After flirting with the old staroffice, and code-weavers wine-office I decided to install the newopenoffice and I was amazed at how mature the suite is.
You mentioned that you import from word and then export back to word and that it stays fixed without any problems. Now, that sounds impressive. I couldnt figure out how to export back to word (export doesnt have MS-format option). How do you do it? I am using the Beta2 version.. maybe this feature is only in the 1.1rc ?
Very easy to post unsubstantiated dream facts. Who said linux has not been subjected to these attacks? I run linux and I log all attempts at hacking and I see a lot of snooping around.
Maybe it needs a lot of logical ability to conclude this, but if you see a lot of windows machines being hacked and very few linux machines, it does not mean script kiddies (quite a few of them use windows too) miraculously spare linux boxes. they just cant hack them as much.
"A recent study" can pretty much conclude anything you need.
I find the shortcut bar in evolution *very* convinient since I can put a bunch of mail and calendar folders there and keep track of them. Now this thread argues that not many users use this feature. I want to know how many slashdot users use this feature. Vote by replying to this message.
Here is a question I have been dying to ask for a long time, but never
got a chance until now for which I thank you and slashdot.
As we all know, laws cannot be defined like scientific formulas, but rather have to evolve to suit the needs of the society and to adhere to the spirit of what the founding fathers intended.
My question is this. When you persue, and prosecute intellectual property cases (esp. related to music industry) what sort of guidelines do you use here to differentiate between fair use of listeners and property rights of conglomerates ? Do you follow all cases int he same way ? Are there references made to the text by the founding fathers and their ideas regarding balancing soceities need for creativity and owners(not necessarily creaters) need for profits ? I would like to know what goes on in the closed rooms where decisions need to be made regarding allocating tax-payers resources to persue cases where it may not always be clear where the fair line needs to be drawn. Do you ever get the feeling that not making a good judgement over long period can lead to civil unrest in digital domain, as has happened before?
Are there times that you personally feel that enforcing a law to its word is unfair but have to nevertheless enforce it to adhere to the letter ?
What do you think is the future of some of the current IP laws and future proposals from a law enforcement perspective ? Do you forsee any major obstacles for enforcement of some of the stricter digital rights laws that are on the table ?
Taking away all the juicy spite, here is what I understood of the article.
Currently RIAA charges the broadcasters (and webcasters specifically) 0.07 cents for each song played for each listener who tunes to their broadcast service. If you have 10000 listeners, you have to pay 70 cents for each song you play on your station. This can add up to quite a bit.
However if your "broadcast" service allows each user to select the songs they want to listen, you can effectively pay 0.07 cents for each song a user listens (*cough* downloads) which means you can let as many songs as they want for 0.07 cents a download. Of course this needs a napster like service for broadcasting, with the DJs forming the p2p network,not for the purpose of allowing music download but for the purpose of allowing music broadcast.
=== end of summary ===
I think the author has hit the point. RIAA has setup the pricing based on an existing model. The pricing has got nothing to do with the supply and demand of a song per customer per se, but rather is positioned in such a way that it is exhorbitant for small webcasters but reasonable for big-musle broadcasts. Author has found an alternate business model (which RIAA didnt dream up of, due to their limited field of vision) which breaks their assumptions and provides cheap music access.
The only downside I can thing is, once this is put into practice (if it is feasible, and lawyers dont find a problem with this approach etc.) RIAA will easily rewrite the pricing and create a new scheme aimed at penalising this new model, by lobbying the law-makers again.
Remember, struggle for music is not a moral or ethical question (nobody involved in this equation really cares if authors are suitable rewarded for their creativity) but a question of policy : "Should the rich monopolies continue to benefit from their monoply". As long as this is the question being asked no business models, pricing schemes whatsoever can bring true music to listeners.
I have to say that even though this is exaggerated and looks like a flaimbait, infact there is some
level of truth in this. Instead of saying that all STATES are rackets to suck resources from people,
it makes sense to say, any state where the people are not vigilant enough, or people are not
reasonably powerful enough to stop miscreants in the government, will become suckers for a state
which gains off of them.
Which can put an end to all other obvious patents:
"A method and procedure which involves spending a time duration greater than 1 sec and less than 10 years to think of the next most obvious thing to do. Write this up in the most obscure format using the longest words your vocabulary permits and file it with the USPO. Hire the most expensive lawyers to now hunt down and sue all the people who are arrogant enough to be using this obvious idea for their own selfish gains"
This quote was interesting: "Last time we had 7 listeners on the conference call, and this time we have 247 people. I think this is due to the interest in our new licensing agreement which is creating quite an interest in the industry"
How do executives (who have a clue) keep a straight face in such meetings ?
Till now when I mention my past work-ex with Novell I would always
cringe with a bit of shame, but now I feel proud !
Way to go Novell ! (and I never said this before for anything Novell did:-) )
Here is a profound prediction for anyone who would care to listen: There have been hundreds of movies about AI over-running the world and dominating human beings, but if at all a non-human intelligence becomes rampant in this world, it will be artificial-genesis: Artificially synthesised mutant genes giving rise to intelligent beings.
It would definitely make a good hollywood script since not many movies have looked at genetic engineering fron this perspective.
If at all movie-viewers are looking for a profound message in this movie, which is first and foremost a highly entertaining, but still just an entertainment nevertheless, one can push and pull the plots, the names, the numbers and everything else to fit their personal beliefs. I expected something beyond this in this article and I was deeply disappointed.
Firstly the article just touches upon other interpretations of Matrix other than that of christianity. Secodnly there is a desparate attempt at bending and mending the movie to make it fit into Christian dogmas. Even in this, most comments are of the type "If you can see a way through those things and really pick out the good stuff... any Christian could apply those things to life and grow from it." rather than saying what the profound connection between the movie and christianity except for Nostradamus like interpretations of Bible which can be made to fit any situation.
I think the biggest thing the author forgot to mention was that the basic theme in itself conveys the most non-christian message. Since the whole world that we live in is depicted as a unreal computer program, the concept of God, the evil, good etc in this world is completely irrelevant since its all just dreamy images. Everything a religion preaches pales into non-entities in front of the machines who are the real masters of the human race.
I actually went to their site and clicked on play a game. I chose business ethics and it brought up this solitaire game with questions after each move to the top. Its so very annoying. Either gimme the questions separately, I will answer them and move on with my day, or gimme a solitaire game, and I will play it until the meeting ends. Put both together and you are tying a boring game with a boring topic putting me to instant sleep.
After working for Novell for 3 years one thing I learnt was that, anything Novell lays their hands
on, just keep away from it. Now they put me in a fix:(
Seriously, Novell is one of those places which strives to keep alive by clinging to
buzzwords. There was a time where any dept. not related to Intranet was afraid they would get
the boot. Then came the time when some developers *actually* tried to write Netware
drivers in Java. Yes Java was the buzzword and all of us were supposed to pass Java
exams from Sun !
Now that they ran out of buzzwords some bright brain in Novell stumbled on Linux.
Tsk tsk... what a horrible thing to happen to Linux.
Its rather hasty to make a call saying just because of one hurdle the whole career is in jeopardy. I am sure the person who was layed off by Nortel Networks will find another job if not in a few days, in a few weeks (if he is good there are jobs).
I think the hi-tech industry is always the same. There is a huge hype and lots of jobs. Hype dies, lots of jobs are lost. But the industy goes on and a lot of people continue with their careers. Software/IT is now going through that phase. When the hype shakes off all the excesses, for the remaining folks this is still going to be a long (life long) career if they want it. For those who were shaken off... its tough. They will move on and find other jobs/other careers.
I think comparing with pro-football is not a valid anology. This hitech sector is in existance for a relatively short span. No one knows whats the full stable job potential of this industry. This industry is going to be around, and people with experience are always going to be invaluable.
On the otherhand pro-football has been around for a long time and people entering it opt it with full knowledge that its not a life long career. Even though this career is going to be around as long as people love football, the players become obsolete due to the sheer physical limitations in a few years. Such is not the case with the engineers.
When I opted in this career, computers were not hot. Electrial and mechanical were and I still took this up. And I will surely opt again if I were to make the same decision now.
Sad really. I thought this was one of the hypes I could live with and actually enjoyed it. Which toy for 30-40 dollars grabbed attention of so many adults in our serious workplace that we set up tracks and actually raced full-force! Now if I had known it was a spam-fired toy I would never have bought it. (Oh well, I might still have bought it!)
Anyway, sad that spam is getting such attention with 'success' stories. We need to stop fueling it. I need to stop this post right here.
Very nice. Well I guess we are hitting the limits of capitalistic soceity as was envisions hundreds of years ago and reaching a point where pure capitalism seems to saturate innovation. I am sure we will either survive by adapting to changing cirumstances or would be left behind everyone else who does.
Even though its sort of a over-simplification I agree that this is basically the most fundamental difference.
I grew up in an environment where we were taught that money comes much after many other things in life. We were also taught that companies (and people) who use money to bend laws around them were evil.
And slowly I realised that in our soceity money _is_ played out to be a very very important factor and that almost all the time most laws are biased by those who lobby and those who have money (yes thats an understatement).
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I am a geek and I love doing thing just because I can. Well, thats not entirely true, because there is no kicks in doing things I know for sure I can do. Its doing things just to see if I can do them, and doing these things just gives me the kicks that somehow I dont get when I am in a suity environment, racking my brains to do things that fetch money (oh yeah since I do get hungry and have to eat food I have a job too... pity).
More specifically since it is quite possible to run closed source software, I was wondering if it is possible to make reverse engineering such programs more legal since its running on an open source OS.
Slashdot Mirror
After flirting with the old staroffice, and code-weavers wine-office I decided to install
.. maybe this feature is only in the 1.1rc ?
the newopenoffice and I was amazed at how mature the suite is.
You mentioned that you import from word and then export back to word and that
it stays fixed without any problems. Now, that sounds impressive. I couldnt figure out
how to export back to word (export doesnt have MS-format option). How do you do it?
I am using the Beta2 version
"A UK BASED security firm" ... lol
t hen yes!
I guess if you are a UK BASED security firm you can pretty much conjure
up anything you like.
If you are talking about breaches such as this:
http://bbspot.com/News/2001/05/hole.html
When slashdot said "this page is brought to you by gaint orange balloons" I thought
they were joking/.
Very easy to post unsubstantiated dream facts. Who said linux has not been subjected to these attacks?
I run linux and I log all attempts at hacking and I see a lot of snooping around.
Maybe it needs a lot of logical ability to conclude this, but if you see a lot of windows machines being hacked and very few linux machines, it does not mean script kiddies (quite a few of them use windows too) miraculously spare linux boxes. they just cant hack them as much.
"A recent study" can pretty much conclude anything you need.
I find the shortcut bar in evolution *very* convinient since I can put a bunch of mail and calendar
folders there and keep track of them. Now this thread argues that not many users use this feature.
I want to know how many slashdot users use this feature. Vote by replying to this message.
When script kiddies hack these machines, microsoft security model will prevail.
yes.
Here is a question I have been dying to ask for a long time, but never
got a chance until now for which I thank you and slashdot.
As we all know, laws cannot be defined like scientific formulas, but rather
have to evolve to suit the needs of the society and to adhere to the spirit
of what the founding fathers intended.
My question is this. When you persue, and prosecute intellectual property
cases (esp. related to music industry) what sort of guidelines do you use
here to differentiate between fair use of listeners and property rights of
conglomerates ? Do you follow all cases int he same way ? Are there
references made to the text by the founding fathers and their ideas regarding
balancing soceities need for creativity and owners(not necessarily creaters) need
for profits ? I would like to know what goes on in the closed rooms where decisions
need to be made regarding allocating tax-payers resources to persue cases where
it may not always be clear where the fair line needs to be drawn. Do you ever
get the feeling that not making a good judgement over long period can lead to civil
unrest in digital domain, as has happened before?
Are there times that you personally feel that enforcing a law to its word is unfair
but have to nevertheless enforce it to adhere to the letter ?
What do you think is the future of some of the current IP laws and future proposals
from a law enforcement perspective ? Do you forsee any major obstacles for enforcement of
some of the stricter digital rights laws that are on the table ?
Thanks again,
Too Bad.
Taking away all the juicy spite, here is what I understood of the article.
Currently RIAA charges the broadcasters (and webcasters specifically) 0.07 cents
for each song played for each listener who tunes to their broadcast service.
If you have 10000 listeners, you have to pay 70 cents for each song you play
on your station. This can add up to quite a bit.
However if your "broadcast" service allows each user to select the songs they want to
listen, you can effectively pay 0.07 cents for each song a user listens (*cough*
downloads) which means you can let as many songs as they want for 0.07 cents
a download. Of course this needs a napster like service for broadcasting, with the
DJs forming the p2p network,not for the purpose of allowing music download
but for the purpose of allowing music broadcast.
=== end of summary ===
I think the author has hit the point. RIAA has setup the pricing based on an existing model.
The pricing has got nothing to do with the supply and demand of a song per customer
per se, but rather is positioned in such a way that it is exhorbitant for small webcasters
but reasonable for big-musle broadcasts. Author has found an alternate business model
(which RIAA didnt dream up of, due to their limited field of vision) which breaks their
assumptions and provides cheap music access.
The only downside I can thing is, once this is put into practice (if it is feasible, and lawyers dont find a
problem with this approach etc.) RIAA will easily rewrite the pricing and create a new
scheme aimed at penalising this new model, by lobbying the law-makers again.
Remember, struggle for music is not a moral or ethical question (nobody involved in
this equation really cares if authors are suitable rewarded for their creativity) but a
question of policy : "Should the rich monopolies continue to benefit from their monoply".
As long as this is the question being asked no business models, pricing schemes whatsoever
can bring true music to listeners.
I have to say that even though this is exaggerated and looks like a flaimbait, infact there is some level of truth in this. Instead of saying that all STATES are rackets to suck resources from people, it makes sense to say, any state where the people are not vigilant enough, or people are not reasonably powerful enough to stop miscreants in the government, will become suckers for a state which gains off of them.
Which can put an end to all other obvious patents:
"A method and procedure which involves spending a time duration greater than 1 sec and less than
10 years to think of the next most obvious thing to do. Write this up in the most obscure
format using the longest words your vocabulary permits and file it with the USPO.
Hire the most expensive lawyers to now hunt down and sue all the people who are arrogant enough
to be using this obvious idea for their own selfish gains"
This quote was interesting:
"Last time we had 7 listeners on the conference call, and this time we have 247 people.
I think this is due to the interest in our new licensing agreement which is creating
quite an interest in the industry"
How do executives (who have a clue) keep a straight face in such meetings ?
Till now when I mention my past work-ex with Novell I would always cringe with a bit of shame, but now I feel proud ! Way to go Novell ! (and I never said this before for anything Novell did :-) )
> 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
And you are talking with a sig like that ?
Get a life.
Here is a profound prediction for anyone who would care to listen:
There have been hundreds of movies about AI over-running the world and
dominating human beings, but if at all a non-human intelligence becomes
rampant in this world, it will be artificial-genesis: Artificially synthesised
mutant genes giving rise to intelligent beings.
It would definitely make a good hollywood script since not many movies
have looked at genetic engineering fron this perspective.
If at all movie-viewers are looking for a profound message in this movie, which is first and
... any
foremost a highly entertaining, but still just an entertainment nevertheless, one can push and
pull the plots, the names, the numbers and everything else to fit their personal beliefs.
I expected something beyond this in this article and I was deeply disappointed.
Firstly the article just touches upon other interpretations of Matrix other than
that of christianity. Secodnly there is a desparate attempt at bending and mending
the movie to make it fit into Christian dogmas. Even in this, most comments are of the
type "If you can see a way through those things and really pick out the good stuff
Christian could apply those things to life and grow from it." rather than saying what the
profound connection between the movie and christianity except for Nostradamus like
interpretations of Bible which can be made to fit any situation.
I think the biggest thing the author forgot to mention was that the basic theme in itself
conveys the most non-christian message. Since the whole world that we live in is
depicted as a unreal computer program, the concept of God, the evil, good etc in this
world is completely irrelevant since its all just dreamy images. Everything a religion preaches
pales into non-entities in front of the machines who are the real masters of the human race.
I actually went to their site and clicked on play a game. I chose business ethics
and it brought up this solitaire game with questions after each move to the top.
Its so very annoying. Either gimme the questions separately, I will answer them and
move on with my day, or gimme a solitaire game, and I will play it until the meeting ends.
Put both together and you are tying a boring game with a boring topic putting me to
instant sleep.
(sighs) Is this innovation at its best ?
After working for Novell for 3 years one thing I learnt was that, anything Novell lays their hands on, just keep away from it. Now they put me in a fix :(
Seriously, Novell is one of those places which strives to keep alive by clinging to
buzzwords. There was a time where any dept. not related to Intranet was afraid they would get
the boot. Then came the time when some developers *actually* tried to write Netware
drivers in Java. Yes Java was the buzzword and all of us were supposed to pass Java
exams from Sun !
Now that they ran out of buzzwords some bright brain in Novell stumbled on Linux.
Tsk tsk ... what a horrible thing to happen to Linux.
Its rather hasty to make a call saying just because of one
... its tough. They will move on
hurdle the whole career is in jeopardy. I am sure the person
who was layed off by Nortel Networks will find another job
if not in a few days, in a few weeks (if he is good there are
jobs).
I think the hi-tech industry is always the same. There is a
huge hype and lots of jobs. Hype dies, lots of jobs are lost.
But the industy goes on and a lot of people continue with their
careers. Software/IT is now going through that phase. When the
hype shakes off all the excesses, for the remaining folks this
is still going to be a long (life long) career if they want it.
For those who were shaken off
and find other jobs/other careers.
I think comparing with pro-football is not a valid anology. This
hitech sector is in existance for a relatively short span. No one
knows whats the full stable job potential of this industry.
This industry is going to be around, and people with experience
are always going to be invaluable.
On the otherhand pro-football has been around for a long time
and people entering it opt it with full knowledge that its not
a life long career. Even though this career is going to be around
as long as people love football, the players become obsolete
due to the sheer physical limitations in a few years. Such is
not the case with the engineers.
When I opted in this career, computers were not hot. Electrial and
mechanical were and I still took this up. And I will surely
opt again if I were to make the same decision now.
No anonymous coward, we never get tired of defending our
freedom.
Sad really. I thought this was one of the hypes I could live with
and actually enjoyed it. Which toy for 30-40 dollars grabbed attention
of so many adults in our serious workplace that we set up tracks and
actually raced full-force! Now if I had known it was a spam-fired toy
I would never have bought it. (Oh well, I might still have bought it!)
Anyway, sad that spam is getting such attention with 'success' stories.
We need to stop fueling it. I need to stop this post right here.
Very nice. Well I guess we are hitting the limits of
capitalistic soceity as was envisions hundreds of years ago
and reaching a point where pure capitalism seems to saturate
innovation. I am sure we will either survive by adapting
to changing cirumstances or would be left behind everyone
else who does.
Even though its sort of a over-simplification I agree that
... pity).
this is basically the most fundamental difference.
I grew up in an environment where we were taught that money
comes much after many other things in life. We were also
taught that companies (and people) who use money to bend laws
around them were evil.
And slowly I realised that in our soceity money _is_ played out to
be a very very important factor and that almost all the time
most laws are biased by those who lobby and those who have money
(yes thats an understatement).
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I am a geek and I love doing thing
just because I can. Well, thats not entirely true, because there
is no kicks in doing things I know for sure I can do. Its doing
things just to see if I can do them, and doing these things
just gives me the kicks that somehow I dont get when I am in
a suity environment, racking my brains to do things that fetch
money (oh yeah since I do get hungry and have to eat food
I have a job too
Oh dear oh dear,
I havent laughed so much for a long time,
but thanks RIAA, even you do have a purpose in in world.
Mind if I steal your sig ? ...
nice one
Thats exactly my point.
More specifically since it is quite possible to run closed
source software, I was wondering if it is possible to make
reverse engineering such programs more legal since its running
on an open source OS.