No idea about the other stuff, but their classical lineup is surprisingly good, and features several big names - Trevor Pinnock and the English concert, Lara St. John, Ensemble Sonnerie, etc etc... Of course, the selection's not huge, but for something that's just starting, it's amazing what people they've got on there already.
I'd like to see some jazz on there too, but it's a very good start.
I agree - reading on a monitor while sitting at a desk is not the comfiest thing to do. I recently set up an old semi-dead 386 laptop as a dumb terminal (it wasn't easy to find a null-modem cable these days!) connecting with kermit, and can at least read in bed now. It's surprisingly comfy for things like this that I don't need all the graphics and stuff for. Just using 'less' on texts from Project Gutenberg has worked pretty well, and I run it in a screen session so that I don't lose my place and have to search around to find it each time I want to read. Not the most elegant setup, but it works pretty well.
They're not necessarily useless... I've got a Microsoft internet keyboard (I think that's what it's called). Not particularly nice in the way of action, but it's got 19 extra buttons (along with the usual windows keys). I've now got F1-F30, and a lot of tasks are made much nicer, just because of the shortcuts. I can touch one set of 8 buttons and instantly move to different workspaces, and can move windows between them by holding shift and hitting it. I have a number of quickload buttons - F13 is an Eterm, etcetc.. I can get at some things that are a pain to do with the mouse as well - opening up the sawfish root menu, for example, or pausing xmms. It's really quite nice to have the extra buttons, as long as they don't get in the way of the normal ones.
Now, if only the keys worked better... but they're not too bad.
As a help desk worker, I've thought this would be a nice thing to have many a time... but for it to work at all, a license would have to be valid for a year or so at most, at least the way technology changes today. Would an "internet knowledge test" from 5 years ago have a lot of relevance today? I rather doubt it.
To really be a responsible and competent net-user, it's not good enough to write a test once - you have to get some basic knowledge, and then use that to continually learn new things as they appear.
I've been dismayed lately to see that all the new programs seem to be for X only, and usually only work with a pile of gnome/kde libraries. I appreciate what these two projects are doing, but there's a lot about both of them that irks many people.
What I'd like to see is a push to bring some of the benefits that Gnome and KDE have brought software into the console application world. I frequently am stuck using a windows computer, and the only access to my machine is over a slow ssh link. Being able to check mail in mutt, news in slrn, etc... is wonderful, but if not being able to use a vaguely modern spreadsheet and word processor is a big hassle! I know there are things like latex and sc, but really, they're not in the same category as the openoffice tools.
Even simple little programs are hard to find - I've had to write my own program for managing finances, because the only alternatives are behemoths like gnucash, or else something like cbb that still requires X.
I'd like to see more programs built like licq, with a plugin UI system, so the same core program (with the same data and core preferences) can be used in text-mode, several different X guis, and some specialized automated modes, just by loading a different library. Doesn't even need to be recompiled!
A wp5-like UI for openoffice would be wonderful, if it worked like this!
Tea varies a lot, actually. Some tea actually has more caffeine per cup than most coffees, but most are significantly less. Depends on the variety though.
It's not a good thing for tendonitis and other sorts of RSI - as a musician, I have lots of friends with big problems with caffeine. It's very easy to have large amounts of tension when even a little bit of caffeine is involved, and that can lead to more serious injuries in the long term (not to mention it can really wreck your performance)
For low intrusion, the best I've seen is coolplayer. It's a tiny little player, released under GPL, and works very nicely, especially on old machines. For all that, it looks nice, is skinnable, and everything else you expect. Still under development, but very usable. The only thing I could really attempt using on an ancient computer I set up for a friend, but it's what I'd use all the time if I still used windows.
Debian is hard to install with less than 16 megs of ram. It's also horribly slow to mess with package installation on a slow computer with small amounts of ram - the packaging system wasn't designed for the 10,000 packages or whatever that are now in sid, and just parsing the database can take ages...
You might get by, but I think another distro might suit you better... Not sure which one - I'm still looking, myself.
Of course, relying on javascript is going to cause you at least as many headaches as the original.
I say let crappy software die. We shouldn't have to support the mistakes a company made 5 years ago.
It's one thing to force upgrades due to rampant featuritis, and the assumption that everyone NEEDS the latest and greatest version because everything else just sucks; it's quite another to require an upgrade when the old software is buggy and incomplete, and always was.
If someone insists on using those old browsers, I recommend they turn off style sheets completely, since the browsers don't REALLY support them.
Of course, the REALLY sad part is that the whole point is that different browsers SHOULDN'T display a given page identically. They should be free to do what they want, whether they put all the fonts twice as big, change the colours to suit the user, or just ignore all the formatting completely (yay links!)
Ideally, a browser is configurable that the user can be sure to see every page in a usable and nice way, so the web designer can mark up the page's structure, suggest some ways to display it, and then let the browser render it as it sees fit, ignoring the formatting completely if necessary, or just ignoring parts of it.
There are lots of kinds of album. Sure, the latest Britney Spears probably cost $1000000 to make, but not all musicians are Britney (thank God)
A friend of mine recorded a CD last year - don't know the exact cost, but I VERY much doubt she spent even $1000 (Canadian) for production. She printed a couple hundred of them, sold them all herself (word of mouth and selling at concerts + busking, mainly), and has now printed up a new batch.
Now, it's not a "professional" recording, but all things considered, it's damn good - better than most professional ones for sure.
It's never appeared in a major store, but why should it? This is the sort of recording that we could use more of, instead of the billions of overproduced things that are out there.
The idea of the bio is interesting, but a typical article can have hundreds of authors, some of whom did nothing but fix a typo or two. It makes things more complicated.
Ok.. that makes sense then. It's not C-32 from THIS session of parliament, but from several years ago... You might want to make that clear in the stories, silly people!
Montreal will be doing this as well, starting in February 2004. Right now, we already have two area codes - to make a local call from the 514 area code to the 450 area code, you need to dial all 10 digits. Next year, you'll have to dial all 10 no matter what local number you're calling.
Where's the text and info about bill c-32? I can't find any information at all on parl.gc.ca (Parliament's web page). The only copyright bill in the last session was C-11, and it only concerns the internet retransmissions, (IcraveTV.com, etc..) and not media levies.
There's no mention of C-32 at all in http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/bills.asp, and no bills would have passed in the past few weeks as parliament isn't back in session until the 27th!
Maybe I'm misunderstanding our government (wouldn't be the first time), or maybe the article isn't quite right?
Just so you know, Canada's copyright expires after just 50 years... odd how there's a fuss made about European copyrights expiring when the USA's largest trading partner has significantly shorter copyright dates...
50 years is still way too long, IMHO, but I'm glad I live here!
After a bit of thought, I realized that my minirant there focused on web-pages more than on the user-agents that this set of guidelines focuses on, but the same things apply in almost all cases.
Very true. Getting more web designers to follow these guidelines is good for EVERYONE, not just those with disabilities. If disabled people are able to view the page the way they *need* to, then everyone else is also able to view it the way they *want* to. The more the web is held up to the ideals of flexibility and customizability the better.
I personally almost always send a note to the owners of web pages that don't follow these guidelines - I don't think it often has much impact, but if more people did it, maybe it would. In any case, people making these bad web pages deserver to be bothered by people complaining about them! Whether it's because you need to be able to access it through a screen-reader, or you can't handle a mouse, or you just hate annoying javascript, guidelines like this can help you set up your browser to display the information and manipulate it in the way you choose, which is a good thing.
Turning on autorun is like telling the the third party that they now have your permission to send or receive information. If I run software on my computer, it's because I trust it enough to do so.
Now, if I don't know that it's running, or it shouldn't be running, (because it's doing so via a security hole, for example) it's a different story. But in this case, the computer owner has configured the computer to run software on CDs when they are inserted, and then he has inserted a CD.
Of course, debates on whether autorun should be ennabled by default are welcome - I know which side I would be on. But calling this "hacking your system" isn't very accurate.
On the other hand, you DO control your computer, and can and SHOULD be careful about what you run on it. In this case, simply turning off the ridiculously stupid autorun when you put in CDs is enough to foil whatever the cd does when you insert it.
Same goes with javascript and ad popups - just turn them off! It's your computer!
Sure, there are conveniences that you lose in doing that, but many conveniences come with security risks and other annoyances. It's just like the security problems with Outlook autorunning attachments and scripts all the time - it's a ridiculous way of writing software, and never should have been included, and anyone with a clue either turns it all off or gets a different mail program. For some reason, people don't see javascript and autorun and similar things in the same way. I do.
From the article: "The one common principle is simple and almost globally applicable: with few exceptions, you need the copyright holder's permission if you want to make new copies or create a work deriving from the author's work within seventy years of the author's death."
Interestingly enough, the US's largest trade partner doesn't follow this "almost globally applicable" rule! Canada's copyright law lasts for only 50 years after the author's death. Makes me want to buy up some bandwidth and host some old movie archives! Why hasn't this been done before, here or in other countries with less-ridiculous copyright terms?
On the other hand, you could say that things are constantly dropping out of the Public Domain - not because restrictions appear on them, but simply because they disappear! If the single copy of a book gets burnt in a fire, it's gone.
In a "normal" scenario, these losses are replaced at a steady pace (at the very least) by new works coming into the PD, but with the copyright freeze, we don't have anything new appearing.
Even if you can legally use something, doesn't mean it's practically feasible.
Of course, rtf is a very limited format - it lacks stuff that you really need to even a simple academic paper. (as does abiword, I might add)
We could really use something between rtf/ascii and ps/pdf files - editable, but still cross-platform, and preferably usable by many different programs. OO's format is a good start, but it won't really help matters until more things support it - in MS land, but also in linuxland.
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No idea about the other stuff, but their classical lineup is surprisingly good, and features several big names - Trevor Pinnock and the English concert, Lara St. John, Ensemble Sonnerie, etc etc... Of course, the selection's not huge, but for something that's just starting, it's amazing what people they've got on there already.
I'd like to see some jazz on there too, but it's a very good start.
I agree - reading on a monitor while sitting at a desk is not the comfiest thing to do. I recently set up an old semi-dead 386 laptop as a dumb terminal (it wasn't easy to find a null-modem cable these days!) connecting with kermit, and can at least read in bed now. It's surprisingly comfy for things like this that I don't need all the graphics and stuff for. Just using 'less' on texts from Project Gutenberg has worked pretty well, and I run it in a screen session so that I don't lose my place and have to search around to find it each time I want to read. Not the most elegant setup, but it works pretty well.
They're not necessarily useless... I've got a Microsoft internet keyboard (I think that's what it's called). Not particularly nice in the way of action, but it's got 19 extra buttons (along with the usual windows keys). I've now got F1-F30, and a lot of tasks are made much nicer, just because of the shortcuts. I can touch one set of 8 buttons and instantly move to different workspaces, and can move windows between them by holding shift and hitting it. I have a number of quickload buttons - F13 is an Eterm, etcetc.. I can get at some things that are a pain to do with the mouse as well - opening up the sawfish root menu, for example, or pausing xmms. It's really quite nice to have the extra buttons, as long as they don't get in the way of the normal ones.
Now, if only the keys worked better... but they're not too bad.
As a help desk worker, I've thought this would be a nice thing to have many a time... but for it to work at all, a license would have to be valid for a year or so at most, at least the way technology changes today. Would an "internet knowledge test" from 5 years ago have a lot of relevance today? I rather doubt it.
To really be a responsible and competent net-user, it's not good enough to write a test once - you have to get some basic knowledge, and then use that to continually learn new things as they appear.
I've been dismayed lately to see that all the new programs seem to be for X only, and usually only work with a pile of gnome/kde libraries. I appreciate what these two projects are doing, but there's a lot about both of them that irks many people.
What I'd like to see is a push to bring some of the benefits that Gnome and KDE have brought software into the console application world. I frequently am stuck using a windows computer, and the only access to my machine is over a slow ssh link. Being able to check mail in mutt, news in slrn, etc... is wonderful, but if not being able to use a vaguely modern spreadsheet and word processor is a big hassle! I know there are things like latex and sc, but really, they're not in the same category as the openoffice tools.
Even simple little programs are hard to find - I've had to write my own program for managing finances, because the only alternatives are behemoths like gnucash, or else something like cbb that still requires X.
I'd like to see more programs built like licq, with a plugin UI system, so the same core program (with the same data and core preferences) can be used in text-mode, several different X guis, and some specialized automated modes, just by loading a different library. Doesn't even need to be recompiled!
A wp5-like UI for openoffice would be wonderful, if it worked like this!
Tea varies a lot, actually. Some tea actually has more caffeine per cup than most coffees, but most are significantly less. Depends on the variety though.
It's not a good thing for tendonitis and other sorts of RSI - as a musician, I have lots of friends with big problems with caffeine. It's very easy to have large amounts of tension when even a little bit of caffeine is involved, and that can lead to more serious injuries in the long term (not to mention it can really wreck your performance)
For low intrusion, the best I've seen is coolplayer. It's a tiny little player, released under GPL, and works very nicely, especially on old machines. For all that, it looks nice, is skinnable, and everything else you expect. Still under development, but very usable. The only thing I could really attempt using on an ancient computer I set up for a friend, but it's what I'd use all the time if I still used windows.
Debian is hard to install with less than 16 megs of ram. It's also horribly slow to mess with package installation on a slow computer with small amounts of ram - the packaging system wasn't designed for the 10,000 packages or whatever that are now in sid, and just parsing the database can take ages...
You might get by, but I think another distro might suit you better... Not sure which one - I'm still looking, myself.
Of course, relying on javascript is going to cause you at least as many headaches as the original.
I say let crappy software die. We shouldn't have to support the mistakes a company made 5 years ago.
It's one thing to force upgrades due to rampant featuritis, and the assumption that everyone NEEDS the latest and greatest version because everything else just sucks; it's quite another to require an upgrade when the old software is buggy and incomplete, and always was.
If someone insists on using those old browsers, I recommend they turn off style sheets completely, since the browsers don't REALLY support them.
Of course, the REALLY sad part is that the whole point is that different browsers SHOULDN'T display a given page identically. They should be free to do what they want, whether they put all the fonts twice as big, change the colours to suit the user, or just ignore all the formatting completely (yay links!)
Ideally, a browser is configurable that the user can be sure to see every page in a usable and nice way, so the web designer can mark up the page's structure, suggest some ways to display it, and then let the browser render it as it sees fit, ignoring the formatting completely if necessary, or just ignoring parts of it.
There are lots of kinds of album. Sure, the latest Britney Spears probably cost $1000000 to make, but not all musicians are Britney (thank God)
A friend of mine recorded a CD last year - don't know the exact cost, but I VERY much doubt she spent even $1000 (Canadian) for production. She printed a couple hundred of them, sold them all herself (word of mouth and selling at concerts + busking, mainly), and has now printed up a new batch.
Now, it's not a "professional" recording, but all things considered, it's damn good - better than most professional ones for sure.
It's never appeared in a major store, but why should it? This is the sort of recording that we could use more of, instead of the billions of overproduced things that are out there.
The idea of the bio is interesting, but a typical article can have hundreds of authors, some of whom did nothing but fix a typo or two. It makes things more complicated.
Ok.. that makes sense then. It's not C-32 from THIS session of parliament, but from several years ago... You might want to make that clear in the stories, silly people!
Montreal will be doing this as well, starting in February 2004. Right now, we already have two area codes - to make a local call from the 514 area code to the 450 area code, you need to dial all 10 digits. Next year, you'll have to dial all 10 no matter what local number you're calling.
Where's the text and info about bill c-32? I can't find any information at all on parl.gc.ca (Parliament's web page). The only copyright bill in the last session was C-11, and it only concerns the internet retransmissions, (IcraveTV.com, etc..) and not media levies.
There's no mention of C-32 at all in http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/bills.asp, and no bills would have passed in the past few weeks as parliament isn't back in session until the 27th!
Maybe I'm misunderstanding our government (wouldn't be the first time), or maybe the article isn't quite right?
Just so you know, Canada's copyright expires after just 50 years... odd how there's a fuss made about European copyrights expiring when the USA's largest trading partner has significantly shorter copyright dates...
50 years is still way too long, IMHO, but I'm glad I live here!
After a bit of thought, I realized that my minirant there focused on web-pages more than on the user-agents that this set of guidelines focuses on, but the same things apply in almost all cases.
Very true. Getting more web designers to follow these guidelines is good for EVERYONE, not just those with disabilities. If disabled people are able to view the page the way they *need* to, then everyone else is also able to view it the way they *want* to. The more the web is held up to the ideals of flexibility and customizability the better.
I personally almost always send a note to the owners of web pages that don't follow these guidelines - I don't think it often has much impact, but if more people did it, maybe it would. In any case, people making these bad web pages deserver to be bothered by people complaining about them! Whether it's because you need to be able to access it through a screen-reader, or you can't handle a mouse, or you just hate annoying javascript, guidelines like this can help you set up your browser to display the information and manipulate it in the way you choose, which is a good thing.
Turning on autorun is like telling the the third party that they now have your permission to send or receive information. If I run software on my computer, it's because I trust it enough to do so.
Now, if I don't know that it's running, or it shouldn't be running, (because it's doing so via a security hole, for example) it's a different story. But in this case, the computer owner has configured the computer to run software on CDs when they are inserted, and then he has inserted a CD.
Of course, debates on whether autorun should be ennabled by default are welcome - I know which side I would be on. But calling this "hacking your system" isn't very accurate.
On the other hand, you DO control your computer, and can and SHOULD be careful about what you run on it. In this case, simply turning off the ridiculously stupid autorun when you put in CDs is enough to foil whatever the cd does when you insert it.
Same goes with javascript and ad popups - just turn them off! It's your computer!
Sure, there are conveniences that you lose in doing that, but many conveniences come with security risks and other annoyances. It's just like the security problems with Outlook autorunning attachments and scripts all the time - it's a ridiculous way of writing software, and never should have been included, and anyone with a clue either turns it all off or gets a different mail program. For some reason, people don't see javascript and autorun and similar things in the same way. I do.
I expect galeon can run much faster in some situations because the gnome libraries are already loaded if you're running other gnome programs.
From the article: "The one common principle is simple and almost globally applicable: with few exceptions, you need the copyright holder's permission if you want to make new copies or create a work deriving from the author's work within seventy years of the author's death."
Interestingly enough, the US's largest trade partner doesn't follow this "almost globally applicable" rule! Canada's copyright law lasts for only 50 years after the author's death. Makes me want to buy up some bandwidth and host some old movie archives! Why hasn't this been done before, here or in other countries with less-ridiculous copyright terms?
On the other hand, you could say that things are constantly dropping out of the Public Domain - not because restrictions appear on them, but simply because they disappear! If the single copy of a book gets burnt in a fire, it's gone.
In a "normal" scenario, these losses are replaced at a steady pace (at the very least) by new works coming into the PD, but with the copyright freeze, we don't have anything new appearing.
Even if you can legally use something, doesn't mean it's practically feasible.
Of course, rtf is a very limited format - it lacks stuff that you really need to even a simple academic paper. (as does abiword, I might add)
We could really use something between rtf/ascii and ps/pdf files - editable, but still cross-platform, and preferably usable by many different programs. OO's format is a good start, but it won't really help matters until more things support it - in MS land, but also in linuxland.