.. and Canada to the North and Mexico to the South.
I can't see any realistic scenario that would lead to the USA once again going to war with either of those now friendly neighbours, but they are land borders and situations do change.
"Nations are not like Mother Teresa or Sir Galahad; they act not out of altruism but out of selfish national interest." Charles de Gaulle
nobody's blaming Microsoft because OOo doesn't translate.rtf correctly. Right?
The problem we blame Microsoft for is that the.doc format is a secret, so the OOo people don't have a full understanding of what they need to do to correctly import all.doc files. Right?
but when I'm using firefox under windows I keep trying to highlight text, then middle clicking in the Google box.
Then I say a rude word as I realise I'm not using X:(
Yes, I would very much like to assist you liberating the 130,000,000 million dollars your father acquired while serving as Sierra Leone's vice president.
I phoned the number you gave in your email, but it was engaged. Please phone me (collect) on my private line (303) 464-8164 at your earliest convenience.
Likes & dislikes in food and drink are a very personal thing, what one person raves over another may hate. That said, when I have to drink instant coffee, my preference is Moccona Classic.
At other times, I go for plunger (aka cafetiere or french press) made coffee.
My way of making it is to
preheat a one cup plunger and glass with boiling water,
discard water,
place about 2 cm of boiling water in the bottom,
add a heaped dessert spoon of coffee,
add the desired amount of water -- this mixes the grounds with the water
plunge immediately. BTW: Slowly rotating the plunger as you press it down makes the process easier and helps avoid locking and blowback.
pour immediately.
I don't have either sugar or milk in my coffee, so I won't advise on those.
Other than boiling the water, the whole process takes under a minute. Nearly as fast as instant.
If you want a stronger brew, add more coffee, don't brew it longer. I gather you like espresso, and if you think about how espresso is made the water is not left in contact with the grounds for any great length of time.
Keep your press clean. Personally I rinse mine out in nearly boiling water each time after use and fully disassemble / clean once a day to prevent the build-up of oils. After cleaning you need to rinse well to remove any remaining detergent.
Now for the coffee. Coffee as consumed is made from roasted seeds (beans). There are two main sources of the beans (robusta & arabica) and a lot of different levels of roasting. If kept dry it seems to have a shelf life of months or years. Unfortunately the aroma doesn't have a long shelf life. The shelf life can be extended by keeping the ground coffee in an air tight container in a cool place.
To get a really good cup of coffee you need freshly roasted beans, and in my opinion they should be made from arabica. You also need to find a roast / blend that matches your taste.
Find a speciality store that roasts the coffee on the premises. Good ones will have a sign saying that they only use arabica. Go in and talk to them about coffee. You'll soon find if they are passionate about their product. Tell them that you will be brewing with a plunger / cafetiere / french press and your preferred Starbucks brew. Ask them which of their blends they would recommend you try first. Buy a small quantity of that and try it.
It might take a few iterations, but you'll eventually find the best blend for you.
When plain text isn't enough we need to use Microsoft formats because so many people can read them. We can't use other formats because only a few people can read them.
So, let's change that.
What an individual can do
Whenever you need to send a document, send it in OOo 's native format. You'll get a reply back saying 'I can't read this', to which you reply with something like one of:
You need to download OOo from..
Oh. I'll send it in another format first chance I get, or you can save time by downloading...
Sorry, I forgot you can't read those, might be best if you download OOo ready for next time I forget
Obviously you have to pick your moments. Not a good idea to do this to an important client, or with your cv when job hunting, but other than that just do it!
One thing an authority (business or academic) can do
Mandate that documents sent by applicants / suppliers are in OOo format. If questioned about this explain that you use OOo internally and can't risk any mistranslations
For hardware vendors
There's a local chain store that sells their own house brand of (sometimes rebadged) computer accessories.
In recent times I've noticed that they are filling the unused portion of the "driver" CDs with OOo. So far I've received copies of OOo with a TV tuner card & an ADSL modem.
No idea why they have chosen to do this, maybe they just see it as a low cost way of making it look like they can bundle software like the "big boys"
So, if you're sending out a CD and there's space on it, pop in a copy of OOo.
Summary
There's many ways to get people to adopt open software. Evangelism is one, giving it to people is another, even forcing it down people's throats.
Let's get out there and get the world on open software.
We run SuSE Professional 8.2 on our home machines, one server, two workstations.
My partner's machine freezes occasionally. Most recent one was yesterday, and even Alt+Ctrl+Backspace wouldn't get control back. I needed to power off!
I've never been able to work out exactly what causes these freezes (my partner is not very "'puter literate"), but suspect that it may be somehow related to the printing subsystem. One time I did manage to ssh into the machine when it froze and the cups process was feasting on CPU cycles.
We upgraded to the then latest patches from the SuSE ftp site about two weeks ago. This did not affect the reliability.
I can't contrast these observations to any other distro. I've only ever used SuSE (since 6.x).
Maybe that's why it's so hard to get the suits to buy Open Source... No escrow.
Now if we could only get Sourceforge and co to offer an Escrowal service:)
Slashdot Mirror
I can't see any realistic scenario that would lead to the USA once again going to war with either of those now friendly neighbours, but they are land borders and situations do change.
"Nations are not like Mother Teresa or Sir Galahad; they act not out of altruism but out of selfish national interest." Charles de Gaulle
nobody's blaming Microsoft because OOo doesn't translate .rtf correctly. Right?
The problem we blame Microsoft for is that the .doc format is a secret, so the OOo people don't have a full understanding of what they need to do to correctly import all .doc files. Right?
but when I'm using firefox under windows I keep trying to highlight text, then middle clicking in the Google box. Then I say a rude word as I realise I'm not using X :(
Or replying to an email I received today
Likes & dislikes in food and drink are a very personal thing, what one person raves over another may hate. That said, when I have to drink instant coffee, my preference is Moccona Classic.
At other times, I go for plunger (aka cafetiere or french press) made coffee.
My way of making it is to
- preheat a one cup plunger and glass with boiling water,
- discard water,
- place about 2 cm of boiling water in the bottom,
- add a heaped dessert spoon of coffee,
- add the desired amount of water -- this mixes the grounds with the water
- plunge immediately.
- pour immediately.
I don't have either sugar or milk in my coffee, so I won't advise on those.BTW: Slowly rotating the plunger as you press it down makes the process easier and helps avoid locking and blowback.
Other than boiling the water, the whole process takes under a minute. Nearly as fast as instant.
If you want a stronger brew, add more coffee, don't brew it longer. I gather you like espresso, and if you think about how espresso is made the water is not left in contact with the grounds for any great length of time.
Keep your press clean. Personally I rinse mine out in nearly boiling water each time after use and fully disassemble / clean once a day to prevent the build-up of oils. After cleaning you need to rinse well to remove any remaining detergent.
Now for the coffee. Coffee as consumed is made from roasted seeds (beans). There are two main sources of the beans (robusta & arabica) and a lot of different levels of roasting. If kept dry it seems to have a shelf life of months or years. Unfortunately the aroma doesn't have a long shelf life. The shelf life can be extended by keeping the ground coffee in an air tight container in a cool place.
To get a really good cup of coffee you need freshly roasted beans, and in my opinion they should be made from arabica. You also need to find a roast / blend that matches your taste.
Find a speciality store that roasts the coffee on the premises. Good ones will have a sign saying that they only use arabica. Go in and talk to them about coffee. You'll soon find if they are passionate about their product. Tell them that you will be brewing with a plunger / cafetiere / french press and your preferred Starbucks brew. Ask them which of their blends they would recommend you try first. Buy a small quantity of that and try it.
It might take a few iterations, but you'll eventually find the best blend for you.
When plain text isn't enough we need to use Microsoft formats because so many people can read them. We can't use other formats because only a few people can read them.
So, let's change that.
What an individual can do
Whenever you need to send a document, send it in OOo 's native format. You'll get a reply back saying 'I can't read this', to which you reply with something like one of:
Obviously you have to pick your moments. Not a good idea to do this to an important client, or with your cv when job hunting, but other than that just do it!
One thing an authority (business or academic) can do
Mandate that documents sent by applicants / suppliers are in OOo format. If questioned about this explain that you use OOo internally and can't risk any mistranslations
For hardware vendors
There's a local chain store that sells their own house brand of (sometimes rebadged) computer accessories.
In recent times I've noticed that they are filling the unused portion of the "driver" CDs with OOo. So far I've received copies of OOo with a TV tuner card & an ADSL modem.
No idea why they have chosen to do this, maybe they just see it as a low cost way of making it look like they can bundle software like the "big boys"
So, if you're sending out a CD and there's space on it, pop in a copy of OOo.
Summary
There's many ways to get people to adopt open software. Evangelism is one, giving it to people is another, even forcing it down people's throats.
Let's get out there and get the world on open software.
We run SuSE Professional 8.2 on our home machines, one server, two workstations.
My partner's machine freezes occasionally. Most recent one was yesterday, and even Alt+Ctrl+Backspace wouldn't get control back. I needed to power off!
I've never been able to work out exactly what causes these freezes (my partner is not very "'puter literate"), but suspect that it may be somehow related to the printing subsystem. One time I did manage to ssh into the machine when it froze and the cups process was feasting on CPU cycles.
We upgraded to the then latest patches from the SuSE ftp site about two weeks ago. This did not affect the reliability.
I can't contrast these observations to any other distro. I've only ever used SuSE (since 6.x).
Maybe that's why it's so hard to get the suits to buy Open Source ... No escrow.
Now if we could only get Sourceforge and co to offer an Escrowal service :)