Yes it does. It's more reliable and Free. It's called VNC. Most Linux users use the Windows server and Linux client kinda like a cross-platform PCAnywhere. If instead you use the Linux server and whatever client you feel like, it pretty much works like Citrix, except you are getting a Linux desktop rather than a Windows one, and your budget isn't hemmoraging due to Citrix's licensing fees. There are officially distributed clients for Linux, Solaris, Windows (95/98/ME/NT/2000 AND CE-SH3/CE-MIPS), Java, Macintosh (68k & PPC), and Alpha OSF1. It's Free software so if your client machine isn't listed it should be easy to port it.
If Accounting is doing anything serious with Excel, there is a problem there. Excel doesn't support even basic accounting functions well. Get a real accounting package, even QuickBooks Pro is better than Excel for that. Better yet, run something decent on a decent operating system, (eg. AccountiX or Proven DK running on Linux)
Actually, according to the article you reference, it was Bush Attorney Barry Richard who made the "the [state] Supreme Court has no jurisdiction" quote, not Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.
Um...here's a good question: why the hell are we using punch cards still for something as important as an election?
Because they are (usually) easy to use, reliable, and can be quickly tallied with inexpensive equipment, saving on both volunteer time and equipment purchases. Granted, in Palm Beach they were used badly, but that isn't grounds to condemn the system as a whole.
Shouldn't we be using technology that isn't 50 years old?
Punched cards are much more than fifty years old. They were used in Jaquard looms since around 1810, I don't know if there are earlier uses recorded or not, but that makes them almost 200 year old technology right there. They were also heavily used in the 1890 census (and most censuses since).
Also, what's wrong with using old technology for something important? Old technology permits you to pick techniques that are proven and reliable. That is far more important than being "high-tech" for a presidential race. Don't you occasionally find yourself using a pen or pencil? Writing in that fashion is an even older technology than punched cards, and I don't see people throwing out their pens anytime soon.
No, it just means a large portion of/. readers aren't in the US. While you are probably right that only a minority will vote, it just doesn't follow from a large turnout of non-citizens in a/. poll.
Looking at the fact that, as of this writing, even Nader beats out "Voting is a waste of time", I can at least hope that of the/.ers who CAN vote in the US, most of us WILL vote. I'm far less optimistic about the rest of the country.
Jon Katz wrote:
Perhaps November will be more meaningful if large numbers of Americans deliberately choose not to participate in this election, and make their reasons known, rather than shrugging and ignoring it. Perhaps then, the Beltway might really buckle a bit.
If large numbers of Americans deliberately choose not to vote, than large numbers of Americans will be completely ignored by the system. Nobody who matters reads not voting as a sign of dissent, they read it as a sign of apathy.
What they count as a vote of dissent is a vote for something other than the main candidates. The people in charge listen to large third party turnout. The third parties don't get any closer to real participation, but the major parties lean closer to the third party positions to try to coopt a vote they consider "swing". Nonvoters aren't swing voters, they are ignored.
This year, there are four third-party candidates with significant campaigns, check them out, see if you like any of them more than Al Bush and George Gore:
Ralph Nader, Green Party
Harry Browne, Libertarian Party
Pat Buchanan,, Reform Party (a good chunk of it, anyway)
John Hagelin, Natural Law Party (and the rest of the Reform Party)
The Socialist Party is also running a candidate, but I couldn't find a good link.
If you don't like the two big-party candidates, vote for one of these, any of these, I don't care who (personally, I like Nader, but I'd prefer seeing votes for Buchanan than people staying home). If you don't like these, just decide to pick whoever ends up in the last column of your ballot (the Democrats and Republicans usually vie for the first two columns in most states); or write in a vote. Just don't stay home, and don't leave the ballot blank (some states throw blank ballots out uncounted). This is the most effective way to say you are unhappy with how things are, in a language that the media and the candidates actually understand.
Try Posix threads, which Linus and Alan Cox have said will never be Posix compliant because the standard's so broken.
No, they said the native kernel threading model will never be Posix compliant. They have also expressed interest in supporting a userspace implementation of Posix threads, but only if it doesn't require bad kernel patches.
Other people pointed out some good things, but there's a category that was missed. There are thousands of software packages, mostly poorly written niche-market DBMS front-ends, that only work on Windows. The companies that write them are small, and generally don't have the resources (money or knowledge) to support multiple platforms. Many businesses, including most of the ones I've worked for, count on one or more of these packages for day-to-day operations.
It sucks, they should switch to something better, but the costs involved in switching the software everyone uses is frighteningly high. If I'm going to recommend someone switch, I prefer recommending Free software, but $35/seat to allow the underlying OS to switch from Windows to Linux while letting everyone still run the same DBMS software systems that they've become familiar with sounds awfully attractive.
i believe there a lots of smarter ways for redhat or any other linux vendor to support free software community.
True, but from a commercial standpoint I can think of few smarter ways to get lucrative government contracts than offering the "First [or Only] Linux Distribution that's POSIX, Unix and DII/COE certified", and getting government-saavy salespeople.
Supporting the lpd standard on the JetDirect 4000 would be trivial for them, and give them excellent Linux support. Any tweaks on the Linux box are irrelevant, you are just spreading FUD.
When filing a patent, there's a presumption that you've been working on the invention for a year before you get around to the paperwork. Therefore prior art has to be at least a year old at the time the patent was filed. Chances are the patent in question was filed in 1992 or 1993.
NeXT failed because:
* It cost too much
* The drive was too slow in the first version
* It was a little too different from the rest of the workstation market at the time for the target market (Universities and Colleges) to be comfortable with it
* Sun had more effective marketing in the target market at the time
In short, it failed primarily because it was ahead of its time, and secondarily because of the whims of a competitive market.
One side note here is that NetNanny is one of the only filtering programs for Windows that releases the blocked site list and allows the user to alter it. This gives the knowledgeable sysadmin some leeway. If someone knows of useable Linux filtering software, please let me know.
Squid is not only a great caching proxy server for Linux, it also offers very powerful access controls. More info on various ways of using them, including people who distribute editable porn blocking lists for Squid, can be found in the Squid FAQ.
Exchange's native protocol is, if I recall correctly, basically a bad IMAP implementation with a proprietary authentication scheme called NTLM. NTLM is supported by Fetchmail, which is under the GPL just like Evolution. Expect to see someone (maybe even you;-) port Exchange Server support to Evolution in the not-too-distant future.
Yes, since if the person looking for a client has the authority to change the Exchange server configuration, they could turn on existing POP3 or IMAP support in Exchange, and avoid having to buy any additional proprietary software.
The latest versions of Fetchmail understand MAPI, and I think it's been ported to cygwin, so it will compile under Win32+Cygwin. That will at least allow you to transfer your Exchange mail to a different mail server.
Alternately, if it's important enough to you, Fetchmail is GPL, Evolution is GPL, it's a SMOP to port the MAPI code from Fetchmail to Evolution. Go for it;-)
They've put up backups. After several days of continually fighting to keep a website up in spite of constant attacks, you'd get sick of it too. I understand why they decided to give up, and I just hope it's temporary.
Walk into the office of your favorite local charity, ask them if they want volunteer computer help. If they don't, go to your next favorite. If you get as far as your third favorite local charity, I'd be very surprised.
Well, you might have seen it on/., but it's certainly not true. A successful patent application grants the applicant a limited monopoly, it does not grant them immunity from the Sherman Antitrust Act and related legislation. Note that I am not a lawyer, and what I say may also be untrue (but if it does give such immunity, surely Microsoft would have used its hundreds of patents as a defense in its recent case).
There's a common misconception that the Sherman Antitrust Act makes monopolies illegal. That is not true. What it does do is restrict the behavior of monopolies and groups of companies (i.e. trusts) which collectively control an industry.
If Rambus controls RDRAM technology (which is undisputed), and controls SDRAM technology through patent licensing (which is what all the lawsuits are about) then they effectively control a trust of RAM device companies. Therefore the Sherman Antitrust Act requires them to avoid anticompetitive behavior. There are a lot of details missing in my description, but that's one part of the DRAM's tack. The other, of course, is getting Rambus's patents on technology developed in the JEDEC conference invalidated, since those weren't theirs to patent.
While I'm sure there are people out there with the attitude you describe, I haven't seen that many of them (a few of them are particularly loud though). There are all sorts of different kinds of people downloading MP3's: * People desperate for access to more and better music than the radio and stores offer; * People curious about the technology; * People (often students) without the cash to spend on CD's if they wanted to; * People who won't spend money if they can get what they want without cash.
The lost sales only fall in the last group, and if you think about it, these people aren't big spenders on CD's to begin with, with cassette copies, CD-R copies and used CD's already available. The first group (and potentially the second as well) represents new sales. From what I've seen, the first group is larger in both numbers and dollars than the fourth.
If you hear someone saying that the artist has no right to make money off of their work, by all means argue against them. I just don't agree that sharing music removes the right or ability of the artist to make money off of their work. There will always be people willing and able to pay for good creative works.
Their disks are all distributed by Rhino Records, but apparently only Chantmania is still in print. Some of their songs are on Dr. Demento compilations. Yahoo's CD Discounters online store apparently has their album Cutting Their Own Groove for sale.
First off a disclaimer, I don't use Napster, but I do use Gnutella (or more accurately, Gnut, Free software implementing the Gnutella protocol) which is essentially the same thing as far as your arguments go. I agree that neither system is sufficient to help the artists much, but I don't see them as competing against the artist either.
In the past six months, I've spent at least $50 on CD purchases that I never would have made if it weren't for hearing MP3's from those albums. All of these purchases were from independant labels or direct sales from the band's website. Yes, there are some people who will spend less on music due to systems like Napster and Gnutella, but my guess from observation is that such losses will be far outweighed by people like me who will spend more. In his Napster defence, Boles refers to studies that show roughly the same thing, on a large scale, as I'm saying here.
The big failing with Napster and Gnutella is that, unless you are lucky, they will only feed you with music that you already know about. They offer minimal additional exposure to the artist. I want a system that will help me to find new artists that I like; and I'm sure struggling artists want more people who would like them to discover them.
Even if only 5% of these new fans buy a CD, say Baptist Death Ray gets discovered by 200,000 new people, you'll get the 10,000 CD sales you're looking for to put food on the table and strings in the guitar. You'd also find it easier to sell your next album, and be that much closer to being able to do a small tour. Exposure is the key, and with some modifications, a descendant of Napster or Gnutella could give you the exposure you need.
Basically, what I'm saying is the revolution isn't dying just as it was about to get started, it's just having some growing pains. We need different tools than the ones we've got, and I'm confident that we will get them.
First, the big fallacy in his argument: Open Source is not the Bazaar! Specifically, there is nothing to stop a person from getting a group of programmers together, writing up a formal spec, paying them to write code, paying a third party to do a formal audit and testing it against formal standards, and then releasing it under an Open Source license. It wouldn't cost any more than the analagous proprietary effort he's presumably advocating.
Secondly, you can use the Bazaar to reduce the cost of developing such software. Take a Bazaar-developed program that does pretty much what you want it to, draw up a formal spec, pay some programmers to audit the program and bring it up to spec, and then go through the formal testing. If you pick wisely, this could greatly reduce the cost of such development, and it should comfortably meet his definition of "Trusted".
Thirdly, I question whether formal specifications improves security; granted, that's no consolation if you're working for an organization that requires it. Formal specification merely means that some thought went into design before the program was written (or modified in the above example). It is very difficult to test a specification for security problems, for obvious reasons. Also, it is easy to write a program that matches a formal specification, yet introduces subtle security holes.
Fourth, there is no reason why you can't perform formal testing (for what it's worth) on any piece of Open Source software, Bazaar or not. Then you have a formally tested program. You must refrain from upgrading without running through the testing procedure again; just like proprietary security software.
The bottom line is, if you want formally trusted software, you've got to spend some money. Open Source will not prevent this, Free Software will not prevent this, neither the Cathedral nor the Bazaar will prevent this. That doesn't mean they should be excluded from consideration.
Neither http://www.linuxdoc.org/docs/OCR/OCR-HOWTO-0.1 (what you wrote) nor http://www.microsoft.com (what your link pointed to) gives OCR information. There is a little info in the Access-HOWTO, and a little in the unofficial AI/Alife mini-HOWTO. I couldn't find any OCR-HOWTO, and would love a real link to it if you have one.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry for the double reply. Mantrid also asked:
Does Linux have an equivalent to Citrix?
Yes it does. It's more reliable and Free. It's called VNC. Most Linux users use the Windows server and Linux client kinda like a cross-platform PCAnywhere. If instead you use the Linux server and whatever client you feel like, it pretty much works like Citrix, except you are getting a Linux desktop rather than a Windows one, and your budget isn't hemmoraging due to Citrix's licensing fees. There are officially distributed clients for Linux, Solaris, Windows (95/98/ME/NT/2000 AND CE-SH3/CE-MIPS), Java, Macintosh (68k & PPC), and Alpha OSF1. It's Free software so if your client machine isn't listed it should be easy to port it.
----
Mantrid writes:
accounting would riot without Excel
If Accounting is doing anything serious with Excel, there is a problem there. Excel doesn't support even basic accounting functions well. Get a real accounting package, even QuickBooks Pro is better than Excel for that. Better yet, run something decent on a decent operating system, (eg. AccountiX or Proven DK running on Linux)
----
Actually, according to the article you reference, it was Bush Attorney Barry Richard who made the "the [state] Supreme Court has no jurisdiction" quote, not Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris.
----
don_carnage wrote:
Um...here's a good question: why the hell are we using punch cards still for something as important as an election?
Because they are (usually) easy to use, reliable, and can be quickly tallied with inexpensive equipment, saving on both volunteer time and equipment purchases. Granted, in Palm Beach they were used badly, but that isn't grounds to condemn the system as a whole.
Shouldn't we be using technology that isn't 50 years old?
Punched cards are much more than fifty years old. They were used in Jaquard looms since around 1810, I don't know if there are earlier uses recorded or not, but that makes them almost 200 year old technology right there. They were also heavily used in the 1890 census (and most censuses since).
Also, what's wrong with using old technology for something important? Old technology permits you to pick techniques that are proven and reliable. That is far more important than being "high-tech" for a presidential race. Don't you occasionally find yourself using a pen or pencil? Writing in that fashion is an even older technology than punched cards, and I don't see people throwing out their pens anytime soon.
----
No, it just means a large portion of /. readers aren't in the US. While you are probably right that only a minority will vote, it just doesn't follow from a large turnout of non-citizens in a /. poll.
/.ers who CAN vote in the US, most of us WILL vote. I'm far less optimistic about the rest of the country.
Looking at the fact that, as of this writing, even Nader beats out "Voting is a waste of time", I can at least hope that of the
----
Jon Katz wrote:
Perhaps November will be more meaningful if large numbers of Americans deliberately choose not to participate in this election, and make their reasons known, rather than shrugging and ignoring it. Perhaps then, the Beltway might really buckle a bit.
If large numbers of Americans deliberately choose not to vote, than large numbers of Americans will be completely ignored by the system. Nobody who matters reads not voting as a sign of dissent, they read it as a sign of apathy.
What they count as a vote of dissent is a vote for something other than the main candidates. The people in charge listen to large third party turnout. The third parties don't get any closer to real participation, but the major parties lean closer to the third party positions to try to coopt a vote they consider "swing". Nonvoters aren't swing voters, they are ignored.
This year, there are four third-party candidates with significant campaigns, check them out, see if you like any of them more than Al Bush and George Gore:
Ralph Nader, Green Party
Harry Browne, Libertarian Party
Pat Buchanan,, Reform Party (a good chunk of it, anyway)
John Hagelin, Natural Law Party (and the rest of the Reform Party)
The Socialist Party is also running a candidate, but I couldn't find a good link.
If you don't like the two big-party candidates, vote for one of these, any of these, I don't care who (personally, I like Nader, but I'd prefer seeing votes for Buchanan than people staying home). If you don't like these, just decide to pick whoever ends up in the last column of your ballot (the Democrats and Republicans usually vie for the first two columns in most states); or write in a vote. Just don't stay home, and don't leave the ballot blank (some states throw blank ballots out uncounted). This is the most effective way to say you are unhappy with how things are, in a language that the media and the candidates actually understand.
----
dvdug wrote:
Try Posix threads, which Linus and Alan Cox have said will never be Posix compliant because the standard's so broken.
No, they said the native kernel threading model will never be Posix compliant. They have also expressed interest in supporting a userspace implementation of Posix threads, but only if it doesn't require bad kernel patches.
----
Other people pointed out some good things, but there's a category that was missed. There are thousands of software packages, mostly poorly written niche-market DBMS front-ends, that only work on Windows. The companies that write them are small, and generally don't have the resources (money or knowledge) to support multiple platforms. Many businesses, including most of the ones I've worked for, count on one or more of these packages for day-to-day operations.
It sucks, they should switch to something better, but the costs involved in switching the software everyone uses is frighteningly high. If I'm going to recommend someone switch, I prefer recommending Free software, but $35/seat to allow the underlying OS to switch from Windows to Linux while letting everyone still run the same DBMS software systems that they've become familiar with sounds awfully attractive.
----
Yes, I know you are kidding, but RSA's excellent Crypto FAQ has a section with all the references you should need for factoring algorhithms:
http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalab s/faq/2-3-4.html
Also, http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalab s/faq/2-3-5.html has some good info about what the future holds for factoring.
----
emir writes:
i believe there a lots of smarter ways for redhat or any other linux vendor to support free software community.
True, but from a commercial standpoint I can think of few smarter ways to get lucrative government contracts than offering the "First [or Only] Linux Distribution that's POSIX, Unix and DII/COE certified", and getting government-saavy salespeople.
----
Supporting the lpd standard on the JetDirect 4000 would be trivial for them, and give them excellent Linux support. Any tweaks on the Linux box are irrelevant, you are just spreading FUD.
----
When filing a patent, there's a presumption that you've been working on the invention for a year before you get around to the paperwork. Therefore prior art has to be at least a year old at the time the patent was filed. Chances are the patent in question was filed in 1992 or 1993.
----
NeXT failed because:
* It cost too much
* The drive was too slow in the first version
* It was a little too different from the rest of the workstation market at the time for the target market (Universities and Colleges) to be comfortable with it
* Sun had more effective marketing in the target market at the time
In short, it failed primarily because it was ahead of its time, and secondarily because of the whims of a competitive market.
----
dlapine asks:
One side note here is that NetNanny is one of the only filtering programs for Windows that releases the blocked site list and allows the user to alter it. This gives the knowledgeable sysadmin some leeway. If someone knows of useable Linux filtering software, please let me know.
Squid is not only a great caching proxy server for Linux, it also offers very powerful access controls. More info on various ways of using them, including people who distribute editable porn blocking lists for Squid, can be found in the Squid FAQ.
----
Exchange's native protocol is, if I recall correctly, basically a bad IMAP implementation with a proprietary authentication scheme called NTLM. NTLM is supported by Fetchmail, which is under the GPL just like Evolution. Expect to see someone (maybe even you ;-) port Exchange Server support to Evolution in the not-too-distant future.
----
Yes, since if the person looking for a client has the authority to change the Exchange server configuration, they could turn on existing POP3 or IMAP support in Exchange, and avoid having to buy any additional proprietary software.
----
The latest versions of Fetchmail understand MAPI, and I think it's been ported to cygwin, so it will compile under Win32+Cygwin. That will at least allow you to transfer your Exchange mail to a different mail server.
;-)
Alternately, if it's important enough to you, Fetchmail is GPL, Evolution is GPL, it's a SMOP to port the MAPI code from Fetchmail to Evolution. Go for it
----
They've put up backups. After several days of continually fighting to keep a website up in spite of constant attacks, you'd get sick of it too. I understand why they decided to give up, and I just hope it's temporary.
----
Walk into the office of your favorite local charity, ask them if they want volunteer computer help. If they don't, go to your next favorite. If you get as far as your third favorite local charity, I'd be very surprised.
----
Well, you might have seen it on /., but it's certainly not true. A successful patent application grants the applicant a limited monopoly, it does not grant them immunity from the Sherman Antitrust Act and related legislation. Note that I am not a lawyer, and what I say may also be untrue (but if it does give such immunity, surely Microsoft would have used its hundreds of patents as a defense in its recent case).
There's a common misconception that the Sherman Antitrust Act makes monopolies illegal. That is not true. What it does do is restrict the behavior of monopolies and groups of companies (i.e. trusts) which collectively control an industry.
If Rambus controls RDRAM technology (which is undisputed), and controls SDRAM technology through patent licensing (which is what all the lawsuits are about) then they effectively control a trust of RAM device companies. Therefore the Sherman Antitrust Act requires them to avoid anticompetitive behavior. There are a lot of details missing in my description, but that's one part of the DRAM's tack. The other, of course, is getting Rambus's patents on technology developed in the JEDEC conference invalidated, since those weren't theirs to patent.
----
While I'm sure there are people out there with the attitude you describe, I haven't seen that many of them (a few of them are particularly loud though). There are all sorts of different kinds of people downloading MP3's:
* People desperate for access to more and better music than the radio and stores offer;
* People curious about the technology;
* People (often students) without the cash to spend on CD's if they wanted to;
* People who won't spend money if they can get what they want without cash.
The lost sales only fall in the last group, and if you think about it, these people aren't big spenders on CD's to begin with, with cassette copies, CD-R copies and used CD's already available. The first group (and potentially the second as well) represents new sales. From what I've seen, the first group is larger in both numbers and dollars than the fourth.
If you hear someone saying that the artist has no right to make money off of their work, by all means argue against them. I just don't agree that sharing music removes the right or ability of the artist to make money off of their work. There will always be people willing and able to pay for good creative works.
----
I hadn't heard of them before (but I had heard Chantmania), but was able to find them with Google. These look like the guys you were talking about:
http://www.dustbury.com/music/bigdaddy. html
http://www.dustbury.com/music/bigdad2.ht ml
Their disks are all distributed by Rhino Records, but apparently only Chantmania is still in print. Some of their songs are on Dr. Demento compilations. Yahoo's CD Discounters online store apparently has their album Cutting Their Own Groove for sale.
----
First off a disclaimer, I don't use Napster, but I do use Gnutella (or more accurately, Gnut, Free software implementing the Gnutella protocol) which is essentially the same thing as far as your arguments go. I agree that neither system is sufficient to help the artists much, but I don't see them as competing against the artist either.
In the past six months, I've spent at least $50 on CD purchases that I never would have made if it weren't for hearing MP3's from those albums. All of these purchases were from independant labels or direct sales from the band's website. Yes, there are some people who will spend less on music due to systems like Napster and Gnutella, but my guess from observation is that such losses will be far outweighed by people like me who will spend more. In his Napster defence, Boles refers to studies that show roughly the same thing, on a large scale, as I'm saying here.
The big failing with Napster and Gnutella is that, unless you are lucky, they will only feed you with music that you already know about. They offer minimal additional exposure to the artist. I want a system that will help me to find new artists that I like; and I'm sure struggling artists want more people who would like them to discover them.
Even if only 5% of these new fans buy a CD, say Baptist Death Ray gets discovered by 200,000 new people, you'll get the 10,000 CD sales you're looking for to put food on the table and strings in the guitar. You'd also find it easier to sell your next album, and be that much closer to being able to do a small tour. Exposure is the key, and with some modifications, a descendant of Napster or Gnutella could give you the exposure you need.
Basically, what I'm saying is the revolution isn't dying just as it was about to get started, it's just having some growing pains. We need different tools than the ones we've got, and I'm confident that we will get them.
----
First, the big fallacy in his argument: Open Source is not the Bazaar! Specifically, there is nothing to stop a person from getting a group of programmers together, writing up a formal spec, paying them to write code, paying a third party to do a formal audit and testing it against formal standards, and then releasing it under an Open Source license. It wouldn't cost any more than the analagous proprietary effort he's presumably advocating.
Secondly, you can use the Bazaar to reduce the cost of developing such software. Take a Bazaar-developed program that does pretty much what you want it to, draw up a formal spec, pay some programmers to audit the program and bring it up to spec, and then go through the formal testing. If you pick wisely, this could greatly reduce the cost of such development, and it should comfortably meet his definition of "Trusted".
Thirdly, I question whether formal specifications improves security; granted, that's no consolation if you're working for an organization that requires it. Formal specification merely means that some thought went into design before the program was written (or modified in the above example). It is very difficult to test a specification for security problems, for obvious reasons. Also, it is easy to write a program that matches a formal specification, yet introduces subtle security holes.
Fourth, there is no reason why you can't perform formal testing (for what it's worth) on any piece of Open Source software, Bazaar or not. Then you have a formally tested program. You must refrain from upgrading without running through the testing procedure again; just like proprietary security software.
The bottom line is, if you want formally trusted software, you've got to spend some money. Open Source will not prevent this, Free Software will not prevent this, neither the Cathedral nor the Bazaar will prevent this. That doesn't mean they should be excluded from consideration.
----
Neither http://www.linuxdoc.org/docs/OCR/OCR-HOWTO-0.1 (what you wrote) nor http://www.microsoft.com (what your link pointed to) gives OCR information. There is a little info in the Access-HOWTO, and a little in the unofficial AI/Alife mini-HOWTO. I couldn't find any OCR-HOWTO, and would love a real link to it if you have one.
----