Apple and Amazon have finally moved to music download services free of copy protection
I'm sorry, I was under the impression that Amazon's music service has always been DRM free. Could you please point me to a source showing that their service was ever under DRM? Did they offer a music service before Amazon MP3?
I don't know why everyone got excited when Apple went DRM-free, I've been buying DRM free MP3 singles from Amazon for over a year.
I don't think Microsoft is alone in their cling-to-DRM mentality. I think this will bomb but does it really even matter? It's just going to be another Zune/XBox bomb all over again offset by their other divisions so it's here to stay whether the market & investors say it should be or not. Oh well, if they want to lose money, let 'em. It does take more work for me to put my MP3s on my phone, maybe joe consumer won't put up with that and live with the DRM? We'll see after an upgrade though...
The courts had ordered the Pentagon to release additional prison torture pics and vids, stuff Congress had viewed in private and turned a lot of stomachs. Currently the Pentagon is illegally sitting on these pics. Can we get all the ugly in the open so we can start to earn our respect back?
You can find the DoD's FOIA request information here. I'm not entirely sure which sub department that would fall under but you could try with the military first.
They should help you:
Please note that this office is not a repository for documents maintained or released by the Department of the Army. Requests received in this office will be forwarded to the activity that has the responsibility for the subject matter requested. For a more timely response, please refer to the POC listing to ensure your request is submitted to the proper office.
After reviewing the POC listing, if you are still unsure which agency to contact, you may submit a request to the Department of the Army Freedom of Information Office, 7701 Telegraph Road, Suite 144, Alexandria, VA 22315-3905 and we will attempt to assist you. Requests to this office can also be sent electronically by emailing: DAFOIA@conus.army.mil, or Facsimile (703) 428-6522.
Address:
Department of the Army
Freedom of Information Act Office
7701 Telegraph Road, Suite 144
Alexandria, VA 22315-3905
E-mail: DAFOIA@conus.army.mil
Telephone: COMM (703) 428-6504 or DSN 328-6504
Facsimile: COMM (703) 428-6522 or DSN 328-6522
FOIA requesters who have any questions concerning the processing of their requests at the US Army Freedom of Information Act Office, should contact this center at (703) 428-6504. If you are not satisfied with the response from the center, you may contact the FOIA Public Liaisons, Mr. Robert Dickerson or Mr. Steven A. Raho, at (703)428-6504, Army_FOIA_Liaison@conus.army.mil.
There's a handbook online if you have questions. If you want something from the State department or FCC, they have pretty easy request forms online. I'm thinking you'll just get a big fat rejection but who knows?
My friend had money that Obama would say "Always bet on black" for his opening speech (paid 700:1) and that he would use the word 'banana' in his speech (paid 800:1). He lost them both.
Can I propose a simpler scheme where your friend just mails me money while being a racist nitwit? As long as that's his idea of a hobby...
Sure, as long as you are willing to send him back several thousand dollars in the event of some highly unlikely event. It's called "gambling" and he loves the it. He's also Indian American and has a great sense of humor.
Um, yeah, you would be surprised what offshore betting brings to the internet. My friend had money that Obama would say "Always bet on black" for his opening speech (paid 700:1) and that he would use the word 'banana' in his speech (paid 800:1). He lost them both. He also bets on every play during football games, especially returns. And he also bets on how long the national anthem lasts at the beginning of each game.
I wish I could link you to the site but it's hard to get to.
You may be able to say that there is always someone willing to quote you a line for anything anytime as long as they get a cut/rake.
I will say that although I have not had the joy of opening Office 2000 files with OO.o 3.0, I do recall there being some serious issues between powerpoint slides. Some weird rendering going on in OO.o for what reason I do not know. In my line of work, powerpoint is perversely pervasive--to the point of alarm for me. If this is true for you, do some testing before taking the plunge!
Are there any reliable ways to view/edit/save a document saved in the OpenXML format through Open Office...
The best recommendation I can give you is to do this change only if you can assure that it will not hinder your ability to serve your customer or detract largely from productivity.
Go to Obama/Biden's issues site and flip through the plans. There are a few measurable details here and there on this site. Like his statement about Iraq:
Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 â" more than 7 years after the war began.
He better have a really good reason for not starting to redeploy brigades from Iraq with an end goal of 16 months. A really good reason.
For us tech minded geeks, his fact sheet--including:
Protect the Openness of the Internet
And if I don't see him take the steps he talks about in that plan, I'm going to quickly realize he's just another lying politician. Here's another point that needs to be reprinted all over:
Open Up Government to its Citizens: The Bush Administration has been one of the most secretive, closed
administrations in American history. Our nation's progress has been stifled by a system corrupted by millions of
lobbying dollars contributed to political campaigns, the revolving door between government and industry, and
privileged access to inside information--all of which have led to policies that favor the few against the public
interest. An Obama presidency will use cutting-edge technologies to reverse this dynamic, creating a new level
of transparency, accountability and participation for America's citizens. Technology-enabled citizen
participation has already produced ideas driving Obama's campaign and its vision for how technology can help
connect government to its citizens and engage citizens in a democracy. Barack Obama will use the most current
technological tools available to make government less beholden to special interest groups and lobbyists and
promote citizen participation in government decision-making. Obama will integrate citizens into the actual
business of government by:
Making government data available online in universally accessible formats to allow citizens to make use
of that data to comment, derive value, and take action in their own communities. Greater access to
environmental data, for example, will help citizens learn about pollution in their communities, provide
information about local conditions back to government and empower people to protect themselves.
Establishing pilot programs to open up government decision-making and involve the public in the work
of agencies, not simply by soliciting opinions, but by tapping into the vast and distributed expertise of
the American citizenry to help government make more informed decisions.
Requiring his appointees who lead Executive Branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct
the significant business of the agency in public, so that any citizen can watch a live feed on the Internet
as the agencies debate and deliberate the issues that affect American society. He will ensure that these
proceedings are archived for all Americans to review, discuss and respond. He will require his
appointees to employ all the technological tools available to allow citizens not just to observe, but also
to participate and be heard in these meetings.
Restoring the basic principle that government decisions should be based on the best-available,
scientifically-valid evidence and not on the ideological predispositions of agency officials.
Aside from the fact that your post is a load of horseshit, I suppose that you didn't step up to the plate by telling management what you witnessed.
And, incidentally, once the youngster took his car to the shop to be repaired, the tampering would have been discovered, and your fictional coworker would have been thrown in jail (hmm just where did this after market valve and regulator come from anyway?). In most states tampering with an automobile is a felony.
Alright alright, I need to come clean... I embellished on this story a little bit. Here's the truth:
I was going to tell my boss but when I walked in, the coworker I was ratting out was on his knees with a mouthful of my boss and I think he said, "Oh hai!" I didn't stick around to clarify, I just left.
And it wasn't a car, it was a hovercraft. And it wasn't a regulator & valve, it was a detonator & C4. And he wasn't late for a meeting, he died. And don't worry about the law, Virginia isn't a state it's a commonwealth.
I feel almost relieved to get that off my chest and to come clean with you. I think I answered all your questions truthfully and fairly. Hopefully, together you and I can keep the internet a sound unbiased source of nothing but the unadulterated truth and historic account of everything.
Why, just the other day, a coworker was in contention for a promotion that was going to a younger engineer. My coworker found the specs to the younger engineer's car online and determined the precise rate it would have to leak coolant to completely drain the reserve tank precisely when he was leaving home to make an important customer meeting the next morning. I saw him on a crawl board attaching the regulator and a valve system in the parking lot and sure enough it overheated at precisely the right time so our customer just sat their waiting.
It's a calculate-or-be-calculated world out there!
First off, there are WAY too many pages to this article for me to read but it looks fun so maybe later.
But in regards to this, I would like a physicist to boil large problems down to "We can't do X because of the simple problem of Y." Example with Mr. Fusion: We can't do Mr. Fusion because the amount of energy that goes into creating the conditions for fusion outweigh the amount of energy produced. That's something measurable and approachable to me, a starting point.
If it comes down to the problem requiring a Free Lunch, I'd probably give up early--I'm not one to disobey the laws of thermodynamics.
In middle school I devoted large amounts of time and reams of paper to developing a formula f(n) to produce the nth prime number (at the time I was searching for O(1) oh how naive I was about mathematical induction!) and it was all because a teacher explained how powerful such a formula would be for encryption and many other things.
While I (obviously) never solved it, I sure the hell enjoyed the simplified form of a much more complex problem. And on top of that, it kind of set the tone for computer science in my life. Could hoverboards & time machines turn a movie goer into a physicist? Maybe not often but it happens.
First, please tell me you've seen the Futurama episodes with the lawyer chicken.
I'm just a country lawyer, but as far as I know: (a) it's not possible to appeal the order, (b) it was procedurally improper and ineffective to file a notice of appeal, and (c) it was improper to direct their motion for a stay to the District Court Judge.
Well, I'm not a lawyer but isn't it pretty much the modus operandi of lawyers who are paid insane amounts of money to toe the line in the interest of their clients?
I am by no means defending this action, but... come on, you wouldn't do the same thing? They've been getting away with everything in private for so long, why ruin a good thing? If this becomes popular, the bawling college student they win a $500,000 suit against isn't going to help their image as heartless vampires.
Shouldn't Sun change the license of OpenOffice.org to protect their fans or are they doing this to protect someone else?
First of all, it's the general public that doesn't understand open source that need protection--highly unlikely a 'fan' would buy OpenOffice.org or even download it from a third party.
Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)
Unless she downloaded it without being notified upfront of the cost, she ain't going to win this one. If they even host a binary distribution from their site they can claim the bandwidth you used was worth whatever you have to pay. If they aren't also offering you the source code or haven't given it to you of that distribution, you could maybe send the EFF after them and try to escape via that route... although I've seen lawyers work their magic & you could still end up paying.
Third, they aren't going to limit or restrict selling their software because this could turn into a scary thing for companies. I write proprietary software for my job. I use code licensed as open source. I make available the source to my customer and they pay my company quite well so that we can adopt and add to that code to specifically suite their needs. It's fairly close to 'software as a service.' Now, assuming I used some library (I can't think of anything off of OO.o that I would use) but my company's law-talkin' guys would be scared as hell if it said I couldn't charge money for it... because maybe it's an integral part of our product?
Do your friend a favor: sit down with her and talk with her. Explain to her that not every piece of software requires you pay out your ass to use it. In the United States, I would call the Better Business Bureau and let them know about this company you speak of. I don't know a lot about your rights or organizations that will help you in Germany but I wish you the best of luck.
Bottom line: For the sake of and proliferation of open source, please don't argue for a fork of the GPL or even for stipulations on charging to be worked into it.
A communication coming in abroad is no different than a package.
I disagree. Communication to me is the transmission of ideas. If you are still attaching them to pieces of trees, then they may be searched although the contents of that idea should not be.
A package, on the other hand, is the transmission of matter. The government may keep that right to intercept those but I will not stand for the censorship and/or interception of ideas or information!
And don't whine to me about National Security... it's the agencies' jobs to keep that from ever being sent across a border.
You should ask the people in Cairo where they think we're heading. Egypt's a "democratic" country terrorizing its people under the guise of a "war on terror." Really, you just need to intercept communications of those people who oppose you in any form or fashion and simply provide even the slightest proof that they belong to The Muslim Brotherhood. The screams in the night are nothing to concern you, comrade, you haven't done anything wrong so why should you be worried?
I don't think anything really bad is being done against the American people at this moment. I do think that boundaries are being crossed whereby if the wrong person gets into power, there is no going back. Just ask yourself: What Would Nixon Do?
And now that DivX is throwing its weight behind the Matroska container, MKV support should increasingly find its way on a range of non-PC devices, such as Blu-ray players, HD digital televisions and set-top boxes.
I don't know man, I think both DivX & Adobe have hidden costs even if both like you to view them as "open." I would put my money on Adobe coming through with better player/container support & marketing. On top of that, I don't know of any plans for DRM in Matroska.
So while this is great news for the people who want to put their home videos out there with software that doesn't support DRM (is the average user really going to care though?), I think that the MPAA & porn industry are going to be the deciders here (as they usually are).
My prediction: Flash 9 will become so pervasive that everyone will use that as a container instead of asking their users to download & install a DivX codec.
Fresh off their annual market survey, eWEEK channel folks have compiled the list of tech vendors their readers think will fail, falter, or be sold off in 2009.
Wrong. Everyone falters at some point. You could probably make a claim that 60% of companies will "falter" this year and be able to point to some debacle, low quarter or misstep to claim you were accurate. Hell, in one of the many fields it's in, Microsoft will falter in 2009--I guarantee it. From the actual article:
In the Channel Insider 2009 Market Pulse Survey, we asked solution providers which vendors they thought would go out of business or be acquired in 2009.
So you're underscoring just how stupid the people that filled out this survey are. Because to say that Sun, AMD or even Novell will be acquired or out of business by December 31st, 2009 is like betting on your favorite American Football team to win the Super Bowl in 2025.
The Channel Insider Prediction at the bottom of these reveals just how unlikely every single one of these predictions comes across as. They predominately disagree with every single reader prediction.
It means that not only are we, the readers, being presented with completely contradictory statements on every page but every single statement is unfounded and backed up by nothing. No market saturation analysis or even talk of operations and profits. Market cap and revenue are good indicators but they don't mean everything.
Others, like CA and Symantec, not so surprising.
"Not so surprising?" Tell me, what has changed so dramatically for 2009 that makes you say that these companies will be acquired or go under?
So tell me, what is a list of reader predictions dealing with the finances and markets of tech companies doing on a 'news for nerds' site?
What other companies are headed for implosion, or should be if all were right with the universe?
Ah, the coup de grÃce for this article... I'm certain that the Slashdot community will proffer only on the most unbiased and strongly founded suggestions for this objective question.
While I often found his stories and comments to be far reaching, overstated, overly optimistic & sometimes bordered on religious zealotry, I will miss his contributions and wish his family and friends well. I hope they know that Roland was a man committed to the proliferation of technology and advancements has done great things for both our community & society.
It is also comforting to see a soul survive and prosper in a technological field and end up where they want to live blogging peacefully. I hope my own retirement and passing are similar instead of some of the mindless inane existences I know my ancestors have lived out in nursing homes and/or in front of a TV.
In My Opinion, Cisco Should Be Worried
on
Google Router Rumors
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Even looking at Google from the outside, even by just knowing that they have hundreds of thousands of desktop machines behind their world class search, even just knowing that those machines have to be connected someway somehow.... you know they
Already have something that beats what Cisco offers.
Have been testing/improving it for years.
Can simply point to their success as reasons you should buy into their technology (no matter how proprietary it is).
Of course, there's a lot of questions that remain to be answered... like many claims they could not be operating on TCP/IP stacks on the inside. Because it's such a resource hog in some respects but that's irrelevant--I'm certain they can apply some of their ideas universally. I would put my money on them being the leader in research on networks and network theory... probably past Cisco even (although behind the NSA as no one's ever sure about those guys). I feel that networking is so closely tied to their bread and butter search application that they should be dumping huge R&D into that field. I can't offer proof but it certainly makes sense to me.
And all I can say is that it's about time someone put pressure on the home & enterprise networking hardware companies. What a stagnant squabbling market that has become.
the problem with being concerned with forward contamination is that you can't even step off into the bushes and take a shit.
Are we really able to put a person on the moon but not properly dispose of their waste?
these are real issues, but until we actually go to some other worlds and kill them all off with smallpox blankets we can't really be sure who, if anyone, is actually in danger.
I'm not sure why you brought up smallpox blankets... I thought those were things designed to destroy the populations of already known indigenous peoples? I think a better analogy would be the rats that were on board the ship from Europe that made it to the New World or maybe even the pigs that escaped and made short work of the squash/tuber/corn plant systems the Native Americans depended so heavily upon? Look around you, there are many species in North America that were 'accidentally' brought here. Look at the Kudzu vine that was in resource contention with plants that didn't stand a chance against it? Smallpox blankets were basically germ warfare... why would we bring germ warfare to another planet?
we can't really be sure who, if anyone, is actually in danger. the big question (other than, is there life out there not based on ours or that we are not based on) is whether life necessarily follows the same lines, or is different enough to where it won't matter.
Well, I have more faith in our current technologies and I am saddened that you don't think we can learn from our errors. You seem to be resigned to the fact that we will destroy whatever we visit but I disagree. We have the ability to manufacture germ free CPUs here on earth and I think we should do our best to keep our external systems and machines also germ free. I think we have even been fairly successful in that.
Lastly, this outer space treaty was signed by many countries and for good reason: all the scientist thought it an absolute necessity.
I don't know why we're so concerned about cross-contamination. The only potential downside to it that I can see is if it obscures evidence that life existed on other planets.
I just find it hard to care about balls of rock and their 'pristine environment'.
the contamination of other worlds with Earth microbes. The risk of forward-contamination is twofold: that human beings may accidentally seed a previously sterile world, thus creating "extraterrestrials" that are really of terrestrial origin (and which might even make it impossible to determine whether the life later found is terrestric or local); or that an actual alien biosphere could be devastated by Earth's bacteria.
So if these escape on Mars and we land later and find microbes how do we know that 1) they aren't really terrestrial or evolved descendants of our microbes and 2) they didn't inadvertently disrupt or destroy original organisms to the planet.
I think it's more so a caution but scientists and people interested in the idea of life forming independently on other planets care very much so.
The converter boxes aren't that expensive, about as much as a new game, sure it sucks to be forced to buy new equipment but there are other things one can do besides watch TV if they are so unwilling to suffer the cost of the boxes.
This is true, my grandmother bought one for $30. Not too expensive. However, when I came home for Christmas, she asked me to hook the box up. She needed the TV to record soap operas on her VCR while she was at work. That is all she used it for (we're talking technologically inept middle of nowhere country folk here). Ok, so I run the coaxial cable into the back of the converter, then put the RCA cables into the input on the back of the VCR (which then turned into a coaxial cable to the back of her TV as her TV is 20 years old and that's all it has). Everything is working fine but as a side result, she can't program different channels because the converter box determines the channels. Ok, not a big deal to her.
But then we record something and I notice a very peculiar thing with the color. I seem to recall that if you had put a DVD signal through a VCR, the color would modulate so that people couldn't dupe videos (or maybe there is a technical restriction). Anyway, she said she would put up with it but after watching 10 minutes of TV I wanted to throw the damned thing through the window.
So tell me, how do you record on these things to a VCR with no color modulation... I tried a few other VCRs at my parent's house and they all seem to do it.
A significant improvement on a crappy OS is still a crappy OS.
I respectfully disagree. At its first release Linux was probably a crappy OS but each subsequent release grew better and better until it wasn't crappy. Who knows, maybe even Windows 7 will live up to the price they ask for it?
No flame intended, but really... who uses FreeBSD anymore?
I certainly don't. But I like the idea of another free operating system for me out there. What would have happened if the courts had screwed Linux and SCO had won and successfully shut down anyone using the Linux kernel? Well, I'd tell you what I would have done: switched all my machines to FreeBSD and recompiled the packages on all the software I used for it. Luckily (and rightfully), I don't have to do this.
You don't mean to flame but what other reason is there for you to ask who uses FreeBSD? Leave the community alone, there are very few fanboys and annoyances about it... if they want to continue with their operating system, I say let them! Who knows what it could become one day? I wish the FreeBSD team the best of luck and am certain I have inadvertently gained from them in some way and therefore appreciate all their hard work and efforts.
Can you look them in the eye and say "choose cancer"?
No, no I can't. I can, however, look them in the eye and say that removing any amount of genetic material or replacing it can have unexpected results. I'm not a biologist of any sort but we still don't have a full understanding of the human genome. Mapping, sure, but we're largely ignorant of what everything does.
Assuming they can assure that this will only effect the cancer risk, then they should go for it.
I recall a study that removed what was thought of as "junk DNA" from mice. In which case, they were badly deformed and doomed from birth because that "junk" was actually acting as a decoy or buffer or something (I don't think they ever really figured it out) to absorb deformities. From the article:
Hirotsune's team made their discovery during an unrelated study in which they inserted a fruit fly gene into embryonic mice. The fruit fly DNA disrupted the mouse pseudogene for makorin1, a gene thought to be associated with bone and kidney development. Most of the mice in this line died within days of birth, exhibiting severe kidney and bone deformities, even though the proper makorin1 gene was unaffected. Putting additional copies of makorin1 or its pseudogene into the mice helped only somewhat. But when Hirotsune reintroduced an intact copy of the original pseudogene into mouse embryos, the animals developed normally.
So assuming this gene has no other function unfortunately might be something we don't find out... until we try it.
I sincerely wish them and their offspring the best of luck at leading full healthy lives. Were I in their place, I would be considering adoption.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple and Amazon have finally moved to music download services free of copy protection
I'm sorry, I was under the impression that Amazon's music service has always been DRM free. Could you please point me to a source showing that their service was ever under DRM? Did they offer a music service before Amazon MP3?
...
I don't know why everyone got excited when Apple went DRM-free, I've been buying DRM free MP3 singles from Amazon for over a year.
I don't think Microsoft is alone in their cling-to-DRM mentality. I think this will bomb but does it really even matter? It's just going to be another Zune/XBox bomb all over again offset by their other divisions so it's here to stay whether the market & investors say it should be or not. Oh well, if they want to lose money, let 'em. It does take more work for me to put my MP3s on my phone, maybe joe consumer won't put up with that and live with the DRM? We'll see after an upgrade though
The courts had ordered the Pentagon to release additional prison torture pics and vids, stuff Congress had viewed in private and turned a lot of stomachs. Currently the Pentagon is illegally sitting on these pics. Can we get all the ugly in the open so we can start to earn our respect back?
You can find the DoD's FOIA request information here. I'm not entirely sure which sub department that would fall under but you could try with the military first.
They should help you:
Please note that this office is not a repository for documents maintained or released by the Department of the Army. Requests received in this office will be forwarded to the activity that has the responsibility for the subject matter requested. For a more timely response, please refer to the POC listing to ensure your request is submitted to the proper office.
After reviewing the POC listing, if you are still unsure which agency to contact, you may submit a request to the Department of the Army Freedom of Information Office, 7701 Telegraph Road, Suite 144, Alexandria, VA 22315-3905 and we will attempt to assist you. Requests to this office can also be sent electronically by emailing: DAFOIA@conus.army.mil, or Facsimile (703) 428-6522.
Address: Department of the Army Freedom of Information Act Office 7701 Telegraph Road, Suite 144 Alexandria, VA 22315-3905
E-mail: DAFOIA@conus.army.mil Telephone: COMM (703) 428-6504 or DSN 328-6504 Facsimile: COMM (703) 428-6522 or DSN 328-6522
FOIA requesters who have any questions concerning the processing of their requests at the US Army Freedom of Information Act Office, should contact this center at (703) 428-6504. If you are not satisfied with the response from the center, you may contact the FOIA Public Liaisons, Mr. Robert Dickerson or Mr. Steven A. Raho, at (703)428-6504, Army_FOIA_Liaison@conus.army.mil.
There's a handbook online if you have questions. If you want something from the State department or FCC, they have pretty easy request forms online. I'm thinking you'll just get a big fat rejection but who knows?
Can I propose a simpler scheme where your friend just mails me money while being a racist nitwit? As long as that's his idea of a hobby...
Sure, as long as you are willing to send him back several thousand dollars in the event of some highly unlikely event. It's called "gambling" and he loves the it. He's also Indian American and has a great sense of humor.
Perhaps your "racism" comments would be more better directed at the Irish bookie making these offerings to the betting community? I think the "Obama Cliche Betting" section has most of what was being offered.
They take bets about this kind of thing?
Um, yeah, you would be surprised what offshore betting brings to the internet. My friend had money that Obama would say "Always bet on black" for his opening speech (paid 700:1) and that he would use the word 'banana' in his speech (paid 800:1). He lost them both. He also bets on every play during football games, especially returns. And he also bets on how long the national anthem lasts at the beginning of each game.
I wish I could link you to the site but it's hard to get to.
You may be able to say that there is always someone willing to quote you a line for anything anytime as long as they get a cut/rake.
Microsoft Office 2000 to Open Office 3.0
I will say that although I have not had the joy of opening Office 2000 files with OO.o 3.0, I do recall there being some serious issues between powerpoint slides. Some weird rendering going on in OO.o for what reason I do not know. In my line of work, powerpoint is perversely pervasive--to the point of alarm for me. If this is true for you, do some testing before taking the plunge!
Are there any reliable ways to view/edit/save a document saved in the OpenXML format through Open Office ...
I regrettably give you the option of getting Novell's OO.o distribution (here) in which you can install an extension for OpenXML.
The best recommendation I can give you is to do this change only if you can assure that it will not hinder your ability to serve your customer or detract largely from productivity.
Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 â" more than 7 years after the war began.
He better have a really good reason for not starting to redeploy brigades from Iraq with an end goal of 16 months. A really good reason.
For us tech minded geeks, his fact sheet--including:
Protect the Openness of the Internet
And if I don't see him take the steps he talks about in that plan, I'm going to quickly realize he's just another lying politician. Here's another point that needs to be reprinted all over:
Open Up Government to its Citizens: The Bush Administration has been one of the most secretive, closed administrations in American history. Our nation's progress has been stifled by a system corrupted by millions of lobbying dollars contributed to political campaigns, the revolving door between government and industry, and privileged access to inside information--all of which have led to policies that favor the few against the public interest. An Obama presidency will use cutting-edge technologies to reverse this dynamic, creating a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America's citizens. Technology-enabled citizen participation has already produced ideas driving Obama's campaign and its vision for how technology can help connect government to its citizens and engage citizens in a democracy. Barack Obama will use the most current technological tools available to make government less beholden to special interest groups and lobbyists and promote citizen participation in government decision-making. Obama will integrate citizens into the actual business of government by:
Aside from the fact that your post is a load of horseshit, I suppose that you didn't step up to the plate by telling management what you witnessed.
And, incidentally, once the youngster took his car to the shop to be repaired, the tampering would have been discovered, and your fictional coworker would have been thrown in jail (hmm just where did this after market valve and regulator come from anyway?). In most states tampering with an automobile is a felony.
Alright alright, I need to come clean ... I embellished on this story a little bit. Here's the truth:
I was going to tell my boss but when I walked in, the coworker I was ratting out was on his knees with a mouthful of my boss and I think he said, "Oh hai!" I didn't stick around to clarify, I just left.
And it wasn't a car, it was a hovercraft. And it wasn't a regulator & valve, it was a detonator & C4. And he wasn't late for a meeting, he died. And don't worry about the law, Virginia isn't a state it's a commonwealth.
I feel almost relieved to get that off my chest and to come clean with you. I think I answered all your questions truthfully and fairly. Hopefully, together you and I can keep the internet a sound unbiased source of nothing but the unadulterated truth and historic account of everything.
You've helped me help myself. I love you.
Do Nice Engineers Finish Last In Tough Times?
Why, just the other day, a coworker was in contention for a promotion that was going to a younger engineer. My coworker found the specs to the younger engineer's car online and determined the precise rate it would have to leak coolant to completely drain the reserve tank precisely when he was leaving home to make an important customer meeting the next morning. I saw him on a crawl board attaching the regulator and a valve system in the parking lot and sure enough it overheated at precisely the right time so our customer just sat their waiting.
It's a calculate-or-be-calculated world out there!
First off, there are WAY too many pages to this article for me to read but it looks fun so maybe later.
But in regards to this, I would like a physicist to boil large problems down to "We can't do X because of the simple problem of Y." Example with Mr. Fusion: We can't do Mr. Fusion because the amount of energy that goes into creating the conditions for fusion outweigh the amount of energy produced. That's something measurable and approachable to me, a starting point.
If it comes down to the problem requiring a Free Lunch, I'd probably give up early--I'm not one to disobey the laws of thermodynamics.
In middle school I devoted large amounts of time and reams of paper to developing a formula f(n) to produce the nth prime number (at the time I was searching for O(1) oh how naive I was about mathematical induction!) and it was all because a teacher explained how powerful such a formula would be for encryption and many other things.
While I (obviously) never solved it, I sure the hell enjoyed the simplified form of a much more complex problem. And on top of that, it kind of set the tone for computer science in my life. Could hoverboards & time machines turn a movie goer into a physicist? Maybe not often but it happens.
I'm just a country lawyer, but as far as I know: (a) it's not possible to appeal the order, (b) it was procedurally improper and ineffective to file a notice of appeal, and (c) it was improper to direct their motion for a stay to the District Court Judge.
Well, I'm not a lawyer but isn't it pretty much the modus operandi of lawyers who are paid insane amounts of money to toe the line in the interest of their clients?
... come on, you wouldn't do the same thing? They've been getting away with everything in private for so long, why ruin a good thing? If this becomes popular, the bawling college student they win a $500,000 suit against isn't going to help their image as heartless vampires.
I am by no means defending this action, but
Submitter: your friend should just stick it to the man and pirate it from Bittorrent. That'll teach those money-grubbing bastards!
A strongly opinionated statement on Slashdot promoting the legal use of BitTorrent?!
These are indeed strange times in which we live.
Shouldn't Sun change the license of OpenOffice.org to protect their fans or are they doing this to protect someone else?
First of all, it's the general public that doesn't understand open source that need protection--highly unlikely a 'fan' would buy OpenOffice.org or even download it from a third party.
Second, your friend is boned.
Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)
Unless she downloaded it without being notified upfront of the cost, she ain't going to win this one. If they even host a binary distribution from their site they can claim the bandwidth you used was worth whatever you have to pay. If they aren't also offering you the source code or haven't given it to you of that distribution, you could maybe send the EFF after them and try to escape via that route ... although I've seen lawyers work their magic & you could still end up paying.
... because maybe it's an integral part of our product?
Third, they aren't going to limit or restrict selling their software because this could turn into a scary thing for companies. I write proprietary software for my job. I use code licensed as open source. I make available the source to my customer and they pay my company quite well so that we can adopt and add to that code to specifically suite their needs. It's fairly close to 'software as a service.' Now, assuming I used some library (I can't think of anything off of OO.o that I would use) but my company's law-talkin' guys would be scared as hell if it said I couldn't charge money for it
Do your friend a favor: sit down with her and talk with her. Explain to her that not every piece of software requires you pay out your ass to use it. In the United States, I would call the Better Business Bureau and let them know about this company you speak of. I don't know a lot about your rights or organizations that will help you in Germany but I wish you the best of luck.
Bottom line: For the sake of and proliferation of open source, please don't argue for a fork of the GPL or even for stipulations on charging to be worked into it.
A communication coming in abroad is no different than a package.
I disagree. Communication to me is the transmission of ideas. If you are still attaching them to pieces of trees, then they may be searched although the contents of that idea should not be.
... it's the agencies' jobs to keep that from ever being sent across a border.
A package, on the other hand, is the transmission of matter. The government may keep that right to intercept those but I will not stand for the censorship and/or interception of ideas or information!
And don't whine to me about National Security
You should ask the people in Cairo where they think we're heading. Egypt's a "democratic" country terrorizing its people under the guise of a "war on terror." Really, you just need to intercept communications of those people who oppose you in any form or fashion and simply provide even the slightest proof that they belong to The Muslim Brotherhood. The screams in the night are nothing to concern you, comrade, you haven't done anything wrong so why should you be worried?
I don't think anything really bad is being done against the American people at this moment. I do think that boundaries are being crossed whereby if the wrong person gets into power, there is no going back. Just ask yourself: What Would Nixon Do?
Why the Mediterranean Is the Net's Achilles' Heel
Becuase Radia Perlman held the Internet by the Mediterranean when she dipped it into the river Styx?
And now that DivX is throwing its weight behind the Matroska container, MKV support should increasingly find its way on a range of non-PC devices, such as Blu-ray players, HD digital televisions and set-top boxes.
I don't know man, I think both DivX & Adobe have hidden costs even if both like you to view them as "open." I would put my money on Adobe coming through with better player/container support & marketing. On top of that, I don't know of any plans for DRM in Matroska.
So while this is great news for the people who want to put their home videos out there with software that doesn't support DRM (is the average user really going to care though?), I think that the MPAA & porn industry are going to be the deciders here (as they usually are).
My prediction: Flash 9 will become so pervasive that everyone will use that as a container instead of asking their users to download & install a DivX codec.
Pats.
"Pats?" I haven't heard of them ... are they like a team of sexually indeterminable players?
Fresh off their annual market survey, eWEEK channel folks have compiled the list of tech vendors their readers think will fail, falter, or be sold off in 2009.
Wrong. Everyone falters at some point. You could probably make a claim that 60% of companies will "falter" this year and be able to point to some debacle, low quarter or misstep to claim you were accurate. Hell, in one of the many fields it's in, Microsoft will falter in 2009--I guarantee it. From the actual article:
In the Channel Insider 2009 Market Pulse Survey, we asked solution providers which vendors they thought would go out of business or be acquired in 2009.
So you're underscoring just how stupid the people that filled out this survey are. Because to say that Sun, AMD or even Novell will be acquired or out of business by December 31st, 2009 is like betting on your favorite American Football team to win the Super Bowl in 2025.
The Channel Insider Prediction at the bottom of these reveals just how unlikely every single one of these predictions comes across as. They predominately disagree with every single reader prediction.
It means that not only are we, the readers, being presented with completely contradictory statements on every page but every single statement is unfounded and backed up by nothing. No market saturation analysis or even talk of operations and profits. Market cap and revenue are good indicators but they don't mean everything.
Others, like CA and Symantec, not so surprising.
"Not so surprising?" Tell me, what has changed so dramatically for 2009 that makes you say that these companies will be acquired or go under?
So tell me, what is a list of reader predictions dealing with the finances and markets of tech companies doing on a 'news for nerds' site?
What other companies are headed for implosion, or should be if all were right with the universe?
Ah, the coup de grÃce for this article ... I'm certain that the Slashdot community will proffer only on the most unbiased and strongly founded suggestions for this objective question.
While I often found his stories and comments to be far reaching, overstated, overly optimistic & sometimes bordered on religious zealotry, I will miss his contributions and wish his family and friends well. I hope they know that Roland was a man committed to the proliferation of technology and advancements has done great things for both our community & society.
It is also comforting to see a soul survive and prosper in a technological field and end up where they want to live blogging peacefully. I hope my own retirement and passing are similar instead of some of the mindless inane existences I know my ancestors have lived out in nursing homes and/or in front of a TV.
I seem to remember rumors of them building their own insane (10 GbE) hardware switches. And I don't think that's hard to imagine as nothing on the market at the time could possibly meet their needs.
... like many claims they could not be operating on TCP/IP stacks on the inside. Because it's such a resource hog in some respects but that's irrelevant--I'm certain they can apply some of their ideas universally. I would put my money on them being the leader in research on networks and network theory ... probably past Cisco even (although behind the NSA as no one's ever sure about those guys). I feel that networking is so closely tied to their bread and butter search application that they should be dumping huge R&D into that field. I can't offer proof but it certainly makes sense to me.
Of course, there's a lot of questions that remain to be answered
And all I can say is that it's about time someone put pressure on the home & enterprise networking hardware companies. What a stagnant squabbling market that has become.
the problem with being concerned with forward contamination is that you can't even step off into the bushes and take a shit.
Are we really able to put a person on the moon but not properly dispose of their waste?
these are real issues, but until we actually go to some other worlds and kill them all off with smallpox blankets we can't really be sure who, if anyone, is actually in danger.
I'm not sure why you brought up smallpox blankets ... I thought those were things designed to destroy the populations of already known indigenous peoples? I think a better analogy would be the rats that were on board the ship from Europe that made it to the New World or maybe even the pigs that escaped and made short work of the squash/tuber/corn plant systems the Native Americans depended so heavily upon? Look around you, there are many species in North America that were 'accidentally' brought here. Look at the Kudzu vine that was in resource contention with plants that didn't stand a chance against it? Smallpox blankets were basically germ warfare ... why would we bring germ warfare to another planet?
we can't really be sure who, if anyone, is actually in danger. the big question (other than, is there life out there not based on ours or that we are not based on) is whether life necessarily follows the same lines, or is different enough to where it won't matter.
Well, I have more faith in our current technologies and I am saddened that you don't think we can learn from our errors. You seem to be resigned to the fact that we will destroy whatever we visit but I disagree. We have the ability to manufacture germ free CPUs here on earth and I think we should do our best to keep our external systems and machines also germ free. I think we have even been fairly successful in that.
Lastly, this outer space treaty was signed by many countries and for good reason: all the scientist thought it an absolute necessity.
I don't know why we're so concerned about cross-contamination. The only potential downside to it that I can see is if it obscures evidence that life existed on other planets.
I just find it hard to care about balls of rock and their 'pristine environment'.
Well, the article cites fear of Forward-Contamination which is
the contamination of other worlds with Earth microbes. The risk of forward-contamination is twofold: that human beings may accidentally seed a previously sterile world, thus creating "extraterrestrials" that are really of terrestrial origin (and which might even make it impossible to determine whether the life later found is terrestric or local); or that an actual alien biosphere could be devastated by Earth's bacteria.
So if these escape on Mars and we land later and find microbes how do we know that 1) they aren't really terrestrial or evolved descendants of our microbes and 2) they didn't inadvertently disrupt or destroy original organisms to the planet.
I think it's more so a caution but scientists and people interested in the idea of life forming independently on other planets care very much so.
The converter boxes aren't that expensive, about as much as a new game, sure it sucks to be forced to buy new equipment but there are other things one can do besides watch TV if they are so unwilling to suffer the cost of the boxes.
This is true, my grandmother bought one for $30. Not too expensive. However, when I came home for Christmas, she asked me to hook the box up. She needed the TV to record soap operas on her VCR while she was at work. That is all she used it for (we're talking technologically inept middle of nowhere country folk here). Ok, so I run the coaxial cable into the back of the converter, then put the RCA cables into the input on the back of the VCR (which then turned into a coaxial cable to the back of her TV as her TV is 20 years old and that's all it has). Everything is working fine but as a side result, she can't program different channels because the converter box determines the channels. Ok, not a big deal to her.
... I tried a few other VCRs at my parent's house and they all seem to do it.
But then we record something and I notice a very peculiar thing with the color. I seem to recall that if you had put a DVD signal through a VCR, the color would modulate so that people couldn't dupe videos (or maybe there is a technical restriction). Anyway, she said she would put up with it but after watching 10 minutes of TV I wanted to throw the damned thing through the window.
So tell me, how do you record on these things to a VCR with no color modulation
A significant improvement on a crappy OS is still a crappy OS.
I respectfully disagree. At its first release Linux was probably a crappy OS but each subsequent release grew better and better until it wasn't crappy. Who knows, maybe even Windows 7 will live up to the price they ask for it?
No flame intended, but really... who uses FreeBSD anymore?
I certainly don't. But I like the idea of another free operating system for me out there. What would have happened if the courts had screwed Linux and SCO had won and successfully shut down anyone using the Linux kernel? Well, I'd tell you what I would have done: switched all my machines to FreeBSD and recompiled the packages on all the software I used for it. Luckily (and rightfully), I don't have to do this.
... if they want to continue with their operating system, I say let them! Who knows what it could become one day? I wish the FreeBSD team the best of luck and am certain I have inadvertently gained from them in some way and therefore appreciate all their hard work and efforts.
You don't mean to flame but what other reason is there for you to ask who uses FreeBSD? Leave the community alone, there are very few fanboys and annoyances about it
Can you look them in the eye and say "choose cancer"?
No, no I can't. I can, however, look them in the eye and say that removing any amount of genetic material or replacing it can have unexpected results. I'm not a biologist of any sort but we still don't have a full understanding of the human genome. Mapping, sure, but we're largely ignorant of what everything does.
Assuming they can assure that this will only effect the cancer risk, then they should go for it.
I recall a study that removed what was thought of as "junk DNA" from mice. In which case, they were badly deformed and doomed from birth because that "junk" was actually acting as a decoy or buffer or something (I don't think they ever really figured it out) to absorb deformities. From the article:
Hirotsune's team made their discovery during an unrelated study in which they inserted a fruit fly gene into embryonic mice. The fruit fly DNA disrupted the mouse pseudogene for makorin1, a gene thought to be associated with bone and kidney development. Most of the mice in this line died within days of birth, exhibiting severe kidney and bone deformities, even though the proper makorin1 gene was unaffected. Putting additional copies of makorin1 or its pseudogene into the mice helped only somewhat. But when Hirotsune reintroduced an intact copy of the original pseudogene into mouse embryos, the animals developed normally.
So assuming this gene has no other function unfortunately might be something we don't find out ... until we try it.
I sincerely wish them and their offspring the best of luck at leading full healthy lives. Were I in their place, I would be considering adoption.