Difference is, the OOo flavour of office document XML is going through Oasis standards (from memory.... if not, then another standards organisation!) and I believe KOffice is going to support the same standard.
MS were invited, but said they didn't want to play... not suprising really given the cash-cow status of MS Office, but it does clearly conflict with the objectives of open government.
Interesting. If MS-Blaster had tried to screw up hardware and had succeeded in damaging a significant number of machines, where would that leave LG?
I'd say its their fault, but they might counter argue it was MS's fault!
It *is* LG's fault of course, but if MS can dodge blame for design flaws, then I'd imagine LG could.
I know a couple of poeple who bought new PC's in recent months and almost immediately got infected with Blaster due to not being patched/not running a firewall. If this had toasted their machines, they'd have taken back to the shop I guess.... I'm sure LG would have to carry the can!
I agree with your arguements, and it may well be a good thing as Linux becomes are consumer product. But I've found a few years ago that trying to "sell" the idea of Linux to my boss was made harder by having a stupid Pengiun logo!! (I don't mean offence btw - its just how I felt about it!).
Several years before when I bought an Amiga, the embarassment was similar because the box was covered in cartoon characters (in the UK at any rate, Commodore liked to bundle their machines with a load of games... there were *no* business packs).
I also hate, when I shut down SuSE 8.2 / KDE 3.1.1, some stupid alien/lizard/monster/thing asks me if I'm shutting down or loggin in as another user.
I think the gist of what you're saying (and I *do* agree), is that a character such as Tux appeals to users who otherwise wouldn't understand the product. With Tux, they identify Pengiun=alternative to Windows.
That is good.
Me years ago trying to persuade my boss to look at Linux, to my boss Pengium=stupid employee thing.
I'd have thought this would work in Windows too? Firebird user settings are stored in %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Phoenix, so isn't that part of the Windows user profile loaded when the user logs in somewhere else?
Aside from that, you can set the location of the bookmarks file by putting this in your user.js file:
// Specify which bookmarks file to use:
user_pref("browser.bookmarks.file", "X:\\somewhere\\else\\bookmarks.html");
I think a problem with sharing the "native" IE favourites is, Windows organises its favourites as a bunch of *.url files, which contain not much information. Mozilla favourites are all in a single file and contain info such as the URL of the site-icon. So they don't easily mix.
I once had the joy of supporting users of MS Exchange. For some reason I needed to delete and re-create someones exchange account (as you do). I'd moved all their important exchange folders somewhere during the procedure, deleted, created and moved them back, gave them a call and told them that whatever problem they were having was solved (as you do) and left it at that.
Five minutes later they're on the phone again asking where a whole load of their information is! I log in to their account, have a nose around, find various bits of data in various folders and ask them what the probelm is(as you do). Anyway, like you know from the subject anyway, they'd stored all their important information in the handy "Recycle" bin.
The worst part is that after that I have to defend myself against being blamed for *their* data loss! Duh!
Looks like a guy with red shoes and a blue cape, with some kind of helmet on, with a bent beak on the helmet. And he is holding his cape back with his left hand, and holding his nuts with his right hand.
So you've never seen Richard Stallman in his posh clobber then?
I understand your concerns regarding the use of open source software, but I
believe that these concerns are based on initial impressions of OSS which are
that it is unsupported, unregulated and (perhaps) unproven. And this leaves a
feeling uncertainty!
If you are just dipping your toe into the world of OSS, then it will appear
daunting. There are numerous choices of solution to the same problem, and none
may be a perfect fit. You may find it difficult to get test systems in place
simply because you can't get numerous other bits of OSS to play together.
It is all very difficult to begin with, and isn't a job for those who are not
technically minded, but this is where you really need consultancy.
Unless you're a small organisation, then you need IT consultancy and/or an IT
department. These people will handle all the technical stuff. You have a
"business" problem to be addressed, and your role in procurement is to evaluate
potential solutions to this problem based on value for money.... taking into
account long term strategy.
The latter part is the hardest part for non-technical people to deal with as
they have no basis on which to base any decisions. This is where you need
independent consultancy (or in-house IT staff, but they could be biased).
Taking the OSS or Closed Proprietary route will involve spending money, and OSS
is unlikely to yield any significant savings initially. However, from your own
personal perspective as "procurement dude", it does yield initial risk.
The gains are more likely to come from support savings in terms of reduced need
to Service Pack machines, and longer service life; Microsoft do tend to
"encourage"** customers to upgrade software quickly, typically after 3 years.
Long Term
In the past (prior to 1990), IT systems tended to be bought to do very specific
jobs as part of the overall aim of the organisation. Typical jobs involving
databases (customers/suppliers/sales/etc), word processing and spreadsheets. Databases were more often the domain of larger organisations; smaller
organisations were likely to get their hands burnt running databases without
IT professionals, e.g. catastrophic data-loss.
These days, IT is pervasive -- it covers all communications (voice, email,
printed) but it changes more rapidly. SMS text messaging might need to be
integrated for example, or WAP or 3G... or whatever the next big thing is.
The point is, where previously you would make a purchase and the thing
you purchase does that job for its entire life, you now have to manage constant
change.
Example: you have an existing IT system that does whatever it was meant to do
when you purchased it 4 years ago, but not a few new things that you want it to
do now. So you decide that you're going to replace the existing kit with new
hardware now running MS Server 2003 and XP+Office 2003.
What happens in 2 years time when you need something new? Lets say you need
tele-holographic messaging from the desktop (oh, it *will* be big!!!). MS have
tele-holographic messaging in Windows Desktop 2005... this is the product that
replaced Windows XP (bearing in mind that XP is 2 years old now).
Even if we ignore that MS operating systems always require hardware upgrades,
you'll note that you now have to upgrade all your desktops. That means software
upgrade and purchasing of new licences.
If you had taken the OSS route, you would only need a hardware upgrade if the
new requirements demanded it -- so if tele-holographic messaging is a memory or
CPU hog, then you still have to upgrade hardware. So at worst, OSS costs you
that same for hardware and at best it is cheaper. Next, you only need to rip-
and-replace the operating system kernel if requirements demand it... not simply
because licensing requires it. Next, you don't have to pay upgrade licence
fees. *You only pay for what you're getting!*
Then 2 years latter (2007), the same happens again! Each time, you pay a lot of
m
That said, I'm using ZoneAlarm on my main machine at the moment and trialing Kerio on another. The thing that I like about Kerio is that:
You can configure it and then save the configuration to a file. Then you can restore it if you reload the system or use it to quickly configure other machines (although I've not *actually* done this yet!)
Once you've configured it, you can set it to a mode that will stop it asking about new software it finds -- it'll just block anything its not seen before. This is good if you're rolling out machines for non-tech users.... e.g. I'm planing it for my folks' PC.
Back to ZoneAlarm - it does work fine under Win2K pro. It was a little funny under Win98SE... but no suprises there! However, I think Kerio looks the more solid product.
Oh... and I think Kerio starts up with the system. ZoneAlarm starts with each use logon. So when you switch users, you get a ZoneAlarm splash screen every time, which is less good.
Finally, with XinXP, if you can then also enable the builtin Firewall in the interests of "layered security" !
I've tried to figure a way to do both Vector and Raster editing in one program before, and had some ideas, but nothing that would truly make it easy. The reason Illustrator and Photoshop are separate is not for the chance to sell two products (although I suspect that influences the idea a bit) but because there isn't a way to do vector and raster editing in a well mixed manner. At best, you end up with something that changes back and forth between being a vector editor and a raster editor depending on what is selected.
PaintShopPro can do this! Layers are either bitmap or vector, and you do have to use different tools with each, but it does work fairly well. I've not use Adobe Illustrator so I can't compare, although I suspect it is lacking a lot of the functionality, it is still very feature complete and usable/useful.
So a version of Gimp that can do vectors would rather piss on PaintShopPro's cornflakes wouldn't it?!
Kind of shame actually, as PSP does have a huge number of features, works very well and (okay its not OSS) only costs 90. [I don't work for the BTW - I just think its always been a sensibly priced product as opposed to Adobe products!]
I can't make up my mind. On one hand, it's just stupid for humanity as a race to have two competing satellite based positioning systems, when one can be shared and the resources used for the other could be used for, say, more research or a new launch system.
Yeah I have that dilema too! If you look at any political process from a business perspective it all seems wildly inefficent - why have all these people debating something in their respective countries when you could just make a decision on a larger scale (take individual EU countries making their own decisions vs. moving decision making to Brussels). But thats where the democrasy is. If you your options on something are limited to a single aavailable choice, then there is no choice. And does this lead to things being more efficent?
Lets take another example, MS vs. OSS (tangent: why does every topic come back to MS on slashdot?!). The problem with say MS Office was that years after being developed and being used by near 100% of companies, it was still as expensive (actually, more so), and wasn't really gaining any new features - most that it did gain were (argueably) for the strategic benefit of MS.
Here having an OSS alternative, such as OpenOffice does at least force MS to make an effort. The same could be argued of more recent versions of Windows that are a vast improvement over old ones (no really, they are!). I believe this is largely in response to Linux.
The point here is, taking your examples the one for all and all for one model (soviets) and the super-capitalistic model (america) need each other. One keeps the other honest.
If the only software available was OSS then we'd wind up with one application being consolidated into another and wind up with a bunch of dull app. suites. We'd have OpenOffice. We'd have Mozilla. There would be variations, but really, these apps would be used by near 100% (like with MS in the past) and there would be little or no innovation; there'd be no money or incentive for innovation.
So, back to Galileo, yep its is hugely expensive and for all this expense we just get another system that does the same as the existing one! But its existence is largely political and it does mean that we have democrasy (must learn how to spell it sometime).
The funny thing is, if a terrorist organisation did want to cause financial upset, stuffing the operation of the internet would be a good way to do this.
Therefore, you'd have thought that the government (which ever one) should be making sure that organisations such as ICANN, Verisign, etc are operating in a controlled manner. It won't happen of-course.... at least not until there *is* a terrorist attack.
The sad thing is, if/when this does happen, it'll co-incide with other infrastrucutre attacks, e.g. national power grid, telecommunications along with a 9/11 style attack. Probably anyway... it would seem the logical next move.
Not agrueing wiht anything, but just an observation re the GDP figures:
Iran is at No. 19 and Sweden is all the way down at No. 34! I believe that the people of Sweden do enjoy a good standard of living and I'd imagine that on average they have more cash in their pocket that Iranians.
This is all speculative however and based on my own opinions but it seems like throwing all these figures around is moot!!
Its true that the US does like to use its "dipolmacy" to "lean" on countries in order to get its own way. Its also true that it can only go so far so it depends on if it thinks it would be economically worth it. Piss the world off vs. loose IP revenue.
European dipolmates might argue that if they're forced to toe the US line, then they'll be loosing to the likes of China or anyone who doesn't comply with the US.
So no, I haven't a clue how this would pan out either!!!;)
Slashdot Mirror
Difference is, the OOo flavour of office document XML is going through Oasis standards (from memory.... if not, then another standards organisation!) and I believe KOffice is going to support the same standard.
MS were invited, but said they didn't want to play... not suprising really given the cash-cow status of MS Office, but it does clearly conflict with the objectives of open government.
Why one needs MS-Blaster that screws up hardware, if there is Mandrake?
So that Windows users don't feel left out!
Interesting. If MS-Blaster had tried to screw up hardware and had succeeded in damaging a significant number of machines, where would that leave LG?
I'd say its their fault, but they might counter argue it was MS's fault!
It *is* LG's fault of course, but if MS can dodge blame for design flaws, then I'd imagine LG could.
I know a couple of poeple who bought new PC's in recent months and almost immediately got infected with Blaster due to not being patched/not running a firewall. If this had toasted their machines, they'd have taken back to the shop I guess.... I'm sure LG would have to carry the can!
The SuSE 8.2 docs still have monitor warnings and I'd guess they all do... just to cover their arses (ass's [en-US]).
I guess because no one is migrating *from* .Net at this point in time -- typically people want to migrate from something older.
...actually, haven't they done something like that in California?
Yeah - f*ck migration to Linux; lets just all adopt German governments!
I agree with your arguements, and it may well be a good thing as Linux becomes are consumer product. But I've found a few years ago that trying to "sell" the idea of Linux to my boss was made harder by having a stupid Pengiun logo!! (I don't mean offence btw - its just how I felt about it!).
:)
Several years before when I bought an Amiga, the embarassment was similar because the box was covered in cartoon characters (in the UK at any rate, Commodore liked to bundle their machines with a load of games... there were *no* business packs).
I also hate, when I shut down SuSE 8.2 / KDE 3.1.1, some stupid alien/lizard/monster/thing asks me if I'm shutting down or loggin in as another user.
I think the gist of what you're saying (and I *do* agree), is that a character such as Tux appeals to users who otherwise wouldn't understand the product. With Tux, they identify Pengiun=alternative to Windows.
That is good.
Me years ago trying to persuade my boss to look at Linux, to my boss Pengium=stupid employee thing.
You see the problem.
I'd have thought this would work in Windows too? Firebird user settings are stored in %USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Phoenix, so isn't that part of the Windows user profile loaded when the user logs in somewhere else?
// Specify which bookmarks file to use:
user_pref("browser.bookmarks.file", "X:\\somewhere\\else\\bookmarks.html");
Aside from that, you can set the location of the bookmarks file by putting this in your user.js file:
I think a problem with sharing the "native" IE favourites is, Windows organises its favourites as a bunch of *.url files, which contain not much information. Mozilla favourites are all in a single file and contain info such as the URL of the site-icon. So they don't easily mix.
Great idea and all, but do they have to kill the fish when they catalogue them? Hmmm?
SuSE 8.2 Pro comes as 2 DVDs and 5 CDs. You only ever need DVD1 though!
"Nuclear Physics 101"? I'm just guessing!
I once had the joy of supporting users of MS Exchange. For some reason I needed to delete and re-create someones exchange account (as you do). I'd moved all their important exchange folders somewhere during the procedure, deleted, created and moved them back, gave them a call and told them that whatever problem they were having was solved (as you do) and left it at that.
Five minutes later they're on the phone again asking where a whole load of their information is! I log in to their account, have a nose around, find various bits of data in various folders and ask them what the probelm is(as you do). Anyway, like you know from the subject anyway, they'd stored all their important information in the handy "Recycle" bin.
The worst part is that after that I have to defend myself against being blamed for *their* data loss! Duh!
Any idea why this:M ozillaFirebird-0.7-i686-pc-linux-gnu.tar.gz
c ontrib/MozillaFirebird-0.7-i686-pc-linux-gnu-ctl-s vg-xft.tar.gz
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firebird/releases/0.7/
is 9.2MB
and this:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firebird/releases/0.7/
is 8.9MB?
(note I've not actually tried downloading these - I'm just going on what the web site says about the download sizes)
Looks like a guy with red shoes and a blue cape, with some kind of helmet on, with a bent beak on the helmet. And he is holding his cape back with his left hand, and holding his nuts with his right hand.
So you've never seen Richard Stallman in his posh clobber then?
Tim,
I understand your concerns regarding the use of open source software, but I believe that these concerns are based on initial impressions of OSS which are that it is unsupported, unregulated and (perhaps) unproven. And this leaves a feeling uncertainty!
If you are just dipping your toe into the world of OSS, then it will appear daunting. There are numerous choices of solution to the same problem, and none may be a perfect fit. You may find it difficult to get test systems in place simply because you can't get numerous other bits of OSS to play together.
It is all very difficult to begin with, and isn't a job for those who are not technically minded, but this is where you really need consultancy.
Unless you're a small organisation, then you need IT consultancy and/or an IT department. These people will handle all the technical stuff. You have a "business" problem to be addressed, and your role in procurement is to evaluate potential solutions to this problem based on value for money.... taking into account long term strategy.
The latter part is the hardest part for non-technical people to deal with as they have no basis on which to base any decisions. This is where you need independent consultancy (or in-house IT staff, but they could be biased).
Taking the OSS or Closed Proprietary route will involve spending money, and OSS is unlikely to yield any significant savings initially. However, from your own personal perspective as "procurement dude", it does yield initial risk.
The gains are more likely to come from support savings in terms of reduced need to Service Pack machines, and longer service life; Microsoft do tend to "encourage"** customers to upgrade software quickly, typically after 3 years.
Long Term
In the past (prior to 1990), IT systems tended to be bought to do very specific jobs as part of the overall aim of the organisation. Typical jobs involving databases (customers/suppliers/sales/etc), word processing and spreadsheets. Databases were more often the domain of larger organisations; smaller organisations were likely to get their hands burnt running databases without IT professionals, e.g. catastrophic data-loss.
These days, IT is pervasive -- it covers all communications (voice, email, printed) but it changes more rapidly. SMS text messaging might need to be integrated for example, or WAP or 3G... or whatever the next big thing is.
The point is, where previously you would make a purchase and the thing you purchase does that job for its entire life, you now have to manage constant change.
Example: you have an existing IT system that does whatever it was meant to do when you purchased it 4 years ago, but not a few new things that you want it to do now. So you decide that you're going to replace the existing kit with new hardware now running MS Server 2003 and XP+Office 2003.
What happens in 2 years time when you need something new? Lets say you need tele-holographic messaging from the desktop (oh, it *will* be big!!!). MS have tele-holographic messaging in Windows Desktop 2005... this is the product that replaced Windows XP (bearing in mind that XP is 2 years old now).
Even if we ignore that MS operating systems always require hardware upgrades, you'll note that you now have to upgrade all your desktops. That means software upgrade and purchasing of new licences.
If you had taken the OSS route, you would only need a hardware upgrade if the new requirements demanded it -- so if tele-holographic messaging is a memory or CPU hog, then you still have to upgrade hardware. So at worst, OSS costs you that same for hardware and at best it is cheaper. Next, you only need to rip- and-replace the operating system kernel if requirements demand it... not simply because licensing requires it. Next, you don't have to pay upgrade licence fees. *You only pay for what you're getting!*
Then 2 years latter (2007), the same happens again! Each time, you pay a lot of m
RMS's long lost brother, maybe?
That said, I'm using ZoneAlarm on my main machine at the moment and trialing Kerio on another. The thing that I like about Kerio is that:
- You can configure it and then save the configuration to a file. Then you can restore it if you reload the system or use it to quickly configure other machines (although I've not *actually* done this yet!)
- Once you've configured it, you can set it to a mode that will stop it asking about new software it finds -- it'll just block anything its not seen before. This is good if you're rolling out machines for non-tech users.... e.g. I'm planing it for my folks' PC.
Back to ZoneAlarm - it does work fine under Win2K pro. It was a little funny under Win98SE... but no suprises there! However, I think Kerio looks the more solid product.Oh... and I think Kerio starts up with the system. ZoneAlarm starts with each use logon. So when you switch users, you get a ZoneAlarm splash screen every time, which is less good.
Finally, with XinXP, if you can then also enable the builtin Firewall in the interests of "layered security" !
Knoppix Linux has picked it up and included it in their distro, so we're hoping to see it pop up in other Linux distros soon.
I imagine you know, but it is (version 0.30) included with SuSE 8.2 Pro.
Sorry. That sounded rude. I should think longer before I say things.
Naaa, it sounded more like Yoda!
I've tried to figure a way to do both Vector and Raster editing in one program before, and had some ideas, but nothing that would truly make it easy. The reason Illustrator and Photoshop are separate is not for the chance to sell two products (although I suspect that influences the idea a bit) but because there isn't a way to do vector and raster editing in a well mixed manner. At best, you end up with something that changes back and forth between being a vector editor and a raster editor depending on what is selected.
PaintShopPro can do this! Layers are either bitmap or vector, and you do have to use different tools with each, but it does work fairly well. I've not use Adobe Illustrator so I can't compare, although I suspect it is lacking a lot of the functionality, it is still very feature complete and usable/useful.
So a version of Gimp that can do vectors would rather piss on PaintShopPro's cornflakes wouldn't it?!
Kind of shame actually, as PSP does have a huge number of features, works very well and (okay its not OSS) only costs 90. [I don't work for the BTW - I just think its always been a sensibly priced product as opposed to Adobe products!]
We, the United States, for better or worse have more than enough nuclear warheads to destroy the entire earth twice over.
Over ordered did we?
I can't make up my mind. On one hand, it's just stupid for humanity as a race to have two competing satellite based positioning systems, when one can be shared and the resources used for the other could be used for, say, more research or a new launch system.
Yeah I have that dilema too! If you look at any political process from a business perspective it all seems wildly inefficent - why have all these people debating something in their respective countries when you could just make a decision on a larger scale (take individual EU countries making their own decisions vs. moving decision making to Brussels). But thats where the democrasy is. If you your options on something are limited to a single aavailable choice, then there is no choice. And does this lead to things being more efficent?
Lets take another example, MS vs. OSS (tangent: why does every topic come back to MS on slashdot?!). The problem with say MS Office was that years after being developed and being used by near 100% of companies, it was still as expensive (actually, more so), and wasn't really gaining any new features - most that it did gain were (argueably) for the strategic benefit of MS.
Here having an OSS alternative, such as OpenOffice does at least force MS to make an effort. The same could be argued of more recent versions of Windows that are a vast improvement over old ones (no really, they are!). I believe this is largely in response to Linux.
The point here is, taking your examples the one for all and all for one model (soviets) and the super-capitalistic model (america) need each other. One keeps the other honest.
If the only software available was OSS then we'd wind up with one application being consolidated into another and wind up with a bunch of dull app. suites. We'd have OpenOffice. We'd have Mozilla. There would be variations, but really, these apps would be used by near 100% (like with MS in the past) and there would be little or no innovation; there'd be no money or incentive for innovation.
So, back to Galileo, yep its is hugely expensive and for all this expense we just get another system that does the same as the existing one! But its existence is largely political and it does mean that we have democrasy (must learn how to spell it sometime).
So I think its a good thing!
The funny thing is, if a terrorist organisation did want to cause financial upset, stuffing the operation of the internet would be a good way to do this.
Therefore, you'd have thought that the government (which ever one) should be making sure that organisations such as ICANN, Verisign, etc are operating in a controlled manner. It won't happen of-course.... at least not until there *is* a terrorist attack.
The sad thing is, if/when this does happen, it'll co-incide with other infrastrucutre attacks, e.g. national power grid, telecommunications along with a 9/11 style attack. Probably anyway... it would seem the logical next move.
Not agrueing wiht anything, but just an observation re the GDP figures:
;)
Iran is at No. 19 and Sweden is all the way down at No. 34! I believe that the people of Sweden do enjoy a good standard of living and I'd imagine that on average they have more cash in their pocket that Iranians.
This is all speculative however and based on my own opinions but it seems like throwing all these figures around is moot!!
Its true that the US does like to use its "dipolmacy" to "lean" on countries in order to get its own way. Its also true that it can only go so far so it depends on if it thinks it would be economically worth it. Piss the world off vs. loose IP revenue.
European dipolmates might argue that if they're forced to toe the US line, then they'll be loosing to the likes of China or anyone who doesn't comply with the US.
So no, I haven't a clue how this would pan out either!!!