KOffice is good except that it still can't handle international input in the way that openOffice can. Seems as if Koffice doesn't support input from SCIM.
I'm still limited to English text.
Recently Google put out a version of Picasa for Linux, and a version of Google Earth for Linux is not too far away. They've also released something like 200 patches to the WINE project recently.
It seems that Google is slowly developing all these apps which can port easily, and are tied to Google's network.
(speculation) I initially thought that Google will develop it's own OS and with it's existing clout with Dell, try and push that onto consumer PC boxes, dislodging windows. That may be one option. OTOH, who thinks that Google is beating out MS simply because they are more trusted? Perhaps Google cannot get away with a full end to end Google OS for the same reason that Microsoft cannot "do a Google" without falling into the same trap. In a way you could say that Google needs Microsoft, but Microsoft doesn't need Google. (end of speculation)
This sound like the plot of a horror sci-fi movie.
Scientists genetically engineer bacteria so they can produce electricity from carbon on a grand scale. What could possibly go wrong when they escape and start mutating?
Even if the reporting of the "faked" Blu-ray is a complete load of hogwash, it doesn't excuse the fact that Sony bootlegged a movie. Would the MPAA like to find out about that?
If that much is true, and if there was no proof of an original DVD of the film anywhere to be found, then what's to say that Sony haven't image tweaked the burnt DVD+R to a lower encoded video quality, in order to help with their performance?
Did anyone see the original blu-ray disc of the movie?
Nothing is future-proof. The only thing consistant in the universe is change.
Even if they never needed to change socket types, eventually they'd do so just so you have to buy a whole new mobo. If this wasn't a marketing conspiracy - CPU technological advancement has not really slowed down enough to warrant that we stop making faster chips and more complicated machines.
Just browsing around the website, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that there are no playstation games on the gaming roster here, and Sony is not given a mention anywhere.
Microsoft, battling for the hearts and minds of professional gamers....
You can barely breathe from being crushed, let alone move your hands, let alone stand up on packed trains. It's almost as if everyone practices for the guniess world record for how many people you can pack into a train on a daily basis.
The silence on the train is deafening too. Nobody talks. It's almost as if you've walked into a stand-up morgue.... and then women get fondled in that environment.
They tried to create "women only" carriages, but nobody guards them, so men often go in there too and get angry when told to leave.
While I'm all for fuel cells and cleaner use of energy, if it's one thing that most Japanese people want from their trains is NOT for them to use cleaner energy, but for the damn things to be BIGGER.
Nobody wants to get crushed in the morning by hundreds of alcohol reeking salary men storming onto the morning rush hour train every day. Nobody should have to put up with being fondled and "fart in the elevator" scenarios either, simply because the train is too small to handle the number of people it attempts to daily.
People are only going to awake to open standards when they realise that the digital movie or tune that they bought suddenly doesn't work anymore because the format is old, closed, and the company went bankrupt. I.e., people will only care about open standards when they run into lovely DRM more often in their daily lives.
Now, from a business point of view.... open standards is actually much harder for IT outsourcing companies to handle. Most of the employees of such companies (who are cheap) are low skill, MCSE people, and even if they aren't, they couldn't write a PERL script to save their hides. Problems start when IT head management wants to try and get these people to help troubleshoot hardware issues with FreeBSD, hack the Linux kernel, and develop and deploy untested beta software for critical systems all at MCSE skills and prices.
Not only is it hard to find people to be Open Source nuts and support open standards, but they cost more. This is where Microsoft wins out with PHBs, because at they pick cheap and fast out of the (Cheap/Fast/Quality) trinity... then they end up accepting locked standards.
DISCLAIMER: Sweeping generalizations of Japanese people and culture ahead based off biased personal and anecdotal evidence!
Seriously guys, DON'T DO IT!
I spent a good deal of my life living in Japan, learning Japanese, teaching English, working in a Japanese IT company, speaking Japanese all day, using chopsticks, etc... and at the end of doing all that I am now what you guys hope to become and I am not proud of myself.
First of all, Japanese is freaking hard. I have learned easier languages that have taken less time and actually been more useful. The time taken up is considerable given the benefits (or lack thereof as I will explain).
On that topic, Japanese is essentially USELESS. The reason for its uselessness is dictated by the fact that you can already speak English. Yes, believe it or not, English is superior in the minds of Japanese people (owing to WW2 perhaps), so if you speak Japanese with them, you actually bring yourself down to their level. It is almost as if you give up your status as an exotic gaijin, and you lose respect in their minds immediately. Who would want to be Japanese?
I have found that my conversations with Japanese people actually go much better when I force English upon them. As soon as I speak Japanese, the people here seem to want to start treating me like a non-human piece of crap... I will not speculate as to how Japanese feel about dealing with other Japanese people they do not know... but given the look of it, *shudder*.
This also explains why English is so popular in Japan. If it wasn't the status one gains from being able to speak it, it's also a chance to escape from a Japanese company (who treat their employees as a low-wage serfs) and work for a foreign company who belives in human rights. Unfortunately for the many English teachers in Japan who are wondering why the Japanese never seem to learn English, a lot of it has to do with certain interests in Japan who deliberatly want to stifle English education so that they can achieve two things: 1) So that the Japanese people never escape from their Japanese company low-wage serf-dom and see the better opportunities. That could have disasterous economic effects. 2) So that the yakuza run NOVA, and other English schools can get rich quick by "teaching" students rubbish so they never get good and keep coming back for more lessons.
Learning Japanese is hard enough if you can actually find someone who wants to speak it with you. The problem is, most Japanese people have poor social skills and really don't like speaking much at all.... (even to other Japanese) so unless you're speaking and teaching them English.... good luck. If you are ever able to find someone to practice with (best bet is a drunken old man who reeks and wants company), you end up with really boring conversations about food or the weather or something anyway. Furthermore due to the reasons above, your attempts to speak Japanese are usually further insulted by certain Japanese people who would just wish you spoke Japanese properly the first time instead of trying this "learning" thing.
Not many people are anime freaks in Japan, so please remember that if you wnat to have "interesting" conversations with Japanese people, that you talk about something really benign like the food, the weather, travel, and how learning English is fun. Do not confuse them by asking their opinion on deep topics. They only know how to communicate in a few safe topics to avoid giving offense... and this means that asking for an opinion on anything is a no-no.
Also do not get offended when Japanese people rudely brush you off for no reason. You're getting a valuable cultural experience here! Namely, a full understanding of what it's like to be "Outside" rather than "Inside". Unless you yell at them and get angry at them, and slap them upside the head to show that you are not Japanese and not interested in their culture, they will stop acting like primadonnas and like you, and laugh at all your jokes.
Many (and I use that term loosely) companies use Linux, but why would you want to trust a company? How would using Linux make them trustworthy?
The more commits a company has made to the kernel or open-source in general, the bigger likelihood they understand it and therefore will be able to support it. Therefore, open source geeks in IT management high positions are more likely to trust said companies.
Oh and if you think Linux fanboys are preaching to the choir, you'd be right. There are lots of "Linux fanboys" who actually have to make purchasing decisions for IT departments, so they call in their equally likeminded Linux fanboy friends, and offer them hard cash, to get things done that need doing.
Perhaps this is just a wake up call to companies who support embedded Linux to perhaps spend more on advertising and marketing (i.e. "hello world, we support Linux embedded because we made a pile of decent kernel patches so we can be trusted.")
Compatibility testing, and wedging in those RTOS kernel patches and supporting those where appropriate can't be a bad thing either.
I'm not going to disagree with that, or take anything away from what B.G's money will do to improve people's lives (which is, either way, a good thing).
Having said that though, the whole thing just smacks of hypocracy. IOW, it's ok for Bill Gates to help people in need, but helping people in need stops once somebody gives them cheap hardware without Windows on it. What makes it worse is that Microsoft wanted to develop a sub $100 PC, and now that someone is doing that, they're knocking it. I just get the feeling that their heart isn't in the right place.
So what if the machine doesn't have a harddrive? Ever heard of compact flash? There have been many functional computers in the past that didn't have hard drives... and besides, there's compact flash.
I can't believe Bill Gates' comments regarding the sub $100 laptop. It just proves that all his donations to charity from his huge coffers don't really come from his geniune desire to help people in need, but rather to glorify himself.
Actually a cadre of extremists were arrested in both Sydney and Melbourne and were charged with a slew of new terrorsism related offenses. It was thought the arrests had effectively prevented an attack on Australian soil.
I know people who have 1.5Ghz processors and 256MB of RAM who complain that Windows XP runs slow on it - and these are "Windows XP ready" machines.
The machine will run fast enough to get the OS working at a barely reasonable pace, but over time the user will get frustrated with the speed of the system enough to want to upgrade.
Slashdot Mirror
KOffice is good except that it still can't handle international input in the way that openOffice can. Seems as if Koffice doesn't support input from SCIM. I'm still limited to English text.
Form search and services, form tools and backbone, and I'll form the network!
m ary_of_the_world_googlezon.htm
GOOGLEZON, ASSEMBLE!
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2004/11/29/sum
Recently Google put out a version of Picasa for Linux, and a version of Google Earth for Linux is not too far away. They've also released something like 200 patches to the WINE project recently.
It seems that Google is slowly developing all these apps which can port easily, and are tied to Google's network.
(speculation)
I initially thought that Google will develop it's own OS and with it's existing clout with Dell, try and push that onto consumer PC boxes, dislodging windows. That may be one option. OTOH, who thinks that Google is beating out MS simply because they are more trusted? Perhaps Google cannot get away with a full end to end Google OS for the same reason that Microsoft cannot "do a Google" without falling into the same trap. In a way you could say that Google needs Microsoft, but Microsoft doesn't need Google.
(end of speculation)
Back in the day, indie games were called "Budget games" and came on an audio cassette.
And if they were crap, we'd tape music over them.
This sound like the plot of a horror sci-fi movie.
Scientists genetically engineer bacteria so they can produce electricity from carbon on a grand scale. What could possibly go wrong when they escape and start mutating?
whooops....
Even if the reporting of the "faked" Blu-ray is a complete load of hogwash, it doesn't excuse the fact that Sony bootlegged a movie. Would the MPAA like to find out about that? If that much is true, and if there was no proof of an original DVD of the film anywhere to be found, then what's to say that Sony haven't image tweaked the burnt DVD+R to a lower encoded video quality, in order to help with their performance? Did anyone see the original blu-ray disc of the movie?
Nothing is future-proof. The only thing consistant in the universe is change.
Even if they never needed to change socket types, eventually they'd do so just so you have to buy a whole new mobo. If this wasn't a marketing conspiracy - CPU technological advancement has not really slowed down enough to warrant that we stop making faster chips and more complicated machines.
I misread the title and thought we were going to be talking about "The Lord of the Rings"
Back to the topic though, Token ring is so old, they should throw it into the volcano.
Just browsing around the website, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that there are no playstation games on the gaming roster here, and Sony is not given a mention anywhere.
Microsoft, battling for the hearts and minds of professional gamers....
8:00am kaisoku Sobu-sen. ... ... ..
How do I love thee...? let me count the ways.
er, sorry.
You can barely breathe from being crushed, let alone move your hands, let alone stand up on packed trains. It's almost as if everyone practices for the guniess world record for how many people you can pack into a train on a daily basis.
The silence on the train is deafening too. Nobody talks. It's almost as if you've walked into a stand-up morgue.... and then women get fondled in that environment.
They tried to create "women only" carriages, but nobody guards them, so men often go in there too and get angry when told to leave.
While I'm all for fuel cells and cleaner use of energy, if it's one thing that most Japanese people want from their trains is NOT for them to use cleaner energy, but for the damn things to be BIGGER.
Nobody wants to get crushed in the morning by hundreds of alcohol reeking salary men storming onto the morning rush hour train every day. Nobody should have to put up with being fondled and "fart in the elevator" scenarios either, simply because the train is too small to handle the number of people it attempts to daily.
People are only going to awake to open standards when they realise that the digital movie or tune that they bought suddenly doesn't work anymore because the format is old, closed, and the company went bankrupt. I.e., people will only care about open standards when they run into lovely DRM more often in their daily lives.
Now, from a business point of view.... open standards is actually much harder for IT outsourcing companies to handle. Most of the employees of such companies (who are cheap) are low skill, MCSE people, and even if they aren't, they couldn't write a PERL script to save their hides. Problems start when IT head management wants to try and get these people to help troubleshoot hardware issues with FreeBSD, hack the Linux kernel, and develop and deploy untested beta software for critical systems all at MCSE skills and prices.
Not only is it hard to find people to be Open Source nuts and support open standards, but they cost more. This is where Microsoft wins out with PHBs, because at they pick cheap and fast out of the (Cheap/Fast/Quality) trinity... then they end up accepting locked standards.
ha ha
Man, all that time wasted writing simple "hello world" programs and number guessing games, and I could have been doing something like this.
*gives himself an uppercut*
DISCLAIMER: Sweeping generalizations of Japanese people and culture ahead based off biased personal and anecdotal evidence!
Seriously guys, DON'T DO IT!
I spent a good deal of my life living in Japan, learning Japanese, teaching English, working in a Japanese IT company, speaking Japanese all day, using chopsticks, etc... and at the end of doing all that I am now what you guys hope to become and I am not proud of myself.
First of all, Japanese is freaking hard. I have learned easier languages that have taken less time and actually been more useful. The time taken up is considerable given the benefits (or lack thereof as I will explain).
On that topic, Japanese is essentially USELESS. The reason for its uselessness is dictated by the fact that you can already speak English. Yes, believe it or not, English is superior in the minds of Japanese people (owing to WW2 perhaps), so if you speak Japanese with them, you actually bring yourself down to their level. It is almost as if you give up your status as an exotic gaijin, and you lose respect in their minds immediately. Who would want to be Japanese?
I have found that my conversations with Japanese people actually go much better when I force English upon them. As soon as I speak Japanese, the people here seem to want to start treating me like a non-human piece of crap... I will not speculate as to how Japanese feel about dealing with other Japanese people they do not know... but given the look of it, *shudder*.
This also explains why English is so popular in Japan. If it wasn't the status one gains from being able to speak it, it's also a chance to escape from a Japanese company (who treat their employees as a low-wage serfs) and work for a foreign company who belives in human rights. Unfortunately for the many English teachers in Japan who are wondering why the Japanese never seem to learn English, a lot of it has to do with certain interests in Japan who deliberatly want to stifle English education so that they can achieve two things: 1) So that the Japanese people never escape from their Japanese company low-wage serf-dom and see the better opportunities. That could have disasterous economic effects. 2) So that the yakuza run NOVA, and other English schools can get rich quick by "teaching" students rubbish so they never get good and keep coming back for more lessons.
Learning Japanese is hard enough if you can actually find someone who wants to speak it with you. The problem is, most Japanese people have poor social skills and really don't like speaking much at all.... (even to other Japanese) so unless you're speaking and teaching them English.... good luck. If you are ever able to find someone to practice with (best bet is a drunken old man who reeks and wants company), you end up with really boring conversations about food or the weather or something anyway. Furthermore due to the reasons above, your attempts to speak Japanese are usually further insulted by certain Japanese people who would just wish you spoke Japanese properly the first time instead of trying this "learning" thing.
Not many people are anime freaks in Japan, so please remember that if you wnat to have "interesting" conversations with Japanese people, that you talk about something really benign like the food, the weather, travel, and how learning English is fun. Do not confuse them by asking their opinion on deep topics. They only know how to communicate in a few safe topics to avoid giving offense... and this means that asking for an opinion on anything is a no-no.
Also do not get offended when Japanese people rudely brush you off for no reason. You're getting a valuable cultural experience here! Namely, a full understanding of what it's like to be "Outside" rather than "Inside". Unless you yell at them and get angry at them, and slap them upside the head to show that you are not Japanese and not interested in their culture, they will stop acting like primadonnas and like you, and laugh at all your jokes.
Want to get a Japanese gir
Many (and I use that term loosely) companies use Linux, but why would you want to trust a company? How would using Linux make them trustworthy?
The more commits a company has made to the kernel or open-source in general, the bigger likelihood they understand it and therefore will be able to support it. Therefore, open source geeks in IT management high positions are more likely to trust said companies.
Oh and if you think Linux fanboys are preaching to the choir, you'd be right. There are lots of "Linux fanboys" who actually have to make purchasing decisions for IT departments, so they call in their equally likeminded Linux fanboy friends, and offer them hard cash, to get things done that need doing.
Perhaps this is just a wake up call to companies who support embedded Linux to perhaps spend more on advertising and marketing (i.e. "hello world, we support Linux embedded because we made a pile of decent kernel patches so we can be trusted.")
Compatibility testing, and wedging in those RTOS kernel patches and supporting those where appropriate can't be a bad thing either.
Maybe it's working so well at getting him multiple girlfriends, so he just left it up.
Don't worry RMS. We won't tell the other women.
I'm not going to disagree with that, or take anything away from what B.G's money will do to improve people's lives (which is, either way, a good thing).
Having said that though, the whole thing just smacks of hypocracy. IOW, it's ok for Bill Gates to help people in need, but helping people in need stops once somebody gives them cheap hardware without Windows on it. What makes it worse is that Microsoft wanted to develop a sub $100 PC, and now that someone is doing that, they're knocking it. I just get the feeling that their heart isn't in the right place.
So what if the machine doesn't have a harddrive? Ever heard of compact flash? There have been many functional computers in the past that didn't have hard drives... and besides, there's compact flash.
I can't believe Bill Gates' comments regarding the sub $100 laptop. It just proves that all his donations to charity from his huge coffers don't really come from his geniune desire to help people in need, but rather to glorify himself.
Hasn't he got enough already?
What a Bees-tard.
...maybe it had something to do with storing Nickel Metal-Hydride (Ni-Mh) together to make a rechargeable battery.
Actually a cadre of extremists were arrested in both Sydney and Melbourne and were charged with a slew of new terrorsism related offenses. It was thought the arrests had effectively prevented an attack on Australian soil.
That's spot on.
I know people who have 1.5Ghz processors and 256MB of RAM who complain that Windows XP runs slow on it - and these are "Windows XP ready" machines.
The machine will run fast enough to get the OS working at a barely reasonable pace, but over time the user will get frustrated with the speed of the system enough to want to upgrade.