept that there were several factors in it's downfall, it cannot be ignored that there are no major aircraft companies with an interest in producing a replacement. Surely it must be easier to produce an efficient supersonic aircraft than it was 40 odd years ago.
The main factor was that it cost a colossal amount of money to make a journey only about twice as fast. Twice as fast is amazing, but when you're talking "most of the day on a plane" versus "half a day on a plane", there's not a huge fundamental advantage for most average Joe's. Millionaires and rich businessmen loved it, but there just aren't enough of those to make a business case for it.
Until someone can come up with supersonic aircraft for less money, there's no point trying it again. And you can bet your rear end that the likes of Boeing and Airbus (who are constantly competing to make bigger, fast, more luxurious planes than each other) will do it as soon as they figure out how.
Commercial software is all about selling packages. You can't sell someone a £200 piece of software more than every few years, as there's only so much money you can extract.
There's no good reason a feature shouldn't be released (in isolation, as a minor version update) as soon as they're stable for a free piece of software. Why hold a feature in reserve for years when it's already ready for prime time?
(This is true for software like GIMP; I accept the argument for Firefox is somewhat different. Firefox is a platform for other software (the plug-ins) almost as much as it's software in its own right. For software like that, feature stability is a lot more important. You could also argue that Firefox is a lot more complete than GIMP- Firefox can get away with a long release cycle as it's already a good piece of software, whereas GIMP is still desperately playing catch-up with the commercial competition and needs every feature it can get).
Of course they are, but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem. If the acronym was "SHIT", people wouldn't like to say it because of the obvious misunderstanding. It wouldn't matter if the similarity were coincidental.
Christ, I still giggle that MS called one of their poorest OS's "WinCE". That isn't rude, and it certainly wasn't intentional, but it's still an unfortunate name for them to have picked. People should think homonyms, innuendo and word play through when they're naming things.
"Gimp" is a derogatory term for disabled people. The BDSM thing is an offshoot of that, i.e. "that guy in a fetish suit is like a spastic cripple, har har har".
It's not exactly the nicest name for a piece of mainstream software.
There should never be a huge feature gap between stable and dev versions of software, really. I always grab stable versions because I don't want my programmes crapping out on me when I'm trying to do something important.If the stable version is 2 years old while features are being added to the dev version every day, then something's gone wrong.
Call it a need for a more "agile" development approach. They should be picking a feature, building it, trying it out in dev, then rolling it into stable where they can move it to regular support. Rinse, repeat.
Happens in all my favourite FOSS projects, though. Games are especially bad at it, where a million great new feature are always nearly-ready, but never quite seem to be polished enough for show time.
It isn't such a problem with GNOME 3 or Unity, seeing as it's trivial to switch to a different Linux desktop. Personally, I'm on XFCE these days (the Xubuntu version looks and feels just like GNOME 2, and is pretty easy to configure).
Although it's a pain for Mac OSX, at least it's in character. Apple have always been about user-friendliness at all costs (or at least have been for a very long time). iOS being their flagship OS these days (in that it's on their bestselling iPads), it was inevitable that OSX was going to head in that direction.
Windows is the killer one really. There's no easy way of changing the desktop environment (as with Linux), and we're all compelled to use it for all sorts of work/play related shenanigans so there's no avoiding it. I could easily not use Linux (I only use it because I like to), but there would be no way for me not to use Windows.
I don't know what their 'game' is here as I don't see a profit motive for splitting up all of these offerings. Are they seriously hoping someone will buy two different versions to get everything they need?
Windows 7 HomePremium costs £110. Windows 7 Professional costs £156. Windows 7 Ultimate costs £170.
There's your profit motive. You sell intentionally crippled versions for less than the real version.
I remember trying to do some password protecting/encryption for some folders on Windows 7 Home Premium. After trying for 30 minutes, I googled it. Apparently that feature isn't available to Home Premium users; if I want to do that, I'll need to spring £100 for the upgrade package.
I don't even really get it. Aside from the similarity in shape (a rectangle), what he's basically described is a smartphone. Not an iPhone specifically; it could be any smartphone.
There were plenty of smartphones (and/or PDAs) before iPhone- not least Palms and BlackBerrys. What made the iPhone so popular was its "soft qualities": how shiny and user friendly it was, the touch screen and the clear picture, etc. There's no way Microsoft would have been managing that in the early 90's- so why would we assume it would do any better than all the other palmtop computers that have come and gone?
I was actively excited when I read TFS. Looking at TFA, though, there's something that I don't like the sound of at all:
Importantly, the researchers retain 100 percent ownership of their project and its results and get to choose how much material they disclose. While backers will generally like to keep apprised of project developments and findings, researchers aren’t obliged to provide updates.
They want money from crowdsourcing, but they want to keep their findings to themselves? I'm not on board with that at all. If science is funded by the kindness of 1000 enthusiasts, it isn't acceptable to claim that the results are strictly yours to do with what you want. If you want money from the public, you have to accepts that the results belong to the public. Or at least you should do, in my opinion.
Usually we let groups get away with claiming "ownership" over information on the basis that they need rewarding for their risky investment. If you take away that element, and they're not investing themselves, what right do they have to keep the information to themselves? To keep it away from "competitors"?
I wouldn't give a penny to a project without at least some show of faith that they're doing the research for the good of the world, and not for themselves.
The threshold of what is "normal" and what is "magic" differs depending on the attitude of the person doing the thinking. I remember going out for a meal with my sister and her boyfriend. The boyfriend decided to cross the road to a newsagent and buy a scratchcard. My sister explained that he's "really good" at scratchcards, has won a prize 4 times in a row. He's really lucky, so he must be more likely to win big!
Being a geek, I looked at the odds printed on the back of the scratchcard, and worked out the probability of winning the smallest prize 4 times in a row. It was something like 1/100. Pretty good, but considering he's been playing scratchards for years, it's not exactly water-to-wine territory. Statistically, it had to be happening to people all the time.
When I told them the maths, they dismissed it as being boring geekery- to them, it would always be magic. To me, even if I hadn't had a chance to do the maths, it would never have been magic.
There are two types of manager (and indeed two types of company) out there. The kind you describe, where everything needs to be done yesterday, damn the protocol, is one kind. Ones where everyone sticks dogmatically to bureaucracy and obsesses with "project gateways" is the other.
When you're stuck with the former, the common reaction is "for god's sake, if they won't let me follow procedure properly the code won't be any good at all!". The reaction to the latter is usually "for god's sake, if they obsess over the paperwork so much I'm never going to actually code it at all!".
I guess you just make the best of the hand you're dealt with, and don't fantasise about which way would be best. As an analyst, I always prefer to do the paperwork properly; but most coders out there would probably feel the opposite.
In a way, it's "nudge theory" in action again (the political class's buzzword du jour, but it does have some merit).
The idea is that while a kid could be adventurous with the £600 home Win7 laptop, odds are both they (and their parents/teachers) will feel overly cautious, treating it with kit gloves, in case the kid somehow "breaks it". It's irrational, but that's the way people think.
Give them a £30 computer that looks like a piece of soldered electronics, it's far more likely that both the kids and their parents will categorise it as a "tool", and actually let loose with them.
Capabilities be damned, it's all about the attitude.
1) Educational tool - seriously? You imagine this will be some sort of "stone soup" revolution in education, all centered arounf a $25 circuit board with no case, PS, keyboard, ouse or display, no course materials, and on a platform unlike the Macs or PCs the students have at home, their parents use at work?
I don't know how many P4 boxes you can buy, for $25, which include a display, keyboard, mouse, course materials, etc. Even the cheapest netbooks are still not much less than $200 in the UK.
The platform being "the same as the one they have at home" is a non-point. Educators don't expect kids to already know the material, so their prior experience is a non-issue.
If all Raspberry Pi turns out to be is a very cheap computer with a suite of FOSS educational tools pre-loaded, it's still something that will be of great interest to schools. No revolution necessary; it can just be a nice tool for schools to buy, or not buy, the same as all the other supplies that are available for schools.
An American company provides a chip for a cookie cutter board built in China, surrounded by a hype and no long term plan.
This is not "the BBC micro revolution Mark 2".
Sorry.
It's a bare-bones computer for the cost of a top 10 DVD, with a FOSS OS, available for schools at a time when most state schools can barely afford to keep the lights on, let alone buy consumer grade electronics. Whether you think it's revolutionary or not, it's certainly something most educators will feel excited by.
Computing teaching in school is spotty at best, if not outright depressing. I went to a so-called "technology specialist" secondary school, and did the most computing-y course they offered (a GNVQ in "ICT"), and I don't think I learnt much above how to format a document in MS Word. I think I learnt more from the decrepit Acorn in my primary school's "computer lab" than I did from the main curriculum. My fiancee is a teacher and is computer literate, and when she teaches the kids basic computing (e.g., programming in Scratch), other teachers react as if she's some sort of genius sorcerer. Anything that can be done to bring computing teaching somewhat back to the days of the BBC Micro is a step in the right direction.
Are you suggesting a donations-based space programme? Kickstarter, maybe?
I like your style, but it's serious amounts of money we're talking about. Even if you accept some volunteer experts instead of money, you'd still need cash for the material fundamentals. New Horizons (which is the closest thing to Voyager in recent years) costs something like $650 million. Kickstarter hasn't managed any projects more than about $3.5 million yet. So you'd be talking about raising 200x as much money.
If an ambitious donations-led space mission were set up, I'd definitely pledge some money. But I don't have much optimism that we would raise anything like enough.
There are also two new applications: Flow for diagrams and flowcharts, and Braindump for the note taking.
If it has something comparable to MS Visio, suddenly I'm interested. Visio is pretty much eh only piece of software in the MS Office suite which I haven't found at least a very rough FOSS competitor to. I've been pinning my hopes on Libre/Open Office coming up with something, and never given KOffice much thought. This makes it a bit of a game changer for when I'm deciding which free office suite to throw on my home computers.
Anyone have any experience running this software under Windows 7? Or Gnome/XFCE/LXDE for that matter? Any good?
How similar were those pictures? I would have never thought to use a 'bear with a fish' to do thermal dynamics. That seems to be a 'non-obvious' solution. Someone else using that example would definitely be copying, even if they didn't use the exact same bear picture.
Whether it is copying or not is moot- only whether it is copyright infringement matters. The two are not strictly synonymous.
Copying is inevitable at that broad level. Lets say that one of the students who uses that textbook is really taken by that example. It really clicks with them, they really gain a better understanding of the concept being illustrated, and they really internalise the bear-and-fish model as a way of understanding thermodynamics (which is presumably the dream goal of any text book writer). Several years down the line, that student has grown up to be someone creating content in that field (maybe as a text book writer themselves, or a pop-science writer, or a university lecturer, etc.); as the bear-and-fish idea really worked for them, they include it in their work as a way of illustrating the concept. Have they infringed the copyright of the person who originally had that idea, even though the wording, imagery and layout are not the same? Even if they can't even remember where they originally saw the idea?
That's why ideas aren't copyrightable; only specific artefacts (such as text and images).
Slashdot Mirror
It must be a strange sort of democracy where someone with half as many votes could still be considered a potential winner.
For whatever reason, Romney is not just ahead, but miles and miles ahead in the democratic competition. Wouldn't it be some sort of travesty is someone that half as many voters voted for were to win?
There's a BBC version that will still be available in the event of the collapse of the USA, so don't worry, it'll be fine.
Unity is a perfectly decent upgrade for Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It's just an absolutely awful upgrade for standard desktop Gnome 2.
On my 10" netbook I've kept Unity, and while "enjoying it" might be putting it a bit strong, it's doing its job fine. I'm looking forward, in that arena, to how they improve it in future versions. On my desktop, I've dropped it for Xubuntu.
I just can't understand what they were thinking when they made it their exclusive GUI, for all versions. I thought Ubuntu were trying to get their desktops into enterprise? It just makes no sense. I hope they realise their mistake and are busy working on a "Desktop Unity" version, but somehow I'm not optimistic.
It seems like it's been taken out of context to me.
This guy (who is a developer, not a lawyer) says "We've looked at the alternatives, and don't like them. Therefore we need to go with Java, so let the legal bods know so they can't start negotiating". That doesn't imply he's informing them, as a knowledgeable legal source, that they'll need to go and get a license. It's clear from the context that this developer doesn't care much about the legal side, and is just talking about technical desirability.
And that's completely ignoring the document attached to that email chain, which says:
Desire
Google would like to work with Sun to conceive of and agree to a
license that enables Google to release to the Open Source
community, under a license of it's own choosing, it's internally
developed CLDC based JVM. Google would like to achieve this goal
with Sun's blessing and cooperation.
Google does not foresee the necessity to license or redistribute any
software from Sun.
Which seems pretty equivocal that the author of that document didn't believe they needed licensing from Sun of the sort that Oracle is now arguing for.
Not that any of that has any legal standing at all, it's just Google's internal opinion. But it certainly doesn't imply Google were wilfully deceiving anyone. Unless I've missed something else important (feel free to point it out); it's a pretty big PDF and I don't intend to read it through properly.
The Windows Phone advertisements have been great. I loved the one with the people so distracted by their phones, especially the chick in the black nighty.
Linked for your pleasure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9evyGr57hs
Personally I like the chap on the roller coaster; his expression tickles me.
Oblig:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/02/02
Although I accept that there were several factors in it's downfall, it cannot be ignored that there are no major aircraft companies with an interest in producing a replacement. Surely it must be easier to produce an efficient supersonic aircraft than it was 40 odd years ago.
The main factor was that it cost a colossal amount of money to make a journey only about twice as fast. Twice as fast is amazing, but when you're talking "most of the day on a plane" versus "half a day on a plane", there's not a huge fundamental advantage for most average Joe's. Millionaires and rich businessmen loved it, but there just aren't enough of those to make a business case for it.
Until someone can come up with supersonic aircraft for less money, there's no point trying it again. And you can bet your rear end that the likes of Boeing and Airbus (who are constantly competing to make bigger, fast, more luxurious planes than each other) will do it as soon as they figure out how.
Commercial software is all about selling packages. You can't sell someone a £200 piece of software more than every few years, as there's only so much money you can extract.
There's no good reason a feature shouldn't be released (in isolation, as a minor version update) as soon as they're stable for a free piece of software. Why hold a feature in reserve for years when it's already ready for prime time?
(This is true for software like GIMP; I accept the argument for Firefox is somewhat different. Firefox is a platform for other software (the plug-ins) almost as much as it's software in its own right. For software like that, feature stability is a lot more important. You could also argue that Firefox is a lot more complete than GIMP- Firefox can get away with a long release cycle as it's already a good piece of software, whereas GIMP is still desperately playing catch-up with the commercial competition and needs every feature it can get).
Of course they are, but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem. If the acronym was "SHIT", people wouldn't like to say it because of the obvious misunderstanding. It wouldn't matter if the similarity were coincidental.
Christ, I still giggle that MS called one of their poorest OS's "WinCE". That isn't rude, and it certainly wasn't intentional, but it's still an unfortunate name for them to have picked. People should think homonyms, innuendo and word play through when they're naming things.
"Gimp" is a derogatory term for disabled people. The BDSM thing is an offshoot of that, i.e. "that guy in a fetish suit is like a spastic cripple, har har har".
It's not exactly the nicest name for a piece of mainstream software.
There should never be a huge feature gap between stable and dev versions of software, really. I always grab stable versions because I don't want my programmes crapping out on me when I'm trying to do something important.If the stable version is 2 years old while features are being added to the dev version every day, then something's gone wrong.
Call it a need for a more "agile" development approach. They should be picking a feature, building it, trying it out in dev, then rolling it into stable where they can move it to regular support. Rinse, repeat.
Happens in all my favourite FOSS projects, though. Games are especially bad at it, where a million great new feature are always nearly-ready, but never quite seem to be polished enough for show time.
It isn't such a problem with GNOME 3 or Unity, seeing as it's trivial to switch to a different Linux desktop. Personally, I'm on XFCE these days (the Xubuntu version looks and feels just like GNOME 2, and is pretty easy to configure).
Although it's a pain for Mac OSX, at least it's in character. Apple have always been about user-friendliness at all costs (or at least have been for a very long time). iOS being their flagship OS these days (in that it's on their bestselling iPads), it was inevitable that OSX was going to head in that direction.
Windows is the killer one really. There's no easy way of changing the desktop environment (as with Linux), and we're all compelled to use it for all sorts of work/play related shenanigans so there's no avoiding it. I could easily not use Linux (I only use it because I like to), but there would be no way for me not to use Windows.
I don't know what their 'game' is here as I don't see a profit motive for splitting up all of these offerings. Are they seriously hoping someone will buy two different versions to get everything they need?
Windows 7 HomePremium costs £110.
Windows 7 Professional costs £156.
Windows 7 Ultimate costs £170.
There's your profit motive. You sell intentionally crippled versions for less than the real version.
I remember trying to do some password protecting/encryption for some folders on Windows 7 Home Premium. After trying for 30 minutes, I googled it. Apparently that feature isn't available to Home Premium users; if I want to do that, I'll need to spring £100 for the upgrade package.
I don't even really get it. Aside from the similarity in shape (a rectangle), what he's basically described is a smartphone. Not an iPhone specifically; it could be any smartphone.
There were plenty of smartphones (and/or PDAs) before iPhone- not least Palms and BlackBerrys. What made the iPhone so popular was its "soft qualities": how shiny and user friendly it was, the touch screen and the clear picture, etc. There's no way Microsoft would have been managing that in the early 90's- so why would we assume it would do any better than all the other palmtop computers that have come and gone?
I was actively excited when I read TFS. Looking at TFA, though, there's something that I don't like the sound of at all:
Importantly, the researchers retain 100 percent ownership of their project and its results and get to choose how much material they disclose. While backers will generally like to keep apprised of project developments and findings, researchers aren’t obliged to provide updates.
They want money from crowdsourcing, but they want to keep their findings to themselves? I'm not on board with that at all. If science is funded by the kindness of 1000 enthusiasts, it isn't acceptable to claim that the results are strictly yours to do with what you want. If you want money from the public, you have to accepts that the results belong to the public. Or at least you should do, in my opinion.
Usually we let groups get away with claiming "ownership" over information on the basis that they need rewarding for their risky investment. If you take away that element, and they're not investing themselves, what right do they have to keep the information to themselves? To keep it away from "competitors"?
I wouldn't give a penny to a project without at least some show of faith that they're doing the research for the good of the world, and not for themselves.
The threshold of what is "normal" and what is "magic" differs depending on the attitude of the person doing the thinking. I remember going out for a meal with my sister and her boyfriend. The boyfriend decided to cross the road to a newsagent and buy a scratchcard. My sister explained that he's "really good" at scratchcards, has won a prize 4 times in a row. He's really lucky, so he must be more likely to win big!
Being a geek, I looked at the odds printed on the back of the scratchcard, and worked out the probability of winning the smallest prize 4 times in a row. It was something like 1/100. Pretty good, but considering he's been playing scratchards for years, it's not exactly water-to-wine territory. Statistically, it had to be happening to people all the time.
When I told them the maths, they dismissed it as being boring geekery- to them, it would always be magic. To me, even if I hadn't had a chance to do the maths, it would never have been magic.
There are two types of manager (and indeed two types of company) out there. The kind you describe, where everything needs to be done yesterday, damn the protocol, is one kind. Ones where everyone sticks dogmatically to bureaucracy and obsesses with "project gateways" is the other.
When you're stuck with the former, the common reaction is "for god's sake, if they won't let me follow procedure properly the code won't be any good at all!". The reaction to the latter is usually "for god's sake, if they obsess over the paperwork so much I'm never going to actually code it at all!".
I guess you just make the best of the hand you're dealt with, and don't fantasise about which way would be best. As an analyst, I always prefer to do the paperwork properly; but most coders out there would probably feel the opposite.
In a way, it's "nudge theory" in action again (the political class's buzzword du jour, but it does have some merit).
The idea is that while a kid could be adventurous with the £600 home Win7 laptop, odds are both they (and their parents/teachers) will feel overly cautious, treating it with kit gloves, in case the kid somehow "breaks it". It's irrational, but that's the way people think.
Give them a £30 computer that looks like a piece of soldered electronics, it's far more likely that both the kids and their parents will categorise it as a "tool", and actually let loose with them.
Capabilities be damned, it's all about the attitude.
In order:
1) Educational tool - seriously? You imagine this will be some sort of "stone soup" revolution in education, all centered arounf a $25 circuit board with no case, PS, keyboard, ouse or display, no course materials, and on a platform unlike the Macs or PCs the students have at home, their parents use at work?
I don't know how many P4 boxes you can buy, for $25, which include a display, keyboard, mouse, course materials, etc. Even the cheapest netbooks are still not much less than $200 in the UK.
The platform being "the same as the one they have at home" is a non-point. Educators don't expect kids to already know the material, so their prior experience is a non-issue.
If all Raspberry Pi turns out to be is a very cheap computer with a suite of FOSS educational tools pre-loaded, it's still something that will be of great interest to schools. No revolution necessary; it can just be a nice tool for schools to buy, or not buy, the same as all the other supplies that are available for schools.
An American company provides a chip for a cookie cutter board built in China, surrounded by a hype and no long term plan.
This is not "the BBC micro revolution Mark 2".
Sorry.
It's a bare-bones computer for the cost of a top 10 DVD, with a FOSS OS, available for schools at a time when most state schools can barely afford to keep the lights on, let alone buy consumer grade electronics. Whether you think it's revolutionary or not, it's certainly something most educators will feel excited by.
Computing teaching in school is spotty at best, if not outright depressing. I went to a so-called "technology specialist" secondary school, and did the most computing-y course they offered (a GNVQ in "ICT"), and I don't think I learnt much above how to format a document in MS Word. I think I learnt more from the decrepit Acorn in my primary school's "computer lab" than I did from the main curriculum. My fiancee is a teacher and is computer literate, and when she teaches the kids basic computing (e.g., programming in Scratch), other teachers react as if she's some sort of genius sorcerer. Anything that can be done to bring computing teaching somewhat back to the days of the BBC Micro is a step in the right direction.
Are you suggesting a donations-based space programme? Kickstarter, maybe?
I like your style, but it's serious amounts of money we're talking about. Even if you accept some volunteer experts instead of money, you'd still need cash for the material fundamentals. New Horizons (which is the closest thing to Voyager in recent years) costs something like $650 million. Kickstarter hasn't managed any projects more than about $3.5 million yet. So you'd be talking about raising 200x as much money.
If an ambitious donations-led space mission were set up, I'd definitely pledge some money. But I don't have much optimism that we would raise anything like enough.
There are also two new applications: Flow for diagrams and flowcharts, and Braindump for the note taking.
If it has something comparable to MS Visio, suddenly I'm interested. Visio is pretty much eh only piece of software in the MS Office suite which I haven't found at least a very rough FOSS competitor to. I've been pinning my hopes on Libre/Open Office coming up with something, and never given KOffice much thought. This makes it a bit of a game changer for when I'm deciding which free office suite to throw on my home computers.
Anyone have any experience running this software under Windows 7? Or Gnome/XFCE/LXDE for that matter? Any good?
They're available right now.
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/search/used/cars/nissan/leaf/postcode/n11en/radius/1501/sort/priceasc
The only current mass produced electric car (the tesla roadster)...
Don't forget the Nissan Leaf. Only a range of ~100 miles on that one.
How similar were those pictures? I would have never thought to use a 'bear with a fish' to do thermal dynamics. That seems to be a 'non-obvious' solution. Someone else using that example would definitely be copying, even if they didn't use the exact same bear picture.
Whether it is copying or not is moot- only whether it is copyright infringement matters. The two are not strictly synonymous.
Copying is inevitable at that broad level. Lets say that one of the students who uses that textbook is really taken by that example. It really clicks with them, they really gain a better understanding of the concept being illustrated, and they really internalise the bear-and-fish model as a way of understanding thermodynamics (which is presumably the dream goal of any text book writer). Several years down the line, that student has grown up to be someone creating content in that field (maybe as a text book writer themselves, or a pop-science writer, or a university lecturer, etc.); as the bear-and-fish idea really worked for them, they include it in their work as a way of illustrating the concept. Have they infringed the copyright of the person who originally had that idea, even though the wording, imagery and layout are not the same? Even if they can't even remember where they originally saw the idea?
That's why ideas aren't copyrightable; only specific artefacts (such as text and images).