I interpret his remarks to mean that 1) organized crime certainly is an international enterprise which would have PBXs, and 2) the local phones calls most likely to tapped would include Hillary Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and the President pro tempore of the Senate Robert Byrd. I would suggest this was perhaps a veiled Watergate reference. The implication being that the biggest, badest "gang" occurs when the President goes bad.
While violent crime *did* fall during the Clinton Administration, the propaganda-myth that cocaine use plummeted (except for extremely short term periods) was refuted recently on the Washington Post's factchecker, with the relevant time period in this graph.
But how many of these companies were found guilty of illegally leveraging their monopoly position? I'd suggest that, while I personally don't use the '$', I am offended at the attitudes of youngsters with no sense of history who snidely snivel about it.
There is a qualitative difference between monitoring phone numbers of international calls, and monitoring data of local calls and local internet traffic. Anyone who needs to apply a thick enough brush to cover both of these activities with the same whitewash is doing a disservice. Civil rights have been degraded, and this fact should not be allowed to lose focus. This is our *constitution*, people. This is serious.
Re:Guarantee of Reliability is not Free
on
NYSE Moves to Linux
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Not so much as your date claims: MS launched in September 2005, so the previous uptime wasn't theirs.
It wasn't just this one article, the quote is being reported all over. It appears to have been a direct quote so the confusion should be attributed to the Netherlands Economic Affairs Ministry, to whom the quote is attributed. Note that from TFA MS says:
Microsoft Netherlands spokesman Hans Bos noted that its Word documents were still allowed as equal alternatives for the moment and said he expects the company to receive approval soon for its Open Office XML to qualify as open source.
But he said the company was worried about and opposed other aspects of the Dutch policy, especially the provision that agencies should prefer open source.
So perhaps this is just the tip of the iceberg and is indeed more like Munich than Massachusetts.
First, it was "In May 2003 Munich's city council voted to switch its 14,000 desktop and notebook computers from Microsoft products to the Linux operating system and open-source desktop applications", not 2002. Next there was a pilot, then they delayed a year, but the mayor has said last yeat at the Systems IT trade show in Munich,"But we're very happy with the results so far. I'm no technology freak but even I must admit how easy it's been to migrate to the new software." By the end of the year, some 200 workstations close to Lord Mayor Christian Ude and a number of nearby organizational units will be running on a special LiMux client. If everything runs according to schedule, most of the approximately 14,000 PCs will be migrated to Open Source in the next two years.
Note that the delay began with debates over patent issues, and companies fighting for contracts (the pilot was based on SuSE but "the city finally chose Softcon and Gonicus to install open source software provided through the Debian GNU/Linux project.") There was certainly resistance to change, but the delays have been more political than technical in nature.
Agreed that the second article is just the tip of an iceberg. That is beside the point, really, which was a response to the assertion that the summary was way off base. I notice no mention of the viability of the summary in your response, hence "off-topic". Your ability to read the articles is commendable here on slashdot. Perhaps you'd care to read the posts you respond to...? Or at least respond to them?
Which is my point. You don't agree with the second article, so the summary is bad because it about the articles (plural). Whether you are right or wrong about the politics surround the proposal withdrawl is worth discussing, but in terms of the summary you made my point.
If you missed that the point of the second article is a rallying call for protest against how "Nokia and Apple have privately pushed to give Ogg the noose treatment (and so far succeeded) ", then you didn't read it. Perhaps you only clicked on the first link? I'd hate to think that since you disagree with it you would just disregard the second link, however your proposal and your critique of the summary make it appear so. Are you negligent? Or more sinister?
My preferred spreadsheet (Gnumeric) just opened in less than 3 seconds. Abiword took 5 seconds. OOo Calc took 15 seconds. (OOo Word took 3 seconds. Probably still had parts of OOo in memory from Calc.) One of the reasons I wiped XP from this machine was that I couldn't stand the long startup times for OOo under windows. This is on a Centrino Duo w/2GB RAM, bought refurbished from Frys a year ago.
"The owner can only apply the restrictions, e.g. the GPL, because they own it" True, I fully agree.
"It is proprietary, because the owner is imposing restrictions on how it can be used." Here is where we disagree. Proprietary refers to
"used, produced, or marketed under exclusive legal right" of the owner. You can still impose restrictions, and yet due to the particular restrictions you choose, actually render the property less exclusive in regard to use, production, and/or even marketing. Whereas most use the exclusivity as a means to wrestle coinage (I'll give you some rights if you give me some cash), the GPL turns this around. It is about inclusion rather than exclusion. The idea is that you (and everyone, really) are invited to partake in these rights, the only restrictions being those that make sure that no exclusion ever creeps back in. These are restrictions for the purpose of inclusion. (It is like judo, in a way, using the momentum of your opponent against them.)
You said, "Proprietary" means "exclusively owned", but Websters says:
something that is used, produced, or marketed under exclusive legal right of the inventor or maker; specifically : a drug (as a patent medicine) that is protected by secrecy, patent, or copyright against free competition as to name, product, composition, or process of manufacture
The difference is that between ownership and the exclusion of rights. One would continue to own the property even if one granted access to rights. The degree of exclusion would indicate the degree to which it remained proprietary. If one uses the GPL, one still remains the sole owner of one's code (assuming you started from scratch and aren't obligated to use the GPL). You and only you can distribute your code by changing the license. However, you are passing along the rights to modify, copy, and distribute the code to others so long as the same degree of lack of exclusion is sustained (by remaining GPLed). Everyone who receives your code (as it passes along) has now been granted what used to be exclusively your rights. But no one except you owns it.
I'm sorry, but I think you confuse "proprietary" with "property". They aren't the same word and don't mean the same thing. Thus, the owner of something (whose property it is) can release it in such a way that it not proprietary. It is the exclusive nature of a release that makes it proprietary, not that it is owned.
proprietary
1: one that possesses, owns, or holds exclusive right to something; specifically : proprietor
2: something that is used, produced, or marketed under exclusive legal right of the inventor or maker; specifically : a drug (as a patent medicine) that is protected by secrecy, patent, or copyright against free competition as to name, product, composition, or process of manufacture
Sounds to me like the GPL is *not* proprietary, and perhaps even almost "anti-proprietary".
Word for Windows 2.0, code-named "Spaceman Spiff", was release in 1991, as was ClarisWorks original entry. The degree of integration to which I refer was when the Office 95 & Office 4.X (1992) products got OLE 2 capacity (moving data automatically from various programs). In the windows 3.0 and 3.1 days, as I recall it, Office couldn't really compete with DOS based programs that launched from 3.x (which wasn't truely multi-tasking without 3rd party support). It was with the move to Win95 that MS Office won.
Still, the point was seamless integration is a worthy pursuit. In terms of "why Sage", the fact that MS's lack of seamless integration drove you to ClarisWorks supports my answer. Integration is *good*.
Vim *is* graphical in its X-windows mode. It *has* menus. A user could go to (and stay in ) insert mode, and cut and paste from the menu, and use vi as a simple text editor.
The mouse doesn't have enough buttons. You can't indicate quickly "search forward in this line to the next (or third) occurance of this letter", and you can't indicate quickly move down 3 lines. You can do these things *fast*, faster than you can reach the mouse. The mouse has to be delta_t_reachMouse + delta_t_doMenuCMD. If the key bindings allow you to finish the action before the delta_t_reachMouse, then the mouse can't be faster. Period. You also want to talk about actively considering the keys necessary. I grant you the mouse is more intuitive, and you can use it via invoking a different part of your brain. However, once you learn the key bindings, you don't think "how do i search", you just *do* it. I know key bindings that I can't explain, because I don't know exactly what they are until I go to use them. I have to put my hands out and see where they go. At that level, you are thinking about the edit and not the key strokes.
In regard to the Apple tests, I'd have to read them. I wonder if they were testing people who had serious experience with an application that is as well designed as the vi interface, or if they were testing newbies with something like notepad (where you can use key bindings to bring up menus, but there is no systematic way to sequence multiple cmds). Newbies will always be faster with a mouse. The question is, with training, could they increase their key stroke commands to a faster rate than one could train to be fast with a mouse. I'm not talking about advanced functionality (like regular expessions vs simple search) but in terms of 1) moving the cursor and 2) doing simple insertions and word changes.
If you've ever seen someone skilled at vi, the notion that a mouse could keep us is beyond comprehension. Its hard to follow the changes by eye, looking over their shoulder.
WordPerfect was better than the original word, Lotus and Quattro were better than the original excel, but word and excel worked together in a seamless fashion that wasn't achieved (at that time) by the other separate standalone applications. This advantage was real enough that users noticed. I suggest this is also one of the advantages of Sage.
But fab plants already exist. If the Univ of CA, Univ of TX, and MIT and the Ivy league all really wanted to push for open systems for their CS depts, odds are that someone would run off the (tens? hundrends?) of thousands of chips for profit. Might not be all that cheap, and might not be all that fast compared to commercial/closed offerings, but if open and verifiable *mattered* it could be achieved.
Slashdot Mirror
"The problem is its hard to find a unique brand (for want of a better word) that can be used to lump them all together..." How about fanatics?
Lets call it a Constitutional Democratic Republic and all just get along. We aren't the bad guys, we are the geeks :-)
I interpret his remarks to mean that 1) organized crime certainly is an international enterprise which would have PBXs, and 2) the local phones calls most likely to tapped would include Hillary Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and the President pro tempore of the Senate Robert Byrd. I would suggest this was perhaps a veiled Watergate reference. The implication being that the biggest, badest "gang" occurs when the President goes bad.
While violent crime *did* fall during the Clinton Administration, the propaganda-myth that cocaine use plummeted (except for extremely short term periods) was refuted recently on the Washington Post's factchecker, with the relevant time period in this graph.
But how many of these companies were found guilty of illegally leveraging their monopoly position? I'd suggest that, while I personally don't use the '$', I am offended at the attitudes of youngsters with no sense of history who snidely snivel about it.
There is a qualitative difference between monitoring phone numbers of international calls, and monitoring data of local calls and local internet traffic. Anyone who needs to apply a thick enough brush to cover both of these activities with the same whitewash is doing a disservice. Civil rights have been degraded, and this fact should not be allowed to lose focus. This is our *constitution*, people. This is serious.
Not so much as your date claims: MS launched in September 2005, so the previous uptime wasn't theirs.
Wasn't SAP going to integrate with OpenOffice? I haven't see ln anything about how that worked out, and googling didn't work for me.
First, it was "In May 2003 Munich's city council voted to switch its 14,000 desktop and notebook computers from Microsoft products to the Linux operating system and open-source desktop applications", not 2002. Next there was a pilot, then they delayed a year, but the mayor has said last yeat at the Systems IT trade show in Munich,"But we're very happy with the results so far. I'm no technology freak but even I must admit how easy it's been to migrate to the new software." By the end of the year, some 200 workstations close to Lord Mayor Christian Ude and a number of nearby organizational units will be running on a special LiMux client. If everything runs according to schedule, most of the approximately 14,000 PCs will be migrated to Open Source in the next two years.
Note that the delay began with debates over patent issues, and companies fighting for contracts (the pilot was based on SuSE but "the city finally chose Softcon and Gonicus to install open source software provided through the Debian GNU/Linux project.") There was certainly resistance to change, but the delays have been more political than technical in nature.
Agreed that the second article is just the tip of an iceberg. That is beside the point, really, which was a response to the assertion that the summary was way off base. I notice no mention of the viability of the summary in your response, hence "off-topic". Your ability to read the articles is commendable here on slashdot. Perhaps you'd care to read the posts you respond to...? Or at least respond to them?
Which is my point. You don't agree with the second article, so the summary is bad because it about the articles (plural). Whether you are right or wrong about the politics surround the proposal withdrawl is worth discussing, but in terms of the summary you made my point.
If you missed that the point of the second article is a rallying call for protest against how "Nokia and Apple have privately pushed to give Ogg the noose treatment (and so far succeeded) ", then you didn't read it. Perhaps you only clicked on the first link? I'd hate to think that since you disagree with it you would just disregard the second link, however your proposal and your critique of the summary make it appear so. Are you negligent? Or more sinister?
My preferred spreadsheet (Gnumeric) just opened in less than 3 seconds. Abiword took 5 seconds. OOo Calc took 15 seconds. (OOo Word took 3 seconds. Probably still had parts of OOo in memory from Calc.) One of the reasons I wiped XP from this machine was that I couldn't stand the long startup times for OOo under windows. This is on a Centrino Duo w/2GB RAM, bought refurbished from Frys a year ago.
"The owner can only apply the restrictions, e.g. the GPL, because they own it" True, I fully agree.
"It is proprietary, because the owner is imposing restrictions on how it can be used." Here is where we disagree. Proprietary refers to "used, produced, or marketed under exclusive legal right" of the owner. You can still impose restrictions, and yet due to the particular restrictions you choose, actually render the property less exclusive in regard to use, production, and/or even marketing. Whereas most use the exclusivity as a means to wrestle coinage (I'll give you some rights if you give me some cash), the GPL turns this around. It is about inclusion rather than exclusion. The idea is that you (and everyone, really) are invited to partake in these rights, the only restrictions being those that make sure that no exclusion ever creeps back in. These are restrictions for the purpose of inclusion. (It is like judo, in a way, using the momentum of your opponent against them.)
Only if all GPLed software requires a patent license! Which it doesn't.
I'm sorry, but I think you confuse "proprietary" with "property". They aren't the same word and don't mean the same thing. Thus, the owner of something (whose property it is) can release it in such a way that it not proprietary. It is the exclusive nature of a release that makes it proprietary, not that it is owned.
"Proprietary means that it's somebody's property"
proprietary
1: one that possesses, owns, or holds exclusive right to something; specifically : proprietor
2: something that is used, produced, or marketed under exclusive legal right of the inventor or maker; specifically : a drug (as a patent medicine) that is protected by secrecy, patent, or copyright against free competition as to name, product, composition, or process of manufacture
Sounds to me like the GPL is *not* proprietary, and perhaps even almost "anti-proprietary".
Word for Windows 2.0, code-named "Spaceman Spiff", was release in 1991, as was ClarisWorks original entry. The degree of integration to which I refer was when the Office 95 & Office 4.X (1992) products got OLE 2 capacity (moving data automatically from various programs). In the windows 3.0 and 3.1 days, as I recall it, Office couldn't really compete with DOS based programs that launched from 3.x (which wasn't truely multi-tasking without 3rd party support). It was with the move to Win95 that MS Office won.
Still, the point was seamless integration is a worthy pursuit. In terms of "why Sage", the fact that MS's lack of seamless integration drove you to ClarisWorks supports my answer. Integration is *good*.
Vim *is* graphical in its X-windows mode. It *has* menus. A user could go to (and stay in ) insert mode, and cut and paste from the menu, and use vi as a simple text editor.
The mouse doesn't have enough buttons. You can't indicate quickly "search forward in this line to the next (or third) occurance of this letter", and you can't indicate quickly move down 3 lines. You can do these things *fast*, faster than you can reach the mouse. The mouse has to be delta_t_reachMouse + delta_t_doMenuCMD. If the key bindings allow you to finish the action before the delta_t_reachMouse, then the mouse can't be faster. Period. You also want to talk about actively considering the keys necessary. I grant you the mouse is more intuitive, and you can use it via invoking a different part of your brain. However, once you learn the key bindings, you don't think "how do i search", you just *do* it. I know key bindings that I can't explain, because I don't know exactly what they are until I go to use them. I have to put my hands out and see where they go. At that level, you are thinking about the edit and not the key strokes.
In regard to the Apple tests, I'd have to read them. I wonder if they were testing people who had serious experience with an application that is as well designed as the vi interface, or if they were testing newbies with something like notepad (where you can use key bindings to bring up menus, but there is no systematic way to sequence multiple cmds). Newbies will always be faster with a mouse. The question is, with training, could they increase their key stroke commands to a faster rate than one could train to be fast with a mouse. I'm not talking about advanced functionality (like regular expessions vs simple search) but in terms of 1) moving the cursor and 2) doing simple insertions and word changes.
If you've ever seen someone skilled at vi, the notion that a mouse could keep us is beyond comprehension. Its hard to follow the changes by eye, looking over their shoulder.
If its open and its good and people want certain features that are better, those features will probably be glued in to Sage at some point :-)
WordPerfect was better than the original word, Lotus and Quattro were better than the original excel, but word and excel worked together in a seamless fashion that wasn't achieved (at that time) by the other separate standalone applications. This advantage was real enough that users noticed. I suggest this is also one of the advantages of Sage.
But fab plants already exist. If the Univ of CA, Univ of TX, and MIT and the Ivy league all really wanted to push for open systems for their CS depts, odds are that someone would run off the (tens? hundrends?) of thousands of chips for profit. Might not be all that cheap, and might not be all that fast compared to commercial/closed offerings, but if open and verifiable *mattered* it could be achieved.