Firing AT the target plane might delay or even prevent the evil-doers from know the exact standing-by-transceiver is operating on, but it might be better for the target planes to glide or taxi INTO the command wave but with a stand-off or back-off threshold so the humans in the cockpit can have positive control of the craft.
After all, theoretically all those reinforced doors that the fucking dollar-sensitive airliners REFUSED to install proactively, like once the FIRST a/c hijacking occurred (nevermind statistics or likelihood of recurrence), ESPECIALLY after the various reported door-crashings well before 9/11.
But, I s'pose the military figures, "Hell, planes go down due to negligence in the cockpit or cost-cutting or negligence in the maintenance bay, due to bad weather, and mountains that maneuvered into the a/c's flight path. So what's a little defense-chief (defense-mischief) to avert what COULD be an imminent attack?"
Whether directed beam, or continuous wave, this kind of stuff can spell greater disaster than all the bullshit lies they fed us about personal electronics risking overwhelming the on-board systems. I've seen individuals running camcorders during the entire takeoff and landing procedures before 9/11 and we've NEVER learned of a crash due to people all of a sudden simultaneously firing up their devices in a suicide-pact manner. I suspect for that scenario the airliners & FAA don't want a working camcorder popping up in a cornfield like Klingons or other aliens with viewable footage and audible death wailing, only to land in the hands of journalists or farmers who make a copy before handing it over.
As far as I'm concerned, if MY plane ever is crashing, and IFFF I have a camcorder, I declare it public (the PEOPLE, not the officials nor their agencies) have first rights to its contents. PERIOD. Now, if they want to trump my wish on the grounds that it's not proper, nor fitting, or distasteful to the co-deceased and their survivors, too bad. We've had way too many untrue conclusions fed to us, and anything that uncovers future false reports should be WELCOME. And, if I SURVIVE a plane crash and happened to film the noise and rattling and crunching and what not, that's not going to become the property of NTSB. They can have a working, tested COPY, but not MY fricking medium.
But, back to the "firing" at planes. How the hell will they know just WHEN to start jamming a taxiing plane? I mean, at WHAT speed? What if the runway is iced? What if another plane is improperly on an intercept/collision, and the signal-commanded plane is decelerating and cannot regain forward speed to avert the impending collision?
And, of the plane in the sky, what are they going to do? Shoot it down? Bloody fucking barbaric. MOST commair don't ahve facilities to enable a hijacker to know the coveted bulls eye of any given military base or silo below. Even if they do, they can't exactly pull Immelmann or other maneuvers, coil like a python, and then SLAM right into the kill zone of a target. Not going to happen. They need to stick with boxing in the plane, making threatening gestures, and THEN leave it up to the pilot on-scene to decide to take it out -- IF they are in the vicinity.
But, I suppose they'll say, "But, as for protecting bases below, this will save fuel (probably $5.00 a gallon for JP-4 for the DOD, but could be $1.95, too...) and time. Besides, we're not looking at shooting down, but diverting aircraft..."
But, pilots might decide to bribe the mechanics to tell them which fuse disables those potentially wretched devices so they can pull them or disable them prior to take-off. Thinking ahead, the government/s will just order Boeing, et al to create disinformation blueprints, then even the mechs won't know for sure what is real or not.
This could become quite damned dangerous! Especially if there is no encryption. Then, what if other nations want positive, reserved control of foreign a/c entering or crossing close to THEIR own airspace? This could end up
Yeh, and then some evil types of people or even pranksters (on ground, or by using a so-configured laptop or camcorder or hand-held game) might figure out how to:
-- boost the reception range in order to deceive or seduce the cockpit,
-- bypass security (long accept command if wheels up, over 100 kph indicated, if turbines over 25%, if altimeter log indicates movement inconsistent with runway traffic...), to force unwitting external (non-pilot) command input
-- trick the ground-based systems to interfere with runway traffic to cause on-ground, or taxi-vs land traffic...
-- trigger false halts and false diverts to wreak havoc upon ATC or military airspace controllers when the aircraft (in real-time or by delayed instruction) fail to "squawk" back...
then all hell could break loose. Don't think I wanna be on one of those planes... nor near one...
Basically, they want radio-controlled, perimeter-restricted shopping carts that work on the ground or in the air.... roi...ght....
Re:Anything else out there? Sail or Rebuild....
on
The State of X.Org
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"but do you keep sailing a sinking ship, or try to build a new one?"
But, the submarine community does BOTH...
Re:Anything else out there? How about "THROAT"?
on
The State of X.Org
·
· Score: 1
"Whereas the X server is somewhere in the middle. It isn't well known, even geeks might not know exactly what it does (i.e., where the separation is between X, the window manager, and so forth), and for some reason it lacks the 'coolness' factor of the Linux kernel. "
Well, instead of calling it a server, or some such nonsense, call it "THROAT": between the head and chest, you simply can NOT do with out it... (unless you think you have a redundant brain in the chest..., then the analogy falls apart...)
Ass for lubing, will Jiffy Lube enjoy this car? How about Lube-n-Go? Would Meineke vie for some of the muff-ler end of the business? Will it say "Hallelujah" when crossing by churches (or Church's Chicken"? Will the dashboard have the game "Condom.exe" installed. End-quiring minds want to know...
I like FOSS because it enables me to do things I cannot do as a non-programmer. I'm not interested in programming. I want to PRODUCE. But, at the prices of SOME non-FOSS apps, I'll never legally/morally/$-wise obtain many nice applications through which to further my activities.
OTOH, I also feel that FOSS must *simply work*. I am yet flabbergasted again at OpenOffice.org and their definition of "Sections".
After failing to get Kpackage to install the RPMs, I had to use the rpm -i --nodeps for EACH of the some 15 rpms. After getting OO.o up and running the first thing I checked was Base. I felt kicked in the chest. A weak, ms-abscess clone. Sure, "E" for effort, but not even a "C". If OO.o are going to CLONE a database ostensibly aimed at non-programmers, they should clone Lotus Approach and some of FileMaker. Otherwise, they just continue to so infuriate me that I will likely create a step-by-step tutorial of how to create a screenplay/dialog tracking database from scratch using a simpler tho outdated database front-end created around 1992, and still unbeatable by OO.o in 2008..." Lotus Approach not only has TEMPLATES, it has APPLICATIONS ready to run, and they also can be reverse-engineered and customized.
I fired up Write/r, and again, felt kicked. Word Pro, also in Lotus Smartsuite (as is Approach) STILL hands-down (for me, at least) has a more sane approach to dealing with compound documents. If I take 5 or 10 disparate documents with individual layouts, fonts, and so on, and bind them as one document and want to preserve each one's attributes in Word Pro, I create a master document, and then activate the spreadsheet-like tabs and import each document as a section or as a division. I can jump to each using the tabs. Each retains it's page orientation. No lame "rule" line that doesn't delineate the document's internal parts. Word Pro has multiple formatted previews, too.
I will reclaim some 200 MB tonight and allocate it to screen shots, footage, and documentation. Maybe I should have done it in 1999 or 2002 instead of giving up and waiting to see if they'd "get it"....
Lotus SmartSuite is why I am running windoze in VirtualBox (it used to be Win4Lin, but i grew weary of kernel incompatibilities and feeling forced by Win4Lin to upgrade past win 98. But getting a new laptop forced me (pretty much) to take vista in all its RAM-hogging glory. Now, if only I could swap vista out for XP (i bought this l/t in Dec 07, and don't know anyone willing to swap OS's with me...)
But, I seriously doubt OO.o as FOSS apps goes will seriously dent ms orifice until OO.o seriously incorporates the best aspects of Lotus SmartSuite into OO.o instead of wasting time and money and pretending to independently develop without stepping on LSS/Lotus/IBM patents. Tools invented TODAY can make child's play out of what was "novel" and "difficult to attain" back in 1992, so legally, technically, and morally, I'd say SmartSuite is probably 90% "clonable" in a handful of FOSS apps like KDevelop, and wxwidgets and Qt/Trolltech tools.
Pretty soon, they'll be FASHION POLICE... "Elf-Recognition Handbook"
1. How to spot an elf: It pretends to be a normal human being by increasing its height. However, the dead giveaway is the stylish, long, pointed, tip-upturned shoes. Confirmation is established by seizing and destroying the elfins in the presence of the former wearer. Ultra confirmation may be deemed by the sudden production of a wand emitting stars or Tesla-like bolts of electricity.
See Appendix IV for coping with wands and Tesla wands... Exercise extreme caution first, and disband and disarm elves by first corralling them into the WNC: Wand Neutralization Chamber, disguised as an ordinary neutron/isotope/explosives sniffer booth. The puffer ports emit Clover-Leaf Extract molecularly bonded to cyanide Grade-4, and Essence of Itching Powder and Essense of Itching POWER, with 10 parts per hundred of Capsicum and Scent of Camay.
Would be nice if the site authors created a non-pr0n version of the article (like, if you use CityDesk, you can create "audiences" and alter the profile...) so that those of us reading where filters are in place can read the salient points, sans the pr0n pics, sans any possibly offensive trackable URLs....
And, I second the request for Unicode... as sometimes some of us want to post content from other languages....
I think i inadvertently might appear to have slighted "TheKompany". That was not my intent. I bored ahead in my drivel, but TheKompany's products are not in the "unpolished" category. I was referring to the majority of things that are rushed out the door without polishing for end users.
Try Lotus SmartSuite... Get hold of a $7.00 to $30.00 unopened, resold CD. Unfortunately, 1-2-3 has some mouse issues in scrolling in Win4Lin and in VirtualBox (maybe even in windoze), but the STARS of SmartSuite have to be Word Pro and Approach, the WYSIWYG, end-user, no-programming skills-required front end.
I'm creating a screenplay/dialog management tool in it, and the regrettable thing is there is no stand-alone executable, and no way to simply run the finished files by end-users unless they have the full suite disk and then deselect installation of the other components.
Table linking is simplistic, but works. Similar to how FileMaker used to be.
Unfortunately, Approach has not got horizontal sliders for detail tables, but it has filters, constraints, and sliders. There is a large, vibrant end-users group at IBM and elsewhere:
BTW, the form shown on the Wikipedia site does an injustice to the things the forms CAN do. It would be nice if/. could resurrect image/file-posting (safely...)... I could submit some screen shots or actual working tables. But, you can also just go into the "Extras" and the SmartMasters (templates) folders and check out the checkbook, movie rental, and other tables.
SmartSuite has some 20+ application templates, numerous forms files... THAT is what BASE should have been emulating, but unfortunately, NIH syndrome STILL pervades, even after my circa-2001 pleas for them to peruse Lotus Approach. All we end up with is a hodgepodge of tepidly invented and release, hi-geekoid, no-beauty apps the make me feel my stomach was kicked in.
That's ANOTHER topic, but Open Source needs companies like IBM, Google, & Sun to shell out beautification money so Open Source developers can have their warez evaluated and transformed into wares. I dare say that most would-be converts are put off by sheer UGLINESS of many Open Source apps that never got any real polish for non-developers. Yeh, I know TheKompany has an app (Rekall), and they have some former Approach users, but their interface approach left me feeling I'd had a combination of Approach and Abscess melded. I would have stuck with Omnis's (since become Raining Data) stuff, but I hate the overhead, the licensing schemes, and the need to CODE to get done what I want to get done.
What somebody NEEDS to do is:
Take SQLite or MySQL as back ends and Lotus Approach's FRONT END for it's WYSIWYG interface, and update it to the CAPABILITIES but not the COMPLEXITY of FileMaker, and THEN, THEN, THEN Open Source will have a worthy database application for end-users who want to open all the current database files Approach can access, and have the ease-of-use of Approach...
Wulfstan's comments, imagine the re: PERCUSSIONS if IBM chimed in with Lotus SmartSuite to:
-- bring more sanity to OO.o,
-- collage or commingle or merge the two, and
-- merge the best of the two to Google's things.
THAT could probably kneecap msoft, or ankle-cap them (either is FINE, as long as msoft is hobbling with it's ass ever-precariously closer to its bone-shards on the ground...lowering the PUCKER and still raising the FACTOR...)
Sun could be the Hammer (put a cap in ms' ass) and IBM could be the Sickle, (cut them down to size)... imagine the gory glory... it would be gorious and glorious...
Butt, does she spin and jump bus stop benches on her way to work...
(Hey, if GOD can be a "she", then can't Satan(a) be, too? And, would hell-bent people look forward to 35.5 or 140 avowed-sex-addicts...?) (You don't have to do a hell of a lot of soul-searching to find the humor here...)
When these landlubbers mix up terms. For instance, "The ship is docked..." or "Tied up..." when it's really MOORED.
But, FTA, what caught my eye was:
"They call it scrambling"
BZZZT! Get ur stuff right, reporters. It's SCRAM, as in Safety Control Rod Activation Mechanism. I frackin' knew this back in 80, as a 15-year old. WTF is wrong with these well-funded reporting arms out there? So, the text probably ought have said, "They call it SCRAMing"..., that is, unless something changed that i didn't know about in the past decade or so...
If the reporter wants to discuss "reactors" and "scrambling", then maybe the story should cover intra-molecular scrambling....
"APRM 40 transmits a scram signal to the rod drive system 6 to scram the reactor. Scramming takes place when the power level reaches about 120% of the..."
Slashdot Mirror
Firing AT the target plane might delay or even prevent the evil-doers from know the exact standing-by-transceiver is operating on, but it might be better for the target planes to glide or taxi INTO the command wave but with a stand-off or back-off threshold so the humans in the cockpit can have positive control of the craft.
After all, theoretically all those reinforced doors that the fucking dollar-sensitive airliners REFUSED to install proactively, like once the FIRST a/c hijacking occurred (nevermind statistics or likelihood of recurrence), ESPECIALLY after the various reported door-crashings well before 9/11.
But, I s'pose the military figures, "Hell, planes go down due to negligence in the cockpit or cost-cutting or negligence in the maintenance bay, due to bad weather, and mountains that maneuvered into the a/c's flight path. So what's a little defense-chief (defense-mischief) to avert what COULD be an imminent attack?"
Whether directed beam, or continuous wave, this kind of stuff can spell greater disaster than all the bullshit lies they fed us about personal electronics risking overwhelming the on-board systems. I've seen individuals running camcorders during the entire takeoff and landing procedures before 9/11 and we've NEVER learned of a crash due to people all of a sudden simultaneously firing up their devices in a suicide-pact manner. I suspect for that scenario the airliners & FAA don't want a working camcorder popping up in a cornfield like Klingons or other aliens with viewable footage and audible death wailing, only to land in the hands of journalists or farmers who make a copy before handing it over.
As far as I'm concerned, if MY plane ever is crashing, and IFFF I have a camcorder, I declare it public (the PEOPLE, not the officials nor their agencies) have first rights to its contents. PERIOD. Now, if they want to trump my wish on the grounds that it's not proper, nor fitting, or distasteful to the co-deceased and their survivors, too bad. We've had way too many untrue conclusions fed to us, and anything that uncovers future false reports should be WELCOME. And, if I SURVIVE a plane crash and happened to film the noise and rattling and crunching and what not, that's not going to become the property of NTSB. They can have a working, tested COPY, but not MY fricking medium.
But, back to the "firing" at planes. How the hell will they know just WHEN to start jamming a taxiing plane? I mean, at WHAT speed? What if the runway is iced? What if another plane is improperly on an intercept/collision, and the signal-commanded plane is decelerating and cannot regain forward speed to avert the impending collision?
And, of the plane in the sky, what are they going to do? Shoot it down? Bloody fucking barbaric. MOST commair don't ahve facilities to enable a hijacker to know the coveted bulls eye of any given military base or silo below. Even if they do, they can't exactly pull Immelmann or other maneuvers, coil like a python, and then SLAM right into the kill zone of a target. Not going to happen. They need to stick with boxing in the plane, making threatening gestures, and THEN leave it up to the pilot on-scene to decide to take it out -- IF they are in the vicinity.
But, I suppose they'll say, "But, as for protecting bases below, this will save fuel (probably $5.00 a gallon for JP-4 for the DOD, but could be $1.95, too...) and time. Besides, we're not looking at shooting down, but diverting aircraft..."
But, pilots might decide to bribe the mechanics to tell them which fuse disables those potentially wretched devices so they can pull them or disable them prior to take-off. Thinking ahead, the government/s will just order Boeing, et al to create disinformation blueprints, then even the mechs won't know for sure what is real or not.
This could become quite damned dangerous! Especially if there is no encryption. Then, what if other nations want positive, reserved control of foreign a/c entering or crossing close to THEIR own airspace? This could end up
Reapers or Raptors, the results can end up pretty grim...
Yeh, and then some evil types of people or even pranksters (on ground, or by using a so-configured laptop or camcorder or hand-held game) might figure out how to:
-- boost the reception range in order to deceive or seduce the cockpit,
-- bypass security (long accept command if wheels up, over 100 kph indicated, if turbines over 25%, if altimeter log indicates movement inconsistent with runway traffic...), to force unwitting external (non-pilot) command input
-- trick the ground-based systems to interfere with runway traffic to cause on-ground, or taxi-vs land traffic...
-- trigger false halts and false diverts to wreak havoc upon ATC or military airspace controllers when the aircraft (in real-time or by delayed instruction) fail to "squawk" back...
then all hell could break loose. Don't think I wanna be on one of those planes... nor near one...
Basically, they want radio-controlled, perimeter-restricted shopping carts that work on the ground or in the air.... roi...ght....
"but do you keep sailing a sinking ship, or try to build a new one?"
But, the submarine community does BOTH...
"Whereas the X server is somewhere in the middle. It isn't well known, even geeks might not know exactly what it does (i.e., where the separation is between X, the window manager, and so forth), and for some reason it lacks the 'coolness' factor of the Linux kernel. "
Well, instead of calling it a server, or some such nonsense, call it "THROAT": between the head and chest, you simply can NOT do with out it... (unless you think you have a redundant brain in the chest..., then the analogy falls apart...)
HIND sight or HIND site? Which is 20/20? Both!
the car is RIBBED...
Ass for lubing, will Jiffy Lube enjoy this car? How about Lube-n-Go? Would Meineke vie for some of the muff-ler end of the business? Will it say "Hallelujah" when crossing by churches (or Church's Chicken"? Will the dashboard have the game "Condom.exe" installed. End-quiring minds want to know...
Super Holes and Black Novas...... I wonder if that probe can find more insight by looking deeper into Uranus...
ShielfW0lf and Chief Camel Breeder go to blows?
Actually, I agree with BOTH of you.
I like FOSS because it enables me to do things I cannot do as a non-programmer. I'm not interested in programming. I want to PRODUCE. But, at the prices of SOME non-FOSS apps, I'll never legally/morally/$-wise obtain many nice applications through which to further my activities.
OTOH, I also feel that FOSS must *simply work*. I am yet flabbergasted again at OpenOffice.org and their definition of "Sections".
After failing to get Kpackage to install the RPMs, I had to use the rpm -i --nodeps for EACH of the some 15 rpms. After getting OO.o up and running the first thing I checked was Base. I felt kicked in the chest. A weak, ms-abscess clone. Sure, "E" for effort, but not even a "C". If OO.o are going to CLONE a database ostensibly aimed at non-programmers, they should clone Lotus Approach and some of FileMaker. Otherwise, they just continue to so infuriate me that I will likely create a step-by-step tutorial of how to create a screenplay/dialog tracking database from scratch using a simpler tho outdated database front-end created around 1992, and still unbeatable by OO.o in 2008..." Lotus Approach not only has TEMPLATES, it has APPLICATIONS ready to run, and they also can be reverse-engineered and customized.
I fired up Write/r, and again, felt kicked. Word Pro, also in Lotus Smartsuite (as is Approach) STILL hands-down (for me, at least) has a more sane approach to dealing with compound documents. If I take 5 or 10 disparate documents with individual layouts, fonts, and so on, and bind them as one document and want to preserve each one's attributes in Word Pro, I create a master document, and then activate the spreadsheet-like tabs and import each document as a section or as a division. I can jump to each using the tabs. Each retains it's page orientation. No lame "rule" line that doesn't delineate the document's internal parts. Word Pro has multiple formatted previews, too.
I will reclaim some 200 MB tonight and allocate it to screen shots, footage, and documentation. Maybe I should have done it in 1999 or 2002 instead of giving up and waiting to see if they'd "get it"....
Lotus SmartSuite is why I am running windoze in VirtualBox (it used to be Win4Lin, but i grew weary of kernel incompatibilities and feeling forced by Win4Lin to upgrade past win 98. But getting a new laptop forced me (pretty much) to take vista in all its RAM-hogging glory. Now, if only I could swap vista out for XP (i bought this l/t in Dec 07, and don't know anyone willing to swap OS's with me...)
But, I seriously doubt OO.o as FOSS apps goes will seriously dent ms orifice until OO.o seriously incorporates the best aspects of Lotus SmartSuite into OO.o instead of wasting time and money and pretending to independently develop without stepping on LSS/Lotus/IBM patents. Tools invented TODAY can make child's play out of what was "novel" and "difficult to attain" back in 1992, so legally, technically, and morally, I'd say SmartSuite is probably 90% "clonable" in a handful of FOSS apps like KDevelop, and wxwidgets and Qt/Trolltech tools.
Maybe the sun has 1 BILLION sunblock? Or, got solar chemotherapy?
Pretty soon, they'll be FASHION POLICE... "Elf-Recognition Handbook"
1. How to spot an elf: It pretends to be a normal human being by increasing its height. However, the dead giveaway is the stylish, long, pointed, tip-upturned shoes. Confirmation is established by seizing and destroying the elfins in the presence of the former wearer. Ultra confirmation may be deemed by the sudden production of a wand emitting stars or Tesla-like bolts of electricity.
See Appendix IV for coping with wands and Tesla wands... Exercise extreme caution first, and disband and disarm elves by first corralling them into the WNC: Wand Neutralization Chamber, disguised as an ordinary neutron/isotope/explosives sniffer booth. The puffer ports emit Clover-Leaf Extract molecularly bonded to cyanide Grade-4, and Essence of Itching Powder and Essense of Itching POWER, with 10 parts per hundred of Capsicum and Scent of Camay.
Keebler... but, I'll take ELVira....
Elope.... after they grep, touch, poke, and head and tail each other in NICE ways....
Whyoops... I s-u-bstituted Can-u-da for Nu-zeal-und...
sound like they have a "u" or "yoo" in them somewhere...
Yoo-knighted-sutates...
Can-u-dah...
Furansu (if hailing from Korea or Japan...)...
Yoo-knighted-king-dum
Germ-u-knee...
What is probably yoo-s-ful to consider is that Can-u-da probably hasn't really colun-ized any other sove-run nation... LOL!
Would be nice if the site authors created a non-pr0n version of the article (like, if you use CityDesk, you can create "audiences" and alter the profile...) so that those of us reading where filters are in place can read the salient points, sans the pr0n pics, sans any possibly offensive trackable URLs....
And, I second the request for Unicode... as sometimes some of us want to post content from other languages....
hate to quote Kirk... but, "What does God need with a..." Rubik's Cube?
1. Pour paint on Cube
2. Let Dry
3. PROPHET
I think i inadvertently might appear to have slighted "TheKompany". That was not my intent. I bored ahead in my drivel, but TheKompany's products are not in the "unpolished" category. I was referring to the majority of things that are rushed out the door without polishing for end users.
Try Lotus SmartSuite... Get hold of a $7.00 to $30.00 unopened, resold CD. Unfortunately, 1-2-3 has some mouse issues in scrolling in Win4Lin and in VirtualBox (maybe even in windoze), but the STARS of SmartSuite have to be Word Pro and Approach, the WYSIWYG, end-user, no-programming skills-required front end.
/. could resurrect image/file-posting (safely...)... I could submit some screen shots or actual working tables. But, you can also just go into the "Extras" and the SmartMasters (templates) folders and check out the checkbook, movie rental, and other tables.
I'm creating a screenplay/dialog management tool in it, and the regrettable thing is there is no stand-alone executable, and no way to simply run the finished files by end-users unless they have the full suite disk and then deselect installation of the other components.
Table linking is simplistic, but works. Similar to how FileMaker used to be.
Unfortunately, Approach has not got horizontal sliders for detail tables, but it has filters, constraints, and sliders. There is a large, vibrant end-users group at IBM and elsewhere:
http://jabrown.customer.netspace.net.au/approach/official.htm
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ssforum.nsf/0/d361cd261211b1e485256e24004dcd75?OpenDocument&Click=
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Approach
BTW, the form shown on the Wikipedia site does an injustice to the things the forms CAN do. It would be nice if
See:
http://www.bluechillies.com/details/9317.html
See Built For Employees 1.0
SmartSuite has some 20+ application templates, numerous forms files... THAT is what BASE should have been emulating, but unfortunately, NIH syndrome STILL pervades, even after my circa-2001 pleas for them to peruse Lotus Approach. All we end up with is a hodgepodge of tepidly invented and release, hi-geekoid, no-beauty apps the make me feel my stomach was kicked in.
That's ANOTHER topic, but Open Source needs companies like IBM, Google, & Sun to shell out beautification money so Open Source developers can have their warez evaluated and transformed into wares. I dare say that most would-be converts are put off by sheer UGLINESS of many Open Source apps that never got any real polish for non-developers. Yeh, I know TheKompany has an app (Rekall), and they have some former Approach users, but their interface approach left me feeling I'd had a combination of Approach and Abscess melded. I would have stuck with Omnis's (since become Raining Data) stuff, but I hate the overhead, the licensing schemes, and the need to CODE to get done what I want to get done.
What somebody NEEDS to do is:
Take SQLite or MySQL as back ends and Lotus Approach's FRONT END for it's WYSIWYG interface, and update it to the CAPABILITIES but not the COMPLEXITY of FileMaker, and THEN, THEN, THEN Open Source will have a worthy database application for end-users who want to open all the current database files Approach can access, and have the ease-of-use of Approach...
(steps down from soap box)
Wulfstan's comments, imagine the re: PERCUSSIONS if IBM chimed in with Lotus SmartSuite to:
-- bring more sanity to OO.o,
-- collage or commingle or merge the two, and
-- merge the best of the two to Google's things.
THAT could probably kneecap msoft, or ankle-cap them (either is FINE, as long as msoft is hobbling with it's ass ever-precariously closer to its bone-shards on the ground...lowering the PUCKER and still raising the FACTOR...)
Sun could be the Hammer (put a cap in ms' ass) and IBM could be the Sickle, (cut them down to size)... imagine the gory glory... it would be gorious and glorious...
(hold on.... somebody's knocking the door...)
Butt, does she spin and jump bus stop benches on her way to work...
(Hey, if GOD can be a "she", then can't Satan(a) be, too? And, would hell-bent people look forward to 35.5 or 140 avowed-sex-addicts...?) (You don't have to do a hell of a lot of soul-searching to find the humor here...)
Umm, eLECtric SHEEP as they await the emergence of GOOPENOffice.org(#sm*)?
(Sorry, I just HAD to... release... that one...)
And bigger than a burning Uranus, call it a stanet, or a plar...
Actually, I was trying to be silly with Spoonerism, but, upon checking Google, sure enough, it has been done:
http://www.futuresoon.com/2008/04/six-for-science_11.html
And, done here, too:
http://uplink.space.com/printthread.php?Cat=&Board=sciastro&main=570057&type=thread
When these landlubbers mix up terms. For instance, "The ship is docked..." or "Tied up..." when it's really MOORED.
..."
But, FTA, what caught my eye was:
"They call it scrambling"
BZZZT! Get ur stuff right, reporters. It's SCRAM, as in Safety Control Rod Activation Mechanism. I frackin' knew this back in 80, as a 15-year old. WTF is wrong with these well-funded reporting arms out there? So, the text probably ought have said, "They call it SCRAMing"..., that is, unless something changed that i didn't know about in the past decade or so...
If the reporter wants to discuss "reactors" and "scrambling", then maybe the story should cover intra-molecular scrambling....
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1381116996002701
But, the reporter should have done some basic patent and process checking:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4337118.html
"APRM 40 transmits a scram signal to the rod drive system 6 to scram the reactor. Scramming takes place when the power level reaches about 120% of the