Since this entire argument is about computer stored files, anyone without a computer is pretty damn SOL. Maybe we should store all the data on paper. In Esperanto. After all, that's the official universal language, right?
That is exactly one of the points of the Peruvian and Argentinian arguments against proprietary software. If they are going to be running their government on-line, then every citizen must have access. Thus, every citizen must have access to a computer capable of communicating with the government software. Thus, if the government wants to run itself on-line, it has to provide these computers.
It is much, much cheaper for the Peruvian government to set out terminals running free software than running Office XP.
The point is, the Peruvian government isn't going to make 90% of its people buy Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, and neither should the United States government. As more and more government services are offered on-line, is it fair to continue distributing those services in Microsoft Word format? Or is it more fair to ensure that the format is open, so that free software can be used?
Wow, way to take things out of context!
That is the context we are talking about. Specifically, the ISC's challenge to the governments of Peru, Columbia, Italy, and others, and the State of California requiring the use of open standards in all government computing services, and Bruce Parens' rebuke of that challenge. I guaranteee you that 90% of the people of Peru do not own computers capable of viewing.doc, and I guarantee further than not even 90% of Californians, by a great, great margin have that capability.
Thus, as I said, the state then has to provide the means to access, and it can either buy 1 million PCs running Windows XP, and Office XP, and "hope" that there are no surprses in licensing down the line, or it can run software built on open standards.
Of the personal computers in the US, the vast majority (90% or more I'd be willing to bet) are capable of reading a Word document.
Yes, technically my computer is "capable" of reading a Microsoft Word Document. I could go out and buy a copy of Office XP for $400 dollars, or whatever it costs nowadays. I could take the hours to download OpenOffice. But neither is a good solution to the problem, which is the closed format itself.
Shrug, keep your holier-than-thou attitude
Sorry if I came off that way, I am quite aware that I am a loser.
this irony will be lost on the 90% of the world that has Word installed and can read.doc documents
not even 90% of the world even own computers, let alone computers powerful enough to run the latest versions of Word (which are incompatible with earlier versions).
as easily as.txt ones.
If I walked down the halls of the building I work in, I would pass the offices of over 500 software developers, and less than 10% would be able to read Word documents. 100% of them could read a.txt document.
If I went to the next building at my complex, and did the same thing, there would be even fewer who could read.doc (we have a bit more leeway with MS Office products in my department than most do).
If I walked through my neighborhood, less than 10% of the people even own a computer.
Most people who send me a.doc format attachment do not even warrant a reply, other than a form letter requesting that they present the information in another format, if they want me to read it.
Shrug, keep sending your.doc format. You're missing out on the input of hundreds of very, very talented SUN and other UNIX software engineers.
My own letter to the ISC, sent through their contact page. I replaced my company name with XXX to protect the innocent.
I was attempting to read some of your links on your "News" page, however, the one which looked most interesting, "ISC response to SF Gate, Perens Article", is apparently only available in Micrsoft Word format (DOC).
I would have thought that an organisation ostensibly formed to promote software choice would provide its information in a format which can be viewed by more than one vendor's software. By providing this information in a closed format (DOC), you prevent a substantial portion of your technical audience from having access to it. Solaris administrators. AIX administrators (of which I am one). We are the people making choices every day as to what software will be installed in the enterprise, and thus I would expect to be included in the audience you are trying to reach.
If you could please provide the information in an open format, such as RTF, XML, PDF, HTML, or even "plain old text", I would be very glad to read your response to the aforementioned SF Gate article.
Sincerely, Samuel Montgomery-Blinn Software Engineer, XXX
(note: my thoughts do not necessarily reflect those of my employer)
They claimed that they would respond to my request shortly, and I'll be sure to post an update if one should arrive.
From the "Institute for Software Choice" news page, they provide a link entitled "ISC response to SF Gate, Perens Article" (/. discussion of that articlehere).
thanks for the replies and info -- just wish some of the statements were links. but cursory investigation (not like I have any REAL info, just Google) seems to corroborate your statements.
really sheds some light on the subject, doesn't it?
exactly. neither in the ad, nor on the linked to page, does it say, "OSDN rocks, we are doing this for blah blah blah". a simple, tasteful campaign, and I'm for one glad they did it.
I still feel the same emotions, albeit quite a bit lessened. Not anger, not rage, not fear, not terror. Just sadness for the people who died. That is all. A year ago, I was openly crying in front of a TV in the office lobby. This morning, my wife and I just watched the ceremonies, and again just feel plain sad for the families. That's it. Still no anger, no fear, just sadness.
And the people who want to drive me into some kind of jingoist frenzy can forget it. The list of names included a "Hussein", several "Changs" and a number of "Garcias". The only thing that united them was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And woe be to the politicians who wage revenge in my name, because I don't want revenge. I want peace.
It's time to stop allowing the Iraqi people to starve and die from malnutrition and treatable disease, simply because we don't like their dictator. I don't remember reading many sagas of human rights violations in Iraq prior to the Gulf War. But in any case, whomever is right, whomever is wrong, we need to get those innocent people some food and medicine, instead of keeping it from them.
If we want to punish Saddam for whatever reason, send in the snipers and get it over with. All we are doing now is starving, and by inaction murdering, the Iraqi people. I'm sure Saddam has food, wine, and medicine, regardless of what the US does. In any case waging another war in the area in the name of "revenge" for Sep-11 is a farce. The Taliban was a truly evil regime, stoning women to death for not wearing the correct clothing, or for being raped. Where are the tales of Iraqi atrocities, other than the invasion of Kuwait?
Ah, yes, the Kurds. Indeed, Saddam is a genocidal terrorist. So why isn't the rest of the world gearing up to be alongside the US? No answers.
And Palestinians are a terrorized people, just as much as the Israeli people are terrorized. That's just a bad, bad situation. The only solution is a permanent, enforced Palestinian state. Just give them the West Bank and/or Gaza Strip and be DONE with it. Neither side is right, no matter what either side will tell you.
Damn, I started ranting. Ridiculous thing to do, when what we should be doing is simply remembering the lives that were lost on Sep-11 and get on with ours.
But one final word: the embargo on Iraq is being carried out in our names, by our power. Thus each and every one of us is responsible for the deaths of thousands of children. Saying, "but I'm just a citizen" is no excuse.
Elections are in November. Find candidates who are against the embargo and elect them. If everyone convinced 2 people who didn't vote last term, and convince them to vote this term, the entire face of politics would be changed over night.
In chips produced with the 90-nanometer process, approximately half of the electricity will be lost through leakage, Welser said. Such chips are expected to come out next year.
My mistake. I mis-read that to mean that this new process would reduce half of the electricy usage, when that sentence has nothing to do with the Fin-Fet process, in particular.
But basically, since half of the electricity pumping through would be loss to leakage, things that reduce leakage by 50% would lead to the 25% overall power reduction the pretty pictures show.
As a moderately proficient German reader, I'm glad to be able to enjoy these kinds of technical articles.
Kind of OT, what other languages are folks finding interesting in today's Internet world? I've seen a lot of content in English, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish, but really, not much else, aside from the Italian page or two.
Is the Internet speeding up the proliferation of these 5 languages, and these 5 alone? And what happens when the Western world all speaks English/German/Spanish and the Eastern world all speaks English/Chinese/Japanese? I tried learning Japanese, but my meager brain was not up to the task. German and Spanish come fairly easily to an English speaker.
you included in your post that you were talking about version 2.0. if other people are idiots and want to start flaming, then hey, that's there problem.
what's really concerning is that you are obviously a user and advocate of the OS, and their own developers are flaming you, when all they had to say was, "Version 2.7 comes with KDE xxx and Gnome xxx". But no, they decide to go the "stupid moron, what do you mean old" route.
but no, the GNU license doesn't require you to be able to download it for free. it only states that if you get the binaries from them, they have to provide the source at cost of media.
so if you don't get the binary distro from libranet, they have no reason to give you the source.
what I don't understand, is why the first person to get the binaries and source, doesn't just post it on linuxiso or something. libranet can't really stop them, because the GPL also grants the right to redistribute.
Remember, the $1M went to the Duke University School of Law. there are hundreds of students there, paying Duke for the privilege of researching this subject.
If somebody wants to sue Duke Law School and hopes to suck them dry with legal costs, they are barking up the wrong tree. You generally don't sue people who (a) know more about the law than you and (b) have hundreds more lawyers than you, especially since (c) they have those hundreds more lawyers for free.
Just downloaded the excellent 4 MB mono 4 windows as mentioned in an earlier thread, and as a C# hobbyist, let me tell you, it is a pretty nice way to get acquainted with the language without having to download the 150 MB or so of the full.NET SDK.
And as is said elsewhere, every language has its place. C# is pretty nice for building Windows native applications. If you don't want to do that, then use a different language.
More on-topic, I'll definitely be checking this book out of the company library.
Slashdot Mirror
Since this entire argument is about computer stored files, anyone without a computer is pretty damn SOL. Maybe we should store all the data on paper. In Esperanto. After all, that's the official universal language, right?
.doc, and I guarantee further than not even 90% of Californians, by a great, great margin have that capability.
That is exactly one of the points of the Peruvian and Argentinian arguments against proprietary software. If they are going to be running their government on-line, then every citizen must have access. Thus, every citizen must have access to a computer capable of communicating with the government software. Thus, if the government wants to run itself on-line, it has to provide these computers.
It is much, much cheaper for the Peruvian government to set out terminals running free software than running Office XP.
The point is, the Peruvian government isn't going to make 90% of its people buy Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, and neither should the United States government. As more and more government services are offered on-line, is it fair to continue distributing those services in Microsoft Word format? Or is it more fair to ensure that the format is open, so that free software can be used?
Wow, way to take things out of context!
That is the context we are talking about. Specifically, the ISC's challenge to the governments of Peru, Columbia, Italy, and others, and the State of California requiring the use of open standards in all government computing services, and Bruce Parens' rebuke of that challenge. I guaranteee you that 90% of the people of Peru do not own computers capable of viewing
Thus, as I said, the state then has to provide the means to access, and it can either buy 1 million PCs running Windows XP, and Office XP, and "hope" that there are no surprses in licensing down the line, or it can run software built on open standards.
Of the personal computers in the US, the vast majority (90% or more I'd be willing to bet) are capable of reading a Word document.
Yes, technically my computer is "capable" of reading a Microsoft Word Document. I could go out and buy a copy of Office XP for $400 dollars, or whatever it costs nowadays. I could take the hours to download OpenOffice. But neither is a good solution to the problem, which is the closed format itself.
Shrug, keep your holier-than-thou attitude
Sorry if I came off that way, I am quite aware that I am a loser.
Pretty fast turnaround on response, but I would have appreciated, oh, a "yes" or "no" or "we'll think about it"!
this irony will be lost on the 90% of the world that has Word installed and can read .doc documents
.txt ones.
.txt document.
.doc (we have a bit more leeway with MS Office products in my department than most do).
.doc format attachment do not even warrant a reply, other than a form letter requesting that they present the information in another format, if they want me to read it.
.doc format. You're missing out on the input of hundreds of very, very talented SUN and other UNIX software engineers.
not even 90% of the world even own computers, let alone computers powerful enough to run the latest versions of Word (which are incompatible with earlier versions).
as easily as
If I walked down the halls of the building I work in, I would pass the offices of over 500 software developers, and less than 10% would be able to read Word documents. 100% of them could read a
If I went to the next building at my complex, and did the same thing, there would be even fewer who could read
If I walked through my neighborhood, less than 10% of the people even own a computer.
Most people who send me a
Shrug, keep sending your
They claimed that they would respond to my request shortly, and I'll be sure to post an update if one should arrive.
From the "Institute for Software Choice" news page, they provide a link entitled "ISC response to SF Gate, Perens Article" (/. discussion of that article here).
Their link? A Microsoft Word document.
ISC: If you are an organisation claiming to promote open standards, why in the world are you releasing data in the very, very closed DOC format?
yes, but at least he didn't whine about it.
thanks for the replies and info -- just wish some of the statements were links. but cursory investigation (not like I have any REAL info, just Google) seems to corroborate your statements.
really sheds some light on the subject, doesn't it?
exactly. neither in the ad, nor on the linked to page, does it say, "OSDN rocks, we are doing this for blah blah blah". a simple, tasteful campaign, and I'm for one glad they did it.
As far as I've been able to tell, Fox does not carry any News programming.
If this whole business weren't so damned depressing, your post would have me laughing.
My wife and I both took the morning off from work to be at home together, and watch Dan Rather on CBS, because that's what we did last year.
I still feel the same emotions, albeit quite a bit lessened. Not anger, not rage, not fear, not terror. Just sadness for the people who died. That is all. A year ago, I was openly crying in front of a TV in the office lobby. This morning, my wife and I just watched the ceremonies, and again just feel plain sad for the families. That's it. Still no anger, no fear, just sadness.
And the people who want to drive me into some kind of jingoist frenzy can forget it. The list of names included a "Hussein", several "Changs" and a number of "Garcias". The only thing that united them was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And woe be to the politicians who wage revenge in my name, because I don't want revenge. I want peace.
It's time to stop allowing the Iraqi people to starve and die from malnutrition and treatable disease, simply because we don't like their dictator. I don't remember reading many sagas of human rights violations in Iraq prior to the Gulf War. But in any case, whomever is right, whomever is wrong, we need to get those innocent people some food and medicine, instead of keeping it from them.
If we want to punish Saddam for whatever reason, send in the snipers and get it over with. All we are doing now is starving, and by inaction murdering, the Iraqi people. I'm sure Saddam has food, wine, and medicine, regardless of what the US does. In any case waging another war in the area in the name of "revenge" for Sep-11 is a farce. The Taliban was a truly evil regime, stoning women to death for not wearing the correct clothing, or for being raped. Where are the tales of Iraqi atrocities, other than the invasion of Kuwait?
Ah, yes, the Kurds. Indeed, Saddam is a genocidal terrorist. So why isn't the rest of the world gearing up to be alongside the US? No answers.
And Palestinians are a terrorized people, just as much as the Israeli people are terrorized. That's just a bad, bad situation. The only solution is a permanent, enforced Palestinian state. Just give them the West Bank and/or Gaza Strip and be DONE with it. Neither side is right, no matter what either side will tell you.
Damn, I started ranting. Ridiculous thing to do, when what we should be doing is simply remembering the lives that were lost on Sep-11 and get on with ours.
But one final word: the embargo on Iraq is being carried out in our names, by our power. Thus each and every one of us is responsible for the deaths of thousands of children. Saying, "but I'm just a citizen" is no excuse.
Elections are in November. Find candidates who are against the embargo and elect them. If everyone convinced 2 people who didn't vote last term, and convince them to vote this term, the entire face of politics would be changed over night.
My mistake. I mis-read that to mean that this new process would reduce half of the electricy usage, when that sentence has nothing to do with the Fin-Fet process, in particular.
But basically, since half of the electricity pumping through would be loss to leakage, things that reduce leakage by 50% would lead to the 25% overall power reduction the pretty pictures show.
go to IBM.
Because every browser I've used for the past, oh, 8 years shows the URL for the link in the status bar when you mouse over the link.
But yes, I hate NY Times articles on the web. Which is one reason I cancelled my NY Times print subscription.
As a moderately proficient German reader, I'm glad to be able to enjoy these kinds of technical articles.
Kind of OT, what other languages are folks finding interesting in today's Internet world? I've seen a lot of content in English, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish, but really, not much else, aside from the Italian page or two.
Is the Internet speeding up the proliferation of these 5 languages, and these 5 alone? And what happens when the Western world all speaks English/German/Spanish and the Eastern world all speaks English/Chinese/Japanese? I tried learning Japanese, but my meager brain was not up to the task. German and Spanish come fairly easily to an English speaker.
was that the last reason to do business with HP, falling out the window?
oh, my bad. that was years ago.
some things hurt pretty bad to apt-get upgrade, no matter what the friendly debian-o-philes say :)
from experience, this list can include:
gnome
kde
kernel
libc
gcc
which have so many nasty circular dependencies... apt-get upgrade all doesn't really get the job done for this complex of a maneuver.
plus, you also upgrade for having the system automatically detect more of your hardware. in this case, IDE soundcards, to begin with.
admittedly, if you're a debian hacker, you can go with 2.0. but if you're a debian hacker, you're just installing debian, anyway.
from Myuu's post: even at 2.0 (what, did they skip a couple numbers =P) it came with really current packages
pretty clear that Myuu is talking about version 2.0.
sorry about the "attack" thing, been a bad, bad day and flat text sometimes carries things it shouldn't.
you included in your post that you were talking about version 2.0. if other people are idiots and want to start flaming, then hey, that's there problem.
what's really concerning is that you are obviously a user and advocate of the OS, and their own developers are flaming you, when all they had to say was, "Version 2.7 comes with KDE xxx and Gnome xxx". But no, they decide to go the "stupid moron, what do you mean old" route.
get a clue before you attack an obviously happy (and recommending) user of your OS. there were SEVERAL in his post.
Clue #1 he has been running it for 3 weeks
Clue #2 he specifically mentions it being version 2.0
well, maybe this is a troll, maybe it isn't.
but no, the GNU license doesn't require you to be able to download it for free. it only states that if you get the binaries from them, they have to provide the source at cost of media.
so if you don't get the binary distro from libranet, they have no reason to give you the source.
what I don't understand, is why the first person to get the binaries and source, doesn't just post it on linuxiso or something. libranet can't really stop them, because the GPL also grants the right to redistribute.
anyway...
Remember, the $1M went to the Duke University School of Law. there are hundreds of students there, paying Duke for the privilege of researching this subject.
If somebody wants to sue Duke Law School and hopes to suck them dry with legal costs, they are barking up the wrong tree. You generally don't sue people who (a) know more about the law than you and (b) have hundreds more lawyers than you, especially since (c) they have those hundreds more lawyers for free.
All you have to do is save the /. HTML from the front page, go to the valitador, and choose the upload service.
Quick hint, more HTML errors than can be easily counted.
Academia. Working IT at a public university lets you do pretty much what you want, decent pay, and you don't have to sell anything.
Just downloaded the excellent 4 MB mono 4 windows as mentioned in an earlier thread, and as a C# hobbyist, let me tell you, it is a pretty nice way to get acquainted with the language without having to download the 150 MB or so of the full .NET SDK.
And as is said elsewhere, every language has its place. C# is pretty nice for building Windows native applications. If you don't want to do that, then use a different language.
More on-topic, I'll definitely be checking this book out of the company library.
No registration required: download the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK. Includes command line utilities, documentation, etc.
The sound you here is a dozen moderators clicking 'Troll'.