Just as important, it's the privileged access to politicians for foreign multinational corporations who are not part of the government's constituency, and supposedly "representative" organisations who actually don't represent *all* of their members - they just represent the few multinational members, who in turn benefit from the government officials *believing* that the organisation represents a broader set of views (e.g. voters and taxpayers). It's the plausible deniability that makes this scenario attractive to the multinationals.
Actually, I'd be very interested to know how much tax those multinationals contribute to the economy compared to the many small locally owned software companies...
I used to use a desktop pager - with miniature screenshots of the application windows on each desktop - as part of the FVWM2 window manager in 1995. I think Robert Nation wrote it...
We use rdiff-backup to automatically backup our laptops (all running Ubuntu Linux) onto a server at our office each day. Similarly, as the director, I maintain a server at home and my laptop backs up there each night. For those that don't know, rdiff-backup uses the rsync algorithm to create a mirror of your laptop's drive on another machine. It checks any files that differ between the source (laptop) and the destination (mirror on server). Rdiff-backup goes one step further, keeping the diffs of older versions of each file for as long as instructed so that you can also recreate older versions of any backed up file!
To avoid backing up invalid/troublesome/cache files, these are the excludes we use: --exclude/proc --exclude/tmp --exclude/mnt --exclude/sys --exclude/dev/bus --exclude '**/.mozilla' --exclude **/.thunderbird --exclude **/.mozilla-thunderbird --exclude **/cache*
For a 100GB laptop drive (nearly full) a daily rdiff-backup run takes about 20 minutes and is triggered by cron automatically. We've got a script which determines which network the laptop is on and backs up to the relevant server.
Rdiff-backup runs on any Linux with a reasonably up-to-date python implementation and rsync library. I believe it's also available for OS X and there's another client for Windows, but I'm not sure what it's called. Or you can run it with cygwin...
Looks like the OpenMoko phone, the Neo1973 (its name reflects the fact that it hopes to be the rebirth of mobile technology, which started with the first cell phone in 1973), is slated to include an accelerometer in its next release, due out in June 2007. This looks like a very cool project - I know I'm planning to invest in one of the next version of the hardware platform...
Dave
I understand that the argument (based on the IE7Blog) for IE7 not supporting CSS and ACID2 to the same level as modern browsers like Opera, Mozilla, and Konqueror/Safari is that doing so would break to many existing websites which were developed to support IE6's non-standard quirks rather than W3C standards. I understand the business requirement to protect this existing user base which is dependent on the flaws in IE6 being propogated to IE7, but there is one thing I don't understand:
Few if any of the web sites which depend on IE6 specific features state an explicit doctype - if they do, they're doing so pointlessly, as they almost never adhere to it. On the other hand, web pages which do assert adherence to a W3C document specification, e.g. , clearly don't intend to use IE6-specific features - if they do, they should be penalised by getting incorrect rendering.
Why, given the depth of developer talent at Microsoft, wasn't IE7 given the smarts to apply appropriate rendering to pages asserting a valid W3C doctype, and fall back to the non-compliant rendering consistent with IE6's non-standard rendering practices for pages that don't state a doctype?
Also, to whom should I send my invoices for the approximately 50% extra development time, per design, required to get perfectly functional W3C standards compliant sites (that render flawlessly in modern standards compliant browsers) to work in IE6 and now IE7? The cost that Microsoft's callous attitude towards open standards compliance has imposed on the diligent web developers for the past 6 or so years is unacceptable.
As much as I'd like to respect Bill Gates, and to see him as something other than a shrewd and souless businessman, I still think this is spin. It hasn't gone unnoticed that no company has seen profit margins like Microsoft's since colonial times when monopolies were gleefully raping and destroying entire cultures and ecosystems for their shareholders' gain, without conscience. Many if not most of the world's modern day problems have their roots in the west's colonial transgressions. What will the future of computing bring?
I think Bill realises that he's done wrong by a signficant portion of the world, and more will come to light as the world's computer users become more savvy (as they are with each generation), and more stories of graft, exploitation, and injustice emerge. Microsoft is a business which routinely uses deceit and law breaking as part of its arsenal of tools to maximise profit. Even if they get caught occasionally (and usually they don't), fighting the occasional law suit with their fleet of lawyers, they still wring more money out of the hapless computer user than if they "did the right thing".
Some might admire Bill's approach, but I don't. Anyone who believes that all is fair in love, war, and business is definitely not someone I'd do business with. The market depends on contract, and ultimately (since we know justice can be bought), contract depends on honour - and the value of reputation. If a business, like Microsoft, finds it cheaper to pay spin doctors to cover up its wrong-doings, then it doesn't really have to worry about its reputation.
Bill realises that eventually, his chickens will come home to roost (so to speak), and the history books will piece together all the really crappy things Microsoft has done under his watchful eye. So, given that a few billion $$ here and there aren't going to have a noticable impact on his lifestyle, why chuck a spare $billion at the masses, targetted with advice from a team of "philathropy advisors" to maximise publicity value. Maybe giving a bit of it away makes him feel better about all the nasty things he did to get that money from the people who earned it in the first place. Who knows, maybe the history books will remember Bill Gates as a beneficent, visonary philanthropist. Maybe they'll see him as a calculating mob-boss who tried too late to exorcise his demons.
All I can say is, the money is great for the people it helps, and I won't knock that. And good for you, Bill... better late than never. I guess we all need to sleep at night. A question one might ask, though: is it really generosity if you have so much you couldn't realistically spend it all yourself anyway?
Either way, sadly Bill donating to charity (especially when it's in the form of MS software licenses, one of MS's favourite tricks, which have 90%+ profit margins, and are thus grossly over-valued as a contribution), doesn't really do anything to polish Microsoft's irreparably tarnished Death Star image.
Several of my clients companies, medium sized by NZ standards (tiny by world standards) are now standardising on Mozilla. The main reasons:
Cool feature like tabbed browsing and junk mail filtering
Better security than Microsoft's equivalents
Believe it or not, themes...
Plus, I think they all really enjoy the idea of thumbing their noses at the Microsoft bulldozer - nearly all of my clients now recognise their dependence on Microsoft, so this is an opportunity to demonstrate their disdain for the company and its practices.
Just a quick clarification. I don't believe that any of Mandrake's configuration scripts are proprietary... They're pretty committed to GPL from what I've seen.
Slashdot Mirror
Just as important, it's the privileged access to politicians for foreign multinational corporations who are not part of the government's constituency, and supposedly "representative" organisations who actually don't represent *all* of their members - they just represent the few multinational members, who in turn benefit from the government officials *believing* that the organisation represents a broader set of views (e.g. voters and taxpayers). It's the plausible deniability that makes this scenario attractive to the multinationals.
Actually, I'd be very interested to know how much tax those multinationals contribute to the economy compared to the many small locally owned software companies...
I wrote about this leadership opportunity for NZ on the Fair Deal site (an anti-Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement "IP Chapter" effort): http://fairdeal.net.nz/2012/08/nzoss-software-patent-exclusion-vs-tpp
I don't think ST:TNG prior art is nearly as compelling as this 1994 *working prototype* from Knight Ridder: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1381528/Knight-Ridder-tablet-looks-just-like-iPad-17-YEARS-OLD.html This should really make Apple STFU. I certainly hope it does. Even more, though, I hope we get over this stupid idea of software and process patents. They're a total waste - like $500 billion since 1994: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1930272
I used to use a desktop pager - with miniature screenshots of the application windows on each desktop - as part of the FVWM2 window manager in 1995. I think Robert Nation wrote it...
We use rdiff-backup to automatically backup our laptops (all running Ubuntu Linux) onto a server at our office each day. Similarly, as the director, I maintain a server at home and my laptop backs up there each night. For those that don't know, rdiff-backup uses the rsync algorithm to create a mirror of your laptop's drive on another machine. It checks any files that differ between the source (laptop) and the destination (mirror on server). Rdiff-backup goes one step further, keeping the diffs of older versions of each file for as long as instructed so that you can also recreate older versions of any backed up file!
/proc --exclude /tmp --exclude /mnt --exclude /sys --exclude /dev/bus --exclude '**/.mozilla' --exclude **/.thunderbird --exclude **/.mozilla-thunderbird --exclude **/cache*
To avoid backing up invalid/troublesome/cache files, these are the excludes we use: --exclude
For a 100GB laptop drive (nearly full) a daily rdiff-backup run takes about 20 minutes and is triggered by cron automatically. We've got a script which determines which network the laptop is on and backs up to the relevant server.
Rdiff-backup runs on any Linux with a reasonably up-to-date python implementation and rsync library. I believe it's also available for OS X and there's another client for Windows, but I'm not sure what it's called. Or you can run it with cygwin...
Looks like the OpenMoko phone, the Neo1973 (its name reflects the fact that it hopes to be the rebirth of mobile technology, which started with the first cell phone in 1973), is slated to include an accelerometer in its next release, due out in June 2007. This looks like a very cool project - I know I'm planning to invest in one of the next version of the hardware platform... Dave
Hi,
I understand that the argument (based on the IE7Blog) for IE7 not supporting CSS and ACID2 to the same level as modern browsers like Opera, Mozilla, and Konqueror/Safari is that doing so would break to many existing websites which were developed to support IE6's non-standard quirks rather than W3C standards. I understand the business requirement to protect this existing user base which is dependent on the flaws in IE6 being propogated to IE7, but there is one thing I don't understand:
Few if any of the web sites which depend on IE6 specific features state an explicit doctype - if they do, they're doing so pointlessly, as they almost never adhere to it. On the other hand, web pages which do assert adherence to a W3C document specification, e.g.
, clearly don't intend to use IE6-specific features - if they do, they should be penalised by getting incorrect rendering.
Why, given the depth of developer talent at Microsoft, wasn't IE7 given the smarts to apply appropriate rendering to pages asserting a valid W3C doctype, and fall back to the non-compliant rendering consistent with IE6's non-standard rendering practices for pages that don't state a doctype?
Also, to whom should I send my invoices for the approximately 50% extra development time, per design, required to get perfectly functional W3C standards compliant sites (that render flawlessly in modern standards compliant browsers) to work in IE6 and now IE7? The cost that Microsoft's callous attitude towards open standards compliance has imposed on the diligent web developers for the past 6 or so years is unacceptable.
As much as I'd like to respect Bill Gates, and to see him as something other than a shrewd and souless businessman, I still think this is spin. It hasn't gone unnoticed that no company has seen profit margins like Microsoft's since colonial times when monopolies were gleefully raping and destroying entire cultures and ecosystems for their shareholders' gain, without conscience. Many if not most of the world's modern day problems have their roots in the west's colonial transgressions. What will the future of computing bring?
I think Bill realises that he's done wrong by a signficant portion of the world, and more will come to light as the world's computer users become more savvy (as they are with each generation), and more stories of graft, exploitation, and injustice emerge. Microsoft is a business which routinely uses deceit and law breaking as part of its arsenal of tools to maximise profit. Even if they get caught occasionally (and usually they don't), fighting the occasional law suit with their fleet of lawyers, they still wring more money out of the hapless computer user than if they "did the right thing".
Some might admire Bill's approach, but I don't. Anyone who believes that all is fair in love, war, and business is definitely not someone I'd do business with. The market depends on contract, and ultimately (since we know justice can be bought), contract depends on honour - and the value of reputation. If a business, like Microsoft, finds it cheaper to pay spin doctors to cover up its wrong-doings, then it doesn't really have to worry about its reputation.
Bill realises that eventually, his chickens will come home to roost (so to speak), and the history books will piece together all the really crappy things Microsoft has done under his watchful eye. So, given that a few billion $$ here and there aren't going to have a noticable impact on his lifestyle, why chuck a spare $billion at the masses, targetted with advice from a team of "philathropy advisors" to maximise publicity value. Maybe giving a bit of it away makes him feel better about all the nasty things he did to get that money from the people who earned it in the first place. Who knows, maybe the history books will remember Bill Gates as a beneficent, visonary philanthropist. Maybe they'll see him as a calculating mob-boss who tried too late to exorcise his demons.
All I can say is, the money is great for the people it helps, and I won't knock that. And good for you, Bill... better late than never. I guess we all need to sleep at night. A question one might ask, though: is it really generosity if you have so much you couldn't realistically spend it all yourself anyway?
Either way, sadly Bill donating to charity (especially when it's in the form of MS software licenses, one of MS's favourite tricks, which have 90%+ profit margins, and are thus grossly over-valued as a contribution), doesn't really do anything to polish Microsoft's irreparably tarnished Death Star image.
Dave
Linux on the desktop since 1994.
Is it possible to make a donation? Drupal is a great project and an impressive community.
Several of my clients companies, medium sized by NZ standards (tiny by world standards) are now standardising on Mozilla. The main reasons:
Plus, I think they all really enjoy the idea of thumbing their noses at the Microsoft bulldozer - nearly all of my clients now recognise their dependence on Microsoft, so this is an opportunity to demonstrate their disdain for the company and its practices.
Just a quick clarification. I don't believe that any of Mandrake's configuration scripts are proprietary... They're pretty committed to GPL from what I've seen.