great story. I especially liked the bit where, after crashing through the house it got so cold, that the thing shattered. Did they ever find all the pieces? hmm...
Unless they're rolling their own distro, with custom and proprietary drivers, and custom kernels, you can pretty much assume that if it'll run one one distro, it'll run on another. You might have to recompile a driver or two, but that's not unreasonable to get one consistent, easily maintained/patched distro.
Now it seems that they improved on that but still the double entry system makes me nervous.
The accepted standard accounting practice of double-entry bookkeeping makes you nervous? Better go back to balancing your checkbook on the back of a napkin.
Here's how I deal with this. I use OO.o and send them in native (.odf?) format. THen I let the word victims figure it out. When they email back that they can't read my file, I wait 24 hours before sending an rtf. Then I politely suggest that they upgrade to more modern software that can handle this format.;)
And the reality in my little world is that most people are running a couple years behind on their Word updates anyway and so the filters work fine.
Quickbooks and Quicken are the reason I left windows in the first place. Both programs were mature products years ago, but did intuit leave well enough alone and move on to something else? nope. All the upgrades that have come out in the past few years basically enable more ways to spy on your stuff and get more of your money through vendor-lock-in. They are bells and whistles that mostly get in the way, clutter the desktop and intrude on real work. I mean they've got freakin' pop-ups for chris'sakes. If I wanted popups I'd use IE, not quickbooks. And their.qif format, which is great to work with, easy to understand etc, has been abandoned by their move lock-up your information and force you into their product for ever.
I made the mistake a couple years ago of upgrading Quickbooks one too many times and discovered too late that they had eliminated the exporting of MY information. Its locked in there forever. They have annual sunset policies, eliminated data exporting and keep jacking up the prices for what is free tax table informatino from the government. When I stopped using their payroll tax table subscription and began using my own spreadsheets (tired of paying every year for that free government information) guess what! The payroll calculations, using user-entered tax tables were incorrect. The tax table information was correct -- THE CALCULATIONS WERE WRONG! As in 1+1 != 2. seriously. (sorry to shout. I obviously care deeply about this).
So now I must forever maintain a Windows partition on one of my boxen just to maintain a working copy of quickbooks in case I ever need to access some old financial records for my business. Screw them Intuit can have their windows. I will never use another one of their products ever. Do not port quickbooks to linux. I like my free world just fine as it is.
Go GnuCash! Check it out. They are close to finally making the GNOME2 port which will bring it to more user desktops. Its a REAL accounting program, not that half-baked quickbooks crap. double entry, invoicing, international support etc. good user community. etc etc etc.
Others have spoken to the differences between Debian and FSF in terms of what should and shouldn't be free. Personally, as a member of the Debian Cult I am happy to know that Debian tends to err on the side of more freedom, even though it occaisionally means less freedom to me as a user in terms of what is available from the official repositories.
Likewise, in terms of levels of agreement with, endorsement of, or use of GPL, IMO the more differing interpretations the better. I want choice and choose my distro based partially on how that distro interprets software freedom. If I want a distro that focuses on freedom in the core and anything goes outside that, fine, I'll choose one appropriately. If I want one that focuses on freedom throughout the entire selection of packages, then I can choose that as well.
So with Debian, we have what looks to be endorsement from one side of the spectrum. Others will have their own views.
My personal experience is that we actually spend LESS time watching tv since I put together our KnoppMyth box. And the TV we watch is definitely higher quality. Instead of sitting there surfing through the channels looking for something good, I boot up the box, see what we've got, and if I've seen it all, I turn the thing off do something else. In a household where the master (my wife) lives for her shows, its very liberating to not be tied to a programming schedule. She is constantly pleased to discover that its 8:30 on a tuesday and we're still sitting around the dinner table chatting instead of scrambling to get to the TV in time to catch the show du jour. So the compelling reason is that its improved our quality of life in many ways. We spend less time watching the glowing magic box, more time with the kids or reading or whatever, and that tv time is of higher quality.
The people supply the seats by their votes. So the people are the suppliers providing an artificially limited resource, so the people have the power. Unfortunately, they don't choose to exercise that power in any reasonable way.
This is not something that TV manufacturers would just DO without demand from their customers.
Ummm... if there is so much demand, then why is the FCC REQUIRING HD broadcast? Why is it being forced on the people? Why is my perfectly good 27" tv going to be made obsolete -- not by market forces, but by mandate? If there is so much demand, then they wouldn't have to GIVE the broadcasters the frequencies, they would happily pay for it.
As has been pointed out several times already, the outrage is in:
1) jail time for a civil offense.
2) the implication that a listener's interpretation of an artist's work is copyright infringement. Its not, its derivative. Along the lines of "I think he says when singing this song."
If someone copies the official lyrics from a licensed source and publishes it, thats copyright infringement. If someone guesses at the lyrics and says "this is my guess", that's not. Although, what if they get it exactly right?
I think the point is who cares. Few if any people are ever going to pay for the lyrics to a song, and the uses of these lyrics are mostly to help people find the song and purchase it or, in my case, learn the lyrics so I can perform the song at a license paying venue. Either way its $ to the author. nuff said.
Damn, we don't even get dj's around here. Just sequenced crap-o-la from some schmuck with a windows box in some corporate tower. How do I know its a wondows box? You can hear the damn "ping" when the user clicks a greyed out button. Crap.
On the flip side, one of these schlock purveyors actually states the title and artist after every song. I can't tell you how cool that is. Now if only they played some decent music.
Damn, I'm old. I learned to play guitar by recording songs off the radio onto...
wait for it...
cassette tape(!), and then playing it over and over and over while desperately trying to find that one missing note. ah well, I should have waited a decade or so and done it the easy way:p
I'm sorry, but that is an E followed by an Esus4. It makes an interesting, discordant transistion that you really need to resolve within a few beats or people will think you're playing out of tune. Makes a great passing chord in certain applications though.
Okay, I put up Mudhoney "SuperFuzz/BigMuff". will you please provide me some offsight archival storage of a backup copy? I expect you, as part of this service, to regularly review (i.e. listen to) the tracks in my archive to make sure they are functioning copies. In the event the archival copy you are holding for me is damaged in someway and can't be used, please let me know and I will transmit another copy for storage in the archive. In the event my original of "SuperFuzz/BigMuff" is damaged you are expected to forthwith (gotta make the lawyers happy) render a duplicate of the archival backup copy to me so that I may continue to listem to my music. I will compensate you by providing reciprocal offsite archival storage of any one cd/album in your collection under the same terms. If others wish to join, we will happily store archival backup copies of one cd for them, in exchange for them providing redundant storage of all backups already in the archive. what you got?
Seems to me, since coders are being held responsible for errors and exploits in their code, that the manufacturer/distributor of the OS that allowed these exploits to occur on her machine should be liable. I'd love to see MS and RIAA duking it out in court. I'd pay good money for 'dem seats....
Slashdot Mirror
because eventually some other rock is gonna hit this rock and if we're all still stuck on this rock, well...
Exactly!
Also, part of the Katrina plan. If we lose a weather satellite today then Bush can claim he COULDN'T have known about the hurricane 6 months ago.
great story. I especially liked the bit where, after crashing through the house it got so cold, that the thing shattered. Did they ever find all the pieces? hmm...
Unless they're rolling their own distro, with custom and proprietary drivers, and custom kernels, you can pretty much assume that if it'll run one one distro, it'll run on another. You might have to recompile a driver or two, but that's not unreasonable to get one consistent, easily maintained/patched distro.
Now it seems that they improved on that but still the double entry system makes me nervous.
The accepted standard accounting practice of double-entry bookkeeping makes you nervous? Better go back to balancing your checkbook on the back of a napkin.
And this is relevant how?
I assure you had you found a computation error in gnucash and contacted the devs it would have been fixed, probably within hours.
Edit->Preferences->Register options check the box for "Register Opens in new window"
simple.
or Window->new window with page
even simpler.
This is a huge, extremely complicated project being developed by a literal handful of volunteers. Give them some credit
high end cutting edge geek keyboards.
:-P
If all it could do was display the key combinations for VIM I'd run out and buy one today.
1% truncated.
Here's how I deal with this. I use OO.o and send them in native (.odf?) format. THen I let the word victims figure it out. When they email back that they can't read my file, I wait 24 hours before sending an rtf. Then I politely suggest that they upgrade to more modern software that can handle this format. ;)
And the reality in my little world is that most people are running a couple years behind on their Word updates anyway and so the filters work fine.
Quickbooks and Quicken are the reason I left windows in the first place. Both programs were mature products years ago, but did intuit leave well enough alone and move on to something else? nope. All the upgrades that have come out in the past few years basically enable more ways to spy on your stuff and get more of your money through vendor-lock-in. They are bells and whistles that mostly get in the way, clutter the desktop and intrude on real work. I mean they've got freakin' pop-ups for chris'sakes. If I wanted popups I'd use IE, not quickbooks. And their .qif format, which is great to work with, easy to understand etc, has been abandoned by their move lock-up your information and force you into their product for ever.
I made the mistake a couple years ago of upgrading Quickbooks one too many times and discovered too late that they had eliminated the exporting of MY information. Its locked in there forever. They have annual sunset policies, eliminated data exporting and keep jacking up the prices for what is free tax table informatino from the government. When I stopped using their payroll tax table subscription and began using my own spreadsheets (tired of paying every year for that free government information) guess what! The payroll calculations, using user-entered tax tables were incorrect. The tax table information was correct -- THE CALCULATIONS WERE WRONG! As in 1+1 != 2. seriously. (sorry to shout. I obviously care deeply about this).
So now I must forever maintain a Windows partition on one of my boxen just to maintain a working copy of quickbooks in case I ever need to access some old financial records for my business. Screw them Intuit can have their windows. I will never use another one of their products ever. Do not port quickbooks to linux. I like my free world just fine as it is.
Go GnuCash! Check it out. They are close to finally making the GNOME2 port which will bring it to more user desktops. Its a REAL accounting program, not that half-baked quickbooks crap. double entry, invoicing, international support etc. good user community. etc etc etc.
cheers
Others have spoken to the differences between Debian and FSF in terms of what should and shouldn't be free. Personally, as a member of the Debian Cult I am happy to know that Debian tends to err on the side of more freedom, even though it occaisionally means less freedom to me as a user in terms of what is available from the official repositories.
Likewise, in terms of levels of agreement with, endorsement of, or use of GPL, IMO the more differing interpretations the better. I want choice and choose my distro based partially on how that distro interprets software freedom. If I want a distro that focuses on freedom in the core and anything goes outside that, fine, I'll choose one appropriately. If I want one that focuses on freedom throughout the entire selection of packages, then I can choose that as well.
So with Debian, we have what looks to be endorsement from one side of the spectrum. Others will have their own views.
Amen [brother|sister]!
My personal experience is that we actually spend LESS time watching tv since I put together our KnoppMyth box. And the TV we watch is definitely higher quality. Instead of sitting there surfing through the channels looking for something good, I boot up the box, see what we've got, and if I've seen it all, I turn the thing off do something else. In a household where the master (my wife) lives for her shows, its very liberating to not be tied to a programming schedule. She is constantly pleased to discover that its 8:30 on a tuesday and we're still sitting around the dinner table chatting instead of scrambling to get to the TV in time to catch the show du jour. So the compelling reason is that its improved our quality of life in many ways. We spend less time watching the glowing magic box, more time with the kids or reading or whatever, and that tv time is of higher quality.
The people supply the seats by their votes. So the people are the suppliers providing an artificially limited resource, so the people have the power. Unfortunately, they don't choose to exercise that power in any reasonable way.
and be sure to gpl it otherwise some wanker will take your shared stuff and sell it to someone else.
The problem is they will attribute this to the "chilling"
effect of litigation when in reality its because the music sucks. dude.
okay, you may be right and I'm a lazy ass and don't want to research it. But, hey, any chance to complain about the man...
I have to say I agree with you but for one point:
This is not something that TV manufacturers would just DO without demand from their customers.
Ummm... if there is so much demand, then why is the FCC REQUIRING HD broadcast? Why is it being forced on the people? Why is my perfectly good 27" tv going to be made obsolete -- not by market forces, but by mandate? If there is so much demand, then they wouldn't have to GIVE the broadcasters the frequencies, they would happily pay for it.
As has been pointed out several times already, the outrage is in:
1) jail time for a civil offense.
2) the implication that a listener's interpretation of an artist's work is copyright infringement. Its not, its derivative. Along the lines of "I think he says when singing this song."
If someone copies the official lyrics from a licensed source and publishes it, thats copyright infringement. If someone guesses at the lyrics and says "this is my guess", that's not. Although, what if they get it exactly right?
I think the point is who cares. Few if any people are ever going to pay for the lyrics to a song, and the uses of these lyrics are mostly to help people find the song and purchase it or, in my case, learn the lyrics so I can perform the song at a license paying venue. Either way its $ to the author. nuff said.
dee-jays
Damn, we don't even get dj's around here. Just sequenced crap-o-la from some schmuck with a windows box in some corporate tower. How do I know its a wondows box? You can hear the damn "ping" when the user clicks a greyed out button. Crap.
On the flip side, one of these schlock purveyors actually states the title and artist after every song. I can't tell you how cool that is. Now if only they played some decent music.
Damn, I'm old. I learned to play guitar by recording songs off the radio onto...
:p
wait for it...
cassette tape(!), and then playing it over and over and over while desperately trying to find that one missing note. ah well, I should have waited a decade or so and done it the easy way
I'm sorry, but that is an E followed by an Esus4. It makes an interesting, discordant transistion that you really need to resolve within a few beats or people will think you're playing out of tune. Makes a great passing chord in certain applications though.
this:
---0--0-------
---0--2-------
---1--2-------
---2--2-------
---2--0-------
---0----------
is E followed by A. next would likely be E and then B A E and then you're playing the blues. Provided of course, you got da' blues.
Sorry, couldn't ignore it.
oh this is fun.
Heck, who needs a company. Just do this:
Okay, I put up Mudhoney "SuperFuzz/BigMuff". will you please provide me some offsight archival storage of a backup copy? I expect you, as part of this service, to regularly review (i.e. listen to) the tracks in my archive to make sure they are functioning copies. In the event the archival copy you are holding for me is damaged in someway and can't be used, please let me know and I will transmit another copy for storage in the archive. In the event my original of "SuperFuzz/BigMuff" is damaged you are expected to forthwith (gotta make the lawyers happy) render a duplicate of the archival backup copy to me so that I may continue to listem to my music. I will compensate you by providing reciprocal offsite archival storage of any one cd/album in your collection under the same terms. If others wish to join, we will happily store archival backup copies of one cd for them, in exchange for them providing redundant storage of all backups already in the archive. what you got?
Seems to me, since coders are being held responsible for errors and exploits in their code, that the manufacturer/distributor of the OS that allowed these exploits to occur on her machine should be liable. I'd love to see MS and RIAA duking it out in court. I'd pay good money for 'dem seats....