XVidcap doesn't encode to Flash or Java, but to MPEG-1. The VX30 stuff looks like MPEG-4, and is a lot better quality. Flash is also easier to embed in an e-mail or web page.
They can download a document viewer(free from Microsoft)
That document viewer is NOT free. Yes, it doesn't cost $$ but you're missing the point. A while back Microsoft made available free fonts for the web. Where are they now? Microsoft decided to stop distributing them and while they were freely redistributable, the Word viewer is NOT. Where is the free MS Works viewer? What about a viewer that reads MS Word 4? They disappeared on a whim of a corporate entity. There is NOTHING to say Microsoft will stop distributing a free viewer anytime in the future.
1) Microsoft and third parties have acknowledged they are working on ("investigating", in Microsoft's case) plugins for importing/exporting OpenDocument formats. Are you implying that the world's largest software maker can't create a simple filter by January 2007?
2) How many of those documents are in older Office formats that even the current Office doesn't support all that well? That is the point. Unless forced, Microsoft will NEVER open up the formats and third parties will ALWAYS be locked into their product.
3) OpenDocument has nothing to do with blind & deaf users. That is a function of the software, not the format. If MS adds an import filter, then Word can be used, can't it? If not, the disabled market is a big enough one to get 3rd parties do develop software for it pretty darn fast. Job creation.
4) No, you're supporting ONE format -- OpenDocument. That is, if MS stops throwing a fit and releases a filter for it. If not, a third part will as that is money to be made. Again, servicing disabled users has nothing to do with format and everything with the software.
When would it be a good time? When Microsoft doesn't hold 90% of the market? Without large customers exerting their rights, exactly how is that going to happen?
I would be greatly surprised if the switch goes on as planned and there is not:
a) an import/export filter in MS Office for the various OpenDocument formats; b) free "viewers" for the OpenDocument formats; c) at least ONE good screen reader and other disabled-assisting software for OD formats
There are pros and cons of going either way (MS or OSS) but this decision sounds like it was made by pure ideology.
Which is how it should be. The ideology that the documents generated by a Government Of the People, By the People and For the People should always be available TO the people, not at the whim of a corporate entity. That is what it boils down to. The people should not be required to pay a fee, license a patent or buy specific software to interact with their government or review the documentation created by said government.
Microsoft can easily add export/import filters to their existing product line and thus be compliant with the requirements and still be usable by everyone in the gov't.
"The DRM reference made me recall having purchased a CD recently that can only be played using the media player that ships on the CD itself and that limits you to at most 3 copies."
Why anyone would purchase a CD under those terms to begin with, is beyond me.
Do formats like this not violate the Red Book standard and thus forfeit their right to be called "CD Audio"?
How many different ways are there to pack the sources... Hmmmmm, must be a number with maaaany digits.
All of which can be handled by caching the files and grepping for strings like "firefox". Souce is just as easy because it would be very easy to write AV-like signatures to watch for "forbidden" code.
Yes, there is always a way around for the determined, but keep in mind most people are NOT determined. Most people are apathetic. China's larger population may work against them in this factor. While a larger population does mean more dissenters, it also means more of the apathetic masses and thus it is harder to reach "critical mass" for a revolution.
Social mass and inertia are the best analogies I can think of. The current gov't just has to keep the bulk of the people apathetic and they win.
Visio isn't easily replacable and does tons more than just simple drawings. I don't know if Kivio has gone anywhere in the last year, but the solution is CrossOver Office.
CrossOver Office allows you to move to Linux and still keep some of the Windows apps that take longer to migrate. Linux, OpenOffice.org, Evolution, Firefox and VideoLAN are great but there are still some apps that don't have good enough equivalents on Linux. Visio and Project are two biggies that can be handled by CrossOver Office.
Did you try to load the example spreadsheet from the article with gnumeric? It uses more memory than openoffice.org and it's slower. Saving the data and reopen it used more than 1.5GByte of memory before I killed the process.
Okay, I downloaded and tried that file on Excel 2003 (Win2K), OpenOffice Calc 2.0 (Win2K) and will try it later on KSpread 1.4.2 (Linux). Here is what I found:
The XML file is 189 Mb when unzipped. Wow, what a pig. Saving in native Excel format turned it into a 49 Mb file. Loading that into Calc and saving it out as.ods resulted in a 3.8 Mb file. Very compact.
Loaded into Excel, the Task Manager showed just under 50 Mb of memory usage. Calc was 210 Mb. I have no idea how much Excel is sharing with Outlook or other Windows apps. I need to do a clean reboot because the way Excel behaves on this machine is like it is sharing resources and the Task Manager memory numbers aren't accurate. (Note: Sharing is good, but I want an apples-to-apples comparison.)
The load time of the document into Calc was atrocious. Somewhere around 120 seconds. Excel was about 30-35 seconds for the first load. Saving in the native format of each was about the same as the load times. OpenDocument is an ordinary Java archive (JAR) containing standard XML files. JAR files are simply a set of files compressed together using the zip file format. This is why the file is so small, and I'm sure the compression/decompression contributes to load times.
Both Calc and Excel pegged the CPU at 99% for the entire document load time, seriously hammering the machine and making other running processes slow to a crawl.
Excel loaded the document much faster, and memory usage was seemingly better, but I think there is a bunch of "hidden" resources that are shared. I had Outlook open at the same time and had used Word earlier in the day. To be fair, I should do a clean reboot and try both again. Also try Calc after using Writer and see how they share resources.
However...
This spreadsheet has no bearing in the real world and this entire exercise it nothing more than jerking off. 16,282 lines of nothing but a few columns of raw data? No formulas, no references, no linked data, nothing. Then that data was copied over to 15 other worksheets. Same data.
This file was meant to do one thing -- make a big file. Period. Looking at 50 or so spreadsheets that are used on a regular basis where I work, it doesn't even come close to resembling any of them.
You need the right tool for the right job. If I saw a spreadsheet like this in production I'd tell whomever that they need to move it to a database, where it belonged.
This type of file (and blog entry) are why many people don't trust benchmarks. They have no reflection what-so-ever on real life usage.
I could just as well point to the 3.8 Mb file size of the OO.org file and say -- "Sure you wait a little longer loading, but you can't e-mail a 49 Mb (or 188 Mb) file to the client. You can a 3.8 Mb one. Even if you could, how long is a 188 Mb file going to take? It more than makes up for the difference in load speeds."
Do you know of any other comparisons that are more realistic? Every test I've done with stuff I use every day has resulted in "more than good enough" results for OO. AbiWord and KOffice have some issues that need to be resolved before they can be used more in corporate environments.
I've tried to use Open Office on my machine at home (dual-P3 800 MHz, 1 Gb RAM) and have always gone back to KOffice. OO has always felt "bloated" to me. It takes much too long to start up, and everything seems to slow down a little on my machine.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Abiword and Gnumeric load very fast and seem to fly during use. KOffice is a touch slower than Abiword/Gnumeric but still light years ahead of Open Office. It also has a very snappy feel to it. Abiword works on Windows, Mac and Linux. Yes, I know, this doesn't address databases or presentation software.
IMHO, there should be no question mark, but more of an exclamation point.
Q: Would the petition force carriers to decode data that might be encrypted?
A: No. The petition does not raise the issue of encryption. That issue is already addressed by CALEA. The statute states that if encryption is provided by a telecommunications carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication, it must decrypt the communications subject to an order for lawful interception. But if the encryption is provided by a subscriber or customer, the carrier is not responsible for decrypting the targeted communications.
Thus the soultion would be to let the user generate their own keys, of which the PUBLIC ones are stored with the provider and the private ones are local to the device/user. Thus the carrier doesn't have any keys to turn over.
There are other implementation issues, obviously. Latency and jitter introduced by encryption is a big one.
Quit whining and try ASKING someone. You know, like iRiver's tech support? You can flash the unit with a ROM update that'll make it a USB Mass Storage (UMS) device. Go search their downloads for "UMS" and drag to your heart's content.
Thinking about it, this may be a *good* thing. Soon, damn near everything will be encrypted traffic. No, I don't mean Skype and its proprietary stuff. I mean tunnel EVERYTHING thru TLS/SSL. Let 'em tap that and have a blast.
IIRC, the wiretap provisions only apply to VoIP POTS interconnects. Straight VoIP VoIP isn't covered by this, only where they interact with the regular phone system. Thus Skype Skype isn't covered, but SkypeOut *IS*.
None-the-less, odd are the courts will rule the FCC doesn't have the authority to enforce this. Even the FCC members who voted for this stated that it was on some convoluted, shakey logic.
I purchased two pre-paid GSM cell phones last month, just as a test.
I bought them in WalMart with cash, and a couple refill cards also with cash. I followed the activation sequence in the manual, doing it from the courtesy phone in a hotel lobby. I was not a registered guest at the hotel.
The last part of the activation sequence asked me for a name and address. I lied -- just flat out made both up using a PO Box in an adjacent city and a phony name. The computer voice-response on the other end did not know, nor did it care.
The phones have been working fine for over a month in a metropolitan area of about 500,000 people. They are used exclusively for the unlimited cell-2-cell calls, and never used to call my home, office or anywhere else on the wired network. The only entry in the address book is for the other cell phone, so they can speed dial each other.
Capitalism (pre-paid phones and cards sold at Walmart and gas stations) trumps security every time.
I set up WebCalendar for a financial services organization. They have 150+ users spread around the country and WebCalendar is accessed as a plug-in to Squirrelmail. We mandate SSL/TLS connections and it performs wonderfully.
When I left the new techies wanted to replace it with Exchange/Outlook/OWA and were flat out told "no way in Hell" by management. The killer sticking point was the ability to overlay calendars -- something Outlook just can't do. (Side-by-side just is not the same.)
Quote #1: "...the General Public License, a subversive bit of lawyering that turns property law on its head by prohibiting the users of open-source software from charging money for it."
There is nothing in the GPL that prohibits people from charging money for GPL software. See Red Hat, Novell, IBM, et al.
BitTorrent has pretty much a lock on the "real large file" distribution market. What other way is there that you can easily and quickly grab files ranging in size from hundres of megabytes to gigabytes?
BitTorrent has the technology and the name recognition. Hollywood really wants to move to digital distribution method but has two problems: security and efficiency. BitTorrent mostly solves the efficiency part very nicely.
Great, programmers can do things with it that they can't do with closed-source. Now how about everyone else?
You're exactly the same place you were if you had chosen a closed-source app. You can ask -- or possibly pay, if it is important enough -- someone else to implement it for you.
The apps being reviewed aren't some half-baked trash that no one but hardcore geeks use. They are complete, polished and professional. They just happen to include the ability to EXTEND IT YOURSELF IF YOU HAVE THE SKILL. For the record, that is a plus.
If you're ranting about other projects that give you half-baked code and then get slammed by some FOSS noob with "the source is there, so stop complaining and start coding", then you're right. However, Ardour and Audacity don't fall into this category and it is unfair to rant about the EXTRA FEATURE of scripting languages and open source code when discussing them.
If you need a feature bad enough, pay someone. Odds are a couple hundred $$ would motivate a rent-a-coder type whereas the big commercial software houses wouldn't look at you twice.
Actually, this is a great idea. If they are sharp enough to set up their own Jabber or IRC server, then they are probably safe in chatting and aren't going to fall for a predator.
If, however, they think the Internet ends with Yahoo, AOL and MSN, then they are probably better off banned unless mommy is there to wipe their ass for them.
They used to pass out press badges or press cards to members of the press that got them special privs. I remember my dad's let him park in handicapped spots, fire lanes, etc. when covering stories in Chicago, back in the 1970s.
"Member of the Press" meant something. It sounds like that idea isn't going away.
Part of it is going to stem from who gets invites to functions as "members of the press". Can you get into Disney's "Press Days" event? How about an invite from Company X to their press event?
You do realize that was, like, eight years ago, right? And then they fixed it ("months"? Good lord!). Are there hiccups? I'm sure there are. But in practice, very few people moan about incompatibility issues.
It was November/December of 1997, so yes about 8 years ago. And I was working at a Fortune 500 company who's Executive VP (pre-CIO days) insisted on immediately upgrading half the company to Office 97 to "standardize". That was 3,000+ desktops on one version and 3,000+ on the older version. It was a damn nightmare for almost a year and that experience stuck with me.:-)
It also stuck with Microsoft, because the Office 97, 2000, XP and 2003 formats are the same and didn't change. Yes, they introduced XML capabilities in 2003 but the default format was the 97/2000/XP one.
Now they're going to change again, this time to XML, and are making the same promises they did in 1997.
Since they are changing, now is the perfect time to try and force an open document solution. Better now than before getting locked into the next cycle.
But in practice, very few people moan about incompatibility issues.
"...neurobiologist seeking data from the Viking probes sent by the United States to Mars in the mid-1970s was told by the US space agency that software to read the 25-year-old computer tapes no longer existed, and "the programmers who knew it had died," according to the scientist." http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=3902& Cr=unesco&Cr1=
People don't care about philosophy until it happens to them. Most are apathetic with the attitude "yeah, but what are the odds of that happening to me?" That attitude can NOT be let to rule the day.
Hell, my dad still has the disks he wrote his first book on. TRS-80 Model III, 5 1/4" floppies. And no earthly idea how to get the data off them, much less what format it is in.
Some manufacturing equipment is still controlled by software on OS/9000-based machines. Yes, they can read and write DOS-format floppies now. Of course, the driver for that is $2,500 per node-locked machine...
Sorry for the rant, but this is an important subject I've been burned by before.
This just isn't true. Frequently Microsoft products can't open previous versions of Microsoft documents without formatting issues, and this doesn't seem to stop anyone.
When Word 97 was released they claimed it could read/write Word 95 documents. They lied. Their "Word 95" export was really a munged RTF saver and it caused no end of headaches for Word 95 users. It wasn't fixed for months, until SP1 for Office 97 was released.
Try using Office 2003 to open MS Works or Office 4.x files and see what happens. If it even tries at all, you better hope it is a plain-Jane file with nothing fancy, or it is all going to be screwed up.
Most documents convert fine. Other can be handled the same way ANY legacy format has been handled in the digital age -- stop using it and keep a couple copies of the old software around just in case someone needs to access the legacy data. I've managed document transistions at a couple large companies moving from RF-Flow to Visio; Wordstar to WordPerfect to Word; Lotus 1-2-3 to Word; and dBase 3 to dBase 4 to Access 95, 97, 2000 then finally Postgres.
The arguments are always the same.
Q. "What about all my old data?" A. "Batch convert what you can. Hand convert what you use, as you use it. Leave the old stuff to decay and keep a copy of the old software."
Hell, most times we also needed to set aside some old PCs with the old OS just to run the legacy software. CLIX, OS/9000, OS/2, Windows 3.11, DOS 4.1. We had a legacy document room with a bunch of old computers at one facility. It was a working museum.
THAT is why open document formats are important. To avoid the necessity of working museums.
No, you're missing the point. A message is more than just a text string.
I just converted my neighbors 3 PCs over to Linux (Linspire) after two were totally trashed by spyware, virii and worms. He didn't give a damn about anything else other than: web browsing, e-mail, can open Word/Excel document (OpenOffice did it fine), and Java/Flash/PDF. Everything else -- EVERYTHING -- was available to axe. If it worked, fine. If not, it was expendable.
It worked great. His kids (teenagers) use one of the PCs for chat (MSN), browsing and homework. They burn some CDs (K3B), play MP3s and videos (Amarok & Kaffeine) and do the stuff most kids do with a PC (Firefox, GAIM & OpenOffice). Their ONLY complaint was MSN video chat was missing from GAIM. Everything else they had no issues with -- just a couple days learning curve as to the differences.
They all live on IM, just like my kids. File transfers on GAIM are a problem if you're behind NAT; setting AOL buddy icons is a pain (can't use aim:// -- maybe I can figure this out...); can't do video or voice chat. Well, they can use PhoneGAIM with their friends that have a SIP client, which is a few.
IM *IS* video chat, file transfer, buddy icons and all that other cutesy crap.
Slashdot Mirror
XVidcap doesn't encode to Flash or Java, but to MPEG-1. The VX30 stuff looks like MPEG-4, and is a lot better quality. Flash is also easier to embed in an e-mail or web page.
Strike one.
-Charles
They can download a document viewer(free from Microsoft)
That document viewer is NOT free. Yes, it doesn't cost $$ but you're missing the point. A while back Microsoft made available free fonts for the web. Where are they now? Microsoft decided to stop distributing them and while they were freely redistributable, the Word viewer is NOT. Where is the free MS Works viewer? What about a viewer that reads MS Word 4? They disappeared on a whim of a corporate entity. There is NOTHING to say Microsoft will stop distributing a free viewer anytime in the future.
1) Microsoft and third parties have acknowledged they are working on ("investigating", in Microsoft's case) plugins for importing/exporting OpenDocument formats. Are you implying that the world's largest software maker can't create a simple filter by January 2007?
2) How many of those documents are in older Office formats that even the current Office doesn't support all that well? That is the point. Unless forced, Microsoft will NEVER open up the formats and third parties will ALWAYS be locked into their product.
3) OpenDocument has nothing to do with blind & deaf users. That is a function of the software, not the format. If MS adds an import filter, then Word can be used, can't it? If not, the disabled market is a big enough one to get 3rd parties do develop software for it pretty darn fast. Job creation.
4) No, you're supporting ONE format -- OpenDocument. That is, if MS stops throwing a fit and releases a filter for it. If not, a third part will as that is money to be made. Again, servicing disabled users has nothing to do with format and everything with the software.
When would it be a good time? When Microsoft doesn't hold 90% of the market? Without large customers exerting their rights, exactly how is that going to happen?
I would be greatly surprised if the switch goes on as planned and there is not:
a) an import/export filter in MS Office for the various OpenDocument formats;
b) free "viewers" for the OpenDocument formats;
c) at least ONE good screen reader and other disabled-assisting software for OD formats
all long before January 1, 2007.
-Charles
There are pros and cons of going either way (MS or OSS) but this decision sounds like it was made by pure ideology.
Which is how it should be. The ideology that the documents generated by a Government Of the People, By the People and For the People should always be available TO the people, not at the whim of a corporate entity. That is what it boils down to. The people should not be required to pay a fee, license a patent or buy specific software to interact with their government or review the documentation created by said government.
Microsoft can easily add export/import filters to their existing product line and thus be compliant with the requirements and still be usable by everyone in the gov't.
-Charles
From the article...
"The DRM reference made me recall having purchased a CD recently that can only be played using the media player that ships on the CD itself and that limits you to at most 3 copies."
Why anyone would purchase a CD under those terms to begin with, is beyond me.
Do formats like this not violate the Red Book standard and thus forfeit their right to be called "CD Audio"?
-Charles
How many different ways are there to pack the sources...
Hmmmmm, must be a number with maaaany digits.
All of which can be handled by caching the files and grepping for strings like "firefox". Souce is just as easy because it would be very easy to write AV-like signatures to watch for "forbidden" code.
Yes, there is always a way around for the determined, but keep in mind most people are NOT determined. Most people are apathetic. China's larger population may work against them in this factor. While a larger population does mean more dissenters, it also means more of the apathetic masses and thus it is harder to reach "critical mass" for a revolution.
Social mass and inertia are the best analogies I can think of. The current gov't just has to keep the bulk of the people apathetic and they win.
-Charles
..which of course would not keep the Chinese from getting Firefox from one of the quazillion official or unofficial mirrors.
It is software, which has a distinct checksum/hash. A specific program is very easy to block, if everything goes thru a controlled proxy.
-Charles
Visio isn't easily replacable and does tons more than just simple drawings. I don't know if Kivio has gone anywhere in the last year, but the solution is CrossOver Office.
CrossOver Office allows you to move to Linux and still keep some of the Windows apps that take longer to migrate. Linux, OpenOffice.org, Evolution, Firefox and VideoLAN are great but there are still some apps that don't have good enough equivalents on Linux. Visio and Project are two biggies that can be handled by CrossOver Office.
-Charles
Did you try to load the example spreadsheet from the article with gnumeric? It uses more memory than openoffice.org and it's slower. Saving the data and reopen it used more than 1.5GByte of memory before I killed the process.
.ods resulted in a 3.8 Mb file. Very compact.
Okay, I downloaded and tried that file on Excel 2003 (Win2K), OpenOffice Calc 2.0 (Win2K) and will try it later on KSpread 1.4.2 (Linux). Here is what I found:
The XML file is 189 Mb when unzipped. Wow, what a pig. Saving in native Excel format turned it into a 49 Mb file. Loading that into Calc and saving it out as
Loaded into Excel, the Task Manager showed just under 50 Mb of memory usage. Calc was 210 Mb. I have no idea how much Excel is sharing with Outlook or other Windows apps. I need to do a clean reboot because the way Excel behaves on this machine is like it is sharing resources and the Task Manager memory numbers aren't accurate. (Note: Sharing is good, but I want an apples-to-apples comparison.)
The load time of the document into Calc was atrocious. Somewhere around 120 seconds. Excel was about 30-35 seconds for the first load. Saving in the native format of each was about the same as the load times. OpenDocument is an ordinary Java archive (JAR) containing standard XML files. JAR files are simply a set of files compressed together using the zip file format. This is why the file is so small, and I'm sure the compression/decompression contributes to load times.
Both Calc and Excel pegged the CPU at 99% for the entire document load time, seriously hammering the machine and making other running processes slow to a crawl.
Excel loaded the document much faster, and memory usage was seemingly better, but I think there is a bunch of "hidden" resources that are shared. I had Outlook open at the same time and had used Word earlier in the day. To be fair, I should do a clean reboot and try both again. Also try Calc after using Writer and see how they share resources.
However...
This spreadsheet has no bearing in the real world and this entire exercise it nothing more than jerking off. 16,282 lines of nothing but a few columns of raw data? No formulas, no references, no linked data, nothing. Then that data was copied over to 15 other worksheets. Same data.
This file was meant to do one thing -- make a big file. Period. Looking at 50 or so spreadsheets that are used on a regular basis where I work, it doesn't even come close to resembling any of them.
You need the right tool for the right job. If I saw a spreadsheet like this in production I'd tell whomever that they need to move it to a database, where it belonged.
This type of file (and blog entry) are why many people don't trust benchmarks. They have no reflection what-so-ever on real life usage.
I could just as well point to the 3.8 Mb file size of the OO.org file and say -- "Sure you wait a little longer loading, but you can't e-mail a 49 Mb (or 188 Mb) file to the client. You can a 3.8 Mb one. Even if you could, how long is a 188 Mb file going to take? It more than makes up for the difference in load speeds."
Do you know of any other comparisons that are more realistic? Every test I've done with stuff I use every day has resulted in "more than good enough" results for OO. AbiWord and KOffice have some issues that need to be resolved before they can be used more in corporate environments.
-Charles
I've tried to use Open Office on my machine at home (dual-P3 800 MHz, 1 Gb RAM) and have always gone back to KOffice. OO has always felt "bloated" to me. It takes much too long to start up, and everything seems to slow down a little on my machine.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Abiword and Gnumeric load very fast and seem to fly during use. KOffice is a touch slower than Abiword/Gnumeric but still light years ahead of Open Office. It also has a very snappy feel to it. Abiword works on Windows, Mac and Linux. Yes, I know, this doesn't address databases or presentation software.
IMHO, there should be no question mark, but more of an exclamation point.
-Charles
From the CALEA FAQ: (http://www.askcalea.com/jper.html#fcc)
Q: Would the petition force carriers to decode data that might be encrypted?
A: No. The petition does not raise the issue of encryption. That issue is already addressed by CALEA. The statute states that if encryption is provided by a telecommunications carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication, it must decrypt the communications subject to an order for lawful interception. But if the encryption is provided by a subscriber or customer, the carrier is not responsible for decrypting the targeted communications.
Thus the soultion would be to let the user generate their own keys, of which the PUBLIC ones are stored with the provider and the private ones are local to the device/user. Thus the carrier doesn't have any keys to turn over.
There are other implementation issues, obviously. Latency and jitter introduced by encryption is a big one.
-Charles
Quit whining and try ASKING someone. You know, like iRiver's tech support? You can flash the unit with a ROM update that'll make it a USB Mass Storage (UMS) device. Go search their downloads for "UMS" and drag to your heart's content.
-Charles
Thinking about it, this may be a *good* thing. Soon, damn near everything will be encrypted traffic. No, I don't mean Skype and its proprietary stuff. I mean tunnel EVERYTHING thru TLS/SSL. Let 'em tap that and have a blast.
-Charles
IIRC, the wiretap provisions only apply to VoIP POTS interconnects. Straight VoIP VoIP isn't covered by this, only where they interact with the regular phone system. Thus Skype Skype isn't covered, but SkypeOut *IS*.
None-the-less, odd are the courts will rule the FCC doesn't have the authority to enforce this. Even the FCC members who voted for this stated that it was on some convoluted, shakey logic.
-Charles
I purchased two pre-paid GSM cell phones last month, just as a test.
I bought them in WalMart with cash, and a couple refill cards also with cash. I followed the activation sequence in the manual, doing it from the courtesy phone in a hotel lobby. I was not a registered guest at the hotel.
The last part of the activation sequence asked me for a name and address. I lied -- just flat out made both up using a PO Box in an adjacent city and a phony name. The computer voice-response on the other end did not know, nor did it care.
The phones have been working fine for over a month in a metropolitan area of about 500,000 people. They are used exclusively for the unlimited cell-2-cell calls, and never used to call my home, office or anywhere else on the wired network. The only entry in the address book is for the other cell phone, so they can speed dial each other.
Capitalism (pre-paid phones and cards sold at Walmart and gas stations) trumps security every time.
-chill
Skype uses their own encryption method and is a black-box.
Use SSL/TLS for encryption and let 'em work on weeding out THAT traffic from regular e-commerce and other SSL connections.
-Charles
I'll have to second this one.
I set up WebCalendar for a financial services organization. They have 150+ users spread around the country and WebCalendar is accessed as a plug-in to Squirrelmail. We mandate SSL/TLS connections and it performs wonderfully.
When I left the new techies wanted to replace it with Exchange/Outlook/OWA and were flat out told "no way in Hell" by management. The killer sticking point was the ability to overlay calendars -- something Outlook just can't do. (Side-by-side just is not the same.)
-Charles
Quote #1: "...the General Public License, a subversive bit of lawyering that turns property law on its head by prohibiting the users of open-source software from charging money for it."
f o/CompanyTearsheet.jhtml?tkr=APA to the Apache web server!
There is nothing in the GPL that prohibits people from charging money for GPL software. See Red Hat, Novell, IBM, et al.
Fuck-up #2: Linking http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/compin
-Charles
BitTorrent has pretty much a lock on the "real large file" distribution market. What other way is there that you can easily and quickly grab files ranging in size from hundres of megabytes to gigabytes?
BitTorrent has the technology and the name recognition. Hollywood really wants to move to digital distribution method but has two problems: security and efficiency. BitTorrent mostly solves the efficiency part very nicely.
-Charles
Great, programmers can do things with it that they can't do with closed-source. Now how about everyone else?
You're exactly the same place you were if you had chosen a closed-source app. You can ask -- or possibly pay, if it is important enough -- someone else to implement it for you.
The apps being reviewed aren't some half-baked trash that no one but hardcore geeks use. They are complete, polished and professional. They just happen to include the ability to EXTEND IT YOURSELF IF YOU HAVE THE SKILL. For the record, that is a plus.
If you're ranting about other projects that give you half-baked code and then get slammed by some FOSS noob with "the source is there, so stop complaining and start coding", then you're right. However, Ardour and Audacity don't fall into this category and it is unfair to rant about the EXTRA FEATURE of scripting languages and open source code when discussing them.
If you need a feature bad enough, pay someone. Odds are a couple hundred $$ would motivate a rent-a-coder type whereas the big commercial software houses wouldn't look at you twice.
-Charles
On proprietary platforms, eventually you'll run into "you can't do that." On open platforms, you'll run into "you have to learn more to do that."
That applies to so much more than just audio programs.
-Charles
Actually, this is a great idea. If they are sharp enough to set up their own Jabber or IRC server, then they are probably safe in chatting and aren't going to fall for a predator.
If, however, they think the Internet ends with Yahoo, AOL and MSN, then they are probably better off banned unless mommy is there to wipe their ass for them.
-Charles
They used to pass out press badges or press cards to members of the press that got them special privs. I remember my dad's let him park in handicapped spots, fire lanes, etc. when covering stories in Chicago, back in the 1970s.
"Member of the Press" meant something. It sounds like that idea isn't going away.
Part of it is going to stem from who gets invites to functions as "members of the press". Can you get into Disney's "Press Days" event? How about an invite from Company X to their press event?
-Charles
You do realize that was, like, eight years ago, right? And then they fixed it ("months"? Good lord!). Are there hiccups? I'm sure there are. But in practice, very few people moan about incompatibility issues.
:-)
s p9 -n05 (Scroll down to #4, about half-way.)
& Cr=unesco&Cr1=
It was November/December of 1997, so yes about 8 years ago. And I was working at a Fortune 500 company who's Executive VP (pre-CIO days) insisted on immediately upgrading half the company to Office 97 to "standardize". That was 3,000+ desktops on one version and 3,000+ on the older version. It was a damn nightmare for almost a year and that experience stuck with me.
It also stuck with Microsoft, because the Office 97, 2000, XP and 2003 formats are the same and didn't change. Yes, they introduced XML capabilities in 2003 but the default format was the 97/2000/XP one.
Now they're going to change again, this time to XML, and are making the same promises they did in 1997.
Since they are changing, now is the perfect time to try and force an open document solution. Better now than before getting locked into the next cycle.
But in practice, very few people moan about incompatibility issues.
Look harder. Google is your friend.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1631430,00.a
http://office-watch.com/office/archtemplate.asp?v
"...neurobiologist seeking data from the Viking probes sent by the United States to Mars in the mid-1970s was told by the US space agency that software to read the 25-year-old computer tapes no longer existed, and "the programmers who knew it had died," according to the scientist."
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=3902
And to top it off, Office 2003 has no less that six(!) different versions, of which only the top-end 2 can create XML formats. http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/04/23/deviant.html
People don't care about philosophy until it happens to them. Most are apathetic with the attitude "yeah, but what are the odds of that happening to me?" That attitude can NOT be let to rule the day.
Hell, my dad still has the disks he wrote his first book on. TRS-80 Model III, 5 1/4" floppies. And no earthly idea how to get the data off them, much less what format it is in.
Some manufacturing equipment is still controlled by software on OS/9000-based machines. Yes, they can read and write DOS-format floppies now. Of course, the driver for that is $2,500 per node-locked machine...
Sorry for the rant, but this is an important subject I've been burned by before.
-Charles
This just isn't true. Frequently Microsoft products can't open previous versions of Microsoft documents without formatting issues, and this doesn't seem to stop anyone.
When Word 97 was released they claimed it could read/write Word 95 documents. They lied. Their "Word 95" export was really a munged RTF saver and it caused no end of headaches for Word 95 users. It wasn't fixed for months, until SP1 for Office 97 was released.
Try using Office 2003 to open MS Works or Office 4.x files and see what happens. If it even tries at all, you better hope it is a plain-Jane file with nothing fancy, or it is all going to be screwed up.
Most documents convert fine. Other can be handled the same way ANY legacy format has been handled in the digital age -- stop using it and keep a couple copies of the old software around just in case someone needs to access the legacy data. I've managed document transistions at a couple large companies moving from RF-Flow to Visio; Wordstar to WordPerfect to Word; Lotus 1-2-3 to Word; and dBase 3 to dBase 4 to Access 95, 97, 2000 then finally Postgres.
The arguments are always the same.
Q. "What about all my old data?"
A. "Batch convert what you can. Hand convert what you use, as you use it. Leave the old stuff to decay and keep a copy of the old software."
Hell, most times we also needed to set aside some old PCs with the old OS just to run the legacy software. CLIX, OS/9000, OS/2, Windows 3.11, DOS 4.1. We had a legacy document room with a bunch of old computers at one facility. It was a working museum.
THAT is why open document formats are important. To avoid the necessity of working museums.
-Charles
No, you're missing the point. A message is more than just a text string.
I just converted my neighbors 3 PCs over to Linux (Linspire) after two were totally trashed by spyware, virii and worms. He didn't give a damn about anything else other than: web browsing, e-mail, can open Word/Excel document (OpenOffice did it fine), and Java/Flash/PDF. Everything else -- EVERYTHING -- was available to axe. If it worked, fine. If not, it was expendable.
It worked great. His kids (teenagers) use one of the PCs for chat (MSN), browsing and homework. They burn some CDs (K3B), play MP3s and videos (Amarok & Kaffeine) and do the stuff most kids do with a PC (Firefox, GAIM & OpenOffice). Their ONLY complaint was MSN video chat was missing from GAIM. Everything else they had no issues with -- just a couple days learning curve as to the differences.
They all live on IM, just like my kids. File transfers on GAIM are a problem if you're behind NAT; setting AOL buddy icons is a pain (can't use aim:// -- maybe I can figure this out...); can't do video or voice chat. Well, they can use PhoneGAIM with their friends that have a SIP client, which is a few.
IM *IS* video chat, file transfer, buddy icons and all that other cutesy crap.
-Charles