There are at least two damn nice looking black women in my local EB Games. Unfortunately one is married (par for the course) and I haven't had the opportunity to chat up the new one yet.
Of course, I'm really not picky race-wise and didn't really think of them in terms of skin color until your post made me try to think up counter-examples. Maybe if you weren't so picky you'd have an easier time getting a date.:)
"You took off Office Suites and replaced them with WordPad? Since when is WordPad a spreadsheet app?"
And you would need a full-featured spreadshet in high school because... ?
That level of schooling is to teach the students to do what the spreadsheet does for them automatically, to give them a grasp of what those mathematical functions are, what they do, and when they're useful (and more importantly, when they're not). Giving a spreadsheet app to a high school student makes about as much sense as giving them a TI-89, and will ruin their education and hobble them intellectually in the same way.
" I wonder if the SWX format will ever really take hold. No doubt it will need something like a very good StarOffice suite to bring it into its own."
I have a "secret" for you: SO/OO.o files are nothing more than ZIPped plaintext XML code! Take a file, UNZIP it, open it in the text editor du jour, and there it is, in all its glory. Not exactly the most proprietary format in the world.
"(And maybe a boost from Microsoft secure documents / forced upgrade)"
There's an amusing little tidbit in the SO 7.0 FAQ here:
Q. Why can I not import password protected MS Office files?
A. Microsoft does not encrypt their protected files. In the past, we simply imported those documents as unprotected files. Naturally, this represents a security violation and which many enterprises were unhappy about. As a result, we blocked the import capability for password-protected files and they can no longer be imported at all.
"I am suprised that Sun's Star Office recieves so much attention from slashdot and the open sauce community."
Why? Is OO.org not "open" enough for you? Unless you're running pure Debain, you risk hipocrisy
And since you're talking about the alternative of Ability Office, what open source code base does it use?
"doesn't use a ugly as hell windowing toolkit."
Huh? What, are you still using 5.2 or something?
"Star Office is not very similar to Open Office at all"
Yeah, they only use exactly the same API structure. It's not like they're more similar to each other than any two versions of MS Office...
"sun kept the best parts to themselves (database app)"
Because the databasee app isn't theirs to open. The database engine included with SO is Software AG's Adabas. Kinda like why they aren't opening "their" Flash code generator.
"Also its cheaper than StarOffice, Ability only costs 69.95"
So far, the three features of Ability Office you've listed are exporting to PDFs, opening MS Office formats and running under *nix. These are two things that OO.org does for free. If price point is your main sticking point, then you should look at OO.org instead of Ability Office.
Yes, I'll grant that your post was informative in bringing attention to Ability Office, but it seems like your post's flamebait-to-information ratio still is above 1.
"Koffice [koffice.org]... has never had its "own" font directory,"
That's because you don't need your own font directory when you're only running in one environment. Or don't you like your documents looking exactly the same no matter what OS you use?
"but Office XP is far superior in terms of usability and productivity."
That's all well and good, but is it four times the usability and productivity of SO? Because that's what the price tag says (and that's just for the standard version). Hell, WinXP Pro retails for less than that.
I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to buying software (and, yes, I buy software), but when it digs into my pocket book as much as a proposed MS Office solution does, I'm going to spend on SO instead and use the savings on ways to make money.
Except then players would have to be... y'know... in shape. When was the last time you saw a computer game player built like a special forces operative?
"The question still remains: what is a good number?"
Personally, I'd just like to apply a managable multiplier to the currenty number (say, double or triple it) and see what that does for things. If you're right and it won't have much effect on the democratic process, at least it will turn the temperature down on the districting debates some (more districts to bicker over).
"The senate is equally represented by the states so it can't really approach true democracy."
First off, I'm not looking for a true democracy. I have no problems with the 1:30,000 limit currently imposed by the US Constitution. My issue is that we're currently around 1:600,000, and I don't see how limiting over half a million to just one voice helps anything.
Secondly, my qualms with the how the Senate currently operates is a whole other kettle of fish.
Then why not establish a single democratically-elected dictator? After all, it worked so well for the Roman Empir^H^H^H^H^HRepublic.
A larger legislature increaes the odds of individual voices ideas making their way to the floor. For an issue to even be uttered on the floor of the House of Representatives, that issue has to be important to around 200,000 people in that congresscritter's district. Decreasing that number to 20,000 both increases the scope of the debates heard as well as the quality of the resolutions made by that debate.
This isn't a matter of an issue having a louder or a softer voice, it's a binary matter of an issue having a voice at all.
"and they had the power to give (or withhold) permission for Bush to attack."
Instead of making the decision to attack or not attack for themselves.
"Congress got to set prerequisites that had to be met before an attack,"
Instead of spelling out what requirements had to be met before the campaign can be (and must be) considered "over."
"but they can't tell the President what to do once it's begun - he's the commander in chief."
Yes they can insofar as war is a tool for foreign policy. Instead of the occasional fund/don't fund votes they allow their hands to become dirty with, a war declaration would have given Congress more say in the broader execution of the campaign (whether or not to involve Turkey, for example). The current status quo under the War Powers Act allows the President to decide foreign policy on the fly without even involving the Senate.
"If you want to talk about responsibility and blame, let's talk about the millions upon millions upon millions of people who elected these current congress-critters."
They were all elected by a majority of a minority. Apathy is to blame here, and those that are too apathetic to even vote are the worst of the lot.
But even then we can turn back to Congress.
Size of Congress - The constitutional maximum number of people that can serve in the House of Representatives is currently in the neighborhood of 10,000, but the House has seen fit to maintain an artificial limit of 435 for the better part of a century while the US population has more than doubled. This has done nothing but simultaneously increase the power those few legislators (why do you think there's all this political back-stabbing going on in Austin?) while decreasing the influence an individual voter can hope to have on them (a drop in an ever-increasing bucket).
If the UK, a country with 1/5 of our population, can function with a national legislature over twice the size as Congress without drowning in bureocracy, why can't we?
Campaign Finance Laws - In the name of returning elections back to votors, contribution limits have done nothing but increase the power of both the special interest groups and the political parties as they operate as legallized money launderers. Instead of eliminating threats to the public's influence on campaigns, these laws have elimiated threats to the party's influence. Not only must anybody who may want to contribume more than their legal limits go through these self-interested middle-men who may or may not share their contributors' views, but these new seas of money from otherwise upright donors allow shadier contributors more room to hide their donations (why I said "money launderers").
And even now new bills are being pushed through Congress that, instead of increasing public disclosure of funding sources, simply decrease the number of money launderers that are able to operate in competition with the political parties
And this is before I even get into the problems of the Seventeenth Amendment and the similar problems of how the Electoral College operates today. It's difficult to give voters all of the blame when politicians and their parties have been working so hard for most of the Twentieth Century to silence them.
Where in my post did I use the word "libertarian?" Hell, one of the people I ran against last year was a Libertarian.
However, there is one major advantage that Libertarians have over both of the two major parties: They don't have the Dems' or GOP's dismal track record. Note that everything you have in your post is pure speculation about what might happen if the Libertarian Party became the dominant party, while Ds and Rs have had over a century of power brokering for us to look back on and say "no" to.
Ultimately, the solution is not to pick one party over another but to reject the concept of political party membership outright. Anybody who runs for public office while a member of a political party (any political party) is trying to serve two masters, and that conflict of interests should be a black mark against the candidate in the eyes of the voters. In this supposed "Information Age," voters have all the tools needed to research all candidates and make their decisions based on the individuals in question, not based on dilluted party philosophy.
And if you still don't like any of the choices you see before you, then put yourself on the ballot. Anything is better than being just another non-voter.
"is anyone else creeped out that the executive branch has so many characters making such public efforts at lawmaking rather than just the execution of law?"
Is anybody else creeped out by the way all this attention and blame is heaped on Ashcroft, ignoring the people who gave him all these new powers to begin with? If you want to talk about lawmaking, let's talk about the 530+ people that made USA PATRIOT into law who apparently aren't doing their jobs to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
There are at least two damn nice looking black women in my local EB Games. Unfortunately one is married (par for the course) and I haven't had the opportunity to chat up the new one yet.
:)
Of course, I'm really not picky race-wise and didn't really think of them in terms of skin color until your post made me try to think up counter-examples. Maybe if you weren't so picky you'd have an easier time getting a date.
How many full versions of SO 7.0 can you buy for the price of one Office XP upgrade?
"You took off Office Suites and replaced them with WordPad? Since when is WordPad a spreadsheet app?"
And you would need a full-featured spreadshet in high school because... ?
That level of schooling is to teach the students to do what the spreadsheet does for them automatically, to give them a grasp of what those mathematical functions are, what they do, and when they're useful (and more importantly, when they're not). Giving a spreadsheet app to a high school student makes about as much sense as giving them a TI-89, and will ruin their education and hobble them intellectually in the same way.
I have a "secret" for you: SO/OO.o files are nothing more than ZIPped plaintext XML code! Take a file, UNZIP it, open it in the text editor du jour, and there it is, in all its glory. Not exactly the most proprietary format in the world.
"(And maybe a boost from Microsoft secure documents / forced upgrade)"
There's an amusing little tidbit in the SO 7.0 FAQ here:
"Sun's on the ropes as a business and they're switching from hardware to software?? Maybe??"
I'd say it's easier to compete with Microsoft than it is to compete with IBM.
"they've got a hill to climb to convince me to make a commitment to the product while their business is struggling."
StarOffice has been around since before Sun owned it, and I don't see any reason to believe why it wouldn't continue if Sun drops it in the future.
"I am suprised that Sun's Star Office recieves so much attention from slashdot and the open sauce community."
Why? Is OO.org not "open" enough for you? Unless you're running pure Debain, you risk hipocrisy
And since you're talking about the alternative of Ability Office, what open source code base does it use?
"doesn't use a ugly as hell windowing toolkit."
Huh? What, are you still using 5.2 or something?
"Star Office is not very similar to Open Office at all"
Yeah, they only use exactly the same API structure. It's not like they're more similar to each other than any two versions of MS Office...
"sun kept the best parts to themselves (database app)"
Because the databasee app isn't theirs to open. The database engine included with SO is Software AG's Adabas. Kinda like why they aren't opening "their" Flash code generator.
"Also its cheaper than StarOffice, Ability only costs 69.95"
So far, the three features of Ability Office you've listed are exporting to PDFs, opening MS Office formats and running under *nix. These are two things that OO.org does for free. If price point is your main sticking point, then you should look at OO.org instead of Ability Office.
Yes, I'll grant that your post was informative in bringing attention to Ability Office, but it seems like your post's flamebait-to-information ratio still is above 1.
"stolen SCO email:"
Hi! How are you! I send you this file in order to have your advice!
"Koffice [koffice.org] ... has never had its "own" font directory,"
That's because you don't need your own font directory when you're only running in one environment. Or don't you like your documents looking exactly the same no matter what OS you use?
"but Office XP is far superior in terms of usability and productivity."
That's all well and good, but is it four times the usability and productivity of SO? Because that's what the price tag says (and that's just for the standard version). Hell, WinXP Pro retails for less than that.
I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to buying software (and, yes, I buy software), but when it digs into my pocket book as much as a proposed MS Office solution does, I'm going to spend on SO instead and use the savings on ways to make money.
Except then players would have to be... y'know... in shape. When was the last time you saw a computer game player built like a special forces operative?
"There's always the chance of having it presented again to get that 2/3 majority to make it override the veto."
55 < 67
How much weight do we put behind that, though?
I mean, just look at all the bills President Bush has vetoed from the 107th and 108th Congresses.
"They're grown by the thousands just for the purpose of dying in nasty ways."
Does PETA have a hissy-fit, or are they not cute and fuzzy enough to garner their attention?
We were all too busy looking at pron.
Solution: Write your state legislators and tell them you want to see changes in the way elections are conducted in your state.
"for this the GC would need a harddrive... "
Why? I don't think a game is going to fill up a 64 MB SD memory card unless you're going to try downloading N64 carts.
"The question still remains: what is a good number?"
Personally, I'd just like to apply a managable multiplier to the currenty number (say, double or triple it) and see what that does for things. If you're right and it won't have much effect on the democratic process, at least it will turn the temperature down on the districting debates some (more districts to bicker over).
"The senate is equally represented by the states so it can't really approach true democracy."
First off, I'm not looking for a true democracy. I have no problems with the 1:30,000 limit currently imposed by the US Constitution. My issue is that we're currently around 1:600,000, and I don't see how limiting over half a million to just one voice helps anything.
Secondly, my qualms with the how the Senate currently operates is a whole other kettle of fish.
What do Doom and Quake have to do with a decades-old ASCII-ish game for the Apple ][?
"That sounds nice, until you realize that nothing will ever happen if 200 "individuals" try to pass a law."
And this is a bad thing? I'd rather have a do-nothing Congress than one that can vote 95+% in favor of USA PATRIOT with a straight face.
Disagreement between legislators isn't a problem here. The problem is when they all do agree.
The easy way. Odds are you can use this and simply mail it in.
"I don't think the size is related to democracy."
Then why not establish a single democratically-elected dictator? After all, it worked so well for the Roman Empir^H^H^H^H^HRepublic.
A larger legislature increaes the odds of individual voices ideas making their way to the floor. For an issue to even be uttered on the floor of the House of Representatives, that issue has to be important to around 200,000 people in that congresscritter's district. Decreasing that number to 20,000 both increases the scope of the debates heard as well as the quality of the resolutions made by that debate.
This isn't a matter of an issue having a louder or a softer voice, it's a binary matter of an issue having a voice at all.
"They set the budget,"
Instead of setting the goals.
"and they had the power to give (or withhold) permission for Bush to attack."
Instead of making the decision to attack or not attack for themselves.
"Congress got to set prerequisites that had to be met before an attack,"
Instead of spelling out what requirements had to be met before the campaign can be (and must be) considered "over."
"but they can't tell the President what to do once it's begun - he's the commander in chief."
Yes they can insofar as war is a tool for foreign policy. Instead of the occasional fund/don't fund votes they allow their hands to become dirty with, a war declaration would have given Congress more say in the broader execution of the campaign (whether or not to involve Turkey, for example). The current status quo under the War Powers Act allows the President to decide foreign policy on the fly without even involving the Senate.
They were all elected by a majority of a minority. Apathy is to blame here, and those that are too apathetic to even vote are the worst of the lot.
But even then we can turn back to Congress.
- Size of Congress - The constitutional maximum number of people that can serve in the House of Representatives is currently in the neighborhood of 10,000, but the House has seen fit to maintain an artificial limit of 435 for the better part of a century while the US population has more than doubled. This has done nothing but simultaneously increase the power those few legislators (why do you think there's all this political back-stabbing going on in Austin?) while decreasing the influence an individual voter can hope to have on them (a drop in an ever-increasing bucket).
- Campaign Finance Laws - In the name of returning elections back to votors, contribution limits have done nothing but increase the power of both the special interest groups and the political parties as they operate as legallized money launderers. Instead of eliminating threats to the public's influence on campaigns, these laws have elimiated threats to the party's influence. Not only must anybody who may want to contribume more than their legal limits go through these self-interested middle-men who may or may not share their contributors' views, but these new seas of money from otherwise upright donors allow shadier contributors more room to hide their donations (why I said "money launderers").
And this is before I even get into the problems of the Seventeenth Amendment and the similar problems of how the Electoral College operates today. It's difficult to give voters all of the blame when politicians and their parties have been working so hard for most of the Twentieth Century to silence them.If the UK, a country with 1/5 of our population, can function with a national legislature over twice the size as Congress without drowning in bureocracy, why can't we?
And even now new bills are being pushed through Congress that, instead of increasing public disclosure of funding sources, simply decrease the number of money launderers that are able to operate in competition with the political parties
Where in my post did I use the word "libertarian?" Hell, one of the people I ran against last year was a Libertarian.
However, there is one major advantage that Libertarians have over both of the two major parties: They don't have the Dems' or GOP's dismal track record. Note that everything you have in your post is pure speculation about what might happen if the Libertarian Party became the dominant party, while Ds and Rs have had over a century of power brokering for us to look back on and say "no" to.
Ultimately, the solution is not to pick one party over another but to reject the concept of political party membership outright. Anybody who runs for public office while a member of a political party (any political party) is trying to serve two masters, and that conflict of interests should be a black mark against the candidate in the eyes of the voters. In this supposed "Information Age," voters have all the tools needed to research all candidates and make their decisions based on the individuals in question, not based on dilluted party philosophy.
And if you still don't like any of the choices you see before you, then put yourself on the ballot. Anything is better than being just another non-voter.
"is anyone else creeped out that the executive branch has so many characters making such public efforts at lawmaking rather than just the execution of law?"
Is anybody else creeped out by the way all this attention and blame is heaped on Ashcroft, ignoring the people who gave him all these new powers to begin with? If you want to talk about lawmaking, let's talk about the 530+ people that made USA PATRIOT into law who apparently aren't doing their jobs to begin with.