If I don't speak out about organizations like scientology then I'm doing nothing but help them. I'm sorry, but I'm just too damned responsible to stand by and watch.
Look man, I'm all for education. Just don't violate copyright law when you do it, and you're ok in my book. (And I'm not saying "do nothing", I'm saying do the right thing.)
It boils down to this: if people can't take these hints, that it has been suggested that
people in the Church have died under suspicious circumstances
people critical of the Church have been pursued and possibly spied on or plotted against by the Church
advancing in the Church can cost you a lot of money
you should proceed at your own risk with extreme caution
...then I can't help them. They must Learn By The Hot Needle.
See how easily that was summed up? No copyright violation necessary, no big megaphone necessary. I just tell all my friends these four points, and they tell all their friends, and it works out for the best for everyone.
I think a lot more people will be disadvantaged when they have to pay-for-play music and movies, or when it is illegal for children to share books, so I fight much harder on that front.
Then they came for me -- and by then there was no one left to speak out for me.
What does that have to do with anything?
The Scientologists are not out to get me. What would they gain by doing so? Nothing. They are not "coming" for anyone, except whoever they can convince to play their game. (Just like loansharks, just like casinos, just like any scam artist.)
The only possible thing they are doing that could impact me is their possible disrespect for fair use and the utilization of lawyers and cash to back it up. That's a problem, but it's a far more widespread problem than just the Scientologists, and requires a more widespread solution than just punishing them in particular.
Ironically, what does irk me is how people take documents that they know are copyrighted by the Church, and redistribute them under the pretense that The Truth Must Be Told. This is classic copyright that you're disrespecting, not some DMCA horseshit. Copyright must be blind to the publisher, or it's ultimately worthless.
And here's the kicker: everything you need to know about the Church and why you shouldn't join isn't even printed in the Church texts. So why the copyright violation in the first place?
I obviously just don't understand the motives and conflicts between the Scientologists and Anti-Scientologists well enough, but someone could make good money on a book about it.
No, they did not. I have the good sense to stay away from them. Easy as that.
You stay away from them too, and you'll be ok. Don't bait them by posting pieces of their copyrighted work, even if you feel you have (or truly have!) fair use rights to do so. Then they won't bother you.
But, you activists are saying, Scientology is an evil organization that murders its followers after taking all their money while giving you bogus and demeaning tests!
Well, well, well. I hate to break it to you, but there are a lot of "evil" organizations out there--way way too many for you to take on. Even if you eliminited Scientology*, one thousand other organizations will be right there to demand your immediate attention. You can't win.
* And when I say "eliminate", I mean that in the sense that you cannot do it. The people who get roped in are exactly the same people who
don't read your expose web pages, so no work done.
The only solution to educating the general populace about dangerous organizations is for parents to educate their kids. Can you imagine how many more traffic deaths there would be if it were up to the government to tell kids to not walk across busy streets without looking both ways? Those kids are spared because we've distributed the solution to the problem across millions of people.
Swell, huh? Now all we have to do is convince parents to teach their kids something or another, which is an uphill battle that we also cannot win.
However, you'll notice a distinct difference between not winning against the parents versus not winning against the 'Church: I don't have the Scientologists breathing down my neck.
So when all is said and done, it really sounds like I'm telling all you Scientologist-fighters that you could do something more productive with your time. And I am. But it's your time, so have fun.
If you are not allowed to distribute the modified movies, I suspect this would be due to the fact that the modified film is a "derivative work", and so normal copyrights apply.
However, what will happen (eventually in the future) is that you'll have the original stream, and CleanFlix (or whoever) will transmit to you commands to modify the file. That is, you provide "An Officer and a Gentleman", and they provide the instructions "strike all content between 1:10 and 1:13."
Then your media player will merge the movie and the instructions and play the "modified" film.
Ok, now in this hypothetical situation, what infraction did Cleanflix commit? They didn't distribute a work or a derivative of the work. And yet you know the media companies and f-ing congress would go after them.
(This is the same issue that Gator (was it?) was having when they put ads over Yahoo!'s ads.)
I want you guys to think about this very carefully, because I feel it's quite important: we're talking about the mandatory presentation of content in the manner of the copyright holder's choosing.
In the case of my Cleanflix hypothetical, I'm talking about making it illegal to distribute a list of scenes from a movie, through the perversion of copyright law.
I hope you're thinking that's insane, but look! It's what we have already in the case of web page framing and advertising! It's been through court that you cannot distribute software that modifies the rendering of a web page from what the source site intended!
Read that again! It's the same issue as not being able to distribute a list of scenes in a movie. In the case of the browser, even though you do not distribute a derivative work of the web page, you are being held liable in the same way if you frame a page, or alter the rendering.
"You can't modify my page before the user sees it! That's copyright infringement! It's like you're making a derivative work!" It sounds like common sense, but it's WRONG. The thing is, it's ok to make a derivative work. People do it all the time. I underline important passages in my college texts, for instance. But I can't resell that as "Footext now with underlines!"
I can, however freaking read it after I've underlined it. And I can tell someone else to turn to page 37 of their copy of the book and underline the second sentence, too!
Now, of course, the ease of copying and merging of the changes into the film does make a difference that should be considered, but the eventual conclusion must be that the user is allowed to modify content with a list of instructions provided by a third party.
This is because, in the US, being able to provide a list of changes to content is protected from the government by the right to free speech, and this should take priority over copyright law.
The wrench in the works is that the movie people can put protection schemes on their software and not license the decrypters to companies who make the editing software, and then the DMCA prohibits the distribution of said software. Wheee!
The DMCA must be destroyed. But that's another story for another time...
The other major point being, why should a person be expected to cripple their professional advancement by being forbidden to use knowledge that they have amassed?
Because if Person A from Company A simply learns the skill at Company A, and then transfers with that skill and corporate insights to Company B, then Company A stands to lose money, right?
It's simple in the US. When you have a question like yours, all you have to do is understand that someone stands to lose money. That's why you have to sign these things.
This is a very American thing. I hate to say that the influence of it, like patents and copyrights and all the other stuff you guys are perpetrating down there, is starting to poison us elsewhere. Thanks a lot. Yeah, you're the home of the free, alright - my ass.
Wish I could help you, pal. Believe me, since I live here, I really wish I could. I do my best and give generously to the EFF. But by lumping me (and most of the/. crowd) in with "you guys", you're fighting on the wrong side.
Also included in the filing is the testimony of several expert witnesses, including Leonard Kleinrock, widely regarded as one of the original founders of the Internet. Kleinrock describes how the defendant's file sharing system works and how they could easily control and prevent the massive copyright infringement from occurring.
Can someone help me locate the testimony in which Kleinrock describes how they could easily control and prevent massive copyright infringement?
I mean, I'm dying of curiosity. Every solution I can think of is either trivial to circumvent, or non-trivial to implement. Nothing falls in the classification of "easy".
Then again, I'm not Dr. Internet with a PhD from MIT.
I second this wholeheartedly. The only drawback to his book is that he deliberately stayed away from calculus. This could be boon or bane, depending on your perspective. I could tell there were a number of places where he could have more clearly described the concepts using calculus.
Overall, I highly recommend the book. All 3 volumes bound into one can often be found in the discount books section at your local major bookstore.
Reuters is carrying a fairly lengthy article [...]
Since when was a two page research paper fairly lengthy? Most English Comp 101 classes require 2+ pages on the first assignment...
You call a 2+ page dissertation fairly lengthy? When I was in school, they were expecting 200+ pages at least!
Re:The word is treason
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 1
Walter Cronkite was rather critical of the US decision to not allow reporters to accompany the troops into Afghanistan during the first stages of the assault.
When asked what the reporters should agree to in return for this priviledge, he stated, "Full censorship."
His argument was that even if the details were classified now, they were recorded by the press, and could eventually be known even if not for decades to come.
However, with no third-party observers, there is simply no accountability whatsoever.
So in times of war, rules change. One possible change here is that if we decide we're always at war, then we could always censor the press, right? People actually feel that way, though. I recall a poll where most of the respondants said they felt the press should have to okay stories with the government before going to press. (!!!)
In summary, get more freedom of the press even if it means temporary censorship in case of a real war, and B) most Americans are fucking morons who are willing to throw away their rights at a drop of the hat.
I tested memory on a win2k box by installing memtest on a floppy and booting from it...it doesn't even need DOS to run.
And I have a linux boot floppy that I sometimes use. Frankly the slackware rescue CD sees more action.
It's all moot anyway since I'm like in 0.01% of the population, and I'll have trouble buying a floppy for my next computer and will start using CDROMs or DVD-ROMs to do the same stuff.
(Just make "cat bzImage >/dev/cd0" work and I'll be happy.):-)
However, there is a far bigger problem to playing games on the IMAX screen: They video card (or the software) has to warp the video so that it'll look correct on the screen. It doesn't look right if the regular image is projected on the screen.
Although digital manipulation is always more fun, I suspect they have a lens that does this distortion for you.:-)
Years ago the version of VC++ I was using had a preprocessor that would ignore directives on the last line of the file. Things like:
#ifndef _FOO_H_
#define _FOO_H_
// some stuff
#endif
would complain about a missing #endif. Very frustrating until I added another blank line to the end of the file, at which point the bug was simply reclassified to "irksome".
What we DO take issue with is individuals and companies stealing our content by linking directly to it and representing it as their own.
So basically if I put an img tag in my page that links to one of your images, and then I write around it, "Here's a picture that I created," you then think I am violating copyright (stealing!)
It's way more vague than that, though. Basically, you're accusing me of stealing something that I never downloaded, that I never see, that I never host, and that I never distribute. I never possess your content, and I never copy it. Very interesting then that you accuse me of stealing it. What kind of definition of "stealing" is this?
I distribute the location of your content, and that's all. I rely on other parties (the viewers) to do what they will with that information.
Maybe they're using Lynx and can't see the image! Am I still "stealing"? No? So my "stealing" of the image is reliant on a third party completely independent of me? Wow. That sucks.
Once this is thoroughly tested on Perl programmers, I'll totally go for it. If I never had to sleep again, I might actually be able to finish some of my projects outside of work.
The enemy are retreating the wrong direction, sir!
on
Unix Isn't Dead
·
· Score: 1
[...]trying to eke sales out of a Unix market that shrank 18.7 percent from $25.3 billion in 2001 to $20.6 billion in 2000.
Now that's the kind of shrinkage I could get used to.
Hard to write fast portable PalmOS stuff
on
Sega doing PalmOS Games
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Pretty much all the graphics routines built into PalmOS are slower than they need to be, and don't do basic things like blitting with transparency and so on.
So people roll their own. The hardware is completely hackable, and it's fun. You can really get a speed improvement by doin' in your way. Unfortunately, many of the Palms use different video hardware, and things break.
Are you using hardware pageflipping for your game on the IIIc? It's gonna crash the Handspring Prism, or worse! Basically you have to be very sure what you're doing is ok on a particular set of hardware.
First, it's good to make syscalls to ID what kind of machine it is. If it's supported by your custom code, go to it. If it's not, you can do a few sanity checks. For instance, if I wanted to write directly to screen memory, I'd use the built in routines to set a pattern of pixels, and then my custom routines to read the pixels. If it reads out the correct values, it's probably good to go.
In short, it translates to being a pain in the ass to do as-fast-as-possible graphics code across multiple Palm platforms. Far better to compromise and get some speed improvements that work on a broader base.
Or, if all else fails, just release free betas to the general public. >;-)
Any key can be cracked--you just have to search through all of them. Phew! Now, for 128 bits, that's a lots of numbers to search. For 2048 bits, it's more than you can possibly imagine.
So the trick is to find a shortcut or a flaw in the algorithm that allows you to get the data without searching all the keys.
In the case of RSA, the shortcut is factoring the product of two primes. It's way way easier to factor a 128-bit product than it is to search through a 128-bit keyspace. So RSA bumped the size of the product up and up and up until it was as impossibly hard to factor it as it was to search a 128-bit keyspace.
Other algorithms have other shortcuts, too. Remember when a weakness was found in the session key choosing algorithm for Netscape? The keyspace was reduced from 128 bits to 24 bits or something like that, and then a search could be made on it.
Anything you can do to avoid trying all the keys is the name of the game. Unless you're some kind of quantum computer freak.;-)
I'm sure of it. Bigtime piracy houses, sure they care. But just consumer piracy out there, I'm sure they don't. Seriously, Joe Blow isn't going to buy the movie anyway, so who cares (from a fiscal standpoint) if he has a pirated copy?
Keep you eye on the prize, they say, and the prize is this: pay for play. These guys won't rest (because they're out for profit) until you are paying for every single viewing of their movies. This kind of legislation facilitates that and the piracy issue is a diversion to hide that fact.
It's a control thing.
I'm just waiting for their next trick when it becomes mandatory to watch their movies.
Has there ever been a piece of software with no security holes?
Yes, you fool! TeX has no security holes at all! Of course, we'll have to rewrite Linux in TeX and all those GNU utilities...maybe they can be done in LaTeX.
I've done Beej's Guide to Network Programming in DocBook (it used to be HTML). It works quite nicely for HTML output with NWalsh's stylesheets.
What was hard was getting it set up, and getting help out of the DocBook people in the know. (They can be pretty unapproachable sometimes.)
What was also hard was getting print output to work nicely. I was running fine for a while until I upgraded openjade, and then blammo--two-sided print output doesn't work anymore. Openjade simply refused to put the two-side directive in the TeX output, so I did it myself.
And what is it about my document that causes openjade to take 3 minutes to pump out TeX output, when it does the HTML in about 5 seconds?
Why is it that when I put two tables on the same page openjade/jadetex doesn't take that into account and keeps printing text off the bottom of the sheet?
The other place I've looked is Xerces/Xalan/Fop at Apache. I like the Formatted Objects idea, and it seems pretty sound. Also, the whole thing was about 827 times easier to set up than the jade stuff. Unfortunately, the code is alpha and doesn't work very well, sometimes crashing during the render.
"How does ORA do it, then?" I hear you asking. They have custom in-house tools for processing DocBook that have been in development for some time. Word on the street is that they might be releasing them soon.
Conclusion: if you want print output, you might have trouble getting what you want with DocBook at this time. At least when I code TeX it does what I say. (I don't recomment plain TeX for documentation. Maybe LaTeX since it's easier to convert to HTML. And pdf(la)tex produces nice PDFs.)
I had an Osborne I years ago, and learned to program assembly on it. The Z80 just kicked ass over the C64's 6510. With 16-bit registers and being binary compatible with the 8080, it was just too cool!
Last time I saw one was at Fry's Electronics...it was selling for $2.50, I think. In bulk, I'll bet they cost less than $0.50. I've also heard they're a favorite for embedded apps like traffic light controllers.
I still have a copy of Leventhal's Z80 Assembly Language Programming on my shelf in the "retired" section, right next to the Turbo C Bible.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Look man, I'm all for education. Just don't violate copyright law when you do it, and you're ok in my book. (And I'm not saying "do nothing", I'm saying do the right thing.)
It boils down to this: if people can't take these hints, that it has been suggested that
See how easily that was summed up? No copyright violation necessary, no big megaphone necessary. I just tell all my friends these four points, and they tell all their friends, and it works out for the best for everyone.
I think a lot more people will be disadvantaged when they have to pay-for-play music and movies, or when it is illegal for children to share books, so I fight much harder on that front.
Scientology is barely a blip.
What does that have to do with anything?
The Scientologists are not out to get me. What would they gain by doing so? Nothing. They are not "coming" for anyone, except whoever they can convince to play their game. (Just like loansharks, just like casinos, just like any scam artist.)
The only possible thing they are doing that could impact me is their possible disrespect for fair use and the utilization of lawyers and cash to back it up. That's a problem, but it's a far more widespread problem than just the Scientologists, and requires a more widespread solution than just punishing them in particular.
Ironically, what does irk me is how people take documents that they know are copyrighted by the Church, and redistribute them under the pretense that The Truth Must Be Told. This is classic copyright that you're disrespecting, not some DMCA horseshit. Copyright must be blind to the publisher, or it's ultimately worthless.
And here's the kicker: everything you need to know about the Church and why you shouldn't join isn't even printed in the Church texts. So why the copyright violation in the first place?
I obviously just don't understand the motives and conflicts between the Scientologists and Anti-Scientologists well enough, but someone could make good money on a book about it.
You stay away from them too, and you'll be ok. Don't bait them by posting pieces of their copyrighted work, even if you feel you have (or truly have!) fair use rights to do so. Then they won't bother you.
But, you activists are saying, Scientology is an evil organization that murders its followers after taking all their money while giving you bogus and demeaning tests!
Well, well, well. I hate to break it to you, but there are a lot of "evil" organizations out there--way way too many for you to take on. Even if you eliminited Scientology*, one thousand other organizations will be right there to demand your immediate attention. You can't win.
The only solution to educating the general populace about dangerous organizations is for parents to educate their kids. Can you imagine how many more traffic deaths there would be if it were up to the government to tell kids to not walk across busy streets without looking both ways? Those kids are spared because we've distributed the solution to the problem across millions of people.
Swell, huh? Now all we have to do is convince parents to teach their kids something or another, which is an uphill battle that we also cannot win.
However, you'll notice a distinct difference between not winning against the parents versus not winning against the 'Church: I don't have the Scientologists breathing down my neck.
So when all is said and done, it really sounds like I'm telling all you Scientologist-fighters that you could do something more productive with your time. And I am. But it's your time, so have fun.
However, what will happen (eventually in the future) is that you'll have the original stream, and CleanFlix (or whoever) will transmit to you commands to modify the file. That is, you provide "An Officer and a Gentleman", and they provide the instructions "strike all content between 1:10 and 1:13."
Then your media player will merge the movie and the instructions and play the "modified" film.
Ok, now in this hypothetical situation, what infraction did Cleanflix commit? They didn't distribute a work or a derivative of the work. And yet you know the media companies and f-ing congress would go after them.
(This is the same issue that Gator (was it?) was having when they put ads over Yahoo!'s ads.)
I want you guys to think about this very carefully, because I feel it's quite important: we're talking about the mandatory presentation of content in the manner of the copyright holder's choosing.
In the case of my Cleanflix hypothetical, I'm talking about making it illegal to distribute a list of scenes from a movie, through the perversion of copyright law.
I hope you're thinking that's insane, but look! It's what we have already in the case of web page framing and advertising! It's been through court that you cannot distribute software that modifies the rendering of a web page from what the source site intended!
Read that again! It's the same issue as not being able to distribute a list of scenes in a movie. In the case of the browser, even though you do not distribute a derivative work of the web page, you are being held liable in the same way if you frame a page, or alter the rendering.
"You can't modify my page before the user sees it! That's copyright infringement! It's like you're making a derivative work!" It sounds like common sense, but it's WRONG. The thing is, it's ok to make a derivative work. People do it all the time. I underline important passages in my college texts, for instance. But I can't resell that as "Footext now with underlines!"
I can, however freaking read it after I've underlined it. And I can tell someone else to turn to page 37 of their copy of the book and underline the second sentence, too!
Now, of course, the ease of copying and merging of the changes into the film does make a difference that should be considered, but the eventual conclusion must be that the user is allowed to modify content with a list of instructions provided by a third party.
This is because, in the US, being able to provide a list of changes to content is protected from the government by the right to free speech, and this should take priority over copyright law.
The wrench in the works is that the movie people can put protection schemes on their software and not license the decrypters to companies who make the editing software, and then the DMCA prohibits the distribution of said software. Wheee!
The DMCA must be destroyed. But that's another story for another time...
It's simple in the US. When you have a question like yours, all you have to do is understand that someone stands to lose money. That's why you have to sign these things.
Wish I could help you, pal. Believe me, since I live here, I really wish I could. I do my best and give generously to the EFF. But by lumping me (and most of the /. crowd) in with "you guys", you're fighting on the wrong side.
But ads get in the way! When I'm playing DOOM III the last thing I need is to be bombarded by bright flashing graphics and loud sounds!
Can someone help me locate the testimony in which Kleinrock describes how they could easily control and prevent massive copyright infringement?
I mean, I'm dying of curiosity. Every solution I can think of is either trivial to circumvent, or non-trivial to implement. Nothing falls in the classification of "easy".
Then again, I'm not Dr. Internet with a PhD from MIT.
Overall, I highly recommend the book. All 3 volumes bound into one can often be found in the discount books section at your local major bookstore.
You call a 2+ page dissertation fairly lengthy? When I was in school, they were expecting 200+ pages at least!
When asked what the reporters should agree to in return for this priviledge, he stated, "Full censorship."
His argument was that even if the details were classified now, they were recorded by the press, and could eventually be known even if not for decades to come.
However, with no third-party observers, there is simply no accountability whatsoever.
So in times of war, rules change. One possible change here is that if we decide we're always at war, then we could always censor the press, right? People actually feel that way, though. I recall a poll where most of the respondants said they felt the press should have to okay stories with the government before going to press. (!!!)
In summary, get more freedom of the press even if it means temporary censorship in case of a real war, and B) most Americans are fucking morons who are willing to throw away their rights at a drop of the hat.
And I have a linux boot floppy that I sometimes use. Frankly the slackware rescue CD sees more action.
It's all moot anyway since I'm like in 0.01% of the population, and I'll have trouble buying a floppy for my next computer and will start using CDROMs or DVD-ROMs to do the same stuff.
(Just make "cat bzImage > /dev/cd0" work and I'll be happy.) :-)
Although digital manipulation is always more fun, I suspect they have a lens that does this distortion for you. :-)
#ifndef _FOO_H_
// some stuff
#define _FOO_H_
#endif
would complain about a missing #endif. Very frustrating until I added another blank line to the end of the file, at which point the bug was simply reclassified to "irksome".
So basically if I put an img tag in my page that links to one of your images, and then I write around it, "Here's a picture that I created," you then think I am violating copyright (stealing!)
It's way more vague than that, though. Basically, you're accusing me of stealing something that I never downloaded, that I never see, that I never host, and that I never distribute. I never possess your content, and I never copy it. Very interesting then that you accuse me of stealing it. What kind of definition of "stealing" is this?
I distribute the location of your content, and that's all. I rely on other parties (the viewers) to do what they will with that information.
Maybe they're using Lynx and can't see the image! Am I still "stealing"? No? So my "stealing" of the image is reliant on a third party completely independent of me? Wow. That sucks.
Once this is thoroughly tested on Perl programmers, I'll totally go for it. If I never had to sleep again, I might actually be able to finish some of my projects outside of work.
Now that's the kind of shrinkage I could get used to.
So people roll their own. The hardware is completely hackable, and it's fun. You can really get a speed improvement by doin' in your way. Unfortunately, many of the Palms use different video hardware, and things break.
Are you using hardware pageflipping for your game on the IIIc? It's gonna crash the Handspring Prism, or worse! Basically you have to be very sure what you're doing is ok on a particular set of hardware.
First, it's good to make syscalls to ID what kind of machine it is. If it's supported by your custom code, go to it. If it's not, you can do a few sanity checks. For instance, if I wanted to write directly to screen memory, I'd use the built in routines to set a pattern of pixels, and then my custom routines to read the pixels. If it reads out the correct values, it's probably good to go.
In short, it translates to being a pain in the ass to do as-fast-as-possible graphics code across multiple Palm platforms. Far better to compromise and get some speed improvements that work on a broader base.
Or, if all else fails, just release free betas to the general public. >;-)
So the trick is to find a shortcut or a flaw in the algorithm that allows you to get the data without searching all the keys.
In the case of RSA, the shortcut is factoring the product of two primes. It's way way easier to factor a 128-bit product than it is to search through a 128-bit keyspace. So RSA bumped the size of the product up and up and up until it was as impossibly hard to factor it as it was to search a 128-bit keyspace.
Other algorithms have other shortcuts, too. Remember when a weakness was found in the session key choosing algorithm for Netscape? The keyspace was reduced from 128 bits to 24 bits or something like that, and then a search could be made on it.
Anything you can do to avoid trying all the keys is the name of the game. Unless you're some kind of quantum computer freak. ;-)
Thank you, O Lord, for creating these wonderful genes which allow macroevolution to take place.
Keep you eye on the prize, they say, and the prize is this: pay for play. These guys won't rest (because they're out for profit) until you are paying for every single viewing of their movies. This kind of legislation facilitates that and the piracy issue is a diversion to hide that fact.
It's a control thing.
I'm just waiting for their next trick when it becomes mandatory to watch their movies.
Yes, you fool! TeX has no security holes at all! Of course, we'll have to rewrite Linux in TeX and all those GNU utilities...maybe they can be done in LaTeX.
At least we know Knuth won't be arrested.
What was hard was getting it set up, and getting help out of the DocBook people in the know. (They can be pretty unapproachable sometimes.)
What was also hard was getting print output to work nicely. I was running fine for a while until I upgraded openjade, and then blammo--two-sided print output doesn't work anymore. Openjade simply refused to put the two-side directive in the TeX output, so I did it myself.
And what is it about my document that causes openjade to take 3 minutes to pump out TeX output, when it does the HTML in about 5 seconds?
Why is it that when I put two tables on the same page openjade/jadetex doesn't take that into account and keeps printing text off the bottom of the sheet?
The other place I've looked is Xerces/Xalan/Fop at Apache. I like the Formatted Objects idea, and it seems pretty sound. Also, the whole thing was about 827 times easier to set up than the jade stuff. Unfortunately, the code is alpha and doesn't work very well, sometimes crashing during the render.
"How does ORA do it, then?" I hear you asking. They have custom in-house tools for processing DocBook that have been in development for some time. Word on the street is that they might be releasing them soon.
Conclusion: if you want print output, you might have trouble getting what you want with DocBook at this time. At least when I code TeX it does what I say. (I don't recomment plain TeX for documentation. Maybe LaTeX since it's easier to convert to HTML. And pdf(la)tex produces nice PDFs.)
These polls are lame anyway...a friend of mine calls them "cheese polls". ZDNet is lame for taking this seriously.
I've met with these guys--it's the nickname of one of their nieces or somesuch. I've forgotten the details.
Last time I saw one was at Fry's Electronics...it was selling for $2.50, I think. In bulk, I'll bet they cost less than $0.50. I've also heard they're a favorite for embedded apps like traffic light controllers.
I still have a copy of Leventhal's Z80 Assembly Language Programming on my shelf in the "retired" section, right next to the Turbo C Bible. :-)