I think you're mistaken. There will be no applications that process OOXML perfectly.
Which is why I said "perfectly" very firmly between quotation marks, and specifically said MSOffice will be the only app that is "anywhere near compliant".
My point is that MSOffice the only app that has even the chance of implementing OOXML spec in full, because Microsoft is in possession of the remaining bits that are missing from the OOXML specification - the behaviour implemented in MSOffice itself that they know exists in MSOffice but didn't bother to reverse-engineer the Office source code and specify what it actually does.
And no, I don't believe Microsoft will bother implementing the spec correctly either; it's very likely that if MSOffice can't read a document produced by another app (no matter that the document is valid), it's obviously in Microsoft's eyes the fault of the other app.
Re:I need enlightenment...
on
ISO Approves OOXML
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· Score: 5, Informative
Sorry, but every article I read about OOXML is about the voting and standardization irregularities, and nothing I've found reviews OOXML from the users standpoint, or implications of it being ISO-ed...
From user's point of view, this rushed standardisation means that the whole point of the standardisation has been defeated in OOXML's case. It also means that we now have two standards that solve the exact same problem, and thanks to the Marketing, the technically far worse format has a chance at winning: If OOXML becomes the dominant format, the promising future from OpenDocument may not be realised. It can be a major setback.
And what was the point of the standardisation? What was the golden promise of OpenDocument? Interoperability, plain and simple.
Simply put: In the current state of affairs, OpenDocument is implementable by third parties. OOXML is not. There can and will be many OpenDocument applications. If OOXML won't get fixed, there will be one and only one application with anywhere near compliant OOXML support.
With OpenDocument, you can edit the documents in any ODF-compliant application - or process them with any external tool, or generate them from scratch programmatically - and there's no problems because the standards is complete, well specified, and not hopelessly tied to one application. OOXML, in comparison, has nothing of this: There's a bunch of nasty features that make writing completely compliant applications difficult, if not impossible. The end result will be that there's one application that processes OOXML "perfectly" (MSOffice) and the rest work when they work (and since consumers expect perfect behaviour, it means they aren't used very much, no?)...
Sure, the interoperability dream is still very much there, because ODF is still out there. It's just that now we have a completely redundant standard that is a) technically inferior but b) Microsoft will make you either use it, or cry and use it.
Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.
That is just the usual clause in website user agreements that basically boils down to "we don't want to contact your lawyer if we want to generate a thumbnail or whatever of a picture you uploaded". Or list it on the public photo sharing website in question with other images, possibly with Google ads. Or they just don't want to contact you if they change the look of the website. Because, you know, you're the copyright holder and you have the ultimate control over the use of the image - all other uses, no matter how common sense they seem to be, are absolutely forbidden.
Otherwise, they probably would have to hear from people all the time: "Oh, I like this gallery of pictures you have here, but could you make my picture thumbnail twice as large as the others? You know, my sixteen-page contract with you guys says I get 400 pixel wide thumbnails if I want to." Someone has to set the terms on the presentation of the image on the website. It's usually the party that publishes the images.
There have been similar moral panics about these clauses - dig around Slashdot and you'll probably find the stories about Yahoo!/Geocities and LiveJournal adding that sort of clauses. They have been also toned down to specifically address the concerns from people who say this clause could mean "we'll do whatever you want with your image". I imagine this will be, too.
Did we learn nothing from the 80s and early 90s? If you write the standard first, you're going to get the kitchen sink. Engineer a good system, then standardize it. Nothing sands the sharp edges like the real world.
No, we learnt from 80s and 90s that if you engineer a system and then standardize it, you get a crappy system - your bugs become everyone's features.
If you engineer a good system, learn from the experience, then write a standard that allows for room for growth, and then make your system compliant with the standard, you get a great standard. If you do this process again n times, you'll be on even stronger ground. We learned that standards aren't perfect and need to be refined; yet, at the same time, compliance with existing standards is important.
(...said he, and posted this over Internet Protocol v4 and Hypertext Transfer Protocol v1.1...)
OpenDocument folks did it right: Start from OpenOffice.org standard, think how to make it better in real world, then standardize it and let OpenOffice.org folks fix their implementation - and the OOo folks did that. With OOXML, Microsoft is just saying "no, perhaps it's not perfect, but you will implement this, all quirks and undocumented sides included, because we aren't touching our perfect implementation. Either that, or you don't implement it at all."
That's your problem right there. Why should the article author have to convince you that 'someone would care about the band'? At least one person cares obviously. If the information is accurate, it has a right to be there because someone else might want to know, and it's none of the editors' business to decide if it's 'important enough'.
How would you deal with spam that gets added to the random articles? "Oh, I see some spammer replaced the page contents with Viagra spam. Naughty spammer, there's no need to delete anything from this article! Let's revert back to the previous version and move the content to the 'Viagra marketing' page where it belongs.". Don't say "delete the spam"; the spammers would have the exact same rights as the other editors. You can't start adding rules like "delete the spam" in an extreme-inclusionistic world! The spammer has every right to claim someone else has the "right to know" about the junk they are pushing, and it's "accurate" too!
My point is this: Everyone has some limiting factors in mind.
Wikipedia has both a goal and commonly agreed standards. If you are really serious about proposing "you can't touch what other people consider important" rule, I'd like to hear how you'd deal with outright spam and random jokes invented by bored schoolkids. The current system in place deals with that; I don't know if yours does.
People who advocate the most extreme forms of inclusionism should be strapped to chair and made browse through CAT:CSD for a few days and see this precious information that, under the current rules, gets deleted all the time in all of its gory glory. You'd be surprised. =) I mean, it'd be extremely nice if we could include everything in Wikipedia, but the reality regrettably isn't that rosy. We need some standards. And once we have limiting standards, we suddenly have the ability to have a goal.
And don't get me wrong; I think most information worth discussing should be included in Wikipedia in one form or another, in proportion to their so far demonstrable lasting significance. I don't see problems mentioning someone's garage band, as long as they do something to justify their existence in Wikipedia - otherwise, they should be relegated to "List of garage bands in region X".
Since Linux use free software, they expect it. The gaming industry doesn't see much profit in spending money developing a game that people will scoff at paying money for.
I'm a Linux user, and heck, I definitely expect free software.
Yet, I see games as a entertainment, not "software" in the usual sense. I buy games just like I buy DVDs - copies of works of art, pieces of entertainment to be enjoyed.
Big issue is that games are created, software gets developed. Games, like works of art, have lifespans and "afterlife": They get written, released, and brought to us, and then the public can enjoy them for the rest of the eternity, in the form the developers left them (or the form the modders cherish them). Paying for games makes sense: You know you either get an allotted short dose of amusement for your 50€, or keep enjoying it for a few years to come - but by that time you know you have also bought something else to be entertained by.
Software, on the other hand, is conceived, developed, used for their intended purpose, updated, used even more - decades at time if we are lucky. The only reason to not use the software is that it gets replaced by something that is better suited for the task, otherwise, you just keep using the tool that does the job. That's one of the reason you don't want to pay for software updates: You don't want to pay for a tool you already have and know you have no problems using it. It doesn't make sense to pay for a tool that worked just fine last week. Your tools aren't supposed to rot away while someone is clearly still maintaining them!
Lately I've been a console gamer (GameCube/Nintendo DS), and you definitely buy console games the way you buy DVDs: You just buy a game and play it to your heart's content, and let it sit on the shelf once you're done with it. I've had no problems paying for games that run on Linux (Quake I/II/III/IV, Doom 3, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Myth II, Neverwinter Nights). I've had no problems buying Windows games when I don't even have Windows on my machine - I know I can run them on Wine pretty much fine now. Heck, I bought The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion when I had absolutely no way of running it initially (underpowered graphics card and no Windows), while now I do (newer graphics card and a version of Wine that runs the game just fine).
Here's a classic example: the band The Protomen. They're very well known for a non-mainstream band, but ask geeks anywhere and they know who they are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=The_Protomen
Yet, The Protomen article keeps being deleted because of one editor/admin who doesn't know who they are, then they set their wikibots who also magically have admin status to go around reverting edits and deleting random pages they don't like.
This is a classic example of letting a few narcissistic individuals with an agenda to push have total power over information and content.
The problem is simple: Instead of figuring out what was wrong with the article, you conclude that it's the admins' fault that the article was deleted. There's no massive conspiracy; the articles just should have bare minimum of facts that tell us why we should care.
Let's hit Special:Undelete and see what was in the most recent version. Hmm, "American progressive rock band from Nashville, Tennessee who create music based on the popular video game series from the late 1980s, Mega Man. They have released one (self-titled) album as of yet and are notable for converting the storyline of the Mega Man video game series into a rock opera." List of members. Three external links (Myspace, official home page, interview with The Escapist).
Now, please read your comment again. Then read the article contents, quoted in full above. You may notice it misses one thing - specifically, the claim that they're "very well known" or that any geeks know them. Instead, the article comes across as "We've made one CD. And we have a MySpace." There's bazillion of garage bands that can make the same claim. I'm not a genius of persuasive writing, but I don't think the article quite communicates the greatness of the band (through neutral claims, of course).
Subject of multiple non-trivial published works? The only work listed in the article was The Escapist article. Are they covered by other magazines? If they are, as you say, "very well known for a non-mainstream band", where are the news articles? If they can get a relatively well known game website to interview them, there's probably a bunch of game/indie music websites just waiting to write articles about them. Bring them on! If you can find tons of independent coverage, that's the single best defence against having your new article not getting deleted on sight.
Albums: Simply saying the band has made an album isn't enough - who published it? Everyone can make a self-published album these days. Besides, one album isn't enough - unless it got on charts somewhere! Is there a second album? Did they go on national tour? You know, knowing about things like this would make it much easier to know why anyone would care about the band.
The article has now been protected against deletion. There are old deletion debates from June 2006 and yet again from June 2006. Note that our notability criteria have changed a bit since those days and these days and these days the verifiable sources are among the most revered of tools you can use to prove the notability. So, if the band really meets the notability criteria, please do bring it up on Deletion review.
And I do mean it. Please do bring it up on Deletion review instead of spinning fanciful conspiracy theories about the Admini
Something I haven't seen here and will probably be wildly explained away, is: Is it Wikipedia's place to be a forum for news reporting and political social change? Is that outside the scope of an "encyclopedia"? Is this type of content really relevant is an encyclopedic article on Florence?
For a random example, if a person is involved in a scandal of some sort, years later someone might wonder "hey, wasn't this guy charged with X a few years back? It was all over the tabloids, I vaguely remember that, but what happened afterwards?" and they go read the article and it says "In 2008 the guy was charged with X(source)(source)(source), resulting in a major discussion in area F on politics surrounding issue Z(source)(source)(source). Later that year the charges were cleared later that year and persons Y and W were found guilty instead(source)(source)." However, if it's not there and it was a Major News Story of the Year, the reader might found it puzzling that the issue isn't mentioned at all in the biography! Thus I see limited news coverage of significant issues relating the individual's careers useful and encyclopaedic. But storms in the teacup are generally not worth covering in my opinion, nor is really really extended discussion of minor details warranted - but I have to say that sometimes people do get overboard with this...
However, it should be noted that some Wikimedia projects (Finnish Wikipedia, for example) do apply local laws in a very limited fashion. For example, as far as I know, Finnish Wikipedia it only applies to copyrights (the US Fair Use law isn't considered, but the basically equivalent law, the "right of quotation" in the Finnish copyright law, is used instead). I can almost imagine there would be similar rules in place in case of libel, but it's basically an user conduct issue and mostly handled through the above principle anyway. Besides all legal issues should be brought against Wikimedia Foundation anyway.
So,you see, the Florida Bar means nothing to Jack Thompson. I guess not even Chuck Norris scares him...
Well, Jack Thompson isn't afraid of Chuck Norris, after all, Chuck Norris is only a subject of an 8-bit game, and while he has made a comeback in Oblivion, Thompson already got Oblivion demolished. Or something.
PAM USB auth.. Then you can take the smallest USB flashdrive you can find. Then build it into something fluffy and big.
Fluffy and big??? I'd just go for bright cute colours and let the thing look like a normal USB key... or something. Putting the USB key in something fluffy and big will just get the kids traumatised - or get them the free ticket to the "Last Few Decades Have Been Pretty Weird" TV show.
I can imagine the discussions they're having, around year 2040:
"Oh, yeah, I was cleaning my compu-attic I found my very first login key. When I was 4 years old, my father built this setup where I didn't need a password to log in, I just needed to make the Furby sit on top of the computer. Now that I think of it, that was weird. Oh, God, it had an USB connector sticking out of its butt..."
This IS the year of Linux on the desktop. We're living it.
Like 10 years ago, people were saying "this will be the Year of Java", and everyone was waiting for that to happen. Okay, it took some time, but it happened exactly the way webpagesthatsuck.com predicted: there was no Year of Java, it just happened and no one noticed. Now Java is everywhere (and coincidentally, less so in applets!) Similarly, the last few years have been invisible "Years of Desktop Linux": In a few years (and you can't say when, exactly), it has probably quietly got around and you'll see random Ubuntu installs everywhere you look.
Yes, I've definitely lived in Year of Linux Desktop for quite a while; I've grown more productive over the years, because the GUIs don't require as much expertise. I've witnessed, verily, with my own eyes, right here, not so long back, a bunch of flea-market PCs with little handwritten spec lists with "Ubuntu 7.04" proudly sitting in the bottom - and people didn't complain. We're getting there. Slowly, but we're getting there.
GBs are pretty tough, yes. The most easily worn part in any system is the controller, and in my use, Nintendo's controllers have never broken. They're probably pretty close to the true king of Indestructible Gaming Widgetry, the TAC-2. =)
Essentially, while the game knows everything that's happening, and has complete freedom over where to move the camera, it still has to be programmed to pick shots that are "interesting" using the human definition of the word.
THAT is the difficult bit.
I'm well aware of that, I'm merely saying that instead of one awfully hard thing (finding cool shots), you have to do two awfully hard things (building an usable interpretation out of a camera feed in real time and finding the cool shots). And based on the state of video analysis today, it might be a much bigger challenge.
The latest wii soccer game gives very good screenshots of the games. I'd say the way of handling the camera isn't actually creative, but algorithmic.
Ah, but the game software knows exactly what's happening in the game. Obviously, the game can focus on interesting things happening within the simulation - it's easy when you have all of the data at hand!
Go on, point a few cameras at a real sports field and program the computer to edit it. It's not exactly as simple any more, you first have to figure out how to turn the video feeds into a simulation of events - figure out where the players are and what they're doing. In real time, of course, if you're doing a live broadcast! Certainly it's plausible (motion tracking isn't exactly a mystery science any more), but not as easy as developing a console game, now is it?
Hey, we've discovered how to automate the language flamewars! Now all we need is an interoperable, multi-language API for automated language flamewars, so that we don't need any human intervention at all!
There is no more powerful, nor easy to use, (with training), remote control tool for servers than ssh. GUIs provide metaphors for users, they have no place in administration.
While SSH allows for direct neural link that allows the computer to do exactly what you think, thus bypassing the metaphors and concepts entirely? Man, I thought SSH didn't do that by default, at least not on my Linux systems; it just provided a secure connection to whatever user interface the system provided. So, where can I download DO-WHAT-I-MEAN-OSIX 2.0? =)
Command lines are a metaphor. Yes, incidentally well suited for system administration, but a metaphor nevertheless. =)
In fact, in that time Python has become very popular; I wonder if it has taken some of the 'market share' that would have otherwise gone to Perl 6.
Yes, in meantime, Python has gained ground - as has Ruby.
But I think there's one thing that's easy to forget - Perl6 has also been losing ground to Perl5. People need to get their jobs done; if you need Yet Another Hack Built Around An Awesome CPAN Module to keep stuff working, you really have no choice but to write it in Perl5. People have jobs to do.
Before the P6 hype, I used to write stuff in Perl, after hype, I was like "Ooh, it will really rule one day," and now I also write a lot of stuff in Ruby, which has all of the stuff that Perl really needs, such as a sane OO syntax. I really hope Perl6 will be a success and I look forward to writing stuff in it. When it's released. I just have to rely on the tools that we have at hand...
One can only hope that they will be using this to replace the database that comes in Open Office.
Oh God, no, please don't make OO.o install any bigger than it already is. It's a wonderful piece of software. It's just... a little big big as it is. You really should see the incredible pace it run on my old 32 meg laptop. =)
$ apt-cache show libhsqldb-java | grep Installed-Size
Installed-Size: 1104
$ apt-cache show mysql-server-5.0 | grep Installed-Size
Installed-Size: 82704
...and let's not forget the fact that MySQL needs a separate daemon process, separate installation, and for security reasons, some rudimentary user education on dangers of running random daemons on your PC (while trying to convince MSOffice expatriates that Yes, This Really Is More Secure Than That Piece Of Junk And Needs No Additional Training Or Worries At All).
Plus, if you want OO.o + MySQL, you can always use the ?DBC connection.
- audiophile motherboards with one vacuum tube at the end of an otherwise 100% digital chain, and again people swearing that their MP3's sound closer to the original with that (never mind that it's really just adding the tube's own soft-clipping kind and harmonics, to those that the digital chain already introduced),
Oooh, they really do things like that? Because my rule of thumb is that on-motherboard audio usually sounds like crap; all of the component noise goes through. Give me an audiophile motherboard® and audiophile headphones and my first question will probably be "why can I hear my hard drive?" =)
Now, external sound card with vacuum tubes inside and golden USB cable, that might sound like a plausible trap for hapless audiophiles. I can't believe people are falling for motherboards.
For example, I still didn't find any place that offers a.deb of the new Firefox Beta 3. Anyone willing to point me to one?
Know what I'd do?
Keep current iceweasel packages to satisfy dependencies. Download the official Firefox Linux beta binaries. Stick in... some location. Update your desktop launchers/menus (create a ~/.menu/local.firefoxbeta and do update-menus if you're feeling fancy, or just create a new launcher on desktop or something). Done. Just be careful with iceweasels.
Don't know how FF3b works right now, but I used FF2 this way when it was released and it took some sweet darn time for the.debs to materialise. For me there were no ill effects when going from and back to Debian packages.
I know what you're thinking and I agree: It's not pretty, it's not.deb. But my point is simple: If there's no.deb, it's not that critical. There's many, many ways to handle software packages cleanly. In this case, using the binary gets the job done until Firefox 3 is out for real because the Mozilla folks provide a nice clean binary tarball you can uninstall effortlessly.
A clean directory of binaries is a clean directory of binaries where the heck it happens to be.
This is my general battle plan:
If it's on official Debian repository, use it.
(Optomatomototize with -fomit-sanity? apt-get source. Not that I'd be into it.)
If someone has an APT repository, use it.
Uh... random.deb download location? Not good, but better than nothing. Use it.
Pre-built binaries? Use them, with care; stick in/usr/local or/opt or ~/Applications or whatever.
Source only? Can do. Just use Stow to manage the stuff: --prefix the thing to/usr/local/stow/whatever-1.0.0, make and make install, then do "cd/usr/local/stow; stow whatever".
Stow in particular is particularly cool. Keeps/usr/local just as nice and clean as dpkg keeps/usr =) Uninstalling stuff built from source is as easy as cd/usr/local/stow; stow -D whatever-1.0.0 && rm -rf whatever-1.0.0...
Um, no... The 'print screen' key is so called because it used to print the screen. You know, with one of those doohickeys that make words show up on paper.
Yep, which is why (as I argued in my post) the keyboard manufacturers would like to shed this archaic labelling of the keys and switch to a more descriptive title. Alas, people wouldn't put up with "Scrn Sht". Nay, it still has to be labelled after the DOS-era monstrosity, Dump-The-Screen-Upon-Parallel-Printer; a great advance in usability and clarity is still held back due to the people's reluctance to use Embarrassing Keycaps.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why I said "perfectly" very firmly between quotation marks, and specifically said MSOffice will be the only app that is "anywhere near compliant".
My point is that MSOffice the only app that has even the chance of implementing OOXML spec in full, because Microsoft is in possession of the remaining bits that are missing from the OOXML specification - the behaviour implemented in MSOffice itself that they know exists in MSOffice but didn't bother to reverse-engineer the Office source code and specify what it actually does.
And no, I don't believe Microsoft will bother implementing the spec correctly either; it's very likely that if MSOffice can't read a document produced by another app (no matter that the document is valid), it's obviously in Microsoft's eyes the fault of the other app.
From user's point of view, this rushed standardisation means that the whole point of the standardisation has been defeated in OOXML's case. It also means that we now have two standards that solve the exact same problem, and thanks to the Marketing, the technically far worse format has a chance at winning: If OOXML becomes the dominant format, the promising future from OpenDocument may not be realised. It can be a major setback.
And what was the point of the standardisation? What was the golden promise of OpenDocument? Interoperability, plain and simple.
Simply put: In the current state of affairs, OpenDocument is implementable by third parties. OOXML is not. There can and will be many OpenDocument applications. If OOXML won't get fixed, there will be one and only one application with anywhere near compliant OOXML support.
With OpenDocument, you can edit the documents in any ODF-compliant application - or process them with any external tool, or generate them from scratch programmatically - and there's no problems because the standards is complete, well specified, and not hopelessly tied to one application. OOXML, in comparison, has nothing of this: There's a bunch of nasty features that make writing completely compliant applications difficult, if not impossible. The end result will be that there's one application that processes OOXML "perfectly" (MSOffice) and the rest work when they work (and since consumers expect perfect behaviour, it means they aren't used very much, no?)...
Sure, the interoperability dream is still very much there, because ODF is still out there. It's just that now we have a completely redundant standard that is a) technically inferior but b) Microsoft will make you either use it, or cry and use it.
That is just the usual clause in website user agreements that basically boils down to "we don't want to contact your lawyer if we want to generate a thumbnail or whatever of a picture you uploaded". Or list it on the public photo sharing website in question with other images, possibly with Google ads. Or they just don't want to contact you if they change the look of the website. Because, you know, you're the copyright holder and you have the ultimate control over the use of the image - all other uses, no matter how common sense they seem to be, are absolutely forbidden.
Otherwise, they probably would have to hear from people all the time: "Oh, I like this gallery of pictures you have here, but could you make my picture thumbnail twice as large as the others? You know, my sixteen-page contract with you guys says I get 400 pixel wide thumbnails if I want to." Someone has to set the terms on the presentation of the image on the website. It's usually the party that publishes the images.
There have been similar moral panics about these clauses - dig around Slashdot and you'll probably find the stories about Yahoo!/Geocities and LiveJournal adding that sort of clauses. They have been also toned down to specifically address the concerns from people who say this clause could mean "we'll do whatever you want with your image". I imagine this will be, too.
And yes, I'll stick with GIMP. =)
No, we learnt from 80s and 90s that if you engineer a system and then standardize it, you get a crappy system - your bugs become everyone's features.
If you engineer a good system, learn from the experience, then write a standard that allows for room for growth, and then make your system compliant with the standard, you get a great standard. If you do this process again n times, you'll be on even stronger ground. We learned that standards aren't perfect and need to be refined; yet, at the same time, compliance with existing standards is important.
(...said he, and posted this over Internet Protocol v4 and Hypertext Transfer Protocol v1.1...)
OpenDocument folks did it right: Start from OpenOffice.org standard, think how to make it better in real world, then standardize it and let OpenOffice.org folks fix their implementation - and the OOo folks did that. With OOXML, Microsoft is just saying "no, perhaps it's not perfect, but you will implement this, all quirks and undocumented sides included, because we aren't touching our perfect implementation. Either that, or you don't implement it at all."
It sure has! Though only a client, not an actual message board server. Which shouldn't be too difficult to implement, of course, if one were inclined.
How would you deal with spam that gets added to the random articles? "Oh, I see some spammer replaced the page contents with Viagra spam. Naughty spammer, there's no need to delete anything from this article! Let's revert back to the previous version and move the content to the 'Viagra marketing' page where it belongs.". Don't say "delete the spam"; the spammers would have the exact same rights as the other editors. You can't start adding rules like "delete the spam" in an extreme-inclusionistic world! The spammer has every right to claim someone else has the "right to know" about the junk they are pushing, and it's "accurate" too!
My point is this: Everyone has some limiting factors in mind.
Wikipedia has both a goal and commonly agreed standards. If you are really serious about proposing "you can't touch what other people consider important" rule, I'd like to hear how you'd deal with outright spam and random jokes invented by bored schoolkids. The current system in place deals with that; I don't know if yours does.
People who advocate the most extreme forms of inclusionism should be strapped to chair and made browse through CAT:CSD for a few days and see this precious information that, under the current rules, gets deleted all the time in all of its gory glory. You'd be surprised. =) I mean, it'd be extremely nice if we could include everything in Wikipedia, but the reality regrettably isn't that rosy. We need some standards. And once we have limiting standards, we suddenly have the ability to have a goal.
And don't get me wrong; I think most information worth discussing should be included in Wikipedia in one form or another, in proportion to their so far demonstrable lasting significance. I don't see problems mentioning someone's garage band, as long as they do something to justify their existence in Wikipedia - otherwise, they should be relegated to "List of garage bands in region X".
I'm a Linux user, and heck, I definitely expect free software.
Yet, I see games as a entertainment, not "software" in the usual sense. I buy games just like I buy DVDs - copies of works of art, pieces of entertainment to be enjoyed.
Big issue is that games are created, software gets developed. Games, like works of art, have lifespans and "afterlife": They get written, released, and brought to us, and then the public can enjoy them for the rest of the eternity, in the form the developers left them (or the form the modders cherish them). Paying for games makes sense: You know you either get an allotted short dose of amusement for your 50€, or keep enjoying it for a few years to come - but by that time you know you have also bought something else to be entertained by.
Software, on the other hand, is conceived, developed, used for their intended purpose, updated, used even more - decades at time if we are lucky. The only reason to not use the software is that it gets replaced by something that is better suited for the task, otherwise, you just keep using the tool that does the job. That's one of the reason you don't want to pay for software updates: You don't want to pay for a tool you already have and know you have no problems using it. It doesn't make sense to pay for a tool that worked just fine last week. Your tools aren't supposed to rot away while someone is clearly still maintaining them!
Lately I've been a console gamer (GameCube/Nintendo DS), and you definitely buy console games the way you buy DVDs: You just buy a game and play it to your heart's content, and let it sit on the shelf once you're done with it. I've had no problems paying for games that run on Linux (Quake I/II/III/IV, Doom 3, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Myth II, Neverwinter Nights). I've had no problems buying Windows games when I don't even have Windows on my machine - I know I can run them on Wine pretty much fine now. Heck, I bought The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion when I had absolutely no way of running it initially (underpowered graphics card and no Windows), while now I do (newer graphics card and a version of Wine that runs the game just fine).
Here's a classic example: the band The Protomen. They're very well known for a non-mainstream band, but ask geeks anywhere and they know who they are. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=The_Protomen Yet, The Protomen article keeps being deleted because of one editor/admin who doesn't know who they are, then they set their wikibots who also magically have admin status to go around reverting edits and deleting random pages they don't like. This is a classic example of letting a few narcissistic individuals with an agenda to push have total power over information and content.
The problem is simple: Instead of figuring out what was wrong with the article, you conclude that it's the admins' fault that the article was deleted. There's no massive conspiracy; the articles just should have bare minimum of facts that tell us why we should care.
Let's hit Special:Undelete and see what was in the most recent version. Hmm, "American progressive rock band from Nashville, Tennessee who create music based on the popular video game series from the late 1980s, Mega Man. They have released one (self-titled) album as of yet and are notable for converting the storyline of the Mega Man video game series into a rock opera." List of members. Three external links (Myspace, official home page, interview with The Escapist).
Now, please read your comment again. Then read the article contents, quoted in full above. You may notice it misses one thing - specifically, the claim that they're "very well known" or that any geeks know them. Instead, the article comes across as "We've made one CD. And we have a MySpace." There's bazillion of garage bands that can make the same claim. I'm not a genius of persuasive writing, but I don't think the article quite communicates the greatness of the band (through neutral claims, of course).
Now, let's compare this to what the criteria say.
The article has now been protected against deletion. There are old deletion debates from June 2006 and yet again from June 2006. Note that our notability criteria have changed a bit since those days and these days and these days the verifiable sources are among the most revered of tools you can use to prove the notability. So, if the band really meets the notability criteria, please do bring it up on Deletion review.
And I do mean it. Please do bring it up on Deletion review instead of spinning fanciful conspiracy theories about the Admini
Or Bill Gates, who apparently could survive just fine on Phobos and Deimos...
For a random example, if a person is involved in a scandal of some sort, years later someone might wonder "hey, wasn't this guy charged with X a few years back? It was all over the tabloids, I vaguely remember that, but what happened afterwards?" and they go read the article and it says "In 2008 the guy was charged with X(source)(source)(source), resulting in a major discussion in area F on politics surrounding issue Z(source)(source)(source). Later that year the charges were cleared later that year and persons Y and W were found guilty instead(source)(source)." However, if it's not there and it was a Major News Story of the Year, the reader might found it puzzling that the issue isn't mentioned at all in the biography! Thus I see limited news coverage of significant issues relating the individual's careers useful and encyclopaedic. But storms in the teacup are generally not worth covering in my opinion, nor is really really extended discussion of minor details warranted - but I have to say that sometimes people do get overboard with this...
Basically, the tendency is that you're not supposed to sue Wikipedia; it's better to try solve the issue first through ordinary channels. It's a procedure that's being used in a lot of subprojects too, due to practical reasons. I'm pretty sure they failed to follow this in this case...
However, it should be noted that some Wikimedia projects (Finnish Wikipedia, for example) do apply local laws in a very limited fashion. For example, as far as I know, Finnish Wikipedia it only applies to copyrights (the US Fair Use law isn't considered, but the basically equivalent law, the "right of quotation" in the Finnish copyright law, is used instead). I can almost imagine there would be similar rules in place in case of libel, but it's basically an user conduct issue and mostly handled through the above principle anyway. Besides all legal issues should be brought against Wikimedia Foundation anyway.
Well, Jack Thompson isn't afraid of Chuck Norris, after all, Chuck Norris is only a subject of an 8-bit game, and while he has made a comeback in Oblivion, Thompson already got Oblivion demolished. Or something.
Fluffy and big??? I'd just go for bright cute colours and let the thing look like a normal USB key... or something. Putting the USB key in something fluffy and big will just get the kids traumatised - or get them the free ticket to the "Last Few Decades Have Been Pretty Weird" TV show.
I can imagine the discussions they're having, around year 2040:
"Oh, yeah, I was cleaning my compu-attic I found my very first login key. When I was 4 years old, my father built this setup where I didn't need a password to log in, I just needed to make the Furby sit on top of the computer. Now that I think of it, that was weird. Oh, God, it had an USB connector sticking out of its butt..."
CIGS is too easy to detect! One of the most curious signs when CIGS is in operation is that your task bar will very slowly grow shorter!
Like 10 years ago, people were saying "this will be the Year of Java", and everyone was waiting for that to happen. Okay, it took some time, but it happened exactly the way webpagesthatsuck.com predicted: there was no Year of Java, it just happened and no one noticed. Now Java is everywhere (and coincidentally, less so in applets!) Similarly, the last few years have been invisible "Years of Desktop Linux": In a few years (and you can't say when, exactly), it has probably quietly got around and you'll see random Ubuntu installs everywhere you look.
Yes, I've definitely lived in Year of Linux Desktop for quite a while; I've grown more productive over the years, because the GUIs don't require as much expertise. I've witnessed, verily, with my own eyes, right here, not so long back, a bunch of flea-market PCs with little handwritten spec lists with "Ubuntu 7.04" proudly sitting in the bottom - and people didn't complain. We're getting there. Slowly, but we're getting there.
GBs are pretty tough, yes. The most easily worn part in any system is the controller, and in my use, Nintendo's controllers have never broken. They're probably pretty close to the true king of Indestructible Gaming Widgetry, the TAC-2. =)
THAT is the difficult bit.
I'm well aware of that, I'm merely saying that instead of one awfully hard thing (finding cool shots), you have to do two awfully hard things (building an usable interpretation out of a camera feed in real time and finding the cool shots). And based on the state of video analysis today, it might be a much bigger challenge.
Ah, but the game software knows exactly what's happening in the game. Obviously, the game can focus on interesting things happening within the simulation - it's easy when you have all of the data at hand!
Go on, point a few cameras at a real sports field and program the computer to edit it. It's not exactly as simple any more, you first have to figure out how to turn the video feeds into a simulation of events - figure out where the players are and what they're doing. In real time, of course, if you're doing a live broadcast! Certainly it's plausible (motion tracking isn't exactly a mystery science any more), but not as easy as developing a console game, now is it?
Hey, we've discovered how to automate the language flamewars! Now all we need is an interoperable, multi-language API for automated language flamewars, so that we don't need any human intervention at all!
While SSH allows for direct neural link that allows the computer to do exactly what you think, thus bypassing the metaphors and concepts entirely? Man, I thought SSH didn't do that by default, at least not on my Linux systems; it just provided a secure connection to whatever user interface the system provided. So, where can I download DO-WHAT-I-MEAN-OSIX 2.0? =)
Command lines are a metaphor. Yes, incidentally well suited for system administration, but a metaphor nevertheless. =)
Yes, in meantime, Python has gained ground - as has Ruby.
But I think there's one thing that's easy to forget - Perl6 has also been losing ground to Perl5. People need to get their jobs done; if you need Yet Another Hack Built Around An Awesome CPAN Module to keep stuff working, you really have no choice but to write it in Perl5. People have jobs to do.
Before the P6 hype, I used to write stuff in Perl, after hype, I was like "Ooh, it will really rule one day," and now I also write a lot of stuff in Ruby, which has all of the stuff that Perl really needs, such as a sane OO syntax. I really hope Perl6 will be a success and I look forward to writing stuff in it. When it's released. I just have to rely on the tools that we have at hand...
Oh God, no, please don't make OO.o install any bigger than it already is. It's a wonderful piece of software. It's just... a little big big as it is. You really should see the incredible pace it run on my old 32 meg laptop. =)
$ apt-cache show libhsqldb-java | grep Installed-Size
Installed-Size: 1104
$ apt-cache show mysql-server-5.0 | grep Installed-Size
Installed-Size: 82704
...and let's not forget the fact that MySQL needs a separate daemon process, separate installation, and for security reasons, some rudimentary user education on dangers of running random daemons on your PC (while trying to convince MSOffice expatriates that Yes, This Really Is More Secure Than That Piece Of Junk And Needs No Additional Training Or Worries At All).
Plus, if you want OO.o + MySQL, you can always use the ?DBC connection.
Oooh, they really do things like that? Because my rule of thumb is that on-motherboard audio usually sounds like crap; all of the component noise goes through. Give me an audiophile motherboard® and audiophile headphones and my first question will probably be "why can I hear my hard drive?" =)
Now, external sound card with vacuum tubes inside and golden USB cable, that might sound like a plausible trap for hapless audiophiles. I can't believe people are falling for motherboards.
Know what I'd do?
Keep current iceweasel packages to satisfy dependencies. Download the official Firefox Linux beta binaries. Stick in... some location. Update your desktop launchers/menus (create a ~/.menu/local.firefoxbeta and do update-menus if you're feeling fancy, or just create a new launcher on desktop or something). Done. Just be careful with iceweasels.
Don't know how FF3b works right now, but I used FF2 this way when it was released and it took some sweet darn time for the .debs to materialise. For me there were no ill effects when going from and back to Debian packages.
I know what you're thinking and I agree: It's not pretty, it's not .deb. But my point is simple: If there's no .deb, it's not that critical. There's many, many ways to handle software packages cleanly. In this case, using the binary gets the job done until Firefox 3 is out for real because the Mozilla folks provide a nice clean binary tarball you can uninstall effortlessly.
A clean directory of binaries is a clean directory of binaries where the heck it happens to be.
This is my general battle plan:
Stow in particular is particularly cool. Keeps /usr/local just as nice and clean as dpkg keeps /usr =) Uninstalling stuff built from source is as easy as cd /usr/local/stow; stow -D whatever-1.0.0 && rm -rf whatever-1.0.0 ...
Yep, which is why (as I argued in my post) the keyboard manufacturers would like to shed this archaic labelling of the keys and switch to a more descriptive title. Alas, people wouldn't put up with "Scrn Sht". Nay, it still has to be labelled after the DOS-era monstrosity, Dump-The-Screen-Upon-Parallel-Printer; a great advance in usability and clarity is still held back due to the people's reluctance to use Embarrassing Keycaps.