[...] who have never worked in IT or had to deal with managers howling at them when a 10 year old document won't open correctly in a new software package.
MS Office doesn't do this very well either.
Some time ago a friend of mine asked me to convert some old Works files to Excel. Excel doesn't have a converter. I lost a few hours looking for a solution, but finally I had to install Works, open the files, export to Excel and then uninstall Works again...
Also, these days, I regularly hear colleagues complain that early adopters to Office 2007 send them documents in the new formats that they can't read. I hardly even notice this, since OOo does open them...
Of course, conversion in OOo isn't perfect. The only point I'm trying to make is that MS Office doesn't do a perfect conversion either, even between its own formats.
What misses in the specs is which processor is inside. I've got a MyBook World Edition that also has GigE, but the processor is so underpowered it barely reaches 10MB/s
Re:this lady need DIY plastic surgery and lyposuct
on
The DIY Dialysis Machine
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
he posted lyrics to a Spinal Tap song!
Frank Zappa, I think you'll find...
Re:NAS: Western Digital MyBook World Edition II
on
What NAS To Buy?
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· Score: 2, Informative
I have the 1TB version.
What I don't like: - the box has a 1Gb ethernet port, but apparently the processor is too slow to get high transfer rates (as you can read in other replies). This was a turn-off when I found this out--of course only after I bought it.
What I do like: - It runs Linux and it's hackable (Woohoo!). See http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/. Speeds can be improved somewhat by hacking it. - It's fast enough for streaming video and audio. - Full backups take some time, but for incremental backups, it's acceptable.
All in all, I'm quite content (though not ecstatic) with the little box.
Kmousetool is the KDE-port of Jef Roush' excellent Mousetool (for Windows) application. He maintained Kmousetool, a very (very) rudimentary version of Mousetool, for a short while. Mousetool was freeware, but since Jef started working for Designer Appliances, it is now no longer free and Kmousetool development has stopped. The KDE Accessibility team (that hosts the Kmousetool project) is now mainly interested in supporting the AT-SPI accessibility framework (which is nice, by the way), so they don't continue to work on it. A student of mine wrote a Qt4 port of Kmousetool, and he has notified the KDE Accessibility team in case they were interested, but got no response. Pity, that.
I use Kmousetool regularly, when my hands are too sore, but only when really necessary. Reason is that it doesn't always behave as expected and is very limited (Mousetool and GentleMouse have many, many more features). For example, Kmousetool only does left clicking and you still need to right/middle click manually. Selecting an item from a context menu is awkward: often an automatic left click click is generated right after the manual right click to show the menu and the item that happens to be under the cursor is selected without having actually seen it properly.
If only I had some more time to learn some C++... I actually started working on Kmousetool a few years back, but had to stop because of other duties...
I guess you're referring to the new laws concerning "VZWs/ASBLs" in Belgium here? I'm sure that GnuCash can be a solution! I'm a long time GnuCash user for my personal finances and live in Flanders.
I want to help you setting up GnuCash for your purposes, if you like. Can you point me to guidelines that you have to follow? An overview of account codes, how you have to report to the taxman, etc. I'll pass that on to the GnuCash team so others can benefit from it, too...
If you want to contact me in private, my e-mail address is my slashdot username, followed by @advalvas.be (I speak Dutch and English; my French is rather bad, I'm afraid).
By the way, if you're looking for Windows accounting software, you may also want to take a look at jGnash, GFP or EekBoek. The latter is Dutch software, and is suitable for European style bookkeeping... That's all I know about these tools, though.
after years of waiting, couldn't the developers have spent a couple more months to make it a bit more stable?
"Release early, release often".
The GnuCash development team is short on coders and need help with debugging from their users.
And as you can read in another reply to your post: 1.9.0 is a development version. Nobody forces you to upgrade. Why don't you wait a couple of months while they make it a bit more stable?;-)
Indeed, this announcement is not necessarily bad news, but I don't agree with your arguments. You can't compare anti-virus software with any other user application (like media players, mail or web browsers). An anti-virus strategy should not be an application, but built-in to the operating system.
You know that someone will try to install malicious code onto your computer, so build the OS so this can be prevented.
The whole anti-virus industry is based on a flawed design of the Windows OS. Any application is allowed to run, unless some other application (anti-virus/-malware software) prevents it. This is rather silly, if you think about it.
The legitimate applications that are running on your computer are limited and well-known. The number of viruses and malware increases every day, and is impossible to keep track of. Anti-virus software tries it anyway, but is always running behind the facts.
It would be better that *no* application is allowed to run, ever, unless the system administrator or -on home systems- the user gives his express permission (either temporarily or permanently). If this would be built into the OS, you wouldn't need any anti-virus software at all.
No, this is not the final solution to viruses or malware, but at least it's a strategy that gives the administrator (or the user) the advantage...
Hope this doesn't get lost because it's such an "old" thread, but...
Incidentally, starting this academic year, I teach a similar course, called "Open Systems". It's also part of a one year continuing education course, specifically (but not exclusively) for graduated Bachelors Applied Informatics. The "Open Systems" course lasts one semester (about twelve weeks) and I teach it six (!) hours every week, which many would consider *waay* too long. Maybe they're right, but consider that the fact that my institution wants to organise such a course is a signal that people are starting to realise the importance of the F/OSS phenomenon...
Anyway. These are some lecture subjects that I have in mind:
Introduction, definition of Open Systems, interoperability, portability, open standards
What is F/OSS, the difference between the two, available F/OSS applications
Understanding Open Source licensing models, judicial and strategical consequences of F/OSS
Open Source = open sores? Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
Starting with Open Source systems: a roadmap towards adoption
The Open Source Business Model
Closing security holes with Open Systems (including a "how to encrypt your e-mail" hands-on session)
Open Systems certification
Open Source Software development: tools, organisation,
As part of the course, the students have to work for an Open Source project. Either they choose one for theirselves, or I put them to work for Dokeos, an e-learning platform that is used (and actively improved and developed) at my institution. The idea is that they write a report, not only about what they've done, but also about the organisation of the project, how communication went, how conflicts are solved, etc. Most of them did an internship in a commercial development environment and they can compare both worlds, which should result in interesting reading...
Students get assignments every now and then, such as comparing an Free/Open Source application with its commercial counterpart (e.g. OpenOffice vs MS Office, the GIMP vs Photoshop,...). I also plan to organise debates about the issues being lectured.
If you want to exchange ideas, teaching materials, etc., send me an e-mail. In the spirit of Open Source, I'm happy to share my course materials with you. My address is my slashdot user name, followed by @advalvas.be.
What has baffled me in this election is the following.
Clinton, during his term, lied about a private matter (that was really nobody's business but his own and the people directly involved) and they tried to impeach him for it.
Bush has lied in public and for the record about matters concerning national security that affects not only the American people, but has also resulted in instability in the international relations worldwide and he gets a second term...?!
These reports about tampering do help in restoring my faith in the sanity of the American people...;)
Printing debug info while developing an application is neat, but when your code goes into production, it's a nuisance. Here's a trick to avoid this in Java.
Define a public constant somewhere, e.g.
public class Utils { public static final boolean DEBUG_OUTPUT = true; ... }
when you want to print some debug info elsewhere, use:
if (Utils.DEBUG_OUTPUT) { System.out.println(stuff); }
When you're about to release the code, change the value of DEBUG_OUTPUT to false. The java compiler is smart enough to know that the if-blocks will never have to be executed and will not generate byte code for the print statements.
For programming, I use Emacs and Paul Kinkunnan's excellent JDEE package, which turns the editor into a full-fledged, extensible Java IDE. Advantages are that you can use this combo on different platforms (Linux, WinNT,...), and that it is highly configurable. If you need another feature, you can add it yourself.
Emacs contains syntax colouring, etc. for other programming languages as well, so if you want to do some scripting for example (as I do regularly), you don't need another editor for that.
Emacs doesn't have a very nice UI and learning all these bleedin' keyboard shortcuts may be a pain, but once you're past that, nothing can beat it. But this is my personal and humble opinion of course...
To be frank, I'd be happier with a web browser (ar any other application) that didn't require a mouse at all. I suffer from (a mild form, thank bob, of) RSI and have to avoid using the mouse as much as possible. Pressing buttons and especially `dragging' movements become very painful after a while.
Okay, this gesture thingee may be a Cool Thing, but I'm more in favour of a user-friendly keyboard navigation. Pressing TAB two zillion times to select the link you need is unfortunately not an alternative for mouse torture.
50$ cheap? In fact, it seems the price went up. Aforementioned/. article talks about 30$. I have strong suspicions, though that that should have been in £...
I don't think distributions in general are profitable for anybody. [...] Really, in what way can people make money at all on Linux?
Depends on how you intend to make money out of it. Redhat, VALinux, Netscape, etc. make money, don't they? Last weekend, I heard Jeremy Allison (the Samba dude) at the OSDEM tell that companies are more than glad to pay him to change open sourced code to fit their needs. In the open source business, it's all about providing services. Apparently, mr. Burney isn't aware of this evolution that's nowadays gaining momentum. He's still thinking in the traditional terms that in the software industry revenue can only come from selling software.
In my opinion, one of the things Microsoft is good at is looking down the road a few years and talking about what that world is like.
This surely provoked a chuckle. Remember what ole Bill used to say about the Internet?
Well, it's the open source concept, but one notch better, because the source wouldn't be open... so the companies that write [plug-ins] can keep them and sell them, but from the user's perspective you get the benefit of open source because you can have the content coming from a variety of companies.
Huh? Can anyone explain this to me? Where's the benefit of open source when it's not open source? And how is Mr Burney going to make money if someone writes a plugin and releases it under the GPL or a similar license?
Mr burney hasn't got a clue what the open source/Free software movement is all about. No wonder Corel "always had a somewhat rough time fitting into Penguinland."
Slashdot Mirror
[...] who have never worked in IT or had to deal with managers howling at them when a 10 year old document won't open correctly in a new software package.
MS Office doesn't do this very well either.
Some time ago a friend of mine asked me to convert some old Works files to Excel. Excel doesn't have a converter. I lost a few hours looking for a solution, but finally I had to install Works, open the files, export to Excel and then uninstall Works again...
Also, these days, I regularly hear colleagues complain that early adopters to Office 2007 send them documents in the new formats that they can't read. I hardly even notice this, since OOo does open them...
Of course, conversion in OOo isn't perfect. The only point I'm trying to make is that MS Office doesn't do a perfect conversion either, even between its own formats.
What misses in the specs is which processor is inside. I've got a MyBook World Edition that also has GigE, but the processor is so underpowered it barely reaches 10MB/s
That sounds familiar...
Whoosh!!!
he posted lyrics to a Spinal Tap song!
Frank Zappa, I think you'll find...
I have the 1TB version.
What I don't like:
- the box has a 1Gb ethernet port, but apparently the processor is too slow to get high transfer rates (as you can read in other replies). This was a turn-off when I found this out--of course only after I bought it.
What I do like:
- It runs Linux and it's hackable (Woohoo!). See http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/. Speeds can be improved somewhat by hacking it.
- It's fast enough for streaming video and audio.
- Full backups take some time, but for incremental backups, it's acceptable.
All in all, I'm quite content (though not ecstatic) with the little box.
Kmousetool is the KDE-port of Jef Roush' excellent Mousetool (for Windows) application. He maintained Kmousetool, a very (very) rudimentary version of Mousetool, for a short while. Mousetool was freeware, but since Jef started working for Designer Appliances, it is now no longer free and Kmousetool development has stopped. The KDE Accessibility team (that hosts the Kmousetool project) is now mainly interested in supporting the AT-SPI accessibility framework (which is nice, by the way), so they don't continue to work on it. A student of mine wrote a Qt4 port of Kmousetool, and he has notified the KDE Accessibility team in case they were interested, but got no response. Pity, that.
I use Kmousetool regularly, when my hands are too sore, but only when really necessary. Reason is that it doesn't always behave as expected and is very limited (Mousetool and GentleMouse have many, many more features). For example, Kmousetool only does left clicking and you still need to right/middle click manually. Selecting an item from a context menu is awkward: often an automatic left click click is generated right after the manual right click to show the menu and the item that happens to be under the cursor is selected without having actually seen it properly.
If only I had some more time to learn some C++... I actually started working on Kmousetool a few years back, but had to stop because of other duties...
I guess you're referring to the new laws concerning "VZWs/ASBLs" in Belgium here? I'm sure that GnuCash can be a solution! I'm a long time GnuCash user for my personal finances and live in Flanders.
I want to help you setting up GnuCash for your purposes, if you like. Can you point me to guidelines that you have to follow? An overview of account codes, how you have to report to the taxman, etc. I'll pass that on to the GnuCash team so others can benefit from it, too...
If you want to contact me in private, my e-mail address is my slashdot username, followed by @advalvas.be (I speak Dutch and English; my French is rather bad, I'm afraid).
By the way, if you're looking for Windows accounting software, you may also want to take a look at jGnash, GFP or EekBoek. The latter is Dutch software, and is suitable for European style bookkeeping... That's all I know about these tools, though.
"Release early, release often".
The GnuCash development team is short on coders and need help with debugging from their users.
And as you can read in another reply to your post: 1.9.0 is a development version. Nobody forces you to upgrade. Why don't you wait a couple of months while they make it a bit more stable?
Indeed, this announcement is not necessarily bad news, but I don't agree with your arguments. You can't compare anti-virus software with any other user application (like media players, mail or web browsers). An anti-virus strategy should not be an application, but built-in to the operating system.
You know that someone will try to install malicious code onto your computer, so build the OS so this can be prevented.
The whole anti-virus industry is based on a flawed design of the Windows OS. Any application is allowed to run, unless some other application (anti-virus/-malware software) prevents it. This is rather silly, if you think about it.
The legitimate applications that are running on your computer are limited and well-known. The number of viruses and malware increases every day, and is impossible to keep track of. Anti-virus software tries it anyway, but is always running behind the facts.
It would be better that *no* application is allowed to run, ever, unless the system administrator or -on home systems- the user gives his express permission (either temporarily or permanently). If this would be built into the OS, you wouldn't need any anti-virus software at all.
No, this is not the final solution to viruses or malware, but at least it's a strategy that gives the administrator (or the user) the advantage...
Whay can't we moderate an article -1 Flamebait...? ;-)
Incidentally, starting this academic year, I teach a similar course, called "Open Systems". It's also part of a one year continuing education course, specifically (but not exclusively) for graduated Bachelors Applied Informatics. The "Open Systems" course lasts one semester (about twelve weeks) and I teach it six (!) hours every week, which many would consider *waay* too long. Maybe they're right, but consider that the fact that my institution wants to organise such a course is a signal that people are starting to realise the importance of the F/OSS phenomenon...
Anyway. These are some lecture subjects that I have in mind:
As part of the course, the students have to work for an Open Source project. Either they choose one for theirselves, or I put them to work for Dokeos, an e-learning platform that is used (and actively improved and developed) at my institution. The idea is that they write a report, not only about what they've done, but also about the organisation of the project, how communication went, how conflicts are solved, etc. Most of them did an internship in a commercial development environment and they can compare both worlds, which should result in interesting reading...
Students get assignments every now and then, such as comparing an Free/Open Source application with its commercial counterpart (e.g. OpenOffice vs MS Office, the GIMP vs Photoshop,
If you want to exchange ideas, teaching materials, etc., send me an e-mail. In the spirit of Open Source, I'm happy to share my course materials with you. My address is my slashdot user name, followed by @advalvas.be.
What has baffled me in this election is the following.
;)
Clinton, during his term, lied about a private matter (that was really nobody's business but his own and the people directly involved) and they tried to impeach him for it.
Bush has lied in public and for the record about matters concerning national security that affects not only the American people, but has also resulted in instability in the international relations worldwide and he gets a second term...?!
These reports about tampering do help in restoring my faith in the sanity of the American people...
Emacs contains syntax colouring, etc. for other programming languages as well, so if you want to do some scripting for example (as I do regularly), you don't need another editor for that.
Emacs doesn't have a very nice UI and learning all these bleedin' keyboard shortcuts may be a pain, but once you're past that, nothing can beat it. But this is my personal and humble opinion of course...
I work at a small (20 people) startup software firm. Budget is tight and investing in training is out of the question for now.
Okay, this gesture thingee may be a Cool Thing, but I'm more in favour of a user-friendly keyboard navigation. Pressing TAB two zillion times to select the link you need is unfortunately not an alternative for mouse torture.
50$ cheap? In fact, it seems the price went up. Aforementioned /. article talks about 30$. I have strong suspicions, though that that should have been in £...
There's a -not very informative- press release on the site of Keele University. There's an e-mail address, but I suspect that covers only the commercial aspect of the thingee.
I'll finish off with some Register articles: here, here and a cached planetit article.
Huh? Can anyone explain this to me? Where's the benefit of open source when it's not open source? And how is Mr Burney going to make money if someone writes a plugin and releases it under the GPL or a similar license?
Mr burney hasn't got a clue what the open source/Free software movement is all about. No wonder Corel "always had a somewhat rough time fitting into Penguinland."