If these files are opened - really opened, Microsoft will have to compete on the basis of quality, price and by innovation.
The thing is, it's humble OSS programmers that have a tendency to think up new uses for things. They can develop quicker and launch quicker.
If true, OpenOffice should quickly have perfect read write of MS files. The challenge now is to come up with more innovative features so that not only can OO read and write the files you need, but it will be the product you actually want to use.
Yes and yes - however gig ethernet is now so cheap that it's doable on small-medium networks without really worrying about it. As long as you don't have 30 staff all starting at exactly 0800 you'll hardly notice it - and I've seen 5GB+ profiles.
Actually if the software came from first4internet and first4internet are based in the UK then this could be interesting.
Under UK law copyright infringement is a criminal offence - in other words, report it to the police and they are obliged to investigate.
So if the copyright holder were to let the police know of their concerns and supply some evidence, the company that authored the software could have an interesting visit.
But the argument doesn't hold for the UK. Rural Scotland is about as rural as anywhere in the US with very low population density.
Nonetheless, by the end of this year almost every home will have access to ADSL (there will be 100% coverage at the exchange level) and by next year these exchanges will all be capable of 8mbit connections
So I moved from a village of about 1,500 people in Scotland where they have a choice of dozens of ADSL suppliers, if you want cheap get cheap, if you want IPv6 pay a bit extra and get it, you want a static IP - tick.
Now I'm in a medium sized US city where I can get 1.5mbit for 50% more than in the UK and havea choice of two suppliers.
Sure there's government regulation of the phone companies in the UK - just as there is in the US, but the investment was done by BT, a privately listed firm.
How much of this is encoded in the printer driver? In other words, are OSS drivers partially immune?
I can only imagine the time and date are passed from the host PC - most printers don't know what time/date it is - at least on those I jsut glanced at I can't set it myself. Of course the network attached ones could have an NTP client but that'd be easily blocked at the firewall.
At least if you can make every printout say it happened three decades ago you don't need to worry about proving you were not in the office at the time the printout was made.
The reason it has the potential is because XaraX is already a fantastic small, fast, stable offering from a programming house that's been developing graphics apps for decades. When Xara launched their vector graphics app first for Acorn RISC OS and then on Windows, the features like transparency and speed were groundbreaking.
Seriously this means an excellent program in an area underserved on linux (vector graphics) will be available source and all.
Cost of film? Let's say you're shooting 35MM instead of medium format (arguably a 1DS is a little less in terms of quality than a Hassy at 16x20, but the customer would probably never see it) then thats 67 rolls of film. A propack of 400NC from BH Photo is 28.45 for 5 rolls, which translates 14 packs at a cost of 400$.
But no one would ever shoot that sort of number of shots if they were shooting film - it's crazy. Digital cameras have created shot inflation in the wedding market. Folk advertise 300, 400 or 500 pictures in their wedding packages and the customers who don't know think that more is better.
It's not as if weddings days are fast moving affairs. So you're right, where this will shine is on things like overseas trips, safaris, and maybe even for photo journalists who might not know when they'll next be able to dump the files on their camera to a decent backup medium.
Most houses with VoIP probably still have their landline (for the DSL they use the VoIP over) plus the one, two or three family mobiles.
Yes,a 911 service needs to be established, though there should be some onus on governments to help here because it's an international problem. If I'm travelling with my laptop my VoIP number comes with me and knows not if I'm in the States, Canada or Europe. Why can't we click a world map to say where we are and give the operators a standard interface so 911 calls can go to the appropriate location?
Q: Can the NSA crack PGP (or RSA, DSS, IDEA, 3DES,...)?
A: This question has been asked many times. If the NSA were able to crack RSA or any of the other well known cryptographic algorithms, you would probably never hear about it from them. Now that RSA and the other algorithms are very widely used, it would be a very closely guarded secret.
The best defense against this is the fact the algorithms are known worldwide. There are many competent mathematicians and cryptographers outside the NSA and there is much research being done in the field right now. If any of them were to discover a hole in one of the algorithms, I'm sure that we would hear about it from them via a paper in one of the cryptography conferences.
For this reason, when you read messages saying that "someone told them" that the NSA is able to break PGP, take it with a grain of salt and ask for some documentation on exactly where the information is coming from. In particular, the story called NSA Can Break PGP Encryption is a joke.
Sure it is unlikely, but unless you have some way of proving what you say, it would be unwise to believe that no one can / will in the near future be able to crack or intercept your encrypted messages.
I'm not sure why they would demand the right to access encryption keys when they already appear to have the power through Section III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act Link here.
IBM walks to the patent office with a stack of patents every single week. I'm sure you can find plenty to pick on in their applications.
Perhaps when Amazon name 500 of their patents that Open Source can use freely they too will be welcomed by OSS programmers.
Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but of course do not speak for them.
Perhaps then you can speak to someone who does and suggest this as a strategy. After all if the patents are only intended as a defence against bottom feeding lawyers, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain from friends in the OSS community.
It's true, PHP and MySQL both ahev great doccumentation. It's very complete, the examples are well laid out and commented but to learn a language from the on screen doccumentation?
I like to be able to lie with a book in bed, in the garden, on the bus, all the places I don't really want to be with a laptop.
When you're physically coding at the keyboard the online doccumentation is often the fastest way to look up a query, but you can really get a feel for something by spending time reading and understanding a book away from the keyboard. I guess that's why there's so much money to be made in writing computer books.
Their Office 2k3 XML format's 'may' have patents prohibiting their use in open source applications. Who's to bet the new RSS 'standard' will similarly be patented.
I'm sure you could capture the audio stream from rhapsody and do with it as you please. Why though? Rhapsody does run pretty well under wine as long as you stick to version 2, not the v3 update.
V2 is still available from the Rhapsody home page.
Re:What is wrong with GPL v2
on
Drafting GPL3
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
There is a problem in GPL v2 that the 'share clause' only comes in to effect with redistribution. Many GPL licensed programs are developed for betwork use. As such, an individual, or company can take the software, modify it then use it commercially with hundreds or thousands of users without ever having to release their changes to the source.
This has been tackled by the AGPL which will be upwards compatible with GPL v3 - in other words, GPL v3 will have a clause that requires release of the source code as soon as a program is used outside an organisation, not just when the program itself is distributed.
It will, I think, still be possible for an organisation to make changes to software that remains internal without releasing the changes. In other words, the distribution takes effect as soon as the program is made available for use to an outside party.
i dunno about this. 'first to apply' has major disadvantages.
If that's really their intention it has huge implications. This could place a big burden on Open Source projects. If you develop something that is patentable, you'll have to patent it - otherwise that suggests someone else can take your invention, patent it then charge you to use it.
Picture A large WA based software company looking through the Linux kernel updates for patentable concepts then launching a law suit against the developer for using the thing!
I don't want them to see my site the way they want to see it. I want them to see it the way it was meant to be seen. That way I can provide content based on expectations of standards compliance.
But the web is about sending content to the user - it's up to the user how they want to display it. Unles you're supplying a locked down PC with your own browser configuration you have absolutely no control over what the end user does with the content you send, or how they interpret it.
Sure you can send CSS to the broser, but your visitor using links isn't going to see the result of you work. The visitor using a screen reader or mobile phone will be equally ignorant of your efforts.
These are user installed scripts, and this is the web not television. The folk visiting sites are not their passively, they're there to interact and if they want your site to function a little differently so it better fits with their expectations what rights do you have to stop them?
Sure, go up the west coast, visit Inverness and go loch for the Momnster:)
Take a trip over to Skye, going over the bridge on to Skye them come off on the ferry at the southern end of the isle, so you can really go over the sea to skye.
Channel 4 do many programmes that are at least as good as the BBC if not better.
Interesting example. A commercial model but another state broadcaster. Seems whatever way you look at it, companies run by the state produce better television.
SuSE: Gone and re-branded as Novel Linux Desktop. Now it's all tailored for business.
Strange, there was a link to this article on the front page of/. about two weeks ago. To quote
SuSE Linux Professional is geared for desktop computer tasks such as word processing, programming or playing digital videos. And Novell hopes Windows users wanting to breathe new life into older computers will be interested.
SuSE Linux Professional 9.3 also adds the Linphone software for voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP); the Firefox Web browser; and the F-Spot photo organizer software. And it comes with the latest versions of graphical interface software, Gnome 2.10 and KDE 3.4.
That doesn't sound all tailored for business - not that it's not suitable for business, but SuSE Pro remains a fantastic all round distro, with a guaranteed two year shelf life and a huge selection of packagaes. Novell have a preview of what will be included in SuSE 9.3 here
While it's connecting to POTS there's not a lot anyone can do, indeed I'm surprised this isn't already the case. However for computer to computer calls via SIP or one of the many other protocols encryption of the actual voice data should be possible.
That way, just like PGP or S/MIME encrypted email, they'll be able to see who you called and at what time, but not what you said.
Perhaps now is the time to make sure VoIP offerings can be easily encrypted - before they are taken up by the masses. If high grade opportunistic encryption was available it might jsut be used, whereas to trya nd introduce it retrospectively... well we all know how successful that has been with email.
With luck, other government agencies can force this position further. For example if you can't write in these formats, it emans Governemnts can't exchange doccuments for editing to anyone without effectively insisting they own a copy of Microsoft Office.If a governemnt organisation wishes to distribute a form to be completed, a spreadsheet to be filled in etc there are immediate problems.
Equally this still presents a roblem for QUANGOS. Non government organisations that perform the delegated work of governments will not be able to produce doccuments without restriction on which programs can read them. This could present huge confusion for end users who can't be expected to know where that blurry line between organisations lies.
I'd think both models have a future. I'm an avid subscriber to Real's Rhapsody (which incidently now mostly works on linux under wine). For $10 a month you can stream a pretty huge collection of music, but you don't store any of it locally. You can buy tracks for your portable music player for an additional fee.
Now lots of people aren't going to like that and I can see their reasons, but for me I work from home and don't drive. For $10 a month my music is almost always with me through my PC. Napster To Go takes this a bit further you can have your music anywhere as long as you have your music player, but for a slightly increased fee. Apple have a much more traditional model which some folk like the permanancy of - though personally I'd be frustrated at the cost of an album through iTunes being not much different than buying the CD in Walmart. Nonetheless, their sales levels show there's a healthy market out there.
What's important is that finally we have these models available to us - for so long we said the music industry has to respond if it's to stop downloads. Sure it's not perfect, indeed DRM has it's problems, Nonetheless, the ability to play almost half a million songs for a reasonable fee is a huge step there and shows what putting pressure on the industry can achieve. Now we need to keep up that pressure over file formats, DRM and proper open source access to our music.
There has to be a role here for ISPs. Often these machines are either spitting out spam or worms, yet abuse reports to ISPs can take days or weeks to receive any attention.
Home PC users do not need to generate traffic on port 25 that's going anywhere other than their ISP's mailserver. ISP mailservers should use SMTP authentication. Of course these simple measures would mean support calls from users who need to reconfigure Outlook, and support calls cost money, so it'll never happen.
Nonetheless, these companies are proffiting while user machines get hijacked. Someone needs to make a little bit of effort, 'cause for now spreading these nets wider is way too easy.
Slashdot Mirror
If these files are opened - really opened, Microsoft will have to compete on the basis of quality, price and by innovation.
The thing is, it's humble OSS programmers that have a tendency to think up new uses for things. They can develop quicker and launch quicker.
If true, OpenOffice should quickly have perfect read write of MS files. The challenge now is to come up with more innovative features so that not only can OO read and write the files you need, but it will be the product you actually want to use.
Yes and yes - however gig ethernet is now so cheap that it's doable on small-medium networks without really worrying about it. As long as you don't have 30 staff all starting at exactly 0800 you'll hardly notice it - and I've seen 5GB+ profiles.
Under UK law copyright infringement is a criminal offence - in other words, report it to the police and they are obliged to investigate.
So if the copyright holder were to let the police know of their concerns and supply some evidence, the company that authored the software could have an interesting visit.
Nonetheless, by the end of this year almost every home will have access to ADSL (there will be 100% coverage at the exchange level) and by next year these exchanges will all be capable of 8mbit connections
So I moved from a village of about 1,500 people in Scotland where they have a choice of dozens of ADSL suppliers, if you want cheap get cheap, if you want IPv6 pay a bit extra and get it, you want a static IP - tick.
Now I'm in a medium sized US city where I can get 1.5mbit for 50% more than in the UK and havea choice of two suppliers.
Sure there's government regulation of the phone companies in the UK - just as there is in the US, but the investment was done by BT, a privately listed firm.
I can only imagine the time and date are passed from the host PC - most printers don't know what time/date it is - at least on those I jsut glanced at I can't set it myself. Of course the network attached ones could have an NTP client but that'd be easily blocked at the firewall.
At least if you can make every printout say it happened three decades ago you don't need to worry about proving you were not in the office at the time the printout was made.
Seriously this means an excellent program in an area underserved on linux (vector graphics) will be available source and all.
But no one would ever shoot that sort of number of shots if they were shooting film - it's crazy. Digital cameras have created shot inflation in the wedding market. Folk advertise 300, 400 or 500 pictures in their wedding packages and the customers who don't know think that more is better.
It's not as if weddings days are fast moving affairs. So you're right, where this will shine is on things like overseas trips, safaris, and maybe even for photo journalists who might not know when they'll next be able to dump the files on their camera to a decent backup medium.
Most houses with VoIP probably still have their landline (for the DSL they use the VoIP over) plus the one, two or three family mobiles.
Yes,a 911 service needs to be established, though there should be some onus on governments to help here because it's an international problem. If I'm travelling with my laptop my VoIP number comes with me and knows not if I'm in the States, Canada or Europe. Why can't we click a world map to say where we are and give the operators a standard interface so 911 calls can go to the appropriate location?
And how exactly would you know this?
From the PGP FAQ:
Sure it is unlikely, but unless you have some way of proving what you say, it would be unwise to believe that no one can / will in the near future be able to crack or intercept your encrypted messages.Now I'll be shouting at folk not to leave their greasy fingerprints on my keyboard too!
Perhaps when Amazon name 500 of their patents that Open Source can use freely they too will be welcomed by OSS programmers.
Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but of course do not speak for them.
Perhaps then you can speak to someone who does and suggest this as a strategy. After all if the patents are only intended as a defence against bottom feeding lawyers, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain from friends in the OSS community.
It's true, PHP and MySQL both ahev great doccumentation. It's very complete, the examples are well laid out and commented but to learn a language from the on screen doccumentation?
I like to be able to lie with a book in bed, in the garden, on the bus, all the places I don't really want to be with a laptop.
When you're physically coding at the keyboard the online doccumentation is often the fastest way to look up a query, but you can really get a feel for something by spending time reading and understanding a book away from the keyboard. I guess that's why there's so much money to be made in writing computer books.
Their Office 2k3 XML format's 'may' have patents prohibiting their use in open source applications. Who's to bet the new RSS 'standard' will similarly be patented.
V2 is still available from the Rhapsody home page.
This has been tackled by the AGPL which will be upwards compatible with GPL v3 - in other words, GPL v3 will have a clause that requires release of the source code as soon as a program is used outside an organisation, not just when the program itself is distributed.
It will, I think, still be possible for an organisation to make changes to software that remains internal without releasing the changes. In other words, the distribution takes effect as soon as the program is made available for use to an outside party.
If that's really their intention it has huge implications. This could place a big burden on Open Source projects. If you develop something that is patentable, you'll have to patent it - otherwise that suggests someone else can take your invention, patent it then charge you to use it.
Picture A large WA based software company looking through the Linux kernel updates for patentable concepts then launching a law suit against the developer for using the thing!
But the web is about sending content to the user - it's up to the user how they want to display it. Unles you're supplying a locked down PC with your own browser configuration you have absolutely no control over what the end user does with the content you send, or how they interpret it.
Sure you can send CSS to the broser, but your visitor using links isn't going to see the result of you work. The visitor using a screen reader or mobile phone will be equally ignorant of your efforts.
These are user installed scripts, and this is the web not television. The folk visiting sites are not their passively, they're there to interact and if they want your site to function a little differently so it better fits with their expectations what rights do you have to stop them?
Take a trip over to Skye, going over the bridge on to Skye them come off on the ferry at the southern end of the isle, so you can really go over the sea to skye.
Have fun and enjoy the whisky.
Interesting example. A commercial model but another state broadcaster. Seems whatever way you look at it, companies run by the state produce better television.
Strange, there was a link to this article on the front page of /. about two weeks ago. To quote
That doesn't sound all tailored for business - not that it's not suitable for business, but SuSE Pro remains a fantastic all round distro, with a guaranteed two year shelf life and a huge selection of packagaes. Novell have a preview of what will be included in SuSE 9.3 hereThat way, just like PGP or S/MIME encrypted email, they'll be able to see who you called and at what time, but not what you said.
Perhaps now is the time to make sure VoIP offerings can be easily encrypted - before they are taken up by the masses. If high grade opportunistic encryption was available it might jsut be used, whereas to trya nd introduce it retrospectively... well we all know how successful that has been with email.
Equally this still presents a roblem for QUANGOS. Non government organisations that perform the delegated work of governments will not be able to produce doccuments without restriction on which programs can read them. This could present huge confusion for end users who can't be expected to know where that blurry line between organisations lies.
Now lots of people aren't going to like that and I can see their reasons, but for me I work from home and don't drive. For $10 a month my music is almost always with me through my PC. Napster To Go takes this a bit further you can have your music anywhere as long as you have your music player, but for a slightly increased fee. Apple have a much more traditional model which some folk like the permanancy of - though personally I'd be frustrated at the cost of an album through iTunes being not much different than buying the CD in Walmart. Nonetheless, their sales levels show there's a healthy market out there.
What's important is that finally we have these models available to us - for so long we said the music industry has to respond if it's to stop downloads. Sure it's not perfect, indeed DRM has it's problems, Nonetheless, the ability to play almost half a million songs for a reasonable fee is a huge step there and shows what putting pressure on the industry can achieve. Now we need to keep up that pressure over file formats, DRM and proper open source access to our music.
Home PC users do not need to generate traffic on port 25 that's going anywhere other than their ISP's mailserver. ISP mailservers should use SMTP authentication. Of course these simple measures would mean support calls from users who need to reconfigure Outlook, and support calls cost money, so it'll never happen.
Nonetheless, these companies are proffiting while user machines get hijacked. Someone needs to make a little bit of effort, 'cause for now spreading these nets wider is way too easy.