I agree. I've been on the web since the beginning, and I can't remember clicking on a single ad... I can say with certainty that I've never made any purchases because of them. I actually hope banning ad blockers becomes the norm - I'm already inhabiting the non-commercial areas of the Internet more and more (eg. technical discussions on IRC after a LOOOONG hiatus after the 90's, mailing lists etc...). I strongly suspect forcing ads on people will precipitate out the more technically minded users with less patience for distraction to the non-commercial net. I'd be quite happy with that. If that makes me parasitic so be it.
...and there have been plenty of dangerous foods generated without GM. Of current interest are A1/A2 gene variants in dairy cows... the A1 milk is possibly linked to type 1 diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses : http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/2008/2260411.htm . There are also potatoes produced from breeding programs which are too poisonous for human consumption, although this is expected because potatoes naturally contain glycoalkaloids. There is also evidence that ever sweeter fruit varieties (particularly in the form of fruit juice) are contributing to health problems due to fructose overload : http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/2007/2104024.htm. What happens in the GMO world with the hugely increased recruitment of new varieties? It's just as easy, perhaps easier for a GM crop to have subtle but serious problems, and there's a whiff of corruption when Monsanto and our food regulators talk. Can we no longer place as much trust in brands such as "corn", "orange", "oats", "apple", "grape" etc?
Look up Thomas Szasz, one of the great critics of psychiatry. His arguments are well thought out, and most slashdotters could probably respect them (even if they don't agree).
I live about 200km (~125 miles) from Bowen; in a small city called Townsville, Queensland - population 150,000. Brisbane is the capital city of this state, and maybe more likely to be known by an international audience(?). I could probably travel another 700km north through Cairns to Cooktown and still easily be in the state, although the roads would be getting bad. Australia has a lot of space per capita, so for example we have cattle stations (ie. ranches) larger than Texas.
Bird eating spiders have fangs strong enough to penetrate a thumb nail. An old friend of mine from my university days has been telling me about occasionally meeting "whistling spiders" ie. the common name for these spiders because they make a hissing sound when they're agitated. She once met one threatening her poodle through a screen door. They caught and released it at a golf course, and could see this dark spot on the lawn running off into the distance as they drove away.
Check out SOGo (Scalable OpenGroupware) - it supports Thunderbird + Lightning (with responsive Thunderbird-look-alike web interface), mobile devices through Funambol etc. It has reached the ninth release candidate for its 1.0 release. It's based on the venerable OGo which suffered from its older looking web interface and lack of support for third party clients.
I'm not sure "counter-spin" is the right tactic. Sure, you can offer some counter arguments, but personally I'd suggest the customer do an Internet search with something like "windows linux security". Microsoft has advertising muscle, editorial influence and sales teams... but despite this many people in-the-know choose open source specifically for security - an Internet search should make that clear. It will also demonstrate your integrity.
GOsa is worth a look but in my experience is VERY hard to implement. It's a web based LDAP front end that manages posix accounts, Samba, email/groupware, Asterisk, fax, automatic installation (via FAI), DNS, DHCP and much more. I think the target market is large organisations with existing inhouse skills in the base technologies and plenty of man hours. I tried getting this working as a lone generalist, and I only got as far as getting posix, Samba, SOGo (a groupware solution), DHCP and DNS working. Scripts to get something working on Debian Lenny are on sourceforge (I finally found a use for my sourceforge project:) : https://sourceforge.net/projects/wfstt/ .
Why not GIVE the English language a term for free-libre eg. "liber". Languages are fluid things... and "liber" fits : liber liberate liberation
Yes, liber has some (uncommon) meanings in English already, but plenty of other words have multiple meanings eg. the word "free" itself! It's certainly not a step backwards, and there's a chance it could add something valuable to English in the longer term.
A high version number on a product I haven't even heard of screams fringe/unpopular.
If I were concerned about the 1.0 effect I wouldn't print it large with the branding - perhaps only in tiny print on the back somewhere, or even not at all.
The elephant in the room is that the Blizzard guys probably would have preferred staying true to the dark and brooding atmosphere, but it's no longer possible with todays technology. On panels black is really gray... often not even a dark gray, and then there's the trade-off most panels make in giving up a few bits per colour channel for speed. "Dark and brooding" looks pretty awful on your average modern rig.
The U.S provides much of the internationally available money for AIDS programs. Unfortunately this process has been hijacked (by religious fundies perhaps?). Recipients of this money are forced into concentrating completely on abstinence-only and faithfulness-in-marriage programs... no condoms allowed. See http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/aids/2005/uganda/ That link is from 2005, and I've listened to recent interviews with AIDS workers complaining bitterly about how this is still the case.
No IBM or Microsoft hanging over your head? Excuse me?
Scalable OpenGroupware (SOGo) looks more promising. Cross platform client (Mozilla Sunbird/Lightning/Thunderbird) with nice Mozilla themed AJAX interface, support for CalDAV, free/busy, Funambol plugin for mobile devices etc... and an Outlook client almost at v1.0
I check the OpenAFS project status semi-regularly, and there has been a bit of work done on the windows side of things recently... the latest version was released just a few days ago. From the site I get the impression that the Windows client stability issues are (mostly?) ironed out and they've been able to concentrate more on performance improvements.
The Windows client IS a bit of a hack ie. it isn't a real filesystem driver - it's a proxy that translates OpenAFS to/from virtual SMB via a virtual network device. Still, it sounds as if it's finally worth a look.
Yes, we are changed by what we see, but are we negatively changed? If this is an argument for packing people in cotton wool I don't buy it.
I'm sure there could equally be an argument against tear jerker movies ie. that they make people depressed, and there's a link between depression and suicide... but I don't like where that line of logic leads.
Movies are just another life experience, albeit merely voyeuristic. I believe movie violence and tears are preferable to sterile bubblegum, and probably do more good than harm. It prepares peoples minds for extreme situations. It's the individuals responsibility to deal with "input", or else avoid it. It should be societies responsibility to provide some support if the individual processes movies or life experience negatively.
Sure, minors should be protected to some extent... but overprotection leaves people unable to deal with life. Its an urban legend that girls raised strictly are more likely to become prostitutes, and when a (female) friend delivered a pizza to a local brothel she asked around... mostly catholic school girls! (Disclaimer : I went to a catholic primary school).
The pieces are JUST starting to come together re: replacing MS Exchange... although, granted, it's still VERY alpha/beta it's quite an exciting development.
OpenGroupware (nightly builds) support CalDAV, and Thunderbird/w Lightning talks to it. There are other Thunderbird plugins which use GroupDAV for shared address lists and free/busy information through the OpenGroupware server.
This works today(!), though it's non-trivial to set up, and you have to be careful about versions. The combination to use is Lightning 0.3.1, the latest Thunderbird, OpenGroupware nightly, and the latest GroupDAV free/busy and shared address lists plugins. Unfortunately the latest Sunbird/Lightning (0.5) doesn't work right now, but bugs have been filed and the developers understand the problem... and a fix will happen in time.
OK, it's less functional and robust compared to the dominant player... but it's cheaper.
OpenGroupware (the nightly build) supports CalDAV. Sunbird 3.1 works fine, although apparently there is a bug with OpenGroupware preventing Sunbird 0.5 working flawlessly at the moment (after a reminder happens in Sunbird a duplicate calendar event gets created). With the Lightning plugin for Thunderbird you've got email and calendar in the one app, and there are extra plugins for free/busy information and shared address lists through GroupDAV from OpenGroupware. That's sounding an awful lot like an Outlook/Exchange replacement to me.
I haven't seen anyone mention continuous ink solutions yet. I don't have any experience with them myself, but if you are doing any volume they seem to be the way to go. Not all printers are an easy mod so you might need to do some homework. Also they say you need to print at least once or twice a week or else you'll be re-priming the kit, which is a hassle. These kits are definitely worth a look however if you are a high volume printer.
I've gone with a b/w laser myself with an inkjet multifunction (an Epson RX430 because of their Linux support) for when I need colour copy. Looked at colour lasers, and inkjets beat them on cost-per-copy believe it or not(!!!). If I needed to do high volume colour I would have gone with continuous ink. As a side note - check out Xerox... I seem to remember they have some kind of wax(?) print technology which was pretty cheap for toner.
I'm an evil multimillionaire genius who wants to screw the users and developers of said PD code.
1) I hijack the project by embracing and extending it so end users will prefer my fork. I distribute it for free, but under a license which prevents anyone else from redistributing it.
2) I create a paid version offering a sweetener (support and/or more functionality etc...) and then do a frog boil by letting the free version fall behind (no bug fixes or functionality extensions etc), and because I'm the only one with redistribution rights I can kill it completely at my whim. (I'll probably keep in around though because it will suck people into using my product, and when they become frustrated with limitations they'll pay me for the real thing).
3) If you try to extend the PD product to match mine (mine MINE!!! ahahaha!!!) I open up with my patent and/or copyright war chest and sue your arse back into the nerd hobbit-hole you came from.
...and while you're at it check out Adempiere http://sourceforge.net/projects/adempiere/ . It's a recent fork of Compiere that aims to be completely open source rather than relying on Oracle. Their first stable release is out (v3.20 nicknamed "May Day").
Looking at the comparison between the open source version, and the commercial versions, much of the functionality that exchange excells in (namely corperate enterprise messeging), is not available in the OS version.
It's worse than that - the Open Source license is "Attribware". Basically any fork must have large obnoxious ads linking back to the Zimbra website. This is a huge disincentive for anyone who wants to fork the project. If a project is stagnating or the company owning a project goes belly up the right to fork without caveats is critical.
I'm not worried though... There are a lot of promising and less restricted open source projects are in the works (Kolab, OpenGroupWare, Citadel etc...). Most projects like Zimbra die away after there's a legitimate free alternative even if the alternative isn't quite as good (eg. QT vs Gnome).
I watched a documentary on this on the ABC (Australia) and they were saying that the main reason nicotine is so addictive is the delivery method. The smoke is inhaled and gives an instant highly concentrated hit. Instant positive reenforcement. I'd imagine ingested nicotine would be much less addictive.
I agree the Mozilla/Opera/whatever guys should talk to Eolas to clarify things for the free software community, but no matter what I think this whole thing represents opportunity and danger.
IMPORTANT : If MS is forced to remove plugin tech from their products it will make the average citizen very aware of how patents can change the face of software development, and the community needs to make sure the heat is on the patent system and not Eolas, the "general insanity of the legal system" or something else.
Just need a decent video card that supports Linux. OK, ATI isn't stellar in their support, but they're certainly better than binary only Nvidia. Besides, the new 9600 is supposed to be a desktop beater!
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. I've been on the web since the beginning, and I can't remember clicking on a single ad... I can say with certainty that I've never made any purchases because of them. I actually hope banning ad blockers becomes the norm - I'm already inhabiting the non-commercial areas of the Internet more and more (eg. technical discussions on IRC after a LOOOONG hiatus after the 90's, mailing lists etc...). I strongly suspect forcing ads on people will precipitate out the more technically minded users with less patience for distraction to the non-commercial net. I'd be quite happy with that. If that makes me parasitic so be it.
...and there have been plenty of dangerous foods generated without GM. Of current interest are A1/A2 gene variants in dairy cows... the A1 milk is possibly linked to type 1 diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses : http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/2008/2260411.htm . There are also potatoes produced from breeding programs which are too poisonous for human consumption, although this is expected because potatoes naturally contain glycoalkaloids. There is also evidence that ever sweeter fruit varieties (particularly in the form of fruit juice) are contributing to health problems due to fructose overload : http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/2007/2104024.htm. What happens in the GMO world with the hugely increased recruitment of new varieties? It's just as easy, perhaps easier for a GM crop to have subtle but serious problems, and there's a whiff of corruption when Monsanto and our food regulators talk. Can we no longer place as much trust in brands such as "corn", "orange", "oats", "apple", "grape" etc?
Look up Thomas Szasz, one of the great critics of psychiatry. His arguments are well thought out, and most slashdotters could probably respect them (even if they don't agree).
I first heard of him on a series of "All in the Mind" podcasts from the ABC (the Australian national broadcaster). This program is on the mind, brain and behaviour : ...and a response from some psychologist (who rebut some arguments, but also admit that the evolution of the psych disciplines actually owe a debt to Szasz) :
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2009/2530830.htm (part 1)
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2009/2536966.htm (part 2)
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2009/2544843.htm
I live about 200km (~125 miles) from Bowen; in a small city called Townsville, Queensland - population 150,000. Brisbane is the capital city of this state, and maybe more likely to be known by an international audience(?). I could probably travel another 700km north through Cairns to Cooktown and still easily be in the state, although the roads would be getting bad. Australia has a lot of space per capita, so for example we have cattle stations (ie. ranches) larger than Texas. Bird eating spiders have fangs strong enough to penetrate a thumb nail. An old friend of mine from my university days has been telling me about occasionally meeting "whistling spiders" ie. the common name for these spiders because they make a hissing sound when they're agitated. She once met one threatening her poodle through a screen door. They caught and released it at a golf course, and could see this dark spot on the lawn running off into the distance as they drove away.
Check out SOGo (Scalable OpenGroupware) - it supports Thunderbird + Lightning (with responsive Thunderbird-look-alike web interface), mobile devices through Funambol etc. It has reached the ninth release candidate for its 1.0 release. It's based on the venerable OGo which suffered from its older looking web interface and lack of support for third party clients.
I'm not sure "counter-spin" is the right tactic. Sure, you can offer some counter arguments, but personally I'd suggest the customer do an Internet search with something like "windows linux security". Microsoft has advertising muscle, editorial influence and sales teams... but despite this many people in-the-know choose open source specifically for security - an Internet search should make that clear. It will also demonstrate your integrity.
I should also mention those scripts are really documentation that I could run to very their correctness.
GOsa is worth a look but in my experience is VERY hard to implement. It's a web based LDAP front end that manages posix accounts, Samba, email/groupware, Asterisk, fax, automatic installation (via FAI), DNS, DHCP and much more. I think the target market is large organisations with existing inhouse skills in the base technologies and plenty of man hours. I tried getting this working as a lone generalist, and I only got as far as getting posix, Samba, SOGo (a groupware solution), DHCP and DNS working. Scripts to get something working on Debian Lenny are on sourceforge (I finally found a use for my sourceforge project:) : https://sourceforge.net/projects/wfstt/ .
Why not GIVE the English language a term for free-libre eg. "liber". Languages are fluid things... and "liber" fits :
liber
liberate
liberation
Yes, liber has some (uncommon) meanings in English already, but plenty of other words have multiple meanings eg. the word "free" itself! It's certainly not a step backwards, and there's a chance it could add something valuable to English in the longer term.
A high version number on a product I haven't even heard of screams fringe/unpopular. If I were concerned about the 1.0 effect I wouldn't print it large with the branding - perhaps only in tiny print on the back somewhere, or even not at all.
The elephant in the room is that the Blizzard guys probably would have preferred staying true to the dark and brooding atmosphere, but it's no longer possible with todays technology. On panels black is really gray... often not even a dark gray, and then there's the trade-off most panels make in giving up a few bits per colour channel for speed. "Dark and brooding" looks pretty awful on your average modern rig.
The U.S provides much of the internationally available money for AIDS programs. Unfortunately this process has been hijacked (by religious fundies perhaps?). Recipients of this money are forced into concentrating completely on abstinence-only and faithfulness-in-marriage programs... no condoms allowed. See http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/aids/2005/uganda/ That link is from 2005, and I've listened to recent interviews with AIDS workers complaining bitterly about how this is still the case.
No IBM or Microsoft hanging over your head? Excuse me?
Scalable OpenGroupware (SOGo) looks more promising. Cross platform client (Mozilla Sunbird/Lightning/Thunderbird) with nice Mozilla themed AJAX interface, support for CalDAV, free/busy, Funambol plugin for mobile devices etc... and an Outlook client almost at v1.0
I check the OpenAFS project status semi-regularly, and there has been a bit of work done on the windows side of things recently... the latest version was released just a few days ago. From the site I get the impression that the Windows client stability issues are (mostly?) ironed out and they've been able to concentrate more on performance improvements.
The Windows client IS a bit of a hack ie. it isn't a real filesystem driver - it's a proxy that translates OpenAFS to/from virtual SMB via a virtual network device. Still, it sounds as if it's finally worth a look.
Yes, we are changed by what we see, but are we negatively changed? If this is an argument for packing people in cotton wool I don't buy it.
I'm sure there could equally be an argument against tear jerker movies ie. that they make people depressed, and there's a link between depression and suicide... but I don't like where that line of logic leads.
Movies are just another life experience, albeit merely voyeuristic. I believe movie violence and tears are preferable to sterile bubblegum, and probably do more good than harm. It prepares peoples minds for extreme situations. It's the individuals responsibility to deal with "input", or else avoid it. It should be societies responsibility to provide some support if the individual processes movies or life experience negatively.
Sure, minors should be protected to some extent... but overprotection leaves people unable to deal with life. Its an urban legend that girls raised strictly are more likely to become prostitutes, and when a (female) friend delivered a pizza to a local brothel she asked around... mostly catholic school girls! (Disclaimer : I went to a catholic primary school).
The pieces are JUST starting to come together re: replacing MS Exchange... although, granted, it's still VERY alpha/beta it's quite an exciting development.
/w Lightning talks to it. There are other Thunderbird plugins which use GroupDAV for shared address lists and free/busy information through the OpenGroupware server.
OpenGroupware (nightly builds) support CalDAV, and Thunderbird
This works today(!), though it's non-trivial to set up, and you have to be careful about versions. The combination to use is Lightning 0.3.1, the latest Thunderbird, OpenGroupware nightly, and the latest GroupDAV free/busy and shared address lists plugins. Unfortunately the latest Sunbird/Lightning (0.5) doesn't work right now, but bugs have been filed and the developers understand the problem... and a fix will happen in time.
OK, it's less functional and robust compared to the dominant player... but it's cheaper.
It's much closer than you think.
OpenGroupware (the nightly build) supports CalDAV. Sunbird 3.1 works fine, although apparently there is a bug with OpenGroupware preventing Sunbird 0.5 working flawlessly at the moment (after a reminder happens in Sunbird a duplicate calendar event gets created). With the Lightning plugin for Thunderbird you've got email and calendar in the one app, and there are extra plugins for free/busy information and shared address lists through GroupDAV from OpenGroupware. That's sounding an awful lot like an Outlook/Exchange replacement to me.
-Mark
I haven't seen anyone mention continuous ink solutions yet. I don't have any experience with them myself, but if you are doing any volume they seem to be the way to go. Not all printers are an easy mod so you might need to do some homework. Also they say you need to print at least once or twice a week or else you'll be re-priming the kit, which is a hassle. These kits are definitely worth a look however if you are a high volume printer.
I've gone with a b/w laser myself with an inkjet multifunction (an Epson RX430 because of their Linux support) for when I need colour copy. Looked at colour lasers, and inkjets beat them on cost-per-copy believe it or not(!!!). If I needed to do high volume colour I would have gone with continuous ink. As a side note - check out Xerox... I seem to remember they have some kind of wax(?) print technology which was pretty cheap for toner.
-Mark
I'm an evil multimillionaire genius who wants to screw the users and developers of said PD code.
1) I hijack the project by embracing and extending it so end users will prefer my fork. I distribute it for free, but under a license which prevents anyone else from redistributing it.
2) I create a paid version offering a sweetener (support and/or more functionality etc...) and then do a frog boil by letting the free version fall behind (no bug fixes or functionality extensions etc), and because I'm the only one with redistribution rights I can kill it completely at my whim. (I'll probably keep in around though because it will suck people into using my product, and when they become frustrated with limitations they'll pay me for the real thing).
3) If you try to extend the PD product to match mine (mine MINE!!! ahahaha!!!) I open up with my patent and/or copyright war chest and sue your arse back into the nerd hobbit-hole you came from.
4) Profit!
--Pav
It's worse than that - the Open Source license is "Attribware". Basically any fork must have large obnoxious ads linking back to the Zimbra website. This is a huge disincentive for anyone who wants to fork the project. If a project is stagnating or the company owning a project goes belly up the right to fork without caveats is critical.
I'm not worried though... There are a lot of promising and less restricted open source projects are in the works (Kolab, OpenGroupWare, Citadel etc...). Most projects like Zimbra die away after there's a legitimate free alternative even if the alternative isn't quite as good (eg. QT vs Gnome).
--Pav
I watched a documentary on this on the ABC (Australia) and they were saying that the main reason nicotine is so addictive is the delivery method. The smoke is inhaled and gives an instant highly concentrated hit. Instant positive reenforcement. I'd imagine ingested nicotine would be much less addictive.
StarControl II? Classic game! ...now open sourced and available at sc2.sourceforge.net . Binaries for Linux and Win32...
Thanks for sharing what you know about the case.
I agree the Mozilla/Opera/whatever guys should talk to Eolas to clarify things for the free software community, but no matter what I think this whole thing represents opportunity and danger.
IMPORTANT : If MS is forced to remove plugin tech from their products it will make the average citizen very aware of how patents can change the face of software development, and the community needs to make sure the heat is on the patent system and not Eolas, the "general insanity of the legal system" or something else.
Just need a decent video card that supports Linux. OK, ATI isn't stellar in their support, but they're certainly better than binary only Nvidia. Besides, the new 9600 is supposed to be a desktop beater!