You will earn my undying gratitude and a spot on my "friends" list if you would please post that script.:)
My own efforts in this area have been of the type to get video files into 352x240 mpeg form so I can burn VCDs, but knowing what settings to use to get good Z-ready video would really be nice.
You'd think with the whole internet at your service you'd be able to find the conversion rate for USD to AUD (hint: xe.com says it's about $1:$0.67).
So $100 A is a bit more in real terms than in the US. But still I agree. $45 US for new titles is way out of line. Not that y'all aren't used to paying it, but personally I balk at $30, and prefer $20. Of course, I'm content to let everyone else play the latest and greatest and wait for the used consoles and games to show up in the bin at EB Games and Funcoland.
Especially since most of the new games put way too much emphasis on graphics and not nearly enough emphasis on game play. Apparently hardcore gamers are taking this all way too seriously. It's not that the sprite animation I grew up with should be good enough for the present day, but that with the possible exception of racing games, I haven't noticed that all this excess computing power has made video gaming any funner.:)
I would think the orientation of the bases would still be significant. Kind of like how atoms can be negative or positive ions. The stop/start codons would help you "orient" the double-strand as well. Not that it has to be, but not taking advantage of that property seems like a waste.:)
The fact is: DNA as it functions biologically is a base 4 system, not binary as you stated. I didn't see any point beyond that, but since you know enough to correct my enzyme/protein foul-up I'm guess I'll let this slide.:)
I missed whatever context would have suggested that you were talking about a situation in which the orientation of the base pairs was unimportant, sorry.
Bzzt! No it isn't. There is no mention of any requirement for the respondent to host the material. Links are mentioned in a context such that the reply does not need to be on the same page as the original information. That is, the reply could be hosted in an area of the site specifically created for such replies and then be linked from the article. In fact, if I were publishing information about some person or company that wanted to respond, why would I want to point my readers to their site?
It's base four, not base two. It depends how the pairs are oriented in the strand. Simply put, the primary purpose of DNA is to split into separate strands temporarily in order to create RNA sequences which are then used to assemble enzymes from amino acids. It's at that point (when the bases are no longer in pairs) that the codons (sets of three pairs) get used to determine which amino acid to use.
This isn't the proposed law though. This is just the directive which would essentially tell the countries involved what sort of law to draft. It would seem that the original right of response laws feature limits, otherwise you could hand a newspaper a bound volume to put in their next issue... similarly this directive suggests that more latitude should be given in that respect for online resources because it's not as likely to be burdensome, but we don't actually know at this time what the laws will say specifically. The on-line media will have some sort of ability to reject or appeal before they have to print the responses, I should think.
Which is primarily the reason why itâ(TM)s now defunked.
Too bad! I'm sure the lack of N64 funkiness is the primary reason the console is now defunct. If the game ain't funky, I don't want no part of none of that!:)
I thought it was widely known that the N64 was a cart-system, which is (overall) more expensive to bring games to market on, regardless of the devkit/libraries. Since mastering carts is always going to be more difficult and expensive than mastering CD/DVD-type media, this means the barriers to entry for that console are higher-- so you get fewer developers taking a chance in the first place, and certainly not taking chances with the types of games they might make.
Plus, if I'm not mistaken, Nintendo is one of those companies that uses game quality as a selling point. Of course, the console company being this strict with the licensing is likely to scare off bit players and people looking to make "questionable" titles.
The draft does not indicate that the original on-line media source can just link to it. It does suggest that the reply needs to, at least, be linked from the same page as the original article or information. But still, it would appear that the on-line media is the one responsible for making the file containing the response available, either by incorporating it into the page in the first place, or by having a special location for such replies and linking to that.
IOW, your web-hosting costs could be affected because of the increased bandwidth used to host these replies.
Interesting to note that the first draft used the phrase "professional on-line media" but that "professional" was stricken in favor of "entity whose main activity [is providing on-line media]". So, for journalists and commentators like Declan McCullough, this would apply. For the every-so-often blogger, this may not apply. Furthermore, nothing in the draft requires you to notify the subjects of the article in order to solicit a reply or anything.
So obviously the rule is intended to keep BigMediaCo's web site from publishing a defamatory article on you or your small business and you not really having any way to respond except via lawsuit. In this sense, the law is hardly a danger to free speech. The question becomes: can I blog about what a skank my ex-gf was without providing equal space for her to complain about what a cheapskate I was on dates?:)
If you're going to call someone an idiot and then swear at them, you may want to read the article yourself, it concludes with "There are many good reasons to improve education and reduce poverty in poor countries. Alas, reducing terrorism is probably not one of them."
The $50K is for a decoder. An encoder like GRIP still has a unit price. None of that covers the legal complications in providing source code to end users. Technically people who compile mp3 software from source (without a license) are infringing the patent-- licenses for end users are not available. I'd say that this complicates things to where just paying $50,000 is not the simple answer you make it out to be.
You're right, the LAME acronym is meant to be cute, because technically it's not an encoder. It's just source code that still needs to be developed into an encoder by compiling it or incorporating the code into a different package. The LAME home page points out that if you actually use LAME for encoding you may need a patent.
You are over-simplifying the matter greatly and in dangerous ways to obfuscate the potential for real harm from software patents. That there is a case where the grey areas have been exploited to do an end-run around the licensing strictures does not provide significant evidence that people should be able to patent what is essentially math in the first place. This is a change to the traditional role of the patent that is neither necessary nor desirable in my view.
Yeah, but that's Canadian money, which trades about 75 cents to the US dollar. So those prices are in line with the $13-$18 you see in the US.
Let's both be glad we don't live in Japan where both CDs and DVDs are quite a bit more. 2900 yen per CD seems typical. That's around $25 US and $33 Canadian.
That you have some counter-examples says more to me about the ROI of filing infringement lawsuits against the people using compressed GIFs and MP3s or making the free software-- IOW, lawsuits are not cheap and the people doing the infringing are a) not making any real money at it, b) not cutting into the larger market. This doesn't make for much of a damages award, maybe a good punitive award, and of course there's the obvious C&D. Simply letting the fringe cases slide keeps things like Ogg and PNG in the also-ran category.
But the fact is, Red Hat takes the MP3 issues seriously enough that they stopped providing MP3 software. LAME apparently had enough concern that they emphasize that LAME is not an MPEG encoder. I think at some point the ROI changes to a positive number when it comes to pursuing infringers... and that's why you don't see large device makers like Sony using MP3s without a very costly license from Fraunhofer.
The mechanisms for DRM do not need to be secret to be effective. The keys do. If there were a patent on the decryption of CSS encoded content, the disclosure of the keys themselves would not be necessary to obtain a patent. The fact that big media/software think that all good crypto should be as secret as possible is the reason they don't obtain patents. And what if decode the unencrypted scheme were patented? Double whammy. All without even touching the DMCA for enforcement.
That is my prime concern with what she said. She doesn't seem to understand the danger patents pose to free software (which I won't reiterate because you did so perfectly). She says Linux grew 50% marketshare. So? If I go from 1% to 1.5% that's a 50% increase... and while that's exciting, it's hardly a big win in terms of that marketplace. The question is, long-term, will the growth continue at 50% rate of increase or at the.5% absolute increase?
We already have ample example in the patents that encumber GIFs and MP3 and the various video technologies. I imagine the next step the RIAA/MPAA will take is to use patents to encumber their DRM schemes. If breaking CSS were not only a DMCA issue, but a case of violating a patent, then DeCSS would potentially get hit from both sides. So the future for free software is (and this would be fine with me, except that it doesn't promote either fair use or interoperability) a ghetto of free formats like Ogg.
Really, I don't see how software patents protect "inventions" in any sense of the word. The computer is already a device. The point of a computer is to handle a changing streams of bits and bytes... some of which are this thing called "software". But software is not distinguishable from data at the device level... they're both just bits and bytes (1s and 0s if you prefer). And the idea that a binary program or a piece of source code could violate a patent... well, what's truly to distinguish them from a file containing the text of the patent itself? And when it comes down to it, is a specific compression algorithm (or other software patent) anything but math?
At least she is aware of the issues involved in granting business method patents. Which is all the scarier. She seems have most of a clue and certainly seems to be saying that what she's pushing for isn't going to be as bad as the US system... and that it will prevent specific countries in Europe from getting as bad as or worse than the US in this area.
Do you call requiring doctors to have gone through medical school elitism? I don't. I call it proper training. This guy needs to get some proper training or he should let one of the many unemployed Slashdotters he expected to do the difficult work of reading the Changelog to him take over for him.
Sounded more like laziness than cluelessness/newbie-ism to me. If the person was smart enough to get a release candidate kernel onto his server, he's either smart enough to figure out if he wants/needs to update to the actual release or he's using a distro and should ask them for an updated package that is known to work with their other packages.
That ad makes me want to take the game device and slap the kid around with it and then jump up and down on the phonegamewhatever until it's in a thousand shiny little pieces. I'm not even going to buy a regular Nokia phone after seeing that (not to imply that I'm unhappy with my current Motorola model).
I don't know how old you are, but if you are 30+ and still even interested in playing video games, you (like me) could probably give a rat's hindquarters what non-gamers think. I got my GBA SP to play on the bus, where I am for 45-60 minutes a day commuting. Before that I'd be struggling to enjoy the lame selection of games for my Zaurus and before that the Palm/Visor. The games available for GBA are simply the best.
Frankly I find a little video gaming a lot less of something to be embarrassed about than some of the recreational activities so-called "mature" 30+ adults get up to. I mean golf? Fishing? Sports on cable TV (especially wrestling)? Come on! It's not like we're model railroading here. This is the equivalent of whipping out a paperback and proceeding to enjoy the story, or playing solitaire. If you have some down time, why not play games on a GB?
OTOH, I agree that if you are out with your friends (and this is for all ages), if you pull out the GBA and are not about to link up to other GBAs for a little competitive gaming, you need to examine your head. It's just plain rude, like talking on a cell phone or whatever.
The studies show that there is significant short-term success with the Atkins diet when compared against more traditional diets, however, they also seem to show that long-term there is no real difference. I suspect any diet that relies on anything other than simply trying to eat smaller portions of generally healthier foods (like fruits, vegetables, lean meats, non-meat proteins like beans, whole grains, etc). Of course, I've never had a serious weight problem and if I have to pay a Democratic-inspired "fat tax" on video games because they're supposedly making me fat, I'm going to start voting for the meanest, nastiest Republicans I can find just to get my passive-aggressive frustrations out. If anything, excessive gaming has caused me to eat less over the years because it's very difficult to eat and play games at the same time.
As for cholesterol and blood pressure, everything I've read indicates that what you eat is not nearly as important as getting enough exercise.
Now, if they go with the 'default', and something goes wrong, that's just the "way it is". That employee was just following orders.
I understand the risk aversion at the lower levels, but the it's the default setting levels where this due diligence should be happening. However, the problem is that the government works for us citizens (supposedly), and we're generally oblivious in these matters. So the ultimate overseers aren't actually paying any attention. And even if we were, we usually only get two choices on our ballots, and then those people are the ones who can actually affect the agencies involved. This is hardly a campaign issue at this point.
Now if a major breach in national security could be pinned on a specific failure in a Microsoft product, then it might become more of an issue. But most of the general public is either too scared of computers to feel like they know enough to challenge policy makers or we're all so used to the annoyances of worms, viruses, rebooting, etc, that we don't really think about it in terms of overall loss of efficiency or safety.
All that said, Microsoft actually only seems to win in places where it doesn't actually matter that much anyway. Like the bureaucracy. I suppose someone can correct me by pointing out that our guided missiles are all programmed using.NET.;)
Why would users need NFS mounted home directories? That's clearly an attempt to borrow the Microsoft metaphor. With Unix/Linux we can just log right into the main server from our thin clients via SSH and either run applications in console or via a local X server. This actually makes life easier since very little clientside software will be needed there is less decentralized updating to do. It also guarantees that the user will have the software they need installed since it's either on the central server or not. Not so the Microsoft way, you've got to install the software on each machine where it's going to be used, right?
And I guess I'll have to disagree with your main point as well. Because there are lots of options available (unless you've already made a foregone conclusion to go with Microsoft Windows), governmental units still would have to evaluate NFS, ssh, NT file sharing, etc before implementing a solution as part of their due diligence, wouldn't they? I understand that the government worker (or any worker) should not have a lot of options in many cases, but the people deciding what choices to make still have all these freedoms, so it does behoove them to honestly evaluate all of their options.
You're kidding right? Is it even possible to write standalone applications in Guile? Are there any GUI bindings that work with Guile? Can I even script for emacs with Guile?
When it comes to freely available scripting languages, I'd think that Ruby, Perl, and Python all trounce the heck out of the competition. All three are available on a wide variety of platforms, have GUI bindings available (some of which bindings are also cross-platform in varying levels of freedom), are powerful, but also easy enough to learn to use. In fact, that seems to me to be the answer right there. We should be glad that Windows doesn't come with a language installed. This presents an enormous opportunity for high-quality, widely-used free programming languages like Ruby, Perl, and Python to take hold.
Slashdot Mirror
You will earn my undying gratitude and a spot on my "friends" list if you would please post that script. :)
My own efforts in this area have been of the type to get video files into 352x240 mpeg form so I can burn VCDs, but knowing what settings to use to get good Z-ready video would really be nice.
You'd think with the whole internet at your service you'd be able to find the conversion rate for USD to AUD (hint: xe.com says it's about $1:$0.67).
:)
So $100 A is a bit more in real terms than in the US. But still I agree. $45 US for new titles is way out of line. Not that y'all aren't used to paying it, but personally I balk at $30, and prefer $20. Of course, I'm content to let everyone else play the latest and greatest and wait for the used consoles and games to show up in the bin at EB Games and Funcoland.
Especially since most of the new games put way too much emphasis on graphics and not nearly enough emphasis on game play. Apparently hardcore gamers are taking this all way too seriously. It's not that the sprite animation I grew up with should be good enough for the present day, but that with the possible exception of racing games, I haven't noticed that all this excess computing power has made video gaming any funner.
I would think the orientation of the bases would still be significant. Kind of like how atoms can be negative or positive ions. The stop/start codons would help you "orient" the double-strand as well. Not that it has to be, but not taking advantage of that property seems like a waste. :)
The fact is: DNA as it functions biologically is a base 4 system, not binary as you stated. I didn't see any point beyond that, but since you know enough to correct my enzyme/protein foul-up I'm guess I'll let this slide. :)
I missed whatever context would have suggested that you were talking about a situation in which the orientation of the base pairs was unimportant, sorry.
Bzzt! No it isn't. There is no mention of any requirement for the respondent to host the material. Links are mentioned in a context such that the reply does not need to be on the same page as the original information. That is, the reply could be hosted in an area of the site specifically created for such replies and then be linked from the article. In fact, if I were publishing information about some person or company that wanted to respond, why would I want to point my readers to their site?
It's base four, not base two. It depends how the pairs are oriented in the strand. Simply put, the primary purpose of DNA is to split into separate strands temporarily in order to create RNA sequences which are then used to assemble enzymes from amino acids. It's at that point (when the bases are no longer in pairs) that the codons (sets of three pairs) get used to determine which amino acid to use.
This isn't the proposed law though. This is just the directive which would essentially tell the countries involved what sort of law to draft. It would seem that the original right of response laws feature limits, otherwise you could hand a newspaper a bound volume to put in their next issue... similarly this directive suggests that more latitude should be given in that respect for online resources because it's not as likely to be burdensome, but we don't actually know at this time what the laws will say specifically. The on-line media will have some sort of ability to reject or appeal before they have to print the responses, I should think.
Which is primarily the reason why itâ(TM)s now defunked.
:)
Too bad! I'm sure the lack of N64 funkiness is the primary reason the console is now defunct. If the game ain't funky, I don't want no part of none of that!
I thought it was widely known that the N64 was a cart-system, which is (overall) more expensive to bring games to market on, regardless of the devkit/libraries. Since mastering carts is always going to be more difficult and expensive than mastering CD/DVD-type media, this means the barriers to entry for that console are higher-- so you get fewer developers taking a chance in the first place, and certainly not taking chances with the types of games they might make.
Plus, if I'm not mistaken, Nintendo is one of those companies that uses game quality as a selling point. Of course, the console company being this strict with the licensing is likely to scare off bit players and people looking to make "questionable" titles.
The draft does not indicate that the original on-line media source can just link to it. It does suggest that the reply needs to, at least, be linked from the same page as the original article or information. But still, it would appear that the on-line media is the one responsible for making the file containing the response available, either by incorporating it into the page in the first place, or by having a special location for such replies and linking to that.
:)
IOW, your web-hosting costs could be affected because of the increased bandwidth used to host these replies.
Interesting to note that the first draft used the phrase "professional on-line media" but that "professional" was stricken in favor of "entity whose main activity [is providing on-line media]". So, for journalists and commentators like Declan McCullough, this would apply. For the every-so-often blogger, this may not apply. Furthermore, nothing in the draft requires you to notify the subjects of the article in order to solicit a reply or anything.
So obviously the rule is intended to keep BigMediaCo's web site from publishing a defamatory article on you or your small business and you not really having any way to respond except via lawsuit. In this sense, the law is hardly a danger to free speech. The question becomes: can I blog about what a skank my ex-gf was without providing equal space for her to complain about what a cheapskate I was on dates?
If you're going to call someone an idiot and then swear at them, you may want to read the article yourself, it concludes with "There are many good reasons to improve education and reduce poverty in poor countries. Alas, reducing terrorism is probably not one of them."
The $50K is for a decoder. An encoder like GRIP still has a unit price. None of that covers the legal complications in providing source code to end users. Technically people who compile mp3 software from source (without a license) are infringing the patent-- licenses for end users are not available. I'd say that this complicates things to where just paying $50,000 is not the simple answer you make it out to be.
You're right, the LAME acronym is meant to be cute, because technically it's not an encoder. It's just source code that still needs to be developed into an encoder by compiling it or incorporating the code into a different package. The LAME home page points out that if you actually use LAME for encoding you may need a patent.
You are over-simplifying the matter greatly and in dangerous ways to obfuscate the potential for real harm from software patents. That there is a case where the grey areas have been exploited to do an end-run around the licensing strictures does not provide significant evidence that people should be able to patent what is essentially math in the first place. This is a change to the traditional role of the patent that is neither necessary nor desirable in my view.
Yeah, but that's Canadian money, which trades about 75 cents to the US dollar. So those prices are in line with the $13-$18 you see in the US.
Let's both be glad we don't live in Japan where both CDs and DVDs are quite a bit more. 2900 yen per CD seems typical. That's around $25 US and $33 Canadian.
That you have some counter-examples says more to me about the ROI of filing infringement lawsuits against the people using compressed GIFs and MP3s or making the free software-- IOW, lawsuits are not cheap and the people doing the infringing are a) not making any real money at it, b) not cutting into the larger market. This doesn't make for much of a damages award, maybe a good punitive award, and of course there's the obvious C&D. Simply letting the fringe cases slide keeps things like Ogg and PNG in the also-ran category.
But the fact is, Red Hat takes the MP3 issues seriously enough that they stopped providing MP3 software. LAME apparently had enough concern that they emphasize that LAME is not an MPEG encoder. I think at some point the ROI changes to a positive number when it comes to pursuing infringers... and that's why you don't see large device makers like Sony using MP3s without a very costly license from Fraunhofer.
The mechanisms for DRM do not need to be secret to be effective. The keys do. If there were a patent on the decryption of CSS encoded content, the disclosure of the keys themselves would not be necessary to obtain a patent. The fact that big media/software think that all good crypto should be as secret as possible is the reason they don't obtain patents. And what if decode the unencrypted scheme were patented? Double whammy. All without even touching the DMCA for enforcement.
That is my prime concern with what she said. She doesn't seem to understand the danger patents pose to free software (which I won't reiterate because you did so perfectly). She says Linux grew 50% marketshare. So? If I go from 1% to 1.5% that's a 50% increase... and while that's exciting, it's hardly a big win in terms of that marketplace. The question is, long-term, will the growth continue at 50% rate of increase or at the .5% absolute increase?
We already have ample example in the patents that encumber GIFs and MP3 and the various video technologies. I imagine the next step the RIAA/MPAA will take is to use patents to encumber their DRM schemes. If breaking CSS were not only a DMCA issue, but a case of violating a patent, then DeCSS would potentially get hit from both sides. So the future for free software is (and this would be fine with me, except that it doesn't promote either fair use or interoperability) a ghetto of free formats like Ogg.
Really, I don't see how software patents protect "inventions" in any sense of the word. The computer is already a device. The point of a computer is to handle a changing streams of bits and bytes... some of which are this thing called "software". But software is not distinguishable from data at the device level... they're both just bits and bytes (1s and 0s if you prefer). And the idea that a binary program or a piece of source code could violate a patent... well, what's truly to distinguish them from a file containing the text of the patent itself? And when it comes down to it, is a specific compression algorithm (or other software patent) anything but math?
At least she is aware of the issues involved in granting business method patents. Which is all the scarier. She seems have most of a clue and certainly seems to be saying that what she's pushing for isn't going to be as bad as the US system... and that it will prevent specific countries in Europe from getting as bad as or worse than the US in this area.
Do you call requiring doctors to have gone through medical school elitism? I don't. I call it proper training. This guy needs to get some proper training or he should let one of the many unemployed Slashdotters he expected to do the difficult work of reading the Changelog to him take over for him.
Sounded more like laziness than cluelessness/newbie-ism to me. If the person was smart enough to get a release candidate kernel onto his server, he's either smart enough to figure out if he wants/needs to update to the actual release or he's using a distro and should ask them for an updated package that is known to work with their other packages.
That ad makes me want to take the game device and slap the kid around with it and then jump up and down on the phonegamewhatever until it's in a thousand shiny little pieces. I'm not even going to buy a regular Nokia phone after seeing that (not to imply that I'm unhappy with my current Motorola model).
I don't know how old you are, but if you are 30+ and still even interested in playing video games, you (like me) could probably give a rat's hindquarters what non-gamers think. I got my GBA SP to play on the bus, where I am for 45-60 minutes a day commuting. Before that I'd be struggling to enjoy the lame selection of games for my Zaurus and before that the Palm/Visor. The games available for GBA are simply the best.
Frankly I find a little video gaming a lot less of something to be embarrassed about than some of the recreational activities so-called "mature" 30+ adults get up to. I mean golf? Fishing? Sports on cable TV (especially wrestling)? Come on! It's not like we're model railroading here. This is the equivalent of whipping out a paperback and proceeding to enjoy the story, or playing solitaire. If you have some down time, why not play games on a GB?
OTOH, I agree that if you are out with your friends (and this is for all ages), if you pull out the GBA and are not about to link up to other GBAs for a little competitive gaming, you need to examine your head. It's just plain rude, like talking on a cell phone or whatever.
By a long shot. :)
The studies show that there is significant short-term success with the Atkins diet when compared against more traditional diets, however, they also seem to show that long-term there is no real difference. I suspect any diet that relies on anything other than simply trying to eat smaller portions of generally healthier foods (like fruits, vegetables, lean meats, non-meat proteins like beans, whole grains, etc). Of course, I've never had a serious weight problem and if I have to pay a Democratic-inspired "fat tax" on video games because they're supposedly making me fat, I'm going to start voting for the meanest, nastiest Republicans I can find just to get my passive-aggressive frustrations out. If anything, excessive gaming has caused me to eat less over the years because it's very difficult to eat and play games at the same time.
As for cholesterol and blood pressure, everything I've read indicates that what you eat is not nearly as important as getting enough exercise.
Now, if they go with the 'default', and something goes wrong, that's just the "way it is". That employee was just following orders.
.NET. ;)
I understand the risk aversion at the lower levels, but the it's the default setting levels where this due diligence should be happening. However, the problem is that the government works for us citizens (supposedly), and we're generally oblivious in these matters. So the ultimate overseers aren't actually paying any attention. And even if we were, we usually only get two choices on our ballots, and then those people are the ones who can actually affect the agencies involved. This is hardly a campaign issue at this point.
Now if a major breach in national security could be pinned on a specific failure in a Microsoft product, then it might become more of an issue. But most of the general public is either too scared of computers to feel like they know enough to challenge policy makers or we're all so used to the annoyances of worms, viruses, rebooting, etc, that we don't really think about it in terms of overall loss of efficiency or safety.
All that said, Microsoft actually only seems to win in places where it doesn't actually matter that much anyway. Like the bureaucracy. I suppose someone can correct me by pointing out that our guided missiles are all programmed using
Why would users need NFS mounted home directories? That's clearly an attempt to borrow the Microsoft metaphor. With Unix/Linux we can just log right into the main server from our thin clients via SSH and either run applications in console or via a local X server. This actually makes life easier since very little clientside software will be needed there is less decentralized updating to do. It also guarantees that the user will have the software they need installed since it's either on the central server or not. Not so the Microsoft way, you've got to install the software on each machine where it's going to be used, right?
And I guess I'll have to disagree with your main point as well. Because there are lots of options available (unless you've already made a foregone conclusion to go with Microsoft Windows), governmental units still would have to evaluate NFS, ssh, NT file sharing, etc before implementing a solution as part of their due diligence, wouldn't they? I understand that the government worker (or any worker) should not have a lot of options in many cases, but the people deciding what choices to make still have all these freedoms, so it does behoove them to honestly evaluate all of their options.
You're kidding right? Is it even possible to write standalone applications in Guile? Are there any GUI bindings that work with Guile? Can I even script for emacs with Guile?
When it comes to freely available scripting languages, I'd think that Ruby, Perl, and Python all trounce the heck out of the competition. All three are available on a wide variety of platforms, have GUI bindings available (some of which bindings are also cross-platform in varying levels of freedom), are powerful, but also easy enough to learn to use. In fact, that seems to me to be the answer right there. We should be glad that Windows doesn't come with a language installed. This presents an enormous opportunity for high-quality, widely-used free programming languages like Ruby, Perl, and Python to take hold.
Me abuse an AC? Never! ;)