The fact that you can't use a *nix machine the way you want isn't a reflection of the Windows/Unix divide - it's a reflection of your personal preferences, experience and background. It's not remotely cultural.
I can't make my Windows machines work in the way I like to (mix of command line and GUI), whereas I can make my iBook and my G4 work wonders because I know OS X / Unix well. That's not cultural either - it's a reflection of the fact that my computing experience has always been some distance from the Windows world.
Just because you don't like something or don't feel comfortable with it doesn't necessarily mean it's a fault with the system as a whole. It can equally easily be a "fault" with your own experience.
You're looking at it the wrong way round. Which could Microsoft lose more from, being deprived of licences in Europe or deprived of licences in the US?
Current population of the US = 270m-ish. Current population of Europe = 730m. And Europe has a relatively low rate of piracy.
Factor in that the EU has shown (in the Windows Media Player case) that it's quite prepared to crack down hard on MS - in contrast to the US government - and it's no surprise that Microsoft is more concerned about European investments than American ones right now, and doing whatever it can to attack competitors' interests.
No, the sky isn't falling, but if you think that events in Europe can't affect those in America and it can't possibly affect you what Microsoft does over here, I suggest you talk to those people who narrowly avoided having their businesses crushed by a massive trade war over steel tariffs the other week.
Not to sound too nationalistic, but Europe is much bigger than the US - it's just more disorganised, and hamstrung by the French.;-)
No, the Mac and PC versions of IE have nothing to do with one another beyond a superficial similarity in looks. The Mac version of IE has often been ahead of its bigger brother in terms of standards compliance and suchlike - for example, IE 5.2 does not require the CSS "box model hack" that you have to use to get some sites to render properly in IE 5.5 on Windows. They have a totally different codebase - Microsoft just made use of a name with high brand recognition.
China has been a world power for thousands of years. It reached a low point in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Wrong. China has been a nation for thousands of years, but it's hardly been a world power. China's influence outside of its own borders has been minimal until very recently. Why do you think the West ended up rediscovering or reinventing things a couple of thousand years after China did? If China was a world power all this time, the West would have simply taken those inventions.
Of course this was partly their choice (China being quite xenophobic at times), but compared to the British, French, Romans, Russians, and even the Mongols and Nazis, they have never been a world power in the sense of making other countries quiver beneath their mighty conquering armies.
Quicktime Pro is more than a codec. It's more like the difference between Acrobat Reader and Acrobat itself; you have the ability to chop files up, convert to other formats, splice two files into one, and construct slideshows. Once you've got your video files, QTP lets you do some good file-munging things. $30 doesn't seem too bad a bargain on those grounds.
It can hardly be considered world wide if you exclude one of the world's superpowers.
At the time of the League, pre-WW2, the US was nowhere near a superpower. The American armed forces ranked somewhere around fifteenth in the world. The British Empire was bigger in 1933 than at any other time in its history and occupied more than ten per cent of the entire world.
Therefore, you could legitimately say that America didn't need including at the time - it was the massive (European) empires that needed to be involved. After WW2, of course, everything changed.
No, but you can't lay claim to something that is objectively proven by measurable criteria. Taste is subjective, speed is not.
Of course, what counts as measurable criteria is decided by the ITC. Hence the complaints; although the ITC is incredibly powerful when it wants to be. Case in point - it can ban Apple from its second most lucrative market, even though this is a relatively small country in population terms.
The ITC isn't always correct. It is merely the body which takes an "official" view based on its assessment of the world to date and has power to act accordingly. This is roughly akin to some federal US government organisation banning something on the grounds it thinks it's harmful or somehow misleading, regardless of whether you think it's OK.
While I think the ITC has a function in clear-cut cases, it's questionable whether it should take action in situations that are open to debate or subject to many variables.
Direct democracy does not necessarily equate to mob rule. Look at Switzerland for an example; referenda on many, many issues. As far as I can tell, Switzerland has yet to degenerate...
What you're referring to is the problem of how to stop knee-jerk reactions, not to direct democracy being impossible in itself. More interesting is your "whim of the majority" argument; every five years (or four/six in the US's case) government alters upon exactly that. Nobody gets a chance to speak up again for another half-decade. Is that any more logical, either, when we have these technologies that allow for consistent, direct communication between representatives and citizens?
It depends on whether you think elected representatives (MP, Congressman, senator...) should be representatives or delegates - Edward Burke initiated the debate 250 years ago (and the United States was the colonies at the time, so this is an example when Empire and republic share the principle) and I don't think it's been settled. Like everything else, there's a balance to be found. But it's worth noting he claimed he was a representative, not a delegate - and the electorate promptly voted him out of office for disagreeing with them.
That also raises the interesting idea of being able to override your own vote later because you've changed your mind (seen a new broadcast debate, for example). You could thus have a constant online poll during the election period which monitors how the campaign is going.
And from there, why not have that system running permanently? Direct democracy in action - do something stoopid one day, get instantly voted out of office.
Assuming you can guarantee security, integrity etc. But it would mean politicians had no choice other than to act according to the public's views.
That doesn't matter, because much of the code is not theirs (they haven't claimed ownership of everything). Suppose you offer a licence for your app at X pounds; if I don't like the licence, the application doesn't nonetheless become mine.
It's my right to refuse to take the offer on your terms, if I don't like them or think they're wrong; however, it's not within my rights at all to substitute my own terms for your product instead.
This doesn't of course apply to their own stuff, which they can sell under whatever licence they choose; however, in changing the licence for someone else's code (e.g. Samba) they are breaking every rule in the book.
I'm not sure what your point about TRIPS is, but given that IBM themselves built the G5, any comparison between TRIPS & the G5 would surely have to take into account the same company assembled both...so there's an equality there that still makes benchmarks valid.
Secondly, if you think redundant hardware denotes an enterprise system, well, there are plenty of Opteron/Itanium systems coming to market which don't have that redundancy. Similarly, the Xserve and Xserve RAID from Apple have oodles of redundancy built in. It's in the overall configuration (hardware, OS, apps) of the beast you find your enterprise-level security, not how many power supplies you have.
Which is exactly why you're missing the point, I think. Without a properly working back office, service delivery will forever involve people running around and paper travelling back and forth between floors and departments. A land charges search is a good example - transfer of information between various departments that all too often involves forms from Planning, Environmental Health, and so on. All too often that happens manually, when it's incredibly easy to automate. You really think IT is ancillary and has nothing to offer in this area? That nothing can be improved by the introduction of new technology that enables a faster transfer of data?
If you don't have the foundation, you don't have the effective service - it's a basic principle that you're missing, and hence I say you've missed the point.
The outsourcing of IT is understandable, as it arose in the 1990s because people believed it would save costs. That model's proven to be unsustainable - here's another example, in the shape of Mendip District Council, which has done the same thing only to find they're paying thousands to Capita for no discernible return. Outsourcing is a way to maintain the status quo, not to bring improvements.
My original point still stands - you need to focus attention on developing in-house skills, not on which company to pay next. A small district council typically employs less than a thousand employees - mine employs just 270 - but there are plenty of companies with smaller workforces that can afford to pay for genuine development and the skillset that supports open source. If you think there's no way your authority can go down this route, I'd be interested to hear why.
Otherwise, you sound like you're only interested in effective contract management, not in the proper development of local government IT - I'm not trying to flame you, but I still think you're missing the point.
Tim, you may or may not be a councillor (and I notice your CV says you were a Microsoft employee and are a software engineer) but this is largely irrelevant. Your contention misses the point entirely, because you're expecting to be feted by a company when no such company exists. OSS is judged by the performance of the software - support, resilience and reliability are up to you.
Very few local authorities have in-house skills, which is why it seems like such a "risk" to you. I work for a Shropshire local authority which also has very few in-house skills, but we're working to change that because we've realised that's the only way we can achieve independence and make IEG produce savings. When you have the skills to maintain software in-house, you don't need a company - you need high-performance software.
I suggest you go back to your authority and re-examine your business processes, your skillset and your fundamental position. Either you will be an authority that can do things on its own, using freely available tools that it can customise to provide a good experience for citizens, or you will be a cash monster for software company hucksters. It's really your choice.
Incidentally, take a look at Cambridgeshire County sometime - they do some good work. Or perhaps you're a member with them and haven't realised that your own authority is more aware than you are of what the options are.
But I'd seriously take a good look at yourself and how you approach things before rounding on others who've made it work for them.
Wrong, I'm afraid. The process that led you to your decision has to be documented to death, in order to prove to auditors (and scandal-hunting citizens) that you didn't do anything wrong by choosing AnySoftware.com. Once that choice is validated, nobody cares whether AnySoftware.com actually does the job or how it does it. Auditors rarely examine that part of the equation.
Government (central and local) in the UK is very focused on process rather than delivery - partly because of scandals, partly because we have very tight auditing mechanisms. It's the reason that IT projects by government often come to nothing, incidentally. But the point of the project is that local authorities and central government departments will adopt nothing unless they're certain it's been tested and validated by someone who has some kind of authority. That authority used to be the US government, but things are changing and now the UK government has its own agenda - a Good Thing.
Well, with OS X, it'd be "it ain't Linux, but it's all the software I'm used to, and it looks sweet, and - and it's a BSD box - but it's got Microsoft Office on it, and Photoshop - and I'm - I'm confused - I'm -....*pop*"
You see, switching OSes actually gives some people brain fever. Remember, kids. It's not clever.
This has been a feature of both landlines and cellular networks for some time in the UK (I'm not sure about the Continent). Strangely enough, the phone system hasn't collapsed and we still seem to have a working telecommunications infrastructure. *touch wood*
In fact, what happened was that some customers switched from company A to company B, and some customers switched from company B to company A, and so on. And people were happy. And companies, the good ones anyway, didn't fall apart, so they were happy too.
I don't know what the motives of the objecting companies are, but perhaps they should think more about the service they're providing - if it's easy for people to switch and they provide a good service, said company could actually benefit.
That depends on your existing postal service, of course, and whether you're sending internationally or not. In the UK, standard first-class mail is - normally - delivered the next day and costs 28p (42 cents) for an envelope of quite a few normal-weight sheets of paper. Such a service wouldn't find a market here.
As a replacement for air mail, however, it has much greater potential. Delivery from the UK to the US can be up to two weeks - with a service like this there would be no correlation between distances and delivery times.
Re:I'm not an American...
on
TIA Project to End
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· Score: 2, Interesting
That might not be the best example. The US and UK collaborate to a much greater extent than the US and Israelis do, and it's already going on - and not just in Iraq. For example, the Echelon listening system that's run jointly by the American NSA and GCHQ here in England. There's a nice political loophole that gets used - "hey, we speak the same language and used to be the same country, we'll be okay, let's just spy on those dang furriners instead" - so they don't have to publicise it or seek approval.
My immediate reaction is that this will simply drive chatroom-using children to less-monitored, less well-policed chatrooms where they can carry on gossiping - especially if they don't have access to IM clients. Only nobody will be watching those chatrooms.
As much as I loathe some of Microsoft's practices, I would have preferred an organisation like them to be monitoring (young) children's chatrooms than SmallISP.com(tm). Purely from a resources standpoint, Microsoft was one of the best-equipped organisations to watch for paedophiles and other slime.
So, people born right after Christmas in January may have different perspectives on the importance of family, friends, and holidays (their birthdays being near the holidays) than someone born in June.
They also realise the same thing when they do what every child does sooner or later and count back nine months from their birthday.
Born at Christmas? Nine months from the first days of spring. Conclusion: Your parents hibernate.
Born in June? Nine months from October. Conclusion: Your parents couldn't afford heating.
For the record, I'm a Scorpio. Born in November, nine months after Valentine's Day. This is the reason Scorpios have a streak of evil - we have lived with the knowledge of dark lust from day one.:-)
Re:Advance only so far, then come to a speeding ha
on
eGovOS 3 Announced
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· Score: 1
Sorry, to clarify - I didn't say the app was actually used, I just meant that GIS was the only area where any open-source effort has even begun. I wasn't trying to say it had taken root anywhere.
And yes, Uni_Form Spacial, ArcView, MapInfo (and GGP) are commonplace in government.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that you can't use a *nix machine the way you want isn't a reflection of the Windows/Unix divide - it's a reflection of your personal preferences, experience and background. It's not remotely cultural.
I can't make my Windows machines work in the way I like to (mix of command line and GUI), whereas I can make my iBook and my G4 work wonders because I know OS X / Unix well. That's not cultural either - it's a reflection of the fact that my computing experience has always been some distance from the Windows world.
Just because you don't like something or don't feel comfortable with it doesn't necessarily mean it's a fault with the system as a whole. It can equally easily be a "fault" with your own experience.
You're looking at it the wrong way round. Which could Microsoft lose more from, being deprived of licences in Europe or deprived of licences in the US?
Current population of the US = 270m-ish. Current population of Europe = 730m. And Europe has a relatively low rate of piracy.
Factor in that the EU has shown (in the Windows Media Player case) that it's quite prepared to crack down hard on MS - in contrast to the US government - and it's no surprise that Microsoft is more concerned about European investments than American ones right now, and doing whatever it can to attack competitors' interests.
No, the sky isn't falling, but if you think that events in Europe can't affect those in America and it can't possibly affect you what Microsoft does over here, I suggest you talk to those people who narrowly avoided having their businesses crushed by a massive trade war over steel tariffs the other week.
Not to sound too nationalistic, but Europe is much bigger than the US - it's just more disorganised, and hamstrung by the French. ;-)
No, the Mac and PC versions of IE have nothing to do with one another beyond a superficial similarity in looks. The Mac version of IE has often been ahead of its bigger brother in terms of standards compliance and suchlike - for example, IE 5.2 does not require the CSS "box model hack" that you have to use to get some sites to render properly in IE 5.5 on Windows. They have a totally different codebase - Microsoft just made use of a name with high brand recognition.
China has been a world power for thousands of years. It reached a low point in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Wrong. China has been a nation for thousands of years, but it's hardly been a world power. China's influence outside of its own borders has been minimal until very recently. Why do you think the West ended up rediscovering or reinventing things a couple of thousand years after China did? If China was a world power all this time, the West would have simply taken those inventions.
Of course this was partly their choice (China being quite xenophobic at times), but compared to the British, French, Romans, Russians, and even the Mongols and Nazis, they have never been a world power in the sense of making other countries quiver beneath their mighty conquering armies.
Quicktime Pro is more than a codec. It's more like the difference between Acrobat Reader and Acrobat itself; you have the ability to chop files up, convert to other formats, splice two files into one, and construct slideshows. Once you've got your video files, QTP lets you do some good file-munging things. $30 doesn't seem too bad a bargain on those grounds.
No, tribbles.
For those not aware, Daleks can actually climb stairs. First shown on screen in 1987.
It can hardly be considered world wide if you exclude one of the world's superpowers.
At the time of the League, pre-WW2, the US was nowhere near a superpower. The American armed forces ranked somewhere around fifteenth in the world. The British Empire was bigger in 1933 than at any other time in its history and occupied more than ten per cent of the entire world.
Therefore, you could legitimately say that America didn't need including at the time - it was the massive (European) empires that needed to be involved. After WW2, of course, everything changed.
No, but you can't lay claim to something that is objectively proven by measurable criteria. Taste is subjective, speed is not.
Of course, what counts as measurable criteria is decided by the ITC. Hence the complaints; although the ITC is incredibly powerful when it wants to be. Case in point - it can ban Apple from its second most lucrative market, even though this is a relatively small country in population terms.
The ITC isn't always correct. It is merely the body which takes an "official" view based on its assessment of the world to date and has power to act accordingly. This is roughly akin to some federal US government organisation banning something on the grounds it thinks it's harmful or somehow misleading, regardless of whether you think it's OK.
While I think the ITC has a function in clear-cut cases, it's questionable whether it should take action in situations that are open to debate or subject to many variables.
Direct democracy does not necessarily equate to mob rule. Look at Switzerland for an example; referenda on many, many issues. As far as I can tell, Switzerland has yet to degenerate...
What you're referring to is the problem of how to stop knee-jerk reactions, not to direct democracy being impossible in itself. More interesting is your "whim of the majority" argument; every five years (or four/six in the US's case) government alters upon exactly that. Nobody gets a chance to speak up again for another half-decade. Is that any more logical, either, when we have these technologies that allow for consistent, direct communication between representatives and citizens?
It depends on whether you think elected representatives (MP, Congressman, senator...) should be representatives or delegates - Edward Burke initiated the debate 250 years ago (and the United States was the colonies at the time, so this is an example when Empire and republic share the principle) and I don't think it's been settled. Like everything else, there's a balance to be found. But it's worth noting he claimed he was a representative, not a delegate - and the electorate promptly voted him out of office for disagreeing with them.
That also raises the interesting idea of being able to override your own vote later because you've changed your mind (seen a new broadcast debate, for example). You could thus have a constant online poll during the election period which monitors how the campaign is going.
And from there, why not have that system running permanently? Direct democracy in action - do something stoopid one day, get instantly voted out of office.
Assuming you can guarantee security, integrity etc. But it would mean politicians had no choice other than to act according to the public's views.
Oh, right, that's why it won't happen....
That doesn't matter, because much of the code is not theirs (they haven't claimed ownership of everything). Suppose you offer a licence for your app at X pounds; if I don't like the licence, the application doesn't nonetheless become mine.
It's my right to refuse to take the offer on your terms, if I don't like them or think they're wrong; however, it's not within my rights at all to substitute my own terms for your product instead.
This doesn't of course apply to their own stuff, which they can sell under whatever licence they choose; however, in changing the licence for someone else's code (e.g. Samba) they are breaking every rule in the book.
I'm not sure what your point about TRIPS is, but given that IBM themselves built the G5, any comparison between TRIPS & the G5 would surely have to take into account the same company assembled both...so there's an equality there that still makes benchmarks valid.
Secondly, if you think redundant hardware denotes an enterprise system, well, there are plenty of Opteron/Itanium systems coming to market which don't have that redundancy. Similarly, the Xserve and Xserve RAID from Apple have oodles of redundancy built in. It's in the overall configuration (hardware, OS, apps) of the beast you find your enterprise-level security, not how many power supplies you have.
Grail
Which is exactly why you're missing the point, I think. Without a properly working back office, service delivery will forever involve people running around and paper travelling back and forth between floors and departments. A land charges search is a good example - transfer of information between various departments that all too often involves forms from Planning, Environmental Health, and so on. All too often that happens manually, when it's incredibly easy to automate. You really think IT is ancillary and has nothing to offer in this area? That nothing can be improved by the introduction of new technology that enables a faster transfer of data?
If you don't have the foundation, you don't have the effective service - it's a basic principle that you're missing, and hence I say you've missed the point.
The outsourcing of IT is understandable, as it arose in the 1990s because people believed it would save costs. That model's proven to be unsustainable - here's another example, in the shape of Mendip District Council, which has done the same thing only to find they're paying thousands to Capita for no discernible return. Outsourcing is a way to maintain the status quo, not to bring improvements.
My original point still stands - you need to focus attention on developing in-house skills, not on which company to pay next. A small district council typically employs less than a thousand employees - mine employs just 270 - but there are plenty of companies with smaller workforces that can afford to pay for genuine development and the skillset that supports open source. If you think there's no way your authority can go down this route, I'd be interested to hear why.
Otherwise, you sound like you're only interested in effective contract management, not in the proper development of local government IT - I'm not trying to flame you, but I still think you're missing the point.
Tim, you may or may not be a councillor (and I notice your CV says you were a Microsoft employee and are a software engineer) but this is largely irrelevant. Your contention misses the point entirely, because you're expecting to be feted by a company when no such company exists. OSS is judged by the performance of the software - support, resilience and reliability are up to you.
Very few local authorities have in-house skills, which is why it seems like such a "risk" to you. I work for a Shropshire local authority which also has very few in-house skills, but we're working to change that because we've realised that's the only way we can achieve independence and make IEG produce savings. When you have the skills to maintain software in-house, you don't need a company - you need high-performance software.
I suggest you go back to your authority and re-examine your business processes, your skillset and your fundamental position. Either you will be an authority that can do things on its own, using freely available tools that it can customise to provide a good experience for citizens, or you will be a cash monster for software company hucksters. It's really your choice.
Incidentally, take a look at Cambridgeshire County sometime - they do some good work. Or perhaps you're a member with them and haven't realised that your own authority is more aware than you are of what the options are.
But I'd seriously take a good look at yourself and how you approach things before rounding on others who've made it work for them.
Wrong, I'm afraid. The process that led you to your decision has to be documented to death, in order to prove to auditors (and scandal-hunting citizens) that you didn't do anything wrong by choosing AnySoftware.com. Once that choice is validated, nobody cares whether AnySoftware.com actually does the job or how it does it. Auditors rarely examine that part of the equation.
Government (central and local) in the UK is very focused on process rather than delivery - partly because of scandals, partly because we have very tight auditing mechanisms. It's the reason that IT projects by government often come to nothing, incidentally. But the point of the project is that local authorities and central government departments will adopt nothing unless they're certain it's been tested and validated by someone who has some kind of authority. That authority used to be the US government, but things are changing and now the UK government has its own agenda - a Good Thing.
Well, with OS X, it'd be "it ain't Linux, but it's all the software I'm used to, and it looks sweet, and - and it's a BSD box - but it's got Microsoft Office on it, and Photoshop - and I'm - I'm confused - I'm - ....*pop*"
You see, switching OSes actually gives some people brain fever. Remember, kids. It's not clever.
This has been a feature of both landlines and cellular networks for some time in the UK (I'm not sure about the Continent). Strangely enough, the phone system hasn't collapsed and we still seem to have a working telecommunications infrastructure. *touch wood*
In fact, what happened was that some customers switched from company A to company B, and some customers switched from company B to company A, and so on. And people were happy. And companies, the good ones anyway, didn't fall apart, so they were happy too.
I don't know what the motives of the objecting companies are, but perhaps they should think more about the service they're providing - if it's easy for people to switch and they provide a good service, said company could actually benefit.
That depends on your existing postal service, of course, and whether you're sending internationally or not. In the UK, standard first-class mail is - normally - delivered the next day and costs 28p (42 cents) for an envelope of quite a few normal-weight sheets of paper. Such a service wouldn't find a market here.
As a replacement for air mail, however, it has much greater potential. Delivery from the UK to the US can be up to two weeks - with a service like this there would be no correlation between distances and delivery times.
That might not be the best example. The US and UK collaborate to a much greater extent than the US and Israelis do, and it's already going on - and not just in Iraq. For example, the Echelon listening system that's run jointly by the American NSA and GCHQ here in England. There's a nice political loophole that gets used - "hey, we speak the same language and used to be the same country, we'll be okay, let's just spy on those dang furriners instead" - so they don't have to publicise it or seek approval.
Sigh.
My immediate reaction is that this will simply drive chatroom-using children to less-monitored, less well-policed chatrooms where they can carry on gossiping - especially if they don't have access to IM clients. Only nobody will be watching those chatrooms.
As much as I loathe some of Microsoft's practices, I would have preferred an organisation like them to be monitoring (young) children's chatrooms than SmallISP.com(tm). Purely from a resources standpoint, Microsoft was one of the best-equipped organisations to watch for paedophiles and other slime.
So, people born right after Christmas in January may have different perspectives on the importance of family, friends, and holidays (their birthdays being near the holidays) than someone born in June.
They also realise the same thing when they do what every child does sooner or later and count back nine months from their birthday.
Born at Christmas? Nine months from the first days of spring. Conclusion: Your parents hibernate.
Born in June? Nine months from October. Conclusion: Your parents couldn't afford heating.
For the record, I'm a Scorpio. Born in November, nine months after Valentine's Day. This is the reason Scorpios have a streak of evil - we have lived with the knowledge of dark lust from day one. :-)
Sorry, to clarify - I didn't say the app was actually used, I just meant that GIS was the only area where any open-source effort has even begun. I wasn't trying to say it had taken root anywhere.
And yes, Uni_Form Spacial, ArcView, MapInfo (and GGP) are commonplace in government.