What does OSS have to do with anything? We're talking about open formats, not open source software. You can produce an ODF file in Microsoft Word if you have the right plugin.
But, being required to use it if you're a govt. employee? Weird.
No weirder than the previous situation, to whit, being required to use Microsoft Office formats if you're a govt. employee.
In fact, neither situation is inherently weird. There is nothing weird about a large organisation, be it government or industry, standardising on a single document format. They all do it. They all HAVE to do it, because failing to standardise means wasting vast sums of money on needless interoperability problems, and they are accountable to shareholders/taxpayers who will hardly be pleased to know that money is being wasted. The only weird thing is when they standardise on a format that is controlled by a single company on the other side of the world.
in any case, I don't think it's right for the city/state governments to tell restaurant and bar owners that they can't allow smoking.
This isn't the city/state governments telling restaurant and bar owners that they can't allow smoking - this is the city/state governments announcing that city/state government employees will no longer be allowed to walk out of their offices and blow smoke into the face of passing citizens. Sorry, I just don't see any problem with that.
Can you name any fully-featured file systems for Unix that provide transparent compression?
What's the point? Disk space is so cheap nowadays that the only way I can possibly imagine filling my hard disk is if I put lots of music and video on it - and in the unlikely case that that's not already compressed, it's not going to compress particularly well using any general-purpose algorithm anyway. So when I eventually run short of space, I might as well just buy a new hard disk that will be twice as fast and fifty times as big as my current one...
Microsoft's actions more resemble the actions of the devil than any kind of god.
Hey, that's unfair. Satan's immortal soul contracts are tricky to get out of, but he's got nothing on a Microsoft EULA. And with Satan, you know you're not going to be inflicted with unspeakable suffering until after you die.
I get a pit in my stomach every time I read some self-righteous tirade from a supposedly intelligent person that amounts to nothing more than a cry for free entertainment.
As well you might. You won't see many of those in a story about DRM, though, since DRM doesn't affect the people who want free entertainment - they can just steal DRM-free copies off some P2P service, and never have to worry about the arbitrary restrictions that are imposed on their law-abiding fellows.
The people who complain about DRM, by and large, are honest types who've paid for their entertainment, only to discover to their dismay that they've wasted their money because they can't actually enjoy the product in the ways they were looking forward to.
Beryl, well, who cares? I mean, really? I don't think many linux geeks care about Beryl other than maybe to turn it on and say "wow, that's neat" and turn it back off.
Don't conflate Beryl with the silly effects like wobbly windows and raindrops making your desktop splash and windows catching fire when you minimise them and so forth. Those are neat for a few minutes and then quickly turned off. But Beryl can bring things to the table that are of real value, and it's unwise to dismiss the whole think just because the parts that get exposure on YouTube are silly.
For example, when I hover my mouse over an entry in my panel's window list, a live preview of that window pops up, so I can instantly tell (for example) whether a long compile process has finished without actually having to switch away from whatever I'm doing. Similarly, when I alt-tab to switch windows, what appears isn't just the icon for each application, it also includes an actual scaled-down representation of each window, so I can tell which picture each graphics editor window is editing far more easily than just going by filenames. The ability to zoom in smoothly on a window is very handy when trying to debug graphics output, and conversely if I want the big picture I can zoom out and see all my desktops at once. (Forget the cube, I'm talking straightforward tiling - but it's just as dependent on Beryl.)
All this adds up to a desktop that's just slightly more pleasant to use than before. Plus whenever smug Mac weenies appear I can switch a few silly effects on and blow their minds with all the cool things "PeeCees" can do these days. Hey, it's a bonus.
Um, because otherwise there is a very good risk of being sued by Microsoft?
That's very debatable. I can't think of a single occasion where Microsoft has sued anyone for violating software patents, and in the case of Linux they haven't even identified any patents they allege it violates. All they've said is basically "something that good must violate our patents, and if we ever work out how we might possibly sue someone".
The time to start getting worried is when Microsoft actually points to a specific patent and says "ahem, you're violating this and we want money or we'll sue". And there's no reason to think that's going to happen any time soon.
Why people is wasting time with java[script], CSS etc. when X11 is the perfect solution for web apps is beyond me.
Probably because if you don't use HTML and CSS, it isn't a web app.
The web is that part of the internet that consists of HTML pages transmitted over HTTP. Other stuff that goes over the internet is not part of the web. If it uses X11, it may be a network application, but it's not a web application.
Graham isn't actually claiming that Microsoft is dead (despite his provocative title) but that it is simply irrelevant -- that it's something startups don't need to worry about.
And that is quite true, but it's not because Microsoft is in trouble in any way, shape, or form - it's simply because most startups aren't trying to sell operating systems or enterprise-grade office software, so they aren't trying to compete with Microsoft's money-spinners in the first place.
Wake me when _anyone_ with the time, money and inclination is allowed to make and sell real games for a console.
Wake up, then. Anyone with the time, money, and inclination is allowed to make and sell games for the most powerful and flexible gaming platform in existence.
Oh, wait, you said "for a console".
Why insist on access to consoles? They were designed from the ground up to be less powerful, less flexible, and full of proprietary restrictions; it's hardly surprising that you can't write your own software for them! But given that there's a platform available that doesn't have those restrictions, what's the problem? Just use the platform that provides the features you want - namely the PC.
Mono is now starting to slip into linux distributions and that worries me. [...] I'm not a rabid MS hater, but since when does a promise from Microsoft mean anything at all?
A certain figure commonly associated with airborne chairs has publicly stated that he believes there is code in every Linux distribution that violates Microsoft patents... and you're worried about a product that Microsoft has promised not to sue over?
Look, if Microsoft decides to get litigious, they're not going to go after a tiny and inessential thing like Mono, they're going to go straight after the real threat to Windows' dominance - and that's not Mono, it's the Linux brand itself. The kernel is a likely target. In all honesty, Mono probably isn't.
I large agree with what you say, but I have to correct you on one point:
Gnome is standard on every "commercial" distribution of Linux, from Redhat, to SuSE, to Solaris.
Sadly this is not the case: KDE is also standard on many "commercial" distributions of Linux, such as Linspire, Xandros, and Mandriva.
(By the way, Solaris is not Linux. It does default to Gnome these days, though. A shame in some ways... ugly as Motif is, I still have a soft spot for good old CDE.)
Seriously, Word's grammar tool is responsible for more bad grammar than it fixes. Last time I had to use a computer that had it switched on, I gave it a quick test to see how well it worked, and I'd estimate about 95% of its objections were false positives.
If you want your grammar checked, hire a trained proofreader. There are plenty of them around, their rates are very reasonable, and unlike Word they actually understand the English language - and they're also capable of spotting stuff that Word completely misses (like incorrect use of homophones).
Lots of people don't have your delicate sensibilities, and are perfectly happy when their clipart immediately conveys their message.
Unfortunately, the message it immediately conveys is "I am an amateur".
This is why any company worth its salt will employ a professional designer to design their documents, just like most people buy professionally-designed clothes, instead of stitching their own together from random bits of cloth without regard to style or consistency.
stop bashing someone that probably lacks the time and or talent to produce what you think is a "professional" looking fax cover sheet.
It takes less time and less talent to produce a professional-looking fax cover sheet. All you have to do is keep it simple and avoid Comic Sans - it hardly takes a design degree, and you don't even have to learn how to add clip art!
The App is great once it loads, but because I'm impatient (as well as my bosses, I have 8, did you get the memo?:p ), I find myself actually using Google Docs for everything.
Why not just use TextEdit? Unlike Google Docs, TextEdit even has basic search-and-replace functionality!
you leave Macs to Mac users, and we'll leave beige to you.
I realise this is a classic troll post, and as such its wording may be considered sacred, but it's beginning to get seriously out of date. It's actually very difficult to buy a beige PC these days. The majority are now some combination of black and silver.
You might like to consider updating it. You don't really want to give the impression that Mac users are stuck in the 1990s, do you?:)
Worked fine for me. It's slightly slow, and I couldn't get it to register the "alt" key, but those are issues that could easily be fixed by tuning it to run on a specific platform.
Of course what they overloook is once you have the emulator, you don't need the game companies - just go through any abandonware site,
Um, if someone is selling the game, it isn't abandonware.
Besides, abandonware is illegal. Many people consider it ethically justifiable, on the grounds that they'd pay for the software if anyone was willing to sell it to them. But that argument kind of falls rather flat the moment there is someone willing to sell it to you, doesn't it?
or your stacks of old floppies.
For those who have the old floppies, yes - but many won't have kept them, or will find that they're dead, or simply won't have any hardware that can read them any more - particularly if they bought the 5 1/4" versions.
And, frankly, given a choice between paying something like $5.99 for a game, or getting it "free" by wasting three hours rummaging through old floppies or trawling through dodgy warez sites, I think I'll pay. My time is worth more than two dollars an hour, thank you very much.
This case (Atlantic vs. Andersen) is a civil case, not a criminal one.
Only in America could taking a 10-year-old to court for something she did when she was 7 be considered civil. It looks decidedly uncivil to me.
Frankly, as far as I can see this should be criminal. If any individual did this to a little girl, they would be universally reviled, and probably face jail time. Why is child abuse suddenly legal when it's being perpetrated by an entire industry in the name of profit?
Buying a PC with preinstalled Ubuntu OS at least makes sure that your PC contains Linux-compatible hardware.
You'd think. So why does every seller of pre-installed linux desktops that I've found sell them with a video card that requires proprietary drivers?
Huh? Requiring proprietary drivers doesn't mean they're not Linux-compatible. If it works just fine in Linux, it's Linux-compatible. And cards that require proprietary drivers work just fine when the drivers are installed, so they're Linux-compatible.
Don't go confusing your personal anti-proprietary philosophy with real-world issues like whether stuff actually works or not.
Besides, file sharing isn't mentioned in the Bible, so it must be forbidden by God.
Well, there's all that stuff about "render unto seeders"...:P
(And the Feeding of the N-thousand, of course; if Jesus is going to go round making thousands of unauthorized copies of someone else's bread, he can hardly send you to hell for sharing a few tracks, now, can he?)
Look at England today, muslims want to ban St. George's Flag because they find it offensive.
"Muslims" may well, but not all plurals are majorities. How many? 2? 3? I defy you to produce evidence that suggests that any significant proportion of Muslims have any problem whatsoever with the English flag.
Besides, plenty of non-Muslims dislike it, too, since it's been appropriated by football hooligans and extremist right-wing bigots to become a symbol of violence and intolerance.
Why the FUCK would anyone move to a country whose flag is OFFENSIVE to them?
Of course, your bizarre assumption that all British Muslims are foreign-born immigrants rather reveals your own prejudices, doesn't it?
I wonder if the Muslim's being polled understand the implications of their decisions. Perhaps they feel that, being in a country founded on a constitution they will be protected from the excesses of Sharia law?
Despite the popular belief of the American folk-religion, constitutions aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Documents don't protect rights; it takes people to do that.
The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, for example, specifically (article 23) forbids religious discrimination. Wanna bet how rigorously that's enforced?
It would seem more likely that the people in question either hadn't considered properly the consequences of Sharia law, or that they weren't answering the question we're assuming. For example, they might have been thinking of civil law, not criminal law.
Religions in general breed intolerance.
No; humanity breeds intolerance. And fundamentalism (whether religious, political, or of any other sort) provides a fertile ground for it to grow in. Religion per se is neutral, and I know plenty of people who are perfectly capable of subscribing to a belief system without desiring to force it down other people's throats.
And, equally, I find the bigoted attitude of many atheists towards religion to be every bit as unpleasant as the bigoted attitude many religious people hold towards other religions; you've managed to restrict your proposals to outlawing religion from government (which is fair enough, and should be the case anyway under your constitution), but some atheists go so far as to call for religion itself to be outlawed, and it's hard to see that as a particularly admirable expression of tolerance.
You complain of the oppressive and theocratic tendencies you perceive among fundamentalist Christians in the USA. And yet, are you really unaware that it is also in the USA that a different branch of Christianity is boldly standing up against homophobia in the church? If you wish to attack intolerant Christians for their intolerance, you would do well to commend tolerant Christians for their tolerance, instead of picking and choosing your examples to support your own prejudices.
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In fact, neither situation is inherently weird. There is nothing weird about a large organisation, be it government or industry, standardising on a single document format. They all do it. They all HAVE to do it, because failing to standardise means wasting vast sums of money on needless interoperability problems, and they are accountable to shareholders/taxpayers who will hardly be pleased to know that money is being wasted. The only weird thing is when they standardise on a format that is controlled by a single company on the other side of the world.This isn't the city/state governments telling restaurant and bar owners that they can't allow smoking - this is the city/state governments announcing that city/state government employees will no longer be allowed to walk out of their offices and blow smoke into the face of passing citizens. Sorry, I just don't see any problem with that.
It's meant to be crying. The lower part of each semicolon represents a tear.
The people who complain about DRM, by and large, are honest types who've paid for their entertainment, only to discover to their dismay that they've wasted their money because they can't actually enjoy the product in the ways they were looking forward to.
For example, when I hover my mouse over an entry in my panel's window list, a live preview of that window pops up, so I can instantly tell (for example) whether a long compile process has finished without actually having to switch away from whatever I'm doing. Similarly, when I alt-tab to switch windows, what appears isn't just the icon for each application, it also includes an actual scaled-down representation of each window, so I can tell which picture each graphics editor window is editing far more easily than just going by filenames. The ability to zoom in smoothly on a window is very handy when trying to debug graphics output, and conversely if I want the big picture I can zoom out and see all my desktops at once. (Forget the cube, I'm talking straightforward tiling - but it's just as dependent on Beryl.)
All this adds up to a desktop that's just slightly more pleasant to use than before. Plus whenever smug Mac weenies appear I can switch a few silly effects on and blow their minds with all the cool things "PeeCees" can do these days. Hey, it's a bonus.
The time to start getting worried is when Microsoft actually points to a specific patent and says "ahem, you're violating this and we want money or we'll sue". And there's no reason to think that's going to happen any time soon.
The web is that part of the internet that consists of HTML pages transmitted over HTTP. Other stuff that goes over the internet is not part of the web. If it uses X11, it may be a network application, but it's not a web application.
Oh, wait, you said "for a console".
Why insist on access to consoles? They were designed from the ground up to be less powerful, less flexible, and full of proprietary restrictions; it's hardly surprising that you can't write your own software for them! But given that there's a platform available that doesn't have those restrictions, what's the problem? Just use the platform that provides the features you want - namely the PC.
Look, if Microsoft decides to get litigious, they're not going to go after a tiny and inessential thing like Mono, they're going to go straight after the real threat to Windows' dominance - and that's not Mono, it's the Linux brand itself. The kernel is a likely target. In all honesty, Mono probably isn't.
(By the way, Solaris is not Linux. It does default to Gnome these days, though. A shame in some ways... ugly as Motif is, I still have a soft spot for good old CDE.)
Seriously, Word's grammar tool is responsible for more bad grammar than it fixes. Last time I had to use a computer that had it switched on, I gave it a quick test to see how well it worked, and I'd estimate about 95% of its objections were false positives.
If you want your grammar checked, hire a trained proofreader. There are plenty of them around, their rates are very reasonable, and unlike Word they actually understand the English language - and they're also capable of spotting stuff that Word completely misses (like incorrect use of homophones).
This is why any company worth its salt will employ a professional designer to design their documents, just like most people buy professionally-designed clothes, instead of stitching their own together from random bits of cloth without regard to style or consistency.
You might like to consider updating it. You don't really want to give the impression that Mac users are stuck in the 1990s, do you?
Besides, abandonware is illegal. Many people consider it ethically justifiable, on the grounds that they'd pay for the software if anyone was willing to sell it to them. But that argument kind of falls rather flat the moment there is someone willing to sell it to you, doesn't it?For those who have the old floppies, yes - but many won't have kept them, or will find that they're dead, or simply won't have any hardware that can read them any more - particularly if they bought the 5 1/4" versions.
And, frankly, given a choice between paying something like $5.99 for a game, or getting it "free" by wasting three hours rummaging through old floppies or trawling through dodgy warez sites, I think I'll pay. My time is worth more than two dollars an hour, thank you very much.
Frankly, as far as I can see this should be criminal. If any individual did this to a little girl, they would be universally reviled, and probably face jail time. Why is child abuse suddenly legal when it's being perpetrated by an entire industry in the name of profit?
Don't go confusing your personal anti-proprietary philosophy with real-world issues like whether stuff actually works or not.
(And the Feeding of the N-thousand, of course; if Jesus is going to go round making thousands of unauthorized copies of someone else's bread, he can hardly send you to hell for sharing a few tracks, now, can he?)
Besides, plenty of non-Muslims dislike it, too, since it's been appropriated by football hooligans and extremist right-wing bigots to become a symbol of violence and intolerance.Of course, your bizarre assumption that all British Muslims are foreign-born immigrants rather reveals your own prejudices, doesn't it?
The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, for example, specifically (article 23) forbids religious discrimination. Wanna bet how rigorously that's enforced?
It would seem more likely that the people in question either hadn't considered properly the consequences of Sharia law, or that they weren't answering the question we're assuming. For example, they might have been thinking of civil law, not criminal law.No; humanity breeds intolerance. And fundamentalism (whether religious, political, or of any other sort) provides a fertile ground for it to grow in. Religion per se is neutral, and I know plenty of people who are perfectly capable of subscribing to a belief system without desiring to force it down other people's throats.
And, equally, I find the bigoted attitude of many atheists towards religion to be every bit as unpleasant as the bigoted attitude many religious people hold towards other religions; you've managed to restrict your proposals to outlawing religion from government (which is fair enough, and should be the case anyway under your constitution), but some atheists go so far as to call for religion itself to be outlawed, and it's hard to see that as a particularly admirable expression of tolerance.
You complain of the oppressive and theocratic tendencies you perceive among fundamentalist Christians in the USA. And yet, are you really unaware that it is also in the USA that a different branch of Christianity is boldly standing up against homophobia in the church? If you wish to attack intolerant Christians for their intolerance, you would do well to commend tolerant Christians for their tolerance, instead of picking and choosing your examples to support your own prejudices.