Actually, the most popular screen reader on the market, JAWS by Freedom Scientific, only works consistantly with IE and nothing else. That is because Freedom Scientific has a very cozy relationship with MS and codes their screen reader to work specifically with IE. If the OpenDocument people want the same level of screen reader support that MS gets from Freedom Scientific and GWMicro, they are going to have to develop the same tight relationship with these mainstream assistive technology companies that MS now enjoys.
When people talk about "accessibility problems", that is really just a code phrase for the lack of a good screen reader for blind users. If you don't know what a screen reader is, just look at JAWS, the most popular screen reader in Windows. I believe you can even download an evaluation Windows version from there to play with.
There are dozens of people working on screen readers for various linux GUIs. Just do a google search for "linux screen reader". But none of them are as full-featured as JAWS, and certainly none of them are taught to blind students in school so it is unlikely that they are much use to the general blind community at the moment.
All it would take is for some reputable Windows screen reader maker, like Freedom Scientific or GWMicro to come out with a version for KDE or something. Certainly those folks have the skills and knowledge of the blind community to do it right and be quickly adopted by blind users. Why doesn't some Linux group cozy up to one of those two companies, get the product developed, and put this issue behind them?
The person using this "freedom toaster" still has to provide their own blank CD, right? Why would they spend $1.00 on a blank CD and then burn it on the freedom toaster when, in most 3rd world countries, the person selling you the blank CD for $1.00 will gladly sell you a CD with MS Windows and MS Office on it for $2.00?
In my opinion, the quality of the internet and with WWW was much better before the proliferation of online ads. Sure, the number of sites would be significantly less without online ads, but the quality would be far better than the majority of junk that currently fills the internet.
Quality content is produced by websites that either 1) have some sort of subscription model 2) have a source of funding, whether public or private, that does not rely on online revenue to fund the content or 3) has an author that is so motivated to publish and share their work that profit is not a consideration.
Online ads may drive much current internet content, but the vast majority of it is content that the internet would be better without.
Many city services can benefit from city-wide wireless coverage. Police and fire, public works, the parks department, street repair crews, social workers. All of them do work all over the city that could be made more efficient with wireless network access.
So why doesn't the city put out an open bid to install and operate city-wide wireless coverage for all of its agencies, then allow the wireless contractor to sell access to the system to the general public at a low monthly rate.
Increased efficiencies in city operations alone would justify the cost of operating city-wide wireless, then the wireless operator could turn around and offer access to the same system for city residents for a regulated fee far less than commercial internet access currently costs.
Such a wireless system would be privately operated for profit, but would be reasonably cheap for citizens to use because the city would be the biggest customer and would negotiate with the provider the rate that whould be charged to the general public.
Are any cities out there taking this approach? I imagine many city agencies are installing ad-hoc wireless networks across town already. Why not coordinate that effort, making it cheaper to install and operate the network city-wide, and then open it up to the public for a reasonable fee while they are at it?
http://www.aiptek.com/ has a few camcorders that can be had for under $100, and record straight to SD memory to boot so they are more reliable than tape. Sure, the video quality is low, but most educational uses of video are to review the video for student learning or presentation and then throw the video away. You don't need broadcast quality for most teaching scenarios.
At $100, you can afford to have more cameras in more hands and just throw them away when the stop working in a year or so.
I don't have any hard number in front of me, but the gap between the claimed 16% Mac install base and your observed Mac share of web traffic could be partly explained by the fact that a huge portion of the Mac install base is in school settings where, even though they likely do have an internet connection, the use of the machines for web surfing is minimal and in many cases zero.
I work in computer support for a school system I know the vast majority of our computer usage is for running stand-alone educational software or for hitting our intranet web site. Very little computer time in schools -- which is a major portion of the Mac install base -- is spent surfing the internet.
By default [Windows] will keep itself updated, checking for updates and installing them, or prompting you to install them.
Many Linux distros can be configured to do the same thing and shipped pre-installed by the manufacturer, just like Windows is.
To reinstall [Windows] it's put the restore CD in the drive and boot.
You mean the CD that most people throw out with the packaging once they turn their computer on the first time? With a Linux distro, you just download and burn a free replacement CD from the web when you need it. Not any more difficult than downloading and burning MP3s from the net that people are doing all the time now.
Now I don't have a choice but to use the contracted collector
But municiple networks don't prohibit you from using other ISPs if you want to.
The original post is right. Municiple networks aren't anti-competative. Municiples networks still have to compete for customers and recover their costs just like any other business. In fact, most proposed municiple networks are run by private companies, not by government agencies. The big telecos are free to bid on these municiple contracts just like any other business can. The only thing municiple networks do differently is pool customers into a large group that allows them to negotiate with a provider for better prices.
Telecom companies want to be like the pharmaceutical companies and prohibit the pooling of buyers to negotiate for better prices for the consumer. Giant telecom companies are not working on behalf of customers, they are working on behalf of telecom shareholders and executives. The only way to build a true consumer-driven marketplace is for consumers pool their telecom buying at the local level. That is what municiple networks do.
That's cool. I notice NeoOffice is just barely out of beta (or still in beta, depending on where you read).
Also, the website says: "while NeoOffice/J is quite stable and feature-complete, it has not entirely adopted the Mac look-and-feel. There are still some bits of the old Windows/Unix interface in there" With the thousands of beginner-to-novice Macintosh users in our district, there is a fear that anything that does not completely look, sound, and act like a Mac is just going to introduce confusion.
Also, people trying to introduce OpenOffice to schools need to stop comparing it to "$300" MS Office. Most schools get Office for $50 per seat, sometimes far less.
So it is not quite ready to "sell" to my administrators this week. But it is promising work. Maybe in a year or so?
Working in the IT department at a public school district, I'd love to run OpenOffice in our district. But being a typical school setting, we are about 50% Mac and 50% Windows. And OpenOffice in Mac is not much fun for casual users -- which describes about 99% of the computer users in our district. OpenOffice does not run native in Mac but relies on an X-Windows interface. If you're going to run software on a Mac that makes a Mac look like a different computer, you lose the whole point of using Macs in the first place. Getting everone used to the unusual OO interface in Mac is a training and support nigthmare.
Besides, the education license for MS Office is about $40 per seat. It's hard to argue that saving $40 per computer every few years is worth the headache that supporting OO will cause you.
If you don't want to have and raise children there is no point in getting married.
So why is nobody suggesting that we ban marriage between people who refuse to raise children and permit marriage to any couple, straight or gay, who agrees to raise children through reproduction, assisted reproduction, adoption, raising nephews and nieces, foster families, or any other way that children are born and raised in our society?
Banning gay marriage is not about raising kids. Straights who refuse to raise kids get married all the time. It is about denying legal recognition to couples, even couples willing and able to raise children, simply because they are gay
If it is a learned behavior or a mutation then why as a species would you encourage this behavior?
Because having a few adults around who don't have kids of their own helps the family to survive. These adults can work and contribute to the welfare of the extended family without the added burden of children of their own. Families with a few productive adults around who don't have their own kids have a greater chance of survival than families where all the adults have children.
Simply put, gays may not pass on their own (gay) genes directly, but their gay genes get passed on through their nephews and nieces, who have a greater chance of survival than other children whose straight uncles are too busy with their own kids to help out.
Having a few gays in a population makes that population stronger in evolutionary terms, not weaker.
Would that be the same consumer market that passed anti-gay marriage laws in 11 different states last November?
11 states is nothing. In 1967, 16 states still banned interracial marriage when the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated those bans. Remember, in the U.S., civil rights are not enforced by the "consumer market" or even by popular vote. Civil rights are enforced by an independent judiciary. And there is a very good reason why we do things that way.
Because thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars are spend maintaining internal web pages. You can reduce those costs significantly by coding them in CSS and forcing people to use CSS-compliant browsers internally. Sure, you may still need to tweek external web pages to support IE for your customers, but loads of money can be saved by ditching IE and following CSS standards for intranet web pages.
Yes, It already ships with most new PCs. In OS X, it is under System Preferences / Universal Access / Keyboard. In WinXP it's under Control Panel / Accessibility Options / Keyboard / FilterKeys.
I don't object to him accumulating wealth or care that much what he does with his money. But I object to characterizing his wealth as "self-made". The wealth he has accumulated has been made by all of us, not by him alone.
Is a person who makes billions of dollars in a society that passes tax breaks off to the wealthy while severely under-funding education and providing inadequate healthcare to the middle class truly "self-made"? Didn't his billions in wealth come about partly by denying basic social needs to low- and middle-class Americans? Is this how Americans want the wealth spent -- wealth that has been created by the hard work of all of us?
blind people might soon be viewed as pioneers in sensory modes in which we all strive for competence, to compete in accessing the mediasphere.
You are right, but it is not a new phenomina. Disabilities have always provided motivation for technology inovation, especially regarding information technology. When Bell invented the first telephone, he was looking for devices that would help deaf people. The first typewriters were promoted as writing aids for people who couldn't write. And deaf people were the first group to develop and adopt text messaging over telephones, and were an early market that helped early commercial text message systems become economically viable. Those are just a few examples.
You are right that we all are "information disabled" in some way and all information technology inovations are basically attempts to reduce that disability. So it is natural that people with disabilities would often be pioneers in those efforts.
If they had to drive tens of thousands of miles to get these pictures, why use a 14-MPG SUV? They could get the same results and cause much less polution in a smaller car -- not to mention save thousands of dollars in fuel costs.
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Actually, the most popular screen reader on the market, JAWS by Freedom Scientific, only works consistantly with IE and nothing else. That is because Freedom Scientific has a very cozy relationship with MS and codes their screen reader to work specifically with IE. If the OpenDocument people want the same level of screen reader support that MS gets from Freedom Scientific and GWMicro, they are going to have to develop the same tight relationship with these mainstream assistive technology companies that MS now enjoys.
There are dozens of people working on screen readers for various linux GUIs. Just do a google search for "linux screen reader". But none of them are as full-featured as JAWS, and certainly none of them are taught to blind students in school so it is unlikely that they are much use to the general blind community at the moment.
All it would take is for some reputable Windows screen reader maker, like Freedom Scientific or GWMicro to come out with a version for KDE or something. Certainly those folks have the skills and knowledge of the blind community to do it right and be quickly adopted by blind users. Why doesn't some Linux group cozy up to one of those two companies, get the product developed, and put this issue behind them?
> Memebership fee maybe? In the old days we called library membership fees "taxes", but I guess that term is no longer in vogue.
The person using this "freedom toaster" still has to provide their own blank CD, right? Why would they spend $1.00 on a blank CD and then burn it on the freedom toaster when, in most 3rd world countries, the person selling you the blank CD for $1.00 will gladly sell you a CD with MS Windows and MS Office on it for $2.00?
The access that is denied is not to the pirated goods, but to the legitimate profits that the author is entitled to but denied because of piracy.
Quality content is produced by websites that either 1) have some sort of subscription model 2) have a source of funding, whether public or private, that does not rely on online revenue to fund the content or 3) has an author that is so motivated to publish and share their work that profit is not a consideration.
Online ads may drive much current internet content, but the vast majority of it is content that the internet would be better without.
So why doesn't the city put out an open bid to install and operate city-wide wireless coverage for all of its agencies, then allow the wireless contractor to sell access to the system to the general public at a low monthly rate.
Increased efficiencies in city operations alone would justify the cost of operating city-wide wireless, then the wireless operator could turn around and offer access to the same system for city residents for a regulated fee far less than commercial internet access currently costs.
Such a wireless system would be privately operated for profit, but would be reasonably cheap for citizens to use because the city would be the biggest customer and would negotiate with the provider the rate that whould be charged to the general public.
Are any cities out there taking this approach? I imagine many city agencies are installing ad-hoc wireless networks across town already. Why not coordinate that effort, making it cheaper to install and operate the network city-wide, and then open it up to the public for a reasonable fee while they are at it?
At $100, you can afford to have more cameras in more hands and just throw them away when the stop working in a year or so.
I work in computer support for a school system I know the vast majority of our computer usage is for running stand-alone educational software or for hitting our intranet web site. Very little computer time in schools -- which is a major portion of the Mac install base -- is spent surfing the internet.
Many Linux distros can be configured to do the same thing and shipped pre-installed by the manufacturer, just like Windows is.
To reinstall [Windows] it's put the restore CD in the drive and boot. You mean the CD that most people throw out with the packaging once they turn their computer on the first time? With a Linux distro, you just download and burn a free replacement CD from the web when you need it. Not any more difficult than downloading and burning MP3s from the net that people are doing all the time now.
Now I don't have a choice but to use the contracted collector But municiple networks don't prohibit you from using other ISPs if you want to. The original post is right. Municiple networks aren't anti-competative. Municiples networks still have to compete for customers and recover their costs just like any other business. In fact, most proposed municiple networks are run by private companies, not by government agencies. The big telecos are free to bid on these municiple contracts just like any other business can. The only thing municiple networks do differently is pool customers into a large group that allows them to negotiate with a provider for better prices. Telecom companies want to be like the pharmaceutical companies and prohibit the pooling of buyers to negotiate for better prices for the consumer. Giant telecom companies are not working on behalf of customers, they are working on behalf of telecom shareholders and executives. The only way to build a true consumer-driven marketplace is for consumers pool their telecom buying at the local level. That is what municiple networks do.
Not to mention that, in the 3rd world, Excel is essentially free. You can get a copy on a downtown street corner for a couple bucks.
How will allowing gay marriage require you to change your life?
Also, the website says: "while NeoOffice/J is quite stable and feature-complete, it has not entirely adopted the Mac look-and-feel. There are still some bits of the old Windows/Unix interface in there" With the thousands of beginner-to-novice Macintosh users in our district, there is a fear that anything that does not completely look, sound, and act like a Mac is just going to introduce confusion.
Also, people trying to introduce OpenOffice to schools need to stop comparing it to "$300" MS Office. Most schools get Office for $50 per seat, sometimes far less.
So it is not quite ready to "sell" to my administrators this week. But it is promising work. Maybe in a year or so?
Which may work fine for you and many other schools. But is a non-starter for most school districts.
Besides, the education license for MS Office is about $40 per seat. It's hard to argue that saving $40 per computer every few years is worth the headache that supporting OO will cause you.
So why is nobody suggesting that we ban marriage between people who refuse to raise children and permit marriage to any couple, straight or gay, who agrees to raise children through reproduction, assisted reproduction, adoption, raising nephews and nieces, foster families, or any other way that children are born and raised in our society?
Banning gay marriage is not about raising kids. Straights who refuse to raise kids get married all the time. It is about denying legal recognition to couples, even couples willing and able to raise children, simply because they are gay
Because having a few adults around who don't have kids of their own helps the family to survive. These adults can work and contribute to the welfare of the extended family without the added burden of children of their own. Families with a few productive adults around who don't have their own kids have a greater chance of survival than families where all the adults have children.
Simply put, gays may not pass on their own (gay) genes directly, but their gay genes get passed on through their nephews and nieces, who have a greater chance of survival than other children whose straight uncles are too busy with their own kids to help out.
Having a few gays in a population makes that population stronger in evolutionary terms, not weaker.
11 states is nothing. In 1967, 16 states still banned interracial marriage when the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated those bans. Remember, in the U.S., civil rights are not enforced by the "consumer market" or even by popular vote. Civil rights are enforced by an independent judiciary. And there is a very good reason why we do things that way.
Because thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars are spend maintaining internal web pages. You can reduce those costs significantly by coding them in CSS and forcing people to use CSS-compliant browsers internally. Sure, you may still need to tweek external web pages to support IE for your customers, but loads of money can be saved by ditching IE and following CSS standards for intranet web pages.
Yes, It already ships with most new PCs. In OS X, it is under System Preferences / Universal Access / Keyboard. In WinXP it's under Control Panel / Accessibility Options / Keyboard / FilterKeys.
I don't object to him accumulating wealth or care that much what he does with his money. But I object to characterizing his wealth as "self-made". The wealth he has accumulated has been made by all of us, not by him alone.
Is a person who makes billions of dollars in a society that passes tax breaks off to the wealthy while severely under-funding education and providing inadequate healthcare to the middle class truly "self-made"? Didn't his billions in wealth come about partly by denying basic social needs to low- and middle-class Americans? Is this how Americans want the wealth spent -- wealth that has been created by the hard work of all of us?
blind people might soon be viewed as pioneers in sensory modes in which we all strive for competence, to compete in accessing the mediasphere. You are right, but it is not a new phenomina. Disabilities have always provided motivation for technology inovation, especially regarding information technology. When Bell invented the first telephone, he was looking for devices that would help deaf people. The first typewriters were promoted as writing aids for people who couldn't write. And deaf people were the first group to develop and adopt text messaging over telephones, and were an early market that helped early commercial text message systems become economically viable. Those are just a few examples. You are right that we all are "information disabled" in some way and all information technology inovations are basically attempts to reduce that disability. So it is natural that people with disabilities would often be pioneers in those efforts.
If they had to drive tens of thousands of miles to get these pictures, why use a 14-MPG SUV? They could get the same results and cause much less polution in a smaller car -- not to mention save thousands of dollars in fuel costs.