Note that format compatibility is rarely mentioned here if at all. It's the features, big and small, that make you productive or just allow you to get the job done.
Well, I dunno about Solaris, but on Linux/home can be mounted with the "noexec" option, preventing a user from running any binaries from their home directory.
LaTeX/LyX can be an option, but it is a niche thing. Scientific magazines and stuff like that. Most often, your employer/customer would require a word processor format.
Apparently they didn't think over the feasibility of their initial migration to OpenOffice.org. Hopefully this taught them the lesson that free as in beer and free as in speech may not be enough.
I hate to say it, but for an awful lot of people not dealing with the simplest documents OOo is still far from being viable. Moreover, MS compatibility is only a part of the problem, and probably even not the largest one. For example, a good list of what a professional such as a technical writer or translator misses in OOo Writer can be found here:
Well, for St. Pete the average salary was 14,633 RUR as of this February. Not that different actually, when you consider a mortgage. When talking about average families (using anecdotal evidence, as you admit yourself), you actually envision a sample from your specific environment, which could very well fall into the 2 percent cited in the RSPP head's report. As for side income, it can work somehow for buying small stuff like home appliances etc., but is much more problematic for cars and real estate, since we are talking loans and mortgages now, and this means you have to confirm your official large income. There were and probable still are banks willing to consider the "unofficial" source of income, but this is all on a shaky ground, as you understand.
Yes some people are buying real estate. Yes I see can the houses being built, it's just that it's misleading to qualify the situation here as a construction boom. (I see boom as a condition where supply rapidly outpaces demand driving prices down - something we don't see here.) In my post I provided a qualification - an average salary. As of last August, this is like 11,000 RUR. No way you can afford a mortgage with a salary like that.
So the question is, what kind of people that is and what is the percent of them. By virtue of your specific environment (family, colleagues, friends etc.) you may be tricked into thinking that mortgages are a trivial part of Russian life. They are not. According to a report by RSPP head on the 4th International Banking Forum that took place in Sochi on September 9, 2006, only 2 percent of Russian population can afford mortgages from the total of 350 banks that offer them. Part of the problem is that many buyers are simply investors, another part - that there is little competition on the real estate market (due to involvement of "administrative resourse" in parcellation and facilities connection), yet another - legalization of income. Under today's conditions, the minimum European level of 30 sq. m. per capita can be achieved only in 45 years.
Firstly, we seem to agree on underinvestment (to put it mildly). This is good. Secondly, nowhere did I say that all of those money should be invested. When you remove the "all" word, you need the specific figures and proofs why inflation would measurably rise from specific investments. You haven't provided them so far. Thirdly, you can invest large money without rising inflation by hiring foreign contractors. Yes, money would go abroad, but investment will stay here, which is more important - because, for example, good roads boost transportation business, and transportation is involved in most industries. Money is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. If money stays home but is not invested, this money is a dead weight. Moreover, investment must be done now when the oil/gas prices are high; when they fall, the money will be spent on more current, short-term goals.
As for economic policy, I beg to differ. Primakov started (and conducted most successful transformations related to non-payment crisis) under Yeltsin, together with Maslyukov who was - shock, horror! - a communist. Kasyanov's cabinet generated policy proposals, and not merely what was ordered by the President Administration. Putin has never had an economic policy of his own - and neither has Yeltsin, for that matter. They largely let the cabinet implement its policy. Nowadays, the government means nothing. President Administration serves as a government now (and the servile Parliament rubberstamps pretty much everything they spew out). Economical decisions are basically taken by a close circle of Putins friends from KGB/FSK/FSB, and, by pure coincidence, from "Ozero" dacha cooperative, and they are taken considering their specific business interests. You can consider them the modern version of oligarchs. As I said before, corruption is more rampant and more systemic than ever, and also more difficult to trace since a significant chunk of current bureaucrats are from FSB. And corruption is the ultimate evil for business climate in the country.
construction is booming
Puhlease, are you joking now? If it were booming, we wouldn't have this outrageous level of prices. A Russian with the average salary can never afford a mortgage under these prices. But as far as I remember, the national project is called "Affordable Housing". So no, not even a glimpse of success here. And it probably has to do mostly not even with the project itself, but with corruption, taxes, bad laws, and weak property rights.
infant mortality goes down
It goes all the way down since 1994 with a slight peak around 1998 (http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2006/0255/lisa01.php). Surely it must be due to Putin, right?
birth rates up
See above regarding economic policy.
The Reform of the military industrial complex, the aircraft industry, the shipbuilding industry are all putin's childs.
Well, this is the only place where I can't argue much. Though where aircraft industry is concerned, there is a question whether one big holding is a solution here.
Oligarchs now invest in the country, well they are now forced to do something for their country.
A forced investment is not really an investment. This is a tax at best, and a robbery at worst. A policemen extorting money from you on the street could also say that he makes you invest in law enforcement of your country.
A forced investment, as a rule, is not effective. They would probably invest more (the oligarchs don't need a dead weight, either), if it weren't for the abovementioned corruption, taxes, bad laws, and weak property rights.
and they nearly destroyed Russia
Interesting, how exactly? Many people say that, but not many care to elaborate (aside from Chechnya, which under Kadyrov Jr. is as independent de facto as in the 90s, they're just smart not to express it that way.)
The western press isn't any better, just look how they surpressed war critics
That economic development you speak of, started under PM Primakov and strengthened under PM Kasyanov (the same that is The Evil Oppositioner now.) Those were the real implementors; it wasn't Putin's economic policy after all. About oil/gas revenues staying in the country, that doesn't matter very much for normal people (look at the roads, public medical service, schools; hell, we could get a completely upgraded military for that money!) The money is just not invested (except in a spot-like, unsystematic manner); the "national projects" are a joke by implementation. (BTW, talking about funds staying home, Stabilization Fund money are invested on the foreign market.) Corruption has soared and became more systemic. After Putin abolished governor elections, governors no longer depend in any way from the population of their respective territories and can do all sorts of crazy things (an example would be the gigantomaniac Matvienko in St. Petersburg that wants to stuff the area near the historical city center with 100- and 300-m buildings). There are "stop lists" on federal TV in radio stations - lists of people that should not be interviewed or even mentioned in news. The remaining elections are fully controlled by means of taking the "wrong" candidates off list for bullshit reasons (see "Yabloko" in St. Petersburg; the party was taken off list for allegedly false signatures; then people were brought before the Electoral Commission that were ready to testify that their signatures are not false, but the Commisssion refused to consider this and confirmed the earlier decision.) This is a sample of what is going in Russia under Putin. Unfortunately, it isn't even pragmatic; this situation costs Russia very much even from entirely domestic point of view.
It is completely irrelevant for the discussion whether the world is deterministic or not
Amen to that! Not many people seem to get it. Determinism does not allow "free will": if all decisions you take are determined by your constitution and your past, your will is not free. Randomness does not allow "free will" either: if all decisions you take are random, there can't be any talk of free will, unless you think of a die as having free will, too. The only possible medium stance is that your decisions are due to a combination of deterministic and random factors, but neither of the constituents give us free will, so it is not possible here, either.
The subject of free will is irrelevant to human life and completely academic. Regardless of it existence, I have an inherent illusion of it in my mind anyway. The problems of punishment and reward, in connection with which the question of free will arises, can be solved without this shaky hypothesis. You just have to realize that whether or not such things as fault or merit exist in the ultimate sense, punishment and reward are there to influence the future, and not to somehow settle up accounts with the past.
AFAIK DEB is better in this specific aspect due to historical reasons, not some inherent qualities of DPKG. It's just that DEB systems tend to be less diverse than RPM-based ones (RedHat vs SUSE vs Mandriva vs AltLinux etc...).
Good luck creating a package (be it RPM or DEB) that would work on every RPM or DEB system out there. (DEB being better here, there's not as much variation present.) If it were that simple, there would be no autopackage, klik or zero install and many other install systems. It's not impossible, but it's damn hard. Different library versions and naming conventions, different default prefixes, menu item installation troubles (unfortunately, reliance on fd.o doesn't always work out), MIME registration troubles. Also you cannot install RPM or DEB under a different prefix or under a user's home directory.
But what's good about Autopackage, is that even if you don't use it as a container, you can in principle make binary compatible and relocatable packages in your preferred format (AFAIK RPM allows relocation, it's just that prefixes are virtually always hardcoded in software).
Now that's what I call really insightful. Take Echo Moskvy radio station (http://www.echo.msk.ru) as an example: despite being owned by Gazprom, state gas monopoly, it's largely in a fierce opposition to Putin's regime. The answer is simple: they have negligible reach as far as air broadcasting goes, and Internet is an everyday news source for a relatively small percent of people (smth. like 20-30%). At the same time, all radio and TV stations that cover most of the country are effectively tightly controlled by the state.
What intellectual property? It's not copyrights - MS is not required to give code. It's not patents and not trademarks. What EU wants is the info on how the code works, so that other software vendors could make software that properly interoperates with the products of a monopolist that Microsoft is. This is only fair.
for estimating the market for alternative platforms like Linux. They look how many people use their online app from under Linux, and then decide if this is going to justify the investment associated with porting.
I suggest that you read a bit about both formats and how they were developed. And actually look at the XML samples of both. Google it, it's not so hard.
Slashdot Mirror
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&comm ent_id=226219 [osnews.com]m ent_id=226313 [osnews.com]m ent_id=226315 [osnews.com]
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&com
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&com
Note that format compatibility is rarely mentioned here if at all. It's the features, big and small, that make you productive or just allow you to get the job done.
I'm afraid it will take a little bit more than just a spellchecker.
m ent_id=226219m ent_id=226313m ent_id=226315
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&com
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&com
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&com
This is not specifically about students, but many points raised here apply to students as well.
Well, I dunno about Solaris, but on Linux /home can be mounted with the "noexec" option, preventing a user from running any binaries from their home directory.
Middle East, stop fucking.
Corrected it for you. Though the measure you suggest looks a bit too radical.
Why? The Politcorrectness Religion forbids stating differences in male and female psychology? :-)
LaTeX/LyX can be an option, but it is a niche thing. Scientific magazines and stuff like that. Most often, your employer/customer would require a word processor format.
Apparently they didn't think over the feasibility of their initial migration to OpenOffice.org. Hopefully this taught them the lesson that free as in beer and free as in speech may not be enough.
m ent_id=226219m ent_id=226313m ent_id=226315
I hate to say it, but for an awful lot of people not dealing with the simplest documents OOo is still far from being viable. Moreover, MS compatibility is only a part of the problem, and probably even not the largest one. For example, a good list of what a professional such as a technical writer or translator misses in OOo Writer can be found here:
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&com
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&com
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=17593&com
Well, for St. Pete the average salary was 14,633 RUR as of this February. Not that different actually, when you consider a mortgage. When talking about average families (using anecdotal evidence, as you admit yourself), you actually envision a sample from your specific environment, which could very well fall into the 2 percent cited in the RSPP head's report. As for side income, it can work somehow for buying small stuff like home appliances etc., but is much more problematic for cars and real estate, since we are talking loans and mortgages now, and this means you have to confirm your official large income. There were and probable still are banks willing to consider the "unofficial" source of income, but this is all on a shaky ground, as you understand.
Yes some people are buying real estate. Yes I see can the houses being built, it's just that it's misleading to qualify the situation here as a construction boom. (I see boom as a condition where supply rapidly outpaces demand driving prices down - something we don't see here.) In my post I provided a qualification - an average salary. As of last August, this is like 11,000 RUR. No way you can afford a mortgage with a salary like that.
So the question is, what kind of people that is and what is the percent of them. By virtue of your specific environment (family, colleagues, friends etc.) you may be tricked into thinking that mortgages are a trivial part of Russian life. They are not. According to a report by RSPP head on the 4th International Banking Forum that took place in Sochi on September 9, 2006, only 2 percent of Russian population can afford mortgages from the total of 350 banks that offer them. Part of the problem is that many buyers are simply investors, another part - that there is little competition on the real estate market (due to involvement of "administrative resourse" in parcellation and facilities connection), yet another - legalization of income. Under today's conditions, the minimum European level of 30 sq. m. per capita can be achieved only in 45 years.
Firstly, we seem to agree on underinvestment (to put it mildly). This is good. Secondly, nowhere did I say that all of those money should be invested. When you remove the "all" word, you need the specific figures and proofs why inflation would measurably rise from specific investments. You haven't provided them so far. Thirdly, you can invest large money without rising inflation by hiring foreign contractors. Yes, money would go abroad, but investment will stay here, which is more important - because, for example, good roads boost transportation business, and transportation is involved in most industries. Money is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. If money stays home but is not invested, this money is a dead weight. Moreover, investment must be done now when the oil/gas prices are high; when they fall, the money will be spent on more current, short-term goals.
As for economic policy, I beg to differ. Primakov started (and conducted most successful transformations related to non-payment crisis) under Yeltsin, together with Maslyukov who was - shock, horror! - a communist. Kasyanov's cabinet generated policy proposals, and not merely what was ordered by the President Administration. Putin has never had an economic policy of his own - and neither has Yeltsin, for that matter. They largely let the cabinet implement its policy. Nowadays, the government means nothing. President Administration serves as a government now (and the servile Parliament rubberstamps pretty much everything they spew out). Economical decisions are basically taken by a close circle of Putins friends from KGB/FSK/FSB, and, by pure coincidence, from "Ozero" dacha cooperative, and they are taken considering their specific business interests. You can consider them the modern version of oligarchs. As I said before, corruption is more rampant and more systemic than ever, and also more difficult to trace since a significant chunk of current bureaucrats are from FSB. And corruption is the ultimate evil for business climate in the country.
construction is booming
Puhlease, are you joking now? If it were booming, we wouldn't have this outrageous level of prices. A Russian with the average salary can never afford a mortgage under these prices. But as far as I remember, the national project is called "Affordable Housing". So no, not even a glimpse of success here. And it probably has to do mostly not even with the project itself, but with corruption, taxes, bad laws, and weak property rights.
infant mortality goes down
It goes all the way down since 1994 with a slight peak around 1998 (http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2006/0255/lisa01.php). Surely it must be due to Putin, right?
birth rates up
See above regarding economic policy.
The Reform of the military industrial complex, the aircraft industry, the shipbuilding industry are all putin's childs.
Well, this is the only place where I can't argue much. Though where aircraft industry is concerned, there is a question whether one big holding is a solution here.
Oligarchs now invest in the country, well they are now forced to do something for their country.
A forced investment is not really an investment. This is a tax at best, and a robbery at worst. A policemen extorting money from you on the street could also say that he makes you invest in law enforcement of your country.
A forced investment, as a rule, is not effective. They would probably invest more (the oligarchs don't need a dead weight, either), if it weren't for the abovementioned corruption, taxes, bad laws, and weak property rights.
and they nearly destroyed Russia
Interesting, how exactly? Many people say that, but not many care to elaborate (aside from Chechnya, which under Kadyrov Jr. is as independent de facto as in the 90s, they're just smart not to express it that way.)
The western press isn't any better, just look how they surpressed war critics
There is no such
That economic development you speak of, started under PM Primakov and strengthened under PM Kasyanov (the same that is The Evil Oppositioner now.) Those were the real implementors; it wasn't Putin's economic policy after all. About oil/gas revenues staying in the country, that doesn't matter very much for normal people (look at the roads, public medical service, schools; hell, we could get a completely upgraded military for that money!) The money is just not invested (except in a spot-like, unsystematic manner); the "national projects" are a joke by implementation. (BTW, talking about funds staying home, Stabilization Fund money are invested on the foreign market.) Corruption has soared and became more systemic. After Putin abolished governor elections, governors no longer depend in any way from the population of their respective territories and can do all sorts of crazy things (an example would be the gigantomaniac Matvienko in St. Petersburg that wants to stuff the area near the historical city center with 100- and 300-m buildings). There are "stop lists" on federal TV in radio stations - lists of people that should not be interviewed or even mentioned in news. The remaining elections are fully controlled by means of taking the "wrong" candidates off list for bullshit reasons (see "Yabloko" in St. Petersburg; the party was taken off list for allegedly false signatures; then people were brought before the Electoral Commission that were ready to testify that their signatures are not false, but the Commisssion refused to consider this and confirmed the earlier decision.) This is a sample of what is going in Russia under Putin. Unfortunately, it isn't even pragmatic; this situation costs Russia very much even from entirely domestic point of view.
Russia defines so much about itself by its opposition to the USA
Excellent point! And this is mostly for domestic consumption.
Oh buddy, seems like you are jealous that your former slave found himself another master?
Not specifically, but in modern Russia that's basically it, except for the "manufacturing" part :-) It's usually gas and oil companies.
Yes. I offered another (simplistic) explanation above, but ultimately, "free" is not a valid predicate for the subject "will".
It is completely irrelevant for the discussion whether the world is deterministic or not
Amen to that! Not many people seem to get it. Determinism does not allow "free will": if all decisions you take are determined by your constitution and your past, your will is not free. Randomness does not allow "free will" either: if all decisions you take are random, there can't be any talk of free will, unless you think of a die as having free will, too. The only possible medium stance is that your decisions are due to a combination of deterministic and random factors, but neither of the constituents give us free will, so it is not possible here, either.
The subject of free will is irrelevant to human life and completely academic. Regardless of it existence, I have an inherent illusion of it in my mind anyway. The problems of punishment and reward, in connection with which the question of free will arises, can be solved without this shaky hypothesis. You just have to realize that whether or not such things as fault or merit exist in the ultimate sense, punishment and reward are there to influence the future, and not to somehow settle up accounts with the past.
AFAIK DEB is better in this specific aspect due to historical reasons, not some inherent qualities of DPKG. It's just that DEB systems tend to be less diverse than RPM-based ones (RedHat vs SUSE vs Mandriva vs AltLinux etc...).
Good luck creating a package (be it RPM or DEB) that would work on every RPM or DEB system out there. (DEB being better here, there's not as much variation present.) If it were that simple, there would be no autopackage, klik or zero install and many other install systems. It's not impossible, but it's damn hard. Different library versions and naming conventions, different default prefixes, menu item installation troubles (unfortunately, reliance on fd.o doesn't always work out), MIME registration troubles. Also you cannot install RPM or DEB under a different prefix or under a user's home directory.
But what's good about Autopackage, is that even if you don't use it as a container, you can in principle make binary compatible and relocatable packages in your preferred format (AFAIK RPM allows relocation, it's just that prefixes are virtually always hardcoded in software).
Wow, looks like the court seriously fscked up here... Do you by chance have a link to the court decision on that case?
Now that's what I call really insightful. Take Echo Moskvy radio station (http://www.echo.msk.ru) as an example: despite being owned by Gazprom, state gas monopoly, it's largely in a fierce opposition to Putin's regime. The answer is simple: they have negligible reach as far as air broadcasting goes, and Internet is an everyday news source for a relatively small percent of people (smth. like 20-30%). At the same time, all radio and TV stations that cover most of the country are effectively tightly controlled by the state.
Yes, yes and yes - if these companies are deemed monopolies.
What intellectual property? It's not copyrights - MS is not required to give code. It's not patents and not trademarks. What EU wants is the info on how the code works, so that other software vendors could make software that properly interoperates with the products of a monopolist that Microsoft is. This is only fair.
Yeah, but God kills these, too.
for estimating the market for alternative platforms like Linux. They look how many people use their online app from under Linux, and then decide if this is going to justify the investment associated with porting.
I suggest that you read a bit about both formats and how they were developed. And actually look at the XML samples of both. Google it, it's not so hard.