Firstly, I admire Mike Anderer for speaking up for himself. Although he is apparently very well known in the insider community of IP-financing he was unknown to the rest of the world prior to ESR's Halloween X release. Being catapulted into the public eye in such a way is not easy for anyone, even more so when the response of the public at large is quite venomous.
Secondly, I get the impression that Mike Anderer is almost there, almost beiginning to fathom the changes in the software industry which he has referred to. He is not simply stuck in the old-style IP tradition which became utterly dominant in the last 20 years-no he was one of the architects of this development.
Secondly, For people like him compatibility, exhangability and interoperatibilty means cross-licenscing. According to this view if companies want to exchange documents between various applications cross-licensing agreements must already be in place which allow for this to happen.I can imagine that for many companies, during the time frame where the IP hegemony system was comming into being(early 80's), the idea of cross-licenscing as the way to enable open exchange and interoperation was quite obvious and even common sensical.
What people didn't realize then, and which many fail to still realize now, is that all of the problems of compatibility, exhangability and interoperatibilty are created by this IP regime to begin with. Only when one sees that these issues are contrived issues, issued which have no technical merit, and are issues which themselves promote and prolong their own very being, does one begin to see how self-servingt the IP regime really is.
Mike Anderer has been in the buisness of creating the need for his own buisness for the last 20 years- and he is not alone. He is but one of an entire industry of IP tychoons which arose in the ecosystem of IP. HE and people like him worked to develop the IP system and these same people then provided the solutions to the self-created problems which the IP system inherently produces-one could view this as a form of autopoesis.
Thirdly, his confusing of the GPL with public domain is pre-programmed. The notion that something can be licensced in such a way that this license itself cannot be bought or sold contradicts, in it's very roots, what licensces have always traditionally meant. The price of the GPL is priceless -and the free software community will stand forever in debt to the brilliance of this licensce. Mike Anderer cannot really grasp this concept fully without fundamentally re-evalutating what licenscing means-and this is of course the fundament of his occupation for the last 20 odd years. For him to fathom this sea-change in the software industry it is necessary for him to understand the incredibly subtle, yet profoundly deep difference between the GPL and public domain/propietary IP.
Understanding this difference means relinquishing the defining oppsoite self-definition of IP-IP has always defined itself through it's opposition to it's other(andere)- public domain. The two notions need each other and exist for each other's benefit. The temporary evil of IP find's it's absolution in the eventual transition to public domain. The defered time, the temporary evil-to-be-covercome, constitutes the horizon of the economy of relative value which is traded in the IP system.
The GPL is never public domain and is never to be bought or sold-it is a-economic in the strictest sense of the word. For Mike Anderer to understand this he would need to call into question the raison d'etre of his entire proffesional life and therein lies the damning self-service of the IP industry.
Moderators Mod the parent post down. This is obvious flamebait material and it is factually wrong. And this counts as interesting ? When GNOME came out QT was not GPL. QT only became GPL significantly later-remember why Debian refused to include KDE for so long? QT did finally become GPL- but it is hampered by a dual-licensing model. Now this license, as a buisness model, has worked well for QT-but it is not *free* for commercial development, and Burce Perens has explicitly stated this as one of the goals for UserLinux. I support Trolltechs licensce model- it is a good model for non-comercial Linux software development-but it is not good for commercial Linux software development, because one has to pay royalty fees to use it- and this is the (cost)barrier Perens wants to avoid.
Your statement:
"reinventing an already _GPL_ desktop.. which KDE was ALWAYS GPL, but it didn't seem like it because Miguel spewed PR crap that said KDE was anything but GPL"
is pure and simple bs. Go find out a little about the history involved before you spout such nonsense.
Not to mention that those who developed for KDE could have written their own toolkit from scratch, like GNOME did, instead of making use of Trollteches then completely propietary software.
Miguel was not alone in opposing the then current licensce for QT. If he had been alone, GNOME would have never come into being.
Your statement:
"During the next few months, GNOME magically catches up to KDE"
Is a) false b) incoherent and c) counter the values of the opensource community
You imply that GNOME "took" things from already existing projects to implement their application base. Well, firstly, code reuse is the point of opensource software. Secondly GNUMERIC is not part of the GNOME desktop. And lastly GNOME did not "catch-up" to KDE- the fact remains the direction KDE is going and that of GNOME are different and there is no "catching up". GNOME is inferior to KDE as regards the tight-nit integration which KDE inherits from QT. But GNOME is superior in all things UI-from a solid HIG, through clear, graspable configuration defaults to an aesthetic touch par none in the Linux GUI world. Moreover GNOME has fundamentally changed its direction from the GNOME-1 days. IF a comparision were to be made one would have to compare GNOME1 with KDE2 -but with the advent of GNOME2 things are going in a markedly different direction, one which I believe is a better choice IMHO.
Your statement:
"In conclusion, GNOME is a failure"
Is utter nonsense. GNOME has not failed, on the contrary it has garnered more support than KDE ever has had- I personally like aspects of KDE/QT but I refuse to use it as my desktop or to inflict it upon simple users as an administrator. For developers KDE is an awesome desktop- but not everyone is a developer and new users only need to click once on one config option and poof! something changed and they have no idea what they did nor how to reverse it.....
You statement:
"Which is very much the point--to fill Miguel's wallet (reality hurts, boys and girls)."
What a load of bs. Certainly Miguel has profited from GNOME, he is a very industrious entrepreneur, but I guess the KDE-fan boys feel *morally* superior because instead of profitting themselves they just help Trolltech to their, substantially greater, profit.....OF course money is involved in these things: get a grip, money plays a role in almost all apects of life-but the values Miguel has expressed embody common values of the opensource community as opposed to those expressed by Trolltech.
Go get a life, Mr. Fanboy. I'm sorry your feelings got hurt when GNOME2 came out and chose a different path- are you still recovering from those wounds ?
Mr. Norman Nolasco, xxxx asdsdfds sfsdfsdfd, No. yyyy, Houston, Texas 770xx (zzz-zzz-
8886) appeared and presented information to Council titled Detailed Issues with Approval of
Ordinance 2002-04601 and reviewed the presentation which related to the SimDesk, Sam
Houston Project, until his time expired. Mayor Brown and Council Members Galloway, Vasquez
and Robinson absent. Mayor Pro Tem Quan presiding.
Page 11
NO. 2002-0677-1
06-18/19-02, Page 11
Upon questions by Council Members, Mr. Nolasco stated that he worked for a company
called Advarian, Inc., that his software company had been in business since around 1997. since
then they had developed all sorts of software for the Internet and for companies like Ford Motor
Company and one of their clients was the U. S. Military, that they first heard about SimDesk in
August of 2001 when they published an article on some of the software that they were also
working on, that the next time he heard about SimDesk was May 28th or June 5th, when the City
pretty much approved the project for $9.5 million dollars, that the members of his company were
practically stunned that it would cost that much so they contacted one of the City Council
Members and then decided to give them this information, that they were in business of providing
software over the web, that the software that was currently being used by the military was a
medical patient management system, they were also using the system with Saturn Corporation,
that he had both corporate and government clients, that they constantly look at the newspapers
and all the published things as far as who was looking for this type of software since they were a
small company and did wish to try to find as much business as possible, that they were able to
look at the RFP and the proposal, that this RFP was at least peculiar, it was very different from
other ones they had seen, that if they read the proposal and compared it to the RFP, pages 5
through 10 of the official proposal submitted and compared it to pages 10 through 13 of the RFP,
they were practically identical, other than a few words changed, no numbers were changed, the
figures were exactly the same, the order of each section was exactly the same, that he was
definitely aware of at least one other company that catered to several Fortune 100 Companies,
that in his professional opinion, it was superior to this software, that the RFP received one
proposal, that that there was no way he could have submitted a proposal because it was drafted
so narrowly that there was only one company that did submit the proposal, that he would say
there was no way another company would even attempt to try to match what was in the RFP.
Mayor Brown and Council Members Galloway, Vasquez and Robinson absent. Mayor Pro Tem
Quan presiding.
Upon questions by Council Member Ellis, Mr. Bibler stated that the drafts were generated
by the department seeking the goods or services, that from time to time, they may check with
the Legal Department, but did not think that there was any requirement that they do so, that he
could not rule out the possibility that Mr. Piper conferred with someone in Legal. Mayor Brown
and Council Members Galloway, Vasquez and Robinson absent. Mayor Pro Tem Quan
presiding.
Upon further questions by Council Members, Mr. Nolasco stated that this software was
actually available from Microsoft for free for a period of time around 1996 to 1998, and since then
had improved it vastly, in fact, a lot of the working innards were what they called this type of word
processing software for the Internet, that it was actually built into the Internet Explorer or 6
browser, that they could get it for free, that the tools were available for free to build this, so if they
were to go to any software development company anywhere in the world, and pointed them to
these tools, it was trivial to make them work, so in a sense, this software was free, that he was
not sure what Mr. Piper would have known, that if he at least did a search on the Internet
spreadsheet or Internet documents, matches would have come up on the Internet; that SimDesk
had a recruiter contact him and offer to look at some of the stuff they worked on, they did not
make him a job offer, the recruiter contacted him and he demonstrated the software to the
recruiter and basically the recruiter got back to him and said he was not someone they wanted to
talk to. Mayor Brown and Council Members Galloway, Ellis, Vasquez and Robinson absent.
Mayor Pro Tem Quan presiding.
Upon questions by Council Member Edwards, Mr. Bibler stated that he had been asked if
the RFP that Mr. Piper submitted was legal and the Legal Department did not prepare or review
the RFP, after it was awarded and it came to them after the proposals had been received, they
looked at it, but of course they were looking at it basically from the same perspective that Council
Page 12
NO. 2002-0677-1
06-18/19-02, Page 12
was looking at it, they had one attorney who had some expertise in computer matters, but for her
to know whether or not this RFP was restricted in some invalid manner was probably beyond
anybody in the Legal Department and he had spoken with the Division Chief and she said no
such issue was raised with them and this was the first they heard about it today, that they were
aware that there were a couple of other vendors in the area that might potentially have similar
products, that they would not have let the issue go forward without raising it with Mr. Piper or
whoever their client was if he thought his RFP was invalid, it would have never gotten this far.
Jubilation...
I am so happy to see that the slashdotters have been able to see through the hype with which we have been bombarded for so many years in the form of fantasy fiction and science pretending to be fiction.
The whole notion of "carbon ccopies" of living beings seems to presuppose that life itself is virtual, ie. subject to substitution. Whereas virtuality is correct paradigm for understanding and dealing with man-made mass-produced technology and everything which has to do with computers, its applicability stops there.
The world in which we live is not virtual, there is no substitute for those beings who constitute this world- each and ever being is in the last instance irreplacable.
99% of what has been written about "cloning" has been science-FICTION inspired hype. I love science fiction personally, becuase it IS fiction. When scientists start pursuing fiction as science they make a laughing-stock of themselves and the "issues" supposedly "moral" which surrounds their work.
It is amazing how are society constantly seeks out virtual dilemnas instead of dealing with that which is already here..
Hats off to a little bit of not so common, common sense.....
I don't wish to take Gelerneters side on this issue, but I believe you are fundamentally mistaken. The real advances in personal computer technology in the last years was the integration of various forms of media into *a* digitial medium. This digital medium is what is called "data".
Cassettes and albums have been to a large extent superceded by CD's- CD's are the digitalized version of electromagnetic recordings-with the introduction of mp3's and other codecs the digitalized CD audio entered into the computer domain-which made music accessible on the internet the first time. DVDs are replacing video cassettes-DVDS are digitialized versions of the electromagnetic recordings-and divx brings high-quality digital video into the computer domain-making such available over the internet. Scanners take physical things(documents, pictures etc.) and digitalize their content-making this available in the computer domain and over the internet.
The ability to render all of these various different things in the form of data is what has so changed most peoples computer experience. This process did not lead to lowest-common-denominator system(even though audiophiles lament to birth of CD's-not realizing that unless you have a tube based amplifier you are still, in effect(TTL), digitalizing the audio prior to pumping it out to your speakers). Once these things are rendered digitally-they become data-this means that they can be stored, duplicated, manipulated, distributed etc. -in short all of the data processing power of a computer can be applied to it-and incredible innovation has taken place as regards this.
These differing forms of data-mp3, divx, tiff etc. are only different from the standpoint of the various hardware involved in decoding, manipulating, storing etc. For the user there is no need for differing file formats provided that the OS takes care of handling the appropriate contexts(ie. doing what an OS should do-forming the bridge between the hardware and the software which the user uses)-freeing the user to combine and manipulate these things in differing new and creative ways.
Within the context of the use of computers differing data formats are the bane of everday computer usage-accounting for most frustration and billions of dollars of wasted(ie. endlessly replicated) user/programmer time. Note-I am not saying that the computer will replace everything else in the world(books for example)-not only is such impossible, but utterly non-sensical-but in the context of computer usage, and thats what this article is about-incpmatbile data formats are simply the product of lazy programmers.
There is no *good* reason why certain document(data) standards have not been created and become ubiquitous which are modularly extensible allowing for the incorporation of new features and functions-providing at once for backwards compatiblity and enabling future adaptations. The bad reason is that then people would not have to buy the newest latest release of MS Application 11. Most software(and hardware) companies have products within their product line competing against other products in their product line(Intel 386sx vs. 386 DX-MS Works vs. MS Office).
This competition requires differences which make the sales difference-and more often than not the only differences which make a difference are the ones which sell. -There is a good side to this-needless programming and engineering jobs arise to minimalize or eliminate these differences once they exist-this creates niche jobs for programmers and engineers(amipro document converts for Word-powerleap adapters for processors)-but the computer user pays through the nose for such things(hyperthreading is already built into all existing intel P4's-but only enabled for the yet to be released 3.0GHz variant).
A book is not a piece of data, an audio-tape is not a piece of data, an audio CD is not a piece of data-once these things have been digitalized into computer formats they become data-at this point the only difference between these various forms of data is the format in which this data is stored and the applications which one uses to manipulate such-as long as the underlying context(hardware) is transparent in terms of the OS the users should not have to constantly struggle with artificially re-imposed differences which programmers could eliminate by using more foresight in their efforts.
Commercial programmers re-impose such differences to carve out economic niches-and this is where many really earn their money-but this only forces the user to beckon to the commerical trough, forking out money for access to that which has been artificially rendered inaccessible due to shortsighted formats.......
open source programmers try to do the right thing providing maximal compatibility and integration(Gstream for example)-the *nix OS is based on this model itself-but the opensource world is often so scattered that 20 different groups work on projects which in essence do the same thing, constantly re-inventing the wheel and inadvertantly producing the same kinds of incompatible data format BS which is the commercial basis of commercial software...but this is due to a lack of foresight and consensus as to how to approach the project at hand.....
Data is not a metaphor. The only context in which *data* has any meaning is the context of human-computer interaction.
I downloaded the pdf file and read throught it. Several times I had to fight back outright laughing, not that there is anything wrong with laughing, particularily when confronted with something which is just simply silly, nonsensical.
This *paper* was, ad is, and shall remain a clever gag- with a tongue in cheek, very dry, sort of humor. it had nothing to do with programming and nothing to do with computer science. It was a laughable attempt to apply various superficially understood ideas of certain postmodern thinkers to the field of computer science.
The modern field of computer science owes its existence primarily to people like Von Neuman, who in rejecting certain post-modern issues developed much of ideas which underly computer architecture.
Heisenberg and Von Neuman disagreed about the issues which theoretical physicist were encountering in the first half of the last century. The disagreement in regards to these issues, was a disagreement concerning how one best dealt with these issues. During the first half of the 20th century physicists were encountering the same phenomena which had already left its mark in philosophy(Husserl,Heidegger), art(Dadaists) and literature(Joyce) (too name but a few). This issue could be entitled, "the problem with identity"- on a more banal level,"how does one deal with a third, not given, but not excluded" (a la tertium non datur).
The issue with identity manifested itself in virtually all human endeavors- political and social. Von Neuman defined his stance as regards this issue, he simply chose to ignore the situation, and ignore the ramifications, which had become apparent, which the problematic of identity presented. Whereas Heisenbergs reflections led, indirectly, to the birth of quantum physics, which in someways was a a form of "postmodern" physics-at least on the theoretical side-engineering techniques based on analysis from quantum physics enables modern computers to operate- Von Neuman's reflections led to the stalwart ultra-modern way of thinking which gave birth to computer science. ai, and congiitve science. Only a modernist could imagine comparing computers with human beings. In fact most of the terminology used in the description of computer functions was taken tfrom the then(1950's) current understanding of cognition-the first cyberneticists, were cognitive psychologists, nuerologists, systems theoreticians, and computer engineers-which is why people still speak about a computers "memory".
The identity issue did not go away because Von Neuman said it was nothing-and his answer was better than Heisenbergs pseudo-epiphenomalism. Working with the ultra-modernists paradigm of computer science, which is decidedly NOT postmodern, programmers and engineers were constantly confronted with identity issues- pragmatism ushered forth ever new software and hardware architectures as answers to these issues. Modern object-oriented programming is based on second-order logic-ie. self-reference-this is one way of dealing with the identity issue-and its structure closely resembles contemporary systems theory. Von Neuman's original ideas were used in the design of processors-as time has gone by the ineffciency of this architecture, the inefficacy of this answer to the identity question, has been left along the wayside, leaving room for more "post-modern" processor architectures.
"postmopdernism" may be the joke of the day, but the issue of identity and the challenges that it poses is something which every thinker, artist, writer, programmer and engineer is confronted with today-this issue is a phenomena-it manifests in many differing, changing forms, some more obvious, some more abstract-there is no ONE answer to this janus-faced problematic, this is not a problem which can be solved, ie. resolved-the way one approaches their answer to this issue is the quiddity(whatness) of their undertaking.
modernists- everything is knowable, subject to empirical research and verifiable.
ultra-modernists- everything is knowable, nothing is verifiable-everything is subject to falsification
post-modernists- knowledge is contructable, knwoledge is not based on empricism, empiricism is not based on experience, experience does not spell knowledge
well Strasbourg(France) uses something somewhat similiar....all the tram stops are outfitted with large simple electronic displays telling you how long you have to wait for the next tram.....I would assume that the relative position and speed of each carrier in a public transportation system(train.subway,tram,monorail etc.()but probably NOT buses) is known,ie. present and tracked by the communcications and control centers of the local public transportation board...ie. someone(invidiuals working together with networked computers) keeps tabs on when and where which carriers are, allowing for central override and rerouting. If such info is available to those in control this info can probably easily be passed onto some kind of local display unit-ie. the tracks and rails used in public transport carry electronic information(ie. when such is being built lines for communication and control coordination are laid at the same time...passing such info to sms should be little more than snapshotting the ongoing communications,ie. tram 7 triggered switch 89a on Rue de Mirrior [Tr7@SW89| 23:08:2002:17.45.32] and piping this into a sms server(in europe the state-or partially state-owned telecoms usually are the biggest cellphone and sms providers.....(the predomicance of the state, in a good way, as evident throughout western europe, is manifest in exhaustive, reliable, high-quality public transportation)
As far as the technical details used in such systems, this will invariably differ to a great extent from one city to the next, perhaps even between the varying subsystems of the public transportation, probably with some degree of national coordination (socialistic-ie built with tax dollars and implemented through gov. contracts and or regional industrial dominance(ie.large electronic/communications firms- phillips/erricson/noikia or....)
(before I moved to europe(for my grad studies) I had only seen passenger trains in movies....and I have been through more than half of the US......
This appears to me to be a silly issue...
who cares what redhat does ?
those who really insist on choice and are willing to act upon it arent likely to be using redhat in the first place
whats so bad about molding gnome and kde together in the new redhat release ?
I think this is great, personally. I dont use redhat, rahter gentoo, and I have installed both gnome and kde (as well as fluxbox and enlightnment) each time I use one of them I need apps from the other, the single biggest problem confronting newbies using linux distros is finding out which programs are installed, wht they do, which ones are needed and how to execute them...if you install kde and gnome and run kde you may not even know that gnome is on your system, because gnome menus are not included in your kde desktop(gnome2 has kde menus)....what this means is that your average newbie does not have a clue as to what he/she just installed on their machine, and more importantly WHERE these things are installed-this is where the menus come in-if stuff is not listed in the menus newbies arent going to find it, some for weeks, others for months, and some NEVER....molding kde and gnome together in temrs of themes and skins(under the surface totally different functionality) simply makes the learning curve for newbies much more appetizing...
finally I would love to see a tiny set of standard menu dialogs(file open,save,save as, close, print, edit,copy, paste, find etc.) written in Gtk+(gnome2) which are used universally in all X programs-gtk+ is much leaner than QT and has the best themeing I have ever seen...if one could put together a set of bindings which enables kde programmers to use the gtk+-bnased standard menus and seperate the standard menus into their own libraries so that compiled programs consiting of QT and gtk+ libraries are not redunantly copying the same functionality and producing massive executables...maybe some form of GTQ or qtk+-we really need a unified vfs system, standard menu files, a unified messaging/communications system-running ORBit2 frome gnome2 and the DCOM stuff from kde at the same time is OVERKILL and universal themeing----a reworking of gtk+ is probably more feasible than rewriting QT-perhaps a set of super-high level extremely abstract OO libraries could bind QT and gtk+ together in a way that endprogrammers would not have to worry to much about and from which endusers would profit....
Slashdot Mirror
Firstly, I admire Mike Anderer for speaking up for himself. Although he is apparently very well known in the insider community of IP-financing he was unknown to the rest of the world prior to ESR's Halloween X release. Being catapulted into the public eye in such a way is not easy for anyone, even more so when the response of the public at large is quite venomous.
Secondly, I get the impression that Mike Anderer is almost there, almost beiginning to fathom the changes in the software industry which he has referred to. He is not simply stuck in the old-style IP tradition which became utterly dominant in the last 20 years-no he was one of the architects of this development.
Secondly, For people like him compatibility, exhangability and interoperatibilty means cross-licenscing. According to this view if companies want to exchange documents between various applications cross-licensing agreements must already be in place which allow for this to happen.I can imagine that for many companies, during the time frame where the IP hegemony system was comming into being(early 80's), the idea of cross-licenscing as the way to enable open exchange and interoperation was quite obvious and even common sensical.
What people didn't realize then, and which many fail to still realize now, is that all of the problems of compatibility, exhangability and interoperatibilty are created by this IP regime to begin with. Only when one sees that these issues are contrived issues, issued which have no technical merit, and are issues which themselves promote and prolong their own very being, does one begin to see how self-servingt the IP regime really is.
Mike Anderer has been in the buisness of creating the need for his own buisness for the last 20 years- and he is not alone. He is but one of an entire industry of IP tychoons which arose in the ecosystem of IP. HE and people like him worked to develop the IP system and these same people then provided the solutions to the self-created problems which the IP system inherently produces-one could view this as a form of autopoesis.
Thirdly, his confusing of the GPL with public domain is pre-programmed. The notion that something can be licensced in such a way that this license itself cannot be bought or sold contradicts, in it's very roots, what licensces have always traditionally meant. The price of the GPL is priceless -and the free software community will stand forever in debt to the brilliance of this licensce. Mike Anderer cannot really grasp this concept fully without fundamentally re-evalutating what licenscing means-and this is of course the fundament of his occupation for the last 20 odd years. For him to fathom this sea-change in the software industry it is necessary for him to understand the incredibly subtle, yet profoundly deep difference between the GPL and public domain/propietary IP.
Understanding this difference means relinquishing the defining oppsoite self-definition of IP-IP has always defined itself through it's opposition to it's other(andere)- public domain. The two notions need each other and exist for each other's benefit. The temporary evil of IP find's it's absolution in the eventual transition to public domain. The defered time, the temporary evil-to-be-covercome, constitutes the horizon of the economy of relative value which is traded in the IP system.
The GPL is never public domain and is never to be bought or sold-it is a-economic in the strictest sense of the word. For Mike Anderer to understand this he would need to call into question the raison d'etre of his entire proffesional life and therein lies the damning self-service of the IP industry.
one step closer to becoming a reality...and without dependency on fonts copied over from a winbloze partition...
Mr. Norman Nolasco, xxxx asdsdfds sfsdfsdfd, No. yyyy, Houston, Texas 770xx (zzz-zzz- 8886) appeared and presented information to Council titled Detailed Issues with Approval of Ordinance 2002-04601 and reviewed the presentation which related to the SimDesk, Sam Houston Project, until his time expired. Mayor Brown and Council Members Galloway, Vasquez and Robinson absent. Mayor Pro Tem Quan presiding. Page 11 NO. 2002-0677-1 06-18/19-02, Page 11 Upon questions by Council Members, Mr. Nolasco stated that he worked for a company called Advarian, Inc., that his software company had been in business since around 1997. since then they had developed all sorts of software for the Internet and for companies like Ford Motor Company and one of their clients was the U. S. Military, that they first heard about SimDesk in August of 2001 when they published an article on some of the software that they were also working on, that the next time he heard about SimDesk was May 28th or June 5th, when the City pretty much approved the project for $9.5 million dollars, that the members of his company were practically stunned that it would cost that much so they contacted one of the City Council Members and then decided to give them this information, that they were in business of providing software over the web, that the software that was currently being used by the military was a medical patient management system, they were also using the system with Saturn Corporation, that he had both corporate and government clients, that they constantly look at the newspapers and all the published things as far as who was looking for this type of software since they were a small company and did wish to try to find as much business as possible, that they were able to look at the RFP and the proposal, that this RFP was at least peculiar, it was very different from other ones they had seen, that if they read the proposal and compared it to the RFP, pages 5 through 10 of the official proposal submitted and compared it to pages 10 through 13 of the RFP, they were practically identical, other than a few words changed, no numbers were changed, the figures were exactly the same, the order of each section was exactly the same, that he was definitely aware of at least one other company that catered to several Fortune 100 Companies, that in his professional opinion, it was superior to this software, that the RFP received one proposal, that that there was no way he could have submitted a proposal because it was drafted so narrowly that there was only one company that did submit the proposal, that he would say there was no way another company would even attempt to try to match what was in the RFP. Mayor Brown and Council Members Galloway, Vasquez and Robinson absent. Mayor Pro Tem Quan presiding. Upon questions by Council Member Ellis, Mr. Bibler stated that the drafts were generated by the department seeking the goods or services, that from time to time, they may check with the Legal Department, but did not think that there was any requirement that they do so, that he could not rule out the possibility that Mr. Piper conferred with someone in Legal. Mayor Brown and Council Members Galloway, Vasquez and Robinson absent. Mayor Pro Tem Quan presiding. Upon further questions by Council Members, Mr. Nolasco stated that this software was actually available from Microsoft for free for a period of time around 1996 to 1998, and since then had improved it vastly, in fact, a lot of the working innards were what they called this type of word processing software for the Internet, that it was actually built into the Internet Explorer or 6 browser, that they could get it for free, that the tools were available for free to build this, so if they were to go to any software development company anywhere in the world, and pointed them to these tools, it was trivial to make them work, so in a sense, this software was free, that he was not sure what Mr. Piper would have known, that if he at least did a search on the Internet spreadsheet or Internet documents, matches would have come up on the Internet; that SimDesk had a recruiter contact him and offer to look at some of the stuff they worked on, they did not make him a job offer, the recruiter contacted him and he demonstrated the software to the recruiter and basically the recruiter got back to him and said he was not someone they wanted to talk to. Mayor Brown and Council Members Galloway, Ellis, Vasquez and Robinson absent. Mayor Pro Tem Quan presiding. Upon questions by Council Member Edwards, Mr. Bibler stated that he had been asked if the RFP that Mr. Piper submitted was legal and the Legal Department did not prepare or review the RFP, after it was awarded and it came to them after the proposals had been received, they looked at it, but of course they were looking at it basically from the same perspective that Council Page 12 NO. 2002-0677-1 06-18/19-02, Page 12 was looking at it, they had one attorney who had some expertise in computer matters, but for her to know whether or not this RFP was restricted in some invalid manner was probably beyond anybody in the Legal Department and he had spoken with the Division Chief and she said no such issue was raised with them and this was the first they heard about it today, that they were aware that there were a couple of other vendors in the area that might potentially have similar products, that they would not have let the issue go forward without raising it with Mr. Piper or whoever their client was if he thought his RFP was invalid, it would have never gotten this far.
Jubilation... I am so happy to see that the slashdotters have been able to see through the hype with which we have been bombarded for so many years in the form of fantasy fiction and science pretending to be fiction. The whole notion of "carbon ccopies" of living beings seems to presuppose that life itself is virtual, ie. subject to substitution. Whereas virtuality is correct paradigm for understanding and dealing with man-made mass-produced technology and everything which has to do with computers, its applicability stops there. The world in which we live is not virtual, there is no substitute for those beings who constitute this world- each and ever being is in the last instance irreplacable. 99% of what has been written about "cloning" has been science-FICTION inspired hype. I love science fiction personally, becuase it IS fiction. When scientists start pursuing fiction as science they make a laughing-stock of themselves and the "issues" supposedly "moral" which surrounds their work. It is amazing how are society constantly seeks out virtual dilemnas instead of dealing with that which is already here.. Hats off to a little bit of not so common, common sense.....
I don't wish to take Gelerneters side on this issue, but I believe you are fundamentally mistaken. The real advances in personal computer technology in the last years was the integration of various forms of media into *a* digitial medium. This digital medium is what is called "data". Cassettes and albums have been to a large extent superceded by CD's- CD's are the digitalized version of electromagnetic recordings-with the introduction of mp3's and other codecs the digitalized CD audio entered into the computer domain-which made music accessible on the internet the first time. DVDs are replacing video cassettes-DVDS are digitialized versions of the electromagnetic recordings-and divx brings high-quality digital video into the computer domain-making such available over the internet. Scanners take physical things(documents, pictures etc.) and digitalize their content-making this available in the computer domain and over the internet. The ability to render all of these various different things in the form of data is what has so changed most peoples computer experience. This process did not lead to lowest-common-denominator system(even though audiophiles lament to birth of CD's-not realizing that unless you have a tube based amplifier you are still, in effect(TTL), digitalizing the audio prior to pumping it out to your speakers). Once these things are rendered digitally-they become data-this means that they can be stored, duplicated, manipulated, distributed etc. -in short all of the data processing power of a computer can be applied to it-and incredible innovation has taken place as regards this. These differing forms of data-mp3, divx, tiff etc. are only different from the standpoint of the various hardware involved in decoding, manipulating, storing etc. For the user there is no need for differing file formats provided that the OS takes care of handling the appropriate contexts(ie. doing what an OS should do-forming the bridge between the hardware and the software which the user uses)-freeing the user to combine and manipulate these things in differing new and creative ways. Within the context of the use of computers differing data formats are the bane of everday computer usage-accounting for most frustration and billions of dollars of wasted(ie. endlessly replicated) user/programmer time. Note-I am not saying that the computer will replace everything else in the world(books for example)-not only is such impossible, but utterly non-sensical-but in the context of computer usage, and thats what this article is about-incpmatbile data formats are simply the product of lazy programmers. There is no *good* reason why certain document(data) standards have not been created and become ubiquitous which are modularly extensible allowing for the incorporation of new features and functions-providing at once for backwards compatiblity and enabling future adaptations. The bad reason is that then people would not have to buy the newest latest release of MS Application 11. Most software(and hardware) companies have products within their product line competing against other products in their product line(Intel 386sx vs. 386 DX-MS Works vs. MS Office). This competition requires differences which make the sales difference-and more often than not the only differences which make a difference are the ones which sell. -There is a good side to this-needless programming and engineering jobs arise to minimalize or eliminate these differences once they exist-this creates niche jobs for programmers and engineers(amipro document converts for Word-powerleap adapters for processors)-but the computer user pays through the nose for such things(hyperthreading is already built into all existing intel P4's-but only enabled for the yet to be released 3.0GHz variant). A book is not a piece of data, an audio-tape is not a piece of data, an audio CD is not a piece of data-once these things have been digitalized into computer formats they become data-at this point the only difference between these various forms of data is the format in which this data is stored and the applications which one uses to manipulate such-as long as the underlying context(hardware) is transparent in terms of the OS the users should not have to constantly struggle with artificially re-imposed differences which programmers could eliminate by using more foresight in their efforts. Commercial programmers re-impose such differences to carve out economic niches-and this is where many really earn their money-but this only forces the user to beckon to the commerical trough, forking out money for access to that which has been artificially rendered inaccessible due to shortsighted formats....... open source programmers try to do the right thing providing maximal compatibility and integration(Gstream for example)-the *nix OS is based on this model itself-but the opensource world is often so scattered that 20 different groups work on projects which in essence do the same thing, constantly re-inventing the wheel and inadvertantly producing the same kinds of incompatible data format BS which is the commercial basis of commercial software...but this is due to a lack of foresight and consensus as to how to approach the project at hand..... Data is not a metaphor. The only context in which *data* has any meaning is the context of human-computer interaction.
I downloaded the pdf file and read throught it. Several times I had to fight back outright laughing, not that there is anything wrong with laughing, particularily when confronted with something which is just simply silly, nonsensical. This *paper* was, ad is, and shall remain a clever gag- with a tongue in cheek, very dry, sort of humor. it had nothing to do with programming and nothing to do with computer science. It was a laughable attempt to apply various superficially understood ideas of certain postmodern thinkers to the field of computer science. The modern field of computer science owes its existence primarily to people like Von Neuman, who in rejecting certain post-modern issues developed much of ideas which underly computer architecture. Heisenberg and Von Neuman disagreed about the issues which theoretical physicist were encountering in the first half of the last century. The disagreement in regards to these issues, was a disagreement concerning how one best dealt with these issues. During the first half of the 20th century physicists were encountering the same phenomena which had already left its mark in philosophy(Husserl,Heidegger), art(Dadaists) and literature(Joyce) (too name but a few). This issue could be entitled, "the problem with identity"- on a more banal level,"how does one deal with a third, not given, but not excluded" (a la tertium non datur). The issue with identity manifested itself in virtually all human endeavors- political and social. Von Neuman defined his stance as regards this issue, he simply chose to ignore the situation, and ignore the ramifications, which had become apparent, which the problematic of identity presented. Whereas Heisenbergs reflections led, indirectly, to the birth of quantum physics, which in someways was a a form of "postmodern" physics-at least on the theoretical side-engineering techniques based on analysis from quantum physics enables modern computers to operate- Von Neuman's reflections led to the stalwart ultra-modern way of thinking which gave birth to computer science. ai, and congiitve science. Only a modernist could imagine comparing computers with human beings. In fact most of the terminology used in the description of computer functions was taken tfrom the then(1950's) current understanding of cognition-the first cyberneticists, were cognitive psychologists, nuerologists, systems theoreticians, and computer engineers-which is why people still speak about a computers "memory". The identity issue did not go away because Von Neuman said it was nothing-and his answer was better than Heisenbergs pseudo-epiphenomalism. Working with the ultra-modernists paradigm of computer science, which is decidedly NOT postmodern, programmers and engineers were constantly confronted with identity issues- pragmatism ushered forth ever new software and hardware architectures as answers to these issues. Modern object-oriented programming is based on second-order logic-ie. self-reference-this is one way of dealing with the identity issue-and its structure closely resembles contemporary systems theory. Von Neuman's original ideas were used in the design of processors-as time has gone by the ineffciency of this architecture, the inefficacy of this answer to the identity question, has been left along the wayside, leaving room for more "post-modern" processor architectures. "postmopdernism" may be the joke of the day, but the issue of identity and the challenges that it poses is something which every thinker, artist, writer, programmer and engineer is confronted with today-this issue is a phenomena-it manifests in many differing, changing forms, some more obvious, some more abstract-there is no ONE answer to this janus-faced problematic, this is not a problem which can be solved, ie. resolved-the way one approaches their answer to this issue is the quiddity(whatness) of their undertaking. modernists- everything is knowable, subject to empirical research and verifiable. ultra-modernists- everything is knowable, nothing is verifiable-everything is subject to falsification post-modernists- knowledge is contructable, knwoledge is not based on empricism, empiricism is not based on experience, experience does not spell knowledge
well Strasbourg(France) uses something somewhat similiar....all the tram stops are outfitted with large simple electronic displays telling you how long you have to wait for the next tram.....I would assume that the relative position and speed of each carrier in a public transportation system(train.subway,tram,monorail etc.()but probably NOT buses) is known,ie. present and tracked by the communcications and control centers of the local public transportation board...ie. someone(invidiuals working together with networked computers) keeps tabs on when and where which carriers are, allowing for central override and rerouting. If such info is available to those in control this info can probably easily be passed onto some kind of local display unit-ie. the tracks and rails used in public transport carry electronic information(ie. when such is being built lines for communication and control coordination are laid at the same time...passing such info to sms should be little more than snapshotting the ongoing communications,ie. tram 7 triggered switch 89a on Rue de Mirrior [Tr7@SW89| 23:08:2002:17.45.32] and piping this into a sms server(in europe the state-or partially state-owned telecoms usually are the biggest cellphone and sms providers.....(the predomicance of the state, in a good way, as evident throughout western europe, is manifest in exhaustive, reliable, high-quality public transportation) As far as the technical details used in such systems, this will invariably differ to a great extent from one city to the next, perhaps even between the varying subsystems of the public transportation, probably with some degree of national coordination (socialistic-ie built with tax dollars and implemented through gov. contracts and or regional industrial dominance(ie.large electronic/communications firms- phillips/erricson/noikia or ....)
(before I moved to europe(for my grad studies) I had only seen passenger trains in movies....and I have been through more than half of the US......
This appears to me to be a silly issue... who cares what redhat does ? those who really insist on choice and are willing to act upon it arent likely to be using redhat in the first place whats so bad about molding gnome and kde together in the new redhat release ? I think this is great, personally. I dont use redhat, rahter gentoo, and I have installed both gnome and kde (as well as fluxbox and enlightnment) each time I use one of them I need apps from the other, the single biggest problem confronting newbies using linux distros is finding out which programs are installed, wht they do, which ones are needed and how to execute them...if you install kde and gnome and run kde you may not even know that gnome is on your system, because gnome menus are not included in your kde desktop(gnome2 has kde menus) ....what this means is that your average newbie does not have a clue as to what he/she just installed on their machine, and more importantly WHERE these things are installed-this is where the menus come in-if stuff is not listed in the menus newbies arent going to find it, some for weeks, others for months, and some NEVER....molding kde and gnome together in temrs of themes and skins(under the surface totally different functionality) simply makes the learning curve for newbies much more appetizing...
finally I would love to see a tiny set of standard menu dialogs(file open,save,save as, close, print, edit,copy, paste, find etc.) written in Gtk+(gnome2) which are used universally in all X programs-gtk+ is much leaner than QT and has the best themeing I have ever seen...if one could put together a set of bindings which enables kde programmers to use the gtk+-bnased standard menus and seperate the standard menus into their own libraries so that compiled programs consiting of QT and gtk+ libraries are not redunantly copying the same functionality and producing massive executables...maybe some form of GTQ or qtk+-we really need a unified vfs system, standard menu files, a unified messaging/communications system-running ORBit2 frome gnome2 and the DCOM stuff from kde at the same time is OVERKILL and universal themeing----a reworking of gtk+ is probably more feasible than rewriting QT-perhaps a set of super-high level extremely abstract OO libraries could bind QT and gtk+ together in a way that endprogrammers would not have to worry to much about and from which endusers would profit....