I knew Ken when I worked at Weslake Developments in Rye, East Sussex, an engineering R&D company that designed and tested engines for the UK automotive and aviation industries (I was the firm's Costing Engineer at the time); he was one of the directors of the firm. He was always a calm and reasonable voice in often head debates over the future of the company. His accomplishments gave him a platform that got people to listen but it was his warmth and understanding, both of technical issues and the people involved, that made him so respected and such an asset to the company.
His flair for the dramatic was never far away...he'd journey from Lydd Airport (principally owned by Richard Branson who knew Ken well) piloting a skeletal Autogyro, of his own design and that he had built, landing it in a field behind the business park where Weslake Developments was housed.
I've many happy memories from that time and value them greatly...I'll surely miss him.
Forcing anyone who might wish to participate to join Google+ Hangouts also forces them to allow Google access to their real names and personal data thus Canonical yet again sjows that it has no, real, understanding, nor interest, in openness or accessibility and still less personal freedom and privacy.
As they have with their Amazon affiliate contract they care more about commercial interests than the rights of their users or developers. Like the EFF and the FSF I never include Ubuntu GNU/Linux in any recommendation list...actually I steer people away from it.
You might consider Trisquel...it is FSF endorsed as a distribution that meets its guidelines:
https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html
Trisquel is akin to a Ubuntu with the non-free elements removed so it shouldn't be too much of a culture shock for you should you opt to use it. Further distributions with FSF approval are on the following link as is the link to obtain Trisquel:
https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
I can understand this in terms of setting a top priority but wouldn't each element being removed affect the short and long term viability of the project? If funding can't be provided what would be the short term and long term effects of less/no events/summits be and even if some were to be held what would be the effect of developers whose personal situation, or company support, wouldn't otherwise allow them to go then not getting a grant and, thus, not attending?
No need to build new aeroplanes or, heaven forbid, work on innovative new designs. Just attack them with...patents!
All those rounded corners must, surely, breach some spurious Apple patent or other. Microsoft can claim that numerous of their patents have been infringed and demand payments with menaces but never be willing to say exactly what patents were infringed.
Paul Allen and Lodsys had best stay out of it as we don't want these aircraft to travel to an East Texas kangeroo court to defend their claims
You don't mention this but DNS Crypt is only, officially, supported on Windows and Mac but it can be made to work on GNU/Linux and BSD with a little work. The following site gives the details you would need to do this https://johnfail.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/dnscrypt-for-linux/
In the UK we a;lso have Channel 4 which is a QUANGO (Quasi Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation) meaning, in practice, that it is funded by a mixture of (mainly) taxation bolstered by advertising revenue. C4 content isn't nearly as good quality, on average, as that of the BBC but its existance shows that either model can fund a public broadcaster.
To be entirely correct neither Ubuntu nor Fedora are OS's...they are distributions of the GNU/Linux OS. You are, however, quite right in pointing out that may of the postings on this topic misuse the term "Linux" to mean GNU/Linux. The FSF has a very readable explanation of this issue http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html
I also did something, I wrote to the MEP's in my area, outlining my position and asking their opinion. They need to know this is important.
My local government web site had a link to my MEP's.
Microsoft is a SOPA supporter by proxy in that it is a member of the pro SOPA Business Software Alliance. By doing their dirty work this way some other companies may also be attempting to escape being named and shamed as SOPA supporters. Note...Kapersky terminated their BSA membership over the SOPA issue. Wikipedia is kind enough to list the BSA members for us so perhaps this list (excluding Kapersky) should be added to this campaign?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Software_Alliance
I wouldn't worry about Canonical/Google preparing free operating systems for mobile devices seeing as KDE, and others, are working towards this end already and, if they do it well, can bring GNU/Linux into the picture as a fully viable contender. The KDE work is being done under the Plasma Active banner...see the following link.
http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active
From reading Groklaw's analysis, which is excellent, I'd say that Google will clearly owe Oracle some monetary settlement but that Oracle's initial claim of vast compensation was ridiculous. as I understand it the latest indication from the judge in the case was that the settlement would be somewhere around the $100 million that was being discussed by Google and Sun as a licensing fee at a much earlier stage. To Google this would seem to be chump change so the main question I'd ask would be which side would be awarded costs or would each side pay their own...costs appear to be likely to be vastly in excess of the settlement fee.
In the 1980's I worked for a company that supplied the engines (Mercedes Benz motor car engines brought up to aviation standards) used in gondolas run under Airship Industries (maker of them) blimps. The gondolas ran as mobile generator sets and saw significant usage to power the lighting for the LA Olympic games. Other airships flew over the games sites so as to provide a high vantage point for security services to monitor the event.
This led all involved into a false feeling of a new dawn for airships...fancy plans were drawn up for them to run tourist trips in and out of the Grand Canyon for instance and over Ayres Rock in Australia. Some even hoped for African wildlife tourism to be involved and for trips up the Amazon...then we came to our senses as the company (AI) went under.
The cost of filling a large blimp with helium is immense and the wretched things leak! To make matters worse in order to move a blimp around a country one either has to wait ages while it covers any noteworthy distance under its own steam or deflate the thing (usually by venting all the helium) and transport the remaining items by more conventional means (road, rail, air or ship) then pay out for a new fill of helium. This made the costs look pretty awful pretty fast. High winds and airships aren't a good combination so should the prevailing conditions grow nasty the owners of the blimps were, again, forced into a deflate/re-inflate cycle so as to protect the structures.
In short almost all the proposed uses of the blimps were unable to see a reasonable return on investment and those that had any chance of same were too few to keep the company making the blimps running.
I very much doubt that an economic case that can be viable long-term really exists for all but a tiny number of large civilian use blimps in anything but an unrealistic pipe-dream. Small military use ones may be a niche product with a future and that's where money might be made off of these things.
There are a few open source alternatives (search on Sourceforge) to Google's web apps that you could host yourself and that might get past your proprietary/enterprise/security concerns. The other benefits you cite for Google systems could be seen in such an arrangement without having to do too much setting up. I prefer this sort of arrangement to handing it to a third party and it avoids giving yet more information to Google (or another provider).
I'm English too and you're right only in as much that hiding ones crossed fingers (can be behind ones back or in ones pocket) is a sign of subterfuge (something intended to misrepresent the true nature of an activity). Showing them openly to be crossed is not a sign of lying or subterfuge and, as per wootest comment, is merely signifying a hope for good luck in pursuit of a particular outcome.
I wouldn't touch G+ with an infinitely long bargepole anyway but on top of that it shows their utter hypocrisy as regards real names...consider their rejection of South Korea's demand for use of real names (Real Name Verification Law)...the following link discusses this issue in more detail if you are interested:
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2011/08/google_refuses.php
Hurrah! Somebody gets the real issue here at last!
To put it another way voltage is near constant from a panel irrespective of incident light and potential power output so even if it isn't facing the sun and only, thus in dim light the voltage will be little affected but the potential power generation will be in the cellar.
For a full debunking of this story try http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-trees-really-are-inferior.html
Computer World/IT World have Microsoft and Apple as, almost unquestionably, their largest advertisers and it is pretty much beyond doubt that Microsoft and Apple pay a lot to Florian Mueller so perhaps your question would be better stated as "How much are Microsoft and Apple paying to get their FUD campaign to the front page".
This is exactly what happened with my, former, account. It was suspended and, to be honest, it gave me an easy excuse to dump the wretched thing (G+). An organisation, to which I belong, had asked me to help raise their profile and to respond to cometary about them if incorrect information was being given and that's why I was pushed into joining G+ but now I've got a good excuse for not being there. The signal to noise level was almost intolerable anyhow and the design of it just didn't work...add someone well-known in your "following circle" and you get every random thought they might have as well as all their fanpersons in the comments with no ability to put in any selective filter to, say, weed out windsurfing holiday posts from coding related ones.
Mozilla have gone a long way towards a more reliable set of add-ons with this latest iteration in that they have at long last begun to publish a set of stable APIs and to direct add-on developers to code against these and only these. Should enterprise clients wish to use FF then they would be best served by supporting these stable APIs and refusing to allow any add -on using other, presumably not officially documented, calls...frankly so would all users be they big or small.
Mozilla state that add-ons using the official stable APIs will, in future, auto update with each new browser version thus removing most of the issues not being debated.
The main reasons for rejecting Bitcoin were twofold:
1) Accepting them was, without justification, being used by others to make the claim that the EFF endorsed Bitcoin.
2) Possible future legal issues resulting from trading in Bitcoin...passing on a worthless item for instance.
Slashdot Mirror
I knew Ken when I worked at Weslake Developments in Rye, East Sussex, an engineering R&D company that designed and tested engines for the UK automotive and aviation industries (I was the firm's Costing Engineer at the time); he was one of the directors of the firm. He was always a calm and reasonable voice in often head debates over the future of the company. His accomplishments gave him a platform that got people to listen but it was his warmth and understanding, both of technical issues and the people involved, that made him so respected and such an asset to the company. His flair for the dramatic was never far away...he'd journey from Lydd Airport (principally owned by Richard Branson who knew Ken well) piloting a skeletal Autogyro, of his own design and that he had built, landing it in a field behind the business park where Weslake Developments was housed. I've many happy memories from that time and value them greatly...I'll surely miss him.
It was also an error in TFA...I submitted this article and had assumed that they had it right.
Sorry about that...I (submitter of this article to /.) took the offending part from TFA and didn't double check to see if it was correct.
Forcing anyone who might wish to participate to join Google+ Hangouts also forces them to allow Google access to their real names and personal data thus Canonical yet again sjows that it has no, real, understanding, nor interest, in openness or accessibility and still less personal freedom and privacy. As they have with their Amazon affiliate contract they care more about commercial interests than the rights of their users or developers. Like the EFF and the FSF I never include Ubuntu GNU/Linux in any recommendation list...actually I steer people away from it.
You might consider Trisquel...it is FSF endorsed as a distribution that meets its guidelines: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html Trisquel is akin to a Ubuntu with the non-free elements removed so it shouldn't be too much of a culture shock for you should you opt to use it. Further distributions with FSF approval are on the following link as is the link to obtain Trisquel: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
I can understand this in terms of setting a top priority but wouldn't each element being removed affect the short and long term viability of the project? If funding can't be provided what would be the short term and long term effects of less/no events/summits be and even if some were to be held what would be the effect of developers whose personal situation, or company support, wouldn't otherwise allow them to go then not getting a grant and, thus, not attending?
No need to build new aeroplanes or, heaven forbid, work on innovative new designs. Just attack them with...patents! All those rounded corners must, surely, breach some spurious Apple patent or other. Microsoft can claim that numerous of their patents have been infringed and demand payments with menaces but never be willing to say exactly what patents were infringed. Paul Allen and Lodsys had best stay out of it as we don't want these aircraft to travel to an East Texas kangeroo court to defend their claims
There are many organisations already working on behalf of ordinary people in cases such as this...the summary already has highlighted one such in the most excellent EFF but there are a number of others who are charitable donation funded and the like so negating your belief that huge wealth is needed to have voices on our side in this, and other, conflicts with the corporations who seek to enrich themselves by removal of our freedoms and liberties. I'll offer a small selection of such organisations below: https://www.eff.org/ http://ffii.org/ http://www.publicknowledge.org/ http://keionline.org/ http://infojustice.org/category/trade-agreements/ http://www.article19.org/ http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ http://www.edri.org/ http://www.michaelgeist.ca/ The last link is to Professor Michael Geist a prominent a noteworthy intellectual and activist in the field. All the above worked diligently to stop ACTA.
You don't mention this but DNS Crypt is only, officially, supported on Windows and Mac but it can be made to work on GNU/Linux and BSD with a little work. The following site gives the details you would need to do this https://johnfail.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/dnscrypt-for-linux/
In the UK we a;lso have Channel 4 which is a QUANGO (Quasi Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation) meaning, in practice, that it is funded by a mixture of (mainly) taxation bolstered by advertising revenue. C4 content isn't nearly as good quality, on average, as that of the BBC but its existance shows that either model can fund a public broadcaster.
To be entirely correct neither Ubuntu nor Fedora are OS's...they are distributions of the GNU/Linux OS. You are, however, quite right in pointing out that may of the postings on this topic misuse the term "Linux" to mean GNU/Linux. The FSF has a very readable explanation of this issue http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html
I also did something, I wrote to the MEP's in my area, outlining my position and asking their opinion. They need to know this is important. My local government web site had a link to my MEP's.
The Free Software Foundation provides the following page of contact details for all the relevant EU politicians: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2011/acta:-signed,-not-yet-sealed-now-its-up-to-us Those on the Development Committee are the most important and are listed on the following link: https://memopol.lqdn.fr/europe/parliament/committee/DEVE/ For the FSF views on ACTA see: http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta
A case in point is your use of the term pedant as it had an original meaning that is now obsolete...it meant a teacher, particularly a schoolmaster.
Microsoft is a SOPA supporter by proxy in that it is a member of the pro SOPA Business Software Alliance. By doing their dirty work this way some other companies may also be attempting to escape being named and shamed as SOPA supporters. Note...Kapersky terminated their BSA membership over the SOPA issue. Wikipedia is kind enough to list the BSA members for us so perhaps this list (excluding Kapersky) should be added to this campaign? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Software_Alliance
I wouldn't worry about Canonical/Google preparing free operating systems for mobile devices seeing as KDE, and others, are working towards this end already and, if they do it well, can bring GNU/Linux into the picture as a fully viable contender. The KDE work is being done under the Plasma Active banner...see the following link. http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active
From reading Groklaw's analysis, which is excellent, I'd say that Google will clearly owe Oracle some monetary settlement but that Oracle's initial claim of vast compensation was ridiculous. as I understand it the latest indication from the judge in the case was that the settlement would be somewhere around the $100 million that was being discussed by Google and Sun as a licensing fee at a much earlier stage. To Google this would seem to be chump change so the main question I'd ask would be which side would be awarded costs or would each side pay their own...costs appear to be likely to be vastly in excess of the settlement fee.
In the 1980's I worked for a company that supplied the engines (Mercedes Benz motor car engines brought up to aviation standards) used in gondolas run under Airship Industries (maker of them) blimps. The gondolas ran as mobile generator sets and saw significant usage to power the lighting for the LA Olympic games. Other airships flew over the games sites so as to provide a high vantage point for security services to monitor the event. This led all involved into a false feeling of a new dawn for airships...fancy plans were drawn up for them to run tourist trips in and out of the Grand Canyon for instance and over Ayres Rock in Australia. Some even hoped for African wildlife tourism to be involved and for trips up the Amazon...then we came to our senses as the company (AI) went under. The cost of filling a large blimp with helium is immense and the wretched things leak! To make matters worse in order to move a blimp around a country one either has to wait ages while it covers any noteworthy distance under its own steam or deflate the thing (usually by venting all the helium) and transport the remaining items by more conventional means (road, rail, air or ship) then pay out for a new fill of helium. This made the costs look pretty awful pretty fast. High winds and airships aren't a good combination so should the prevailing conditions grow nasty the owners of the blimps were, again, forced into a deflate/re-inflate cycle so as to protect the structures. In short almost all the proposed uses of the blimps were unable to see a reasonable return on investment and those that had any chance of same were too few to keep the company making the blimps running. I very much doubt that an economic case that can be viable long-term really exists for all but a tiny number of large civilian use blimps in anything but an unrealistic pipe-dream. Small military use ones may be a niche product with a future and that's where money might be made off of these things.
There are a few open source alternatives (search on Sourceforge) to Google's web apps that you could host yourself and that might get past your proprietary/enterprise/security concerns. The other benefits you cite for Google systems could be seen in such an arrangement without having to do too much setting up. I prefer this sort of arrangement to handing it to a third party and it avoids giving yet more information to Google (or another provider).
I'm English too and you're right only in as much that hiding ones crossed fingers (can be behind ones back or in ones pocket) is a sign of subterfuge (something intended to misrepresent the true nature of an activity). Showing them openly to be crossed is not a sign of lying or subterfuge and, as per wootest comment, is merely signifying a hope for good luck in pursuit of a particular outcome.
I wouldn't touch G+ with an infinitely long bargepole anyway but on top of that it shows their utter hypocrisy as regards real names...consider their rejection of South Korea's demand for use of real names (Real Name Verification Law)...the following link discusses this issue in more detail if you are interested: http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2011/08/google_refuses.php
Hurrah! Somebody gets the real issue here at last! To put it another way voltage is near constant from a panel irrespective of incident light and potential power output so even if it isn't facing the sun and only, thus in dim light the voltage will be little affected but the potential power generation will be in the cellar. For a full debunking of this story try http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-trees-really-are-inferior.html
Computer World/IT World have Microsoft and Apple as, almost unquestionably, their largest advertisers and it is pretty much beyond doubt that Microsoft and Apple pay a lot to Florian Mueller so perhaps your question would be better stated as "How much are Microsoft and Apple paying to get their FUD campaign to the front page".
This is exactly what happened with my, former, account. It was suspended and, to be honest, it gave me an easy excuse to dump the wretched thing (G+). An organisation, to which I belong, had asked me to help raise their profile and to respond to cometary about them if incorrect information was being given and that's why I was pushed into joining G+ but now I've got a good excuse for not being there. The signal to noise level was almost intolerable anyhow and the design of it just didn't work...add someone well-known in your "following circle" and you get every random thought they might have as well as all their fanpersons in the comments with no ability to put in any selective filter to, say, weed out windsurfing holiday posts from coding related ones.
Mozilla have gone a long way towards a more reliable set of add-ons with this latest iteration in that they have at long last begun to publish a set of stable APIs and to direct add-on developers to code against these and only these. Should enterprise clients wish to use FF then they would be best served by supporting these stable APIs and refusing to allow any add -on using other, presumably not officially documented, calls...frankly so would all users be they big or small. Mozilla state that add-ons using the official stable APIs will, in future, auto update with each new browser version thus removing most of the issues not being debated.
The main reasons for rejecting Bitcoin were twofold: 1) Accepting them was, without justification, being used by others to make the claim that the EFF endorsed Bitcoin. 2) Possible future legal issues resulting from trading in Bitcoin...passing on a worthless item for instance.