More precisely: I believe US patents are valid 20 years from *date of application*. Also if you publish your own patentable idea or sell a patentable product, I believe you have one year to file an application. If you want to litigate you must notify the public that your patent is "pending." You can then litigate once the patent has been issued. IANAL; consult one before you start the patent process.
I use Cinelerra to edit video on 64-bit Linux (http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3). According to their website, Cinelerra is much happier doing its math in 64-bit land.
Has anyone compiled Opie for something like a P133 laptop? I am curious to know how a distro designed to work on lightweight platforms works with older heavyweight hardware with the same specs.
Is the monolithic cross-platform OO.org still strictly necessary? The project has given the best gift we could have hoped for, a free and open office document format. Perhaps now instead of focusing on the clunkiness of the cross-platform OO.org interface in a particular operating system, we can convince experts in each platform to write native OpenDocument-based tools. That would be a chance for folks to solve some of the usability ills by leveraging the services each platform has to offer. For example, OO.org would no longer have to burn precious cycles developing cross platform OLE. Instead the native tools would use such facilities available in each platform. OO.org can then focus on making sure the file format can handle new features like collaboration tasks.
My.02c
-LLM
When I can start my Exchange-connected Evolution on Friday, leave it running all weekend to enable me to work from home, and then come in Monday to find that it has NOT sucked up ALL my RAM and swap, then, and only then, I will think it's ready.
Outlook 2003 may be a resource hog, but at least it stops grabbing resources eventually.
Microsoft requires sales to drive development. To drive sales they "encourage" upgrades as much as possible. Most businesses, though, have been through expensive (both in terms of people power and money) Office upgrades several times in the last decade. They are understandably getting more and more gun-shy about upgrading yet again. For the home-user that simply needs to create documents for themselves, the competition is even more stiff. Several of my non-IT-concerned friends have not upgraded from the Office that came with their computer. Their Office does everything they need and they understand it. They see no need to go through the disruption of upgrading. Without the upgrades the funds to supply Office development will decrease. MS could raise prices, but that would prevent more people from upgrading. They could (as they have done) break backwards compatibility, but that also makes folks fear upgrading.
Me: I use this operating system called Linux on my laptop. It's Open Source.
Friend: How much did it cost?
Me: It's "Free" as in free speech. I downloaded it.
Friend: It didn't cost you anything?
Folks, this is the economy of Walmart, Target, Costco, and Home Depot fed by 99-cent menus at McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's. The most important factor that attracts every person I have introduced to "FLOSS" is the price. Richard can be the idealist. Someone has to inspire the troops. But, money walks and bullshit talks. In the post-boom economy, anything that can enable folks to get work done on a computer without affecting the bottom line, either in terms of direct cost or avoiding the BSA, can be very enticing. Sure I yammer on about access to the code and how the code will always be open, etc, but free-as-in-beer is what sells the product the new folks.
I have used the last release candidate to do "real" work on personal projects. That is, I actually tried to get things done with it rather than just clicking around to see how "Mac" it is. I have both MS Office X and NeoOffice/J installed. Office X is used for school work, where I cannot take a chance of my professors not being able to read a document.
1) In the early releases NeoOffice/J was sluggish. There were rendering delays with first word typed, pull-down menus, and switching tools, among other things. I am pleased to say that the interface speed has increased through the release candidate schedule. That said, you will find there are still delays here and there that may bother you. They bothered me until I used Office X again. That product has UI delays as well, just in different places. At this point I think it is a wash.
2) Stability (e.g. random crashes) was an issue on the earlier releases. These have been largely successfully addressed. In fact, when using the last RC to get work done I did not experience any crashes. Very nice.
3) The UI is somewhat confusing, since it departs from some of the standard metaphors we usually see in office software. The primary example is the tight coupling of the different suite functions. Those that are used to using one application for spreadsheets and another for presentations will need to aclimate to a monolithic application. This is not a big change per se; it just takes some getting used to. There are other minor departures, such as the lack of aqua widgets and different locations of buttons and menu items. Once I got used to these differences, I found the product usable for my project work.
All that being said, I have decided to do all my personal project work in NeoOffice/J. Why? The data I generate in my personal projects is valuable to me personally. I would like to maximize the chances of being able to read it in the distant future. Since the Open Office file format is completely open and documented, I believe that the OO.org file format has the greatest chance of being read 15-20 years from now. If there is not any software in 15-20 years that can read the format, then due to the open licensing on the format I could write/hire someone to write a program to read the documents. Try doing that with some archaic closed format. I will deal with quirks today to enable access to the my data tomorrow.
is the closest I could find. This implies that the tech needed to get such resolution is still not being mass produced enough to get the price down to "webcam levels". I say be patient for now.
Please try the website (now/.'d:-/) before commenting. The site does not provide a form fax where you fill in only your name and address. You must write your own text. Now they do provide a few bullet points to talk about, but the fax will be in your own words. I don't think they will all be "basically the same". I, myself, commented on an issue not mentioned in the bullet points.
Airbrushed cases? Yawn. I would be more impressed if they had a Darth Vader helmet or had licensed the Imperial cruiser or Millenium Falcon mods we have gushed over here before.
Having this information crawled and therefore easily available to a world-wide audience makes me nervous. What if you are having passports or some other ID material shipped? Or medical tests? Interception is now that much easier. I know the protection before was via obscurity, i.e. the information was not crawled, but, personally, I think that shippers should not make this information crawlable.
Well it worked so well in Asia:-P. The problem is that these parts of the world need low cost FULL featured OSs and applications that can be customized and integrated easily. Maddog Hall has explained at our LUG meetings on several occasions the advantages of OSS in such environments. Scientists at underfunded universities in this region can easily get real work done without wasting hard fought funding on hard to purchase and integrate opaque proprietary software.
Regarding Xen support, is it robust enough to "jail" applications like web servers or ftp servers? Or, at least, can it be used to provide multiple personal "servers" as we have seen with VMware?
-LLM
As everyone and their brother/sister jumps into the timeshifting business (even FLOSS), Tivo needs to stay viable. They can do that with marketing information. Correct me if I am wrong, but these patents look like they have to do with collecting data about viewing. Such market information is worth quite a bit to advertisers. I expect Tivo to use these patents to force cable providers who also do timeshifting either to take no marketing data from their services or to pay Tivo royalties for the privledge.
It seems like they just tacked on "computer <-> phone" to their existing AIM voice technology.
To me, it is arbitrary to say that once the "computer <-> computer" voice technology gets connected another voice system, POTS, that one is suddenly regulated (USF, etc). \
That being said, however one communicates, there needs to be technology for that medium that locates you in an emergency. One is not always able to spell out an exact location to 911 when in trouble.
A delivery system without decent content is an empty bowl. Microsoft should spend some of those billions for a content firm like Viacom or Time Warner.
LLM
Management usually does not have a good idea what happens on a day to day basis. Now it should be said that both we (IT staff) and management need to work together to solve this, but the end result is that, when asked whether they have the resources to work on a project, our uninformed management answers incorrectly. This results in over-subscribed staff who cannot easily focus on getting a particular project done on time. Instead we have to allocate small chunks of time for each of many projects just make sure we have made some progress when our customer calls. Little progress on lots of projects means none get finished in a reasonable amount of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't the term "containment" be better? Why invent a word when a suitable one already exists - oh wait, this is the tech industry... ;)
-LLM
I wonder if it's the zero length cell protection scheme with which the handbrake folks have been fighting.
t =30&t=266
http://handbrake.m0k.org/forum/viewtopic.php?star
-LLM
More precisely: I believe US patents are valid 20 years from *date of application*. Also if you publish your own patentable idea or sell a patentable product, I believe you have one year to file an application. If you want to litigate you must notify the public that your patent is "pending." You can then litigate once the patent has been issued. IANAL; consult one before you start the patent process.
LLM
I use Cinelerra to edit video on 64-bit Linux (http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3). According to their website, Cinelerra is much happier doing its math in 64-bit land.
-LLM
Has anyone compiled Opie for something like a P133 laptop? I am curious to know how a distro designed to work on lightweight platforms works with older heavyweight hardware with the same specs.
-LLM
Is the monolithic cross-platform OO.org still strictly necessary? The project has given the best gift we could have hoped for, a free and open office document format. Perhaps now instead of focusing on the clunkiness of the cross-platform OO.org interface in a particular operating system, we can convince experts in each platform to write native OpenDocument-based tools. That would be a chance for folks to solve some of the usability ills by leveraging the services each platform has to offer. For example, OO.org would no longer have to burn precious cycles developing cross platform OLE. Instead the native tools would use such facilities available in each platform. OO.org can then focus on making sure the file format can handle new features like collaboration tasks. My .02c
-LLM
Heh, I don't think Evolution is ready.
When I can start my Exchange-connected Evolution on Friday, leave it running all weekend to enable me to work from home, and then come in Monday to find that it has NOT sucked up ALL my RAM and swap, then, and only then, I will think it's ready.
Outlook 2003 may be a resource hog, but at least it stops grabbing resources eventually.
-LLM
Microsoft requires sales to drive development. To drive sales they "encourage" upgrades as much as possible. Most businesses, though, have been through expensive (both in terms of people power and money) Office upgrades several times in the last decade. They are understandably getting more and more gun-shy about upgrading yet again. For the home-user that simply needs to create documents for themselves, the competition is even more stiff. Several of my non-IT-concerned friends have not upgraded from the Office that came with their computer. Their Office does everything they need and they understand it. They see no need to go through the disruption of upgrading. Without the upgrades the funds to supply Office development will decrease. MS could raise prices, but that would prevent more people from upgrading. They could (as they have done) break backwards compatibility, but that also makes folks fear upgrading.
-LLM
Me: I use this operating system called Linux on my laptop. It's Open Source.
Friend: How much did it cost?
Me: It's "Free" as in free speech. I downloaded it.
Friend: It didn't cost you anything?
Folks, this is the economy of Walmart, Target, Costco, and Home Depot fed by 99-cent menus at McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's. The most important factor that attracts every person I have introduced to "FLOSS" is the price. Richard can be the idealist. Someone has to inspire the troops. But, money walks and bullshit talks. In the post-boom economy, anything that can enable folks to get work done on a computer without affecting the bottom line, either in terms of direct cost or avoiding the BSA, can be very enticing. Sure I yammer on about access to the code and how the code will always be open, etc, but free-as-in-beer is what sells the product the new folks.
Just my experience in the trenches....
-LLM
I have used the last release candidate to do "real" work on personal projects. That is, I actually tried to get things done with it rather than just clicking around to see how "Mac" it is. I have both MS Office X and NeoOffice/J installed. Office X is used for school work, where I cannot take a chance of my professors not being able to read a document.
1) In the early releases NeoOffice/J was sluggish. There were rendering delays with first word typed, pull-down menus, and switching tools, among other things. I am pleased to say that the interface speed has increased through the release candidate schedule. That said, you will find there are still delays here and there that may bother you. They bothered me until I used Office X again. That product has UI delays as well, just in different places. At this point I think it is a wash.
2) Stability (e.g. random crashes) was an issue on the earlier releases. These have been largely successfully addressed. In fact, when using the last RC to get work done I did not experience any crashes. Very nice.
3) The UI is somewhat confusing, since it departs from some of the standard metaphors we usually see in office software. The primary example is the tight coupling of the different suite functions. Those that are used to using one application for spreadsheets and another for presentations will need to aclimate to a monolithic application. This is not a big change per se; it just takes some getting used to. There are other minor departures, such as the lack of aqua widgets and different locations of buttons and menu items. Once I got used to these differences, I found the product usable for my project work.
All that being said, I have decided to do all my personal project work in NeoOffice/J. Why? The data I generate in my personal projects is valuable to me personally. I would like to maximize the chances of being able to read it in the distant future. Since the Open Office file format is completely open and documented, I believe that the OO.org file format has the greatest chance of being read 15-20 years from now. If there is not any software in 15-20 years that can read the format, then due to the open licensing on the format I could write/hire someone to write a program to read the documents. Try doing that with some archaic closed format. I will deal with quirks today to enable access to the my data tomorrow.
-LLM
...to plagerize directly from the CNN writer in one's submission. Sure cuts down on the writing.
I can understand why it was anonymous.
On the other hand, the cynic in me says that the CNN writer himself submitted the article anonymously to drive traffic to cnn.com...
-LLM
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/73002/wo/BM6C0BMsZR0m3blExQHNWY99xZW /11.0.0.11.1.0.6.9.3.19.0.1.0.1.1.2.1.0.1
is the closest I could find. This implies that the tech needed to get such resolution is still not being mass produced enough to get the price down to "webcam levels". I say be patient for now.
-LLM
Please try the website (now /.'d :-/) before commenting. The site does not provide a form fax where you fill in only your name and address. You must write your own text. Now they do provide a few bullet points to talk about, but the fax will be in your own words. I don't think they will all be "basically the same". I, myself, commented on an issue not mentioned in the bullet points.
LLM
Airbrushed cases? Yawn. I would be more impressed if they had a Darth Vader helmet or had licensed the Imperial cruiser or Millenium Falcon mods we have gushed over here before.
-LLM
Having this information crawled and therefore easily available to a world-wide audience makes me nervous. What if you are having passports or some other ID material shipped? Or medical tests? Interception is now that much easier. I know the protection before was via obscurity, i.e. the information was not crawled, but, personally, I think that shippers should not make this information crawlable.
-LLM
Regarding Xen support, is it robust enough to "jail" applications like web servers or ftp servers? Or, at least, can it be used to provide multiple personal "servers" as we have seen with VMware? -LLM
As everyone and their brother/sister jumps into the timeshifting business (even FLOSS), Tivo needs to stay viable. They can do that with marketing information. Correct me if I am wrong, but these patents look like they have to do with collecting data about viewing. Such market information is worth quite a bit to advertisers. I expect Tivo to use these patents to force cable providers who also do timeshifting either to take no marketing data from their services or to pay Tivo royalties for the privledge.
-LLM
For more on this topic read Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson...
LLM
A delivery system without decent content is an empty bowl. Microsoft should spend some of those billions for a content firm like Viacom or Time Warner. LLM
Management usually does not have a good idea what happens on a day to day basis. Now it should be said that both we (IT staff) and management need to work together to solve this, but the end result is that, when asked whether they have the resources to work on a project, our uninformed management answers incorrectly. This results in over-subscribed staff who cannot easily focus on getting a particular project done on time. Instead we have to allocate small chunks of time for each of many projects just make sure we have made some progress when our customer calls. Little progress on lots of projects means none get finished in a reasonable amount of time.
Since the donation page is /.'d, can you mirror the donation page elsewhere? Or perhaps post paypal info here?
Thanks! -LLM