BTW, for those that don't know, M$ has free viewers for most of their file formats available for download. Not that I expect your average teach to know this.
Not that I expect your average somethingwicked to have the URL to back his claims... or do you? Post the URL, silly, otherwise nobody will beleive you!
After too many recent interviews with some of the few remaining, beleive-your-own-hype cash-burning dot-coms, and already being in my thirties, I have started asking myself how I intend on spending the rest of my working life and whether chasing the dot-cash-and-carry dream is worth it. Do I really feel like burning myself up before hitting forthy and becoming a lifeless corporate drone until retirement comes of age?
As a fresh example, two days ago, I interviewed with a Paris-based network auditing startup that flew me business-class just to meet me face-to-face, but whose managers could not answer basic questions about their company's business strategy nor about the salary and benefits package they intend on offering me if I accept the job.
That one was the last stroll for me.
Meanwhile, a reputable university is offering me the leading role in their new Multilingual e-Communication Entrepreneurship curriculum. Being a publicly-funded college, the paycheck they offer is not amazing but the benefits package and permanent nature of the position more than make up for it. Heck, they're even offering me to add a couple of degrees to my CV while working for them! Part business, part Internet publishing, part international cooperation, part plurilinguistic communications... a very good combination for an ex dot-burned looking for something mellower where the sum of his multidisciplinary experience will be appreciated and passed on to the next generation of the workforce. I know I'm gonna enjoy it.
Actually, there is probably one good reason for dropping Linux support: the Family Internet Access program from the Government of Québec (which finances the purchase of one computer per family) specificly requires people to purchase brand-new computers with either MacOS or Windows on them. The even go as far as specifying what hardware they expect to see on such a computer, namely a G3 or PIII and so much RAM, etc. Since Zero-K is in Québec, subject to all sorts of fascist laws from the PQ governement, those are likely the only two platforms they are even allowed to support, so Linux is out. Period. Blame Canada! Don't go there, it sucks!
WAP still offers one important feature: it is the m-business' first opportunity to learn what works in m-commerce and what doesn't, the same way the Web scene learned the ropes on crude HTML version, in the mid-90's. As long as one is aware that the possibilites are similar to HTML 2.0 using monochrome icons over a 9600 baud connection. there is still a possibility to develop crude but usefull content and service, and most of all, to learn what the public will actually acquire a taste for. Lessons learned in developping simple SMS and WAP based services can later be applied to 3G, but one has to develop their basic m-skills from some starting point and WAP is a good basic technology to start playing with.
gratuitous plug from a satisfied customer
on
Insanely Audiophile
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· Score: 1
Try the Jamo CS-5 multimedia speakers. Real audiophile powered speakers with bi-amplification, Surround output and sub-woofer output, gold-plated connectors, etc. and amazing basses. Meant for the geek with deep pockets. Paid mine 1500 FIM (about 250 USD) and they are worth the price. My stereo became useless after that and is currently gathering dust in the basement.
Re:sweeping, cross-border laws already enforced
on
Harm From The Hague
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· Score: 1
1) It might be a good idea to learn the difference between "legal" and "tolerated thus seldom prosecuted". Very few countries and states actually allow prostitution, in practice.
2) The notion of national treason is an oxymoron, just like military intelligence. Every time a government breaks some law "for matters of national security" (like the CIA constantly does), they never mean the security of the nation (i.e. its citizens), but rather the powers that be's interrests.
3) The fact that some governments purposely ignore borders whenever they see fit, whether it is to prosecute a citizen abroad or to avoid helping out a country requesting outside help, does not make politicians and lawyers any more clever or usefull. Both are corrupt, self-serving bastards imposing their agenda and should tberefore be exterminated.
sweeping, cross-border laws already enforced
on
Harm From The Hague
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· Score: 2
Laws regarding prostitution and pedophilia already are implemented accross borders, as unfortunate people coming back from sex-tourism trips abroad often find out. Whether it is the Finn doing Russian girls or the American doing Thai boys, both people have the very unpleasant surprise of being arrested in their home country on their way back, based on outrageous jusridiction overlaps about one's country slightly lower or higher age of consent. The usual math is, the country where the tourists come from places the treshold at an older age than the country where the prostitution happens. Rock starts sleeping with their teenage fans in the wrong country also have the same unpleasant surprise
Americans are the first to talk about global markets, yet they fail to open branches outside USA. Clueless... If ThinkGeek's people had half a brain, they would already have a warehouse in Ireland and another one in New Zealand, to serve the European and Asia-Pacific markets.
I'm not surprised to see your telco misbehaving. I have no experience dealing with them, other than as a unsatisfied end-user, but then again their behavior reminds me of ICANN: customers are expected to take whatever bullshit the telco shoves at them, the same way ICANN board members are expected to be nothing more than rubber stamps for what influential industry members want. Doesn't the Internet start to suck, as far as end-user experience is concerned? How about a nice commune, somewhere miles away from the nearest telco and cop?
"EMI will work to develop ways for consumers to easily record authorized music onto recordable CDs"
Excuse me? Authorized music? Are we back in the USSR all of a sudden? Must we ask the Politburo if the band we intend on downloading is approved by the Mothers Against Rock & Roll, the MPAA and Dubya's pastor, before we are allowed to listed and record?
Once again, it sounds like the Entertainement moguls are simply trying to control which bands we will be allowed access to: only those under contract with them. Where's Courtney when you need her to be as bold about defending independant artists as she was about showing her pussy in Larry Flint?
A former collegue was hired as a technical writer in some faceless IT startup, on the basis that he was a native English speaker. Great perks, promise of a bright future with the company, stock options, etc.
After a couple of releases of the product, management let the word out that, now that everything had been proofread twice and only minor changes would be required for future releases, that bloody foreigner is costing too much so everyone is invited to make him feel unwelcome so he will leave voluntarily and we won't need to fire him.
Interrestingly enough, he later learned, when interviewing elsewhere once he started feeling the heat, that recruiters had tried reaching him but were told "No, this is a local company. We never employ foreigners, therefore have no one by that name working here".
If giving due credit where credit is due is so bad for the business, ask yourself why the movie industry includes the full name of every little moron that once held a coffee cup on the set of a movie in the credits at the end?
Re:please let it work on my dear old Compaq
on
XFree 4.1.0 Out
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· Score: 1
I stayed with 3.3.6 because 4.x.x refuses to find my Compaq's ET4000w32, even though it's supposed to still be a supported card.
Here is a really traditional century-old company with an ultra-heavy bureaucratic infrastructure and yet, they are truely supporting and embracing free software. Interresting to notice that one can still teach an old dog some new tricks, but one cannot remove the gates around Bill's newfound "read my sources, but don't touch" openness. Quote of the day: When customers complain that the Linux development process doesn't have formal enough timetables, "We tell them you'll have to get used to it,"
What McNealy seems to forget is that current databases, even if they are regualted by laws that mandate granting access and corrective rights to people being catalogued, already fail to provide the ammount of tracing and accountability that is required.
One blatant example is banking and credit history. While most countries require firms like Equifax to divulge what they have on any individual that wants access to their files, such companies have been known to provide thined-down versions of the files whose content does not even amount to 10% of what the person's bank manager has access to. Also, several compnies, while they will comply with allowing someone access to their record, will not include the access log with it, pretexting protection of their customers' right to confidentiality. In effect, this means you get access to: 1) partial info and half-thruths someone has accumulated about yourself, 2) nothing about who has shown interrest in you in the past, why and when.
The disaster doesn't stop there. Several credit gathering companies have become generic data gathering companies that catter equally to your medical records, banking history, criminal record, employment history, and so forth; any data ever amassed somewhere about you by anyone is in their database, protected by laws that may or may not require them to grant you access to your own file and request corrections on incorrect data.
Therefore, if Scott McNeely wants a Z80 in his phanny, so his doctors, bank manager and the CIA can track him 24h, let him have one but count me out.
It's well known that the BSD platform on which OS X is based is historically chock full of security holes. Seriously, ditch that and go with Windows NT, a solid OS backed by the world's largest software company.
Read what a MSCE had to say about Why Microsoft uses Solaris instead of NT and how most large corporations are fazing out NT in favor of BSD or Linux. While you're at it, try a search on "blue screen of the death" on Google, for a proof that NT is worthless garbage and that Windows 1901 is even worst.
I enjoy Debian for my desktop use, which mainly consists of: Opera 5.0 for browsing, BlueFish for web publishing, Pine for mail/news, and ircII to keep in touch with the pals. This accounts for 90% of what I need a computer for, which is pretty good.
However, AbiWord, Applix and other word processors are nowhere near what Word offers, neither in terms of facilities nor compatibility with the original Microsoft Word. Previously, being the only Linux user in a marketting department fuled on Win2000 prooved that 90% compatibility claimed by Star Office is simply not good enough either. If your business includes dealing with Word files sent as Request For Pricing queries by customers, you need the real thing, not some script-foo magic that renders the document useless for anything but Emacs.
As a side issue, Linux acceptance is nowhere near where it could be, even in the IT field. I used to work for a company that had two famous Debian contributors on their team. When the admin asked what I wanted on my workstation and I answered Debian, his reply was a disdainfull "Debian?! Yuck! I don't trust that shit! It's either Win2000 or Red Hat." I reluctantly chose Red Hat, but eventually had to switch to Win2000 so I could handle the constant flow of Word and Excel files coming in from my collegues in Marketting.
For the above reasons, I do not foresee Linux making it outside the programming and service deployment business any time soon.
Finnish and Estonian are similar enough that people can understand each other just fine. However, about 200 words have a slightly divergeant meaning, which sometimes leads to funny misunderstandings. The level of similarity between the two languages is about the same as between, say, Spanish and Portuguese. In between Finnish and Estonian, there is Karelian, which is still spoken in Eastern Finland and, to a lesser extent, in Northern Russia's Karelian republic.
Hungarian and other languages of central Russia, such as Mordavian and Komi, are distant cousins of those Baltic languages. In each case, about 200 words have retained the same pronounciation and meaning e.g. body parts, harvesting equipment, hunting parlance, etc. but that's all the affiliation that remains with the Baltic branch.
Genetically, Finns and Karelians are related to Germanic and Russian branches. However, Samer (i.e. Lapland natives) have a genetic heritage that ressembles that of central Russia, near the Perm area, and the language is associated with Finnish (not that many Finns can understand Lappish, however!).
The reason why I thought of those two is because they have a bulltproof credibility in the business world too, not just among free software advocates, following the buy the platform that comes with the application you want paradigm used outside the software development universe.
Apache, being the unquestionable number one web server worldwide, has been a key element towards bringing Linux to the forefront and getting business people to consider Linux a viable choice. As for Samba, it happens to be a good example of trying to integrate with the reluctant player itself, Microsoft, and a really positive message that free software is the real business model that embraces, proprietary monopoly is not.
Along the same line, I wonder why the Apache and Samba team's names are not there too, given that they are two of the most visible posterchildren of the free software community.
And, yes, good point about BSD people not being there. I wonder why too, although BSD generally has kept a discrete profile, while Linux advocacy has attracted attention. This might explain it.
Given that Linux and open software are making it big in places where even the government cannot afford M$'s expensive "pay and upgrade some more" scheme, such as in China, East Europe and South America, why not combine a great holiday with volunteer work à la GNU generation:
For your next holiday, get in touch with a Linux User Group at some obscure destination of your choice and offer them your consulting services for free, in exchange for room and board during your stay. Also offer to bring some of those 486's and early Pentiums gathering dust in your attic, claim them as vintage non-taxable equipment worth nothing when passing the border and make a few underpriviledged free software promoters happy.
If you are really thorough with your planning and do a bit of investigating upfront, you might even land yourself a short contract with local companies or governments that need some sound advice on affordable and robust free software solutions.
All the above is dead easy to do if you are still among those earning a juicy paycheck and have one month or more of vacation per year, ever easier if you are working for a well-know IT company or, better yet, are involved in a famous free software project. In this case, your reputation predecesses you and can open doors.
You part about the 9-hour workday reminded me of an anecdotal fact:
In the transportation industry, all mission-critical positions are based on 8-hour shifts and anyone exceeding that receives a penalty. This applies to air traffic controllers, train dispatchers and the like. On trains, they have an exception for train crews operating in remote areas: they are allowed to stretch it up to 12 hours, but just enough to reach the nearest terminal where they can be releived by another crew. The basis for this is that, on average, a healthy person cannot keep their focus at a mission-critical level for longer than 8 hours.
Last time I was in Moscow, I was amazed at the variety of material that was available in Russian: K&R's C classic, Perl cookbooks, TCP/IP programming, etc.
However, unless you have relatives studying in those polytechnics with western connections, it might be a bit difficult to locate and purchase copies.
Ultimately, mail-ordering the original English books from Finland, Germany, Hungary or Poland, might be your best shot. Bear in mind that most western mail-order shops do not accept credit cards from Russia and other formerly soviet countries, though, for fear of fraud, which might be a problem. Good luck!
IMAP (no, not the mailbox standard) is a very sensible standard supported by major corporations, in fields as varied as aeronotics and chemistry. We have all seen this documentation system before, in Nokia or SUN manuals, for instance. Unless you can afford to actually hire professional technical writers - with a fat salary to match their expert knowledge of your field, on top of grammar and documentation technique - to create you a customized documentation system and adapt it to every project, sending a few people to IMAP training is your best shot. Several IT consulting companies around the glode provide training, such as this one. You might also wanna read this technical writing primer to give you an idea of other issues to consider. Good luck!
What you should do is find some independent musicians (not signed with any RIAA member) and get them to go down there and demand to be heard
A plethora of independent musicians already oppose the RIAA and the major labels. The only bands who will be heard on these issues are bands that are already signed with major labels, and they are already impotent.
I agree that unknown faces in the crowd are unlikely to be taken seriously. However, there are people like Prince who are good top charts sellers that managed to create their own record label, once they were freed from their first recording contract. When it comes to Prince, he even changed his stage name to The Artist and painted the word "slave" on his face, for a few years, precisely because he found out that his record company owned the rights to the stage name Prince, not him. Musicians like him will definitely be heard if they demand to present their opinion in court.
Slashdot Mirror
Somethingwicked wrote:
Not that I expect your average somethingwicked to have the URL to back his claims... or do you? Post the URL, silly, otherwise nobody will beleive you!
After too many recent interviews with some of the few remaining, beleive-your-own-hype cash-burning dot-coms, and already being in my thirties, I have started asking myself how I intend on spending the rest of my working life and whether chasing the dot-cash-and-carry dream is worth it. Do I really feel like burning myself up before hitting forthy and becoming a lifeless corporate drone until retirement comes of age?
As a fresh example, two days ago, I interviewed with a Paris-based network auditing startup that flew me business-class just to meet me face-to-face, but whose managers could not answer basic questions about their company's business strategy nor about the salary and benefits package they intend on offering me if I accept the job.
That one was the last stroll for me.
Meanwhile, a reputable university is offering me the leading role in their new Multilingual e-Communication Entrepreneurship curriculum. Being a publicly-funded college, the paycheck they offer is not amazing but the benefits package and permanent nature of the position more than make up for it. Heck, they're even offering me to add a couple of degrees to my CV while working for them! Part business, part Internet publishing, part international cooperation, part plurilinguistic communications... a very good combination for an ex dot-burned looking for something mellower where the sum of his multidisciplinary experience will be appreciated and passed on to the next generation of the workforce. I know I'm gonna enjoy it.
Actually, there is probably one good reason for dropping Linux support: the Family Internet Access program from the Government of Québec (which finances the purchase of one computer per family) specificly requires people to purchase brand-new computers with either MacOS or Windows on them. The even go as far as specifying what hardware they expect to see on such a computer, namely a G3 or PIII and so much RAM, etc. Since Zero-K is in Québec, subject to all sorts of fascist laws from the PQ governement, those are likely the only two platforms they are even allowed to support, so Linux is out. Period. Blame Canada! Don't go there, it sucks!
WAP still offers one important feature: it is the m-business' first opportunity to learn what works in m-commerce and what doesn't, the same way the Web scene learned the ropes on crude HTML version, in the mid-90's. As long as one is aware that the possibilites are similar to HTML 2.0 using monochrome icons over a 9600 baud connection. there is still a possibility to develop crude but usefull content and service, and most of all, to learn what the public will actually acquire a taste for. Lessons learned in developping simple SMS and WAP based services can later be applied to 3G, but one has to develop their basic m-skills from some starting point and WAP is a good basic technology to start playing with.
Try the Jamo CS-5 multimedia speakers. Real audiophile powered speakers with bi-amplification, Surround output and sub-woofer output, gold-plated connectors, etc. and amazing basses. Meant for the geek with deep pockets. Paid mine 1500 FIM (about 250 USD) and they are worth the price. My stereo became useless after that and is currently gathering dust in the basement.
1) It might be a good idea to learn the difference between "legal" and "tolerated thus seldom prosecuted". Very few countries and states actually allow prostitution, in practice.
2) The notion of national treason is an oxymoron, just like military intelligence. Every time a government breaks some law "for matters of national security" (like the CIA constantly does), they never mean the security of the nation (i.e. its citizens), but rather the powers that be's interrests.
3) The fact that some governments purposely ignore borders whenever they see fit, whether it is to prosecute a citizen abroad or to avoid helping out a country requesting outside help, does not make politicians and lawyers any more clever or usefull. Both are corrupt, self-serving bastards imposing their agenda and should tberefore be exterminated.
Laws regarding prostitution and pedophilia already are implemented accross borders, as unfortunate people coming back from sex-tourism trips abroad often find out. Whether it is the Finn doing Russian girls or the American doing Thai boys, both people have the very unpleasant surprise of being arrested in their home country on their way back, based on outrageous jusridiction overlaps about one's country slightly lower or higher age of consent. The usual math is, the country where the tourists come from places the treshold at an older age than the country where the prostitution happens. Rock starts sleeping with their teenage fans in the wrong country also have the same unpleasant surprise
Americans are the first to talk about global markets, yet they fail to open branches outside USA. Clueless... If ThinkGeek's people had half a brain, they would already have a warehouse in Ireland and another one in New Zealand, to serve the European and Asia-Pacific markets.
I'm not surprised to see your telco misbehaving. I have no experience dealing with them, other than as a unsatisfied end-user, but then again their behavior reminds me of ICANN: customers are expected to take whatever bullshit the telco shoves at them, the same way ICANN board members are expected to be nothing more than rubber stamps for what influential industry members want. Doesn't the Internet start to suck, as far as end-user experience is concerned? How about a nice commune, somewhere miles away from the nearest telco and cop?
Excuse me? Authorized music? Are we back in the USSR all of a sudden? Must we ask the Politburo if the band we intend on downloading is approved by the Mothers Against Rock & Roll, the MPAA and Dubya's pastor, before we are allowed to listed and record?
Once again, it sounds like the Entertainement moguls are simply trying to control which bands we will be allowed access to: only those under contract with them. Where's Courtney when you need her to be as bold about defending independant artists as she was about showing her pussy in Larry Flint?
A former collegue was hired as a technical writer in some faceless IT startup, on the basis that he was a native English speaker. Great perks, promise of a bright future with the company, stock options, etc.
After a couple of releases of the product, management let the word out that, now that everything had been proofread twice and only minor changes would be required for future releases, that bloody foreigner is costing too much so everyone is invited to make him feel unwelcome so he will leave voluntarily and we won't need to fire him.
Interrestingly enough, he later learned, when interviewing elsewhere once he started feeling the heat, that recruiters had tried reaching him but were told "No, this is a local company. We never employ foreigners, therefore have no one by that name working here".
If giving due credit where credit is due is so bad for the business, ask yourself why the movie industry includes the full name of every little moron that once held a coffee cup on the set of a movie in the credits at the end?
I stayed with 3.3.6 because 4.x.x refuses to find my Compaq's ET4000w32, even though it's supposed to still be a supported card.
Here is a really traditional century-old company with an ultra-heavy bureaucratic infrastructure and yet, they are truely supporting and embracing free software. Interresting to notice that one can still teach an old dog some new tricks, but one cannot remove the gates around Bill's newfound "read my sources, but don't touch" openness. Quote of the day: When customers complain that the Linux development process doesn't have formal enough timetables, "We tell them you'll have to get used to it,"
What McNealy seems to forget is that current databases, even if they are regualted by laws that mandate granting access and corrective rights to people being catalogued, already fail to provide the ammount of tracing and accountability that is required.
One blatant example is banking and credit history. While most countries require firms like Equifax to divulge what they have on any individual that wants access to their files, such companies have been known to provide thined-down versions of the files whose content does not even amount to 10% of what the person's bank manager has access to. Also, several compnies, while they will comply with allowing someone access to their record, will not include the access log with it, pretexting protection of their customers' right to confidentiality. In effect, this means you get access to: 1) partial info and half-thruths someone has accumulated about yourself, 2) nothing about who has shown interrest in you in the past, why and when.
The disaster doesn't stop there. Several credit gathering companies have become generic data gathering companies that catter equally to your medical records, banking history, criminal record, employment history, and so forth; any data ever amassed somewhere about you by anyone is in their database, protected by laws that may or may not require them to grant you access to your own file and request corrections on incorrect data.
Therefore, if Scott McNeely wants a Z80 in his phanny, so his doctors, bank manager and the CIA can track him 24h, let him have one but count me out.
Read what a MSCE had to say about Why Microsoft uses Solaris instead of NT and how most large corporations are fazing out NT in favor of BSD or Linux. While you're at it, try a search on "blue screen of the death" on Google, for a proof that NT is worthless garbage and that Windows 1901 is even worst.
I enjoy Debian for my desktop use, which mainly consists of: Opera 5.0 for browsing, BlueFish for web publishing, Pine for mail/news, and ircII to keep in touch with the pals. This accounts for 90% of what I need a computer for, which is pretty good.
However, AbiWord, Applix and other word processors are nowhere near what Word offers, neither in terms of facilities nor compatibility with the original Microsoft Word. Previously, being the only Linux user in a marketting department fuled on Win2000 prooved that 90% compatibility claimed by Star Office is simply not good enough either. If your business includes dealing with Word files sent as Request For Pricing queries by customers, you need the real thing, not some script-foo magic that renders the document useless for anything but Emacs.
As a side issue, Linux acceptance is nowhere near where it could be, even in the IT field. I used to work for a company that had two famous Debian contributors on their team. When the admin asked what I wanted on my workstation and I answered Debian, his reply was a disdainfull "Debian?! Yuck! I don't trust that shit! It's either Win2000 or Red Hat." I reluctantly chose Red Hat, but eventually had to switch to Win2000 so I could handle the constant flow of Word and Excel files coming in from my collegues in Marketting.
For the above reasons, I do not foresee Linux making it outside the programming and service deployment business any time soon.
Finnish and Estonian are similar enough that people can understand each other just fine. However, about 200 words have a slightly divergeant meaning, which sometimes leads to funny misunderstandings. The level of similarity between the two languages is about the same as between, say, Spanish and Portuguese. In between Finnish and Estonian, there is Karelian, which is still spoken in Eastern Finland and, to a lesser extent, in Northern Russia's Karelian republic.
Hungarian and other languages of central Russia, such as Mordavian and Komi, are distant cousins of those Baltic languages. In each case, about 200 words have retained the same pronounciation and meaning e.g. body parts, harvesting equipment, hunting parlance, etc. but that's all the affiliation that remains with the Baltic branch.
Genetically, Finns and Karelians are related to Germanic and Russian branches. However, Samer (i.e. Lapland natives) have a genetic heritage that ressembles that of central Russia, near the Perm area, and the language is associated with Finnish (not that many Finns can understand Lappish, however!).
Nice to see you're reading this, Bruce! ;-)
The reason why I thought of those two is because they have a bulltproof credibility in the business world too, not just among free software advocates, following the buy the platform that comes with the application you want paradigm used outside the software development universe.
Apache, being the unquestionable number one web server worldwide, has been a key element towards bringing Linux to the forefront and getting business people to consider Linux a viable choice. As for Samba, it happens to be a good example of trying to integrate with the reluctant player itself, Microsoft, and a really positive message that free software is the real business model that embraces, proprietary monopoly is not.
Along the same line, I wonder why the Apache and Samba team's names are not there too, given that they are two of the most visible posterchildren of the free software community.
And, yes, good point about BSD people not being there. I wonder why too, although BSD generally has kept a discrete profile, while Linux advocacy has attracted attention. This might explain it.
Given that Linux and open software are making it big in places where even the government cannot afford M$'s expensive "pay and upgrade some more" scheme, such as in China, East Europe and South America, why not combine a great holiday with volunteer work à la GNU generation:
All the above is dead easy to do if you are still among those earning a juicy paycheck and have one month or more of vacation per year, ever easier if you are working for a well-know IT company or, better yet, are involved in a famous free software project. In this case, your reputation predecesses you and can open doors.
You part about the 9-hour workday reminded me of an anecdotal fact:
In the transportation industry, all mission-critical positions are based on 8-hour shifts and anyone exceeding that receives a penalty. This applies to air traffic controllers, train dispatchers and the like. On trains, they have an exception for train crews operating in remote areas: they are allowed to stretch it up to 12 hours, but just enough to reach the nearest terminal where they can be releived by another crew. The basis for this is that, on average, a healthy person cannot keep their focus at a mission-critical level for longer than 8 hours.
Last time I was in Moscow, I was amazed at the variety of material that was available in Russian: K&R's C classic, Perl cookbooks, TCP/IP programming, etc. However, unless you have relatives studying in those polytechnics with western connections, it might be a bit difficult to locate and purchase copies.
Ultimately, mail-ordering the original English books from Finland, Germany, Hungary or Poland, might be your best shot. Bear in mind that most western mail-order shops do not accept credit cards from Russia and other formerly soviet countries, though, for fear of fraud, which might be a problem. Good luck!
IMAP (no, not the mailbox standard) is a very sensible standard supported by major corporations, in fields as varied as aeronotics and chemistry. We have all seen this documentation system before, in Nokia or SUN manuals, for instance. Unless you can afford to actually hire professional technical writers - with a fat salary to match their expert knowledge of your field, on top of grammar and documentation technique - to create you a customized documentation system and adapt it to every project, sending a few people to IMAP training is your best shot. Several IT consulting companies around the glode provide training, such as this one. You might also wanna read this technical writing primer to give you an idea of other issues to consider. Good luck!
I agree that unknown faces in the crowd are unlikely to be taken seriously. However, there are people like Prince who are good top charts sellers that managed to create their own record label, once they were freed from their first recording contract. When it comes to Prince, he even changed his stage name to The Artist and painted the word "slave" on his face, for a few years, precisely because he found out that his record company owned the rights to the stage name Prince, not him. Musicians like him will definitely be heard if they demand to present their opinion in court.