One other little thing (that's sort of an e-book format in a high-tech sort of way) that I'd like to see on every PDA / e-book reader is a Z-Machine (with a Glk virtual machine being an extra bonus) that can be used for er, well, interacting with interactive fiction.
The specifications are easily available (for both Z-Machine and Glk) and so could be pretty readily implemented into any PDA or e-book reader by any competent programmer.
I'd add Newton books to the list of formats that the e-book reader should read. There are still tons of them around out there available for free (many which aren't available in other formats), plus the software to create them is freely available and the file format specifications for them are widely available.
See this project for some further information on working with Newton books.
It's also quite easy to convert plain text to the superior Newton book format; converters to do so are available here and there. There are also utilities out there to pull plain text back out of Newton books; locally Saugus.net uses such a utility to incorporate the text of Newton books into the site's search engine.
There are also still hundreds (actually probably over a thousand) Newton books freely available on the Internet. These days though they're somewhat scattered waiting for the return of Newton's Library (some of the original site can still be found on the Internet Archive) and other similar sites.
Are the skill levels really always competitive? I've heard horror stories of companies sending tasks overseas to find that they need to have so many people here supporting less capable workforces over there that it ends up not being worthwhile. Likewise there have been companies that have had noticeable decreases in quality on their products after they've been outsourced, or even cases where certain products have been dropped after outsourcing.
When companies calculate outsoucing savings, do they consider the logistics of having design teams in different timezones, continents, and sometimes languages? It's one thing to send a sweater pattern overseas to be bulk produced -- it's another to try and get the designers from the various countries working together cooperatively to create the initial pattern.
Who guarantees security on the national, corporate, and individual levels? There are certainly no laws in place that will once one crosses national borders. Isn't it true that the same workers who have the most reason to work ridiculous hours for low pay will also have the most reason to cheaply sell private information?
I think that all told the economics would generally weigh against the outsourcing of most design tasks, but many upper level managers are too shortsighted to realize it.
I think Polcari's dropped a little in quality after they transitioned from a family-run place to more of a chain. Prince is definitely my current fave for pizza; not sure what you mean about the Pasta from a box (the pasta distributor "Prince" isn't the same as the restaurant "Prince" if that's what you're thinking) but I'm just evaluating pizza here in any case.:) My old fave for pizza was a tiny little hole-in-the-wall joint on the Lynn Marsh Road in the wilderness between Saugus and Revere called "Peter's Pizza". It was run by a little old man (Peter himself) but unfortunately he retired and the business closed.
I was born in Massachusetts and am therefore somewhat biased, but having worked all over the country I always enjoy coming home. I've never lived directly in Boston and thus can't comment on life there, but living far enough out of the city to get some occasional quiet while still being close enough to it to enjoy its entertainment, schools, hospitals, etc. is a pretty good mix.
The Boston area has many strengths. It has one of the best local music scenes with some of the best local bands, some of the best pizza, good nightlife, decent public transportation, active special interest groups in any topic you care to name, and of course a really strong computer community.
As the original poster of one of the referenced articles, I have a couple thoughts on Open Source Software in Massachusetts.
First, the cited announcement of the Open Source Trough is really encouraging news. How can one find fault with the notion of having Apache, Zope, Linux, OpenLDAP, etc. all pre-packaged and distributed around to all the different state departments? Better still, this same package will be being made available to the various cities and towns of Massachusetts, too. The fact that other states may start working with Massachusetts to embrace / expand the Trough is icing on the cake.
Second, the question that immediately comes to mind is why it took so long? If GNU (along with Linux) is viewed as one of the parents of the Open Source Movement (or even just an important element), then the Boston / Cambridge / Rt. 128 area is arguably one of the most important sites worldwide for both the past and the present of the Open Source Movement. While it's true that some of the key Massachusetts regional sites like Saugus.net and Boston.com are (and have been for quite awhile) both users and advocates of open source software, there are many more regional sites that aren't. As for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts itself, it's great that it's sticking out against Microsoft even when so many others caved, and it's great that it's finally pushing open source software to its various departments, but it's amazing to me that they're only just starting to do so now.
If the Open Source Movement is taking so long to convince the governments right in its own backyard to switch, how long is it going to take to influence governments more distant? We can only hope that this Trough will have a positive impact and really serve to introduce open source software to those who otherwise would never have even looked.
At least here North of Boston, the open space is fairly limited. I run one of the local community websites and can say that one of the biggest complaints people have is the mismanagement of open space.
Out in the western part of the state, there is quite a bit of open space. However, there's no easy access between there and Boston via public transportation.
Actually FrameMaker at least also used to run on IBM AIX systems that did have a PowerPC processor. UNIX FrameMaker still won't run on modern Macs, but for other reasons.
Weird; I went to the Adobe site to verify that FrameMaker is still available for HP-UX, and I can't find any reference to such a capability there. However, on various software resellers' sites there are references to current availability of FrameMaker for HP-UX and AIX in addition to Solaris.
Keep in mind though that during the entire period for which Adobe quotes the low sales, they hadn't produced a current version of FrameMaker that would run natively on the current Mac OS, and in fact their final Mac release came out well after OS X and was still OS 9 only (in spite of their earlier promises about OS X versions in future major releases of all flagship apps).
Most Mac users didn't purchase FrameMaker 7.0 because they were waiting for the OS X version that was supposedly in the works. To see real sales figures, Adobe would have to look back earlier in time to the 6.0 - 6.5 range.
Nope, none of the UNIX versions of FrameMaker (as far as I know there are versions for Solaris and HP-UX, I'm sure the SunOS version is no longer supported) will run on the Mac.
Slashdot Mirror
One other little thing (that's sort of an e-book format in a high-tech sort of way) that I'd like to see on every PDA / e-book reader is a Z-Machine (with a Glk virtual machine being an extra bonus) that can be used for er, well, interacting with interactive fiction.
The specifications are easily available (for both Z-Machine and Glk) and so could be pretty readily implemented into any PDA or e-book reader by any competent programmer.
I'd add Newton books to the list of formats that the e-book reader should read. There are still tons of them around out there available for free (many which aren't available in other formats), plus the software to create them is freely available and the file format specifications for them are widely available.
See this project for some further information on working with Newton books.
It's also quite easy to convert plain text to the superior Newton book format; converters to do so are available here and there. There are also utilities out there to pull plain text back out of Newton books; locally Saugus.net uses such a utility to incorporate the text of Newton books into the site's search engine.
There are also still hundreds (actually probably over a thousand) Newton books freely available on the Internet. These days though they're somewhat scattered waiting for the return of Newton's Library (some of the original site can still be found on the Internet Archive) and other similar sites.
There's an interesting article describing the local changes to Bangalore on vsbabu.org.
An example on Slashdot today (see the article here) shows that outsourcing can work against company's wishes, too...
Of course examples of how outsourcing can work against the government are a dime a dozen...
I have four basic thoughts on outsourcing:
I think that all told the economics would generally weigh against the outsourcing of most design tasks, but many upper level managers are too shortsighted to realize it.
...and his misuse of the word "terror" for "terrorism"...
I think Polcari's dropped a little in quality after they transitioned from a family-run place to more of a chain. Prince is definitely my current fave for pizza; not sure what you mean about the Pasta from a box (the pasta distributor "Prince" isn't the same as the restaurant "Prince" if that's what you're thinking) but I'm just evaluating pizza here in any case. :) My old fave for pizza was a tiny little hole-in-the-wall joint on the Lynn Marsh Road in the wilderness between Saugus and Revere called "Peter's Pizza". It was run by a little old man (Peter himself) but unfortunately he retired and the business closed.
I was born in Massachusetts and am therefore somewhat biased, but having worked all over the country I always enjoy coming home. I've never lived directly in Boston and thus can't comment on life there, but living far enough out of the city to get some occasional quiet while still being close enough to it to enjoy its entertainment, schools, hospitals, etc. is a pretty good mix.
The Boston area has many strengths. It has one of the best local music scenes with some of the best local bands, some of the best pizza, good nightlife, decent public transportation, active special interest groups in any topic you care to name, and of course a really strong computer community.
As the original poster of one of the referenced articles, I have a couple thoughts on Open Source Software in Massachusetts.
First, the cited announcement of the Open Source Trough is really encouraging news. How can one find fault with the notion of having Apache, Zope, Linux, OpenLDAP, etc. all pre-packaged and distributed around to all the different state departments? Better still, this same package will be being made available to the various cities and towns of Massachusetts, too. The fact that other states may start working with Massachusetts to embrace / expand the Trough is icing on the cake.
Second, the question that immediately comes to mind is why it took so long? If GNU (along with Linux) is viewed as one of the parents of the Open Source Movement (or even just an important element), then the Boston / Cambridge / Rt. 128 area is arguably one of the most important sites worldwide for both the past and the present of the Open Source Movement. While it's true that some of the key Massachusetts regional sites like Saugus.net and Boston.com are (and have been for quite awhile) both users and advocates of open source software, there are many more regional sites that aren't. As for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts itself, it's great that it's sticking out against Microsoft even when so many others caved, and it's great that it's finally pushing open source software to its various departments, but it's amazing to me that they're only just starting to do so now.
If the Open Source Movement is taking so long to convince the governments right in its own backyard to switch, how long is it going to take to influence governments more distant? We can only hope that this Trough will have a positive impact and really serve to introduce open source software to those who otherwise would never have even looked.
At least here North of Boston, the open space is fairly limited. I run one of the local community websites and can say that one of the biggest complaints people have is the mismanagement of open space.
Out in the western part of the state, there is quite a bit of open space. However, there's no easy access between there and Boston via public transportation.
Actually FrameMaker at least also used to run on IBM AIX systems that did have a PowerPC processor. UNIX FrameMaker still won't run on modern Macs, but for other reasons.
Weird; I went to the Adobe site to verify that FrameMaker is still available for HP-UX, and I can't find any reference to such a capability there. However, on various software resellers' sites there are references to current availability of FrameMaker for HP-UX and AIX in addition to Solaris.
Keep in mind though that during the entire period for which Adobe quotes the low sales, they hadn't produced a current version of FrameMaker that would run natively on the current Mac OS, and in fact their final Mac release came out well after OS X and was still OS 9 only (in spite of their earlier promises about OS X versions in future major releases of all flagship apps). Most Mac users didn't purchase FrameMaker 7.0 because they were waiting for the OS X version that was supposedly in the works. To see real sales figures, Adobe would have to look back earlier in time to the 6.0 - 6.5 range.
Nope, none of the UNIX versions of FrameMaker (as far as I know there are versions for Solaris and HP-UX, I'm sure the SunOS version is no longer supported) will run on the Mac.