If the justification is that the officer fears for their safety, how does an armed drone possibly fit into that logic. Was the suspect threatening the officer from 1/2 mile away?!
Police are not armed merely for self defense. They are expected to stop someone that is threatening to kill or severely injure anyone.
Remembering that COBOL was written so your average 60's MBA could write code, there's a decent chance that COBOL will come back. It's terrifying, but it's much more understandable to the finance types than more modern languages.
In recent years about one third of MBAs are scientists or engineers, including many software developers. So there is a pool of traditional (science and engineering) software developers who are financially literate enough to properly implement financial software. The "accountants" don't have to write the code themselves anymore, and neither do the "scientists" and "engineers", as in the 60s. They probably have not had to do so for many decades.
Plus there are (or were as recently as the 80s) "software development" type degree programs that are enterprise focused rather than science or engineering focused. At one university I am familiar with the school of science had a computer science program, the school of engineering a computer engineering program and the school of business a computer information systems program. The former two were pretty much what one might expect. The later was similar to computer science for the first two years, algorithms and data structures for example, but the later two years were focused more on development of large software projects for large enterprise and government. Cobol was still taught and used. My understanding was that it was uncommon for a school of business to have a "software development" type program.
And yet the NRA thinks that the "average person" with a firearm is the solution to the problem.
Actually the NRA is the premier advocate of and provider of firearms safety and training, training many firearms and safety instructors as well as private citizens. This is their primary mission. Political advocacy is their secondary mission, one they feel "forced" into.
Every public distribution channel is amateur hour, open source or commercial. Look at your favorite app store.
That said, while fully acknowledging the shortcomings of many such apps its wrong to be negative about some of the authors. Many are quite literally beginners, working on their first non-trivial program. The fact that they started and finished a non-trivial project puts them in the top echelon of their peers. High marks and congratulations for getting it done, now let me brutally comment on your implementation details, a public peer review of sorts. Learn, keep at it, you will become very good at this.
To a developer honest negative feedback is far more useful than positive feedback. It leads to product improvement. Positive feedback is for marketing blurbs.
Car repo and bail bondsmen have been doing license plate scanning and logging for a while. Going far beyond what the garbage trucks will do. For example the repo/bond guys in addition to logging while driving down the street they also cruise parking lots of grocery stores, walmart, etc to log plates. There is a huge national database of these logs. Many police departments actually subscribe to this database.
Google was publishing those pictures via street view.
And license plate scanning and logging is something corporations and individuals are allowed to do. Car repo and bail bondsmen have been doing this for a while. Going far beyond what the garbage trucks will do. For example the repo/bond guys in addition to logging while driving down the street they also cruise parking lots of grocery stores, walmart, etc to log plates. There is a huge national database of these logs. Many police departments actually subscribe to this database.
Things are getting a little confused without the proper context, I've re-inserted the context.
OK, but a developer can't "fix" what is not specified. msoffice formats are not specified so that they can be implemented. So that's not something a oo developer would be able to fix by himself.
Sometimes code's behavior is the documentation.
Yes, that is the definition of undocumented software, when the only documentation is its observed behaviour.
I should have used quotes around "documentation" but the point is that programmers frequently fix things that are observed anomalies and not failures to meet a specification, contrary to the "can't "fix" what is not specified" notion. Or if you want to get overly "corporate" the "specification" in such a case is the "bug report" not a "design document".
Being a government, they can ditch it completely if it makes sense for them. Where I live, there is a law that requires all gov data to be available in open formats, so it's even easier to comply that way.
Successfully reading and interpreting a file is one thing. Rendering its contents is another. The Office Open XML format,.docx, is open: ISO/IEC 29500.
No, it's not open. First, OOXML is a sanctioned standard, but it's not open. For example, there is no open reference implementation, only proprietary binaries.
Also, and most importantly, msoffice does not implement OOXML completely. Its small differences are what make compatibility a moving target.
My point is that a standard has more to do with successfully reading, interpreting and writing a file than defining absolute visual layout; and that it is common to have an adhoc heuristic in an implementation to better meet a users intention. For example "is the user trying to define a page break with all those CR/LF's? If I'm near a natural page break maybe I'll ignore a CR/LF or two that goes past the break." Basically it is not uncommon for a specification to leave things at that level implementation dependent. Yes, it would be nice to have a reference implementation to demonstrate such heuristics. But the lack of a reference is no reason not to implement such observed behavior, an observed heuristic. Especially for something related to very basic functionality such as pagination.
So, the second to best solution is to just acknowledge msoffice is not compatible with other software, so either ditch it completely, or keep it completely. Half assed efforts are doomed to fail from the start.
That is a fine strategy if you are not trying to get people to convert to your app. Blowing off a valid user expectation hurts adoption.
But these guys were not trying to get people to convert to anything. Their job was to provide office productivity software for the city personnel.
I'm referring to the FOSS developers. As for the guys providing the FOSS software to users, well that takes us back to my original post: "The town should have had an easy way to report their difficulties to the FOSS developers and the FOSS developers should have been responsive. Such reporting and response is necessary for FOSS adoption."
The hybrid solution was a bad idea, they failed because they tried something that is known not to work. OpenOffice/LibreOffice guys can work on interoperability as much as they want. That doesn't automatically make it viable as a solution for a big organization.
My point is that given FOSS a lack of implemented spreadsheet macros and pagination differences should not have torpedoed a project. These were addressable issues. Perhaps things to be implemented by the developers on their own due to the obvious goal of promoting adoption of their product, perhaps a donation from the town to the developers might have been the most cost effective thing for the town to do, or hiring a contractor to implement and submit the changes, etc. It is FOSS after all, its not supposed to be necessary to take things as they are and live with it.
The problem was unrealistic expectations. They went from an all msoffice operation, to a hybrid one.
msoffice is not compatible with anything else. You can migrate away from their formats, but you can't really interoperate with them without a lot of fiddling around.
That's costly, and wasn't accounted for in the original planning. Shockingly, it costed time and money.
I did read the article and you are completely mistaken. The problem is OpenOffice's failure at being compatible. If it paginates wrong an OpenOffice developer should fix that. If macros are missing an OpenOffice developer should add those.
OK, but a developer can't "fix" what is not specified. msoffice formats are not specified so that they can be implemented. So that's not something a oo developer would be able to fix by himself.
Sometimes code's behavior is the documentation.
So, the second to best solution is to just acknowledge msoffice is not compatible with other software, so either ditch it completely, or keep it completely. Half assed efforts are doomed to fail from the start.
That is a fine strategy if you are not trying to get people to convert to your app. Blowing off a valid user expectation hurts adoption.
Being a government, they can ditch it completely if it makes sense for them. Where I live, there is a law that requires all gov data to be available in open formats, so it's even easier to comply that way.
Successfully reading and interpreting a file is one thing. Rendering its contents is another. The Office Open XML format,.docx, is open: ISO/IEC 29500.
There is also the code's implementation of how to handle various edge cases, special circumstances, guessing as to the user's intent, defaults defined outside the document, etc.
Yes, and most of this will be handled better by a publication tool for which layout (including things like pagination) is critical.
I'm not arguing against page layout software. I'm merely arguing that compatibility with MS is critical for FOSS office software.
GP is right -- the problem is users are using the wrong tool, or at least using it very poorly. Rather than simply migrating them back to MS Office, they'd be better off using that training money to teach people how to use software (any software) correctly.
No, the GP is most likely making very bad guesses as to the nature of the various compatibility problems. Note the article mentions macros from excel not being available. There really is no excuse for that. Its a publicly documented function, not some esoteric and arbitrary implementation detail in MS' code.
If it paginates wrong an OpenOffice developer should fix that.
Long and short of it: you want precise pagination, use a Page Layout program, not a Word Processor. Or at least don't expect the space bar and Return key to be the determinants on where the pages break.
You assume that the problem is simply different font metrics leading to a different natural page break. There is also the code's implementation of how to handle various edge cases, special circumstances, guessing as to the user's intent, defaults defined outside the document, etc.
The problem was unrealistic expectations. They went from an all msoffice operation, to a hybrid one.
msoffice is not compatible with anything else. You can migrate away from their formats, but you can't really interoperate with them without a lot of fiddling around.
That's costly, and wasn't accounted for in the original planning. Shockingly, it costed time and money.
I did read the article and you are completely mistaken. The problem is OpenOffice's failure at being compatible. If it paginates wrong an OpenOffice developer should fix that. If macros are missing an OpenOffice developer should add those.
A hybrid approach is a given in the sense that outsiders will be sending or expecting office documents even if you are 100% OpenOffice internally. Compatibility is not an unrealistic expectation, it is a business requirement.
Even if Microsoft is the messenger that doesn't mean the message, that a town tried FOSS and found unexpected costs, is untrue. Liars will tell the truth when the truth is coincidentally on their side.
The town should have had an easy way to report their difficulties to the FOSS developers and the FOSS developers should have been responsive. Such reporting and response is necessary for FOSS adoption. I think this is the first thing to look into, not the messenger, not competition's sales force.
At the company I work for we have a lot of techs/engineers who are smart and a lot of leeway to install whatever OS/software we want. Several have gone all linux with Libre or Open Office. It seems like they all eventually switch back for some reason.
For the last 20 years I've had (or created) such freedom but I've always dual booted. Different tools for different tasks. I've also usually been able to hang onto the old machine when getting an upgrade, "need it for testing". I could leave the old machine running outlook and do office when needed over there and boot the new machine into Windows or Linux depending on the software development task at hand. Its worked well for me, admittedly I had full sized desks.
Flawless or nearly-flawless books have to be found, then they have to be cut apart with precision paper-handling equipment to separate the pages from the spines while leaving the pages of a uniform size.
I suddenly have a new appreciation for spiral bound manuals, ring binder manuals.:-)
Good news for Apple II and Commodore 64 programmers reference manuals, IBM PC reference manuals, the 1983 pre-hardware release Inside Macintosh manual.
BTW, the precision paper cutting equipment should be somewhat common. Nearly every print shop (in the "printing press" sense not the "kinkos laser printer" sense) would have (had) such equipment, including high school shops.
But my recommendation is to not just google for stuff which agrees with your opinion. You will always find some "arguments".
I cited WSJ, FT and Reuters articles not some crank websites.
Are you claiming that there is no German legislation that will keep some coal plants that should be "closed" as "reserves" due to the "intermittent" nature of wind and solar?
Are you claiming something is wrong with the wiki numbers? Note that the wiki numbers account for imports and therefore renewables are lower than the numbers for purely domestic production. Two thirds of Germany's energy is imported.
From that it is very clear that shutting down some nuclear plants did not cause any increase in coal consumption in Germany. I know a lot of pundits claim just that. They are wrong.
That is a simplistic analysis, poor actually. Coal is being used because nuclear is politically out of favor. These coal plants should be closed and never run again, but renewables are giving coal new life. Renewables are intermittent due to weather and need additional backup, nuclear needs no such weather related backup. If renewables are being backed up with coal then that is an increase in coal usage. Don't play political number games saying that coal usage is not up because of comparisons to an earlier decade where coal was a "normal" fuel for power generation. Intermittent renewables are giving coal additional life, there is no way to deny that, that is increased coal usage entirely due to renewables and the political policies that are make non-coal backups unavailable.
No. I live in a world where nighttime or no wind does not take down nuclear plants.
Wow! Zero maintenance nuclear! You are truly blessed.:-p
Blessed with reading comprehension? No one said nuclear is zero maintenance, just that it is not dependent on good weather like solar and wind. That is an important consideration for much of the world, one of the leading advocate of renewables -- Germany -- is wrestling with that and having to import two-thirds of its electricity.
"Environmentalists" fighting tooth and nail to dismantle carbon-free nuclear generation, and insisting that we can decarbonize with renewables alone will doom the oceans if they have their way
Ah, the "only nuclear can safe us" myth. When looking at this without ideology, one quickly learns that nuclear is simply too expensive. As such, it is not a solution to any problem - investing in nuclear makes the situation worse by wasting resources.
No, you are operating under the myth that we have the time to wait for renewables like solar and wind. We don't, decades of science and engineering are ahead of us.
Renewables are already today more cost effective than nuclear. There is no engineering needed. More engineering will only make it better.
Minimizing carbon output requires nuclear. Avoiding nuclear results in more carbon released into the atmosphere. Look at Germany's current consumption:
"Germany is one of the largest consumers of energy in the world. In 2014, it consumed energy from the following sources:
Oil 35.0%
Bituminous coal 12.6%
Lignite 12.0 %
Natural gas 20.4%
Nuclear power 8.1%
Hydropower, windpower, solar 2.1%
Other renewable 9.0%
Renewable energy is more present in the domestically produced energy, since Germany imports about two-thirds of its energy. This however is offset by exports of energy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Berlin's "energy revolution" is going great—if you own a coal mine. The German shift to renewable power sources that started in 2000 has brought the green share of German electricity up to around 25%. But the rest of the energy mix has become more heavily concentrated on coal, which now accounts for some 45% of power generation and growing. Embarrassingly for such an eco-conscious country, Germany is on track to miss its carbon emissions reduction goal by 2020.
Greens profess horror at this result, but no one who knows anything about economics will be surprised. It's the result of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Energiewende, or energy revolution, a drive to thwart market forces and especially price signals, that might otherwise allocate energy resources. Now the market is striking back.
Take the so-called feed-in tariff, which requires distributors to buy electricity from green generators at fixed prices before buying power from other sources. Greens tout the measure because it has encouraged renewable generation to the point that Germany now sometimes experiences electricity gluts if the weather is particularly sunny or windy.
Yet by diverting demand to renewables, the tariff deprives traditional generators of revenue and makes it harder for them to forecast demand for thermal power plants that require millions of euros of investment and years to build. No wonder utilities favor cheaper coal plants to pick up the slack whenever renewables don't deliver as promised.
Mrs. Merkel's accelerated phase-out of nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan has had a similar effect. Shutting profitable nuclear plants deprives utilities of revenue and saddles them with steep decommissioning costs, which makes cheaper coal more appealing." http://www.wsj.com/articles/ge...
Even then the ability to manufacture sufficient battery (or alternative) storage is unknown.
This is another myth. Renewables can easily be expanded by a significant amount without additional storage. In fact, Germany has a bit of pumped storage which are currently under-utlized today because renewables fit better to the demand curve.
Easily expanded. They can't even manage what renewables they are currently using:
"The government in the past assumed that enough new power transmission
So you live in a magical world in which the capacity factor of a nuclear plant is 100% and there are no downtimes whatsoever?
No. I live in a world where nighttime or no wind does not take down nuclear plants. I live in a world where no non-carbon energy source should be abandoned, where avoiding nuclear results in additional carbon output.
They'd be backing up nuclear plants otherwise. So, your point is?
No they would not. Nuclear plants continue to generate when its dark and when the wind isn't blowing.
But about the only aspect in which these plants are related specifically to renewables in any way is their more flexible operation.
These coal / nat gas plants are being built specifically to back up renewables due to their far greater downtime, lack of sun or wind. Nuclear, like these coal and nat gas plants, don't have this downtime.
We should be using nuclear to backup the renewables to eliminate carbon emissions.
I'd like to point out that around 6000 GW of PV capacity is predicted to be installed by 2050.
And where is the battery or other storage capacity necessary to store power to supply demand when its dark, the weather is bad, etc? Right now we are building out coal and nat gas plants to backup renewables.
More and more anti-nuclear activists and environmentalists are realizing that we need nuclear as a bridge to a day when we have the renewable generation and storage capacity necessary. They are embracing science, getting past their former political group think.
The German coal plants that had been built recently had been scheduled to be built many years before the decision to shut down some nuclear plants ahead of time was made. This was not a reaction to anything. In fact, many coal plant plans have been canceled in past years.
They were built to backup renewables, solar and wind. To supply demand when renewables weren't producing. Similar story with nat gas plants.
Slashdot Mirror
If the justification is that the officer fears for their safety, how does an armed drone possibly fit into that logic. Was the suspect threatening the officer from 1/2 mile away?!
Police are not armed merely for self defense. They are expected to stop someone that is threatening to kill or severely injure anyone.
Remembering that COBOL was written so your average 60's MBA could write code, there's a decent chance that COBOL will come back. It's terrifying, but it's much more understandable to the finance types than more modern languages.
In recent years about one third of MBAs are scientists or engineers, including many software developers. So there is a pool of traditional (science and engineering) software developers who are financially literate enough to properly implement financial software. The "accountants" don't have to write the code themselves anymore, and neither do the "scientists" and "engineers", as in the 60s. They probably have not had to do so for many decades.
Plus there are (or were as recently as the 80s) "software development" type degree programs that are enterprise focused rather than science or engineering focused. At one university I am familiar with the school of science had a computer science program, the school of engineering a computer engineering program and the school of business a computer information systems program. The former two were pretty much what one might expect. The later was similar to computer science for the first two years, algorithms and data structures for example, but the later two years were focused more on development of large software projects for large enterprise and government. Cobol was still taught and used. My understanding was that it was uncommon for a school of business to have a "software development" type program.
Obviously, they were just holding it wrong.
Given the number of pictures with the tip of a finger in them, yes, people very frequently hold their phone wrong while taking a picture. :-)
Sorry, botched an edit and hit submit rather than continue editing, should have read: "premier advocate of firearms safety and provider of training"
And yet the NRA thinks that the "average person" with a firearm is the solution to the problem.
Actually the NRA is the premier advocate of and provider of firearms safety and training, training many firearms and safety instructors as well as private citizens. This is their primary mission. Political advocacy is their secondary mission, one they feel "forced" into.
you do realize not more than 15 years ago you could fly with a weapon in the cabin.
With all the aircraft hijackings happening in the 80's, I doubt in 2000 you could have reached the cabin having a kalashnikov in your handbag.
More like early to mid 1970s
I really DO NOT get California. If there was ONE state I thought you *might* be able to get an anti-government-monitoring consensus in....
Why would you think that? Nanny's are all about monitoring the children and California is quite the nanny state.
Every public distribution channel is amateur hour, open source or commercial. Look at your favorite app store.
That said, while fully acknowledging the shortcomings of many such apps its wrong to be negative about some of the authors. Many are quite literally beginners, working on their first non-trivial program. The fact that they started and finished a non-trivial project puts them in the top echelon of their peers. High marks and congratulations for getting it done, now let me brutally comment on your implementation details, a public peer review of sorts. Learn, keep at it, you will become very good at this.
To a developer honest negative feedback is far more useful than positive feedback. It leads to product improvement. Positive feedback is for marketing blurbs.
Car repo and bail bondsmen have been doing license plate scanning and logging for a while. Going far beyond what the garbage trucks will do. For example the repo/bond guys in addition to logging while driving down the street they also cruise parking lots of grocery stores, walmart, etc to log plates. There is a huge national database of these logs. Many police departments actually subscribe to this database.
Google was publishing those pictures via street view.
And license plate scanning and logging is something corporations and individuals are allowed to do. Car repo and bail bondsmen have been doing this for a while. Going far beyond what the garbage trucks will do. For example the repo/bond guys in addition to logging while driving down the street they also cruise parking lots of grocery stores, walmart, etc to log plates. There is a huge national database of these logs. Many police departments actually subscribe to this database.
OK, but a developer can't "fix" what is not specified. msoffice formats are not specified so that they can be implemented. So that's not something a oo developer would be able to fix by himself.
Sometimes code's behavior is the documentation.
Yes, that is the definition of undocumented software, when the only documentation is its observed behaviour.
I should have used quotes around "documentation" but the point is that programmers frequently fix things that are observed anomalies and not failures to meet a specification, contrary to the "can't "fix" what is not specified" notion. Or if you want to get overly "corporate" the "specification" in such a case is the "bug report" not a "design document".
Being a government, they can ditch it completely if it makes sense for them. Where I live, there is a law that requires all gov data to be available in open formats, so it's even easier to comply that way.
Successfully reading and interpreting a file is one thing. Rendering its contents is another. The Office Open XML format, .docx, is open: ISO/IEC 29500.
No, it's not open. First, OOXML is a sanctioned standard, but it's not open. For example, there is no open reference implementation, only proprietary binaries. Also, and most importantly, msoffice does not implement OOXML completely. Its small differences are what make compatibility a moving target.
My point is that a standard has more to do with successfully reading, interpreting and writing a file than defining absolute visual layout; and that it is common to have an adhoc heuristic in an implementation to better meet a users intention. For example "is the user trying to define a page break with all those CR/LF's? If I'm near a natural page break maybe I'll ignore a CR/LF or two that goes past the break." Basically it is not uncommon for a specification to leave things at that level implementation dependent. Yes, it would be nice to have a reference implementation to demonstrate such heuristics. But the lack of a reference is no reason not to implement such observed behavior, an observed heuristic. Especially for something related to very basic functionality such as pagination.
So, the second to best solution is to just acknowledge msoffice is not compatible with other software, so either ditch it completely, or keep it completely. Half assed efforts are doomed to fail from the start.
That is a fine strategy if you are not trying to get people to convert to your app. Blowing off a valid user expectation hurts adoption.
But these guys were not trying to get people to convert to anything. Their job was to provide office productivity software for the city personnel.
I'm referring to the FOSS developers. As for the guys providing the FOSS software to users, well that takes us back to my original post: "The town should have had an easy way to report their difficulties to the FOSS developers and the FOSS developers should have been responsive. Such reporting and response is necessary for FOSS adoption."
The hybrid solution was a bad idea, they failed because they tried something that is known not to work. OpenOffice/LibreOffice guys can work on interoperability as much as they want. That doesn't automatically make it viable as a solution for a big organization.
My point is that given FOSS a lack of implemented spreadsheet macros and pagination differences should not have torpedoed a project. These were addressable issues. Perhaps things to be implemented by the developers on their own due to the obvious goal of promoting adoption of their product, perhaps a donation from the town to the developers might have been the most cost effective thing for the town to do, or hiring a contractor to implement and submit the changes, etc. It is FOSS after all, its not supposed to be necessary to take things as they are and live with it.
That, or you can RTFA.
The problem was unrealistic expectations. They went from an all msoffice operation, to a hybrid one. msoffice is not compatible with anything else. You can migrate away from their formats, but you can't really interoperate with them without a lot of fiddling around. That's costly, and wasn't accounted for in the original planning. Shockingly, it costed time and money.
I did read the article and you are completely mistaken. The problem is OpenOffice's failure at being compatible. If it paginates wrong an OpenOffice developer should fix that. If macros are missing an OpenOffice developer should add those.
OK, but a developer can't "fix" what is not specified. msoffice formats are not specified so that they can be implemented. So that's not something a oo developer would be able to fix by himself.
Sometimes code's behavior is the documentation.
So, the second to best solution is to just acknowledge msoffice is not compatible with other software, so either ditch it completely, or keep it completely. Half assed efforts are doomed to fail from the start.
That is a fine strategy if you are not trying to get people to convert to your app. Blowing off a valid user expectation hurts adoption.
Being a government, they can ditch it completely if it makes sense for them. Where I live, there is a law that requires all gov data to be available in open formats, so it's even easier to comply that way.
Successfully reading and interpreting a file is one thing. Rendering its contents is another. The Office Open XML format, .docx, is open: ISO/IEC 29500.
There is also the code's implementation of how to handle various edge cases, special circumstances, guessing as to the user's intent, defaults defined outside the document, etc.
Yes, and most of this will be handled better by a publication tool for which layout (including things like pagination) is critical.
I'm not arguing against page layout software. I'm merely arguing that compatibility with MS is critical for FOSS office software.
GP is right -- the problem is users are using the wrong tool, or at least using it very poorly. Rather than simply migrating them back to MS Office, they'd be better off using that training money to teach people how to use software (any software) correctly.
No, the GP is most likely making very bad guesses as to the nature of the various compatibility problems. Note the article mentions macros from excel not being available. There really is no excuse for that. Its a publicly documented function, not some esoteric and arbitrary implementation detail in MS' code.
If it paginates wrong an OpenOffice developer should fix that.
Long and short of it: you want precise pagination, use a Page Layout program, not a Word Processor. Or at least don't expect the space bar and Return key to be the determinants on where the pages break.
You assume that the problem is simply different font metrics leading to a different natural page break. There is also the code's implementation of how to handle various edge cases, special circumstances, guessing as to the user's intent, defaults defined outside the document, etc.
That, or you can RTFA.
The problem was unrealistic expectations. They went from an all msoffice operation, to a hybrid one. msoffice is not compatible with anything else. You can migrate away from their formats, but you can't really interoperate with them without a lot of fiddling around. That's costly, and wasn't accounted for in the original planning. Shockingly, it costed time and money.
I did read the article and you are completely mistaken. The problem is OpenOffice's failure at being compatible. If it paginates wrong an OpenOffice developer should fix that. If macros are missing an OpenOffice developer should add those.
A hybrid approach is a given in the sense that outsiders will be sending or expecting office documents even if you are 100% OpenOffice internally. Compatibility is not an unrealistic expectation, it is a business requirement.
Yup. Original source: news.microsoft.com
Even if Microsoft is the messenger that doesn't mean the message, that a town tried FOSS and found unexpected costs, is untrue. Liars will tell the truth when the truth is coincidentally on their side.
The town should have had an easy way to report their difficulties to the FOSS developers and the FOSS developers should have been responsive. Such reporting and response is necessary for FOSS adoption. I think this is the first thing to look into, not the messenger, not competition's sales force.
At the company I work for we have a lot of techs/engineers who are smart and a lot of leeway to install whatever OS/software we want. Several have gone all linux with Libre or Open Office. It seems like they all eventually switch back for some reason.
For the last 20 years I've had (or created) such freedom but I've always dual booted. Different tools for different tasks. I've also usually been able to hang onto the old machine when getting an upgrade, "need it for testing". I could leave the old machine running outlook and do office when needed over there and boot the new machine into Windows or Linux depending on the software development task at hand. Its worked well for me, admittedly I had full sized desks.
Flawless or nearly-flawless books have to be found, then they have to be cut apart with precision paper-handling equipment to separate the pages from the spines while leaving the pages of a uniform size.
I suddenly have a new appreciation for spiral bound manuals, ring binder manuals. :-)
Good news for Apple II and Commodore 64 programmers reference manuals, IBM PC reference manuals, the 1983 pre-hardware release Inside Macintosh manual.
BTW, the precision paper cutting equipment should be somewhat common. Nearly every print shop (in the "printing press" sense not the "kinkos laser printer" sense) would have (had) such equipment, including high school shops.
TL;DR
But my recommendation is to not just google for stuff which agrees with your opinion. You will always find some "arguments".
I cited WSJ, FT and Reuters articles not some crank websites.
Are you claiming that there is no German legislation that will keep some coal plants that should be "closed" as "reserves" due to the "intermittent" nature of wind and solar?
Numbers how electricity is produced in Germany can be found here: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen....
Are you claiming something is wrong with the wiki numbers? Note that the wiki numbers account for imports and therefore renewables are lower than the numbers for purely domestic production. Two thirds of Germany's energy is imported.
From that it is very clear that shutting down some nuclear plants did not cause any increase in coal consumption in Germany. I know a lot of pundits claim just that. They are wrong.
That is a simplistic analysis, poor actually. Coal is being used because nuclear is politically out of favor. These coal plants should be closed and never run again, but renewables are giving coal new life. Renewables are intermittent due to weather and need additional backup, nuclear needs no such weather related backup. If renewables are being backed up with coal then that is an increase in coal usage. Don't play political number games saying that coal usage is not up because of comparisons to an earlier decade where coal was a "normal" fuel for power generation. Intermittent renewables are giving coal additional life, there is no way to deny that, that is increased coal usage entirely due to renewables and the political policies that are make non-coal backups unavailable.
No. I live in a world where nighttime or no wind does not take down nuclear plants.
Wow! Zero maintenance nuclear! You are truly blessed. :-p
Blessed with reading comprehension? No one said nuclear is zero maintenance, just that it is not dependent on good weather like solar and wind. That is an important consideration for much of the world, one of the leading advocate of renewables -- Germany -- is wrestling with that and having to import two-thirds of its electricity.
"Environmentalists" fighting tooth and nail to dismantle carbon-free nuclear generation, and insisting that we can decarbonize with renewables alone will doom the oceans if they have their way
Ah, the "only nuclear can safe us" myth. When looking at this without ideology, one quickly learns that nuclear is simply too expensive. As such, it is not a solution to any problem - investing in nuclear makes the situation worse by wasting resources.
No, you are operating under the myth that we have the time to wait for renewables like solar and wind. We don't, decades of science and engineering are ahead of us.
Renewables are already today more cost effective than nuclear. There is no engineering needed. More engineering will only make it better.
Minimizing carbon output requires nuclear. Avoiding nuclear results in more carbon released into the atmosphere. Look at Germany's current consumption:
"Germany is one of the largest consumers of energy in the world. In 2014, it consumed energy from the following sources:
Oil 35.0%
Bituminous coal 12.6%
Lignite 12.0 %
Natural gas 20.4%
Nuclear power 8.1%
Hydropower, windpower, solar 2.1%
Other renewable 9.0%
Renewable energy is more present in the domestically produced energy, since Germany imports about two-thirds of its energy. This however is offset by exports of energy"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Berlin's "energy revolution" is going great—if you own a coal mine. The German shift to renewable power sources that started in 2000 has brought the green share of German electricity up to around 25%. But the rest of the energy mix has become more heavily concentrated on coal, which now accounts for some 45% of power generation and growing. Embarrassingly for such an eco-conscious country, Germany is on track to miss its carbon emissions reduction goal by 2020.
Greens profess horror at this result, but no one who knows anything about economics will be surprised. It's the result of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Energiewende, or energy revolution, a drive to thwart market forces and especially price signals, that might otherwise allocate energy resources. Now the market is striking back.
Take the so-called feed-in tariff, which requires distributors to buy electricity from green generators at fixed prices before buying power from other sources. Greens tout the measure because it has encouraged renewable generation to the point that Germany now sometimes experiences electricity gluts if the weather is particularly sunny or windy.
Yet by diverting demand to renewables, the tariff deprives traditional generators of revenue and makes it harder for them to forecast demand for thermal power plants that require millions of euros of investment and years to build. No wonder utilities favor cheaper coal plants to pick up the slack whenever renewables don't deliver as promised.
Mrs. Merkel's accelerated phase-out of nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan has had a similar effect. Shutting profitable nuclear plants deprives utilities of revenue and saddles them with steep decommissioning costs, which makes cheaper coal more appealing."
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ge...
Even then the ability to manufacture sufficient battery (or alternative) storage is unknown.
This is another myth. Renewables can easily be expanded by a significant amount without additional storage. In fact, Germany has a bit of pumped storage which are currently under-utlized today because renewables fit better to the demand curve.
Easily expanded. They can't even manage what renewables they are currently using:
"The government in the past assumed that enough new power transmission
So you live in a magical world in which the capacity factor of a nuclear plant is 100% and there are no downtimes whatsoever?
No. I live in a world where nighttime or no wind does not take down nuclear plants. I live in a world where no non-carbon energy source should be abandoned, where avoiding nuclear results in additional carbon output.
Minimizing carbon output requires nuclear.
They'd be backing up nuclear plants otherwise. So, your point is?
No they would not. Nuclear plants continue to generate when its dark and when the wind isn't blowing.
But about the only aspect in which these plants are related specifically to renewables in any way is their more flexible operation.
These coal / nat gas plants are being built specifically to back up renewables due to their far greater downtime, lack of sun or wind. Nuclear, like these coal and nat gas plants, don't have this downtime.
We should be using nuclear to backup the renewables to eliminate carbon emissions.
I'd like to point out that around 6000 GW of PV capacity is predicted to be installed by 2050.
And where is the battery or other storage capacity necessary to store power to supply demand when its dark, the weather is bad, etc? Right now we are building out coal and nat gas plants to backup renewables.
More and more anti-nuclear activists and environmentalists are realizing that we need nuclear as a bridge to a day when we have the renewable generation and storage capacity necessary. They are embracing science, getting past their former political group think.
The German coal plants that had been built recently had been scheduled to be built many years before the decision to shut down some nuclear plants ahead of time was made. This was not a reaction to anything. In fact, many coal plant plans have been canceled in past years.
They were built to backup renewables, solar and wind. To supply demand when renewables weren't producing. Similar story with nat gas plants.