PDF is not really a suitable "universal" format, not just because it is not really an "open" format (since only Adobe controls it) but the main issue is that it is a "display" format, and not an editable format.
The Open Office Format on the other hand is now normalized by the OASIS organization. This means that other software maker can read and write OO formated documents without fear that their competitor decides to change the format stealthely in order to "improve" it and of course to break their software.
------------ There are three types of Public Servants buying "Closed Source Software", Ignorants Public Servants, Corrupt Public Servants and Ignorant corrupt Public Servants
97% of the population covered means that about 50% of the rural areas are NOT covered.
In addition you might want to look at the relative coverage of various offerings.
Where do you have 25Mb/s, 8Mb/s, 1Mb/s, 128kb/s (also called "broadband" by France Telecom in small cities) ?
And you will notice that the Internet Geography has a direct influence on the economical geography and housing prices.
It happened the same way in France, they "split" France Telecom (Operator) and Wanadoo (ISP), and since although they are supposed to be different companies they are not really. (same schools originally, same teams, and of course same "investors").
So now "big news" FT is reintegrating Wanadoo (with probably a name change).
And yes rural broadband is a problem.
it seems that the US government wants to veto the.xxx TLD because a number of "concerned citizens" are afraid that sudently a horde of pornographs will create many new porn sites and transform law and church abiding young people into perverts.
Its interesting that the initial worries where more on the civil liberties activist side. Worrying that a "red light district" could open the doors to censorship "outside the RLD". Basically a.xxx TLD could potentially allow schools, universities, "familly value" ISPs and corporations to block.xxx and the governement to force any site that could "potentially be to titiliating" to go where nobody can see them.
So the creation of a.xxx domain being obviously in the interest of censorship the US government veto leads to some interesting questions.
a) Are they totally inocently clueless ? since the US conservatives are quite skilled at using the Internet politically this seems unlickely. b) Are they trying to protect a large (very US based) industry ? Maybe, this would be the "fun answer kind of similar to the funding of Plan 9. c) Are the US jsut trying the show the ICANN who the boss is ? In the last case this should lead to some thinking about how to move from the current DNS toward some P2P distributed protocol. Wich would lead of course to questions about is www.something.this the same everywhere ? To check this we would need an increased reliance on signed certificates. It seems we are back to square one.
It seems the Internet Karma has just been modded down.
You should buy a laptop, very early provided you know how to install and maintain it under Linux.
The goal is to give your child an open tool for learning, playing and creating before s/he gets brainwashed by gaming consoles, and automated pop up spam generator (also known under the the marketing name Windows based personal computer, but this is misleading since they are not really meant to compute something and certainly you do not own them so the "personal" is newspeak for interactive idiotbox).
Barefoot Gen is a portrayal of the Atomic Bombing of Japan created by Artist Keiji Nakazawa.
It describes the situation in Japan before, during and after the bomb from the point of view of a joung boy.
I also think that the most important point is not: where the US right or not in dropping the bomb.
Some would arge that the Emperor was on the werge of surrounding, other would deny it, and yet other would say that a surrender without a complette shake up of the power structure would be useless.
But what is the most damning element in the story it the sensorship that the US occupation forces maintained on the occupied countries.
Accounts of the bombing where not only sensored in the US, but mainly in Japan, the penalty for trying to publish something about this was in theory at least death. In practice it was just impossible to get a printer, and trying a little to hard would get you into prison.
Freedom of speech is not something that can be only given when convenient.
The US also imposed a certain way of rebuilding the countries, and for instance in Germany it stopped many (most) emigrated intelectuals from returning to Germany, not just pro Soviet Communist, but anybody that would be "left leaning" would be seen as a potential "Communist Spy" and therefore barred from returning.
I also notice that many poster do not understand why europeans are not more thankful for the US role during WWI and WWII.
Well the US has over the years supported many right wing neo-facistic governments (in general to 'free' the citizens from the risk of getting 'left wing facists at their helm). So the "ideological sanctity" of the US is very suspect. The US intervention came quite late in both cases, and came at points where the economical interests of the US where at stake.
So I believe the Europeans are very thankful to the GI's that risked or gave their lives for freedom. But do not expect this to extend to the US leadership. Because we also remember that people that had to flee the Nazis often where a couple of years latter in a position of fleeing from Mac Carthy.
And you might want to ponder Göddels remark to the judje that gave him the US nationality: (paraphrasing: Oh but now, I read the US constitution yesterday evening, and there are ways to build the same kind of police state I just left).
Good luck and Happy Dreams.... --- There is no excuse for Software Patents
Well I do believe the grand parent was right on the need to break up monopolies. And yes the only way to create new stuff that can reach a large audience is either Open Source or being one of the oligopolist in your space.
But it's true that in a decreasing job market there is also surprisingly enough a decrease of capacity.
I'm living in Europe, and many people complain on the job market (and with the Software Patent directive going through it will most probably get worse).
On the other hand I had a very surprising phone call yesterday from a Regional Governement Buyer, I had no previous contact with that person, nor that particular organisation.
And the reason that person called me (my small company) was: You downloaded our Tender and didn't submit a proposal, why ?
Hu, heuu, actually I was working on another much bigger one and more inline with what I do, why are you asking ?
Well we didn't get enough answers, and we will have to retender, so we are trying to understand where we went wrong ?
So we have many people desperate for jobs, and customers desperate for proposals.
Somehow I suspect it has something to do with junk science in Business administration.
But clearly if the EC accept this it would actually means that the ONLY tool against the progressive expantion of M$'s monopolist position would be severely blunted.
On the long run as long as M$ has their command of the end user PC they can get any market they want, it may take time, it may need intermediary steps, but NO propritary source company has any chance to really compete on the long run.
Accepting interoperability and forbiding to make it Open Source is a way to make sure that all "competitors" need to use their business model, and in M$'s business model the "biggest wins" since it can allways affort to dump the price until they are the only game in town.
So hopefully it will not work, if it does it would mean that we will have to create a fund to develop "public domain" "closed source" gateways. It would be an interesting test of the strength of the community, but above all it would be an hassle and a total waste of time.
Concidering that a large percentage of all Corporations are absolutelly the wrong place to be. And since there is a strong corelation between abusive "Work place Rules" (acceptable use,...) and corporate uglyness.
Reading the AU document is a good indication if you want to work there or not.
Of course it also means that you have to join or create an Union if you are allready working somewhere, and they jump such an AU policy on you.
And that you have to make sure that the law forces Corporations to clearly define what level of privacy they give you. And make sure that the bad guy do not use the bogymen to "force" the corporations to become spooky.
(Because of all those pedophiliac drug dealing terrorist helping companies, any company that has such content on its email servers can get a slap on its CEO's wrist, so of course the company needs to check your underwears just in case you got a kinky USB enabled pair of socks (or other pieces of clothing, but/. is a familly place, so I leave it to your imaginations, you;-)))
Of course it means that you have to "work" on your rights, not accept that the only way to create "collective actions" is the corporation, but remember that a system only works with check and balances.
Well nobody ever said it would be easy (or they where trying to sell you something:-))
Buy American ?
Isn't this against letting the "market" find the optimum solution ?
Now I finally understand why the Republican Color is "Red", the French Communist Party has long be favoring "Buy French" policies.
So I guess Republicans are US style communist ? or did I miss something ?
Of course limiting this "Buy American" to the Homeland Security Department is a way to say "the market is allright, only for "security" against these "pesky terrorrrist" you need to be sure of what you buy !!
Of course buying 50% american helps, for instance you can buy a VPN server with a Big Metallic box made in the USA, and a piece of crypto software made in Pakistan.
So you will be perfectly protected against axe wielding terrorrist thanks to the nice iron, you only have to worry about the ethics of underpaid and well indoctrinated programmers in a country that has not many reasons to be thankful to the US.
So 100% "could" possibly make sens if you would have a real interest in security.
Anything bellow is useless and you need other processes to manage it.
What it WILL acheive is of course that the US tax payer will have to pay more for the DHS in order to compensate for the price hike protectionist policies generate (hey it cost money to put a glizy new stiker on a taiwaneese box to make it "proudly american").
To generate the extra cash the US governement will have to find yet another way to squeeze more money out of third world countries, wich of course will have a positive effect on the "necessity" of the department of homeland security.
So time to buy "defence stocks".
You have 13 000 Trained employees (quality varies, but the really bad ones have been allready fired).
You have approximatelly 100 000$ per employe.
Most employees are in Europe, so you need extra insurance against french cheese, bavarian beers, multiple language disorientation.
You can:
Start a new distribution channel for your existing products
Create a new product
Start a new service activity
Fire every body and dump all the cash in a big hole
Your mission is to maximise something for I forgot who, and of course line your own pockets.
Answer:
WRONG: New channels should be outsourced to india.
WRONG: What do you think "Education by Work" centers in China are for ?
WRONG: Once we have burdenned the European economy by dumping all our employees on them, they will not have any money left to buy services
RIGHT: You get the 40 000 000 $ CARLETON arward, you are a true thoughleading economist !!
Maybe the US government should just clarify the way patents should really be used.
For instance
Only US patents matters
Although foreign companies are welcome to give money to the USPO only US company owned patents matters.
These little law offices who just try to use patents to sue large campaign donors give patents a bad name, so only patents owned by companies having allready more thant 1000 patents matters (provided they do not forget to give enough campaing money)
Anybody that does not accept software patents gets invaded (they are obviously though thiefs with bad intentions)
The Bela Lugosi Power Source Company has 9 Plans that are completely spacing out.
And how did the japaneese came upon this traditional romanian technology?
What did the WIPO do !!!
Isn't this a patented business method ? getting power out of sucking poor peoples blood ?
I smell a scandal, or maybe garlic ?
What I find "really interesting" is the "partner list".
Among them is "firstlight" (i.e. the british film concil) wich is a UK lottery funded organisation helping kids to make movies.
If you have 20% matching funding you might get 80% of up to 4000£ (provided your are an uk teen, etc...)
This being cash for a "project".
So here comes microsoft and offers 2000£ of "film and video equipment" IF you are one of the five winner! with them as partner.
So most probably they "waved 2000£" in front of this organisation saying that they will save the industry.
Got the matching 8000£ of funding
"sold" this so some equipment and film vendor (no sense of "really" loosing 2000£)
And now are probably congratulating themselves on how philantropic they are.
see http://www.firstlightmovies.com/fundingpage.php
Yes the education market is there to prepare people for life, that is exactly one key reason NOT to use windows.
Because one thing is certain, k12 students or event first year university students will NOT use the "current industry standard OS" in their professional life.
Even if by a total disaster microsoft is still the dominant platform in 5 to 15 years (i.e. when the potential student has finished his or her studies and is working) the chances that this environement will be similar to what we have today is quite slim.
Early 80s I and others convinced my colleages at the university to choose Unix as the standard operating system instead of what the MoE very forcefully recommended.
Our student should have been learning the "industry prefered OS", well 5 years latter they where very thankful that they had learned Unix and not GCOS Mod 400 (if you do not know what it is have no regret:-)).
Moreover even for non CS students having an open environement with a variety of possible tools and potentially the capacity to modify them is making a real positive difference, and helps then to really understand their future jobs.
Nevertheless it is true that efforts need to be done to manage the "mass management" of PCs, and to make more software disponible.
But this is exactly what the Gouvernment of Estremadura in Spain is doing very successfully.
see http://www.linex.org/index.php?newlang=eng
Another point is that many school district do not want to go away from Microsoft because they do not have the technicians to manage the move, but maybe if some of the money that goes today in licences would go into jobs they would have the ressources, but this means also transforming "licence money" into "head counts", wich is "not trivial":-).
Beside Iridium you can also try inmarsat wich can be used with a subscription service or a pay as you go.
Starting price of the terminal is about 3000$.
Of course Thuraya might be an attractive option if it wouldn't have the "slight" dissadventage of not working in the US;-).
But seriously if you have seven servers and only one tech, and that tech is yourself either your business plan needs a serious rewamp or you should quit your boss:-).
Or your are working for an assosiation and then you should still try to convince your members to accept a fee increase.
Because all seven servers will break down at precisely the moment your phone battery dies, and a grizzly is between you and your car.
Well apparently Mel retired some time ago
(see: http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/t/TheStoryofMel.h tml )
But maybe they still use Hex editor in some episodes of "charmed":-)
-----------
Now I'm sure this post will really contribute to the fast adoption of Open Source Software in the Public Sector world wide, and generaly better the world;-)
When people use "the easy choice" (i.e. whatever monopolist software they got with their computer, provided by their company, stolen by their friend or even bought) they participate in a certain world construction.
A world where your media experience, computer usage and governement interactions are seamlessly integrated.
And DRMs, DCMA, Patriot ACT II will garenty that you will not be able to circumvent the way your media experience will be built.
Your e-mails, documents will be open for "security reasons" to whom ever has a "need to access".
I do not want this world for my children (or anybody elses children).
People that accept "software patents", "closed formats", are willingly renouncing all their liberties.
And conspiring to remove mine.
Patented Document formats means that you loose the full right to your content.
Using propriatary Instant Messages means that you are creating a community of people under the control of the company that owns the IM servers.
It means that you are pushing your friends into having to accept whatever "advertisement", "content surveillance", "payment schedule" the provider wants.
So to be very clear: using "monopolistic" software is either a demonstration of ignorance, cowardice or evilness.
Take your pick.
It would destroy American "civilisation", jocks would have to learn a job and do something useful instead of turning into PHBs.
Even worse the incresdible stupidity of looking at spectator sport (AF, BB, Soccer, Criket, etc...)
Would finaly hit home and people would start to do something with their lives.
Billions of useless advertisement money would disappear hand would have to be invested in something that actually creates value.
How horrible;-)
What happened up to now is that:
The president of France said that he'd rather have his own "very large digital library" rather than let google do it all on their own.
What some of his "minder" said in answer of a journalists question was: yes Microsoft could be a partner.
Most probably if the journalist would have asked if Oracle, or Mysql or any other organisation/person/BEM the answer would have been more or less the same.
The first issue being: Should the governement fund a public "digital library"
The second issue being: How.
So I do find it very unfortunate that people make a lot of "advertizement" for a mediocre propriaitary software provider (as in you can write good things or bad things about me, but first of all write about me !), based on partial information.
For the record, I do like the google search engine, but I do think that any government should make the effort of putting as much as possible of cultural content as possible online.
Of course I do hope that when the project will start it will use Free and Open Source Software, but for the time being there is not even a call for tender
BTW the french national library is called "La tres grande bibliotheque"/"Bibliotheque François Mitterand", (socialist predecessor of Chirac) no wonder Jacques wants his own.
Typically most if not all Academic Institutions have some document that describe how you are allowed to use the network.
In the unlikely case there is none, you could argue that you have the right to do anything you want with your network access.
In the probable case there is one, you should first check (you should have done it before).
If P2P is not allowed, then you should not have used Bittorent no matter how useful it is.
IMHO you should not have registered to that University since they are obviously clueless.
If P2P is not forbidden then you should go to your student union, and protest, you could most probably sue the university in the "small claim court" to get them to pay your personal broadband access, since obviously without network access you cannot study efficiently, and concidering the probable price of tuition you pay in the US you could expect adequate service.
Anyway the issue is not "is P2P good or bad", but what contract do I have with the University.
Then if the contract forces me to use the Internet in an ineficient way, it's my duty to protest and either change university, or change the university.
Even if it doesn't work, it will be probably the best opportunity your university will give you to have a real education.
And if you cannot be bothered, well keel over and admit that you want to join the sheeps.
The licence is not for microsoft products, but for interfaces that because of the monopolistic position of Microsoft are "de facto" standards.
And its not a question of costs, but of who controls the way your company works, you as an owner of a company or some other company.
But to be objective it is not reasonable to force Microsoft to produce a licence, what is reasonable it do order microsoft to close down and put all its sources in the public trust.
There is actually no reason to think that microsoft will ever do business in an honest way, so there is no reason for them to exist at all.
Considering that over 90% of the US representative elected are the incumbent, there are NO representative in the US.
Just like in the Soviet Union there are only appointed delegate.
who are then voted in with some satisfying number of votes.
The only difference is the the central party in the US has two branches and therefore can keep the public amused longer.
So Mr Hatch has been appointed by its administration, and is using the power and priviledge to squeeze money out of the plebs, as requested from him.
He is just a standard member of your aristocracy.
Do not blame him, blame your constitution.
Slashdot Mirror
It's scary nobody confessed having a pack of condom in his/her bag.
:-))
So either their lying, or even worse, it's true.
How will we get the next generation.
Male Hacker Unite! (preferably with Hackeresses or other female intelectuals, unless of course your tastes differ, in wich case you are excused
PDF is not really a suitable "universal" format, not just because it is not really an "open" format (since only Adobe controls it) but the main issue is that it is a "display" format, and not an editable format.
The Open Office Format on the other hand is now normalized by the OASIS organization.
This means that other software maker can read and write OO formated documents without fear that their competitor decides to change the format stealthely in order to "improve" it and of course to break their software.
------------
There are three types of Public Servants buying "Closed Source Software", Ignorants Public Servants, Corrupt Public Servants and Ignorant corrupt Public Servants
97% of the population covered means that about 50% of the rural areas are NOT covered. In addition you might want to look at the relative coverage of various offerings. Where do you have 25Mb/s, 8Mb/s, 1Mb/s, 128kb/s (also called "broadband" by France Telecom in small cities) ? And you will notice that the Internet Geography has a direct influence on the economical geography and housing prices.
It happened the same way in France, they "split" France Telecom (Operator) and Wanadoo (ISP), and since although they are supposed to be different companies they are not really. (same schools originally, same teams, and of course same "investors"). So now "big news" FT is reintegrating Wanadoo (with probably a name change). And yes rural broadband is a problem.
it seems that the US government wants to veto the .xxx TLD because a number of "concerned citizens" are afraid that sudently a horde of pornographs will create many new porn sites and transform law and church abiding young people into perverts.
.xxx TLD could potentially allow schools, universities, "familly value" ISPs and corporations to block .xxx and the governement to force any site that could "potentially be to titiliating" to go where nobody can see them.
.xxx domain being obviously in the interest of censorship the US government veto leads to some interesting questions.
Its interesting that the initial worries where more on the civil liberties activist side.
Worrying that a "red light district" could open the doors to censorship "outside the RLD".
Basically a
So the creation of a
a) Are they totally inocently clueless ? since the US conservatives are quite skilled at using the Internet politically this seems unlickely.
b) Are they trying to protect a large (very US based) industry ? Maybe, this would be the "fun answer kind of similar to the funding of Plan 9.
c) Are the US jsut trying the show the ICANN who the boss is ?
In the last case this should lead to some thinking about how to move from the current DNS toward some P2P distributed protocol.
Wich would lead of course to questions about is www.something.this the same everywhere ?
To check this we would need an increased reliance on signed certificates.
It seems we are back to square one.
It seems the Internet Karma has just been modded down.
You should buy a laptop, very early provided you know how to install and maintain it under Linux. The goal is to give your child an open tool for learning, playing and creating before s/he gets brainwashed by gaming consoles, and automated pop up spam generator (also known under the the marketing name Windows based personal computer, but this is misleading since they are not really meant to compute something and certainly you do not own them so the "personal" is newspeak for interactive idiotbox).
Barefoot Gen is a portrayal of the Atomic Bombing of Japan created by Artist Keiji Nakazawa.
It describes the situation in Japan before, during and after the bomb from the point of view of a joung boy.
I also think that the most important point is not: where the US right or not in dropping the bomb.
Some would arge that the Emperor was on the werge of surrounding, other would deny it, and yet other would say that a surrender without a complette shake up of the power structure would be useless.
But what is the most damning element in the story it the sensorship that the US occupation forces maintained on the occupied countries.
Accounts of the bombing where not only sensored in the US, but mainly in Japan, the penalty for trying to publish something about this was in theory at least death. In practice it was just impossible to get a printer, and trying a little to hard would get you into prison.
Freedom of speech is not something that can be only given when convenient.
The US also imposed a certain way of rebuilding the countries, and for instance in Germany it stopped many (most) emigrated intelectuals from returning to Germany, not just pro Soviet Communist, but anybody that would be "left leaning" would be seen as a potential "Communist Spy" and therefore barred from returning.
I also notice that many poster do not understand why europeans are not more thankful for the US role during WWI and WWII.
Well the US has over the years supported many right wing neo-facistic governments (in general to 'free' the citizens from the risk of getting 'left wing facists at their helm).
So the "ideological sanctity" of the US is very suspect.
The US intervention came quite late in both cases, and came at points where the economical interests of the US where at stake.
So I believe the Europeans are very thankful to the GI's that risked or gave their lives for freedom.
But do not expect this to extend to the US leadership.
Because we also remember that people that had to flee the Nazis often where a couple of years latter in a position of fleeing from Mac Carthy.
And you might want to ponder Göddels remark to the judje that gave him the US nationality:
(paraphrasing: Oh but now, I read the US constitution yesterday evening, and there are ways to build the same kind of police state I just left).
Good luck and Happy Dreams....
---
There is no excuse for Software Patents
Well I do believe the grand parent was right on the need to break up monopolies.
And yes the only way to create new stuff that can reach a large audience is either Open Source or being one of the oligopolist in your space.
But it's true that in a decreasing job market there is also surprisingly enough a decrease of capacity.
I'm living in Europe, and many people complain on the job market (and with the Software Patent directive going through it will most probably get worse).
On the other hand I had a very surprising phone call yesterday from a Regional Governement Buyer, I had no previous contact with that person, nor that particular organisation.
And the reason that person called me (my small company) was: You downloaded our Tender and didn't submit a proposal, why ?
Hu, heuu, actually I was working on another much bigger one and more inline with what I do, why are you asking ?
Well we didn't get enough answers, and we will have to retender, so we are trying to understand where we went wrong ?
So we have many people desperate for jobs, and customers desperate for proposals.
Somehow I suspect it has something to do with junk science in Business administration.
Actually SAMBA is only a visible example.
But clearly if the EC accept this it would actually means that the ONLY tool against the progressive expantion of M$'s monopolist position would be severely blunted.
On the long run as long as M$ has their command of the end user PC they can get any market they want, it may take time, it may need intermediary steps, but NO propritary source company has any chance to really compete on the long run.
Accepting interoperability and forbiding to make it Open Source is a way to make sure that all "competitors" need to use their business model, and in M$'s business model the "biggest wins" since it can allways affort to dump the price until they are the only game in town.
So hopefully it will not work, if it does it would mean that we will have to create a fund to develop "public domain" "closed source" gateways.
It would be an interesting test of the strength of the community, but above all it would be an hassle and a total waste of time.
Concidering that a large percentage of all Corporations are absolutelly the wrong place to be. ...) and corporate uglyness.
/. is a familly place, so I leave it to your imaginations, you ;-)))
:-))
And since there is a strong corelation between abusive "Work place Rules" (acceptable use,
Reading the AU document is a good indication if you want to work there or not.
Of course it also means that you have to join or create an Union if you are allready working somewhere, and they jump such an AU policy on you.
And that you have to make sure that the law forces Corporations to clearly define what level of privacy they give you.
And make sure that the bad guy do not use the bogymen to "force" the corporations to become spooky.
(Because of all those pedophiliac drug dealing terrorist helping companies, any company that has such content on its email servers can get a slap on its CEO's wrist, so of course the company needs to check your underwears just in case you got a kinky USB enabled pair of socks (or other pieces of clothing, but
Of course it means that you have to "work" on your rights, not accept that the only way to create "collective actions" is the corporation, but remember that a system only works with check and balances.
Well nobody ever said it would be easy (or they where trying to sell you something
Buy American ?
Isn't this against letting the "market" find the optimum solution ?
Now I finally understand why the Republican Color is "Red", the French Communist Party has long be favoring "Buy French" policies.
So I guess Republicans are US style communist ? or did I miss something ?
Of course limiting this "Buy American" to the Homeland Security Department is a way to say "the market is allright, only for "security" against these "pesky terrorrrist" you need to be sure of what you buy !!
Of course buying 50% american helps, for instance you can buy a VPN server with a Big Metallic box made in the USA, and a piece of crypto software made in Pakistan.
So you will be perfectly protected against axe wielding terrorrist thanks to the nice iron, you only have to worry about the ethics of underpaid and well indoctrinated programmers in a country that has not many reasons to be thankful to the US.
So 100% "could" possibly make sens if you would have a real interest in security. Anything bellow is useless and you need other processes to manage it.
What it WILL acheive is of course that the US tax payer will have to pay more for the DHS in order to compensate for the price hike protectionist policies generate (hey it cost money to put a glizy new stiker on a taiwaneese box to make it "proudly american").
To generate the extra cash the US governement will have to find yet another way to squeeze more money out of third world countries, wich of course will have a positive effect on the "necessity" of the department of homeland security.
So time to buy "defence stocks".
You can:
- Start a new distribution channel for your existing products
- Create a new product
- Start a new service activity
- Fire every body and dump all the cash in a big hole
Your mission is to maximise something for I forgot who, and of course line your own pockets.Answer:
So at least we would know where we stand
The Bela Lugosi Power Source Company has 9 Plans that are completely spacing out.
And how did the japaneese came upon this traditional romanian technology?
What did the WIPO do !!!
Isn't this a patented business method ? getting power out of sucking poor peoples blood ?
I smell a scandal, or maybe garlic ?
What I find "really interesting" is the "partner list".
Among them is "firstlight" (i.e. the british film concil) wich is a UK lottery funded organisation helping kids to make movies.
If you have 20% matching funding you might get 80% of up to 4000£ (provided your are an uk teen, etc...) This being cash for a "project".
So here comes microsoft and offers 2000£ of "film and video equipment" IF you are one of the five winner! with them as partner.
So most probably they "waved 2000£" in front of this organisation saying that they will save the industry.
Got the matching 8000£ of funding
"sold" this so some equipment and film vendor (no sense of "really" loosing 2000£)
And now are probably congratulating themselves on how philantropic they are.
see http://www.firstlightmovies.com/fundingpage.php
Yes the education market is there to prepare people for life, that is exactly one key reason NOT to use windows. :-)).
:-).
Because one thing is certain, k12 students or event first year university students will NOT use the "current industry standard OS" in their professional life.
Even if by a total disaster microsoft is still the dominant platform in 5 to 15 years (i.e. when the potential student has finished his or her studies and is working) the chances that this environement will be similar to what we have today is quite slim.
Early 80s I and others convinced my colleages at the university to choose Unix as the standard operating system instead of what the MoE very forcefully recommended.
Our student should have been learning the "industry prefered OS", well 5 years latter they where very thankful that they had learned Unix and not GCOS Mod 400 (if you do not know what it is have no regret
Moreover even for non CS students having an open environement with a variety of possible tools and potentially the capacity to modify them is making a real positive difference, and helps then to really understand their future jobs.
Nevertheless it is true that efforts need to be done to manage the "mass management" of PCs, and to make more software disponible.
But this is exactly what the Gouvernment of Estremadura in Spain is doing very successfully. see http://www.linex.org/index.php?newlang=eng
Another point is that many school district do not want to go away from Microsoft because they do not have the technicians to manage the move, but maybe if some of the money that goes today in licences would go into jobs they would have the ressources, but this means also transforming "licence money" into "head counts", wich is "not trivial"
Beside Iridium you can also try inmarsat wich can be used with a subscription service or a pay as you go. Starting price of the terminal is about 3000$. ;-).
:-).
Of course Thuraya might be an attractive option if it wouldn't have the "slight" dissadventage of not working in the US
But seriously if you have seven servers and only one tech, and that tech is yourself either your business plan needs a serious rewamp or you should quit your boss
Or your are working for an assosiation and then you should still try to convince your members to accept a fee increase.
Because all seven servers will break down at precisely the moment your phone battery dies, and a grizzly is between you and your car.
Well apparently Mel retired some time ago (see: http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/t/TheStoryofMel.h tml )
:-)
;-)
But maybe they still use Hex editor in some episodes of "charmed"
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Now I'm sure this post will really contribute to the fast adoption of Open Source Software in the Public Sector world wide, and generaly better the world
When people use "the easy choice" (i.e. whatever monopolist software they got with their computer, provided by their company, stolen by their friend or even bought) they participate in a certain world construction. A world where your media experience, computer usage and governement interactions are seamlessly integrated. And DRMs, DCMA, Patriot ACT II will garenty that you will not be able to circumvent the way your media experience will be built. Your e-mails, documents will be open for "security reasons" to whom ever has a "need to access". I do not want this world for my children (or anybody elses children). People that accept "software patents", "closed formats", are willingly renouncing all their liberties.
And conspiring to remove mine.
Patented Document formats means that you loose the full right to your content.
Using propriatary Instant Messages means that you are creating a community of people under the control of the company that owns the IM servers.
It means that you are pushing your friends into having to accept whatever "advertisement", "content surveillance", "payment schedule" the provider wants.
So to be very clear: using "monopolistic" software is either a demonstration of ignorance, cowardice or evilness.
Take your pick.
It would destroy American "civilisation", jocks would have to learn a job and do something useful instead of turning into PHBs. ;-)
Even worse the incresdible stupidity of looking at spectator sport (AF, BB, Soccer, Criket, etc...) Would finaly hit home and people would start to do something with their lives.
Billions of useless advertisement money would disappear hand would have to be invested in something that actually creates value.
How horrible
What happened up to now is that: The president of France said that he'd rather have his own "very large digital library" rather than let google do it all on their own. What some of his "minder" said in answer of a journalists question was: yes Microsoft could be a partner. Most probably if the journalist would have asked if Oracle, or Mysql or any other organisation/person/BEM the answer would have been more or less the same.
The first issue being: Should the governement fund a public "digital library" The second issue being: How.
So I do find it very unfortunate that people make a lot of "advertizement" for a mediocre propriaitary software provider (as in you can write good things or bad things about me, but first of all write about me !), based on partial information.
For the record, I do like the google search engine, but I do think that any government should make the effort of putting as much as possible of cultural content as possible online.
Of course I do hope that when the project will start it will use Free and Open Source Software, but for the time being there is not even a call for tender
BTW the french national library is called "La tres grande bibliotheque"/"Bibliotheque François Mitterand", (socialist predecessor of Chirac) no wonder Jacques wants his own.
For those actually interested in what is there http://gallica.bnf.fr/
Typically most if not all Academic Institutions have some document that describe how you are allowed to use the network.
In the unlikely case there is none, you could argue that you have the right to do anything you want with your network access.
In the probable case there is one, you should first check (you should have done it before). If P2P is not allowed, then you should not have used Bittorent no matter how useful it is.
IMHO you should not have registered to that University since they are obviously clueless.
If P2P is not forbidden then you should go to your student union, and protest, you could most probably sue the university in the "small claim court" to get them to pay your personal broadband access, since obviously without network access you cannot study efficiently, and concidering the probable price of tuition you pay in the US you could expect adequate service.
Anyway the issue is not "is P2P good or bad", but what contract do I have with the University.
Then if the contract forces me to use the Internet in an ineficient way, it's my duty to protest and either change university, or change the university.
Even if it doesn't work, it will be probably the best opportunity your university will give you to have a real education.
And if you cannot be bothered, well keel over and admit that you want to join the sheeps.
The licence is not for microsoft products, but for interfaces that because of the monopolistic position of Microsoft are "de facto" standards. And its not a question of costs, but of who controls the way your company works, you as an owner of a company or some other company.
But to be objective it is not reasonable to force Microsoft to produce a licence, what is reasonable it do order microsoft to close down and put all its sources in the public trust.
There is actually no reason to think that microsoft will ever do business in an honest way, so there is no reason for them to exist at all.
It's been proposed, read The Sheeps Look Up John Brunner. :-)
But then I'm against the death penalty
Considering that over 90% of the US representative elected are the incumbent, there are NO representative in the US.
Just like in the Soviet Union there are only appointed delegate.
who are then voted in with some satisfying number of votes.
The only difference is the the central party in the US has two branches and therefore can keep the public amused longer.
So Mr Hatch has been appointed by its administration, and is using the power and priviledge to squeeze money out of the plebs, as requested from him.
He is just a standard member of your aristocracy.
Do not blame him, blame your constitution.