I've been using Debain for about six months now on my desktop PC, with almost no complaints. From an admin perspective, apt is great. One problem I've had, though, is that it's not very dialup friendly, and unfortunately due to various circumstances at the moment I'm stuck with a 56k connection.
I'm not referring the sizes of packages being downloaded. That's always going to be an issue with a dialup connection but I can at least make special allowances for when I want to grab something big.
The bigger problem for me is simply updating the apt-get package lists. Any time that I want to update, even if it's only to check for new packages and grab one or two, I have to wait for at least 3 MB of downloads simply to get the new package lists. In my case it's between 5 and 6 MB because I'm running a combination of testing and unstable.
A great improvement to apt from my perspective would be for it to handle diffs. If diffs of the packages could be stored on the servers so that apt could download the correct diff if it were available, even if it were just for the previous week or so, it'd save me lots much time in waiting for downloads.
Has anyone else noticed or had a problem with this? Maybe I'm missing an easy way out.
Mouse gestures are much faster than pie menus, but as I said, they have different uses, and pie menus are supposed to be slower, because you select your action, rather than perform it quickly.
I'm not sure if you're speaking from experience, but this hasn't been my experience at all. Pie menus are just mouse gestures with visual guides available. I frequently use pie menus as mouse gestures in mozilla without looking at the menu. In cases when I'm quick enough, within probably a few tenths of a second, the menu doesn't even need to display. Pie menus aren't slower for me, because most of the time that I use them they're equivalent to mouse gestures.
The key difference, when implemented well, is that pie menus give you some guidance when you decide to do something unusual that you haven't memorised.
I can't comment about the US with any authority, but it sounds like it's similar to New Zealand (where I am).
Here, you can't prevent people from using common words but you can still trademark them as trade names. This was in the local news several years ago when someone managed to trademark the word "Millenium".
It didn't mean that nobody could use the word Millenium. It didn't even mean that people couldn't use it for routine commercial use. (eg. "There will be a huge sale to mark the new millenium.") What it did mean is that nobody else could create a product or whatever called "Millenium".
I was considering upgrading my ageing win98 OS to XP using the student licencing system through my university. (Free Microsoft licences for students, etc etc.)
Then I read the agreement and discovered that I wasn't allowed to keep the CD, and that was the end of it. There's absolutely no way I'll install an operating system on my PC if I'm not allowed to keep the installation software. There was also the unease in locking myself into being forced to pay lots of money as soon as I'm no longer a student. ie. It's not really free, only delaying the payment.
Within a couple of weeks I'd killed Windows altogether, and I took the opportunity to migrate properly to linux -- which I've been trying and failing to do for various reasons over the last five years or so. Now I'm happily running Debian on the desktop, and it's been going great.
I posit that Linux developers have something rather important on the line; their reputations, professional and personal.
I'd start by pointing out that even if Microsoft perhaps should be in trouble for shoddy software, it's not as if they don't get away with it. Consider what you actually get if you complain to Microsoft or request a new feature. Normally it's nothing. Microsoft has effectively avoided most public criticism about recent security exploits by simply saying "Sorry, that's just how computers are." Because most people simply don't comprehend a "computer" as anything other than running Windows software, they get away with it.
That said, open source software shouldn't need to make up excuses or reasons about being responsible for software. It just works... or sometimes it doesn't. but how is that different from other products?
If it doesn't work then stop using it if there's a better alternative. But more often than not any reasonable evaluation by a potential customer would reveal that the developers behind the majority of major open source products are much more reponsive and communicative about bugs and issues and how they're dealing (or not dealing) with things than Microsoft, or many similar big corporates.
If OSS is to be justified, there shouldn't be a need to try to invent strategies for countering Microsoft's FUD. It's already not fact, OSS already has responsible people behind it and (IMHO) they do a much better job than the majority of their closed source commercial counterparts. Just point this out.
It means that we don't know what the other 16% answered. Without seeing the details of the survey, it's completely reasonable that 16% of CIO's either didn't respond to the survey or never had plans to implement Linux in the first place, which in my mind is much more likely.
I don't want to specifically attack Sun with this comment, but...
Watching competition between different desktops is about as exciting as watching competition between the Democans and the Republicrats.
Most desktops copy each other and have no serious differences. They're all competing for the middle ground, either because their developers don't want to innovate any more (due to time constraints or other reasons) or because they're hoping that people might switch as the new isn't really revolutionary from the old.
To name a few, KDE, Windows (any version), Gnome, MacOS, WindowMaker, and so on, all have the same basic features.
They're all built around moveable and often re-sizable windows for each application that occupy space on the desktop.
They all use menus.
They all have dialogue boxes, often modal and annoying (although that's changing).
They all have a desktop background.
They mostly use icons in similar ways to represent and sometimes launch applications. (At least the more recent ones do -- now that there's something to copy.)
They all support a mouse that can typically be used to drag things around and activate them. Dragging application windows is metaphorically analygous to manipulating bits of paper on the tops of piles by gripping the edges with a single finger.
In other words, they're all designed to be the same and to only have niche differences. Consequently, they're all falling into the same general traps that come with these similar ways of doing things.
To name an example, I'd love to see a less modal window manager that tried to do away with overlapping windows. Currently one of my biggest gripes with using nearly any computer desktop is the ability to lose windows behind other windows and lose track of what state things are in.
If a window manager allows switching windows and seeing what's running by looking at and clicking on the visible windows, then people will do that. (And I frequently do.) The problem is that the whole action of doing so then becomes very ambiguous, because the ability to switch applications is somewhat randomly dependent on how much of the window is visible.
How long until we actually see some real innovation with desktops where they aren't just copying each other and making the same mistakes?
Many years after the Internet, Amazon and all, were live and kicking. Prior art existed; why in the hell did they get that patent?
I'm becoming more and more convinced that prior art isn't the issue with software patents, and much more should be considered than what is currently. In the case you point out there was prior art, but this isn't always the case with software patents. Sometimes they're just small extensions to ideas that already exist. (Think one-click shopping, for example, which is just another business application for existing technology.)
In the context of physical invention, it's actually plausible to have a patent that spans a number of years. This is a reasonable time for someone to be able to take their idea, develop it, market it and make money from it. Most likely however, with a few exceptions that should be picked up by the patent office, it's not very likely that someone else will develop the same solution to the same problem within a short time. This is not true with software.
One of the biggest problem with software patents is that they last for a length of time that's dis-proportionate to the software development medium in which they restrict. Technology and software ideas in particular is moving as a phenomenal pace compared with physical invention. It'd make more sense for software patents to last no longer than a year or two at most, and that's being generous.
Software patents are completely different. Technology advances and people immedaitely have ideas to take advantage of the improved technology. But if you have a great idea about how to use new technology in an innovative way, it's likely that other people will also have the same idea completely independently. If they don't have that idea before you, then they'll probably have it within a short time.
The problem is that even though both people develop and market their idea, it's only the first person who can get the patent.
I suppose the biggest problem here is that most software patents are trivial, even if it's not obvious at the time. The fact that within a short space of time most software ideas are likely to be duplicated independently should demonstrate that awarding them to one person for such a long time is just silly.
If software patents are to exist, then they should also take into account just how rapidly things change and how quickly people independently come to the same conclusions and ways of doing things. Something trivial in software is different from something trivial in physical-world inventions. It shouldn't just be prior art that matters with software patents. Future art that is developed within some reasonable time span should also be considered.
RMS said that Free Software developers seem to do a better job. This may be because of peer review, or even the threat of peer review etc.
This is probably true. Even though I'm not currently an active open source developer, I've always really enjoyed how easy it is to be involved in the process and give feedback.
If I find a bug or disagree with how something works, I can usually communicate directly with the developers instead of having to go through a marketing/helpdesk shield whose main job is to stop me from telling those people where things are broken. At worst, the developers will probably tell me that they're not going to fix something, in which case I at least know that they're aware of it.
Bugzilla's a great example of involving users in the development process. One of the reasons that Mozilla is becoming such a neat browser is that hte developers have direct contact with the users... and they don't have to respond to every problem (since obviously not everyone has good ideas or knows what they're talking about), but they at least know what the issues are.
Personally, I find it sickening that schools (here in the UK at least) are teaching lessons as what amount to "Microsoft Office Classes"...
I can't speak about schools where it would probably make more sense, but I've witnessed this fall over at university level.
When I was an undergrad between about 1997 and 2000, our computer science department used to provide a course for people who didn't really want to get into computer science, but just wanted to learn to use computers. Instead of the unix and NetBSD workstations used everywhere else, there were two Macintosh labs set aside for this purpose, as it was a very popular course for people who'd never touched computers before. Basically (as I was helping tutor it) we used Clarisworks to try and teach the concepts of what the different tools were, what they should be used for, and how to use them properly. (eg. Using cell references in spreadsheets instead of duplicating information.)
Eventually during this time, there were more and more people taking the course who'd actually used computers elsewhere, and less people who were getting their first taste of computers. This led to more people complaining that they wanted to know how to do things using the Microsoft products that were actually used rather than the useless products like ClarisWorks.
Eventually the "evil" Commerce faculty, through the emerging Information Systems department, started offering a Windows/Office tutorial course on the other side of the campus, and a lot of people started going there. Basically we threw in the towel at that point and stopped offering the COMP course because it was clear that regular users just didn't want it, even if it was offerred. As long as Microsoft was going to have a monopoly on everything, everyone just wanted to learn things on Microsoft products.
Re:Forget destroying them, I'm more worried about.
on
NYT on RFID
·
· Score: 1
4: What happens when the stores decide paper money is antequated and require credit cards only? Don't tell me it won't happen either.
I don't know what the situation is in the US, but definitely in some countries (such as New Zealand, where I am), it would at least take an act of legislation for that to happen.
One of the legal requirements here, as I understand it, is that if you're running a business and you place a monetary price on an item or service, you're legally required to accept paper cash as payment if the customer wants to pay that way. Telling someone that they're required to pay by credit card isn't legal. If you're able to negotiate a more convenient method of payment with the customer such as a form of bank deposit (cheque, credit card, EFTPOS, etc) then that's fine, but you have to be prepared to accept cash if the customer walks up with a suitcase holding enough of it.
I'm not sure of the reason for this... whether it's a privacy issue or something else that co-incidentally happens to be there. I'm also not sure how it works with things like mail and internet sales. It might be that it's still on the burden of the customer to get you the cash within reason, but I wouldn't really have a clue.
I disagree with your first point if only because twice is equivalent to several. Plus the bio itself is what makes it appear that @Stake has something to do with his opinion. Thanks for pointing out that sentance on page three -- I'd missed it completely and I stand corrected. It still seems inadequately informal though
That aside, I still think it looks irresponsible, since his employer obviously has a stake in the response to the report, yet without having asked permission from his employer there's still no clear attempt to distance himself.
Did he do this on his own, or as an @stake employee?
The report itself stated quite clearly in several places that Dr Geer was the Chief Technical Officer of @Stake.
I can't find a disclaimer anywhere in the report saying that he wasn't representing @Stake, and yet he used it to back up his authoritarian position, and intentional or not it appear that he was speaking on behalf of the company he worked for.
Perhaps more details will emerge about what actually went on, but it does seem quite irresponsible to make it appear that you're speaking on behalf of a company if you're not... if that's what happened.
You convinced me into doing some research, and everything out there seems to suggest that it's quite an incredible word processor. Consequently I'm surprised that there doesn't seem to be any open source clone, which is a shame, and that everyone who still likes it seems to be going to great lengths to run the ancient DOS version on modern systems.
Do you have any idea if there are any open source apps out there that are trying to clone or work like XyWrite? I simply haven't been able to find any after a moderate search.
What sort of monetary damages is this action by Verisign incurring for people and businesses everywhere?
Verisign's action was most probably intended for web traffic, where it's at least an annoyance. But since the DNS is an independent system from the web that's used by all sorts of services, it's undoubtedly breaking all sorts of non-web things out there that rely on knowing accurately if a domain name exists... not to mention all of the additional maintenance time. Email and spam filters are the two that seem to've been brought up a lot.
So far I've seen a lot of people getting mad and I am too, but I haven't seen anyone actually state how much they're losing due to the sudden change and breaking of standards by Verisign. Is anyone confident to put an amount on this?
Programmer makes 80K a year. Boss thinks, "gee, I can hire a guest worker for 50K a year instead". So. Boss gets 30K more a year, guest workter gets $50K a year. And American looses his job.
Why can't American accept 50K instead of 80K? If a foreigner in America can live on it then an American should certainly be able to.
The cost of living in the US has become disproportionately high compared with the rest of the world. People overseas who move to the US often haven't been living in poverty. They simply get huge salaries if they can find work in the US compared with another country.
In New Zealand where I am, for example, which is a perfectly okay OECD country that probably has less poverty and a better health/education system than the USA, an opening developer salary would be on the order of US$17K. It's difficult travelling to the US on that salary (without picking up work on the way), but locally it's not a bad amount to live on.
In a true global trade market, people in the US would be able to move to other places, and vice-versa, where there's work and where the cost of living is cheaper. They would also be able to work for a living there without any silly restrictions imposed by governments. Wages are lower in some places, but that doesn't mean poverty unless the cost of living is high and there are labour movement restrictions.
I work that way a lot, too. One place where it's obvious is in me rarely using bookmarks for web pages. Instead, I use the url dropdown in my web browser where my most commonly and frequently visited websites are nearly always near the top without me having to actively bother saying I want them to be there.
It falls over a little for less frequent things, like interesting websites that don't get updated very often and so I forget to go back to them.
Re:google censorship
on
Google Turns 5
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The third party is the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, and Google puts up a statement at the bottom of the page pointing at this notice.
I agree entirely, but I'd prefer it if google put the notice at the top of the results instead of the bottom. How frequently do you scroll to the end of a page of search results?
The real reason the antenna broke was politics
on
Goodbye, Galileo
·
· Score: 1
Galileo was equipped with a high-bandwidth communications link capable of doing a much better job with image transmission, but its antenna failed to deploy.
It's worth pointing out that although the reason the high gain antenna failed was because it didn't unfold properly, the reason that it had to unfold in the first place was more related to politics.
Galileo had to be designed to fit into the shuttle cargo bay, and then propel itself out of orbit after being let loose and placed into space, because various political heavyweights had decided that the shuttle should be used to launch it. Making the antenna foldable added even more complexity to an already incredibly complex machine. Having the launch delayed due to Challenger exploding just added to the complexity of the whole operation, and the antenna failed.
The Cassini probe, later launched to Saturn, was designed with a fixed antenna that didn't need to unfold, and launched from the top of a much more suitable rocket. It hasn't suffered anywhere near the same sorts of problems because it simply doesn't have as much complexity that can potentially break.
I was listening to the inventor (or at least the guy whose main idea it was) speaking on the radio this morning. He's actually a New Zealander, and initially went to Detroit to consult various auto engineers about his ideas. After a certain point though, he couldn't find the right mix of experience and qualifications in the USA for what he was trying to do. That's how he ended up going to the UK to develop and build the thing.
I dont think many drivers would go for a car that drives for them, but something that makes merging into fast/dangerous traffic would be greatly appreciated.
It's too bad, because if people and infrastructures were convinced to support it, more intelligent cars would help to solve a lot of traffic problems. It'll probably happen eventually, but only after someone eventually does it and everyone sees how useful it is.
There are certain driving tasks that computers simply can't perform, such as around town with spontaneous pedestrians and so on. But driving on most parts of the open road isn't quite as complicated, as long as it's sufficiently protected from the less predictible events that occur around populated areas. If specially designed cars were able to join a road that only allowed other such cars to use it, then travel would be much faster and much safer. When entering the open road network, the driver would become a passenger.
Computers react more quickly and more accurately than humans and they can be given more information about the surrounding road than people can. Consequently it would be possible to safely have much faster speeds and much closer following distances, fitting more traffic on the road and moving it much more efficiently and safely than human drivers ever could. Translation: Far fewer traffic jams and people having more time to spend doing other things.
As much as they might like to, Microsoft can't control how we think about abstract problems. If you learn about linked lists using Visual C++, vi and gcc, or pascal and EDT, you are STILL learning about linked lists.
I agree with you about the main point of what's learned in computer science. In my comp-sci degree, I also consider the abstract concepts that I learned as much more important than the day-to-day software that we were using to learn it. I disagree with your post as a whole, however, since I think the software and tools used can and do have an impact on the learning environment.
By paying out large sums of money and heavily subsidising courses, Microsoft is hampering the independence of the university staff to make the best possible choice of tools for teaching a quality course.
There's certainly an argument that because Microsoft is giving lots of money for its software to be used, it's lowering the fees that I might have to pay and somehow increasing quality in other areas. On the other hand, this is penalising potential makers of higher quality academic software simply because they can't afford to bribe with larger amounts than Microsoft can, and it's penalising students who might not get as useful-a-learning-environment because of it.
...and therefore very out of date. That would put it in the class of Windows 95, which never had an especially good UI by anyone's standards except Microsoft and people who prefer eye candy over effectiveness.
Slashdot Mirror
Well it has that new revolutionary file format. Surely that has to count for something!
I've been using Debain for about six months now on my desktop PC, with almost no complaints. From an admin perspective, apt is great. One problem I've had, though, is that it's not very dialup friendly, and unfortunately due to various circumstances at the moment I'm stuck with a 56k connection.
I'm not referring the sizes of packages being downloaded. That's always going to be an issue with a dialup connection but I can at least make special allowances for when I want to grab something big.
The bigger problem for me is simply updating the apt-get package lists. Any time that I want to update, even if it's only to check for new packages and grab one or two, I have to wait for at least 3 MB of downloads simply to get the new package lists. In my case it's between 5 and 6 MB because I'm running a combination of testing and unstable.
A great improvement to apt from my perspective would be for it to handle diffs. If diffs of the packages could be stored on the servers so that apt could download the correct diff if it were available, even if it were just for the previous week or so, it'd save me lots much time in waiting for downloads.
Has anyone else noticed or had a problem with this? Maybe I'm missing an easy way out.
I'm not sure if you're speaking from experience, but this hasn't been my experience at all. Pie menus are just mouse gestures with visual guides available. I frequently use pie menus as mouse gestures in mozilla without looking at the menu. In cases when I'm quick enough, within probably a few tenths of a second, the menu doesn't even need to display. Pie menus aren't slower for me, because most of the time that I use them they're equivalent to mouse gestures.
The key difference, when implemented well, is that pie menus give you some guidance when you decide to do something unusual that you haven't memorised.
I can't comment about the US with any authority, but it sounds like it's similar to New Zealand (where I am).
Here, you can't prevent people from using common words but you can still trademark them as trade names. This was in the local news several years ago when someone managed to trademark the word "Millenium".
It didn't mean that nobody could use the word Millenium. It didn't even mean that people couldn't use it for routine commercial use. (eg. "There will be a huge sale to mark the new millenium.") What it did mean is that nobody else could create a product or whatever called "Millenium".
I was considering upgrading my ageing win98 OS to XP using the student licencing system through my university. (Free Microsoft licences for students, etc etc.)
Then I read the agreement and discovered that I wasn't allowed to keep the CD, and that was the end of it. There's absolutely no way I'll install an operating system on my PC if I'm not allowed to keep the installation software. There was also the unease in locking myself into being forced to pay lots of money as soon as I'm no longer a student. ie. It's not really free, only delaying the payment.
Within a couple of weeks I'd killed Windows altogether, and I took the opportunity to migrate properly to linux -- which I've been trying and failing to do for various reasons over the last five years or so. Now I'm happily running Debian on the desktop, and it's been going great.
I'd start by pointing out that even if Microsoft perhaps should be in trouble for shoddy software, it's not as if they don't get away with it. Consider what you actually get if you complain to Microsoft or request a new feature. Normally it's nothing. Microsoft has effectively avoided most public criticism about recent security exploits by simply saying "Sorry, that's just how computers are." Because most people simply don't comprehend a "computer" as anything other than running Windows software, they get away with it.
That said, open source software shouldn't need to make up excuses or reasons about being responsible for software. It just works... or sometimes it doesn't. but how is that different from other products?
If it doesn't work then stop using it if there's a better alternative. But more often than not any reasonable evaluation by a potential customer would reveal that the developers behind the majority of major open source products are much more reponsive and communicative about bugs and issues and how they're dealing (or not dealing) with things than Microsoft, or many similar big corporates.
If OSS is to be justified, there shouldn't be a need to try to invent strategies for countering Microsoft's FUD. It's already not fact, OSS already has responsible people behind it and (IMHO) they do a much better job than the majority of their closed source commercial counterparts. Just point this out.
It means that we don't know what the other 16% answered. Without seeing the details of the survey, it's completely reasonable that 16% of CIO's either didn't respond to the survey or never had plans to implement Linux in the first place, which in my mind is much more likely.
Wouldn't that be almost like free trade?
Good luck!
I don't want to specifically attack Sun with this comment, but...
Watching competition between different desktops is about as exciting as watching competition between the Democans and the Republicrats.
Most desktops copy each other and have no serious differences. They're all competing for the middle ground, either because their developers don't want to innovate any more (due to time constraints or other reasons) or because they're hoping that people might switch as the new isn't really revolutionary from the old.
To name a few, KDE, Windows (any version), Gnome, MacOS, WindowMaker, and so on, all have the same basic features.
In other words, they're all designed to be the same and to only have niche differences. Consequently, they're all falling into the same general traps that come with these similar ways of doing things.
To name an example, I'd love to see a less modal window manager that tried to do away with overlapping windows. Currently one of my biggest gripes with using nearly any computer desktop is the ability to lose windows behind other windows and lose track of what state things are in.
If a window manager allows switching windows and seeing what's running by looking at and clicking on the visible windows, then people will do that. (And I frequently do.) The problem is that the whole action of doing so then becomes very ambiguous, because the ability to switch applications is somewhat randomly dependent on how much of the window is visible.
How long until we actually see some real innovation with desktops where they aren't just copying each other and making the same mistakes?
I'm becoming more and more convinced that prior art isn't the issue with software patents, and much more should be considered than what is currently. In the case you point out there was prior art, but this isn't always the case with software patents. Sometimes they're just small extensions to ideas that already exist. (Think one-click shopping, for example, which is just another business application for existing technology.)
In the context of physical invention, it's actually plausible to have a patent that spans a number of years. This is a reasonable time for someone to be able to take their idea, develop it, market it and make money from it. Most likely however, with a few exceptions that should be picked up by the patent office, it's not very likely that someone else will develop the same solution to the same problem within a short time. This is not true with software.
One of the biggest problem with software patents is that they last for a length of time that's dis-proportionate to the software development medium in which they restrict. Technology and software ideas in particular is moving as a phenomenal pace compared with physical invention. It'd make more sense for software patents to last no longer than a year or two at most, and that's being generous.
Software patents are completely different. Technology advances and people immedaitely have ideas to take advantage of the improved technology. But if you have a great idea about how to use new technology in an innovative way, it's likely that other people will also have the same idea completely independently. If they don't have that idea before you, then they'll probably have it within a short time.
The problem is that even though both people develop and market their idea, it's only the first person who can get the patent.
I suppose the biggest problem here is that most software patents are trivial, even if it's not obvious at the time. The fact that within a short space of time most software ideas are likely to be duplicated independently should demonstrate that awarding them to one person for such a long time is just silly.
If software patents are to exist, then they should also take into account just how rapidly things change and how quickly people independently come to the same conclusions and ways of doing things. Something trivial in software is different from something trivial in physical-world inventions. It shouldn't just be prior art that matters with software patents. Future art that is developed within some reasonable time span should also be considered.
This is probably true. Even though I'm not currently an active open source developer, I've always really enjoyed how easy it is to be involved in the process and give feedback.
If I find a bug or disagree with how something works, I can usually communicate directly with the developers instead of having to go through a marketing/helpdesk shield whose main job is to stop me from telling those people where things are broken. At worst, the developers will probably tell me that they're not going to fix something, in which case I at least know that they're aware of it.
Bugzilla's a great example of involving users in the development process. One of the reasons that Mozilla is becoming such a neat browser is that hte developers have direct contact with the users... and they don't have to respond to every problem (since obviously not everyone has good ideas or knows what they're talking about), but they at least know what the issues are.
I can't speak about schools where it would probably make more sense, but I've witnessed this fall over at university level.
When I was an undergrad between about 1997 and 2000, our computer science department used to provide a course for people who didn't really want to get into computer science, but just wanted to learn to use computers. Instead of the unix and NetBSD workstations used everywhere else, there were two Macintosh labs set aside for this purpose, as it was a very popular course for people who'd never touched computers before. Basically (as I was helping tutor it) we used Clarisworks to try and teach the concepts of what the different tools were, what they should be used for, and how to use them properly. (eg. Using cell references in spreadsheets instead of duplicating information.)
Eventually during this time, there were more and more people taking the course who'd actually used computers elsewhere, and less people who were getting their first taste of computers. This led to more people complaining that they wanted to know how to do things using the Microsoft products that were actually used rather than the useless products like ClarisWorks.
Eventually the "evil" Commerce faculty, through the emerging Information Systems department, started offering a Windows/Office tutorial course on the other side of the campus, and a lot of people started going there. Basically we threw in the towel at that point and stopped offering the COMP course because it was clear that regular users just didn't want it, even if it was offerred. As long as Microsoft was going to have a monopoly on everything, everyone just wanted to learn things on Microsoft products.
I don't know what the situation is in the US, but definitely in some countries (such as New Zealand, where I am), it would at least take an act of legislation for that to happen.
One of the legal requirements here, as I understand it, is that if you're running a business and you place a monetary price on an item or service, you're legally required to accept paper cash as payment if the customer wants to pay that way. Telling someone that they're required to pay by credit card isn't legal. If you're able to negotiate a more convenient method of payment with the customer such as a form of bank deposit (cheque, credit card, EFTPOS, etc) then that's fine, but you have to be prepared to accept cash if the customer walks up with a suitcase holding enough of it.
I'm not sure of the reason for this... whether it's a privacy issue or something else that co-incidentally happens to be there. I'm also not sure how it works with things like mail and internet sales. It might be that it's still on the burden of the customer to get you the cash within reason, but I wouldn't really have a clue.
I disagree with your first point if only because twice is equivalent to several. Plus the bio itself is what makes it appear that @Stake has something to do with his opinion. Thanks for pointing out that sentance on page three -- I'd missed it completely and I stand corrected. It still seems inadequately informal though
That aside, I still think it looks irresponsible, since his employer obviously has a stake in the response to the report, yet without having asked permission from his employer there's still no clear attempt to distance himself.
The report itself stated quite clearly in several places that Dr Geer was the Chief Technical Officer of @Stake.
I can't find a disclaimer anywhere in the report saying that he wasn't representing @Stake, and yet he used it to back up his authoritarian position, and intentional or not it appear that he was speaking on behalf of the company he worked for.
Perhaps more details will emerge about what actually went on, but it does seem quite irresponsible to make it appear that you're speaking on behalf of a company if you're not... if that's what happened.
You convinced me into doing some research, and everything out there seems to suggest that it's quite an incredible word processor. Consequently I'm surprised that there doesn't seem to be any open source clone, which is a shame, and that everyone who still likes it seems to be going to great lengths to run the ancient DOS version on modern systems.
Do you have any idea if there are any open source apps out there that are trying to clone or work like XyWrite? I simply haven't been able to find any after a moderate search.
What sort of monetary damages is this action by Verisign incurring for people and businesses everywhere?
Verisign's action was most probably intended for web traffic, where it's at least an annoyance. But since the DNS is an independent system from the web that's used by all sorts of services, it's undoubtedly breaking all sorts of non-web things out there that rely on knowing accurately if a domain name exists... not to mention all of the additional maintenance time. Email and spam filters are the two that seem to've been brought up a lot.
So far I've seen a lot of people getting mad and I am too, but I haven't seen anyone actually state how much they're losing due to the sudden change and breaking of standards by Verisign. Is anyone confident to put an amount on this?
(Disclaimer: I'm not American.)
Why can't American accept 50K instead of 80K? If a foreigner in America can live on it then an American should certainly be able to.
The cost of living in the US has become disproportionately high compared with the rest of the world. People overseas who move to the US often haven't been living in poverty. They simply get huge salaries if they can find work in the US compared with another country.
In New Zealand where I am, for example, which is a perfectly okay OECD country that probably has less poverty and a better health/education system than the USA, an opening developer salary would be on the order of US$17K. It's difficult travelling to the US on that salary (without picking up work on the way), but locally it's not a bad amount to live on.
In a true global trade market, people in the US would be able to move to other places, and vice-versa, where there's work and where the cost of living is cheaper. They would also be able to work for a living there without any silly restrictions imposed by governments. Wages are lower in some places, but that doesn't mean poverty unless the cost of living is high and there are labour movement restrictions.
I work that way a lot, too. One place where it's obvious is in me rarely using bookmarks for web pages. Instead, I use the url dropdown in my web browser where my most commonly and frequently visited websites are nearly always near the top without me having to actively bother saying I want them to be there.
It falls over a little for less frequent things, like interesting websites that don't get updated very often and so I forget to go back to them.
I agree entirely, but I'd prefer it if google put the notice at the top of the results instead of the bottom. How frequently do you scroll to the end of a page of search results?
It's worth pointing out that although the reason the high gain antenna failed was because it didn't unfold properly, the reason that it had to unfold in the first place was more related to politics.
Galileo had to be designed to fit into the shuttle cargo bay, and then propel itself out of orbit after being let loose and placed into space, because various political heavyweights had decided that the shuttle should be used to launch it. Making the antenna foldable added even more complexity to an already incredibly complex machine. Having the launch delayed due to Challenger exploding just added to the complexity of the whole operation, and the antenna failed.
The Cassini probe, later launched to Saturn, was designed with a fixed antenna that didn't need to unfold, and launched from the top of a much more suitable rocket. It hasn't suffered anywhere near the same sorts of problems because it simply doesn't have as much complexity that can potentially break.
I was listening to the inventor (or at least the guy whose main idea it was) speaking on the radio this morning. He's actually a New Zealander, and initially went to Detroit to consult various auto engineers about his ideas. After a certain point though, he couldn't find the right mix of experience and qualifications in the USA for what he was trying to do. That's how he ended up going to the UK to develop and build the thing.
It's too bad, because if people and infrastructures were convinced to support it, more intelligent cars would help to solve a lot of traffic problems. It'll probably happen eventually, but only after someone eventually does it and everyone sees how useful it is.
There are certain driving tasks that computers simply can't perform, such as around town with spontaneous pedestrians and so on. But driving on most parts of the open road isn't quite as complicated, as long as it's sufficiently protected from the less predictible events that occur around populated areas. If specially designed cars were able to join a road that only allowed other such cars to use it, then travel would be much faster and much safer. When entering the open road network, the driver would become a passenger.
Computers react more quickly and more accurately than humans and they can be given more information about the surrounding road than people can. Consequently it would be possible to safely have much faster speeds and much closer following distances, fitting more traffic on the road and moving it much more efficiently and safely than human drivers ever could. Translation: Far fewer traffic jams and people having more time to spend doing other things.
I agree with you about the main point of what's learned in computer science. In my comp-sci degree, I also consider the abstract concepts that I learned as much more important than the day-to-day software that we were using to learn it. I disagree with your post as a whole, however, since I think the software and tools used can and do have an impact on the learning environment.
By paying out large sums of money and heavily subsidising courses, Microsoft is hampering the independence of the university staff to make the best possible choice of tools for teaching a quality course.
There's certainly an argument that because Microsoft is giving lots of money for its software to be used, it's lowering the fees that I might have to pay and somehow increasing quality in other areas. On the other hand, this is penalising potential makers of higher quality academic software simply because they can't afford to bribe with larger amounts than Microsoft can, and it's penalising students who might not get as useful-a-learning-environment because of it.