The first person who loses his job because of a database or connectivity problem keeping him from gassing up on the way to work should be able to sue those who came up with this INDIVIDUALLY.
As I understand it there are big differences between employment practices and customs between the UK and the US. In the UK it would be highly unlikely for someone to loose a job over being late for work or even missing a whole day of work if such a situation was to occur. There'll also more than likely be an over-ride for the pump operator (such as for legally filling petrol cans or car's once an issue had been resolved with a few phone calls). The system will also more than likely be able to be deactivated should there be connectivity problems.
Personally I'm all for it. Vehicle Tax, MOT and insurance are legally mandated in the UK, the small minority that flout the laws cause plenty of grief for those that end up involved in accidents with those that don't have insurance (or safe vehicles) and drive up the cost for the majority who play be the rules.
If the members of your team are globally distributed, I'd drop conference calls for many decision-making meetings. Whilst you may have staff that are happy to partake in a conference call at 7pm local time, they will get frustrated with not being as fresh as others where the meeting is being held at 10am their time. For those that are tired, having already worked a full working day, it will prove very difficult for them to efficiently express their side of an argument. Look at how the open source community solve this - discussions are carried out over a number of days via email, with plenty of time available for each contributor to reply and formulate their answers.
The same law that is being proposed to disconnect individuals is coming under fire from the British library (among many others) as it will leave them quite exposed. What if the libraries decide that internet access isn't worth the risk?
"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us." - Alexander Graham Bell
It seems the post office are one of the few places that have found another open door rather than litigating to have the closed door forced open.
"The MemoryManager, WebKit and Reindeer components are covered by the Nokia BSD license. The WebCore and JavaScriptCore components are covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The Netscape Plug-in API is a ported version of the open source plug-in interface from Netscape Communications Corporation, which is covered by the Netscape Public License v1.1."
It seems that ISPs are getting greedy, not only in America, I hear that one ISP in Germany has been banding about the same idea.
As far as I'm concerned it's wrong. I pay for broadband, a connection through which I can send and receive data. Google no doubt pays for it's connection at it's end, including the data it sends and receives. I want to have access to any point on the internet as fast as possible. If they have a problem because people are transmitting and receiving "too much data" for their networks to cope with, then they should increase the capacity of their networks.
I hear that there's quite a bit of dark fiber about, they should start using it. If that means that they need to put their prices up, so be it, I'll have to reconcider who I use as an ISP. If it means that I have to pay more for the uncapped connection I'll either have to put up with it or concider what level of cap I can keep within.
As a side issue - maybe this is why Google are buying up some of that dark fiber. It will allow them to lower the number of hops data needs to do on the internet between them and the client and thus potentially speed up search results...
Yeah, saw a demo of this a while back. I'm not holding my breath. Solidworks seems tied into the windows platform. For example, similar parts can be described by creating a basic part and specifying dimensions in a spreadsheet, the spreadsheet app is excel. I can't remember any other specifics, it was a few years ago, I can remember feeling a little depressed when I looked for comparable apps (even proprietary) that would run on Linux and provide similar features.
I'm guessing without a way to "time" pings received, there's no easy way to validate your position.
It is likely that rather than "pinging" the landmarks it is often sufficent to list those points which you are within range of and which you aren't. Even better is to provide Signal Strength information about each landmark. Iterative solution algoithms can then be used to approximate location to a good degree of accuracy based on this information.
GPS + realtime traffic heuristics could offer faster escape routes during evacuations, or better gas mileage by avoiding idle periods.
GPS is nice, however it suffers in heavily built up/covered areas (such as cities and woods) due to relections and attenuation of signals. GPS really falls down indoors - it usually completely stops working. I think this work is largely targeted towards context aware/ubiquitous computing
I accidentally put my pen drive through the washing machine. Then the tumble dryer. It was lovely and dry when it came out, but the USB plug had been broken off the board.
Quick soldering job later and I plugged it in, to find all my data intact.
Definitely more robust than a floppy disk. Comparatively, looking at them in the wrong way was enough to corrupt them at times.
Bought one solely for it's ability to play OGG. OK, it's not as flashy as the ipod, but the docking station does have an ethernet port and the device has it's own webserver, with downloadable java app for uploading and downloading files.
It also will work (via ethernet) with Mac and Linux.
Unfortunately, in their infinite wisdom, Rio have stopped producing it (or are winding down production). Though there are still units available in stores.
Re:Talking out both sides of out mouths.
on
Pepping Up Windows
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· Score: 1
It's one thing to point out some nifty FOSS apps to people that may not have heard of them. It's an entirely another thing to jump on the anti-MS bandwagon and claim that this functionality should have been included in the OS.
I don't think that is what is being suggested at all. Microsoft sees fit to include a whole host of apps in with its OS, most of them are willfully inadequate for anything but light use. Some of the apps have such bad security records that it may be better if they weren't included at all. OK, it could be problematic for some if they weren't included, all that having to install an email client or use what was bundled with the PC when it was bought or what came on that AOL CD when they got broadband. It might however have spared the rest of us having to deal with the quantity of spam or the bandwidth drain of all those zombied machines trying to find other targets.
"Open Office was perfectly free to make their own document format"
In a way they did. OpenOffice.org 1.x has it's own XML based format, which was offered to OASIS as the starting point from which the OpenDocument Format was derived. This has since (AFAIK) superseded the original format for OpenOffice.org 2.x.
"but everyone know the standard is the Word 2000 format"
A widely used format - yes, proprietary standard - yes. An open standard - no. If it was I would be able to get a specification on how to interpret the contents of a.doc file. If this was the case, opensource projects would not have to reverse engineer the file format. If anything OpenDocument is the closest thing to a true standard, even if it isn't as widely used as words format.
"Since the word 2000 format isn't encumbered by copyright or patent"
Any Microsoft internal documents describing the file format (if they exist) will definitely be copyrighted, as will any code that has been written by them to write, read data from the format. Unless it is explicitly placed in the public domain code is copyrighted. The format cannot be explicitly copyrighted as such, though portions of it may be protected by patents. Whether these patents are enforced/owned by Microsoft is a different matter. It could however be classed as a trade secret.
every other companie(sic) that does word processing has found a way to output to.doc
Yes - it's called interoperatability, 20th century style.
"Compare and contrast with AOL instant messenger" Blah, blah, blah
I can't see much of a contrast. Both are proprietary standards that have been reversed engineered by some and possibly others have paid AOL/microsoft to provide them with specs. Both parties change there format/protocol which, whether on purpose or not, breaks interoperatability with those that reverse engineered the protocol. Neither to my knowledge has published there protocols/formats as a standard. As for IM hell, if you want to talk to people using different IMs thats the price you have to pay. Either that or pick one and try and get other people to use it, preferably an open standard such as jabber.
"Standards are easy, as long as everyone is free to implement the proprietary formats of everyone else."
Unfortunately in the real world companies tend to want to keep there proprietary formats secret to lock people into their software. Generally the only way of getting at these formats is through reverse engineering, which takes time, skill and is done by trial and error.
"Markets get to set them and enforce them, but everyone gets to benefit from them."
Nice fiction. People create formats, an open market may or may not eventually converge on a format. It may just remain with a number of competing formats much to the annoyance of everyone just trying to share data. Companies try to get as many people as possible using their formats as it increases their revenue. The companies/groups with the most widely used formats benefit. Others benefit from using these formats as they can share data. Others who use other formats or unable to use them, for many reasons, loose out. Not everyone gets to benefit from them. Not everyone gets to benefit from open standards, but they attempt to increase the percentage of people that can benefit from them.
Until they become mom and pop and angsty teen children (or grandchildren) computers, and then they need to be able to run World of Warcraft.
At which point a copy of World of Warcraft is purchased, along with a copy of Cedega (Formally TransGaming WineX). It is installed for them in the same manner the OS was and life goes on
I too have been using Mandrake/Mandriva for years now. I use it at work, home and on my laptop. I currently have 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2 running on each machine respectively.
My parents are using 10.0, my sister 9.2 (Should really get arround to updating that machine) as is my Gran.
None of them ever have much of a problem.
My sister sometimes phones me to ask about the best piece of software for her to use to get something done - usually I've already installed it or I can guide her through installation FROM THE COMMAND PROMPT. Why from the command prompt? Because I can get her to relay anything that pops up on the screen down the phone in a consistent manner and no, it's neither that problematic for her or a lengthy process even though she doesn't know much about the PC, beyond how to use the apps she needs to.
My Gran has a very cut down desktop - she uses email, writes and prints out the odd letter. She very rarely has a problem and I have taught my father how to run Mandrake Update to ensure her system is patched (OK, she has a really old version now, but it also doesn't spend that much of it's time on let alone on the web using dialup).
My parents are happy with Linux and OpenOffice for the things they need to do. My Mum is even getting to be a bit of a Linux/OpenOffice evangelist, because it works for her and it's free.
I like you spend a little time every so often trying different distros. I also tend to use different distros for different jobs, my server runs Debian stable, I currently have a smoothwall firewall.
Mandrake has come on leaps and bounds on the desktop, bluetooth has worked the almost the instant I plugged in the USB bluetooth adapter in since 10.0. All the hardware in my laptop and desktop machines work.
I think the problem the Great Grand Parent had was his choice of distribution. Hell, Debian stable even has a version of bugzilla all packaged up and ready to go!
I think they switched to StarOffice, hang on I'll just check in the article again...
Ah ha, a little detective work has confimed that they switched to StarOffice.
It really doesn't supprise me that they didn't gain any advantage they were still running windows on the desktop. The most sucessful open source switches have moved to thin-clients connecting to a Linux terminal server. This gets the actual desktop machines to appliance like status, they can be swapped out when they go wrong without any lost information - all accounts and work reside on centralised/partially centralised servers...
The purpose is to port linux to yet another platform. This will allow next generation of embedded system using similar hardware to utilise linux. Which in turn will hopefully lead to the next big thing running linux.
It's about minimising the work required to build a system using linux and also allows a group of individuals to gain a shed load of experience in embedded system design, again with linux.
So it's not overly novel, but the exposure will no doubt help bring together a group of individuals that will make it as successful as possible...
An exporter attempts to map your features to the format it's exporting to. Someone with access to the internal documentation (if there is any) of the app has a greater chance of correctly mapping features against the open format and thus loosing as little as possible.
The Open Document Format is different from the original openoffice document format, though the Open Document Format is to be used by default (AFAIK) in OO.o ver.2. It is also to be used by Koffice and Abiword.
Yes there are problems with conversion, information and clarity is lost in most conversions, however they are sometimes necessary.
The university probably have an obligation to ensure all members of the university can use the services they buy in to and probably also have an obligation to ensure that the deal is fair for the students. As a result they were required to go for a provider which catered for windows, Mac and Linux. The popular providers don't do this and worse they wrap all there files in DRM. DRMed music files would no doubt increase support calls from not technical students to the universities help desk, all those students whose old computers have died and who have managed to copy there music across, only to find that it won't play...(or similar - I guess this is the case, I don't have any DRMed music.)
Mindawn don't carry popular music, but this is probably more because the record labels are unwilling to provide mindawn with them in a suitable form for them to sell (ie. allow them to sell them as unDRMed ogg vorbis files at $0.99).
I think that by choosing Mindawn UC is covering there back, whilst at the same time sending a message to the record labels that they want them to provide music at reasonable price, in an OS agnostic manner, without DRM.
I'm sure this deal won't stop the UC pupils from getting itunes accounts and grabbing all the utter shite pop they want, but at least the university aren't bank-rolling this.
Slashdot Mirror
The first person who loses his job because of a database or connectivity problem keeping him from gassing up on the way to work should be able to sue those who came up with this INDIVIDUALLY.
As I understand it there are big differences between employment practices and customs between the UK and the US. In the UK it would be highly unlikely for someone to loose a job over being late for work or even missing a whole day of work if such a situation was to occur. There'll also more than likely be an over-ride for the pump operator (such as for legally filling petrol cans or car's once an issue had been resolved with a few phone calls). The system will also more than likely be able to be deactivated should there be connectivity problems.
Personally I'm all for it. Vehicle Tax, MOT and insurance are legally mandated in the UK, the small minority that flout the laws cause plenty of grief for those that end up involved in accidents with those that don't have insurance (or safe vehicles) and drive up the cost for the majority who play be the rules.
If the members of your team are globally distributed, I'd drop conference calls for many decision-making meetings. Whilst you may have staff that are happy to partake in a conference call at 7pm local time, they will get frustrated with not being as fresh as others where the meeting is being held at 10am their time. For those that are tired, having already worked a full working day, it will prove very difficult for them to efficiently express their side of an argument. Look at how the open source community solve this - discussions are carried out over a number of days via email, with plenty of time available for each contributor to reply and formulate their answers.
The same law that is being proposed to disconnect individuals is coming under fire from the British library (among many others) as it will leave them quite exposed. What if the libraries decide that internet access isn't worth the risk?
Is there a good reason to switch the family to Linux, other than for ideological reasons?
Um, how about cost?
"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."
- Alexander Graham Bell
It seems the post office are one of the few places that have found another open door rather than litigating to have the closed door forced open.
From http://wiki.opendarwin.org/index.php/S60Webkit:
"The MemoryManager, WebKit and Reindeer components are covered by the Nokia BSD license. The WebCore and JavaScriptCore components are covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). The Netscape Plug-in API is a ported version of the open source plug-in interface from Netscape Communications Corporation, which is covered by the Netscape Public License v1.1."
Doesn't really interest me. Had to configure OS X for my GF's mother, lost the appeal after that.
It seems that ISPs are getting greedy, not only in America, I hear that one ISP in Germany has been banding about the same idea.
As far as I'm concerned it's wrong. I pay for broadband, a connection through which I can send and receive data. Google no doubt pays for it's connection at it's end, including the data it sends and receives. I want to have access to any point on the internet as fast as possible. If they have a problem because people are transmitting and receiving "too much data" for their networks to cope with, then they should increase the capacity of their networks.
I hear that there's quite a bit of dark fiber about, they should start using it. If that means that they need to put their prices up, so be it, I'll have to reconcider who I use as an ISP. If it means that I have to pay more for the uncapped connection I'll either have to put up with it or concider what level of cap I can keep within.
As a side issue - maybe this is why Google are buying up some of that dark fiber. It will allow them to lower the number of hops data needs to do on the internet between them and the client and thus potentially speed up search results...
to welcome the WTO onto the axis of evil.
Welcome.
"Personally, I'd like to see SolidWorks ported."
Yeah, saw a demo of this a while back. I'm not holding my breath. Solidworks seems tied into the windows platform. For example, similar parts can be described by creating a basic part and specifying dimensions in a spreadsheet, the spreadsheet app is excel. I can't remember any other specifics, it was a few years ago, I can remember feeling a little depressed when I looked for comparable apps (even proprietary) that would run on Linux and provide similar features.
Wankers.
Current main page:
5 Microsoft related articles.
1(this one) Apple related article.
It is likely that rather than "pinging" the landmarks it is often sufficent to list those points which you are within range of and which you aren't. Even better is to provide Signal Strength information about each landmark. Iterative solution algoithms can then be used to approximate location to a good degree of accuracy based on this information.
GPS is nice, however it suffers in heavily built up/covered areas (such as cities and woods) due to relections and attenuation of signals. GPS really falls down indoors - it usually completely stops working. I think this work is largely targeted towards context aware/ubiquitous computing
You are correct.
I accidentally put my pen drive through the washing machine. Then the tumble dryer. It was lovely and dry when it came out, but the USB plug had been broken off the board.
Quick soldering job later and I plugged it in, to find all my data intact.
Definitely more robust than a floppy disk. Comparatively, looking at them in the wrong way was enough to corrupt them at times.
Yup, the Rio Karma.
Bought one solely for it's ability to play OGG. OK, it's not as flashy as the ipod, but the docking station does have an ethernet port and the device has it's own webserver, with downloadable java app for uploading and downloading files.
It also will work (via ethernet) with Mac and Linux.
Unfortunately, in their infinite wisdom, Rio have stopped producing it (or are winding down production). Though there are still units available in stores.
I don't think that is what is being suggested at all. Microsoft sees fit to include a whole host of apps in with its OS, most of them are willfully inadequate for anything but light use. Some of the apps have such bad security records that it may be better if they weren't included at all. OK, it could be problematic for some if they weren't included, all that having to install an email client or use what was bundled with the PC when it was bought or what came on that AOL CD when they got broadband. It might however have spared the rest of us having to deal with the quantity of spam or the bandwidth drain of all those zombied machines trying to find other targets.
What are you babbling on about!
"Open Office was perfectly free to make their own document format"
In a way they did. OpenOffice.org 1.x has it's own XML based format, which was offered to OASIS as the starting point from which the OpenDocument Format was derived. This has since (AFAIK) superseded the original format for OpenOffice.org 2.x.
"but everyone know the standard is the Word 2000 format"
A widely used format - yes, proprietary standard - yes. An open standard - no. If it was I would be able to get a specification on how to interpret the contents of a .doc file. If this was the case, opensource projects would not have to reverse engineer the file format. If anything OpenDocument is the closest thing to a true standard, even if it isn't as widely used as words format.
"Since the word 2000 format isn't encumbered by copyright or patent"
Any Microsoft internal documents describing the file format (if they exist) will definitely be copyrighted, as will any code that has been written by them to write, read data from the format. Unless it is explicitly placed in the public domain code is copyrighted. The format cannot be explicitly copyrighted as such, though portions of it may be protected by patents. Whether these patents are enforced/owned by Microsoft is a different matter. It could however be classed as a trade secret.
every other companie(sic) that does word processing has found a way to output to .doc
Yes - it's called interoperatability, 20th century style.
It is effectively an open standard.
No, it's a proprietary standard that is widely used. This is not the same as an open standard
"Compare and contrast with AOL instant messenger" Blah, blah, blah
I can't see much of a contrast. Both are proprietary standards that have been reversed engineered by some and possibly others have paid AOL/microsoft to provide them with specs. Both parties change there format/protocol which, whether on purpose or not, breaks interoperatability with those that reverse engineered the protocol. Neither to my knowledge has published there protocols/formats as a standard. As for IM hell, if you want to talk to people using different IMs thats the price you have to pay. Either that or pick one and try and get other people to use it, preferably an open standard such as jabber.
"Standards are easy, as long as everyone is free to implement the proprietary formats of everyone else."
Unfortunately in the real world companies tend to want to keep there proprietary formats secret to lock people into their software. Generally the only way of getting at these formats is through reverse engineering, which takes time, skill and is done by trial and error.
"Markets get to set them and enforce them, but everyone gets to benefit from them."
Nice fiction. People create formats, an open market may or may not eventually converge on a format. It may just remain with a number of competing formats much to the annoyance of everyone just trying to share data. Companies try to get as many people as possible using their formats as it increases their revenue. The companies/groups with the most widely used formats benefit. Others benefit from using these formats as they can share data. Others who use other formats or unable to use them, for many reasons, loose out. Not everyone gets to benefit from them. Not everyone gets to benefit from open standards, but they attempt to increase the percentage of people that can benefit from them.
At which point a copy of World of Warcraft is purchased, along with a copy of Cedega (Formally TransGaming WineX). It is installed for them in the same manner the OS was and life goes on
I too have been using Mandrake/Mandriva for years now. I use it at work, home and on my laptop. I currently have 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2 running on each machine respectively.
My parents are using 10.0, my sister 9.2 (Should really get arround to updating that machine) as is my Gran.
None of them ever have much of a problem.
My sister sometimes phones me to ask about the best piece of software for her to use to get something done - usually I've already installed it or I can guide her through installation FROM THE COMMAND PROMPT. Why from the command prompt? Because I can get her to relay anything that pops up on the screen down the phone in a consistent manner and no, it's neither that problematic for her or a lengthy process even though she doesn't know much about the PC, beyond how to use the apps she needs to.
My Gran has a very cut down desktop - she uses email, writes and prints out the odd letter. She very rarely has a problem and I have taught my father how to run Mandrake Update to ensure her system is patched (OK, she has a really old version now, but it also doesn't spend that much of it's time on let alone on the web using dialup).
My parents are happy with Linux and OpenOffice for the things they need to do. My Mum is even getting to be a bit of a Linux/OpenOffice evangelist, because it works for her and it's free.
I like you spend a little time every so often trying different distros. I also tend to use different distros for different jobs, my server runs Debian stable, I currently have a smoothwall firewall.
Mandrake has come on leaps and bounds on the desktop, bluetooth has worked the almost the instant I plugged in the USB bluetooth adapter in since 10.0. All the hardware in my laptop and desktop machines work.
I think the problem the Great Grand Parent had was his choice of distribution. Hell, Debian stable even has a version of bugzilla all packaged up and ready to go!
Mirrordot.org : Lazy Click Here.
I think they switched to StarOffice, hang on I'll just check in the article again...
Ah ha, a little detective work has confimed that they switched to StarOffice.
It really doesn't supprise me that they didn't gain any advantage they were still running windows on the desktop. The most sucessful open source switches have moved to thin-clients connecting to a Linux terminal server. This gets the actual desktop machines to appliance like status, they can be swapped out when they go wrong without any lost information - all accounts and work reside on centralised/partially centralised servers...
The purpose is to port linux to yet another platform. This will allow next generation of embedded system using similar hardware to utilise linux. Which in turn will hopefully lead to the next big thing running linux.
It's about minimising the work required to build a system using linux and also allows a group of individuals to gain a shed load of experience in embedded system design, again with linux.
So it's not overly novel, but the exposure will no doubt help bring together a group of individuals that will make it as successful as possible...
No an exporter is the point.
An exporter attempts to map your features to the format it's exporting to. Someone with access to the internal documentation (if there is any) of the app has a greater chance of correctly mapping features against the open format and thus loosing as little as possible.
The Open Document Format is different from the original openoffice document format, though the Open Document Format is to be used by default (AFAIK) in OO.o ver.2. It is also to be used by Koffice and Abiword.
Yes there are problems with conversion, information and clarity is lost in most conversions, however they are sometimes necessary.
I think this is a very good move by UC.
The university probably have an obligation to ensure all members of the university can use the services they buy in to and probably also have an obligation to ensure that the deal is fair for the students. As a result they were required to go for a provider which catered for windows, Mac and Linux. The popular providers don't do this and worse they wrap all there files in DRM. DRMed music files would no doubt increase support calls from not technical students to the universities help desk, all those students whose old computers have died and who have managed to copy there music across, only to find that it won't play...(or similar - I guess this is the case, I don't have any DRMed music.)
Mindawn don't carry popular music, but this is probably more because the record labels are unwilling to provide mindawn with them in a suitable form for them to sell (ie. allow them to sell them as unDRMed ogg vorbis files at $0.99).
I think that by choosing Mindawn UC is covering there back, whilst at the same time sending a message to the record labels that they want them to provide music at reasonable price, in an OS agnostic manner, without DRM.
I'm sure this deal won't stop the UC pupils from getting itunes accounts and grabbing all the utter shite pop they want, but at least the university aren't bank-rolling this.