Hmmm... thanks for the suggestion. TagZilla looks interesting but it seems to just be for single-sentence inserts. I need to insert multiple lines of text like...
*** Disclaimer *** This product quotation is subject to the blah, and the blah, and the blah, blah, blah. Any use of this product is blah, blah, blah... and is therefore subject to the blah and the blah.
... and stuff like that. TBird has a signature file pointer but lacks a signature 'picker' ala Outlook. If I was a coder, I would try to implement this myself - but I'm not. So I won't!:-) Guess I'll go to the TBird forums and suggest it. Maybe it will be included in a future release...
...I switched everyone at my work over to TBird from Outlook2k. Everyone likes it much better than Outlook. They all especially like the speed of mail download (something was going on with Outlook where it would sometimes take up to an hour to download mail from the POP server - especially on a Monday where the mail had stacked up all weekend). Very annoying when you're trying to get your day going. TBird grabs it all in a minute or two.
One thing everyone especially likes is the multiple mail account handling. Having separate folders for each account is very cool and makes organizing messages very intuitive. The only thing we're missing is Outlooks ability to insert multiple 'signatures'. Anyone know if this is currently possible in TBird? Having blocks of pre-typed text ready to go at the click of your mouse is a real time-saver. One kludge we came up with is to keep a message in the Drafts folder that contains the needed text but that's a rather clumsy solution.
We are a small company so this changeover is pretty insignificant in the overall scheme of things but... it's a start. With the warm reception TBird received from my users at work (they really were getting sick of Outlook), I figure they'll go install it on their home computers. Their wives and kids will see it and begin to use it. They'll tell their friends, etc., etc... Word of mouth is a GoodThing(TM).
Personally, I've been using TBird since it was first released and have never had any problems with it. Maybe I'm just lucky but it's been rock-solid for me. I currently use TBird on WinNT4 at work and on my laptop, which runs Mandrake 9.2. My wife, (who is not in the least computer literate), has no trouble at all with TBird on her Win98 box. This open source app is ready for mass use!
Well... the question was for carry-bags not hard-sided plastic cases. Pelican does make decent plastic cases - as does SKB. But, if you want some real protection for sensitive equipment, I recommend you check out some custom made A.T.A. cases. They're not cheap or light-weight, but the level of protection is much better.
Try adding "+specifications", (w/o the quotes), to your search. It doesn't affect the sponsored sites returns, but does seem to help hone the standard results.
will be glad when SCO is no more. I really, really dislike sharing my initials with such a sleazy company. I long for the day when I can apply my initials to paperwork without the chorus of accompanying snickers, (I even got it from the financing person last time I re-financed my mortgage, ferchrissakes!)
I'm just glad I had the foresight, (blind luck), to have added the 'Lgo' to the end of my username. I don't think I could stand the slashdot backlash if I hadn't...;-]
Distro installers should have a "I have never used Linux before, but I have been using Windows for 5 years" option. This will offer extra help in the form of, "If you are looking for this, you will now use this instead."
This is an excellent point. Microsoft did this very thing with Office. In the Word Help menu, there is a 'WordPerfect Help..." option and in Excel you'll find "Lotus 1-2-3 Help...". While most people that are willing to try Linux are (usually) capable of figuring things out for themselves, there's nothing wrong with making it easier up front.
Is there a hidden 666 in bar code?
NO! I get this question asked at least once a week. What people really mean is "does UPC found on grocery products have a hidden 666 (mentioned in Revelation 13:16 in the New Testament)?" People have thought that the three guard bars used to specify the start, middle and end of a UPC bar code looked like the bar code sequence for a "6" found in the UPC symbol table. You can find a copy of the symbol table on the UPC/EAN page. These guard bars are not "6" and carry no information. Even if you don't believe that guard bars carry no information and insist on applying the code table, you have to determine whether the digit is on the left side or the right side of the symbol. That's because the sequence of bars and spaces are different depending on whether the digit is on the left of the symbol or the right of the symbol. The LEFT guard bar would have to be smallest space, smallest bar, smallest space, WIDEST BAR in order to be a "6". The guard bar on the left is actually space of undetermined wide (left side digit must always start with a space element), smallest bar, smallest space, smallest bar. That sequence of bars and spaces is undefined and is not a "6" even using the table. The middle guard bar is not on the left or the right ('cause it is used to divide the symbol), so it is undefined by the table. UPC is just one bar code symbology out of over 300 others. The bar code on the backs of some driver licenses, for example, is not UPC and has no guard bars at all. Much better "marks of the beast" would be finger prints, DNA typing, or plain automatic face recognition. These are all "source marking" (marks put on during manufacturing) approaches and are far more cost-effective. "No Hidden Sixes in the UPC Barcode" by Robert Harris of Southern California College / Vanguard University is good explanation.
Well, it's possible that my tinfoil hat is on crooked today...
From the Reg article... "Intel's announcement implies that the system works better when coupled with facial recognition to identify 'known' speakers."
Doesn't this imply that, at least for the foreseeable future, this technology won't be easily used as some general Orwellian tool? It sounds as though it needs to 'learn' each speaker - much like voice recognition software has to be trained to your voice before it can be used accurately.
From the Intel link... "The speaker independent audio-visual continuous speech recognition system relies on a robust set of visual features obtained from the accurate detection and tracking of the mouth region."
As mentioned by someone else in another thread, this system relies on a relatively uninterrupted view of the speaker's face. There are billions of people on this planet, all moving around willy-nilly and not worrying about holding still long enough for this technology to track their mouth movements. It's therefore just not feasible to apply this to public video 'eavesdropping'.
It's more likely to be used in educational situations and for people with special needs, (automatic translation of seminar presentations for the deaf, perhaps?).
As I already said, I can see this being used by government spooks to track certain individuals that are already under investigation - hopefully after getting a warrant.
Sigh... the signal to noise ratio alone is enough to lend you reasonable anonymity. There's just way too much information that would need to be grepped through in order to listen in on your dinner conversation. No one, (or their Big Brother), is going to bother unless they have a really good reason to be investigating you in the first place.
I'm thinking that the 'good' will outweigh the 'evil' here...
While I do enjoy using Linux, I am not in favor of bombing Redmond. You see, I live right next door in Kirkland and the fallout might be, ummm... 'inconvenient'.
We then conspired to create a war in the region and deliberately with-held Aluminum Sulphate and Chlorine so that their water treatement facilities would stop functioning (source: declassified DoD documents)-- the result of which was that 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five were killed by water-born illnesses (UNICEF and WHO statistics), and Secretary Albright on CBS stated that this price was "worth it."
Do you have a link to those documents? I'd be interested in reading more in depth for myself. Thanks.
We have the same, but opposite, situation here in Washington. The legislators want to institute a state income tax to go along with the state sales tax. Where I live, sales tax is currently 8.5%. In Seattle, I think it's as high as 8.9% now. Just what we need - another income tax on top of that, right?
As far as the internet/interstate sales issue. If we would just abolish the damned federal income tax, I'd be fine with paying a federal sales tax instead. Change the IRS code to make them responsible for collecting sales taxes and let me keep the money I make until I decide to spend it. Where and how I spend it won't matter - it would still be subject to federal sales tax. This way the federal government can collect their tax at a reasonable rate. Oh wait, I used the word 'reasonable' in the same paragraph as 'federal government'. Sorry - my bad...
But distiller is only the output side. You still need to write the document.
That's certainly a good point.
They think, they have Word, why doesn't everyone else?
Exactly! This is the mentality that I feel needs to change. I understand that MS likes this, but that's not a good argument for making it a 'standard'.
Look, if you are an individual who is sending proprietary format documents to your friends and they don't complain - that's one thing. But if you are a company shipping off potentially virus-ridden Excel spreadsheets to your suppliers and/or customers - that's another thing altogether. In this case, you're not doing yourself any favors. At that point, the additional cost of Acrobat for output is really negligible. Additionally, it gives you the ability to output much, much more than just Word documents. Try sending someone a CAD drawing for instance. Should everyone in the world have AutoCAD installed so we can all share drawings? I realize that sounds ridiculous, but how about PowerPoint? I can't tell you how many times I've had PP presentations sent to me only to have to reply with a request to please send me something I can actually open. If only they would ask before burning up my bandwidth, I wouldn't be as bothered by it.
I like being able to send a document that 99% of the world can read without having to go through some negotiation process. I mean, what if we all had to call each other on the phone to ask what "plain text" format they used, ASCII or EBCDIC? Standards are good
I totally agree with you here. A standard format is definitely necessary. But which format are you talking about?.doc? I hope not.
Information should be freely available to all, regardless of economic background. Should libraries have to pony up for software licenses just so people can view proprietary documents on public terminals? Should I have to do the same to view documents on my PC? Sure, I can if I want to, but should I have to?
Please don't get me wrong. I'm no MS basher. I use their software quite a bit and I don't think it totally sucks. A lot of it is actually quite good, IMHO. I just don't like the idea of information, (the 'product' of the software), being locked into one vendor's format. It's the old "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" adage that I'm talking about here...
personally I would much rather have the Visio source file that I can further modify rather than a PDF that's completely static.
Actually,.PDF's are not completely static. If you have Acrobat, (not just the Reader), you can easily add notes to them for annotation purposes. As someone who sends out a lot of CAD drawings to clients, I don't want them to be able to edit the drawings themselves. If they want changes, they can:
Embed notes in the.PDF and send it back to me.
Print it. Scribble on it. Fax it back to me.
Print it. Scribble on it. Scan it. Email it back.
Call me toll-free to discuss the changes.
Any combination of the above that they're comfortable with.
So, maybe you'd rather have the file to modify, but maybe I don't want you to.
Also, shouldn't an initial communication consist of a standard information format, (I suggest plain text), and then fork into proprietary formats only if both parties agree to standardize on that format? I used Visio as an example, but this applies to all file formats. I don't want you sending me an Open Office document without first asking if I can read it either.
What I was trying to say is; send me an e-mail asking if I can read [insert file format here] first. If I answer in the affirmative, fine - send away. But don't assume up front by sending the attachment with your very first message.
The reason I mentioned.PDF is that Adobe's Reader is freely available for download. If I'm dealing with a new client, I tell them that and I provide them a link to the download page. It's not a perfect system, but it's better than anything else I've found that's universally applicable.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm... thanks for the suggestion. TagZilla looks interesting but it seems to just be for single-sentence inserts. I need to insert multiple lines of text like...
... and stuff like that. TBird has a signature file pointer but lacks a signature 'picker' ala Outlook. If I was a coder, I would try to implement this myself - but I'm not. So I won't! :-) Guess I'll go to the TBird forums and suggest it. Maybe it will be included in a future release...
*** Disclaimer ***
This product quotation is subject to the blah, and
the blah, and the blah, blah, blah. Any use of
this product is blah, blah, blah... and is therefore
subject to the blah and the blah.
...I switched everyone at my work over to TBird from Outlook2k. Everyone likes it much better than Outlook. They all especially like the speed of mail download (something was going on with Outlook where it would sometimes take up to an hour to download mail from the POP server - especially on a Monday where the mail had stacked up all weekend). Very annoying when you're trying to get your day going. TBird grabs it all in a minute or two.
One thing everyone especially likes is the multiple mail account handling. Having separate folders for each account is very cool and makes organizing messages very intuitive. The only thing we're missing is Outlooks ability to insert multiple 'signatures'. Anyone know if this is currently possible in TBird? Having blocks of pre-typed text ready to go at the click of your mouse is a real time-saver. One kludge we came up with is to keep a message in the Drafts folder that contains the needed text but that's a rather clumsy solution.
We are a small company so this changeover is pretty insignificant in the overall scheme of things but... it's a start. With the warm reception TBird received from my users at work (they really were getting sick of Outlook), I figure they'll go install it on their home computers. Their wives and kids will see it and begin to use it. They'll tell their friends, etc., etc... Word of mouth is a GoodThing(TM).
Personally, I've been using TBird since it was first released and have never had any problems with it. Maybe I'm just lucky but it's been rock-solid for me. I currently use TBird on WinNT4 at work and on my laptop, which runs Mandrake 9.2. My wife, (who is not in the least computer literate), has no trouble at all with TBird on her Win98 box. This open source app is ready for mass use!
Well... the question was for carry-bags not hard-sided plastic cases. Pelican does make decent plastic cases - as does SKB. But, if you want some real protection for sensitive equipment, I recommend you check out some custom made A.T.A. cases. They're not cheap or light-weight, but the level of protection is much better.
Oh.. Is that what D.A.R.E. stands for?
I always thought it was an acronym for 'Drugs Are Recreational Entertainment'...
Try adding "+specifications", (w/o the quotes), to your search. It doesn't affect the sponsored sites returns, but does seem to help hone the standard results.
HTH...
will be glad when SCO is no more. I really, really dislike sharing my initials with such a sleazy company. I long for the day when I can apply my initials to paperwork without the chorus of accompanying snickers, (I even got it from the financing person last time I re-financed my mortgage, ferchrissakes!)
;-]
I'm just glad I had the foresight, (blind luck), to have added the 'Lgo' to the end of my username. I don't think I could stand the slashdot backlash if I hadn't...
"no no, don't touch it - don't even look at it!"
'nuff said! ;-]
That's strange - I received at least 12 e-mails today telling me that size does matter. Were they all wrong?
My bad - thanks for the clarification! :-)
Umm... shouldn't that read...
0000 = 0
0001 = 1
0010 = 2
0011 = 3
0100 = 4
0101 = 5
0110 = 6
0111 = 7
Besides which, barcode != binary, (per se). Please see this page for a table that explains the layout of a UPC-A barcode.
Please try again Mr. AC troll...
Well, it's possible that my tinfoil hat is on crooked today...
From the Reg article... "Intel's announcement implies that the system works better when coupled with facial recognition to identify 'known' speakers."
Doesn't this imply that, at least for the foreseeable future, this technology won't be easily used as some general Orwellian tool? It sounds as though it needs to 'learn' each speaker - much like voice recognition software has to be trained to your voice before it can be used accurately.
From the Intel link... "The speaker independent audio-visual continuous speech recognition system relies on a robust set of visual features obtained from the accurate detection and tracking of the mouth region."
As mentioned by someone else in another thread, this system relies on a relatively uninterrupted view of the speaker's face. There are billions of people on this planet, all moving around willy-nilly and not worrying about holding still long enough for this technology to track their mouth movements. It's therefore just not feasible to apply this to public video 'eavesdropping'.
It's more likely to be used in educational situations and for people with special needs, (automatic translation of seminar presentations for the deaf, perhaps?).
As I already said, I can see this being used by government spooks to track certain individuals that are already under investigation - hopefully after getting a warrant.
Of course, I could be wrong...
Sigh... the signal to noise ratio alone is enough to lend you reasonable anonymity. There's just way too much information that would need to be grepped through in order to listen in on your dinner conversation. No one, (or their Big Brother), is going to bother unless they have a really good reason to be investigating you in the first place.
I'm thinking that the 'good' will outweigh the 'evil' here...
While I do enjoy using Linux, I am not in favor of bombing Redmond. You see, I live right next door in Kirkland and the fallout might be, ummm... 'inconvenient'.
:-)
Thanks for your consideration!
Just in case you still have some doubts...
Absolutely correct - thanks for correcting my oversight.
The pros...
The cons...
Of course, YMMV...
Do you have a link to those documents? I'd be interested in reading more in depth for myself. Thanks.
We have the same, but opposite, situation here in Washington. The legislators want to institute a state income tax to go along with the state sales tax. Where I live, sales tax is currently 8.5%. In Seattle, I think it's as high as 8.9% now. Just what we need - another income tax on top of that, right?
As far as the internet/interstate sales issue. If we would just abolish the damned federal income tax, I'd be fine with paying a federal sales tax instead. Change the IRS code to make them responsible for collecting sales taxes and let me keep the money I make until I decide to spend it. Where and how I spend it won't matter - it would still be subject to federal sales tax. This way the federal government can collect their tax at a reasonable rate. Oh wait, I used the word 'reasonable' in the same paragraph as 'federal government'. Sorry - my bad...
That's certainly a good point.
Exactly! This is the mentality that I feel needs to change. I understand that MS likes this, but that's not a good argument for making it a 'standard'.
Look, if you are an individual who is sending proprietary format documents to your friends and they don't complain - that's one thing. But if you are a company shipping off potentially virus-ridden Excel spreadsheets to your suppliers and/or customers - that's another thing altogether. In this case, you're not doing yourself any favors. At that point, the additional cost of Acrobat for output is really negligible. Additionally, it gives you the ability to output much, much more than just Word documents. Try sending someone a CAD drawing for instance. Should everyone in the world have AutoCAD installed so we can all share drawings? I realize that sounds ridiculous, but how about PowerPoint? I can't tell you how many times I've had PP presentations sent to me only to have to reply with a request to please send me something I can actually open. If only they would ask before burning up my bandwidth, I wouldn't be as bothered by it.
Oh well...
It is easy to produce a PDF document if you have the full Adobe Acrobat or Distiller. Unforunately they cost money.
;-]
True, but last I checked, it's about half the price of OfficeXP - and a more open and ubiquitous format to boot
I like being able to send a document that 99% of the world can read without having to go through some negotiation process. I mean, what if we all had to call each other on the phone to ask what "plain text" format they used, ASCII or EBCDIC? Standards are good
.doc? I hope not.
I totally agree with you here. A standard format is definitely necessary. But which format are you talking about?
Information should be freely available to all, regardless of economic background. Should libraries have to pony up for software licenses just so people can view proprietary documents on public terminals? Should I have to do the same to view documents on my PC? Sure, I can if I want to, but should I have to?
Please don't get me wrong. I'm no MS basher. I use their software quite a bit and I don't think it totally sucks. A lot of it is actually quite good, IMHO. I just don't like the idea of information, (the 'product' of the software), being locked into one vendor's format. It's the old "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" adage that I'm talking about here...
Actually,
So, maybe you'd rather have the file to modify, but maybe I don't want you to.
Also, shouldn't an initial communication consist of a standard information format, (I suggest plain text), and then fork into proprietary formats only if both parties agree to standardize on that format? I used Visio as an example, but this applies to all file formats. I don't want you sending me an Open Office document without first asking if I can read it either.
What I was trying to say is; send me an e-mail asking if I can read [insert file format here] first. If I answer in the affirmative, fine - send away. But don't assume up front by sending the attachment with your very first message.
The reason I mentioned
YMMV