LaTeX, quite simply, is the world standard for scientific documents, and it should stay that way. You simply cannot enter complex mathematics in any word processor.
If your journal is telling you that they won't accept latex, tell them you won't submit your articles anymore, thank you very much.
In physics we have it good due to the existence of the arXiv, where we put our articles first. Therefore journals are already limited by the fact that your article is already published on the web, and they have to accept the consequences of that. e.g. they cannot have too draconian copyright terms. I know in many disciplines the situation with journals is much worse. But remember, journals are totally dependent on us, the scientists, and not the other way around. With the advent of the web and email we can diseminate our work to our colleagues and perform peer review all without the intervention of a journal.
The physics community accepts latex as the standard, and people are (rightfully) suspicious of articles which appear on the arxiv in only.doc or.pdf format.
So, I suggest you keep using latex, investigate adding a section to the arxiv for your specialty, and tell your journal that they will accept latex or be replaced.
It's not a political troll. For decades we have imported the best talent in the world, and the fact that 50% of the faculty at most US universities are foreign-born enriches the US. Who cares where they come from, we need brains.
Yes we need to fix our school systems, but closing our borders to brains is stupid when those foreign-born brains could be training our kids in universities, and improving our education system.
I generally don't watch movies at home. When I do it's on VHS. Occasionally I go to the theater (but rarely in the summer -- too much drivel). On one computer I have a tv tuner (pchdtv) with MythTV. So I watch some TV.
For a short time this year I signed up for netflix and watched things on my laptop (because I was laid up due to surgery). I put a few films in, played them for 5 minutes then they quit due to this region coding bullshit. Then my girlfriend got to watch me fiddle with the fucking computer for an hour, all the while looking like a moron because I can't play a DVD. This only cemented my previous decision to forgo DVD's altogether. I did install the RPC-1 patch though. More recently I bought a DVD burner. So I can burn DVD's (only for data storage so far), but the RPC patch for this burner didn't work at all, so I won't be playing DVD's on that computer anytime soon...
I've been using free-software only for about 10 years now...the freedom and power that gives me is far more valuable than an hour and a half of the latest car crash scenes.
As time goes on more and more film makers will release things on unencrypted DVD's, using bittorrent, etc. I already go out of my way to buy indie music. I will go out of my way to pay for their films too. The real power of the consumer is in his use of his wallet.
I do have a DVD-player in my laptop (because it came with one), and promptly downloaded the RPC patch to fix it. I do own a couple DVD's, but they were all gifts.
Then I will never, ever use it. I will never purchase hardware which makes me jump through hoops to do legal things.
And to the content industry, I will never buy or rent, or watch your content on these terms. You will be replaced by artists who do not insist on such things.
It's a library. It's an information resource for citizens. Free access to information is a cornerstone of democracy. People's behavior changes when they know they're being tracked, whether they're doing something nefarious or not. The implications for law-abiding citizens and democracy itself are dire.
And what ever happened to that quaint phrase "presumed innocent until proven guilty". While the law on that has changed little, public attitude has turned 180 degrees. For hundreds of years municipalities and corporations have followed the principles and spirit of our founding fathers, even though they were not necessarily bound by them.
I do not want to live in any place where I'm presumed a criminal until I demonstrate otherwise. That is not a free state. That is a police state.
Tuxmobil has a list of resellers that will preinstall linux. However be careful, several of those vendors sell linux laptops by buying OEM ones with windows on it, and then removing windows. (e.g. you're still paying M$ for the privelage of having a linux laptop)
I also have a page of linux-preinstalled and no-OS laptop vendors. By my count there are at least 20 vendors that sell linux and no-os laptops, so nobody should have an excuse anymore for whining about not being able to find linux laptops.
P.S. All you currently looking for a laptop...please email me if anything on my list needs to be updated.
Corporations should not attempt "social engineering". Don't tell me where to sit, how long to stay, that I have to buy a drink before reserving a table, or that I have to jump through your hoops to access your internet. Don't nickel and dime your customers either. Such practices only alienate customers. Small friendly retail joints generally cannot afford to alienate customers.
What is left is simple economics. Does the store owner really care that it's crowded? No! That's great business! If he can't pay the bills, raise the prices on drinks. The free internet is a loss-leader to sell drinks. Offering internet to paying customers, with a small coffee stand on the side is a different business model (and very likely...less popular).
Basically, any business which has any kind of "list of rules" is missing the point. It's a business. They sell things. And selling things is all that the business owner really has control over.
-- Bob (who spends to much time in the local coffee shop)
This is compounded by the second definition of 'free' in english. (e.g. free-as-in-beer) Your average person hears 'free' in so many advertisements and associates it with zero monetary cost, and never thinks about the other definition, especially in modern industrialized democracies. (Oppressed peoples probably think of freedom, but there aren't a heck of a lot of those producing or using software) PHB's see 'free' as you-get-what-you-pay-for.
So, for both average users and businesses, the term 'open source' is superior. One gets sick of explaining the difference between 'free' and 'libre'. The distinction is just an extra hurdle for OSS/FS to surmount.
The other killer app besides 3D games waiting to happen in the video sector is TV. The pcHDTV guys have demonstrated significant demand for their linux-friendly part. Combined with MythTV many people are building TiVo-like devices which do not operate as desktop machines. Their primary purpose is recording and displaying video at the resolutions required by TV, DVD, and HDTV.
A path that could be very fruitful is to design a video card to be used in a TiVo-like device. In particular, in addition to the good suggestions involving the Render and Damage extensions, a 2D-only card should do some hardware accelerating of IDCT and motion compensation, so that i.e. DVD's and MPEG-4 files can be played with a very minimal CPU. Work with systems integrators that are willing to put MythTV on a silent fanless system with a pcHDTV card and your video card/chip. This could be a good way to go for smaller but demonstrated market, where the part is easier to design than a 3D-nvidia-ati competing beast.
Actually doing the video and TV on the same part is a good idea, if it can be done, since these machines are usually space and PCI-slot constrained.
I do not think, out of the gate on a small budget is reasonable or feasable to get a 3D part. It would be better to start small, and plan some features for the second generation. For funding, take pre-orders. Oh and hype the shit out of it, on slashdot.
Secondly, how feasable is it to put a cheap off-the-shelf CPU on the part to handle the 3D workload. Certainly that's faster and cheaper than a FPGA. CPU's with MMX or Altivec instructions can be had in the 1-2 GHz range for < $50.
This ruling is landmark for another reason. On page 16 (yes, I RTFA) of the ruling, the court makes reference to wikipedia!
We also reject the notion that the Department of Homeland Security's threat advisory level somehow justifies these searches. Although the threat level was "elevated" at the time of the protest, "[t]o date, the threat level has stood at yellow (elevated) for the majority of its time in existence. It has only been raised to orange (high) six times." Wikipedia, Homeland Security Advisory System, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Homelan d_Security_Advisory_System (last referenced Aug. 16, 2004). Given that we have been on "yellow alert" for over two and a half years now, we cannot consider this a particularly exceptional condition that warrants curtailment of constitutional rights. We cannot simply suspend or restrict civil liberties until the War on Terror is over, because the War on Terror is unlikely ever to be truly over. September 11, 2001, already a day of immeasurable tragedy, cannot be the day liberty perished in this country. Furthermore, a system that gave the federal government the power to determine the range of constitutionally permissible searches simply by raising or lowering the nation's threat advisory system would allow the restrictions of the Fourth Ammendment to be circumvented too easily. Consequently, the "elevated" alert status does not aid the City's case.
You can solve ALL crime problems by the process of elimination and assuming everyone is guilty. That system is called a police state. It is a balance between power of the government and power of the people. If the government (or for that matter a large enough private company) has all this info, the people have no power to oppose it, because one crime they can prevent is dissent. No organization (government or private) will always have your best interests at heart (and in fact none of them do). Collecting all this info combined with the Patriot Act or Patriot II enables the government to spy on political opponents.
Freedom of speech and communication (especially including anonymous communication) is a critical tool to oppose large corporations and governments. I am not willing to give it up to stop three or four perverts. There are other ways to find the perverts without making the rest of us live in a police state.
If you have to provide a valid email address, it provides at least a minimum amount of accountability in case the service is abused.
This sucks because it's a guilty-until-proven-innocent measure. Providing your email address can only be used to harm you. (by false accusation) Furthermore this idea of finding the bad guy by process of elimination is counter to the principles of a free society, and stinks of a police state.
I am extemely encouraged that a linux-only hardware company has sold out of their product and is having difficulty meeting demand. While I'm worried that I won't be able to get my hands on one, this bodes very well for future hardware that is linux-aware and/or linux-only.
Your reply clearly demonstrates that you did not read the article.
Point is, checks and balances is failing due to solidification of seats in congress due to jerrymandering, and other things. Also I do not think this is a leftist document. It is only left if you believe that "opposition to the current republican administration is leftist". But change all the words "conservative" to "liberal" and "republican" to "democrat" and this article still applies and is still valid, could be applied to FDR's administration, but you'd call it "right-ist". (hmmm why is leftist a word but not rightist?)
The cracking down on student visas, travel, and the outright lack of rights of foreigners on US soil has already led to a 32% decline in applicants to graduate school. In my field (physics) I have heard reluctance to hold conferences on US soil because it is so difficult for participants to get here.
I predict that if we persist in our police state, and in treating foreigners as criminals with no dignity, the US will be an academic backwater in no time.
Did I just read that correctly? In the United States of America you must have a permit to protest?
yes.
Worse, at the conventions they are quarantining people with differing opinions in a "Free Speech Zone" that is away from the convention, away from cameras and the eyes of delegates.
Make no mastake, America is not the bastion of freedom and democracy that we claim to be. And by claiming to be such, George W. Bush is a rather large hypocrite.
As I write, hundreds of people from the war resistors league march are being arrested, without a dispersal order or any charges.
It has become common practice for police to arrest any group they basically don't like for political reasons. They never have a real charge and are released 24 hours later. As a consequence, they are off the street, unable to distribute their political message. This is a first ammendment violation.
We need a series of lawsuits against police departments for this practice, on first ammendment grounds, and wrongful arrest. There need to be serious repercussions for police departments that decide to remove people for political reasons.
Of course, proving a political motivation is very difficult. In practice there is almost always something they can charge you with. (like not having a protest permit, disorderly conduct, etc) This is a problem of too many laws, and selective enforcement. The police are effectively able to suppress political views using the legal system. The selective enforcement issue must be solved at a higher level by reducing and clarifying contradictory laws.
All you protestors, carry a videocamera. Make sure to videotape anyone who is arrested or looks like they're going to be, and offer up the footage as evidence.
So SCO sues on trumped-up charges for which it has no evidince (linux-related stuff). During the discovery it digs deep into IBM's documents and finds crimes different from what it initially alleged.
In most circles this is called self-incrimination. It is the duty of SCO to prove that IBM was involved in wrongdoing, not the other way around. If you dig deep enough into any companies documents I'm sure you will find evidince of many minor crimes. (come on kids, copyright infringement is easy to do and easy to overlook -- welcome to zero marginal cost of copying)
Shouldn't the whole damn thing be thrown out, on the basis that SCO never had a basis in the first place, and IBM incriminated themselves?
Close but wrong. Simply not watching TV is a poor choice these days.
There is a significant demand in the market for parents to know which programs have sexually explicit content, violent content, cuss words, etc. This demand should be creating products and ratings from industry so that parents can enforce what their kids watch. Parents will pay more for a TV that can filter violence.
The reason they don't do this currently is that the government is already doing it for them. This is not an appropriate thing for the government to be doing. The free market can take care of this with fewer drawbacks than letting the government do it.
Slashdot Mirror
If your journal is telling you that they won't accept latex, tell them you won't submit your articles anymore, thank you very much.
In physics we have it good due to the existence of the arXiv, where we put our articles first. Therefore journals are already limited by the fact that your article is already published on the web, and they have to accept the consequences of that. e.g. they cannot have too draconian copyright terms. I know in many disciplines the situation with journals is much worse. But remember, journals are totally dependent on us, the scientists, and not the other way around. With the advent of the web and email we can diseminate our work to our colleagues and perform peer review all without the intervention of a journal.
The physics community accepts latex as the standard, and people are (rightfully) suspicious of articles which appear on the arxiv in only .doc or .pdf format.
So, I suggest you keep using latex, investigate adding a section to the arxiv for your specialty, and tell your journal that they will accept latex or be replaced.
-- Bob
Yes we need to fix our school systems, but closing our borders to brains is stupid when those foreign-born brains could be training our kids in universities, and improving our education system.
Someone else will come along and take advantage of the rest of the market that is being intentionally ignored by the big players.
-- Bob
For a short time this year I signed up for netflix and watched things on my laptop (because I was laid up due to surgery). I put a few films in, played them for 5 minutes then they quit due to this region coding bullshit. Then my girlfriend got to watch me fiddle with the fucking computer for an hour, all the while looking like a moron because I can't play a DVD. This only cemented my previous decision to forgo DVD's altogether. I did install the RPC-1 patch though. More recently I bought a DVD burner. So I can burn DVD's (only for data storage so far), but the RPC patch for this burner didn't work at all, so I won't be playing DVD's on that computer anytime soon...
I've been using free-software only for about 10 years now...the freedom and power that gives me is far more valuable than an hour and a half of the latest car crash scenes.
As time goes on more and more film makers will release things on unencrypted DVD's, using bittorrent, etc. I already go out of my way to buy indie music. I will go out of my way to pay for their films too. The real power of the consumer is in his use of his wallet.
-- Bob
I do have a DVD-player in my laptop (because it came with one), and promptly downloaded the RPC patch to fix it. I do own a couple DVD's, but they were all gifts.
And to the content industry, I will never buy or rent, or watch your content on these terms. You will be replaced by artists who do not insist on such things.
-- Bob
It's a library. It's an information resource for citizens. Free access to information is a cornerstone of democracy. People's behavior changes when they know they're being tracked, whether they're doing something nefarious or not. The implications for law-abiding citizens and democracy itself are dire.
And what ever happened to that quaint phrase "presumed innocent until proven guilty". While the law on that has changed little, public attitude has turned 180 degrees. For hundreds of years municipalities and corporations have followed the principles and spirit of our founding fathers, even though they were not necessarily bound by them.
I do not want to live in any place where I'm presumed a criminal until I demonstrate otherwise. That is not a free state. That is a police state.
Yes, you can play on linux!
Excuse me, I have to go wipe the drool.
Yes, I've played all the way through both of the missions (using wine). The linux client has a couple crasher bugs that need fixing.
I also have a page of linux-preinstalled and no-OS laptop vendors. By my count there are at least 20 vendors that sell linux and no-os laptops, so nobody should have an excuse anymore for whining about not being able to find linux laptops.
P.S. All you currently looking for a laptop...please email me if anything on my list needs to be updated.
What is left is simple economics. Does the store owner really care that it's crowded? No! That's great business! If he can't pay the bills, raise the prices on drinks. The free internet is a loss-leader to sell drinks. Offering internet to paying customers, with a small coffee stand on the side is a different business model (and very likely...less popular).
Basically, any business which has any kind of "list of rules" is missing the point. It's a business. They sell things. And selling things is all that the business owner really has control over.
-- Bob (who spends to much time in the local coffee shop)
So, for both average users and businesses, the term 'open source' is superior. One gets sick of explaining the difference between 'free' and 'libre'. The distinction is just an extra hurdle for OSS/FS to surmount.
-- Bob
This is no better/worse than the Nielsen ratings, which is also a statistical tracking system...
divide by 2.
A path that could be very fruitful is to design a video card to be used in a TiVo-like device. In particular, in addition to the good suggestions involving the Render and Damage extensions, a 2D-only card should do some hardware accelerating of IDCT and motion compensation, so that i.e. DVD's and MPEG-4 files can be played with a very minimal CPU. Work with systems integrators that are willing to put MythTV on a silent fanless system with a pcHDTV card and your video card/chip. This could be a good way to go for smaller but demonstrated market, where the part is easier to design than a 3D-nvidia-ati competing beast. Actually doing the video and TV on the same part is a good idea, if it can be done, since these machines are usually space and PCI-slot constrained.
I do not think, out of the gate on a small budget is reasonable or feasable to get a 3D part. It would be better to start small, and plan some features for the second generation. For funding, take pre-orders. Oh and hype the shit out of it, on slashdot.
Secondly, how feasable is it to put a cheap off-the-shelf CPU on the part to handle the 3D workload. Certainly that's faster and cheaper than a FPGA. CPU's with MMX or Altivec instructions can be had in the 1-2 GHz range for < $50.
-- Bob
Way to go wikipedia!
-- Bob
Freedom of speech and communication (especially including anonymous communication) is a critical tool to oppose large corporations and governments. I am not willing to give it up to stop three or four perverts. There are other ways to find the perverts without making the rest of us live in a police state.
-- Bob
-- Bob
-- Bob
Point is, checks and balances is failing due to solidification of seats in congress due to jerrymandering, and other things. Also I do not think this is a leftist document. It is only left if you believe that "opposition to the current republican administration is leftist". But change all the words "conservative" to "liberal" and "republican" to "democrat" and this article still applies and is still valid, could be applied to FDR's administration, but you'd call it "right-ist". (hmmm why is leftist a word but not rightist?)
-- Bob
I predict that if we persist in our police state, and in treating foreigners as criminals with no dignity, the US will be an academic backwater in no time.
-- Bob
Worse, at the conventions they are quarantining people with differing opinions in a "Free Speech Zone" that is away from the convention, away from cameras and the eyes of delegates.
Make no mastake, America is not the bastion of freedom and democracy that we claim to be. And by claiming to be such, George W. Bush is a rather large hypocrite.
-- Bob
We need a series of lawsuits against police departments for this practice, on first ammendment grounds, and wrongful arrest. There need to be serious repercussions for police departments that decide to remove people for political reasons.
Of course, proving a political motivation is very difficult. In practice there is almost always something they can charge you with. (like not having a protest permit, disorderly conduct, etc) This is a problem of too many laws, and selective enforcement. The police are effectively able to suppress political views using the legal system. The selective enforcement issue must be solved at a higher level by reducing and clarifying contradictory laws.
All you protestors, carry a videocamera. Make sure to videotape anyone who is arrested or looks like they're going to be, and offer up the footage as evidence.
This is how democracy dies folks...
-- Bob
-- Bob
In most circles this is called self-incrimination. It is the duty of SCO to prove that IBM was involved in wrongdoing, not the other way around. If you dig deep enough into any companies documents I'm sure you will find evidince of many minor crimes. (come on kids, copyright infringement is easy to do and easy to overlook -- welcome to zero marginal cost of copying)
Shouldn't the whole damn thing be thrown out, on the basis that SCO never had a basis in the first place, and IBM incriminated themselves?
-- Bob
There is a significant demand in the market for parents to know which programs have sexually explicit content, violent content, cuss words, etc. This demand should be creating products and ratings from industry so that parents can enforce what their kids watch. Parents will pay more for a TV that can filter violence.
The reason they don't do this currently is that the government is already doing it for them. This is not an appropriate thing for the government to be doing. The free market can take care of this with fewer drawbacks than letting the government do it.
-- Bob