The "Mojave Experiment" was supposedly to show that people had just a bad opinion of Vista because of bad hype but that once they saw it they liked it. This "experiment" showed that they could have been shown any different or flashy interface and many people would have responded positively.
So, you explain it well, you can pull people off the street and dupe them into all kinds of things. This "experiment" tells us nothing about OSS, KDE 4, and nothing about Windows 7. It does tell us lot about marketing campaigns and specifically the "Mojave Experiment".
All these years and most marketing is still a giant circle jerk.
If you want sex offenders to serve more time, increase the time sex offenders serve. Sentencing "enhancements" are legislative tricks to make it look like a politician is tough on crime. Every law that gives police an excuse to pull over your car fall in this same category. Want an argument against it? It is lazy, it is intellectually dishonest, and it is political showboating to pass a law that you don't think can or should be enforced properly just because it may come in handy as an excuse to increase jail time or authorize a search warrant, etc.
Why should using a gun increase the amount of time someone serves for a felony? If there is a problem with felons not serving enough time pass a law that allows sentences to be longer. Anything else will lead to inconsistent enforcement and sentencing for "equal" crimes. I don't care if someone killed a mother of 3 with a fork or an AK-47 and neither should you, the crime speaks for itself.
If what you say were true then this would just be a convenient excuse for getting rid of free and essentially anonymous email services... hey, wait a second.
Seriously, even if McCain is clueless enough not think of the dozens of gaping holes in this Law (I don't know if he is or not) you can bet there are a ton of neo-fascists who are drooling over the possibilities created by this legislative stupidity. "But we have to be able to track everyone on the internets to be sure that the sex offenders are registering their email addresses." "Anonymous email isn't necessary if you aren't breaking the law." Just like Free Speech isn't necessary if you never say anything that upsets anyone. Yeah it is a conspiracy theory but it sounds pretty plausible doesn't it?
Next step is to tie the passing of this legislation to fighting terrorism or child pornography thus removing the stink of corporate favouritism. Maybe throw in some sort of muttering about intellectual property protecting American workers from having their jobs shipped over seas and this will fly through with barely a comment from most people.
I personally would like to thank these gentlemen for working so hard to find a way to destroy watermarks in audio ripped from various sources. Watermarks are hidden data in audio, right? So do you think adding watermarks may become an act of terror now?
that all these neat technologies depend on exotic materials? Just once I would like some really cool technology to be dependent on something cheaper and easy to obtain, while being ten times more efficient that the gold/lithium irradiated crystals it replaces.
Today's news: hobo sweat and nail clippings mixed with Diet Coke and mentos == cold fusion.
http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/ - obviously it isn't perfect but it is better than MSVDM. The worst incompatibility I have found is that some programs show up on every desktop.
I have mentioned this before in posts on slashdot, but I have no relationship with the project.I, like many of us, have to use MS Windows for work, but with virtuawin at least I have ONE annoyance out of the way.
Re:MySQL forgot the important part of the equation
on
Can Sun Make MySQL Pay?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Because the OSS database server can support a database larger than 4GB and still be free? The "free" version of MS SQL is pretty limited in terms of software on which you might run a company. If you are going to pay the kind of money that MS SQL server standard + any support from Microsoft costs you suddenly have several more options both Open and Proprietary.The fact that it only runs in Windows is irrelevant, it doesn't fill the same niche as MySQL or PostgreSQL, where you can use labour to compensate for the lack of some niceties.
I don't think this is a "shot at MS". Microsoft Office 97,XP, and 2003 are not the only versions that use the familiar xls, doc, and ppt extensions. The file format is different for at least 2 previous versions of Office even though the extensions are the same.I think 2003 even adds some "extensions" to the Microsoft Office 97 format.
Even if they are asking for the current file formats, how is that a shot? Microsoft doesn't plan on supporting the older file format indefinitely (or at least the haven't before) and it will be necessary sometime in the future to recover the information in some files that use it. Once it has been decided to deprecate a file format any responsible company should begin to plan how long term access to file information can be assured. If they don't want to stand behind the format indefinitely public domain is a very reasonable option.
I hate to say this, but unless you give us a few reasons why some of the solutions you have looked at are not sufficient I doubt you will get any meaningful response.It's a pretty common problem when people ask for an open source replacement for a program they have used and were reasonably happy with.
Without some starting point for comparison you will just get dozens of stories about how product X works fine for them.
Sorry for the off-topic, but out of curiosity, what is it that you don't like about SIL as an institution? I know very little about them outside of the information on their site and given their growing notability in the font arena I would like to gather a little more info.
And I completely agree! For the record the only reason I would advise someone to use Live Office IS to sign up for the free level and make Microsoft pay for a domain. Even for the situations I mentioned there are better services for a similar price point. Even with the growing distrust of Google at least they use ODF file formats for their online apps. If ever there is a time to INSIST on an open format and the right to save offline copies of your info easily it is when you are signing up with a software service. No matter how much you love and trust a company you always want an offline backup.
Software as a service is a service like any other, you always check their work and have an alternate plan in case they close up shop.
Let's look at one of the options that hasn't gotten much press, and frankly isn't considered to be very good, Office Live.
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft but this service (intially, until they have a lot of people signed up then they can tighten the screws) could save a small business a lot of money. For $40 a month you get a domain name, tools for building a site, 20GB of bandwidth a month, 2GB of storage space for your website, 50 email addresses with 2GB of storage a piece as well as some basic business apps, contact management, project management etc.
And zero servers to maintain, backup, or purchase.
For a small business that is HUGE. If the business takes off they will out grow it, but if it doesn't it won't take years to pay off the loans they took out to buy hardware.
In house hardware and software is definitely a valuable asset for a lot of companies, but for someone running a mail order doll furniture business, software as a service might be just the ticket (though they might want to look at the free level of Office Live).
Actually I encourage everyone to make Microsoft pay for a free domain for a year by using the Office Live Basic service:)
In the U.S. I believe the number of miners killed in coal mine accidents was just a little under 50. We probably make a bigger deal of that now than we did when we were averaging 2000 a year, decades ago. Face it we are waaaaay over sensitive to danger these days, 25 years ago a kid wearing a bike helmet was more likely to be beaten up by the other kids in the neighborhood than they were to fall off a bike.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do what we can to minimize mine accidents, or nuclear material mishandling (or bike accidents for that matter). I'm just saying we need to realize there isn't much more news in a 24 hour period than there ever was and 1000 times as many ways to spread it around. They have to talk about something and listing the things that might kill us about as often as a lightning strike seems to keep the ratings up.
This is just another story that is designed to convince people that creating a tiered internet is the only possible solution. Many small ISPs aren't even involved in this discussion. This is all about the owners of big sections of the internet infrastructure looking for a way to justify charging sites not only for the huge amounts of bandwidth they need, as they do now, but also charge for actually using the huge amounts of bandwidth they have purchased.
Tiered internet is like charging someone $50,000 for a car with 500 horsepower and them charging them again each time they go over 35mph. Unfortunately most car companies would probably try that system if they could figure out a way to implement it.
While I agree with your assertion that there is no reason to paint Microsoft as the bad guy here I do think that we all need to realize that the bad guy is the current patent system.
I'm not sure Alcatel-Lucent is what most people would call a patent troll. They tried to take advantage of a broken system to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars. If the money is on the table it is not easy to resist. This is the same behavior that you might see from any company that sees that amount of money is possible by spending a few million dollars.
The fact that this case isn't a slam dunk tells you that our patent system is completely out of sync with reality. The need to do a patent search on even the most basic piece of software before distributing it is insane. The fact that Microsoft did license this technology and still someone managed to pop up with a claim that made it past at least one court review tells you how complex the problem is.
I don't believe he said anything about 100 million units/people making something "right". By many standards Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism are very successful religions, not failures. To say they have 100 million failures in their ranks doesn't determine the success or failure on a religion, just like one atheist tard who attempts to attack religions at every given chance doesn't necessarily mean all atheist have their heads up their asses. If you had a problem with his statement you could have picked a thousand examples
Now back to the topic. Personally I believe the kernel developers should continue to look for the best way to ensure that Linux retains the flexibility that it needs to adapt to the server, desktop or mobile roles. Leave the tuning to the distro. Microsoft, despite all of their press, isn't in the innovation business as a rule. Historically they prefer to follow or purchase the early leader making only the changes or improvements that they must to dominate the market. If Con thinks he has a better way to deal with the desktop I hope he develops it. Windows and Mac envy is a good motivator but one advantage that Linux has is that multiple distros provide plenty of testbeds for new ideas. Even developments that have a very narrow application can find a home in a specialty distro.
Mr. Halprin may be a brilliant novelist, or he may be a over-hyped hack, but if he gets his wish, he will also be completely forgotten in 100 years. There would be very few 11 year old faces that would light up at the words "The Little Mermaid" if Andersen's copyright hadn't lapsed. Shakespeare wouldn't be considered a one of the great writers of all time if somewhere his work hadn't escaped the bounds of being property of a few people to instead become the property of the world. The Grey Seal is not at all well known, but if it was still under copyright you wouldn't be able to buy a book by Frank L. Packard at all because no publisher would want to spend the money to pay for it. Ideas live in minds, and books eventually take more space than they are worth to booksellers. If a story doesn't become part of the culture it dies.
If you want to keep control of an idea, don't tell anyone about it. Nothing the government can do will keep people from imagining that Harry Potter had one more adventure. Eventually an idea will grow beyond control no matter how strong the copyright laws are.
Really that is exactly the point, some industries would like as many countries as possible to have almost identical copyright and patent policies. Lately those industries have had the most luck influencing U.S. law so they have decided to make those laws the template. It isn't the "Americans" that are pushing this, it is a collection of huge corporations that are trying to keep from having to fight the same court battles over and over. If they can convince the U.S. government to pressure other countries to bring their laws "in line" with the U.S. laws they make their own lives a lot easier. If Canada keeps it's own laws it will be a force these industries have to deal with directly, if Canada bows to pressure they fade into the background, another "me too" country they never have to work with. Australia should think about that too.
Slashdot Mirror
The "Mojave Experiment" was supposedly to show that people had just a bad opinion of Vista because of bad hype but that once they saw it they liked it. This "experiment" showed that they could have been shown any different or flashy interface and many people would have responded positively.
So, you explain it well, you can pull people off the street and dupe them into all kinds of things. This "experiment" tells us nothing about OSS, KDE 4, and nothing about Windows 7. It does tell us lot about marketing campaigns and specifically the "Mojave Experiment".
All these years and most marketing is still a giant circle jerk.
You may want to take a look at the pulse2 link from a little earlier in the thread.
http://pulse2.mandriva.org/
If you want sex offenders to serve more time, increase the time sex offenders serve. Sentencing "enhancements" are legislative tricks to make it look like a politician is tough on crime. Every law that gives police an excuse to pull over your car fall in this same category. Want an argument against it? It is lazy, it is intellectually dishonest, and it is political showboating to pass a law that you don't think can or should be enforced properly just because it may come in handy as an excuse to increase jail time or authorize a search warrant, etc.
Why should using a gun increase the amount of time someone serves for a felony? If there is a problem with felons not serving enough time pass a law that allows sentences to be longer. Anything else will lead to inconsistent enforcement and sentencing for "equal" crimes. I don't care if someone killed a mother of 3 with a fork or an AK-47 and neither should you, the crime speaks for itself.
If what you say were true then this would just be a convenient excuse for getting rid of free and essentially anonymous email services... hey, wait a second.
Seriously, even if McCain is clueless enough not think of the dozens of gaping holes in this Law (I don't know if he is or not) you can bet there are a ton of neo-fascists who are drooling over the possibilities created by this legislative stupidity. "But we have to be able to track everyone on the internets to be sure that the sex offenders are registering their email addresses."
"Anonymous email isn't necessary if you aren't breaking the law." Just like Free Speech isn't necessary if you never say anything that upsets anyone. Yeah it is a conspiracy theory but it sounds pretty plausible doesn't it?
An egg white gets waaaay more than 30% of its calories from protein, about 12 of 16 calories. Ban them!
Next step is to tie the passing of this legislation to fighting terrorism or child pornography thus removing the stink of corporate favouritism. Maybe throw in some sort of muttering about intellectual property protecting American workers from having their jobs shipped over seas and this will fly through with barely a comment from most people.
80? Luxury!
:)
And my UID is prime, as well as evil and odd
I personally would like to thank these gentlemen for working so hard to find a way to destroy watermarks in audio ripped from various sources. Watermarks are hidden data in audio, right? So do you think adding watermarks may become an act of terror now?
that all these neat technologies depend on exotic materials? Just once I would like some really cool technology to be dependent on something cheaper and easy to obtain, while being ten times more efficient that the gold/lithium irradiated crystals it replaces.
Today's news: hobo sweat and nail clippings mixed with Diet Coke and mentos == cold fusion.
http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/ - obviously it isn't perfect but it is better than MSVDM. The worst incompatibility I have found is that some programs show up on every desktop.
I have mentioned this before in posts on slashdot, but I have no relationship with the project.I, like many of us, have to use MS Windows for work, but with virtuawin at least I have ONE annoyance out of the way.
Because the OSS database server can support a database larger than 4GB and still be free? The "free" version of MS SQL is pretty limited in terms of software on which you might run a company. If you are going to pay the kind of money that MS SQL server standard + any support from Microsoft costs you suddenly have several more options both Open and Proprietary.The fact that it only runs in Windows is irrelevant, it doesn't fill the same niche as MySQL or PostgreSQL, where you can use labour to compensate for the lack of some niceties.
I don't think this is a "shot at MS". Microsoft Office 97,XP, and 2003 are not the only versions that use the familiar xls, doc, and ppt extensions. The file format is different for at least 2 previous versions of Office even though the extensions are the same.I think 2003 even adds some "extensions" to the Microsoft Office 97 format.
Even if they are asking for the current file formats, how is that a shot? Microsoft doesn't plan on supporting the older file format indefinitely (or at least the haven't before) and it will be necessary sometime in the future to recover the information in some files that use it. Once it has been decided to deprecate a file format any responsible company should begin to plan how long term access to file information can be assured. If they don't want to stand behind the format indefinitely public domain is a very reasonable option.
Sorry for the off topic, but http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/ does a good job on my work machine. Free as in beer AND free as in speech, what a deal!
Jim,
I hate to say this, but unless you give us a few reasons why some of the solutions you have looked at are not sufficient I doubt you will get any meaningful response.It's a pretty common problem when people ask for an open source replacement for a program they have used and were reasonably happy with.
Without some starting point for comparison you will just get dozens of stories about how product X works fine for them.
Sorry for the off-topic, but out of curiosity, what is it that you don't like about SIL as an institution? I know very little about them outside of the information on their site and given their growing notability in the font arena I would like to gather a little more info.
They have no respect for their elders. Got to go, time for bridge here at the home...
And I completely agree! For the record the only reason I would advise someone to use Live Office IS to sign up for the free level and make Microsoft pay for a domain. Even for the situations I mentioned there are better services for a similar price point. Even with the growing distrust of Google at least they use ODF file formats for their online apps. If ever there is a time to INSIST on an open format and the right to save offline copies of your info easily it is when you are signing up with a software service. No matter how much you love and trust a company you always want an offline backup.
Software as a service is a service like any other, you always check their work and have an alternate plan in case they close up shop.
Let's look at one of the options that hasn't gotten much press, and frankly isn't considered to be very good, Office Live.
:)
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft but this service (intially, until they have a lot of people signed up then they can tighten the screws) could save a small business a lot of money. For $40 a month you get a domain name, tools for building a site, 20GB of bandwidth a month, 2GB of storage space for your website, 50 email addresses with 2GB of storage a piece as well as some basic business apps, contact management, project management etc.
And zero servers to maintain, backup, or purchase.
For a small business that is HUGE.
If the business takes off they will out grow it, but if it doesn't it won't take years to pay off the loans they took out to buy hardware.
In house hardware and software is definitely a valuable asset for a lot of companies, but for someone running a mail order doll furniture business, software as a service might be just the ticket (though they might want to look at the free level of Office Live).
Actually I encourage everyone to make Microsoft pay for a free domain for a year by using the Office Live Basic service
In the U.S. I believe the number of miners killed in coal mine accidents was just a little under 50. We probably make a bigger deal of that now than we did when we were averaging 2000 a year, decades ago. Face it we are waaaaay over sensitive to danger these days, 25 years ago a kid wearing a bike helmet was more likely to be beaten up by the other kids in the neighborhood than they were to fall off a bike.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do what we can to minimize mine accidents, or nuclear material mishandling (or bike accidents for that matter). I'm just saying we need to realize there isn't much more news in a 24 hour period than there ever was and 1000 times as many ways to spread it around. They have to talk about something and listing the things that might kill us about as often as a lightning strike seems to keep the ratings up.
This is just another story that is designed to convince people that creating a tiered internet is the only possible solution. Many small ISPs aren't even involved in this discussion. This is all about the owners of big sections of the internet infrastructure looking for a way to justify charging sites not only for the huge amounts of bandwidth they need, as they do now, but also charge for actually using the huge amounts of bandwidth they have purchased.
Tiered internet is like charging someone $50,000 for a car with 500 horsepower and them charging them again each time they go over 35mph. Unfortunately most car companies would probably try that system if they could figure out a way to implement it.
While I agree with your assertion that there is no reason to paint Microsoft as the bad guy here I do think that we all need to realize that the bad guy is the current patent system.
I'm not sure Alcatel-Lucent is what most people would call a patent troll. They tried to take advantage of a broken system to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars. If the money is on the table it is not easy to resist. This is the same behavior that you might see from any company that sees that amount of money is possible by spending a few million dollars.
The fact that this case isn't a slam dunk tells you that our patent system is completely out of sync with reality. The need to do a patent search on even the most basic piece of software before distributing it is insane. The fact that Microsoft did license this technology and still someone managed to pop up with a claim that made it past at least one court review tells you how complex the problem is.
I don't believe he said anything about 100 million units/people making something "right". By many standards Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism are very successful religions, not failures. To say they have 100 million failures in their ranks doesn't determine the success or failure on a religion, just like one atheist tard who attempts to attack religions at every given chance doesn't necessarily mean all atheist have their heads up their asses. If you had a problem with his statement you could have picked a thousand examples
Now back to the topic. Personally I believe the kernel developers should continue to look for the best way to ensure that Linux retains the flexibility that it needs to adapt to the server, desktop or mobile roles. Leave the tuning to the distro. Microsoft, despite all of their press, isn't in the innovation business as a rule. Historically they prefer to follow or purchase the early leader making only the changes or improvements that they must to dominate the market. If Con thinks he has a better way to deal with the desktop I hope he develops it. Windows and Mac envy is a good motivator but one advantage that Linux has is that multiple distros provide plenty of testbeds for new ideas. Even developments that have a very narrow application can find a home in a specialty distro.
Mr. Halprin may be a brilliant novelist, or he may be a over-hyped hack, but if he gets his wish, he will also be completely forgotten in 100 years. There would be very few 11 year old faces that would light up at the words "The Little Mermaid" if Andersen's copyright hadn't lapsed. Shakespeare wouldn't be considered a one of the great writers of all time if somewhere his work hadn't escaped the bounds of being property of a few people to instead become the property of the world. The Grey Seal is not at all well known, but if it was still under copyright you wouldn't be able to buy a book by Frank L. Packard at all because no publisher would want to spend the money to pay for it. Ideas live in minds, and books eventually take more space than they are worth to booksellers. If a story doesn't become part of the culture it dies.
If you want to keep control of an idea, don't tell anyone about it. Nothing the government can do will keep people from imagining that Harry Potter had one more adventure. Eventually an idea will grow beyond control no matter how strong the copyright laws are.
http://dev.alfresco.com/
Their description:
"Alfresco is the leading open source alternative for enterprise content management."
I'm sure it doesn't do everything you want out of the box, but you wanted FLOSS for a reason, right?
Really that is exactly the point, some industries would like as many countries as possible to have almost identical copyright and patent policies. Lately those industries have had the most luck influencing U.S. law so they have decided to make those laws the template. It isn't the "Americans" that are pushing this, it is a collection of huge corporations that are trying to keep from having to fight the same court battles over and over. If they can convince the U.S. government to pressure other countries to bring their laws "in line" with the U.S. laws they make their own lives a lot easier. If Canada keeps it's own laws it will be a force these industries have to deal with directly, if Canada bows to pressure they fade into the background, another "me too" country they never have to work with. Australia should think about that too.