If your scale for "most" is product categories, then yes, you might be right. However, printing generates something like 40% of the revenue and lately, approximately all the profit for HP. And there are a lot of printer models: personal, workgroup, all-in-one, high-end network, and the recently purchased Indigo digital press company. All of this information is in HP's 10K on http://edgar.sec.gov/ . The idea is that the areas you mentioned become profitable once HewPaq is buying in HP+Compaq's combined volumes and gets price breaks.
and you don't want to forget HP's digital cameras or projectors, either...both seem likely to make some good money.
Because most of the 'really well known' and yet APPROPRIATE standards bodies require you to be a member to submit or make changes to a proposed spec and it costs money to be a member.
Well, yes, that's probably true, but I think the hurdle is a bit lower than you would make it out to be.
I agree with the original question--the choice of the IETF seems a strange starting point. It would be nice to get them, but perhaps starting "smaller" would be easier.
For instance, there's the
Audio Engineering Society, who have tons of published standards. Membership is $80. I'm betting Xiph could swing that.
Or there's the the IEEE, who charge a cool $132 per year.
Anyway, yeah they cost money, but come on, don't you think a hundred dollars US to get a standard published would be a decent investment? I imagine they could get the community to chip in. Hell, I'd kick in $10 if the standards body they joined said they had a chance of getting Ogg published as a standard.
Having looked at xzgv, it looks like the main problem would be getting it running on HP-UX, Windows and Linux, which are our platforms. I edited this important information out of my original post, sorry.
So I'm back to thinking that we could write something more easily with the Java Advanced Imaging library, or libtiff. What do you think?
Well, the Gimp also has the problem for us of requiring lots of work to get it running on HP-UX, and we would also need something for Windows. The gimp's web page does not inspire confidence in their Windows stability--or are they just being modest?
TIFF has a tile format as well. Is there something better about the JPEG2000 or PhotoCD formats over the TIFF one? Especially given that TIFF tool support is quite broad.
But really, the format elegance doesn't matter if an intelligent viewer doesn't exist that knows not to try and read the whole file into memory. Are there viewers like this for JPEG2000 or PhotoCD?
From what I read a few months ago, adding CMYK support to the GIMP, while desirable for the whole graphic arts industry, would be heroic amounts of work. Has the situation improved? Is anyone working on it? How would that compare to the work needed, say, to use the Java Advanced Imaging library (here) to write a viewer?
You are right, in general. Fortunately, we need the viewer for an application we are developing that outputs TIFF. So we can control the strip length as well.
We will look into changing formats if necessary, but as this application is for in-house use and most of our users will have fast computers with lots of memory, reading in, say, 900 TIFF strips that are 10,000 pixels wide should be acceptable in most cases. Regardless, you are correct that another approach would be better. I have thought about changing to tiles--it would be tricky, but possible, for this application.
I will think about your client-server idea, though. Thanks.
You didn't specify an operating system, price or hardware concerns...
Sorry, editing error. I mentioned that in my first draft, started to go off on a tangent, deleted the tangent... Anyway:
Our application runs on Linux, HP-UX and soon, Cygwin on Windows. We have some Apple machines around as well, but most of our users won't, so Apple isn't really an option. Ideally, the viewer would run under the three OS's listed, but we could settle for a different viewer for Windows, for example.
This seems to be a classic example of if-it-aint-broke-don't-fix-it syndrome. TW's previous system seemed to handle their needs, and after the merger, they switched to AOL? Does anyone see the logic behind this? If you have a system that gets the job done without complaints, don't change it.
Then again, there is a well-known counter-example. Mr. Bill supposedly mandates that everything Microsoft does be done w/ Microsoft tools, when available. (There is of course the well-known exception of the Hotmail servers, but anyway...) It sounds like another bullshit CEO mandate, but what should happen is that your employees use the tools they develop. If the CS's have to use the tools, they get pissed off at the same annoying bugs that piss off end users, and they fix them. You get better products, and your company didn't spend money on something that was nominally the competition. Reasonable, no?
All that said, I tend to agree with you. Just as--last I heard--MS never got Hotmail working on Windows servers, AOL-TW should have pondered whether the needs of their thousands of employees were the same as the needs of people who are swayed by getting a free AOL CD in the mail.
...is a cross-platform tool. We are working on a project (in C++) at work that runs on HP-UX, Linux and Windows-under-Cygwin (a little English town near Stratford-on-Avonshire). What I really want is ONE tool that I can use on ALL these platforms. We use ElectricFence on HP-UX and Linux, but no luck under Cygwin so far. Purify doesn't work under Cygwin either, only MS. First tool to support all three of these gets our vote and even our money.
Oh, definitely. I didn't want to get into that topic because I thought it would confuse my main point. In the same way, we can feel "sound" below 20Hz in our bodies, so encoding this and being able to reproduce it could likewise be argued to have value, rather than just removing data below 20Hz in hopes of better compression.
It seems to me that you could treat music as not-band-limited. CD's, for instance, start with the "static" assumption that the musical signal will be between 0 Hz and 22050 Hz (44.1 KHz sampling rate, right?). But most music isn't going to hit frequencies near 22KHz, so a lot of that sampling is going wasted. (Most people can't hear below 20-25Hz, but it's not worth the effort to avoid sampling that.)
As an alternative, I could say that the music will usually be between 0 Hz and 10KHz. Now my sampling rate is cut in half, and if I'm wrong, I can iteratively adjust upward to recover the higher frequency information (if I'm understanding the basics of the paper correctly). This seems attractive to me, at least. Obviously it's too late to change the CD or DVD standards, but maybe some new music format for 3G cell phones, for instance?
I'm not sure what you mean by "a Linux group" but I see a very big difference between me saying "I'm a Linux user and I say don't pay for Microsoft licenses," and a corporation with legal responsibilities for its actions and products engaging in a covert letter-writing campaign on behalf of itself.
I don't own Linux. I can not cause Linux, Inc. to be sued for negligence. (Hint: there is no Linux, Inc.) The situation is very different for Microsoft as a public company. The entire corporation can be sued for fraud or negligence as a result. If I say "Microsoft is poisoning my mom because I use Linux!" Microsoft can sue me for slander, but I don't see them getting very far naming Linus as a defendant, too.
Come on, folks, the first paragraph reads:
Notice:This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the Federal Reporter or U.S. App.D.C. Reports. Users are requested to notify the Clerk of any formal errors in order that corrections may be made before the bound volumes go to press.
Come on, aren't there any lawyers out there who could help us with a few "corrections"?
Okay, okay, I'll wait for the new lower court penalty...
Several partial answers appear to your question, but I thought you might be interested in a bit of context. I was looking at this issue recently because some people in my company wanted to embed Python in a product and I wanted to point the lawyers to the relevant docs.
One major point of contention was that since Guido van Rossum now works for a company (CNRI) in the U.S. Commonwealth (non-US people: state) of Virginia, and that company naturally did not want to have to go around the world fighting court battles, they included language stating that any legal issues would be governed by the laws of Virginia. This makes reasonable sense for the company, but presents a problem for the FSF.
Why? Because the laws of any state or country are a moving target. If the FSF signs off today on the license as "Free Software" and Virginia passes UCITA the next day, the FSF would have to turn around and say that Python is no longer Free Software. Obviously no programmer would want to deal with this. So, the FSF's point of view is also perfectly reasonable. It just depends who's looking.
>> Hey Jack Valenti. I have a free and open clue for you. >> Release the damned movie at the same time in Australia. >> And everywhere else.
They probably would if they could. IIRC, each copy of a 35mm or 70mm film costs a lot, on the order of 10^5 dollars per copy, maybe more now. This is precisely one of the big selling points of digital movies: no print costs, and no shipping costs. And of course, no wear and tear on the print.
I remember reading a while back (at this very site) Bruce saying that he was working on releasing specs to HP printers to allow Free Software people a way to write decent drivers. He said, IIRC, that the problem wasn't so much HP's willingness to release the spec as patent issues and 3rd party licenses. Perhaps HP is using this forum as a start on releasing some of those printer specs...
I'm so glad to see someone mention this. I lived in Spain for four years and continue to work with people over there. One thing that still drives me nuts is that the "Spanish" calendar included with my calendar software is (I think) some sort of nominal national calendar. But each town in Spain has a different set of holidays. We worked in a suburb of Barcelona, and thus had Spanish national holidays, Catalan national holidays, and local city holidays. Of course, when scheduling meetings, we had to use the subset of days that had neither our holidays nor our US counterparts' holidays. Morals:
Make sure your software allows multiple sets of national holidays. Other parts of the Spanish site dealt with other nations, so each area may have a different set of relevant nations.
Make sure the admins can create the set of holidays, you'll never get them all.
Probably it's so late that nobody will ever read this comment, but FWIW...
I just downloaded the nightly build of Mozilla, and frankly, I was pretty disappointed. I don't mean to disparage the project, by any means, but wow... Specific complaints (I'm stuck using winNT at work), ordered by when I experienced them:
Doesn't install in, or even offer an obvious option to install in the "Programs" folder, nor to add a link to the start menu.
The interface looks like Netscape for Kids(tm, I'm sure): giant icons (that I couldn't figure out, for that matter.) huge sidebar with no obvious option to make it go away. The default appearance takes up way too much real estate and leaves this silly mini-window for seeing web pages. I really think Mozilla should consider that seeing web pages will be a primary intent for users, and devote more real estate to this.
Probably a frequently-submitted bug (I haven't checked yet), but I couldn't even get all the menus to appear! If I clicked on View and scrolled sideways, "File" and "Edit" wouldn't drop down.
It knows how to import my IE bookmarks, but not the proxy server configuration. When I tried a sample page, I just get "Not found" rather than something more useful like "I can't see anything in the outside world, check your proxy server maybe?"
All that said, I would wade through all that to use Mozilla in a heartbeat if it gave me the possibility of restricting cookies I accept to only specifically named sites (why don't other browsers have this, anyway?)
There is also a view of development projects that separates them into "hard" and "soft", where "hard" projects are those which are lower level and have greater kudos associated with them. Hard projects include such things as kernel hacking, writing device drivers, and creating new programming languages. Soft projects include applications, user interfaces, multimedia, documentation, and so on. By stretching the definition, we could say that advocacy, training, marketing, and business-related activities could also be considered "soft" projects.
and later...
It was mentioned earlier that the skills at which women typically excel include UI and psychology, language and communications, and group interactions.
Sort of a peripheral comment, but I keep expecting that we will at some point cease re-writing operating systems and device drivers and start moving on to finally adding those chi-chi technologies Star Trek has been promising for years: working voice recognition, functionally integrated touch screens, computer comprehension of natural languages, etc... If this ever were to happen, it would surely require people with skills other than hardcore hacking. Perhaps the slow evolution to these technologies will be one way that more women become "important" contributors to software projects.
No flames please, I mean this in a positive way. I can't think of a better way to phrase this last sentence, but I am not trying to suggest that women are not important contributors already.
We have some in-house software that we tried to recompile on Debian Linux w/ LessTif and it cores out pretty quickly. We haven't spent the time to track down the problem, but I suspect one problem is that we abuse the Scrollbar widget to be a % complete widget, so we repeatedly set the size of the scrollbar. I think there are other problems, too, but I won't have time to dig into them for another few weeks. I'll try to remember to follow up when I know something actually useful.
As long as I'm spending bandwidth, Here are some complaints about Motif. (GTK should consider not only equalling Motif, but doing better!)
No % complete widget
Requesting different bit depths in different widgets is PAINFUL. Requesting 24 bit color for the Canvas should be a resource, not a complicated subroutine
No scrolling option menu (there are freeware like the ComboBox, but this should be built in, c'mon now, really.
I lived in Barcelona for 4 years, working for a US company. There were many non-Spanish people there, Americans, English, Scottish and French mostly. Emails went around in English, Spanish and Catalan, but most people pretty much wrote in their foreign languages in the same style they would write in their native language. Some would be funny, word-for-word translations of how it would be correctly said in the native language. The fact that the person acquired the language well after age 5 doomed him/her. People had learned from many sources, but one's mental structure for language quickly subsumes any proffered style from a language school. In any case, most people learn mechanics from the schools, few stay to learn style.
Slashdot Mirror
and you don't want to forget HP's digital cameras or projectors, either...both seem likely to make some good money.
adéu,
Mateu
Because most of the 'really well known' and yet APPROPRIATE standards bodies require you to be a member to submit or make changes to a proposed spec and it costs money to be a member.
Well, yes, that's probably true, but I think the hurdle is a bit lower than you would make it out to be.
I agree with the original question--the choice of the IETF seems a strange starting point. It would be nice to get them, but perhaps starting "smaller" would be easier.
For instance, there's the Audio Engineering Society, who have tons of published standards. Membership is $80. I'm betting Xiph could swing that.
Or there's the the IEEE, who charge a cool $132 per year.
Anyway, yeah they cost money, but come on, don't you think a hundred dollars US to get a standard published would be a decent investment? I imagine they could get the community to chip in. Hell, I'd kick in $10 if the standards body they joined said they had a chance of getting Ogg published as a standard.
adéu,
Mateu
Too bad for us slashdot folks who aren't in CA
Well, there are other such efforts in the world. In Portland, OR, there is a group called FreeGeek that does the same thing.
There was an earlier Slashdot story that mentioned some other places to donate PC's: this one
adéu,
Mateu
Having looked at xzgv, it looks like the main problem would be getting it running on HP-UX, Windows and Linux, which are our platforms. I edited this important information out of my original post, sorry.
So I'm back to thinking that we could write something more easily with the Java Advanced Imaging library, or libtiff. What do you think?
gràcies,
Mateu
TIFF has a tile format as well. Is there something better about the JPEG2000 or PhotoCD formats over the TIFF one? Especially given that TIFF tool support is quite broad.
But really, the format elegance doesn't matter if an intelligent viewer doesn't exist that knows not to try and read the whole file into memory. Are there viewers like this for JPEG2000 or PhotoCD?
From what I read a few months ago, adding CMYK support to the GIMP, while desirable for the whole graphic arts industry, would be heroic amounts of work. Has the situation improved? Is anyone working on it? How would that compare to the work needed, say, to use the Java Advanced Imaging library (here) to write a viewer?
adéu,
Mateu
adéu,
Mateu
You are right, in general. Fortunately, we need the viewer for an application we are developing that outputs TIFF. So we can control the strip length as well.
We will look into changing formats if necessary, but as this application is for in-house use and most of our users will have fast computers with lots of memory, reading in, say, 900 TIFF strips that are 10,000 pixels wide should be acceptable in most cases. Regardless, you are correct that another approach would be better. I have thought about changing to tiles--it would be tricky, but possible, for this application.
I will think about your client-server idea, though. Thanks.
adéu,
Mateu
You didn't specify an operating system, price or hardware concerns...
Sorry, editing error. I mentioned that in my first draft, started to go off on a tangent, deleted the tangent... Anyway:
Our application runs on Linux, HP-UX and soon, Cygwin on Windows. We have some Apple machines around as well, but most of our users won't, so Apple isn't really an option. Ideally, the viewer would run under the three OS's listed, but we could settle for a different viewer for Windows, for example.
adéu,
Mateu
Then again, there is a well-known counter-example. Mr. Bill supposedly mandates that everything Microsoft does be done w/ Microsoft tools, when available. (There is of course the well-known exception of the Hotmail servers, but anyway...) It sounds like another bullshit CEO mandate, but what should happen is that your employees use the tools they develop. If the CS's have to use the tools, they get pissed off at the same annoying bugs that piss off end users, and they fix them. You get better products, and your company didn't spend money on something that was nominally the competition. Reasonable, no?
All that said, I tend to agree with you. Just as--last I heard--MS never got Hotmail working on Windows servers, AOL-TW should have pondered whether the needs of their thousands of employees were the same as the needs of people who are swayed by getting a free AOL CD in the mail.
adéu,
Mateu
adéu,
Mateu
Oh, definitely. I didn't want to get into that topic because I thought it would confuse my main point. In the same way, we can feel "sound" below 20Hz in our bodies, so encoding this and being able to reproduce it could likewise be argued to have value, rather than just removing data below 20Hz in hopes of better compression.
adéu,
Mateu
As an alternative, I could say that the music will usually be between 0 Hz and 10KHz. Now my sampling rate is cut in half, and if I'm wrong, I can iteratively adjust upward to recover the higher frequency information (if I'm understanding the basics of the paper correctly). This seems attractive to me, at least. Obviously it's too late to change the CD or DVD standards, but maybe some new music format for 3G cell phones, for instance?
Or am I misunderstanding something here?
adéu,
Mateu
Are there Linux drivers for the Audiophile? I don't see any mention of them anywhere...
adéu,
Mateu
sorry, couldn't resist.
adéu,
Mateu
I'm not sure what you mean by "a Linux group" but I see a very big difference between me saying "I'm a Linux user and I say don't pay for Microsoft licenses," and a corporation with legal responsibilities for its actions and products engaging in a covert letter-writing campaign on behalf of itself.
I don't own Linux. I can not cause Linux, Inc. to be sued for negligence. (Hint: there is no Linux, Inc.) The situation is very different for Microsoft as a public company. The entire corporation can be sued for fraud or negligence as a result. If I say "Microsoft is poisoning my mom because I use Linux!" Microsoft can sue me for slander, but I don't see them getting very far naming Linus as a defendant, too.
adéu,
Mateu
Come on, folks, the first paragraph reads: Notice:This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the Federal Reporter or U.S. App.D.C. Reports. Users are requested to notify the Clerk of any formal errors in order that corrections may be made before the bound volumes go to press.
Come on, aren't there any lawyers out there who could help us with a few "corrections"?
Okay, okay, I'll wait for the new lower court penalty...
sigh,
Mateu
One major point of contention was that since Guido van Rossum now works for a company (CNRI) in the U.S. Commonwealth (non-US people: state) of Virginia, and that company naturally did not want to have to go around the world fighting court battles, they included language stating that any legal issues would be governed by the laws of Virginia. This makes reasonable sense for the company, but presents a problem for the FSF.
Why? Because the laws of any state or country are a moving target. If the FSF signs off today on the license as "Free Software" and Virginia passes UCITA the next day, the FSF would have to turn around and say that Python is no longer Free Software. Obviously no programmer would want to deal with this. So, the FSF's point of view is also perfectly reasonable. It just depends who's looking.
adéu,
Mateu
>> Hey Jack Valenti. I have a free and open clue for you.
>> Release the damned movie at the same time in Australia.
>> And everywhere else.
They probably would if they could. IIRC, each copy of a 35mm or 70mm film costs a lot, on the order of 10^5 dollars per copy, maybe more now. This is precisely one of the big selling points of digital movies: no print costs, and no shipping costs. And of course, no wear and tear on the print.
adéu,
Mateu
I remember reading a while back (at this very site) Bruce saying that he was working on releasing specs to HP printers to allow Free Software people a way to write decent drivers. He said, IIRC, that the problem wasn't so much HP's willingness to release the spec as patent issues and 3rd party licenses. Perhaps HP is using this forum as a start on releasing some of those printer specs...
24098y7ueigjfx;lkja40-bguti7jnhj
which isn't a message, but aspires to be one.
yours, grammatically,
Mateu
----
I'm so glad to see someone mention this. I lived in Spain for four years and continue to work with people over there. One thing that still drives me nuts is that the "Spanish" calendar included with my calendar software is (I think) some sort of nominal national calendar. But each town in Spain has a different set of holidays. We worked in a suburb of Barcelona, and thus had Spanish national holidays, Catalan national holidays, and local city holidays. Of course, when scheduling meetings, we had to use the subset of days that had neither our holidays nor our US counterparts' holidays. Morals:
I just downloaded the nightly build of Mozilla, and frankly, I was pretty disappointed. I don't mean to disparage the project, by any means, but wow... Specific complaints (I'm stuck using winNT at work), ordered by when I experienced them:
- Doesn't install in, or even offer an obvious option to install in the "Programs" folder, nor to add a link to the start menu.
- The interface looks like Netscape for Kids(tm, I'm sure): giant icons (that I couldn't figure out, for that matter.) huge sidebar with no obvious option to make it go away. The default appearance takes up way too much real estate and leaves this silly mini-window for seeing web pages. I really think Mozilla should consider that seeing web pages will be a primary intent for users, and devote more real estate to this.
- Probably a frequently-submitted bug (I haven't checked yet), but I couldn't even get all the menus to appear! If I clicked on View and scrolled sideways, "File" and "Edit" wouldn't drop down.
- It knows how to import my IE bookmarks, but not the proxy server configuration. When I tried a sample page, I just get "Not found" rather than something more useful like "I can't see anything in the outside world, check your proxy server maybe?"
All that said, I would wade through all that to use Mozilla in a heartbeat if it gave me the possibility of restricting cookies I accept to only specifically named sites (why don't other browsers have this, anyway?)adeu,
Mateu
Skud said:
There is also a view of development projects that separates them into "hard" and "soft", where "hard" projects are those which are lower level and have greater kudos associated with them. Hard projects include such things as kernel hacking, writing device drivers, and creating new programming languages. Soft projects include applications, user interfaces, multimedia, documentation, and so on. By stretching the definition, we could say that advocacy, training, marketing, and business-related activities could also be considered "soft" projects.
and later...
It was mentioned earlier that the skills at which women typically excel include UI and psychology, language and communications, and group interactions.
Sort of a peripheral comment, but I keep expecting that we will at some point cease re-writing operating systems and device drivers and start moving on to finally adding those chi-chi technologies Star Trek has been promising for years: working voice recognition, functionally integrated touch screens, computer comprehension of natural languages, etc... If this ever were to happen, it would surely require people with skills other than hardcore hacking. Perhaps the slow evolution to these technologies will be one way that more women become "important" contributors to software projects.
No flames please, I mean this in a positive way. I can't think of a better way to phrase this last sentence, but I am not trying to suggest that women are not important contributors already.
a reveure,
Mateu
LessTif is an exciting proposition to me, but...
We have some in-house software that we tried to recompile on Debian Linux w/ LessTif and it cores out pretty quickly. We haven't spent the time to track down the problem, but I suspect one problem is that we abuse the Scrollbar widget to be a % complete widget, so we repeatedly set the size of the scrollbar. I think there are other problems, too, but I won't have time to dig into them for another few weeks. I'll try to remember to follow up when I know something actually useful.
As long as I'm spending bandwidth, Here are some complaints about Motif. (GTK should consider not only equalling Motif, but doing better!)
- No % complete widget
- Requesting different bit depths in different widgets is PAINFUL. Requesting 24 bit color for the Canvas should be a resource, not a complicated subroutine
- No scrolling option menu (there are freeware like the ComboBox, but this should be built in, c'mon now, really.
adeu,Mateu
I lived in Barcelona for 4 years, working for a US company. There were many non-Spanish people there, Americans, English, Scottish and French mostly. Emails went around in English, Spanish and Catalan, but most people pretty much wrote in their foreign languages in the same style they would write in their native language. Some would be funny, word-for-word translations of how it would be correctly said in the native language. The fact that the person acquired the language well after age 5 doomed him/her. People had learned from many sources, but one's mental structure for language quickly subsumes any proffered style from a language school. In any case, most people learn mechanics from the schools, few stay to learn style.
My 8 pesetas..
Matt