A low-cost course in MS Office is quite a success, so you interpret that to mean OpenOffice is "a ticket to nowhere" to "most folks." So if a course in OpenOffice has good attendance, would that be a sign that MS Office is "a ticket to nowhere?"
These courses were subsidized through state government grants because local employers want these skills. I could as easily have pointed to a dozen other programs running concurrently.
"MS Office is your ticket out of welfare. It is a paycheck for seniors and the disabled." That was the fundamental lesson being hammered home here.
early this morning Maryland passed legislation to apply a new 6% sales tax to 'custom computer programming' and other computer- and hardware-related services.
The only thing that surprises me is that it isn't being done elsewhere. That it isn't being done everywhere. There are damn few things in this state that are exempt from the sales tax and you can't plausibly call this particular tax regressive.
People don't understand at first the implications of free[dom] software.
Well, of course, they don't, and, most likely, they never will.
OpenOffice.org is more or less indistinguishable from Sun's Star Office, the free-as-in-beer download from Google. Both have grown too big and unwieldy to look like anything other than the mega-corporate product they are.
Most users will never read or write a single line of code. Most will never have any direct contact with a programmer. Never hire a programmer. Never have the slightest - sustainable - interest in the religion, philosophy or ideology which is free and open source.
There are many applications where the FOSS model does not work particularly well - because the programmer is in many ways submerged by a much larger and more diverse team of players.
The businessman wants to see expertise in small business accounting. The action and RPG gamer strength is story-telling, game play, character design, animation and at least a dozen other crafts and specialties.
I fully expect to see telecommuting plans as a normal part of government recommendations for business during times of terrorism, epidemic or natural disaster.
All of which puts enormous stress on the infrastructure that makes telecommuting possible.
Maintaining your work at home lifestyle is going to be quite a challenge. Unless of course you are a Keep-A-Year's-Supply Mormon.
Bottled water from the Salvation Army but no DSL. When a battery goes dead, it stays dead.
Your employer can't function because - at the most basic level - he is still both a producer and consumer of physical goods and services that cannot be delivered unless there are people up and around to get the job done.
If the FedEx planes are grounded the Geek at might as well unplug his laptop and go back to bed.
Everyone should know who this fool is. As a shareholder I would be horrifed to learn that we had such an idiot in charge!
The executive is paid to make decisions, The secretary is paid to manage appointments and correspondence.
So long as he makes the right decisions the stockholder has no cause for complaint if the CEO is more comfortable working with a quill pen and parchment than with a PowerBook.
It is I suppose typical that an introduction to free and open source apps for Windows would be spread over ten add filled pages.
Open Office.org
Last month, our community college extension program was offering state subsidized courses in MS Office at $5 for each three hour course at the beginner and intermediate levels. No age or income restrictions whatsoever.
It was quite a success and a reminder that to most folks OpenOffice.org is a ticket to nowhere.
To talk of piracy is so much wasted breath.
The odds are quite good that if you are in the market for an office suite, you will qualify as a Home User through your employer's volume licensing plan or you will be eligible for a steeply discounted academic package.
MS Office for the cost of S&H.
The most you are likely to spend is $150 for MS Office Home (three seats, retail boxed) or $200 for the OEM Office bundle installed on your new road-warrior laptop. If that isn't in the budget, how you can afford the consumables for an ink jet or a laser?
The GIMP
I'll admit that I cringe whenever I type these two words.
It comes perhaps from my experience with a sheltered work program for the disabled.
Setting that aside for the moment, basic editing software is bundled with every printer and multifunction printer. Paint.NET is elegant little program. There are good alternatives for the amateur in Paint Shop Pro.
Older versions are easy to find, dirt cheap, and come with a thick printed manual.
Vista Premium. 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor. 2.3 GHz Athlon Dual-Core CPU. 2 GB DDR RAM. 500 GB HDD. DVD Burner.
The buyer who has been out of the market will be looking at tech that didn't exist when he was last out shopping or was priced hopelessly out of reach. The $200 Linux PC at Walmart has come - and gone, once again. What remains is Vista, and I can't believe that Walmart thinks that the Vista GUI is a significant barrier.
The installation requires 7GB of free hard-drive space
I will take the odds that this is the "everything Vista" RC for the support tech or network administrator who wants to test every possible configuration from Basic to Ultimate.
Modern enlightened age you think? Think again... If you install some electronic stuff in a modern US city, you can laugh as you watch the crowd getting crazy and paranoid... until they catch you
Then maybe it is time you did some thinking.
The legitimate advertiser calls the Boston transit authority and inquires about costs, liability, restrictions on the placement and mounting of devices, and so on.
He knows that promotional stunts have gone sour before.
The terrorist by definition doesn't play by the rules. But the Geek can be counted on to press The Big Red Button because he knows it couldn't be real.
The reason the subways use DC was that at the time the subways were developed, DC motors were smaller, lighter, cheaper and more efficient than variable speed AC motors.
In 1900 that would seem to make DC the choice for anything other than long distance transmission. What else would you be using electricity for but a light, a motor, or a radiant heater?
Under the deal, Microsoft gets to add patented Kyocera Mita technology to its Windows and Office products. What does Kyocera get? The right to use patented Microsoft technology in its printers, copiers and "certain Linux-based embedded devices."
Kyocera makes everything from ball-point pens to machine tools.
Ah, so you personally asked all owners/shareholders of SourceForge, Inc. if you could access this website and post comments on it.
This argument is fraudulent and the Geek damn well knows it is fraudulent.
The mod up to +4 Insightful notwithstanding.
Slashdot advertises its accessibility elsewhere on the net. There is a Slashdot button on the Google toolbar. It stories appear on Google's news page.
Slashdot is not broadcasting a signal with a range outside the home of under 100 feet.
You may have noticed that I post as westlake and not as an AC. I have an account here. I played by the rules. There is a real - traceable - email address on file.
The Geek frames his arguments in ways that appeal to other Geeks.
The problem is that the Geek isn't the Judge. The problem is that the Geek isn't on the Jury.
The guy on the Jury is paying Time-Warner $150 a month for cable TV, Internet and phone service for himself and his family.
To him it is a trespass, and to him the wardriver is a thief. Plain and simple.
I would say that the beacon and authentication process would communicate that permission is granted
Communication between machines is not communication with their owners.
The permission you need is from the subscriber who signs the monthly checks to Verizon. The judge doesn't have to say that as a matter of law a residential "access point" is meant to be public simply because it is not secured.
It's the judge's business to ask the inconvenient questions:
Why were you parked in a neighborhood where you had no acquaintances, no obvious reason for being there? Why were you using a directional antenna, the Pringles can? The legit public access point generally isn't in the basement playroom of a private home.
Every single work written by arguably the greatest author in the English language (Shakespeare)...heavily incorporated elements from previous authors well beyond the standard that we would call "copyright infringement" today.
Not true.
The simplest argument to make here is that the Shakespearean production totally eclipsed everything that came before it. His contemporaries are read only by academics, their plays performed only as theatrical curiosities.
That is the mark of the creative artist who can place his own stamp on a popular genre and make it is own.
Be luckless enough to get your own history play on stage and he will strike back with a Falstaff, the pageantry and patriotism of Henry IV and Henry V. You will be plowed into the ground so deep it will be as if you never existed.
I think that JK Rowling and all of the people associated with the "Harry Potter" machine have made enough that the objective of our copyright laws is being fulfilled. It is time for them to let it go.
The purpose of copyright law is to encourage and protect the production of original works of art, as an inspiration to others.
Derivatives are fan fiction. Derivatives are for the second rate.
Brad Bird learns from "Steamboat Wille." He writes and produces The Iron Giant, The Incredibles. Ratatouille.
It is very revealing, how quickly the geek is willing to appropriate the work of others, without ever having accomplished anything significant himself.
what is scary: our culture is being taken from us and given to corporations. There is no legitimate reason that Mickey Mouse, which is part of our culture and should be free for us all, should still be covered under copyright. Walt Disney is dead.
This is nonsense.
The Mouse was a corporate creation from the beginning.
Disney himself had very limited skills and training in animation. He was as much a product of the bleak black and white world of rural Kansas as The Wizard of Oz.
What he brought to animation was a strong sense of story, a relentless drive to pursue technical and artistic excellence and innovation beyond his own abilities.
He risked a hell of lot on films like Snow White, Fantasia, Victory Through Airpower. Some of the greatest films in the Disney cannon did not show a profit for almost fifty years.
Disney was above all else an entrepreneur who built and built and built and kept his independence.
I hope she wins now, but not 60 years later, like Disney who doesn't want his earliest works to fall in the PD.
Disney's earliest works are in the public domain.
Disney was an independent animator in Kansas in 1922. Disney Silent Cartoons [Disney Before The Mouse]
The geek might want to think about the numbers: eighty-five years of corporate independence, all but the tiniest fraction of the studio's production preserved and easily accessible.
The geek might also might want to think about you actually get when a film comes into the public domain.
It isn't ownership or possession of primary sources.
It isn't the technical competence or financial resources needed to work from primary sources. "Steamboat Willie" was released on 35mm nitrate stock with synchronized sound on phonographic disk. That is a problem for MoMA or the Smithsonian.
You get the rights to the characters and story of "Steamboat Willie."
Eight minutes of silent era sight gags linked by a thin narrative thread. You do not get the Mouse in any of his later incarnations. You do not get the trademarked character designs. You do not get The Phantom Blot. You do not get The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
You want to learn from "Steamboat Willie?"
"Vintage Mickey" is $15 on Disney DVD. The complete Mouse in Black and White will set you back about $60.
in the UK what killed nuclear power was not environmental concerns but the cost.
The companies in the states that ran into trouble with nuclear power were building to a scale far beyond their experience, competence and financial resources.
Management was second-rate. Design. Construction. Recruitment and training.
TMI was a shock to the system - not because people were dying - but because of the Pollyanna attitude of its management in the face of the blatantly obvious truth that no one seemed to know what was going on inside the reactor or how to deal with it.
Vista has shown a small increase in representation, but clearly nowhere near where Microsoft would have desperately hoped. Previously 7.99% of gamers were using the latest operating system. Now it's 16.91%, with a vast 81.13% sticking with XP.
This is the most ridiculous take on Vista I have heard yet.
20% of gamers migrate to a new and more demanding OS in less than one year and this is supposed to be bad news for Vista?
Slashdot Mirror
These courses were subsidized through state government grants because local employers want these skills. I could as easily have pointed to a dozen other programs running concurrently.
"MS Office is your ticket out of welfare. It is a paycheck for seniors and the disabled." That was the fundamental lesson being hammered home here.
That doesn't help when you are in New Orleans and the traffic is being re-routed through Shreveport and Dallas.
Where do you go when all the pastures turn the same shade of green?
Where do you go when the best paying jobs go to those who understand local conditions?
The real property law of New York. The tax structure of Virginia.
The only thing that surprises me is that it isn't being done elsewhere. That it isn't being done everywhere. There are damn few things in this state that are exempt from the sales tax and you can't plausibly call this particular tax regressive.
Well, of course, they don't, and, most likely, they never will.
OpenOffice.org is more or less indistinguishable from Sun's Star Office, the free-as-in-beer download from Google. Both have grown too big and unwieldy to look like anything other than the mega-corporate product they are.
Most users will never read or write a single line of code. Most will never have any direct contact with a programmer. Never hire a programmer. Never have the slightest - sustainable - interest in the religion, philosophy or ideology which is free and open source.
There are many applications where the FOSS model does not work particularly well - because the programmer is in many ways submerged by a much larger and more diverse team of players.
The businessman wants to see expertise in small business accounting. The action and RPG gamer strength is story-telling, game play, character design, animation and at least a dozen other crafts and specialties.
All of which puts enormous stress on the infrastructure that makes telecommuting possible.
Maintaining your work at home lifestyle is going to be quite a challenge. Unless of course you are a Keep-A-Year's-Supply Mormon.
Basic utility services disrupted. Food shipments disrupted.
Bottled water from the Salvation Army but no DSL. When a battery goes dead, it stays dead.
Your employer can't function because - at the most basic level - he is still both a producer and consumer of physical goods and services that cannot be delivered unless there are people up and around to get the job done.
If the FedEx planes are grounded the Geek at might as well unplug his laptop and go back to bed.
The executive is paid to make decisions, The secretary is paid to manage appointments and correspondence.
So long as he makes the right decisions the stockholder has no cause for complaint if the CEO is more comfortable working with a quill pen and parchment than with a PowerBook.
basic editing software is bundled with every digital camera and multifunction printer.
Open Office.org
Last month, our community college extension program was offering state subsidized courses in MS Office at $5 for each three hour course at the beginner and intermediate levels. No age or income restrictions whatsoever.
It was quite a success and a reminder that to most folks OpenOffice.org is a ticket to nowhere.
To talk of piracy is so much wasted breath.
The odds are quite good that if you are in the market for an office suite, you will qualify as a Home User through your employer's volume licensing plan or you will be eligible for a steeply discounted academic package.
MS Office for the cost of S&H.
The most you are likely to spend is $150 for MS Office Home (three seats, retail boxed) or $200 for the OEM Office bundle installed on your new road-warrior laptop. If that isn't in the budget, how you can afford the consumables for an ink jet or a laser?
The GIMP
I'll admit that I cringe whenever I type these two words.
It comes perhaps from my experience with a sheltered work program for the disabled.
Setting that aside for the moment, basic editing software is bundled with every printer and multifunction printer. Paint.NET is elegant little program. There are good alternatives for the amateur in Paint Shop Pro.
Older versions are easy to find, dirt cheap, and come with a thick printed manual.
In a word, yes.
The conditions of entry into Japan are defined by Japan.
The conditions for entry into the United States are defined by the United States.
There is no such thing as a right to travel anonymously beyond your own borders.
This is what $800 will buy at Walmart.com:
Dell Inspiron Desktop
Vista Premium. 22" Widescreen LCD Monitor. 2.3 GHz Athlon Dual-Core CPU. 2 GB DDR RAM. 500 GB HDD. DVD Burner.
The buyer who has been out of the market will be looking at tech that didn't exist when he was last out shopping or was priced hopelessly out of reach. The $200 Linux PC at Walmart has come - and gone, once again. What remains is Vista, and I can't believe that Walmart thinks that the Vista GUI is a significant barrier.
I will take the odds that this is the "everything Vista" RC for the support tech or network administrator who wants to test every possible configuration from Basic to Ultimate.
Then maybe it is time you did some thinking.
The legitimate advertiser calls the Boston transit authority and inquires about costs, liability, restrictions on the placement and mounting of devices, and so on.
He knows that promotional stunts have gone sour before.
The terrorist by definition doesn't play by the rules. But the Geek can be counted on to press The Big Red Button because he knows it couldn't be real.
Then you won't mind signing over the rights to the imaginary - the intangible - property which is in your 401(K)?
In 1900 that would seem to make DC the choice for anything other than long distance transmission. What else would you be using electricity for but a light, a motor, or a radiant heater?
Vonage loses every case that goes to trial. Voyage loses every case that goes to an appeal.
Vonage can't win on the facts and it can't win on the law. It is running out of time and it is running out of money.
Kyocera makes everything from ball-point pens to machine tools.
Kyocera is interested in things like data security in printing. Kyocera Mita America's Data Security Kit Offers Critical Data Protection of Stored Data on Color Multifunctional Products [November 14, 2007]
Microsoft is also interested in things like data security in printing.
Tell me why the Geek trots out his paranoia every time two companies that compliment each other sign a cross-licensing agreement.
This argument is fraudulent and the Geek damn well knows it is fraudulent.
The mod up to +4 Insightful notwithstanding.
Slashdot advertises its accessibility elsewhere on the net. There is a Slashdot button on the Google toolbar. It stories appear on Google's news page.
Slashdot is not broadcasting a signal with a range outside the home of under 100 feet.
You may have noticed that I post as westlake and not as an AC. I have an account here. I played by the rules. There is a real - traceable - email address on file.
The Geek frames his arguments in ways that appeal to other Geeks.
The problem is that the Geek isn't the Judge. The problem is that the Geek isn't on the Jury.
The guy on the Jury is paying Time-Warner $150 a month for cable TV, Internet and phone service for himself and his family. To him it is a trespass, and to him the wardriver is a thief. Plain and simple.
Communication between machines is not communication with their owners.
The permission you need is from the subscriber who signs the monthly checks to Verizon. The judge doesn't have to say that as a matter of law a residential "access point" is meant to be public simply because it is not secured.
It's the judge's business to ask the inconvenient questions:
Why were you parked in a neighborhood where you had no acquaintances, no obvious reason for being there? Why were you using a directional antenna, the Pringles can? The legit public access point generally isn't in the basement playroom of a private home.
You waste my time quoting an online poll.
Not true.
The simplest argument to make here is that the Shakespearean production totally eclipsed everything that came before it. His contemporaries are read only by academics, their plays performed only as theatrical curiosities.
That is the mark of the creative artist who can place his own stamp on a popular genre and make it is own.
Be luckless enough to get your own history play on stage and he will strike back with a Falstaff, the pageantry and patriotism of Henry IV and Henry V. You will be plowed into the ground so deep it will be as if you never existed.
I think that JK Rowling and all of the people associated with the "Harry Potter" machine have made enough that the objective of our copyright laws is being fulfilled. It is time for them to let it go.
The purpose of copyright law is to encourage and protect the production of original works of art, as an inspiration to others.
Derivatives are fan fiction. Derivatives are for the second rate.
Brad Bird learns from "Steamboat Wille." He writes and produces The Iron Giant, The Incredibles. Ratatouille.
It is very revealing, how quickly the geek is willing to appropriate the work of others, without ever having accomplished anything significant himself.
what is scary: our culture is being taken from us and given to corporations. There is no legitimate reason that Mickey Mouse, which is part of our culture and should be free for us all, should still be covered under copyright. Walt Disney is dead.
This is nonsense.
The Mouse was a corporate creation from the beginning.
Disney himself had very limited skills and training in animation. He was as much a product of the bleak black and white world of rural Kansas as The Wizard of Oz.
What he brought to animation was a strong sense of story, a relentless drive to pursue technical and artistic excellence and innovation beyond his own abilities.
He risked a hell of lot on films like Snow White, Fantasia, Victory Through Airpower. Some of the greatest films in the Disney cannon did not show a profit for almost fifty years.
Disney was above all else an entrepreneur who built and built and built and kept his independence.
Disney's earliest works are in the public domain.
Disney was an independent animator in Kansas in 1922. Disney Silent Cartoons [Disney Before The Mouse]
The geek might want to think about the numbers: eighty-five years of corporate independence, all but the tiniest fraction of the studio's production preserved and easily accessible.
The geek might also might want to think about you actually get when a film comes into the public domain.
It isn't ownership or possession of primary sources.
It isn't the technical competence or financial resources needed to work from primary sources. "Steamboat Willie" was released on 35mm nitrate stock with synchronized sound on phonographic disk. That is a problem for MoMA or the Smithsonian.
You get the rights to the characters and story of "Steamboat Willie."
Eight minutes of silent era sight gags linked by a thin narrative thread. You do not get the Mouse in any of his later incarnations. You do not get the trademarked character designs. You do not get The Phantom Blot. You do not get The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
You want to learn from "Steamboat Willie?"
"Vintage Mickey" is $15 on Disney DVD. The complete Mouse in Black and White will set you back about $60.
The companies in the states that ran into trouble with nuclear power were building to a scale far beyond their experience, competence and financial resources.
Management was second-rate. Design. Construction. Recruitment and training.
TMI was a shock to the system - not because people were dying - but because of the Pollyanna attitude of its management in the face of the blatantly obvious truth that no one seemed to know what was going on inside the reactor or how to deal with it.
This is the most ridiculous take on Vista I have heard yet.
20% of gamers migrate to a new and more demanding OS in less than one year and this is supposed to be bad news for Vista?
and the pacemaker is going to keep you alive through the stress of a high speed chase?