Re:Publishers and StarOfffice: An editor's view
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Piers Anthony Unbound
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· Score: 1
In the academic world, almost all of the journals I consider submitting to request electronic submissions in Microsoft Word or RTF. This is a major consideration for me in looking for a new writing system. Microsoft Word keeps clobbering my styles every time the document gets moved to a different machine and I feel like I spend more time fiddling with the stylesheets than writing.
For me, the big deal-killer is lack of a mature acessiblity framework coupled with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. In fact, I'm still wondering why OpenOffice is the only program on my desktop that does not successfully interoperate with Dragon.
And another option to extend range and for more fun is an electric bicycle. (And for another site Electric Bikes Northwest). The battery is used to provide an extra bost on hills or at stop lights while carying heavy loads.
I don't know. Have you looked at marketed portion sizes compared to the recommendations? A supersized french-fry is about three servings right there. 1/2 of the recommendations. Add that to another 3 servings for the bread on a Big Mac (only 2 if you just get the 1/4 pounder) and the carbs in the drink and allready you have a full day's worth of carbs in one meal.
There is an element of reactionary fanaticism in low-carb advocates that seriously bothers me. A lot of it parallels a lot of the other quackery I see vicariously because my partner works in a natural food store.
Problem: We don't eat enough raw vegetables. Solution: Eat only raw vegetables and spin some yarn about how its the way humans were meant to eat.
Problem: We don't eat enough fruits. Solution: Eat only fruit and spin some yarn about how its the way humans were meant to eat.
Problem: We don't pay enough attention to the health of our colon. Solution: Purges, fasts, colon cleansing and hydrotherapy. And spin some yarn about toxin build-up.
Problem: We eat too many carbohydrates and surgars. Solution: Avoid carbs and surgars as much as humanly possible. And spin some yarn about evolutionary digestion.
I can certainly agree that all of the above are actual real problems, but the solutions are probably as bad as the original problem.
I agree with Barrett's conclusion - that most of the "success stories" of Atkins dieters are merely the logical end result result of caloric restriction, and not anything "magical" about the approach -- other than that it's a lot easier and more pleasant to eat 1500 calories of "what you want" (guzzle coffee, water, and diet sodas all day long at the office and finish off - at 400 calories per 4-oz serving - with a juicy well-marbled 16-oz New York Strip for dinner! Every night!) than to live on 1500 calories a day of tofu.
In that respect, I think the one of the reasons why Atkins works is because it allows you to eat foods that most Americans find attractive, while getting rid of most "side dishes". I also think that it is medically correct for a certain class of people whose metabolisms have been misadjusted in a certain way.
My personal experience is that the only time I've successfully made a dietary change was inspired by an experience in which meat products changed from being tasty to disgusting overnight. After the first three months I found that my palette had changed significantly to the point where I am no longer tempted at all. Coincidentally, sugary foods have become less and less appealing as well. My point is not to advocate for vegetarianism, but to point out that most people that I have known who have successfully changed their diets as a long-term lifestyle change have either reported similar conversion experiences that dramatically changed the way they view the world, or they toughed it out for long enough that their appetites reprogrammed.
Seriously, it looks like that the current system fails both the fans and the artists. Paul Westerberg just released an album recorded in his basement. Unfortunately this link does not include the full interview in which Westerberg complains that while he got $1 million advance on his last big studio album, all of it was spent before the record was shipped. About half of my music money is spent on local artists like Salaam, and most of the other half is spent on used CDs.
A large part of it is a simple issue of economics. Peer to peer distribution would seem to be a great way to promote albums without paying thousands of dollars for radio air time. In addition it would satisfy people like me who have a serious trouble finding a radio outlet where I can hear cool new music like Yann Tiersen(heavy flash page) or the Tosca Tango Orchestra (review, I could not find a band web page). Quite honestly, the only major label albums that I purchased new in the last year have been movie soundtracks ( Waking Life, Amelie, and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou).
I think it will we need is a radical shift in the way that we buy, promote and distribute music parallel to the rise of microbreweries. An alternative market of music favored by those who know better. Just as you have the Budweiser's of the world selling large quantities of watered down whiz, the major labels can keep doing what they do. Meanwhile there are good outlets for the good stuff. (Insert gratuitous beer snob flame of mass-produced American beer drinkers here.)
I do feel that there is a good place for traditional hardcopy distribution, partly some gate keeping regarding the quality of the audio distributed, but also to provide brand recognition for particular genres.
Um, didn't the railroads create a need for the federal government to enforce standardized time zoned. For another example of law applying to a specific information technology, what about the regulation of radio in the early 20th century to reduce interferance.
It is also worth noting that the Federalist Papers were not representative of the entire constitutional convention but a nice work of post-colonial propaganda advocating for a much more conservative view of the Constitution than what was actually passed. It is also worth noting that the authors of the First Amendment not only put some pretty harsh language ("Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion, or restricting the free practice thereof") in regards to defining the relationship of government and religion, but they also soundly rejected accommodationist drafts of the First Amendment that would specifically endorse government funds for religious observance.
SWF is not only neck and neck with GIF, it beats it hands-down if you are working with vector animation. A simple test movie comes in at 12K. The same movie rendered as an animated GIF comes in at 44K. A simple two-object animated banner I made is %80 the same size of the original GIF primarily because the Flash crops the bitmaps while GIF files are one big bitmap.
In addition, (responding to the original poster) I don't buy the claim that the math involved in positioning 2D vector graphics on the screen using Flash is that much more expensive than decompressing and displaying multiple stacked bitmaps, or running an animation applet through the Java runtime compiler. It's not like we are talking about a brand-new technology here. I have professors who were doing vector graphic computer art on punchcards and plotters. The computations invovled are not that much more complex than drawing a windowing desktop.
Nope it won't except in history books used in Education. With a computer, a student can read things written by Samual Adams, diaries by soldiers at Valley Forge or Jamestown.
Instead of reading the paragraph in the text book about the Atomic Bombings of Japan, a student could go up and read raw materials about IJA weapons stockpiles, or the planned Commonwealth invasion of Singapore or the Joint Allied invasions of southern Japan and understand why the Americans were willing to nuke two cites, beyond the vauge and inaccurate stock answers in a text book.
Heck, I was doing that back in the 80s before the mass internet when the only BBS I had access to was the local Boy Scout office (and usually had to wardial for an hour because everyone competed for the same phone line.) Books have some definite advantages, especially when a major problem with the internet is sorting through too much information.
I have found a few other issues that are stalling me from switching to open office.
1: open office is the only software on my desktop that does not cooperate with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Sure I could use "press Alt-Foxtrot press Alt-Siera" instead of "file-save" but that is missing the point. While Mozilla is not fully assessable they at least made a good faith effort in speech recognition integration when they released 1.0 (menu commands are accessible for speech recognition without using keyboard shortcuts but HTML text is not). I may be transitioning to ViaVoice in the fall so I might give open office another try then.
2: the bibliographic reference management system included in open office is currently completely inadequate. You don't have a choice of formats. The process of changing the default format for bibliographic references is tedious. While changes are saved with the current document they are not saved with a template made from the document. In fact, this is one area where open office could not only imitate Microsoft Office but advance the bar a little bit by creating a good open format, open sourced bibliographic reference database similar to EndNote or Procite. A good bibliographic reference database would help to get open office into academic and research markets.
"The entire concept of an inalienable freedom only became popular in the last 500 years. Prior to the American revolution such freedoms did not exist."
America has been around 500 years? And you're talking about understanding history...:)
Note two sentences there. The concept of an inalienable freedom only became popular in the last 500 years. These arguments for inalienable freedom set the philosophical basis for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution which defined those freedoms.
But it is interesting that the argument for access to source code as a right fails not only on the basis of property rights, but also on free speech rights. I may not want to include source code (or an offer to provide source code) with something I produce for a variety of reasons. I may feel that distributing the software as a black box is part of the entire artistic experience. My intended audience may be completely uninterested in the source code for the same reason that most consumers of music are uninterested in musical scores. I may not want to put unnecessary burdens on my audience if they choose to redistribute the code.
If indeed there is a free-speech right to modify the code of software, then isn't there a free-speech right to modify the license as well? And yet, with copyleft while the code is mutable the license is not. Not only can you not adopt a more restrictive license, but you can't adopt a more liberal license either.
The bottom line is the GPL is not "free" in the libre definition. It simply replaces a set of ideologicaly-founded restrictions with a different set. You can certainly argue that the restrictions imposed by the GPL are preferable to the restrictions imposed by Microsoft (and I would agree). You can even argue that the restrictions are necessary to create a viable software commons (I'm not convinced). But arguing that GPL is "free" because it is less restrictive than commercial licenses misses the point of freedom.
The entire concept of an inalienable right dates back at least as far as the Greeks, and quite probably much farther than that, as a lot of tribal cultures have certain rights as well as responsiblities encoded into their tribal customs that appear to go back many tens of thousands of years at least.
Certainly, however such an inalienable right was rarely properly applied in civic life. From the Roman Empire forward the majority of the population lived in some form of servitude with restrictions on travel.
The notion that the state, or the church, could limit information is a relatively new idea, going back perhaps as far as the Egyptions, if that. In comparison to 3 million years of human existence those kinds of restrictions are almost as new as the copyright laws designed to propogate them into the age of the printing press.
Quite a non-sequetor here. After all, the Egyptians were among the first people to create a full record of civic life so therefore, speculation in regards to rights before the Egyptians is simply speculation. We can't say what rights pre-literary cultures granted in regards to IP simply because they left no written record.
However, it is worth noting that pre-literary cultures have very different tradtions on who owns ideas and stories. For example, there is the Lakota declaration of war on "plastic medicine men" which denounces the appropriation of traditional symbols, traditions and philosophies outside of their culture.
Your confusion of basic property rights with the artificial, and largely arbitrary, concept of "intellectual property" such as patents and, in the context of this duscussion copyright, and your confusion of basic property rights with basic human rights, underscores your ayndroidian myopia in viewing everything in economic terms, when clearly economic issues are only one small part of the overall human experience. I do not expect to be able to heal you of your myopia in one post, but perhaps my rebuttal will protect another from being taken in by such fallacious arguments (and yes, I have read Ayn Rand's works, so I do know what I'm talking about WRT her myopia, which is echoed by the Libertarians and indeed constitutes one of their most fatal philosophical as well as practical flaws).
In fact, the "no IP" camp gleefully ignores the fact that in many cases, we don't want information to be free and even though we may have the technical ability to create a million copies of an bit of information, perhaps we shouldn't do so out of respect for the traditions that created that information. So in contrast to arguing on "purely economic terms." I suggest that there is a moral obligation to respect the creators of works, and to respect their wishes in regards to how their works should be used. This is true no matter how valuable the created work is. The moral obligations to creators of work are above and beyond simply the economic arguments.
Said creator is only obligated to do so if he or she uses a GPLed work within his or her own work, in which case the creator has chosen to accept such a requirement consciously and knowingly. This is in contrast to the incredibly onerous restrictions copyright places on our freedom to use and disseminate information, which is forced down our throats with absolutely no input, or choice, on our part. Indeed, it is a direct result of that very coercion under copyright law that the GNU project felt it necessary to impose any defensive and protective requirements in the GPL at all.
However, there is no contrast. The restrictions of copyright only apply if the creator of a work consciously or knowingly appropriates portions of another work. In fact, practially speaking, I find the restrictions of copyright to be less problematic than the GPL. Most of the time getting permission to use material covered by copyright requires a simple phone call. "Can I use your comic strip on my web page?" "Sure, whatever."
In fact, my students are quite suprised to find that there is usually no reason to use copyright protected material. Where is the coersion? No one is forcing you to include The Fellowship of the Ring or Microsoft code in your product.
But the basic problem is as soon as you say, "You must..." the work you distribute is no longer free. Either the work is free, or it is not free. There is no middle ground. If a work is free, it is distributed with no restrictions. The instant you put restriction on a work, no matter if you rationalize it as "defensive" the work is no longer free.
As for your claim that fair use allows one to disseminate information, you clearly know that to be untrue, as evidenced by your very next sentance in which you correctly point out that we do not have the freedom to copy information verbatim, which is in fact the definition of what it means to disseminate information.
Actually, there is a big difference between disseminating information, and copying information verbatum (although assuming as such reveals a lack of creativity.) Fair use does permit me to copy text verbatum as long as it is a small portion of the entire work. In addition, I can paraphrase, describe, and re-write to my heart's content as long as I add substantial original content. For example, I can write an entire plot synopsis of The Fellowship of the Ring without running afoul of copyright. I can even write multiple parodies.
What I can't do is publish it verbatum with my own printing press.
No, it points out that this freedom existed for most of the 3 million years humans have been around, and was only abridged in the last few centuries. Obviously the right is "alienable," as we have had it denied us all our lives.
Again, geeks without an understanding of history.
The entire concept of an inalienable freedom only became popular in the last 500 years. Prior to the American revolution such freedoms did not exist. With the exception of a few radicals it was taken for granted that the Church and the State had the Divine right to restrict publication and distribution of works, and to punish those who expressed dangerous or heretical ideas.
A central right behind the American revolution was the right to choose what to produce, how to produce it, and how to take it to market. Free speech was not envisioned to be in opposition to basic property rights, the right to profit from the fruit of your labor. In approving copyright the constitution recognizes this right.
What is absurd is the notion that the creator of some information has the right to limit is spread through ceorcive legislation, fining or imprisoning others who make use of it or pass it along.
How is this any more absurd than the notion that a creator is obligated to distribute no only the information, but any source material used to create that information?
This in no way justifies the mass limitation of freedom to use and disseminate information that is copyright.
In which case, I would like to point out that the freedom to disseminate information is granted by "fair use." What you don't have with copyright law is the freedom to plagarize or to copy verbatum.
You as the original author, by default, shall automatically deprive everyone else on the planet from any basic freedom they might otherwise have to use, copy, modify, or disseminate what you happened to create (freedoms which the species happened to enjoy some 3 million odd years previously, btw). What is more, because of the peculiarities in how digital systems function, you can impose whatever onerous restrictions above and beyond the removal of those freedoms you wish to, as a price for granting anyone the privelege of using what you created, and in fact you are encouraged to do so.
Arguing from primoridal history is a pretty obvious fallacy. The obvious counter-argument is that for most of human history, most human beings did not have the freedom to own the products they create, the freedom to travel, the freedom to speak politically, and in fact for most of history a large chunk of the world population lived in some form of slavery.
A fundamental problem with asserting this as a basic freedom is that it conflicts with another basic freedom to create and sell the fruit of my labor on my own terms.
An obvious test on how "free" the GPL really is comes in regards to the ability to distribute software under more liberal licenses. Not only can you not include GPL code into proprietary products, but you can't include GPL code under a license that offers fewer restrictions than the GPL. One potential legal problem with this comes with government products which by statute are released into the public domain. You have a situation where the GPL is "free" but only as long as you are not a government employee obligated to publish in the public domain.
In this context the free software foundation has said simply "If you include our work in your own work, you must agree not to go around restricting other peoples freedoms in this manner, and you may not impose additional onerous restrictions on other people."
The problem is that any license which includes the words, "you must" cannot be free by definition. It either is free (in which case, I can use it for whatever purpose I want) or it is not free (in which case, you restrict my ability to use the software in some way, or place conditions on my use of the software.) As far as I know, the only free license is public domain. The FSF only redefines the term "freedom" in such a way that it can impose the same powers used by Microsoft for its own agenda.
Lacking the "freedom" to imprison other people in your cellar hardly makes you less free, indeed quite the contrary as such a restriction protects you from being incarcerated in turn by another third party.
There is a big problem with your analogy here in that releasing software under my own terms (freedom of speech) certainly does not cause harm to another person. No one is forcing you to use my software absent source code. You are free to make your own economic decisions on whether you want to use a product with source code or without source code.
Furthermore, the obsession regarding source code reveals a bias for a feature that can only be used by an elite few. By an analogy, I am not harmed because AMD creates a sealed microchip that can't be substantially modified by users. No one argues that my free speech rights are violated because of my inability to physically change the microchip. (Although the advancing use of microchip and SMCs seriously has reduced the long-standing hobby of hardware hacking.) By not providing you with source code I have not infringed on any of your rights in the same way that I have not infringed on any of your rights by releasing negatives or rough drafts. If you don't like it, make an alternative. If you don't like it, don't use it.
This entire argument that the GPL's built in protections of the software freedom it grants, and its innoculation against abuse by unscrupulous third parties (cf. "tragedy of the commons") is IMHO quite nonsensical, as the above metaphor should help to illuminate.
Well, this is where you pseudo-freedom advocates run into an inconsistency of your own logic. The argument is that IP should be treated on a different basis from physical property because there are no limits to ideas or copies of machine-readable artefacts. However, simultaneously you argue that restrictions on redistribution of derivative works are necessary to avoid a "tragedy of the commons" which applies to limited goods.
So the question is, which is it? Is IP a limited resource that needs protection by invoking a non-free license that places considerable demands on people wishing to distribute dirivative works? Or is IP an unlimited resource in which case, the "tragedy of the commons" does not apply?
I think this is missing the wide variety of conditions under which software is produced. For example, the project I'm working on was a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation. They wanted a few dozen research papers they could show Congress to justify their funding. In the process, we produced quite a bit of software for running an education professional development website with a few other universities interested in buying the software.
In this case, the development is already paid for. We don't have a large ammount of debt or investors looking for a RoI. Therefore we are under no obligation to charge for our software.
In contrast, a lot of proprietary software development is done on spec. The company goes into debt to fund the developers in the hope that in the end, there is a product that will make money.
Am I only one wondering why the parent post was moderated "flame bait" for pointing out much of the class bigotry present in this thread?
I mean sure it's easy to dismiss buyers in rural areas as just a bunch of ignorant yokels unable to RTFM or even the description on the box to realize that they are not getting a pre-packaged Windows system with Microsoft Works. I think this is ignoring the fact that cottage industries and agricultural producers are increasingly relying on information technology in order just to survive in the marketplace. This is a sector that is pioneering GIS and GPS applications for agriculture while universities are dicking around with tracking students. There is a huge market out there of farmers and craftspeople who do everything on a shoestring staff (or even solo) and a shoestring budget from finding the cheapest supplier, to tracking inventory, accounting, quality control, marketing, and shipping. This is a group of potential users that strongly values performance, reliability, and value. Perhaps more importantly they are a group of users quite capable of fixing their own problems.
So certainly, I can see a huge market for not only Linux but also mysql, Apache, and openoffice in the rural areas served by Wal-Mart.
Insure the freedom of derivative works (no BSD-style loopholes to allow the MPAA, RIAA, or Microsofts of the world to lock down derivative works and thereby deny their use by future generations of artists)
I'm not exactly certain how this is a problem with public domain. After all, "What's Opera Doc" has no impact on my ability to use Wagner's Rheingeld no matter how many times Elmer Fudd sings "Kill the Wabbit!"
In fact, a problem with your license is that it is not free (as in libre) because I can't distribute derivative works under my own preferred terms (public domain) or in my own preferred format (absent source materials). In fact, I can make a strong argument that any license that contains the words, "You must..." can't be free by definition. I find it interesting that the "Free" Media License is about twice as lengthy as the consent forms I use to get private data for research, almost as long as Microsoft EULAs and huge compared the one-paragraph notice on most books and journals (which basically say "ask permission before copying.")
Certainly, there is a strong need for a public commons. But there are some fundamental contradictions in your position when you argue that artists should "give up control" while drafting one of the more controlling content licenses I've ever seen.
The requirement to distribute source material places serious constrants on what kinds of derivative works can be made. How does this apply to physical media such as painting, calligraphy and layered collage? If I cut a stencil for sidewalk art am I expected to include a URL?
And demanding that creators of derivative workds bundle 11 pages of license text with every work is "freedom?" Excuse me?
Certainly, I don't particularly care or mind if you use your powers of copyright in order to enforce the kinds of control you wish over your works. In fact, I would argue that exerting that level of control may be economically and politically necessary. However, ultimately the only difference between Free Media License, the GPL, Microsoft EULAs and traditional copyright is is in what they compel users to do or not to do.
Actually, the credits for most movies include a listing of included works, along with "property of..." or "with permission of...". In fact, most movies pay someone to track down permissions and handle royalty issues.
That's because FX technology was, and is, always developing. This expectation that CG is somehow infallibe, and all its imagery should somehow be perfect and consistent, is rubbish. There's probably a very good reason there wasn't a CGI Yoda in Episode I -- and he will probably look much better in Episode III -- just like everything else.
There is probably a psychology experiment out there which shows that the higher fidelity in CG effects the more people notice the failures of those effects. I see quite a bit more criticism of minor quirks in Final Fantasy, AotC and Shrek than Pixar's animation which makes no attempt at realism. Of course, part of that could be because Pixar has some of the best comedic screenwriters in the business currently.
The things you gripe about are temporary technological limitations on display and input of data, and not worth discussing because they'll be overcome soon enough. Foldable high-res OLED screens, retinal projection, etc... all close on the horizon.
Those things have been "close on the horizon" for the last 20 years now. Until thery are not only "close on the horizon" but in my hands for under $5, the technology is still inferior to paper.
If you think of all electronic data as 1-dimensional strings of 8-bit characters, your view is severely limited. Ever heard of Unicode? XML? Postscript? SVG? PDF? LaTeX? Visio? Mathematica? Hyperchem? PNG? Graphing calculators? OCR? Voice recognition? Databases? Arrays? Spreadsheets? Expert systems? Data is data, it's how you manage it that creates the "dimensions."
However, current PDA notepad software does treat all data as 1-dimensional 8-bit strings but there are still serious interface issues with all those technologies.
Unicode: entering extended caracters requires memorizing hundreds of character codes or navagating extended menus. With a pen, you can make a seamless transition between character sets. The major challenge with the next generation of PDA systems is to recongize not only a reduced Grafitti character script but to recognize the entire unicode character set as drawn. I should not need to draw two separate characters or navagate through menus in order to draw an o-umlaut or a greek Theta.
XML, Postscript, PDF and Latex: considerable overhead because you have to explicitly tell the computer what type of content you are entering. I shouldn't have to tell the system the difference between a bulleted list, a paragraph and a heading, instead, the PDA should infer the content type from position on page, size, and extra marks.
Viso and other graphic programs: Drawing context is dependent on the selected cursor. Drawing a box requires clicking on the graphical box icon, then drawing the box. Enclosing text in a box can require at least three clicks (as opposed to simply circling the text.)
Voice recognition: Right into my field. Voice recognition works great with a 1D string of characters but positioning text in the frame with current voice recognition technology is difficult. And again, advanced formatting of text is more difficult than it should be.
By the way, it would be much easier to get the PDA to "understand" Kurt Vonnegut's relation to Joseph Heller via WWII than to get a piece of paper to understand it. This is perhaps the worst way to make paper look good next to a computer. A dead-simple expert system will keep track of this and 1000000 other relationships in a totally organized way.
But the difference is the piece of paper doesn't need to understand it. All it needs to do is hold the information in a structured format until I flip through the entire notebook. In addition, constructing an expert system, much less entering data into an expert system is a tedious process. Expert systems are currently very fragile, they work well if you know in advance what kinds of data you want to enter in advance. They break quickly when you start entering data that does not fit within their current schema. So for example, my notes for the last project meeting include a shopping list of items for a party. This is the first time in three years we've ever made a shopping list, if I don't already have a shopping list data type, I have to either break the system by entering it as a different data type, or create a data type on the fly. Meanwhile life still rolls on and while I'm massaging the data to fit my expert system, I've missed the first half of the list.
Moral: don't force yourself to ride a horse just because a car can't take you to the moon.
At this point, the technology is barely able to get me next door, one tiny business-card sized chunk at a time. You're trying to sell me on vaporware. Show me a PDA that meets or exceeds the 7 requirements I set down earlier, and I'll buy. I know what's out there on the market, the intelligent text recognition isn't there, the displays are in pre-commercial prototype form, and application interfaces are not even close.
Paper has no built-in organizational system. You impose your organizational system on a piece of paper after you use it, same as with digital information. The difference is overhead. What happens if somebody brand new has to find a piece of info in your notes all of a sudden and they don't understand your arcane filing system? If you had it on a PDA, worst case, it could be dumped out and grepped through in a matter of minutes, in the unlikely event you filed it so badly it couldn't be found through the PDA's menus.
The filing system is hardly arcane: 1: A separate notebook for each project. 2: Notes entered in sequential order by date, with a title describing the note.
Don't even get me started about "when I choose to share I rewrite the notes into a memo." Double work is more efficient? Sure... whatever you say.
I don't consider it double-work. I consider it the minimal work necessary to communicate ideas effectively. I have yet to see anyone take notes in any media that did not require substantial re-writes. This is true even of people who use transcription services. This is basic information management. Whenever you share notes, you re-write, contextualize and transform those notes into coherent paragraphs.
I should stop here because it's pretty clear to me that you don't get it on a fundamental level. You've committed yourself to paper because you're uninformed about PDA technology. Bon voyage. I pity the person who succeeds you in your position.
Actually, I'm quite informed having used a Palm for 2 years, and found it to be no great loss when it broke. I notice that you did not acknoledge the 7 basic limits on current PDA technology which are necessary to even get EQUAL to the utility value of paper. The biggest problem is developing a way to view and store notes not as a 1D stream of letters but as a 2D organized structure of items linked by text style, orientation, position in frame and graphical elements such as boxes, circles and letters. Until you can develop a PDA that can index, search and understand cluster diagrams there is really not much point is there? Sure the Palm can search for the name "Kurt Vonnegut" in a bulleted list but can it understand "Kurt Vonnegut" in a connection to "Joseph Heller" via "WWII"? The current generation of PDA devices can't even display three items of a cluster graph on the screen in a legible format, much less search for arbitrary relationships between nodes. Drawing a cluster graph (or any kind of a graph for that matter) on the Palm is a painful process.
On top of this, you have the crappy interface that only excells in relationship to the pocket calculator. I can display more information on a business card than I can on a palm display. About three words per line, less than a full paragraph in the frame. Unreadable in bright light because of glare. Poor contrast. Readable only within about 20 degrees of normal to the screen. Handwriting recognition highly sensitive to vibration (makes writing on the road difficult) Dreadfully limited number of fonts and font styles. Changing fonts and font styles requires multiple clicks. (With a pen if I want big letters, I just draw big letters. If I want to switch between italic and celtic, I just switch.) Only one orientation for text.
Certainly the PDA is wonderful if all you are dealing with is content that is grepable. What do you do with the content that is not grepable? What do you do with cluster diagrams, storyboards (dated, numbered, with commentary), multiple rough-drafts of icons and interfaces (with notes and associated arrows), process diagrams, scripts, huge matrix analysis charts, sketches, doodles, mathematical formulae, organic chemical structures, three-pannel comic strips, margin notes, footnotes, endnotes, annotations, proofreading marks, heck for that matter, even a simple outline going four levels deep when you can't even fit a full paragraph on the screen, or more than five words to a line? There is so much more the the world than greppable 8 bit characters organized in 1D strings.
In addition there is nothing to prevent the government or any other agency to negotiate a different licence with the copyright holder (although this may be difficult for collaborative projects.) From the GPL FAQ:
The GNU GPL does not give users permission to attach other licenses to the program. But the copyright holder for a program can release it under several different licenses in parallel. One of them may be the GNU GPL.
For example MySQL is more than happy to sell a non-GPL license for a closed-source application along with the GPL license.
Why would you make this comparison, especially being a scientist yourself? Shouldn't you compare against people who were trained to archive notes on PDAs?
Not when your claim is that a PDA accomplishes tasks that can't be done through the use of paper records.
Because you weren't trained on a PDA, your techniques of working with paper notes appear to work better for you. But here are a few simple, real-world objective tests. Take 1000 notes on paper and 1000 notes on a PDA, using random subjects. Now organize them into a filing system. How long does that take? Now search for references to a certain surname. How long does that take? Search for a phone number. Make 5 copies of only the notes on a certain subject for a colleague, and 20 copies to distribute to other staff members. Get copies of all to a field researcher in Russia. Organize them by subject. Now reorganize them by date. Add markup to 50 without disturbing the originals. Should I go on?
Well, here you are comparing apples and oranges. The 1000 paper-based notes are already sorted on the basis of subject and indexed by time at creation so no work is necessary to sort them. Phone numbers of course don't go into a notebook but into an addressbook, rollodex or card file. Copying the notes takes a bit longer but again, the notes are already sorted by topic (if you use loose-leaf the time for copying is less than 1 minute.)
The markup issue is another problem that doesn't need to be solved because the handwritten notes are already marked up as headers, graphs and tables. This is actually one area in which PDAs don't do well because of both the limited screen size and the limits on producing and integrating graphics with text. Notebooks are for rough drafts. If I'm going to go through the trouble of marking up something, I simply plop my notes next to the keyboard and go right to a second draft.
Perhaps its just a problem with note-taking style, but I don't write nice linear HTML friendly notes. My notes tend to be loaded with graphs, maps, charts, tables, text that is underlined, text in different scripts, text in multiple colors, text in different orientations, and text mapped to paths. I've not seen a PDA editor yet that was able to do round point medium Italic in one color and caligraphy point broad Celtic in a different color. The reason why markup is not that important to me is because my notes are highly compressed and highly coded with position on page, (another concept that doesn't work in PDA text editors) orientation, font, color and style important to the overall meaning. When I choose to share, I rewrite the notes to a memo.
This coding permits some searches that are not available through PDA text editors. For example, I can spot the most important items in a meeting by looking for graphical arrows from margin notes. (1/2 second flipping through a notebook.)
If you don't know how to flip through a set of images to find a certain diagram, have someone show you. I can certainly do that faster with a "back" and "next" button than by sifting through a pile of randomly sized papers.
Again, you are comparing the abilities of a PDA to worst practice. It takes me about 1/2 second to find a diagram in a notebook. Less if I can pin down the date to within a week. This is compared to clicking through dozens of graphical files viewed through a window little larger than a business card.
Perhaps you should get a little more experience with a PDA before passing a blanket judgement over those who find them useful as "ignorant of history."
Been there, done that, tried it for a few years. But your posts do demonstrate a fairly blatant ignorance of history because you would know that people have been able to do what you claim is only possible with PDAs for centuries.
Certainly there are some good arguments for PDAs but not as a replacement for notebooks (or at least not in their current form with their inability to handle multiple layers of text encoding.) It isn't a blankent judgement, its only those who pick the most trivial of abilities that have been available for centuries and highlight them as an example of why PDAs are so much superior to other media.
If you are going to point out how PDAs are so much more useful, you might as well point to capabilities that don't exist with paper-based media. For example, the ability to hook up a PDA to a GPS and a temperature probe for real-time data collection and analysis. Using the PDA as a mobile front end for a shared database within an organization. However, just using a PDA in its current form as a notebook or an addressbook is a waste of money and a waste of time.
Perhaps it's also time to forget what you learned in the 1990s and catch up with the hundreds of thousands of other scientists and professionals around the world who use electronic information management techniques. Times have changed. And for much, much longer than paper was used, electronic methods will continue to be used in the future. 1000 years from now, electronic systems will have been the dominant way to organize information for twice as long as paper.
Of course, I do use electronic information management every day for applications where it is superior. I certainly don't use a typewriter to create paper drafts.
However, if all you are talking about is using a PDA as a glorified spiral-bound notebook, then the PDA is a pretty bad choice for a number of reasons. So what would convince me to use a PDA?
1: 8in X 11in high resolution screen. 2: handwriting recognition that can handle and display multiple scripts. 3: 2D graphical data entry that can handle 360 degrees of arbitrary text orientation, multicolored text, shapes, text boxes, and arrows. Furthermore this should be cursor-independent. I shouldn't have to click on the box cursor to draw a box, the drawing cursor to draw a doodle, and the text cursor to draw text. 4: Data perminance. Nothing gets deleted. Edits leave pre-existing text clearly visible. 5: Flipability. I want the ability to flip through all of my notes in less than 5 seconds. 6: Frames. It should recognize that each frame is by default a specific unit of information. 7: No batteries.
In other words, it should offer all of the abilities of paper notebooks, along with the leveraged capabilities of a microprocessor and the ability to integrate with peripherals. Until the above 7 abilities are implemented in a PDA, any talk about the superiority of a PDA is bullshit.
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In the academic world, almost all of the journals I consider submitting to request electronic submissions in Microsoft Word or RTF. This is a major consideration for me in looking for a new writing system. Microsoft Word keeps clobbering my styles every time the document gets moved to a different machine and I feel like I spend more time fiddling with the stylesheets than writing.
For me, the big deal-killer is lack of a mature acessiblity framework coupled with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. In fact, I'm still wondering why OpenOffice is the only program on my desktop that does not successfully interoperate with Dragon.
And another option to extend range and for more fun is an electric bicycle. (And for another site Electric Bikes Northwest). The battery is used to provide an extra bost on hills or at stop lights while carying heavy loads.
I don't know. Have you looked at marketed portion sizes compared to the recommendations? A supersized french-fry is about three servings right there. 1/2 of the recommendations. Add that to another 3 servings for the bread on a Big Mac (only 2 if you just get the 1/4 pounder) and the carbs in the drink and allready you have a full day's worth of carbs in one meal.
There is an element of reactionary fanaticism in low-carb advocates that seriously bothers me. A lot of it parallels a lot of the other quackery I see vicariously because my partner works in a natural food store.
Problem: We don't eat enough raw vegetables.
Solution: Eat only raw vegetables and spin some yarn about how its the way humans were meant to eat.
Problem: We don't eat enough fruits.
Solution: Eat only fruit and spin some yarn about how its the way humans were meant to eat.
Problem: We don't pay enough attention to the health of our colon.
Solution: Purges, fasts, colon cleansing and hydrotherapy. And spin some yarn about toxin build-up.
Problem: We eat too many carbohydrates and surgars.
Solution: Avoid carbs and surgars as much as humanly possible. And spin some yarn about evolutionary digestion.
I can certainly agree that all of the above are actual real problems, but the solutions are probably as bad as the original problem.
I agree with Barrett's conclusion - that most of the "success stories" of Atkins dieters are merely the logical end result result of caloric restriction, and not anything "magical" about the approach -- other than that it's a lot easier and more pleasant to eat 1500 calories of "what you want" (guzzle coffee, water, and diet sodas all day long at the office and finish off - at 400 calories per 4-oz serving - with a juicy well-marbled 16-oz New York Strip for dinner! Every night!) than to live on 1500 calories a day of tofu.
In that respect, I think the one of the reasons why Atkins works is because it allows you to eat foods that most Americans find attractive, while getting rid of most "side dishes". I also think that it is medically correct for a certain class of people whose metabolisms have been misadjusted in a certain way.
My personal experience is that the only time I've successfully made a dietary change was inspired by an experience in which meat products changed from being tasty to disgusting overnight. After the first three months I found that my palette had changed significantly to the point where I am no longer tempted at all. Coincidentally, sugary foods have become less and less appealing as well. My point is not to advocate for vegetarianism, but to point out that most people that I have known who have successfully changed their diets as a long-term lifestyle change have either reported similar conversion experiences that dramatically changed the way they view the world, or they toughed it out for long enough that their appetites reprogrammed.
Seriously, it looks like that the current system fails both the fans and the artists. Paul Westerberg just released an album recorded in his basement. Unfortunately this link does not include the full interview in which Westerberg complains that while he got $1 million advance on his last big studio album, all of it was spent before the record was shipped. About half of my music money is spent on local artists like Salaam, and most of the other half is spent on used CDs.
A large part of it is a simple issue of economics. Peer to peer distribution would seem to be a great way to promote albums without paying thousands of dollars for radio air time. In addition it would satisfy people like me who have a serious trouble finding a radio outlet where I can hear cool new music like Yann Tiersen(heavy flash page) or the Tosca Tango Orchestra (review, I could not find a band web page). Quite honestly, the only major label albums that I purchased new in the last year have been movie soundtracks ( Waking Life, Amelie, and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou).
I think it will we need is a radical shift in the way that we buy, promote and distribute music parallel to the rise of microbreweries. An alternative market of music favored by those who know better. Just as you have the Budweiser's of the world selling large quantities of watered down whiz, the major labels can keep doing what they do. Meanwhile there are good outlets for the good stuff. (Insert gratuitous beer snob flame of mass-produced American beer drinkers here.)
I do feel that there is a good place for traditional hardcopy distribution, partly some gate keeping regarding the quality of the audio distributed, but also to provide brand recognition for particular genres.
Um, didn't the railroads create a need for the federal government to enforce standardized time zoned. For another example of law applying to a specific information technology, what about the regulation of radio in the early 20th century to reduce interferance.
It is also worth noting that the Federalist Papers were not representative of the entire constitutional convention but a nice work of post-colonial propaganda advocating for a much more conservative view of the Constitution than what was actually passed. It is also worth noting that the authors of the First Amendment not only put some pretty harsh language ("Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion, or restricting the free practice thereof") in regards to defining the relationship of government and religion, but they also soundly rejected accommodationist drafts of the First Amendment that would specifically endorse government funds for religious observance.
SWF is not only neck and neck with GIF, it beats it hands-down if you are working with vector animation. A simple test movie comes in at 12K. The same movie rendered as an animated GIF comes in at 44K. A simple two-object animated banner I made is %80 the same size of the original GIF primarily because the Flash crops the bitmaps while GIF files are one big bitmap.
In addition, (responding to the original poster) I don't buy the claim that the math involved in positioning 2D vector graphics on the screen using Flash is that much more expensive than decompressing and displaying multiple stacked bitmaps, or running an animation applet through the Java runtime compiler. It's not like we are talking about a brand-new technology here. I have professors who were doing vector graphic computer art on punchcards and plotters. The computations invovled are not that much more complex than drawing a windowing desktop.
Nope it won't except in history books used in Education. With a computer, a student can read things written by Samual Adams, diaries by soldiers at Valley Forge or Jamestown.
Instead of reading the paragraph in the text book about the Atomic Bombings of Japan, a student could go up and read raw materials about IJA weapons stockpiles, or the planned Commonwealth invasion of Singapore or the Joint Allied invasions of southern Japan and understand why the Americans were willing to nuke two cites, beyond the vauge and inaccurate stock answers in a text book.
Heck, I was doing that back in the 80s before the mass internet when the only BBS I had access to was the local Boy Scout office (and usually had to wardial for an hour because everyone competed for the same phone line.) Books have some definite advantages, especially when a major problem with the internet is sorting through too much information.
One of the advantages I found to building my own was upgrading on an installment plan. Each paycheck you buy a different component and install it.
Another advantage for bottom feeders is the ability to save money by getting last-year's best components and put the money where you need it.
I have found a few other issues that are stalling me from switching to open office.
1: open office is the only software on my desktop that does not cooperate with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Sure I could use "press Alt-Foxtrot press Alt-Siera" instead of "file-save" but that is missing the point. While Mozilla is not fully assessable they at least made a good faith effort in speech recognition integration when they released 1.0 (menu commands are accessible for speech recognition without using keyboard shortcuts but HTML text is not). I may be transitioning to ViaVoice in the fall so I might give open office another try then.
2: the bibliographic reference management system included in open office is currently completely inadequate. You don't have a choice of formats. The process of changing the default format for bibliographic references is tedious. While changes are saved with the current document they are not saved with a template made from the document. In fact, this is one area where open office could not only imitate Microsoft Office but advance the bar a little bit by creating a good open format, open sourced bibliographic reference database similar to EndNote or Procite. A good bibliographic reference database would help to get open office into academic and research markets.
"The entire concept of an inalienable freedom only became popular in the last 500 years. Prior to the American revolution such freedoms did not exist."
:)
America has been around 500 years? And you're talking about understanding history...
Note two sentences there. The concept of an inalienable freedom only became popular in the last 500 years. These arguments for inalienable freedom set the philosophical basis for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution which defined those freedoms.
But it is interesting that the argument for access to source code as a right fails not only on the basis of property rights, but also on free speech rights. I may not want to include source code (or an offer to provide source code) with something I produce for a variety of reasons. I may feel that distributing the software as a black box is part of the entire artistic experience. My intended audience may be completely uninterested in the source code for the same reason that most consumers of music are uninterested in musical scores. I may not want to put unnecessary burdens on my audience if they choose to redistribute the code.
If indeed there is a free-speech right to modify the code of software, then isn't there a free-speech right to modify the license as well? And yet, with copyleft while the code is mutable the license is not. Not only can you not adopt a more restrictive license, but you can't adopt a more liberal license either.
The bottom line is the GPL is not "free" in the libre definition. It simply replaces a set of ideologicaly-founded restrictions with a different set. You can certainly argue that the restrictions imposed by the GPL are preferable to the restrictions imposed by Microsoft (and I would agree). You can even argue that the restrictions are necessary to create a viable software commons (I'm not convinced). But arguing that GPL is "free" because it is less restrictive than commercial licenses misses the point of freedom.
The entire concept of an inalienable right dates back at least as far as the Greeks, and quite probably much farther than that, as a lot of tribal cultures have certain rights as well as responsiblities encoded into their tribal customs that appear to go back many tens of thousands of years at least.
Certainly, however such an inalienable right was rarely properly applied in civic life. From the Roman Empire forward the majority of the population lived in some form of servitude with restrictions on travel.
The notion that the state, or the church, could limit information is a relatively new idea, going back perhaps as far as the Egyptions, if that. In comparison to 3 million years of human existence those kinds of restrictions are almost as new as the copyright laws designed to propogate them into the age of the printing press.
Quite a non-sequetor here. After all, the Egyptians were among the first people to create a full record of civic life so therefore, speculation in regards to rights before the Egyptians is simply speculation. We can't say what rights pre-literary cultures granted in regards to IP simply because they left no written record.
However, it is worth noting that pre-literary cultures have very different tradtions on who owns ideas and stories. For example, there is the Lakota declaration of war on "plastic medicine men" which denounces the appropriation of traditional symbols, traditions and philosophies outside of their culture.
Your confusion of basic property rights with the artificial, and largely arbitrary, concept of "intellectual property" such as patents and, in the context of this duscussion copyright, and your confusion of basic property rights with basic human rights, underscores your ayndroidian myopia in viewing everything in economic terms, when clearly economic issues are only one small part of the overall human experience. I do not expect to be able to heal you of your myopia in one post, but perhaps my rebuttal will protect another from being taken in by such fallacious arguments (and yes, I have read Ayn Rand's works, so I do know what I'm talking about WRT her myopia, which is echoed by the Libertarians and indeed constitutes one of their most fatal philosophical as well as practical flaws).
In fact, the "no IP" camp gleefully ignores the fact that in many cases, we don't want information to be free and even though we may have the technical ability to create a million copies of an bit of information, perhaps we shouldn't do so out of respect for the traditions that created that information. So in contrast to arguing on "purely economic terms." I suggest that there is a moral obligation to respect the creators of works, and to respect their wishes in regards to how their works should be used. This is true no matter how valuable the created work is. The moral obligations to creators of work are above and beyond simply the economic arguments.
Said creator is only obligated to do so if he or she uses a GPLed work within his or her own work, in which case the creator has chosen to accept such a requirement consciously and knowingly. This is in contrast to the incredibly onerous restrictions copyright places on our freedom to use and disseminate information, which is forced down our throats with absolutely no input, or choice, on our part. Indeed, it is a direct result of that very coercion under copyright law that the GNU project felt it necessary to impose any defensive and protective requirements in the GPL at all.
However, there is no contrast. The restrictions of copyright only apply if the creator of a work consciously or knowingly appropriates portions of another work. In fact, practially speaking, I find the restrictions of copyright to be less problematic than the GPL. Most of the time getting permission to use material covered by copyright requires a simple phone call. "Can I use your comic strip on my web page?" "Sure, whatever."
In fact, my students are quite suprised to find that there is usually no reason to use copyright protected material. Where is the coersion? No one is forcing you to include The Fellowship of the Ring or Microsoft code in your product.
But the basic problem is as soon as you say, "You must..." the work you distribute is no longer free. Either the work is free, or it is not free. There is no middle ground. If a work is free, it is distributed with no restrictions. The instant you put restriction on a work, no matter if you rationalize it as "defensive" the work is no longer free.
As for your claim that fair use allows one to disseminate information, you clearly know that to be untrue, as evidenced by your very next sentance in which you correctly point out that we do not have the freedom to copy information verbatim, which is in fact the definition of what it means to disseminate information.
Actually, there is a big difference between disseminating information, and copying information verbatum (although assuming as such reveals a lack of creativity.) Fair use does permit me to copy text verbatum as long as it is a small portion of the entire work. In addition, I can paraphrase, describe, and re-write to my heart's content as long as I add substantial original content. For example, I can write an entire plot synopsis of The Fellowship of the Ring without running afoul of copyright. I can even write multiple parodies.
What I can't do is publish it verbatum with my own printing press.
No, it points out that this freedom existed for most of the 3 million years humans have been around, and was only abridged in the last few centuries. Obviously the right is "alienable," as we have had it denied us all our lives.
Again, geeks without an understanding of history.
The entire concept of an inalienable freedom only became popular in the last 500 years. Prior to the American revolution such freedoms did not exist. With the exception of a few radicals it was taken for granted that the Church and the State had the Divine right to restrict publication and distribution of works, and to punish those who expressed dangerous or heretical ideas.
A central right behind the American revolution was the right to choose what to produce, how to produce it, and how to take it to market. Free speech was not envisioned to be in opposition to basic property rights, the right to profit from the fruit of your labor. In approving copyright the constitution recognizes this right.
What is absurd is the notion that the creator of some information has the right to limit is spread through ceorcive legislation, fining or imprisoning others who make use of it or pass it along.
How is this any more absurd than the notion that a creator is obligated to distribute no only the information, but any source material used to create that information?
This in no way justifies the mass limitation of freedom to use and disseminate information that is copyright.
In which case, I would like to point out that the freedom to disseminate information is granted by "fair use." What you don't have with copyright law is the freedom to plagarize or to copy verbatum.
You as the original author, by default, shall automatically deprive everyone else on the planet from any basic freedom they might otherwise have to use, copy, modify, or disseminate what you happened to create (freedoms which the species happened to enjoy some 3 million odd years previously, btw). What is more, because of the peculiarities in how digital systems function, you can impose whatever onerous restrictions above and beyond the removal of those freedoms you wish to, as a price for granting anyone the privelege of using what you created, and in fact you are encouraged to do so.
Arguing from primoridal history is a pretty obvious fallacy. The obvious counter-argument is that for most of human history, most human beings did not have the freedom to own the products they create, the freedom to travel, the freedom to speak politically, and in fact for most of history a large chunk of the world population lived in some form of slavery.
A fundamental problem with asserting this as a basic freedom is that it conflicts with another basic freedom to create and sell the fruit of my labor on my own terms.
An obvious test on how "free" the GPL really is comes in regards to the ability to distribute software under more liberal licenses. Not only can you not include GPL code into proprietary products, but you can't include GPL code under a license that offers fewer restrictions than the GPL. One potential legal problem with this comes with government products which by statute are released into the public domain. You have a situation where the GPL is "free" but only as long as you are not a government employee obligated to publish in the public domain.
In this context the free software foundation has said simply "If you include our work in your own work, you must agree not to go around restricting other peoples freedoms in this manner, and you may not impose additional onerous restrictions on other people."
The problem is that any license which includes the words, "you must" cannot be free by definition. It either is free (in which case, I can use it for whatever purpose I want) or it is not free (in which case, you restrict my ability to use the software in some way, or place conditions on my use of the software.) As far as I know, the only free license is public domain. The FSF only redefines the term "freedom" in such a way that it can impose the same powers used by Microsoft for its own agenda.
Lacking the "freedom" to imprison other people in your cellar hardly makes you less free, indeed quite the contrary as such a restriction protects you from being incarcerated in turn by another third party.
There is a big problem with your analogy here in that releasing software under my own terms (freedom of speech) certainly does not cause harm to another person. No one is forcing you to use my software absent source code. You are free to make your own economic decisions on whether you want to use a product with source code or without source code.
Furthermore, the obsession regarding source code reveals a bias for a feature that can only be used by an elite few. By an analogy, I am not harmed because AMD creates a sealed microchip that can't be substantially modified by users. No one argues that my free speech rights are violated because of my inability to physically change the microchip. (Although the advancing use of microchip and SMCs seriously has reduced the long-standing hobby of hardware hacking.) By not providing you with source code I have not infringed on any of your rights in the same way that I have not infringed on any of your rights by releasing negatives or rough drafts. If you don't like it, make an alternative. If you don't like it, don't use it.
This entire argument that the GPL's built in protections of the software freedom it grants, and its innoculation against abuse by unscrupulous third parties (cf. "tragedy of the commons") is IMHO quite nonsensical, as the above metaphor should help to illuminate.
Well, this is where you pseudo-freedom advocates run into an inconsistency of your own logic. The argument is that IP should be treated on a different basis from physical property because there are no limits to ideas or copies of machine-readable artefacts. However, simultaneously you argue that restrictions on redistribution of derivative works are necessary to avoid a "tragedy of the commons" which applies to limited goods.
So the question is, which is it? Is IP a limited resource that needs protection by invoking a non-free license that places considerable demands on people wishing to distribute dirivative works? Or is IP an unlimited resource in which case, the "tragedy of the commons" does not apply?
I think this is missing the wide variety of conditions under which software is produced. For example, the project I'm working on was a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation. They wanted a few dozen research papers they could show Congress to justify their funding. In the process, we produced quite a bit of software for running an education professional development website with a few other universities interested in buying the software.
In this case, the development is already paid for. We don't have a large ammount of debt or investors looking for a RoI. Therefore we are under no obligation to charge for our software.
In contrast, a lot of proprietary software development is done on spec. The company goes into debt to fund the developers in the hope that in the end, there is a product that will make money.
Am I only one wondering why the parent post was moderated "flame bait" for pointing out much of the class bigotry present in this thread?
I mean sure it's easy to dismiss buyers in rural areas as just a bunch of ignorant yokels unable to RTFM or even the description on the box to realize that they are not getting a pre-packaged Windows system with Microsoft Works. I think this is ignoring the fact that cottage industries and agricultural producers are increasingly relying on information technology in order just to survive in the marketplace. This is a sector that is pioneering GIS and GPS applications for agriculture while universities are dicking around with tracking students. There is a huge market out there of farmers and craftspeople who do everything on a shoestring staff (or even solo) and a shoestring budget from finding the cheapest supplier, to tracking inventory, accounting, quality control, marketing, and shipping. This is a group of potential users that strongly values performance, reliability, and value. Perhaps more importantly they are a group of users quite capable of fixing their own problems.
So certainly, I can see a huge market for not only Linux but also mysql, Apache, and openoffice in the rural areas served by Wal-Mart.
Insure the freedom of derivative works (no BSD-style loopholes to allow the MPAA, RIAA, or Microsofts of the world to lock down derivative works and thereby deny their use by future generations of artists)
I'm not exactly certain how this is a problem with public domain. After all, "What's Opera Doc" has no impact on my ability to use Wagner's Rheingeld no matter how many times Elmer Fudd sings "Kill the Wabbit!"
In fact, a problem with your license is that it is not free (as in libre) because I can't distribute derivative works under my own preferred terms (public domain) or in my own preferred format (absent source materials). In fact, I can make a strong argument that any license that contains the words, "You must..." can't be free by definition. I find it interesting that the "Free" Media License is about twice as lengthy as the consent forms I use to get private data for research, almost as long as Microsoft EULAs and huge compared the one-paragraph notice on most books and journals (which basically say "ask permission before copying.")
Certainly, there is a strong need for a public commons. But there are some fundamental contradictions in your position when you argue that artists should "give up control" while drafting one of the more controlling content licenses I've ever seen.
The requirement to distribute source material places serious constrants on what kinds of derivative works can be made. How does this apply to physical media such as painting, calligraphy and layered collage? If I cut a stencil for sidewalk art am I expected to include a URL?
And demanding that creators of derivative workds bundle 11 pages of license text with every work is "freedom?" Excuse me?
Certainly, I don't particularly care or mind if you use your powers of copyright in order to enforce the kinds of control you wish over your works. In fact, I would argue that exerting that level of control may be economically and politically necessary. However, ultimately the only difference between Free Media License, the GPL, Microsoft EULAs and traditional copyright is is in what they compel users to do or not to do.
Actually, the credits for most movies include a listing of included works, along with "property of..." or "with permission of...". In fact, most movies pay someone to track down permissions and handle royalty issues.
That's because FX technology was, and is, always developing. This expectation that CG is somehow infallibe, and all its imagery should somehow be perfect and consistent, is rubbish. There's probably a very good reason there wasn't a CGI Yoda in Episode I -- and he will probably look much better in Episode III -- just like everything else.
There is probably a psychology experiment out there which shows that the higher fidelity in CG effects the more people notice the failures of those effects. I see quite a bit more criticism of minor quirks in Final Fantasy, AotC and Shrek than Pixar's animation which makes no attempt at realism. Of course, part of that could be because Pixar has some of the best comedic screenwriters in the business currently.
The things you gripe about are temporary technological limitations on display and input of data, and not worth discussing because they'll be overcome soon enough. Foldable high-res OLED screens, retinal projection, etc... all close on the horizon.
Those things have been "close on the horizon" for the last 20 years now. Until thery are not only "close on the horizon" but in my hands for under $5, the technology is still inferior to paper.
If you think of all electronic data as 1-dimensional strings of 8-bit characters, your view is severely limited. Ever heard of Unicode? XML? Postscript? SVG? PDF? LaTeX? Visio? Mathematica? Hyperchem? PNG? Graphing calculators? OCR? Voice recognition? Databases? Arrays? Spreadsheets? Expert systems?
Data is data, it's how you manage it that creates the "dimensions."
However, current PDA notepad software does treat all data as 1-dimensional 8-bit strings but there are still serious interface issues with all those technologies.
Unicode: entering extended caracters requires memorizing hundreds of character codes or navagating extended menus. With a pen, you can make a seamless transition between character sets. The major challenge with the next generation of PDA systems is to recongize not only a reduced Grafitti character script but to recognize the entire unicode character set as drawn. I should not need to draw two separate characters or navagate through menus in order to draw an o-umlaut or a greek Theta.
XML, Postscript, PDF and Latex: considerable overhead because you have to explicitly tell the computer what type of content you are entering. I shouldn't have to tell the system the difference between a bulleted list, a paragraph and a heading, instead, the PDA should infer the content type from position on page, size, and extra marks.
Viso and other graphic programs: Drawing context is dependent on the selected cursor. Drawing a box requires clicking on the graphical box icon, then drawing the box. Enclosing text in a box can require at least three clicks (as opposed to simply circling the text.)
Voice recognition: Right into my field. Voice recognition works great with a 1D string of characters but positioning text in the frame with current voice recognition technology is difficult. And again, advanced formatting of text is more difficult than it should be.
By the way, it would be much easier to get the PDA to "understand" Kurt Vonnegut's relation to Joseph Heller via WWII than to get a piece of paper to understand it. This is perhaps the worst way to make paper look good next to a computer. A dead-simple expert system will keep track of this and 1000000 other relationships in a totally organized way.
But the difference is the piece of paper doesn't need to understand it. All it needs to do is hold the information in a structured format until I flip through the entire notebook. In addition, constructing an expert system, much less entering data into an expert system is a tedious process. Expert systems are currently very fragile, they work well if you know in advance what kinds of data you want to enter in advance. They break quickly when you start entering data that does not fit within their current schema. So for example, my notes for the last project meeting include a shopping list of items for a party. This is the first time in three years we've ever made a shopping list, if I don't already have a shopping list data type, I have to either break the system by entering it as a different data type, or create a data type on the fly. Meanwhile life still rolls on and while I'm massaging the data to fit my expert system, I've missed the first half of the list.
Moral: don't force yourself to ride a horse just because a car can't take you to the moon.
At this point, the technology is barely able to get me next door, one tiny business-card sized chunk at a time. You're trying to sell me on vaporware. Show me a PDA that meets or exceeds the 7 requirements I set down earlier, and I'll buy. I know what's out there on the market, the intelligent text recognition isn't there, the displays are in pre-commercial prototype form, and application interfaces are not even close.
Paper has no built-in organizational system. You impose your organizational system on a piece of paper after you use it, same as with digital information. The difference is overhead. What happens if somebody brand new has to find a piece of info in your notes all of a sudden and they don't understand your arcane filing system? If you had it on a PDA, worst case, it could be dumped out and grepped through in a matter of minutes, in the unlikely event you filed it so badly it couldn't be found through the PDA's menus.
The filing system is hardly arcane:
1: A separate notebook for each project.
2: Notes entered in sequential order by date, with a title describing the note.
Don't even get me started about "when I choose to share I rewrite the notes into a memo." Double work is more efficient? Sure... whatever you say.
I don't consider it double-work. I consider it the minimal work necessary to communicate ideas effectively. I have yet to see anyone take notes in any media that did not require substantial re-writes. This is true even of people who use transcription services. This is basic information management. Whenever you share notes, you re-write, contextualize and transform those notes into coherent paragraphs.
I should stop here because it's pretty clear to me that you don't get it on a fundamental level. You've committed yourself to paper because you're uninformed about PDA technology. Bon voyage. I pity the person who succeeds you in your position.
Actually, I'm quite informed having used a Palm for 2 years, and found it to be no great loss when it broke. I notice that you did not acknoledge the 7 basic limits on current PDA technology which are necessary to even get EQUAL to the utility value of paper. The biggest problem is developing a way to view and store notes not as a 1D stream of letters but as a 2D organized structure of items linked by text style, orientation, position in frame and graphical elements such as boxes, circles and letters. Until you can develop a PDA that can index, search and understand cluster diagrams there is really not much point is there? Sure the Palm can search for the name "Kurt Vonnegut" in a bulleted list but can it understand "Kurt Vonnegut" in a connection to "Joseph Heller" via "WWII"? The current generation of PDA devices can't even display three items of a cluster graph on the screen in a legible format, much less search for arbitrary relationships between nodes. Drawing a cluster graph (or any kind of a graph for that matter) on the Palm is a painful process.
On top of this, you have the crappy interface that only excells in relationship to the pocket calculator. I can display more information on a business card than I can on a palm display. About three words per line, less than a full paragraph in the frame. Unreadable in bright light because of glare. Poor contrast. Readable only within about 20 degrees of normal to the screen. Handwriting recognition highly sensitive to vibration (makes writing on the road difficult) Dreadfully limited number of fonts and font styles. Changing fonts and font styles requires multiple clicks. (With a pen if I want big letters, I just draw big letters. If I want to switch between italic and celtic, I just switch.) Only one orientation for text.
Certainly the PDA is wonderful if all you are dealing with is content that is grepable. What do you do with the content that is not grepable? What do you do with cluster diagrams, storyboards (dated, numbered, with commentary), multiple rough-drafts of icons and interfaces (with notes and associated arrows), process diagrams, scripts, huge matrix analysis charts, sketches, doodles, mathematical formulae, organic chemical structures, three-pannel comic strips, margin notes, footnotes, endnotes, annotations, proofreading marks, heck for that matter, even a simple outline going four levels deep when you can't even fit a full paragraph on the screen, or more than five words to a line? There is so much more the the world than greppable 8 bit characters organized in 1D strings.
In addition there is nothing to prevent the government or any other agency to negotiate a different licence with the copyright holder (although this may be difficult for collaborative projects.) From the GPL FAQ:
The GNU GPL does not give users permission to attach other licenses to the program. But the copyright holder for a program can release it under several different licenses in parallel. One of them may be the GNU GPL.
For example MySQL is more than happy to sell a non-GPL license for a closed-source application along with the GPL license.
Why would you make this comparison, especially being a scientist yourself? Shouldn't you compare against people who were trained to archive notes on PDAs?
Not when your claim is that a PDA accomplishes tasks that can't be done through the use of paper records.
Because you weren't trained on a PDA, your techniques of working with paper notes appear to work better for you. But here are a few simple, real-world objective tests. Take 1000 notes on paper and 1000 notes on a PDA, using random subjects. Now organize them into a filing system. How long does that take? Now search for references to a certain surname. How long does that take? Search for a phone number. Make 5 copies of only the notes on a certain subject for a colleague, and 20 copies to distribute to other staff members. Get copies of all to a field researcher in Russia. Organize them by subject. Now reorganize them by date. Add markup to 50 without disturbing the originals. Should I go on?
Well, here you are comparing apples and oranges. The 1000 paper-based notes are already sorted on the basis of subject and indexed by time at creation so no work is necessary to sort them. Phone numbers of course don't go into a notebook but into an addressbook, rollodex or card file. Copying the notes takes a bit longer but again, the notes are already sorted by topic (if you use loose-leaf the time for copying is less than 1 minute.)
The markup issue is another problem that doesn't need to be solved because the handwritten notes are already marked up as headers, graphs and tables. This is actually one area in which PDAs don't do well because of both the limited screen size and the limits on producing and integrating graphics with text. Notebooks are for rough drafts. If I'm going to go through the trouble of marking up something, I simply plop my notes next to the keyboard and go right to a second draft.
Perhaps its just a problem with note-taking style, but I don't write nice linear HTML friendly notes. My notes tend to be loaded with graphs, maps, charts, tables, text that is underlined, text in different scripts, text in multiple colors, text in different orientations, and text mapped to paths. I've not seen a PDA editor yet that was able to do round point medium Italic in one color and caligraphy point broad Celtic in a different color. The reason why markup is not that important to me is because my notes are highly compressed and highly coded with position on page, (another concept that doesn't work in PDA text editors) orientation, font, color and style important to the overall meaning. When I choose to share, I rewrite the notes to a memo.
This coding permits some searches that are not available through PDA text editors. For example, I can spot the most important items in a meeting by looking for graphical arrows from margin notes. (1/2 second flipping through a notebook.)
If you don't know how to flip through a set of images to find a certain diagram, have someone show you. I can certainly do that faster with a "back" and "next" button than by sifting through a pile of randomly sized papers.
Again, you are comparing the abilities of a PDA to worst practice. It takes me about 1/2 second to find a diagram in a notebook. Less if I can pin down the date to within a week. This is compared to clicking through dozens of graphical files viewed through a window little larger than a business card.
Perhaps you should get a little more experience with a PDA before passing a blanket judgement over those who find them useful as "ignorant of history."
Been there, done that, tried it for a few years. But your posts do demonstrate a fairly blatant ignorance of history because you would know that people have been able to do what you claim is only possible with PDAs for centuries.
Certainly there are some good arguments for PDAs but not as a replacement for notebooks (or at least not in their current form with their inability to handle multiple layers of text encoding.) It isn't a blankent judgement, its only those who pick the most trivial of abilities that have been available for centuries and highlight them as an example of why PDAs are so much superior to other media.
If you are going to point out how PDAs are so much more useful, you might as well point to capabilities that don't exist with paper-based media. For example, the ability to hook up a PDA to a GPS and a temperature probe for real-time data collection and analysis. Using the PDA as a mobile front end for a shared database within an organization. However, just using a PDA in its current form as a notebook or an addressbook is a waste of money and a waste of time.
Perhaps it's also time to forget what you learned in the 1990s and catch up with the hundreds of thousands of other scientists and professionals around the world who use electronic information management techniques. Times have changed. And for much, much longer than paper was used, electronic methods will continue to be used in the future. 1000 years from now, electronic systems will have been the dominant way to organize information for twice as long as paper.
Of course, I do use electronic information management every day for applications where it is superior. I certainly don't use a typewriter to create paper drafts.
However, if all you are talking about is using a PDA as a glorified spiral-bound notebook, then the PDA is a pretty bad choice for a number of reasons. So what would convince me to use a PDA?
1: 8in X 11in high resolution screen.
2: handwriting recognition that can handle and display multiple scripts.
3: 2D graphical data entry that can handle 360 degrees of arbitrary text orientation, multicolored text, shapes, text boxes, and arrows. Furthermore this should be cursor-independent. I shouldn't have to click on the box cursor to draw a box, the drawing cursor to draw a doodle, and the text cursor to draw text.
4: Data perminance. Nothing gets deleted. Edits leave pre-existing text clearly visible.
5: Flipability. I want the ability to flip through all of my notes in less than 5 seconds.
6: Frames. It should recognize that each frame is by default a specific unit of information.
7: No batteries.
In other words, it should offer all of the abilities of paper notebooks, along with the leveraged capabilities of a microprocessor and the ability to integrate with peripherals. Until the above 7 abilities are implemented in a PDA, any talk about the superiority of a PDA is bullshit.