This past Sunday was the 4th anniversary of the 9/11 bombings that destroyed the World Trade Center.
Osama Bin Forgotten, um... Bin Laden, is still at large despite a very firm, clear,speech by President Bush that he would capture him.
I can't help but have the intuition that all of this cold war era recycled talk of big missile nuclear is the rattling of sabers so that the US doesn't feel like a paper tiger.
In under 6 years we went from the most powerful, prosperous, and confident nation in the world to a country that can not ( or will not ) catch a grown up spoiled child in the middle east, to a country with red/yellow/whatever alerts, and to a country that gets offered foreign aide ( and needs it ) after a natural disaster.
Maybe we need a new administration( republican or democrat ) instead of a new nuclear war doctrine.
I have gone through this with a number of organizations.
I have found that writing emails about the situation, the existence of the World Wide Web Consortium standards body, and the existence as well as compliance of "other browsers" with the w3.org standards.... politely, usually results in the site getting updated when the organization gets a chance.
Nobody wants to have their organization as being seen as backwards technically or with regards to standards.
Please do no just complain about this issue on slashdot. Send a polite not to FEMA.
The secretaries were in the wrong, they got fired.
However, other people in the company, lawyers, were the ones who passed the email exchange onto people outside of the firm.
If you ask me they have equal responsibility in embarrassing the company and should get an equal penalty.
If they haven't my guess would be because they are more valuable to the company or the company is like most in being cowardly and does not want to risk firing lawyers.
These guys ( in addition to the secretarys ) should be ashamed of themselves.
One of the oldest email etiquette lessons around has been not to get into pissing contests over email. It is descended from an even more ancient rule before the era of tech "be careful what you put in writing".
It would be tempting to call these secretary's slow learners, but I can remember reading a slashdot article about men in an IT company plotting to take other personnel ( and customers ) with them to form their own breakaway company. They used company blackberries for these communications!
So, it isn't about being tech savvy, it is about common sense or the lack of it.
However, the purpose of a business is to make as much money as it can. The purpose of software and computers is to be a labor saving device for the customers.
If people get to have fun and are allowed to do the job right in the process those things are a bonus.
Probably because switching to OpenOffice will require enough people to relearn or do things they have always done differently. If they change the OS on them too, it is too much at once. Let them get used to OO first
The wouldn't have to if the interface to Open Office wasn't gratuitously different from MS Office.
Each e-book should be cheap (no dead-trees needed), eco-freindly (no dead trees needed) and once on my device, easy to manipulate, such as searching for certain text/images.
Making e-books will likely involve using minerals and plastics. That means mining. It also means discarded ebooks and whatever chemicals power them being discarded to waste dumps.
Paper can be obtained by growing trees or hemp, the later choice being even less environmentally destructive than mining. Both materials are renewable and recyclable unlike resources that will need to be mined to make e-books.
As to your fear for content-control, this is where peope like GNU, FSF and EFF step in. We already have GPL (and LGPL and BSD etc) software, we shall continue to have open literature.
No insult to those fine people, but I can't see them having (or getting) the strength they need to take on corporate America.
Are the technologists trying to make electronic books really trying to build a better mouse trap?
I can take any book, drop it off the roof of my building, into a puddle, step on it, and it will still function as an information device. An earthquake can come, bury the book beneath rubble, and an archaeologist will be able to dig it up 500 years from now and retrieve the information.
A book can cost only a few dollars, requires no power to use ( except when reading at night ), is made from renewable resources, and is recyclable.
How can electronic books, which will have none of the attributes hope to compete? Is there perhaps another motivation?
Electronic books will bring more corporate control of information and I think this is the motivation given that we have pretty good technology for books already.
Instead of buying a text book which you ( or anyone else ) can read for years to come, you will lease the information, to yourself only, and the information will "vanish" from your e-book once the lease is over. Like software that you will not be able to buy for yourself and give to a friend the same will be true of your books.
Don't laugh, it already happened to a dental school I read about on slashdot about a year ago.
There is no way an electronic book can compete with paper books in terms of price, durability, reusability, and eco friendliness.
However, people laughed at the idea of bottled water and despite years of news reports to the contrary people still buy bottled water believing it to better in quality.
FWIW, bottled water is still more expensive than gasoline ( maybe not for much longer )
Dude, you totally gave me a good laugh when I needed one:).
However, how tough can can the icon look if it looks like big bird instead of godzilla?
BTW, I also laughed really hard at the link someone posted as "artists conception" of the "new" dinosaurs ( it turned out to be big bird from Sesame Street)
I really do wish it was about idealogy instead of cost and terms.
Some scarey things are coming with corporate control of information.
Free(dom) software could help fight that battle if it could be made as appealing as proprietary software...or at least "good enough" for people who tire of dracaonian terms and prices.
I know many slashdotters are busy people who often don't read every article.
In case you haven't here is a quote from the article that you will not want to miss:
The feather revelation follows a series of discoveries in fossil beds at Liaoning in northeast China where a volcanic eruption buried many dinosaurs alive. It also cut off the oxygen that would otherwise have rotted them away.
Some theropod ("beast-footed") dinosaurs were preserved complete with feathery plumage. Theropod is the name given to predatory creatures that walked upright on two legs, balanced by a long tail.
The feathered finds include an early tyrannosaur, a likely ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex, two small flying dinosaurs and five other predators. Feathers are thought to have evolved first to keep dinosaurs warm and only later as an aid to flight.
In any event, I will always think of dinosaurs in terms of the cheesy special effects from that old 70's children's show "Land Of The Lost"
I think they deliberately misunderstand the issue. The issue here is not functionality. Yes opendoc may actually be less functional than the word-format but guess what Microsoft? I haven't used any of this additional functionality since 1997 and neither has the US government.
The battle for features is over and what's replaced it is a lot more important. What we have today is a battle of ideology.
I would like to agree with you as I am fan of and realize the importance of the Free(dom) Software philosophy.
However, I think the real motivation behind these types of software migrations are that people are tired of paying Microsoft's prices and being dictated too by Microsoft's strict terms.
Now that alternatives are emerging people are moving towards them.
An excellent novel to read is "Clan Of The Cave Bear" by Jean Auel.
The story is set in prehistoric Europe where Cromagnon and Neanderthal humans coexist. The story is about a Cromagnon toddler who is orphaned, adopted by a tribe of Neanderthals, does not know of the other kind of humans for almost her entire life, and how she adjusts growing up.
Auel thoroughly researched her book to the point of becoming the darling of archaeologists. Many of the places and elements in the story were inspired from real life finds. The same is true for some of the caves and places she describes. She interpolates what Neanderthal culture was like liberally, but her interpolations start from what is believed to be known in scientific circles. She writes very descriptively like Ray Bradbury.
When you read the book you really feel as if you visited prehistoric Europe.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the heads up.
I have used Video CDs before. I don't mind using them if DVDs are going to be a such a pain in linux.
I'm not about to buy a copy of windows to complete this project
If I didn't have to deal with resumes and IT clueless HR people I would be with Wordpad.
Thanks for the info.
Right now I am watching the tapes via kdetv.
Blank DVDs are no problem. I have a stack.
My problem is that I don't even know what I need to know to move all of this stuff to DVD.
Beyond getting it to DVD I would also like to edit trailers out of the vhs and make menus ( & mrls ) on the dvd.
Most of the literature I found on the web assumes a lot of knowledge.
This past Sunday was the 4th anniversary of the 9/11 bombings that destroyed the World Trade Center.
,speech by President Bush that he would capture him.
Osama Bin Forgotten, um... Bin Laden, is still at large despite a very firm, clear
I can't help but have the intuition that all of this cold war era recycled talk of big missile nuclear is the rattling of sabers so that the US doesn't feel like a paper tiger.
In under 6 years we went from the most powerful, prosperous, and confident nation in the world to a country that can not ( or will not ) catch a grown up spoiled child in the middle east, to a country with red/yellow/whatever alerts, and to a country that gets offered foreign aide ( and needs it ) after a natural disaster.
Maybe we need a new administration( republican or democrat ) instead of a new nuclear war doctrine.
I just gone done figuring out how to watch some old VHS tapes, without a tv, using an old vcr and linux.
I think I would like to copy these vhs tapes to dvd so I don't have to deal with the tapes anymore.
Would this be software I would want to use?
Forgive the obvious question, I am new to the whole multimedia thing on linux
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091557/
I agree, totally.
We all get offended from time to time, sometimes even in a childish way, but we control ourselves for our own good.
I am also amazed that grown men, especially lawyers, would be so cavalier about forwarding internal company correspondence to outside parties.
That is like the new IT manager who shows up for his first day at work and downloads a virus. Red flag.
I bet you were not.
How could they possibly find an address to send an invitation to "Anonymous Coward"?
I'm beginning to think that may be it
LOL! Even worse, would you trust your money to investment bankers who would do something like that?
I do think there was another article where the blackberry users were IT people.
Don't ask me for a citation, it was a long time ago.
I have gone through this with a number of organizations.
I have found that writing emails about the situation, the existence of the World Wide Web Consortium standards body, and the existence as well as compliance of "other browsers" with the w3.org standards.... politely, usually results in the site getting updated when the organization gets a chance.
Nobody wants to have their organization as being seen as backwards technically or with regards to standards.
Please do no just complain about this issue on slashdot. Send a polite not to FEMA.
The secretaries were in the wrong, they got fired.
However, other people in the company, lawyers, were the ones who passed the email exchange onto people outside of the firm.
If you ask me they have equal responsibility in embarrassing the company and should get an equal penalty.
If they haven't my guess would be because they are more valuable to the company or the company is like most in being cowardly and does not want to risk firing lawyers.
These guys ( in addition to the secretarys ) should be ashamed of themselves.
It would be tempting to call these secretary's slow learners, but I can remember reading a slashdot article about men in an IT company plotting to take other personnel ( and customers ) with them to form their own breakaway company. They used company blackberries for these communications!
So, it isn't about being tech savvy, it is about common sense or the lack of it.
I agree with everything you had to write.
However, the purpose of a business is to make as much money as it can. The purpose of software and computers is to be a labor saving device for the customers.
If people get to have fun and are allowed to do the job right in the process those things are a bonus.
I am not saying I like that way.
This is a great move.
Please include a CSS/theme for the original look and feel to slashdot.
The new default look takes away from slashdot's unique look and makes the site look like one among many web boards.
Sorry.
I guess I just like what you had off the bat.
Are the technologists trying to make electronic books really trying to build a better mouse trap?
I can take any book, drop it off the roof of my building, into a puddle, step on it, and it will still function as an information device. An earthquake can come, bury the book beneath rubble, and an archaeologist will be able to dig it up 500 years from now and retrieve the information.
A book can cost only a few dollars, requires no power to use ( except when reading at night ), is made from renewable resources, and is recyclable.
How can electronic books, which will have none of the attributes hope to compete? Is there perhaps another motivation?
Electronic books will bring more corporate control of information and I think this is the motivation given that we have pretty good technology for books already.
Instead of buying a text book which you ( or anyone else ) can read for years to come, you will lease the information, to yourself only, and the information will "vanish" from your e-book once the lease is over. Like software that you will not be able to buy for yourself and give to a friend the same will be true of your books.
Don't laugh, it already happened to a dental school I read about on slashdot about a year ago.
There is no way an electronic book can compete with paper books in terms of price, durability, reusability, and eco friendliness.
However, people laughed at the idea of bottled water and despite years of news reports to the contrary people still buy bottled water believing it to better in quality.
FWIW, bottled water is still more expensive than gasoline ( maybe not for much longer )
Dude, you totally gave me a good laugh when I needed one :).
However, how tough can can the icon look if it looks like big bird instead of godzilla?
BTW, I also laughed really hard at the link someone posted as "artists conception" of the "new" dinosaurs ( it turned out to be big bird from Sesame Street)
I really do wish it was about idealogy instead of cost and terms.
Some scarey things are coming with corporate control of information.
Free(dom) software could help fight that battle if it could be made as appealing as proprietary software...or at least "good enough" for people who tire of dracaonian terms and prices.
However, I think the real motivation behind these types of software migrations are that people are tired of paying Microsoft's prices and being dictated too by Microsoft's strict terms.
Now that alternatives are emerging people are moving towards them.
Yah, I agree. As I said in my original post their bullshit is pretty transparent. I just wish someone would call them on it to their face.
An excellent novel to read is "Clan Of The Cave Bear" by Jean Auel.
The story is set in prehistoric Europe where Cromagnon and Neanderthal humans coexist. The story is about a Cromagnon toddler who is orphaned, adopted by a tribe of Neanderthals, does not know of the other kind of humans for almost her entire life, and how she adjusts growing up.
Auel thoroughly researched her book to the point of becoming the darling of archaeologists. Many of the places and elements in the story were inspired from real life finds. The same is true for some of the caves and places she describes. She interpolates what Neanderthal culture was like liberally, but her interpolations start from what is believed to be known in scientific circles. She writes very descriptively like Ray Bradbury.
When you read the book you really feel as if you visited prehistoric Europe.
I was at microcenter yesterday.
I bought two copies of Linspire for 1 cent each.
It didn't say on the box what version it was other than "OEM Edition".
It is probably an older version, but at 1 cent per copy I couldn't help picking up two.
I think I may leave one at work as an incentive for the windows users to take it home and give a try.