Only giving children access to Microsoft is actually crippling their ability to use computers effectively.
If you only learn how to use one OS or one office system, then you will only ever know how to use one.
If you learn how to use two OSes or two office systems, then you will be able to handle any other OS or office system you come across later in life, because you will have learnt the additional (and vital) skill of adaptability.
"MS Office is here to stay"...and ten years ago, it would have been "WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 are here to stay!"
Who knows what office systems will be in use in 2010 or 2020. I imagine that there'll be greater diversity than now, whatever happens - the likes of OpenOffice.org will be adopted increasingly as people realise they have a choice, even if others will continue to use MS Office for both good and bad reasons.
The one thing I can absolutely guarantee is that your child - at least if she is under 14 and planning to go to university - will not be using Office 2000 or Office 2003 in her first job.
I wouldn't want to be a Dutch iPod salesman...
on
Dutch Pass iPod Tax
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The single market in the European Union means that people living in the Netherlands can just buy their iPods, blank CD-Rs etc from a country like the UK, which doesn't impose taxes like this. Which is one reason why I bet the proposal will end up either being dropped, or else watered down sufficiently to create less of an incentive for shopping around.
My worry is that the UK will end up being forced to adopt similar levies in the name of "harmonisation", which would be ruinously expensive for those of us who only buy blank CD-Rs to use for data rather than music.
Reading the GPL, I can't see what the fuss is about. The discussion seems to have arisen from talking about "derived works" in a fairly loose sense - "If I create a document using a GPL-ed font, that work is derived from the font, so covered by the GPL" - rather than looking at the GPL itself and what it means by "derived works".
What the GPL means by "derived works" is works created under section 2, which states that "You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program..."
So we're talking about programs that *modify* the GPL-ed original: in this case, modifications to the font itself. If you take the original font and modify it, then the modified font is covered by the GPL; it is a "derived work" in the GPL's sense of that term.
However, using a font in a document does not modify that font in any way. The fact that one can loosely talk about a document being "derived" from the fonts used in it doesn't bring it within the scope of section 2 of the GPL.
Finally, there is the issue of how a court would interpret the GPL if this issue were ever litigated. Certainly within the UK (I'm an English-qualified lawyer), it is inconceivable that any court would hold that documents created using GPLed fonts were therefore covered by the GPL. If the worst came to the worst, any English court (and I suspect in most other common law jurisdictions, such as the US) would almost certainly imply additional licence terms into the arrangement: "If you make a font available for use, then - in the absence of a very clear and strong statement to the contrary - there is *obviously* an implied licence for people to use that font, unmodified, in their documents, without restricting their rights in those documents".
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Only giving children access to Microsoft is actually crippling their ability to use computers effectively.
If you only learn how to use one OS or one office system, then you will only ever know how to use one.
If you learn how to use two OSes or two office systems, then you will be able to handle any other OS or office system you come across later in life, because you will have learnt the additional (and vital) skill of adaptability.
"MS Office is here to stay" ...and ten years ago, it would have been "WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 are here to stay!"
Who knows what office systems will be in use in 2010 or 2020. I imagine that there'll be greater diversity than now, whatever happens - the likes of OpenOffice.org will be adopted increasingly as people realise they have a choice, even if others will continue to use MS Office for both good and bad reasons.
The one thing I can absolutely guarantee is that your child - at least if she is under 14 and planning to go to university - will not be using Office 2000 or Office 2003 in her first job.
The single market in the European Union means that people living in the Netherlands can just buy their iPods, blank CD-Rs etc from a country like the UK, which doesn't impose taxes like this. Which is one reason why I bet the proposal will end up either being dropped, or else watered down sufficiently to create less of an incentive for shopping around.
My worry is that the UK will end up being forced to adopt similar levies in the name of "harmonisation", which would be ruinously expensive for those of us who only buy blank CD-Rs to use for data rather than music.
Reading the GPL, I can't see what the fuss is about. The discussion seems to have arisen from talking about "derived works" in a fairly loose sense - "If I create a document using a GPL-ed font, that work is derived from the font, so covered by the GPL" - rather than looking at the GPL itself and what it means by "derived works". What the GPL means by "derived works" is works created under section 2, which states that "You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program..." So we're talking about programs that *modify* the GPL-ed original: in this case, modifications to the font itself. If you take the original font and modify it, then the modified font is covered by the GPL; it is a "derived work" in the GPL's sense of that term. However, using a font in a document does not modify that font in any way. The fact that one can loosely talk about a document being "derived" from the fonts used in it doesn't bring it within the scope of section 2 of the GPL. Finally, there is the issue of how a court would interpret the GPL if this issue were ever litigated. Certainly within the UK (I'm an English-qualified lawyer), it is inconceivable that any court would hold that documents created using GPLed fonts were therefore covered by the GPL. If the worst came to the worst, any English court (and I suspect in most other common law jurisdictions, such as the US) would almost certainly imply additional licence terms into the arrangement: "If you make a font available for use, then - in the absence of a very clear and strong statement to the contrary - there is *obviously* an implied licence for people to use that font, unmodified, in their documents, without restricting their rights in those documents".