MAYBE 2025's COBOL, not 2020. More likely 2030's or 2035's COBOL (relative to the position COBOL enjoyed in 2000). COBOL now is aggressively dying, So many COBOL software systems have been ported to Java as a replacement. I fully agree though that on the desktop or browser, it has dwindled drastically. And, from what I have heard about CERNER, Java EJB is a challenge when trying to scale up from 4 hospitals to, say, 150 integrated hospitals.
Calling the NUMBER TWO LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD, dead? That's just Click-Bait. By that logic, there is only one living language, JavaScript, and All other languages are on their way to extinction. Now, if Java were to drop to #5, one might be a little concerned and if it dropped below #10, then you could say it is a dying language. But seriously, the biggest problem it has it its license and Oracles past behavior concerning it. Those definitely have muddied the water for a long time. I expect to see Java as one of the 10 primary languages for business for between the next 10 and 20 years. Maybe longer since most internal business programs last for at least 10 years, and the bigger the user base for the program, the longer. Maybe in 30 years Java will become like Cobol, still supported, but actively being migrated away from. Perhaps Julia or something similar might be the reigning language then.
I used a much older version with the nickname of "Helios" or something like that and 7 years ago I was able to set it up to debug a Fortran app that called C++ libraries that call Fortran libraries. I also debugged Java apps that called C++ libraries which, I think, called Fortran libraries. I was able to step from a call in one language to the library in another language, track, and even modify the variables at different levels and see the results in the other language levels.
VERY useful. Eclipse works with a gazillion languages and environments (Linux, Windows, Android, IOS, along with various CPU's like ARM, MIPS, Intel, you name it). BUT, if you have to debug something like SQL Server SSRS packages, that I doubt would work, but hey, maybe nowadays, someone has extended Eclipse to even work with SSRS/SSIS/SSAS packages.
Eclipse is the grand daddy. Most environments are more speciallized to things like just Java or just Android.
Most creationist seriously DO believe what they say they believe. They believe it even when they are all by themselves with NO church or pastor and with the threat of being killed for saying they believe it. You must live in America - where it is still MOSTLY safe to be a Christian. Try saying you believe in the Bible and salvation through trust in Jesus in Iran or Saudi Arabia. That can get you thrown in prison pretty darn fast or sometimes killed.
A few, most often Catholics it seems - at least from conversations with a few Catholics and ex-Catholics I have had, have a fear of their church hierarchy. I should note that I like Catholics and have even attended two Catholic churches but I am not a Catholic. Also, some people from very small rural towns perhaps may fear their community some.
But hey, you would also be in trouble with Muslims too. The Koran is fairly emphatic on Creationism too. I wouldn't want to be saying the Koran is irrational and false in several middle east countries or Indonesia for that matter. That WILL likely get you killed. They DO believe it.
Interesting. You just increased my respect for Carl Sagan up from where it had been. I would make a small qualification though. It seems that the most haughty are the arm-chair "scientists" who like to post on SlashDot. Most honest scientist without a bone to pick and who aren't too caught up with where they went to school (Harvard graduates are the worst on this one and least when it comes to epidemiology) are more than willing to admit flaws in their and others research. Some flaws are barn-door sized but only found out years or decades later. Sadly, when it comes to anything concerning evolution, too many are intolerant and insist on lock-step compliance or else you are an outcast and will not receive any grant money.
As far as Creationism/Evolution it is Biblically consistent to believe in some hybrid of both if you actually go back to the Hebrew. From what I have read, the Bible and genetic mutation seem to indicate an initial creation billions of years ago, then a reforming of a trashed/chaotic earth/moon system and the creation of man in 6 days followed by evolution of life forms after then where you see SNP variations like you do now.
Before blurting out that catch-22 garbage, most people could recognize that the wording is not remotely Kings James English. If you even took the trivial effort of cutting and pasting to Google, you would find out that the above quotation comes from the English Standard Version. ESV came out somewhere in the last 10 years, after the NIV. For those churches not stuck in the King James (usually churches with 90% of the congregation around 80+ years old), the NIV has become the most commonly used version that have heard of, though the ESV is gaining popularity. ESV does an equal or better job than the NIV on some passages I am familiar with without making the text so close to the Greek grammar structure as to be difficult to read for an average English reader.
But then, what can one expect from the majority of Slashdot comment'ers? Mostly knee jerk, uninformed responses. Only a minority seem technically astute and those usually on areas such as particle physics.
"I didn't think people still believed it LITERALLY, this is news to me."
You obviously have never set foot in a church - at least one that didn't belong to the Unitarian Universalist, or perhaps some of the parishes of the United Presbyterian, Anglican , Lutheran, or Church of Christ denominations. Most of the denominations believe in literal interpretation with the caveat that certain phrases in the Bible are understood as figures of speech. For example, in the Psalms, when it the text mentions God protecting Israel under the pinions of His wings, it is not saying that God is a big chicken but it is understood that God is protecting Israel just like a mother hen protects it chicks.
So the concept of no Adam basically is considered as Heresy with a capital H since that would make Jesus, Moses, and all the prophets to be liars since the entire old and new testament depend upon the concept of substitutionary atonement for original and individual sin. Therefore, in this case, the researches who call themselves "evangelical" are demonstrating their fundamental ignorance of the foundation of evangelicalism and Christianity in general.
Ahh you got to love Slashdot. Filled with atheist bigots who want to push their agenda down everyone's throats and who would say that anyone believing in the opposite of them is an intolerant bigot who is pushing their ideology down everyone's throats. In the end, everyone gets painted as a bigot these days when it comes to origins discussions. Such is the nature of the issue of origins. No matter how you look at it it eventually reduces to a fundamental religious issue (yes, atheism is a religion too. A religion is the set of concepts that posit answers to who we are, is there life after death, is there an absolute entity, what is our relationship with that entity, is there sin, is there salvation, etc and how do I order my life accordingly?)
Yes, I know I threw out flame bait in the second sentence. I just wish people could see themselves as others see them like in that old poem. I myself have hypothesis about origins that don't fit either of the diametrical opposite models that so many slashdotters love to paint as "the models" and then trash or embrace. I would likely be considered an idiot by some, slightly heretical by others,... and people will continue to feel good about themselves and that their beliefs are right or "pretty much" right and that others are just stupid, dangerous, or even evil and not to be permitted.
The only solution to this will eventually come, but it will not be from humankind in my opinion.
I'll just sit back and enjoy the roasting I get. Cheers!
The far left and many environmentalists will fight this tooth and nail.
First, it is proposed by a capitalist, hence it "must" be evil. There is far to much conspiracy thinking in those camps.
Second, it is proposed by an oil billionaire.
Now for the saner reasons. (Unfortunately I have talked with several people that will completely distrust it based on the first two points).
The first sane problem is that he is likely going to use the typical pinwheel windmill. Those things slice through birds at 200 mph, since the birds don't know to avoid them. GE should just buy out that company that uses a impeller style windmill that looks turned on its side. These appear solid to birds so they avoid them. Secondly, they don't spin faster than the wind.
The next big big problem is that these things are going to get trashed by tornadoes in that area and the flying blade pieces will likely kill some people. We are talking tornado alley here.
Next big problem is that they can't handle high wind speed and will often be switched off and the blades locked in place. Again, GE needs to buy that impeller design lock, stock, and barrel. They can handle twice the windspeed and only need locked down at above 100 mph wind.
Next, people will complain about all the electric fields, and there will be some health study, that will result in some class action lawsuit.
The only good thing going for it is that you have a billionaire with enough money to make it happen even with the lawsuits.
Actually most of those on the Far Right also agree with you on this point. I'm one of those right leaners. Most of the Right hear that it is the Left who are demanding all the PC. When we hear that Bert and Ernie are labeled homosexual, we attribute it to the homosexual activist groups trying to recruit characters from the culture (like Bert and Ernie) as spokes models. I think both sides are being duped somehow.
I too find the germaphobia and 'life-proofing' of our children to be approaching the rediculous. I myself for instance only ride a bike on those bike paths where there are no cars (except at crossings) and things are fairly wide open so I can pedal hard all the way. Yet I hear that it is the law that I have to wear a helmet. I am 44 years old and I find this ridiculous. I get incensed somewhat at the idea of being fined or arrested or whatever they do to non-complier's.
I liked the fact that children where shown people like the Grouch on Sesame street. Children need to know that some people are hard to get along with, but that they can still respect them and learn how to work with them.
I suspect some of the paranoia comes from many more parents these days having just one child. Many parents on their first child are so up tight. After 2 to 3 they seem to develop a more balanced attitude. Perhaps this is a major part of what is driving our culture these days.
The new version seems as snappy as Word on windows XP. I get around 20 characters/second typing speed. Initial startup takes same time as 2.1, which is 19 seconds. After you kill the particular app (say writer) and just leave the quickstart running, starting a new app takes only 0.5 seconds if it was previously opened, or 4 seconds max, if it was a new sub app (spreadsheet).
I think they REALLY focus on speed on Windows, not on Linux. But also, it is very likely the way the program loads in Linux also. They don't seem to be assuming KDE or Gnome and so they load a huge library instead. IS THIS THE CASE???
Actually, from the weapons inspector's perspective, they almost always found a smoking gun. Not the bullets (bombs) but definitely the gun ( the hurried movement by Iraqi operatives of equipment out the back doors while they gave lame excuses to the inspectors at the front door to why they couldn't come in yet). Several times they even had satellite photos of trucks being driven up to the back doors and loaded with crates of stuff, while the inspectors waited at the front.
The Democrats just paid politics by saying no bombs where actually found by the time the inspectors were finally let in.
The inspectors were actually fairly happy about at least about making Saddams WMO apparatus look like fools.
I suspect that the laws you specify are actually very very likely to be the laws that Microsoft would implement in a future robot that is sufficiently sophisticated to use Prolog like rule-based programming. I bet that Microsoft would then round out to 10 rules with rules 8, 9, and 10 being Asimov's 3 rules. Microsoft would just never publish the first 7 which would supercede the classic 3 laws. Proprietary secrets and all that...
In our company nationalities and women make up the majority of the management too. I (an american born white guy) account for around 20% of the staff. It really just depends where you are. I suspect that some of the newer companies in the large metropolitan cities (like Atlanta) have the large majority of their staff and management composed of 'minorities'. For instance, in my developement team, I am the only white american guy. My best friend is from Belorussia and I have many other friends (indian, cambodian, black american, chinese, and more indian, and lots of women).
I agree. Most of the writers on slashdot don't seem to be aware that there are many many widowed elderly who living on small fixed incomes - like around $1200 to $1400 a month and have plenty of medical bills to pay. On top of this, they were born in the 1920's or earlier and the most high tech thing that they can work is a microwave or basic TV remote.
Many of these also have dementia or various mild to moderate psychological problems that they don't fully recognise and that impede easy social interaction. Furthermore, many are scooter bound or just have very limitted walking ability, like say, ONE block! Many of these live in Florida and when summer comes, all of the snowbird neighbors leave.(middle incomers who can fligh to their summer home in the north).
These poor souls may try calling friends and family on a regular basis for social life (but what family member - even the loving ones - can stand getting 20 phone calls a day!).
As a result, the TV is their primary companion.
Fortunately, some of these, like my mother has sons that can foot the bill for a new digital TV and cable. Many can not.
Although I am a conservative, it really ticks me off that people totally ignore catagories of people like the elderly in their planning. Most of these people seem to live in the illusions of youth. We all grow old and many of us will become physically feeble or burdened by psychological problems.
I personally love OpenOffice and use it almost always at home. But I have found out that it still causes formatting problems with most Word documents at work. Today for example, I had a footer what use to fit on one line with inches to spare now wrap around. After some investigation, I discovered that the page number on the right side of the footer was left justified at a tab setting and that the field seemed to extend beyond the beginning of the margin. This apparently caused OpenOffice to deposit the field on the next line at the first tab stop which was at the middle of the line. I can make changes to the document, but I still need Word to compare my changes to the original. I see many other formatting hassles like this - particularly with tabs, outlines, and tables.
My current annoyance is that when I close a read-only Word Doc, Open Office crashes on me every time.
To me it looks like we still have about 6 months before OOo can be used in offices that have lots of pre-existing documents or get lots of Word documents from outside sources.
Don't get me wrong. I eagerly wait for the day when I can delete Word from my system at work. Just, OpenOffice needs another half year or so.
This McCollum guy is amazing from www.worldtribune.com. I consider myself to be mostly right wing. Heck some might even call me radical right wing for opposing things like abortion. But this guy would likely label me a communist. He should be hired by Microsoft, Disney, or RIAA. I'm glad at least that some corporate managers have clearer vision.
How do you reason with a guy like this? Tell him that current software patents would make writing a "Hello World" program illegal and by extension all software is illegally produced and all programmers are thieves - oh yes, and all companies that develop software are thieves? Has anyone had success in reasoning with similar people concerning software development and patent issues.
AMEN!! Although I highly respect most of the
general slashdot view, many of us have forgotten
that using absolutes with law where there is no room for balancing concerns, gets us into some of
the crazy cases I have seen in florida. Too often
some social worker, prosecutor, or team gets it
into their head that since 95% of the time a certain set of circumstances orcurs, that party A is guilty (for instance, parents report someone stole their baby and there are not overwelming
evidences that the house was broken into, they
assume that the parents murdered the baby. Even
when the prosecutors case falls apart later, they
still say things like "Well, well get you next time.")
Anyways the point I am trying to make is that looking at one legal concern (1st admendment) and
ignoring others (raising children) gets people into these Yihads just like SOME prosecutors get into.
Just arguing for some BALANCE, people!!!!
I can feel the flames coming already...
I have been running 0.8 for a month now. It usually traps on me after visiting less than a dozen web pages. It even crashed on me just now while reading slashdot. Crashes occur both in the mail client and in the browser. My less common crash is when it eats 100% cpu and then crashes after eating all memory (over 100 megs of
VM). It bites me so bad that I am writing this message from IE 4.0 to make sure it gets sent. YUCK! (I am running NT 4.0 sp6).
Slashdot Mirror
MAYBE 2025's COBOL, not 2020. More likely 2030's or 2035's COBOL (relative to the position COBOL enjoyed in 2000). COBOL now is aggressively dying, So many COBOL software systems have been ported to Java as a replacement. I fully agree though that on the desktop or browser, it has dwindled drastically. And, from what I have heard about CERNER, Java EJB is a challenge when trying to scale up from 4 hospitals to, say, 150 integrated hospitals.
Calling the NUMBER TWO LANGUAGE IN THE WORLD, dead? That's just Click-Bait. By that logic, there is only one living language, JavaScript, and All other languages are on their way to extinction. Now, if Java were to drop to #5, one might be a little concerned and if it dropped below #10, then you could say it is a dying language. But seriously, the biggest problem it has it its license and Oracles past behavior concerning it. Those definitely have muddied the water for a long time. I expect to see Java as one of the 10 primary languages for business for between the next 10 and 20 years. Maybe longer since most internal business programs last for at least 10 years, and the bigger the user base for the program, the longer. Maybe in 30 years Java will become like Cobol, still supported, but actively being migrated away from. Perhaps Julia or something similar might be the reigning language then.
The current Eclipse is 4.7.2 or so.
I used a much older version with the nickname of "Helios" or something like that and 7 years ago I was able to set it up to debug a Fortran app that called C++ libraries that call Fortran libraries. I also debugged Java apps that called C++ libraries which, I think, called Fortran libraries. I was able to step from a call in one language to the library in another language, track, and even modify the variables at different levels and see the results in the other language levels.
VERY useful. Eclipse works with a gazillion languages and environments (Linux, Windows, Android, IOS, along with various CPU's like ARM, MIPS, Intel, you name it). BUT, if you have to debug something like SQL Server SSRS packages, that I doubt would work, but hey, maybe nowadays, someone has extended Eclipse to even work with SSRS/SSIS/SSAS packages.
Eclipse is the grand daddy. Most environments are more speciallized to things like just Java or just Android.
Wow! You are seriously OUT THERE dude!
Most creationist seriously DO believe what they say they believe. They believe it even when they are all by themselves with NO church or pastor and with the threat of being killed for saying they believe it. You must live in America - where it is still MOSTLY safe to be a Christian. Try saying you believe in the Bible and salvation through trust in Jesus in Iran or Saudi Arabia. That can get you thrown in prison pretty darn fast or sometimes killed.
A few, most often Catholics it seems - at least from conversations with a few Catholics and ex-Catholics I have had, have a fear of their church hierarchy. I should note that I like Catholics and have even attended two Catholic churches but I am not a Catholic. Also, some people from very small rural towns perhaps may fear their community some.
But hey, you would also be in trouble with Muslims too. The Koran is fairly emphatic on Creationism too. I wouldn't want to be saying the Koran is irrational and false in several middle east countries or Indonesia for that matter. That WILL likely get you killed. They DO believe it.
Interesting. You just increased my respect for Carl Sagan up from where it had been. I would make a small qualification though. It seems that the most haughty are the arm-chair "scientists" who like to post on SlashDot. Most honest scientist without a bone to pick and who aren't too caught up with where they went to school (Harvard graduates are the worst on this one and least when it comes to epidemiology) are more than willing to admit flaws in their and others research. Some flaws are barn-door sized but only found out years or decades later. Sadly, when it comes to anything concerning evolution, too many are intolerant and insist on lock-step compliance or else you are an outcast and will not receive any grant money.
As far as Creationism/Evolution it is Biblically consistent to believe in some hybrid of both if you actually go back to the Hebrew. From what I have read, the Bible and genetic mutation seem to indicate an initial creation billions of years ago, then a reforming of a trashed/chaotic earth/moon system and the creation of man in 6 days followed by evolution of life forms after then where you see SNP variations like you do now.
It would seem you are dishonest to yourself.
Before blurting out that catch-22 garbage, most people could recognize that the wording is not remotely Kings James English. If you even took the trivial effort of cutting and pasting to Google, you would find out that the above quotation comes from the English Standard Version. ESV came out somewhere in the last 10 years, after the NIV. For those churches not stuck in the King James (usually churches with 90% of the congregation around 80+ years old), the NIV has become the most commonly used version that have heard of, though the ESV is gaining popularity. ESV does an equal or better job than the NIV on some passages I am familiar with without making the text so close to the Greek grammar structure as to be difficult to read for an average English reader.
But then, what can one expect from the majority of Slashdot comment'ers? Mostly knee jerk, uninformed responses. Only a minority seem technically astute and those usually on areas such as particle physics.
"I didn't think people still believed it LITERALLY, this is news to me."
You obviously have never set foot in a church - at least one that didn't belong to the Unitarian Universalist, or perhaps some of the parishes of the United Presbyterian, Anglican , Lutheran, or Church of Christ denominations. Most of the denominations believe in literal interpretation with the caveat that certain phrases in the Bible are understood as figures of speech. For example, in the Psalms, when it the text mentions God protecting Israel under the pinions of His wings, it is not saying that God is a big chicken but it is understood that God is protecting Israel just like a mother hen protects it chicks.
So the concept of no Adam basically is considered as Heresy with a capital H since that would make Jesus, Moses, and all the prophets to be liars since the entire old and new testament depend upon the concept of substitutionary atonement for original and individual sin. Therefore, in this case, the researches who call themselves "evangelical" are demonstrating their fundamental ignorance of the foundation of evangelicalism and Christianity in general.
You really need to get out more. :-)
Ahh you got to love Slashdot. Filled with atheist bigots who want to push their agenda down everyone's throats and who would say that anyone believing in the opposite of them is an intolerant bigot who is pushing their ideology down everyone's throats. In the end, everyone gets painted as a bigot these days when it comes to origins discussions. Such is the nature of the issue of origins. No matter how you look at it it eventually reduces to a fundamental religious issue (yes, atheism is a religion too. A religion is the set of concepts that posit answers to who we are, is there life after death, is there an absolute entity, what is our relationship with that entity, is there sin, is there salvation, etc and how do I order my life accordingly?)
Yes, I know I threw out flame bait in the second sentence. I just wish people could see themselves as others see them like in that old poem. I myself have hypothesis about origins that don't fit either of the diametrical opposite models that so many slashdotters love to paint as "the models" and then trash or embrace. I would likely be considered an idiot by some, slightly heretical by others, ... and people will continue to feel good about themselves and that their beliefs are right or "pretty much" right and that others are just stupid, dangerous, or even evil and not to be permitted.
The only solution to this will eventually come, but it will not be from humankind in my opinion.
I'll just sit back and enjoy the roasting I get. Cheers!
The far left and many environmentalists will fight this tooth and nail.
First, it is proposed by a capitalist, hence it "must" be evil. There is far to much conspiracy thinking in those camps.
Second, it is proposed by an oil billionaire.
Now for the saner reasons. (Unfortunately I have talked with several people that will completely distrust it based on the first two points).
The first sane problem is that he is likely going to use the typical pinwheel windmill. Those things slice through birds at 200 mph, since the birds don't know to avoid them. GE should just buy out that company that uses a impeller style windmill that looks turned on its side. These appear solid to birds so they avoid them. Secondly, they don't spin faster than the wind.
The next big big problem is that these things are going to get trashed by tornadoes in that area and the flying blade pieces will likely kill some people. We are talking tornado alley here.
Next big problem is that they can't handle high wind speed and will often be switched off and the blades locked in place. Again, GE needs to buy that impeller design lock, stock, and barrel. They can handle twice the windspeed and only need locked down at above 100 mph wind.
Next, people will complain about all the electric fields, and there will be some health study, that will result in some class action lawsuit.
The only good thing going for it is that you have a billionaire with enough money to make it happen even with the lawsuits.
Actually most of those on the Far Right also agree with you on this point. I'm one of those right leaners. Most of the Right hear that it is the Left who are demanding all the PC. When we hear that Bert and Ernie are labeled homosexual, we attribute it to the homosexual activist groups trying to recruit characters from the culture (like Bert and Ernie) as spokes models. I think both sides are being duped somehow.
I too find the germaphobia and 'life-proofing' of our children to be approaching the rediculous. I myself for instance only ride a bike on those bike paths where there are no cars (except at crossings) and things are fairly wide open so I can pedal hard all the way. Yet I hear that it is the law that I have to wear a helmet. I am 44 years old and I find this ridiculous. I get incensed somewhat at the idea of being fined or arrested or whatever they do to non-complier's.
I liked the fact that children where shown people like the Grouch on Sesame street. Children need to know that some people are hard to get along with, but that they can still respect them and learn how to work with them.
I suspect some of the paranoia comes from many more parents these days having just one child. Many parents on their first child are so up tight. After 2 to 3 they seem to develop a more balanced attitude. Perhaps this is a major part of what is driving our culture these days.
The new version seems as snappy as Word on windows XP. I get around 20 characters/second typing speed. Initial startup takes same time as 2.1, which is 19 seconds. After you kill the particular app (say writer) and just leave the quickstart running, starting a new app takes only 0.5 seconds if it was previously opened, or 4 seconds max, if it was a new sub app (spreadsheet).
I think they REALLY focus on speed on Windows, not on Linux. But also, it is very likely the way the program loads in Linux also. They don't seem to be assuming KDE or Gnome and so they load a huge library instead. IS THIS THE CASE???
Patrick
Actually, from the weapons inspector's perspective, they almost always found a smoking gun. Not the bullets (bombs) but definitely the gun ( the hurried movement by Iraqi operatives of equipment out the back doors while they gave lame excuses to the inspectors at the front door to why they couldn't come in yet). Several times they even had satellite photos of trucks being driven up to the back doors and loaded with crates of stuff, while the inspectors waited at the front.
The Democrats just paid politics by saying no bombs where actually found by the time the inspectors were finally let in.
The inspectors were actually fairly happy about at least about making Saddams WMO apparatus look like fools.
Although iniallty modded as funny,
I suspect that the laws you specify are actually very very likely to be the laws that Microsoft would implement in a future robot that is sufficiently sophisticated to use Prolog like rule-based programming. I bet that Microsoft would then round out to 10 rules with rules 8, 9, and 10 being Asimov's 3 rules. Microsoft would just never publish the first 7 which would supercede the classic 3 laws. Proprietary secrets and all that...
In our company nationalities and women make up the majority of the management too. I (an american born white guy) account for around 20% of the staff. It really just depends where you are. I suspect that some of the newer companies in the large metropolitan cities (like Atlanta) have the large majority of their staff and management composed of 'minorities'. For instance, in my developement team, I am the only white american guy. My best friend is from Belorussia and I have many other friends (indian, cambodian, black american, chinese, and more indian, and lots of women).
I agree. Most of the writers on slashdot don't seem to be aware that there are many many widowed elderly who living on small fixed incomes - like around $1200 to $1400 a month and have plenty of medical bills to pay. On top of this, they were born in the 1920's or earlier and the most high tech thing that they can work is a microwave or basic TV remote.
Many of these also have dementia or various mild to moderate psychological problems that they don't fully recognise and that impede easy social interaction. Furthermore, many are scooter bound or just have very limitted walking ability, like say, ONE block! Many of these live in Florida and when summer comes, all of the snowbird neighbors leave.(middle incomers who can fligh to their summer home in the north).
These poor souls may try calling friends and family on a regular basis for social life (but what family member - even the loving ones - can stand getting 20 phone calls a day!).
As a result, the TV is their primary companion.
Fortunately, some of these, like my mother has sons that can foot the bill for a new digital TV and cable. Many can not.
Although I am a conservative, it really ticks me off that people totally ignore catagories of people like the elderly in their planning. Most of these people seem to live in the illusions of youth. We all grow old and many of us will become physically feeble or burdened by psychological problems.
I personally love OpenOffice and use it almost always at home. But I have found out that it still causes formatting problems with most Word documents at work. Today for example, I had a footer what use to fit on one line with inches to spare now wrap around. After some investigation, I discovered that the page number on the right side of the footer was left justified at a tab setting and that the field seemed to extend beyond the beginning of the margin. This apparently caused OpenOffice to deposit the field on the next line at the first tab stop which was at the middle of the line. I can make changes to the document, but I still need Word to compare my changes to the original. I see many other formatting hassles like this - particularly with tabs, outlines, and tables.
My current annoyance is that when I close a read-only Word Doc, Open Office crashes on me every time.
To me it looks like we still have about 6 months before OOo can be used in offices that have lots of pre-existing documents or get lots of Word documents from outside sources.
Don't get me wrong. I eagerly wait for the day when I can delete Word from my system at work. Just, OpenOffice needs another half year or so.
This McCollum guy is amazing from www.worldtribune.com. I consider myself to be mostly right wing. Heck some might even call me radical right wing for opposing things like abortion. But this guy would likely label me a communist. He should be hired by Microsoft, Disney, or RIAA. I'm glad at least that some corporate managers have clearer vision.
How do you reason with a guy like this? Tell him that current software patents would make writing a "Hello World" program illegal and by extension all software is illegally produced and all programmers are thieves - oh yes, and all companies that develop software are thieves? Has anyone had success in reasoning with similar people concerning software development and patent issues.
AMEN!! Although I highly respect most of the general slashdot view, many of us have forgotten that using absolutes with law where there is no room for balancing concerns, gets us into some of the crazy cases I have seen in florida. Too often some social worker, prosecutor, or team gets it into their head that since 95% of the time a certain set of circumstances orcurs, that party A is guilty (for instance, parents report someone stole their baby and there are not overwelming evidences that the house was broken into, they assume that the parents murdered the baby. Even when the prosecutors case falls apart later, they still say things like "Well, well get you next time.") Anyways the point I am trying to make is that looking at one legal concern (1st admendment) and ignoring others (raising children) gets people into these Yihads just like SOME prosecutors get into. Just arguing for some BALANCE, people!!!! I can feel the flames coming already...
I have been running 0.8 for a month now. It usually traps on me after visiting less than a dozen web pages. It even crashed on me just now while reading slashdot. Crashes occur both in the mail client and in the browser. My less common crash is when it eats 100% cpu and then crashes after eating all memory (over 100 megs of VM). It bites me so bad that I am writing this message from IE 4.0 to make sure it gets sent. YUCK! (I am running NT 4.0 sp6).