"The report says reliance on voluntary industry standards meant that many problems were simply not addressed."
I just wonder if the industries in general are self-regulating themselves as well as this when it comes to environmental issues and maintaining fair competition in the markets.
I think it's a typo. It's not longhorn, but lower horn.
Lrrr: "Interesting. The trousers conceal a tiny secondary horn."
Fry: "Hey, what've you heard?"
Lrrr: "Guards, seize him! Prepare to harvest the lower horn."
Hold on there. What you're doing there is arguing for software patents - that one should be able to own an idea.
It's kind of sad that the free software advocates sometimes get so carried off by their pathological hatred for Microsoft and corporations that they don't see that they're about to become "the enemy" themselves.
Free is free. If you start to restrict the use and availability of your code by requiring the release of any modifications to the public, it's not free code anymore - no matter what RMS says.
if you don't mind lots of extremely sick people on board (soldiers are supposed to be tough, right?)
Well, you just feed them enough anti-emetics before the trip. I suppose the modern versions don't make one drowsy anymore. During WW2 allied air- and seaborne troops were often given anti-nausea meds to such extent that they kept falling asleep (prior to combat, of course).
I've always wanted to see a HUD projected on a car windshield - just like they've got in fighter jets. If the HUD shows against a bright sky, it should work on a car windshield too.
Separate modes for day and nightvision with complete overlapping information like speed, direction, GPS etc...
If you'd make your case simply "It's the right thing to do" that would definitely not convince me - in fact, such argumentation would only aggravate me. It smells like an ideological argument.
If you could demonstrate that installing/upgrading from the source results in a quantifiable improvent in maintenance or performance over a pure binary distribution, I would consider it. If there are no existing reliable benchmarks, but you'd make a good case, perhaps I'd let you turn your own workstation into a demonstration system.
Anything else. No way. If it works, don't mess with it.
I run Gentoo at home and, while updating with "emerge" is kind of nice, I've yet to find any compelling reasons why it'd be better than up2date or apt-get. There really are no measurable performance or reliability advantages.
Agreed. I'd just like to subscribe to Discovery and History Channel and I might even pay-per-view for high-end Formula 1 coverage or stuff like Sopranos or Band of Brothers but no. It's either a package deal of mostly-crap channels I'd never watch or no deal at all.
On a similar note, I've just got to wonder about the digital TV and how it's being crammed down our throats.
Where I live the transition to digital TV is supposed to be over by 2008 when the last of the analog channels is scheduled to be taken off the air.
The only problem the corporations (and the government who fully backs the digitization) have is that the consumers aren't really buying into the digi-tv thing. Ok, so we would get an order of magnitude more channels but so what? There isn't enough quality or even mediocre stuff for the existing dozens of analog channels. Moreover, consumer organizations have also succeeded in getting the message about how the fair use is in danger ("What? I can't videotape my programs anymore?!") if everything goes digital and according to the plans.
For once (OK, the big stinking "no thanks!" to G3 was another sweet moment) I am actually impressed by what the watchdog organizations and the mere consumers have already achieved: they're not even trying to sell the digi-tv anymore; the ads have become almost desperate pleas and/or threats recently.
You might not believe it but that's a major reason. I don't know about you but arguments like "You get what you pay for", "There's no such thing as a free lunch" and "It's free if you consider your own time [setting up the system] worthless" tend to be rather convincing.
And I'm sure there will be an option to disable it in that bios. And when that option disappears, Macs and their OpenFirmware will look very attractive.
Attractive to whom?
The majority of people using computers? Hardly. If the software they run (like Windows, for instance, or media players) doesn't either work or work poorly without DRM you can bet that they'll find DRM bios more attractive.
Ahh, and can they use them for free for the rest of their career, asks a 47 year old TeX/LaTex user.
In theory? Probably not legally.
In practise? Yes, unless they're running a business and are susceptible to BSA audits, in which case they really should buy a legit copy. In fact, when they graduate, they really should be able to afford a new, personal Office license as well.
So, no problems unless you consider someone paying for software a problem.
I would also like to add, that in my personal experience even novices have little trouble understanding Tex or Latex commands.
Perhaps, if you're willing to restrict yourself to the use of boring default styles like "article".
MS Word does not handle book-sized documents very well at all, our are your PhD students just writting short stories for a creative writing class rather than a thesis?
Well, I wrote my PhD thesis in Word years ago and never had much trouble with it. Of course, I split the document into separate chapter files but from what I've seen that's pretty much what LaTeX users do as well. After it was finished, I just printed it out as PS and took it to the university press.
These days I (and the students as well before they write their thesis) mostly write manuscripts to journals. The manuscripts typically consist of 10-40 pages of double spaced-wide margin text with equations, tables, references and figures.
It's pretty easy to overlay your notes over a PS or DVI, notes written in your favorite text editor, WYSIWYG editor or paint program.
Uh... I'm not sure if I'm following you here. It's not just a question of overlaying the notes.
I want to be able to type in my changes directly into the electronic document. It's like modifying someone's source code. You can do it by printing the code out as PDF and making overlay notes on it, or you can modify the code directly and propose changes using a version control system with which you two can track the changes. I think the former way is a much more cumbersome way of doing modifications. Why not edit the source directly if you have it available?
a) My handwriting is incomprehensible to most other people.
b) There's never enough space in margins or in between the double spaced lines.
c) I like to play with the words - I can't do that on paper.
There are rules for typesetting documents. TeX (and by extension, LaTeX) uses those rules.
So the standard, boring "letter" and "article" styles that just scream out: "THIS DOCUMENT WAS TYPESET IN LATEX!" are the rule and we shouldn't deviate from them?
This is not the job of a word processor.
Says who? The same guys who made "the rules"? Whose job is it?
MS Word tracks changes just fine. The student sends me his draft, I type in the changes I propose which the student can see alongside with the original text, he modifies the text, sends it to me, I check out the changes and so on. Works perfectly.
Slashdot Mirror
Was the front page filled with Jon Katz posts or something worse?
I just wonder if the industries in general are self-regulating themselves as well as this when it comes to environmental issues and maintaining fair competition in the markets.
I fear not.
Lrrr: "Interesting. The trousers conceal a tiny secondary horn."
Fry: "Hey, what've you heard?"
Lrrr: "Guards, seize him! Prepare to harvest the lower horn."
It's kind of sad that the free software advocates sometimes get so carried off by their pathological hatred for Microsoft and corporations that they don't see that they're about to become "the enemy" themselves.
Free is free. If you start to restrict the use and availability of your code by requiring the release of any modifications to the public, it's not free code anymore - no matter what RMS says.
Looks surprisingly unwieldy for an ultra-modern rifle. Or is it still just a demo version?
Well, you just feed them enough anti-emetics before the trip. I suppose the modern versions don't make one drowsy anymore. During WW2 allied air- and seaborne troops were often given anti-nausea meds to such extent that they kept falling asleep (prior to combat, of course).
You must be new to the internet.
It's already being done - under the control of treaties signed to by nation states.
Why can't we run the internet in the same way?
I have not indeed read it. I never got past the Vogon silliness.
Separate modes for day and nightvision with complete overlapping information like speed, direction, GPS etc...
Please tell me that's not a real profession but something you made up for the joke?
Yeah, right.
I remember those things from the 80s - never stopped C64 game sharing.
If you could demonstrate that installing/upgrading from the source results in a quantifiable improvent in maintenance or performance over a pure binary distribution, I would consider it. If there are no existing reliable benchmarks, but you'd make a good case, perhaps I'd let you turn your own workstation into a demonstration system.
Anything else. No way. If it works, don't mess with it.
I run Gentoo at home and, while updating with "emerge" is kind of nice, I've yet to find any compelling reasons why it'd be better than up2date or apt-get. There really are no measurable performance or reliability advantages.
On a similar note, I've just got to wonder about the digital TV and how it's being crammed down our throats.
Where I live the transition to digital TV is supposed to be over by 2008 when the last of the analog channels is scheduled to be taken off the air.
The only problem the corporations (and the government who fully backs the digitization) have is that the consumers aren't really buying into the digi-tv thing. Ok, so we would get an order of magnitude more channels but so what? There isn't enough quality or even mediocre stuff for the existing dozens of analog channels. Moreover, consumer organizations have also succeeded in getting the message about how the fair use is in danger ("What? I can't videotape my programs anymore?!") if everything goes digital and according to the plans.
For once (OK, the big stinking "no thanks!" to G3 was another sweet moment) I am actually impressed by what the watchdog organizations and the mere consumers have already achieved: they're not even trying to sell the digi-tv anymore; the ads have become almost desperate pleas and/or threats recently.
Maybe, just maybe there is still hope.
"We have seen too many bodybags and buckyballsacks"
Wasn't that the velocity given by the Pegasus-booster?
I thought the scram jet was then supposed to separate from the booster and reach speeds up to Mach 7?
You might not believe it but that's a major reason. I don't know about you but arguments like "You get what you pay for", "There's no such thing as a free lunch" and "It's free if you consider your own time [setting up the system] worthless" tend to be rather convincing.
So what happened?
Attractive to whom?
The majority of people using computers? Hardly. If the software they run (like Windows, for instance, or media players) doesn't either work or work poorly without DRM you can bet that they'll find DRM bios more attractive.
In theory? Probably not legally.
In practise? Yes, unless they're running a business and are susceptible to BSA audits, in which case they really should buy a legit copy. In fact, when they graduate, they really should be able to afford a new, personal Office license as well.
So, no problems unless you consider someone paying for software a problem.
I would also like to add, that in my personal experience even novices have little trouble understanding Tex or Latex commands.
Perhaps, if you're willing to restrict yourself to the use of boring default styles like "article".
Which brings us back to my first gripe which was the necessity of having to learn a programming language to prepare documents.
Well, I wrote my PhD thesis in Word years ago and never had much trouble with it. Of course, I split the document into separate chapter files but from what I've seen that's pretty much what LaTeX users do as well. After it was finished, I just printed it out as PS and took it to the university press.
These days I (and the students as well before they write their thesis) mostly write manuscripts to journals. The manuscripts typically consist of 10-40 pages of double spaced-wide margin text with equations, tables, references and figures.
It's pretty easy to overlay your notes over a PS or DVI, notes written in your favorite text editor, WYSIWYG editor or paint program.
Uh... I'm not sure if I'm following you here. It's not just a question of overlaying the notes.
I want to be able to type in my changes directly into the electronic document. It's like modifying someone's source code. You can do it by printing the code out as PDF and making overlay notes on it, or you can modify the code directly and propose changes using a version control system with which you two can track the changes. I think the former way is a much more cumbersome way of doing modifications. Why not edit the source directly if you have it available?
Most students here are directly subsidized by the government. That's out of my pocket too.
I consider it money well spent.
a) My handwriting is incomprehensible to most other people.
b) There's never enough space in margins or in between the double spaced lines.
c) I like to play with the words - I can't do that on paper.
So the standard, boring "letter" and "article" styles that just scream out: "THIS DOCUMENT WAS TYPESET IN LATEX!" are the rule and we shouldn't deviate from them?
This is not the job of a word processor.
Says who? The same guys who made "the rules"? Whose job is it?
MS Word tracks changes just fine. The student sends me his draft, I type in the changes I propose which the student can see alongside with the original text, he modifies the text, sends it to me, I check out the changes and so on. Works perfectly.