Am I the only one that doesn't care about startup times? My debian servers only need to be rebooted for a kernel upgrade. For how infrequently I need to restart, startup times are a minor issue.
I can't say the same for Windows, which requires a restart on half the Microsoft Updates that are installed, many software installations, and of course crashes.
You are abducted by savages, who intend to kill you. You can choose your manner of death by making a true or false statement. If you make a true statement, you will be submersed in boiling water. If you make a false statement, you will be burned at the stake.
What statement, if any, can you make to save your life?
WIthout federal backing, state parks will be gone in a decade.
Says who?
What about parks the move across several states?
I was waiting for this one. I don't really know. I'm sure the expenses can be shared.
When Bush added NCLB, it's budget shot up dramatically. from 14B to what is project to be 71 Billion.
Get rid of NCLB. and you will save far more the RP will.
Agreed. NCGA ( no child gets ahead ) does more harm than good.
Becasue school expensic go up, but no one wants to pay for them, so they nede other avenue of revenue.
I think this approach is wrong. I also think going to parent to hepl with class room itrems is wrong.
IT hides the growing cost until it get to big, then suddenly its a massive problem instead ogf a growing concernt hat culd ahve been planned for.
Expenses are going up. Yet the average cost per pupil per year for private schooling, is less than the average cost per pupil per year for public schooling. Arguably, the private education is better as well. The government is unable to efficiently run schools, that is the primary reason for the increased expenses.
"I have no kids in school."
And you still reap the benefit of an educated society.
A common argument. Indeed, property values are also higher in areas with better school districts. The point is, the amount you pay towards a school district should be determined by more than your property value. Somehow the number of children you have enrolled should be accounted for.
If I were to have kids and send them to a private school, I would not get a tax credit.
Nor should you. Please bear in mind you would have the right to participate in all extracurricular activities.
That is your only argument? Those are some darn expensive extra-curricular activities. Why not just a participation fee for those?
Maybe I'm biased because I lived in public housing; which allowed for an education and now I am better off then my mother was.
Or I could have lived o the street with no education and still be a drain.
And contractor are monitored and regulated.
I didn't say we don't need any public housing, but I argue the need for more of it. I also argue the cost of building it. Have you nothing to say about the $316,000 per apartment fee for renovating an existing structure to provide low income housing? These end up being pork barrel projects for politicians to hand out to their contractor friends. Then, they are monitored and regulated by the same people that hired them. You completely dodged that issue and took my comments personally, throwing in an insult.
Well, at least he wants to get rid of the fed, who secretly gave $16 trillion to bailout corporations in less than a three year period. That is more than 10 times greater than the national deficit, and more than the entire national debt accrued by the US in it's 200+ years of spending.
When I am short on money, it isn't a matter of cutting spending on things I don't want or need anymore. I want or need everything I spend money on, otherwise I wouldn't be spending it. Still, I have to cut somewhere. Every penny counts, right?
If the federal government is funding education from my tax dollars, then why do I pay thousands of dollars to the school district for property taxes each year? Why do my niece and nephew send me fund raisers for the school district year round? I have no kids in school. If I were to have kids and send them to a private school, I would not get a tax credit.
If the federal government is funding roads and bridges, then why do I pay 31.2 cents per gallon of gasoline to my state to pay for road and bridge maintenance and construction?
Low income housing - cut me a break. That is a scam to absurdly overpay politically favored contractors. They build housing, on the tax payer dime, to house more non-taxpayers and non-contributors. These are persons who will not pay property taxes, yet have plenty of children in school. This results in lower property values, higher taxes, and more diluted education for the taxpayers. Recently, our local government spent $3.8 million to turn an old hall into 12 low income apartments. That is $316,000 per apartment. In this area, I could buy a new construction 3000 square foot home built on an acre of land for less than $300,000. Something stinks.
Parks -> state parks. Easy one.
Energy research - I think Ron Paul may be making a mistake here. I think he's also screwing up by getting rid of USGS and NOAA.
To expand on this, the Mythbusters confirmed that the poor driving resulted regardless of using a hands-free device. The greatest component in the loss of driving abilities was the amount of concentration required by the discussion. They had people drive obstacle courses while having conversations three ways, 1) holding the phone 2) using a hands free device 3) with a passenger in the car.
The tests concluded that while having a casual conversation, the obstacle course was navigated well. When asked to solve simple math problems while driving, such as 56 divided by 8, the participants failed miserably. This was with a person in the back seat asking the questions.
I used to have my passenger read the letters from the Jumble puzzles to me while driving to pass the time. I thought I was safe as long as I had two hands on the wheel and I wasn't reading them myself. I don't do that anymore.
My family and I were traveling on I-95 in the US and saw a woman playing a violin while driving. No joke. Presumably, she was steering with her knees. In disbelief, I wanted to get a better look, but I wouldn't risk being in the lane adjacent to her. I think we need a campaign to ban playing musical instruments while driving.
What makes you think it was 10 billion digits? The TFA reads 10 trillion digits. Maybe you were being funny, and I misunderstood. In which case, mod funny.
/. moderation is out of control. Unpopular opinion, including anything positive about Apple, MS, Facebook. etc... get moderated as flamebait or troll, even if it is clearly not. Just because you don't agree with someone, doesn't mean they should be moderated as flamebait. Now, mark me off-topic, because that would be appropriate in this case.
I was looking at the date that the calendar patent was granted, 2002, instead of the date filed, 1999. Also, the two pieces of prior art I referenced did not include multiple strokes. The first had the action registered upon pen lift, the second defined the action as a single stroke curve. It looks like you were right after all.
I still don't like software patents, but that's completely irrelevant.
It is not, since you answered it yourself. The wikipedia link makes this even more understandable.
By definition a patent must be new, useful, and non-obvious.
No. By definition a patent is the grant of an exclusive right to produce a particular invention. By United States law (and international treaties), it must be new, useful, and non-obvious.
Here is a wikipedia link for you: Patent: Definition
"The term patent usually refers to an exclusive right granted to anyone who invents any new, useful, and non-obvious process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, and claims that right in a formal patent application."
While the methods listed in the patents are useful, they are neither new, nor non-obvious.
Let's look at the actual claims, then, and think about the history involved.
In the first patent from TFA, the invention claimed is (in simple terms) a system for accepting various commands drawn onto a touch-sensitive display. Yes, we've had touch-sensitive screens for years, but they've never used complex symbols (like circles, polygons, or letters) as commands. It's always been touching single points to select buttons, up until Palm created Graffiti. What does this patent cover? That's another rhetorical question. The patent appears to cover later implementations of Graffiti, which isn't surprising since it was filed by PalmSource, Inc. At the time, was it new? Pretty much, yes. A lot of it is based on earlier Graffiti work, but some the claims cover new functionality relating to what commands can be done with the input system. It's using an old idea in a new way. In 2000 when the patent was filed, most of the actions claimed were unheard of for a handheld terminal to use, like connecting a writing tablet to an optical projector. Skilled in the arts or not, that kind of system wouldn't really be obvious to anyone twelve years ago.
Now let's look at the second patent. This one's pretty easy to see the new and non-obvious use, because the first claim is quite clear:
Have you never seen POS devices? I agree with the first comment in this thread, which describes a PDA is a computer in a small form factor. Whether the software resides on a desktop, laptop, handheld computer, wrist-top computer, etc... shouldn't determine the software's patentability.
A portable data storage module for simultaneously depicting multiple calendars on a single display...
Multiple calendars at once, on a single display. Note that we're not talking about having multiple sets of events like most calendar programs do, but showing separate calendars. Later in the claims it's clear that the calendars can be independently controlled to show different time scales. As a software programmer for over 15 years, I personally can't think of any instance where this was done before the patent was filed. I myself certainly wouldn't have thought of it, even if I had been working on a calendar application. It seems quite new and non-obvious to me.
Outlook has supported side by side calendars since 2003. Since 2007, Outlook has supported side by side and overlaid calendars. I admit, this was released one year after the patent was filed. Microsoft provided an official download knows as Multi-Calendar viewer for Outlook 2000, which could display up to 6 calendars side by side. This was released well before the patent application.
Either the USPTO employees are ill-educated on software methodologies, or just plain lazy.
Why do you ask a question, then answer it yourself?
By definition a patent must be new, useful, and non-obvious. While the methods listed in the patents are useful, they are neither new, nor non-obvious. Either the USPTO employees are ill-educated on software methodologies, or just plain lazy.
I agree that the whole of civilization has been built by minor improvements. So, why should we slow that process down with software patents?
TFA doesn't have any useful examples. I count 3 images on the first link, 1 on the second. I really wish they would have shown an example of paging through content, either with consecutive screetshots, or a video. I can't make a conclusion on whether I like it or not, because I haven't seen it in action. The concept should have been better demonstrated in the article, instead of leaving so much up to the imagination.
Then again, tablets serve no practical purpose IMHO.
Hurd did a bang-up job during the NVIDIA GPU overheating problems present in their laptops. While other companies using the affected GPU experienced similar problems, HP's response was awful.
Those who wrote to Hurd got ignored at best, insulted at worst.
For those who don't know, here is an outline of the HPs response:
1. Say nothing is wrong at all
2. Admit there is a problem, and propose a BIOS update to fix the problem. This update did only one thing, which was instruct the CPU fan to run constantly. This did little to help the overheating, and a great deal to cause premature CPU fan failures.
3. Admit there is a problem and the BIOS fix doesn't work. Now, supply customers with an extended warranty that would cover the repair for this issue for an additional 12 months. Unfortunately, laptops sent in for repair had the GPU replaced with the same exact faulty GPU. A warranty of merely 90 days was supplied with this repair. This means that the GPU would overheat again, causing failure. This was likely to happen in greater than the 90 day warranty. When the CEO was contacted about this, the response was that the GPU was replaced with a different GPU. Physically looking at the GPU, or inspecting the GPU with a tool like lspci told otherwise. HP still would not admit that the same faulty GPU was used in the replacement.
4. Civil suits were filed by numerous laptop owners. HP lost every case AFAIK. They still wouldn't settle with all of the other owners who did not sue.
5. A class action suit was filed against NVIDIA, in which NVIDIA lost. HP agreed to laptops meeting the case requirements. Regardless of which laptop was owned, the HP replacement laptop was a $300 Compaq Presario CQ56-115DX. So, if you bought a $1500 HP laptop that never worked right, this is your compensation.
There are already many posts on here questioning whether or not the security guard could legally confiscate the camera. The posts title is be a bit misleading. It is a case of having too many antecedents to choose from for the pronoun "he". The article does _not_ state that the security guard was within his rights to confiscate the camera. It states that the _officer_ was withing his rights to confiscate the camera.
The article did not state that the security guard could confiscate the camera. Instead, the article stated that the officer claimed to have rights to confiscate the camera.
This is a case of having multiple possible antecedents for a pronoun.
From TFA:
Mr White said that one officer claimed that under the Prevention of Terrorism Act he was within in his rights to confiscate the mobile phone on which the photos were taken.
In this case, the pronoun "he" is referring to it's antecedent "one officer".
Thank you. I guess I should create a list of templates to install by default on other people's computers. The Professional Template Pack English II looks very promising.
The LanguageTool extension is not provided with the with the Debian packages. Actually, LanguageTool is not yet in the Debian repository. There has been a bug report filed, since LibreOffice ships with LanguageTool by default. So, it should probably ship with the Debian package as well. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=403619
Any insight on whether LibreOffice and OpenOffice extensions will remain interchangeable as the two projects migrate away from each other?
There are a few providers of a sales tax database, and at least one that provides a calculation service, strikeiron.com. This may not be a problem for multibillion dollar businesses, but it is for smaller businesses.
The first method requires you to pay for monthly updates. It requires the business owner pay for a developer to write an data munging script, and/or an import script for the e-commerce software. It also requires the business owner to pay for a monthly import of the data into his e-commerce software.
The second method requires you to pay services fees. Many of these are out of reach for small businesses, which would force them to close. The only ones who could afford it are the giant companies you seem to despise.
Accuracy and liability may be another issue. With a database download, updates are provided once monthly. This may not be frequent enough to guarantee accurate tax rates. Ultimately, who is responsible for rate or calculation errors with either method?
If interstate sales tax collection is mandated by the government, then the government should provide free access to current and accurate rates. Given the increase in sales tax revenues that can be expected from mandating interstate sales tax, the cost to provide access to this information is negligible. A minuscule percentage of the sales tax revenues could be appropriated to building and maintaining this service.
I may not disagree that Amazon uses this as a loophole to undercut brick-and-mortar stores. However, there are certainly technical and financial issues with mandating interstate sales tax, which would hurt small e-commerce businesses and start-ups. Mandating this tax without providing a reliable, accurate, server based method of obtaining tax rates is a bad decision, IMHO.
Disclaimer: I rarely use any office products.
I was an OO user, but switched to LibreOffice when Debian made the switch. I've been happy the few times I've used it.
Over the years, while trying to sell the idea of OO or LO to clients and friends, I've not had much success. Other than the ridiculous gripe they've had about not saving new documents as MS.doc formats by default, the major complaint has been lack of templates. A vanilla install of OO or LO doesn't have nearly the amount of templates that are bundled with MS Office. I tried pointing these users to template downloads at thedocumentfoundation.org, but there are only a handful there as well. Additionally, I just checked the LibreOffice site, and they suggest visiting opentemplate.org, which appears to be down.
As I said, I don't use any Office programs, but there is the feedback I've gotten from people I referred to OO & LO.
I've had more success with family members, but then again they are all converted to linux and never looked back.
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Am I the only one that doesn't care about startup times? My debian servers only need to be rebooted for a kernel upgrade. For how infrequently I need to restart, startup times are a minor issue.
I can't say the same for Windows, which requires a restart on half the Microsoft Updates that are installed, many software installations, and of course crashes.
If you don't want to waste your time watching the video, here is the only quote you need to hear from it.
"You don't necessarily worry about doing something the right when you're doing it in a hackathon. The most important thing is to crank something out."
Yep, that explains a lot.
You are abducted by savages, who intend to kill you. You can choose your manner of death by making a true or false statement. If you make a true statement, you will be submersed in boiling water. If you make a false statement, you will be burned at the stake.
What statement, if any, can you make to save your life?
WIthout federal backing, state parks will be gone in a decade.
Says who?
What about parks the move across several states?
I was waiting for this one. I don't really know. I'm sure the expenses can be shared.
When Bush added NCLB, it's budget shot up dramatically. from 14B to what is project to be 71 Billion. Get rid of NCLB. and you will save far more the RP will.
Agreed. NCGA ( no child gets ahead ) does more harm than good.
Becasue school expensic go up, but no one wants to pay for them, so they nede other avenue of revenue.
I think this approach is wrong. I also think going to parent to hepl with class room itrems is wrong.
IT hides the growing cost until it get to big, then suddenly its a massive problem instead ogf a growing concernt hat culd ahve been planned for.
Expenses are going up. Yet the average cost per pupil per year for private schooling, is less than the average cost per pupil per year for public schooling. Arguably, the private education is better as well. The government is unable to efficiently run schools, that is the primary reason for the increased expenses.
"I have no kids in school."
And you still reap the benefit of an educated society.
A common argument. Indeed, property values are also higher in areas with better school districts. The point is, the amount you pay towards a school district should be determined by more than your property value. Somehow the number of children you have enrolled should be accounted for.
If I were to have kids and send them to a private school, I would not get a tax credit.
Nor should you. Please bear in mind you would have the right to participate in all extracurricular activities.
That is your only argument? Those are some darn expensive extra-curricular activities. Why not just a participation fee for those?
Maybe I'm biased because I lived in public housing; which allowed for an education and now I am better off then my mother was. Or I could have lived o the street with no education and still be a drain.
And contractor are monitored and regulated.
I didn't say we don't need any public housing, but I argue the need for more of it. I also argue the cost of building it. Have you nothing to say about the $316,000 per apartment fee for renovating an existing structure to provide low income housing? These end up being pork barrel projects for politicians to hand out to their contractor friends. Then, they are monitored and regulated by the same people that hired them. You completely dodged that issue and took my comments personally, throwing in an insult.
Well, at least he wants to get rid of the fed, who secretly gave $16 trillion to bailout corporations in less than a three year period. That is more than 10 times greater than the national deficit, and more than the entire national debt accrued by the US in it's 200+ years of spending.
http://www.unelected.org/audit-of-the-federal-reserve-reveals-16-trillion-in-secret-bailouts
When I am short on money, it isn't a matter of cutting spending on things I don't want or need anymore. I want or need everything I spend money on, otherwise I wouldn't be spending it. Still, I have to cut somewhere. Every penny counts, right?
If the federal government is funding education from my tax dollars, then why do I pay thousands of dollars to the school district for property taxes each year? Why do my niece and nephew send me fund raisers for the school district year round? I have no kids in school. If I were to have kids and send them to a private school, I would not get a tax credit.
If the federal government is funding roads and bridges, then why do I pay 31.2 cents per gallon of gasoline to my state to pay for road and bridge maintenance and construction?
Low income housing - cut me a break. That is a scam to absurdly overpay politically favored contractors. They build housing, on the tax payer dime, to house more non-taxpayers and non-contributors. These are persons who will not pay property taxes, yet have plenty of children in school. This results in lower property values, higher taxes, and more diluted education for the taxpayers. Recently, our local government spent $3.8 million to turn an old hall into 12 low income apartments. That is $316,000 per apartment. In this area, I could buy a new construction 3000 square foot home built on an acre of land for less than $300,000. Something stinks.
Parks -> state parks. Easy one.
Energy research - I think Ron Paul may be making a mistake here. I think he's also screwing up by getting rid of USGS and NOAA.
To expand on this, the Mythbusters confirmed that the poor driving resulted regardless of using a hands-free device. The greatest component in the loss of driving abilities was the amount of concentration required by the discussion. They had people drive obstacle courses while having conversations three ways, 1) holding the phone 2) using a hands free device 3) with a passenger in the car.
The tests concluded that while having a casual conversation, the obstacle course was navigated well. When asked to solve simple math problems while driving, such as 56 divided by 8, the participants failed miserably. This was with a person in the back seat asking the questions.
I used to have my passenger read the letters from the Jumble puzzles to me while driving to pass the time. I thought I was safe as long as I had two hands on the wheel and I wasn't reading them myself. I don't do that anymore.
My family and I were traveling on I-95 in the US and saw a woman playing a violin while driving. No joke. Presumably, she was steering with her knees. In disbelief, I wanted to get a better look, but I wouldn't risk being in the lane adjacent to her. I think we need a campaign to ban playing musical instruments while driving.
What makes you think it was 10 billion digits? The TFA reads 10 trillion digits. Maybe you were being funny, and I misunderstood. In which case, mod funny.
/. moderation is out of control. Unpopular opinion, including anything positive about Apple, MS, Facebook. etc... get moderated as flamebait or troll, even if it is clearly not. Just because you don't agree with someone, doesn't mean they should be moderated as flamebait. Now, mark me off-topic, because that would be appropriate in this case.
I wasn't trolling, but I think I just got owned.
I was looking at the date that the calendar patent was granted, 2002, instead of the date filed, 1999. Also, the two pieces of prior art I referenced did not include multiple strokes. The first had the action registered upon pen lift, the second defined the action as a single stroke curve. It looks like you were right after all.
I still don't like software patents, but that's completely irrelevant.
Correct. Even more ironic, is the reasoning behind Xerox losing a summary judgement to palmOne.
The reason was prior art. The two pieces of prior art were from 1983 and 1985.
So, at the time, palmOne said the software wasn't patentable due to prior art. Now they want to patent it themselves. Oh sweet irony.
Why do you ask a question, then answer it yourself?
Because it's a device.
It is not, since you answered it yourself. The wikipedia link makes this even more understandable.
By definition a patent must be new, useful, and non-obvious.
No. By definition a patent is the grant of an exclusive right to produce a particular invention. By United States law (and international treaties), it must be new, useful, and non-obvious.
Here is a wikipedia link for you: Patent: Definition
"The term patent usually refers to an exclusive right granted to anyone who invents any new, useful, and non-obvious process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, and claims that right in a formal patent application."
While the methods listed in the patents are useful, they are neither new, nor non-obvious.
Let's look at the actual claims, then, and think about the history involved.
In the first patent from TFA, the invention claimed is (in simple terms) a system for accepting various commands drawn onto a touch-sensitive display. Yes, we've had touch-sensitive screens for years, but they've never used complex symbols (like circles, polygons, or letters) as commands. It's always been touching single points to select buttons, up until Palm created Graffiti. What does this patent cover? That's another rhetorical question. The patent appears to cover later implementations of Graffiti, which isn't surprising since it was filed by PalmSource, Inc. At the time, was it new? Pretty much, yes. A lot of it is based on earlier Graffiti work, but some the claims cover new functionality relating to what commands can be done with the input system. It's using an old idea in a new way. In 2000 when the patent was filed, most of the actions claimed were unheard of for a handheld terminal to use, like connecting a writing tablet to an optical projector. Skilled in the arts or not, that kind of system wouldn't really be obvious to anyone twelve years ago.
Now let's look at the second patent. This one's pretty easy to see the new and non-obvious use, because the first claim is quite clear:
Have you never seen POS devices? I agree with the first comment in this thread, which describes a PDA is a computer in a small form factor. Whether the software resides on a desktop, laptop, handheld computer, wrist-top computer, etc... shouldn't determine the software's patentability.
A portable data storage module for simultaneously depicting multiple calendars on a single display...
Multiple calendars at once, on a single display. Note that we're not talking about having multiple sets of events like most calendar programs do, but showing separate calendars. Later in the claims it's clear that the calendars can be independently controlled to show different time scales. As a software programmer for over 15 years, I personally can't think of any instance where this was done before the patent was filed. I myself certainly wouldn't have thought of it, even if I had been working on a calendar application. It seems quite new and non-obvious to me.
Outlook has supported side by side calendars since 2003. Since 2007, Outlook has supported side by side and overlaid calendars. I admit, this was released one year after the patent was filed. Microsoft provided an official download knows as Multi-Calendar viewer for Outlook 2000, which could display up to 6 calendars side by side. This was released well before the patent application.
Either the USPTO employees are ill-educated on software methodologies, or just plain lazy.
Ther
Why do you ask a question, then answer it yourself?
By definition a patent must be new, useful, and non-obvious. While the methods listed in the patents are useful, they are neither new, nor non-obvious. Either the USPTO employees are ill-educated on software methodologies, or just plain lazy.
I agree that the whole of civilization has been built by minor improvements. So, why should we slow that process down with software patents?
TFA doesn't have any useful examples. I count 3 images on the first link, 1 on the second. I really wish they would have shown an example of paging through content, either with consecutive screetshots, or a video. I can't make a conclusion on whether I like it or not, because I haven't seen it in action. The concept should have been better demonstrated in the article, instead of leaving so much up to the imagination.
Then again, tablets serve no practical purpose IMHO.
Agreed. Just clarifying the article, since many posters confused the person supposedly within rights to confiscate the camera, according to TFA.
Hurd did a bang-up job during the NVIDIA GPU overheating problems present in their laptops. While other companies using the affected GPU experienced similar problems, HP's response was awful.
Those who wrote to Hurd got ignored at best, insulted at worst.
For those who don't know, here is an outline of the HPs response:
1. Say nothing is wrong at all
2. Admit there is a problem, and propose a BIOS update to fix the problem. This update did only one thing, which was instruct the CPU fan to run constantly. This did little to help the overheating, and a great deal to cause premature CPU fan failures.
3. Admit there is a problem and the BIOS fix doesn't work. Now, supply customers with an extended warranty that would cover the repair for this issue for an additional 12 months. Unfortunately, laptops sent in for repair had the GPU replaced with the same exact faulty GPU. A warranty of merely 90 days was supplied with this repair. This means that the GPU would overheat again, causing failure. This was likely to happen in greater than the 90 day warranty. When the CEO was contacted about this, the response was that the GPU was replaced with a different GPU. Physically looking at the GPU, or inspecting the GPU with a tool like lspci told otherwise. HP still would not admit that the same faulty GPU was used in the replacement.
4. Civil suits were filed by numerous laptop owners. HP lost every case AFAIK. They still wouldn't settle with all of the other owners who did not sue.
5. A class action suit was filed against NVIDIA, in which NVIDIA lost. HP agreed to laptops meeting the case requirements. Regardless of which laptop was owned, the HP replacement laptop was a $300 Compaq Presario CQ56-115DX. So, if you bought a $1500 HP laptop that never worked right, this is your compensation.
There are already many posts on here questioning whether or not the security guard could legally confiscate the camera. The posts title is be a bit misleading. It is a case of having too many antecedents to choose from for the pronoun "he". The article does _not_ state that the security guard was within his rights to confiscate the camera. It states that the _officer_ was withing his rights to confiscate the camera.
This is a case of having multiple possible antecedents for a pronoun.
From TFA:
In this case, the pronoun "he" is referring to it's antecedent "one officer".
Thank you. I guess I should create a list of templates to install by default on other people's computers. The Professional Template Pack English II looks very promising.
The LanguageTool extension is not provided with the with the Debian packages. Actually, LanguageTool is not yet in the Debian repository. There has been a bug report filed, since LibreOffice ships with LanguageTool by default. So, it should probably ship with the Debian package as well. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=403619
Any insight on whether LibreOffice and OpenOffice extensions will remain interchangeable as the two projects migrate away from each other?
Thanks a million. Now I'm better prepared to help others make the switch to LibreOffice. Unfortunately I have no mod points to give you.
I don't understand why anyone would write a book that would be guaranteed to have outdated information almost immediately.
There are a few providers of a sales tax database, and at least one that provides a calculation service, strikeiron.com. This may not be a problem for multibillion dollar businesses, but it is for smaller businesses.
The first method requires you to pay for monthly updates. It requires the business owner pay for a developer to write an data munging script, and/or an import script for the e-commerce software. It also requires the business owner to pay for a monthly import of the data into his e-commerce software.
The second method requires you to pay services fees. Many of these are out of reach for small businesses, which would force them to close. The only ones who could afford it are the giant companies you seem to despise.
Accuracy and liability may be another issue. With a database download, updates are provided once monthly. This may not be frequent enough to guarantee accurate tax rates. Ultimately, who is responsible for rate or calculation errors with either method?
If interstate sales tax collection is mandated by the government, then the government should provide free access to current and accurate rates. Given the increase in sales tax revenues that can be expected from mandating interstate sales tax, the cost to provide access to this information is negligible. A minuscule percentage of the sales tax revenues could be appropriated to building and maintaining this service.
I may not disagree that Amazon uses this as a loophole to undercut brick-and-mortar stores. However, there are certainly technical and financial issues with mandating interstate sales tax, which would hurt small e-commerce businesses and start-ups. Mandating this tax without providing a reliable, accurate, server based method of obtaining tax rates is a bad decision, IMHO.
Disclaimer: I rarely use any office products.
.doc formats by default, the major complaint has been lack of templates. A vanilla install of OO or LO doesn't have nearly the amount of templates that are bundled with MS Office. I tried pointing these users to template downloads at thedocumentfoundation.org, but there are only a handful there as well. Additionally, I just checked the LibreOffice site, and they suggest visiting opentemplate.org, which appears to be down.
I was an OO user, but switched to LibreOffice when Debian made the switch. I've been happy the few times I've used it.
Over the years, while trying to sell the idea of OO or LO to clients and friends, I've not had much success. Other than the ridiculous gripe they've had about not saving new documents as MS
As I said, I don't use any Office programs, but there is the feedback I've gotten from people I referred to OO & LO.
I've had more success with family members, but then again they are all converted to linux and never looked back.