Personally, I think that the only way ODF can become a universal file format is if it's possible to convert *all* formats (broken or not, Microsoft format or not) into ODF. Conversion from ODF into broken formats isn't required nor is round-trip conversion (If you have to round-trip for OOXML, use DOC which has almost universal reverse engineered support). The reason is simple. People currently have a lot of legacy out there and late ODF adopters will have a lot of OOXML legacy. Imagine you're early adopters with a lot of legacy (not necessarily DOC or OOXML) or late adopters with a lot of OOXML legacy. Without a way of escaping the legacy trap, you'll have no choice but to give up their terabytes of legacy or forever pay Microsoft to access their legacy and force people to live (for at least 10 years since many financial and health documents require at least this much retention) with two system (and implement the necessary duplicate infrastructure and retraining). The cost of adopting ODF will likely be too high. If Y2K has taught us anything is that even when a clear problem is know, people won't do anything about it until the last minute unless it threatens to shut down the company.
ODF is a fantastic concept that will save you a lot of money and give you a lot of freedom and flexibility in the future. If there is no at least moderate fidelity legacy format to ODF conversion, sticking with OOXML or other legacy formats gives managers a whole lot less (company) political and (transition cost, legacy duplication) financially a whole lot less grief *in the present* (where bonuses are decided).
If, OTOH, there is a moderate fidelity legacy format to ODF conversion available for all popular legacy formats, the world open up to you. You can get rid of hundreds of incompatible systems and formats and have a more uniform system that is free from vendor lock-in. Managers can save *a lot* of money, especially since they no longer have to worry about being held hostage to one vendor that charges them whatever they can get away with and they don't have to support multiple incompatible systems.
Actually, it's a common tactic, especially in a weak minority government as the case in Canada at the moment.
Suppose you want Law X (because of some strong lobby), but you know know that the opposition (especially a discredited opposition that wants to win some points) will not allow Law X. How do you get your law passed?
Step 1. Propose Law X+Y+Z+W where Y, Z, and W are unacceptable to everyone, including you. Step 2. The opposition will jump on it and demand it be changed. Step 3. You debate or form "a royal commission" which ends up stripping the draconian Y, Z, and W provisions buy leave the milder Law X that you wanted as a "fair compromise". Step 4. The opposition gets their bone, and you get credit for being reasonable (after all, you gave up so many provisions) without sacrificing your principles (Law X), Step 5. The politicians are happy, and the rest of us suffer.
The only way to counteract this tactic is for the opposition to propose an "anti-X+Y+Z+W" amendment to the law you proposed which also has strong lobby and attempts to liberalize the status quo in a way that no sane person would accept. Debate happens and the end result is that nothing changes because "the status quo is the best compromise" and both sides claim victory for defending the public from "the radicals on the other side".
Unfortunately, I don't know anyone in the opposition that has the backbone to suggest an "anti-X+Y+Z+W" amendment.
"One Click" shopping is an e-commerce technique, which allows a customer to purchase products via the Internet without repeatedly entering personal information such as name and address. At the time it was introduced it eased the frustration of on-line shopping.
So soon after the RFC was *announced* Amazon requested a patent for doing what the RFC was specifically designed for. If you ignore the sleeziness of the action, it would be virtually impossible to find prior art since no implementation was possible before the standard was approved. And even if an early implementations of cookies existed, since Amazon was one of the few e-commerce site out there at the time, there would be virtually no chance of finding another prior art implementation.
Now you could go to the real-world analogy of going to a friendly store and pointing at a bunch of things and saying "Charge it", but since it's done by "a computer" it magically turns into a completely different thing.
The problem is, Windows like a free puppy--cute and cuddly but it requires massive investments in time and training, You also have to consider the support costs and (virus) medical bills and all the (non-free application) food you have to pay. And when, the puppy makes a mess on your carpet or "eats your homework", you have only yourself to blame.
Linux, OTOH is free like free-will. The more you exercise it, the more you have. As long as you don't become too complacent and let others (proprietary vendors) make your decisions for you "just this one time" (famous last words), your costs will go down in the long term as you're able to do things you previously weren't able to (because you have the source and new opportunities exist where none existed before).
The problem most people and companies and countries face now is that they've been convinced that being complacent is actually good for them. "Don't worry about the details", they're told, "it's all handled for you in your best interests. Honest.". The problem is, the details *are* important and end up biting you when your interests conflict with theirs (forced upgrades, forced obsolescence, silent changes, silent feature removals, vendor lock-in, inflexibility, increased support costs that you have to accept, privacy).
I think that the only honest thing the "The OpenDocument Foundation" can do is rename itself "The Compound Documents Format Foundation", since to do otherwise would be as deceitful as Microsoft choosing to name OOXML "Office Open XML". But honestly, I doubt they will. Their comparison chart between CDF and ODF betrays a few lies: http://opendocument.foundation.googlepages.com/GOSCON_Chart.pdf In particular: * CDF is not OOXML compatible, nor has any implementation shown this to be possible. ODF at least has a not-100% compatible conversion. * ODF has a lot more big vendor support than CDF * Neither are universal formats, but ODF is supported by more vendors and software projects at the moment.
Personally, I think that the reasons for "The OpenDocument Foundation" changing it's support from ODF to CDF is self-interest. When ODF was first introduced, there was money to be made for a small company to write MS Office/Corel Office/Mac Office plugins and other conversion services. But then Sun and others started offering free converters and conversion services. There's just too much competition too quickly
CDF, OTOH is not as well supported universally, so there's a lot more room for a small company. And if the CDF growth rate is slow, the "The OpenDocument Foundation" has the chance to become *the CDF conversion experts* and make a lot of money. Also, since CDF (if you believe their claims) is more web oriented, it would be good for transactional converters of many types that need to be used for each message. With ODF, you convert your document once and don't have to worry about going back (by purpose....ODF is best for documents that have to be read, as is 100 years from now). The difference in profit between one-time business and licensed per transaction business could huge, even if CDF has a smaller market.
As far as Project replacement, the only open source competitor that even comes close to MS Project (that also reads MS Project files) is OpenProj: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openproj/
There are only two problems with it: 1) It uses an attribution license (hope they eventually wise up and switch to a better FOSS license) 2) It's a bit slow -- they *really* need to switch from Java runtime to GCJ compiled Java.
On the plus side, since it's Java, it's available on all platforms that OpenOffice is available.
(I know about GanttProject and have used it, but it still has a way to go.)
Seriously, almost nothing is obvious to all people. Even something as basic as counting is not obvious to everyone ( http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=1207 ). Even the old cliche "The only intuitive interface is the nipple" is false, since it ignores the fact that some new mothers have breast feeding problems.
On top of that, many of the "obvious" things we know are wrong in some situations. It's "obvious" that when you drop a ball, it falls down....except if you're in space or your ball is more buoyant than its environment or.....
So "obvious" only has a meaning when referring to an audience in a particular context. For anyone in the computer world, it's "obvious" that if something exists in the real world that it's also possible for the same thing to exist in the virtual world. In this case, the real world analogy of "pointing to an item and saying 'put it on my tab'" is exactly equivalent to the computer implementation of the 1-click patent. It's "obvious" even though the technology for implementation might not be for a person who's unfamiliar with Java-script, HTML, cookies, and sessions (which sound more like a cooking show than a patent application).
BTW, your quote shows precisely the problem of most patent application. They use complex wordings to describe simple concepts in order to make that patent sound like something that should be patented. As Orwell pointed out, that's intellectual dishonesty ( http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm ).
If I were in charge of the patent office (and if I believed patenting was justified, which I don't), I'd reject any patent application that couldn't be phrased in a way that could be understood by a 10 year old, yet get solicit a "cool, why didn't I think of that!" response from anyone that looked at it.
The problem is, how to do you define "Server" and "Desktop"? Suppose you're using a primary desktop. If you run an access-like database on your computer, are you a server? If you allow file sharing are you a server? If you have your own personal wiki, are you a server? Suppose that wiki is visible to other computers in an intranet?
As far as servers go, what do you call a VMWare server or terminal-server? Is it a server or a desktop?
The problem is, in the real world, there are very few "pure desktops" out there, so if you optimize for the pure desktop, everything else suffers.
It's not a new problem. HIG people face exactly this issue every time there are calls to divide a GUI into an "beginner", "intermediate", and "expert" mode since you eventually end up with beginners who need to do some expert things and experts who don't want to have to do "simple things difficult" as the normal case (which generally happens to make difficult things possible). HIG people generally agree that moded interfaces are a cop-out. If you do things right, the GUI should be simple but scalable to advanced needs.
That's what Linus and the kernel gang are trying to do. Do things right instead of copping out. Make Linux good for both the "Pure Desktop" and the "Pure Server" and everything in between. It may not be "optimal" for the "Pure Desktop" or "Pure Server", but it should be possible for it to be indistinguishable by anyone else other than the ricers.
> If you are 'slow' (don't read handicapped here), you get special teachers and special dummed down classes for you,
Personal experience. From grade 1-3 I was classified as in need of special classes for reading. There were funding cuts, so no special classes were offered after grade 3. My former teachers despaired that poor-me would be trampled under the weight of having adapt to regular classes.
My grade 4 teacher had a different attitude. He told me to forget about labels since what people say about you often has little bearing of who you are. He said that failing on something I try is not shameful. Many of the greatest people failed hundreds of times, but they learned something each time and got better. What is shameful is not trying or not living up to one's full potential, which he stated I was not. Ultimately, only I knew if I were living up to that potential and I would recognize that potential if I gave everything I had in me but still found the courage and determination to try and to keep trying to go further.
Under that teacher, I went from the bottom of the class to the top.
Given my experience, the last thing most students need is to have courses be easier for them. They need to be challenged and engaged. They need to learn to love challenges because the rewards of *FINALLY* breaking through are a thousand times more rewarding and self-confidence building than taking the easy way out and knowing "you didn't really deserve it" and assuming "if it's not easy, then it's not worth the effort".
This is especially true in the sciences, where by definition, you're investigating the unknown and you don't know if your lifetime's work will amount to anything other than an "Okay I showed that this isn't possible by the means I used, try something else" guidepost for other researchers.
> You can't just use a shorthand if it isn't completely common.
Of course you can. We do it all the time. Tell me, what is the colour *blue*. It's guarenteed that what some of what I call green, others will call blue or yellow or turquoise or even grey or red (if you're colour blind). There are few things in this world where you can get 100% agreement in, but you can get close. Which is why most religions and secular philosophies can agree on so much even though they have completely different world views on what life and existence are.
Evil exists. Whether it's caused by some red suited goatee wearing gen-x wannabee with a farm tool or it's caused by a chemical imbalance or improper nurturing or incomplete knowledge of the full impact or an underdeveloped or badly developed soul or all of the above is irrelevant.
It doesn't matter where it comes from and we shouldn't be afraid of calling a spade a spade.
What you're arguing isn't that evil isn't a meaningless concept, but that just because someone does a lot of evil things it doesn't mean that everything a person does is evil. So Jack the Ripper might have been a model parent and gave generously to charity and that Bush might actually do something good and selfless once and a while.
My personal use is audiobooks and podcasts. There's so much free content for audiobooks and podcasts out there it's ridiculous. I also have some paid audiobooks. Even if I assumed that the levey meant it were now open season on uploading and downloading paid audiobooks, 0% of the revenue gained from the levy would go to audiobook creators. What makes music so special that it should get all the revenue for audiobooks, pictures (personal and commercial), PDFs (ebooks and personal), and other media? How on earth is this levy going to be distributed fairly?
Actually, they're saying something quite different. They're saying the ODF is too limiting, so they'll accept ODF if they can add MS Proprietary components (e.g. OOXML components or even OOXML embedded documents) into ODF and still call it an ODF document. This, of course, makes ODF worse different than OOXML, since if everyone could embed anything into an ODF document, no-one would be able to read anyone's document, but one thing is for certain. If 90% of people use MS Word, then non-MS Word ODF extensions will be considered to be "a file saving error" by most people, so only Microsoft will be able to pull this off successfully.
Basically, the standard: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish that they've used time and time again.
It's actually worse when you consider site licenses and MSDN Universal should cover these naked PCs, so you're paying more than once for the same software.
Fuzzy argument. One can easily argue that it's naturally to poop wherever you walk like animals do, but most societies don't. Is human nature responsible? Who knows? It doesn't really matter. Society's conventions are societies conventions.
> 3. Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
It's easier to make the opposite argument, courtesy of "The Selfish" . Men can spread there seed more with polygamy and women can get a provider to protect and provide food in monogamy, thus the benefit appears opposite. Obviously both my argument and the article's argument are meaningless oversimplifications.
> 4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim
Asymmetrical warfare is as old as the hills. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assymetrical_warfare Whenever the weak need to fight the strong and they have to alternatives, they'll resort to playing dirty. (Of course, that doesn't stop the strong from playing dirty too.)
The key reasons you didn't hear about suicide bombers in the old days is that the technology wasn't wide spread. The most you'd get was "Suicide assassinations" (which as as old as the hills) and "Suicide shooting massacres" (which started to happen when the gun was introduced). Islam is the second largest religion in the world and islamic countries are in politically strategic locations which have had their fates manipulated (Shaw of Iran, Hussein, bin Ladin, propping up the Saudi kings, etc) by the powers that be. The conditions are right for asymmetrical warfare in those islamic, so Muslims use suicide bombing (which is generally less fatal but more paranoia inducing than shooting massacres) not because they are muslims be because their conditions, and you hear about it more simply because most islamic countries are affected. Failing to recognize this fact will result in more tragic consequences down the road when the technology advances and non-muslim groups that feel opposed see suicide attacks using portable fusion devices etc as their only choice. Lord knows there are more than a few nutjobs in the US who are capable of doing this to its own citizens.
Saving to file is an inherently lossy process and conversion from one lossy format to another rarely leads to equivalent results.
I'm willing to bet Sun's plugin is better than the converter for the simple reason that Sun's plugin has access to the internal datastructures of the word document, i.e. it has access to the information before the lossy conversion happened.
> Security through obscurity is rightly derided, but not because it has no value.
You're making one mistake that non-techies commonly make....If you don't have the source code, then you don't have the algorithm. This is far from true.
Any cracker worth his salt can read assembly language and won't have any problems in converting assembly language into an algorithm. It's often even possible to use a disassembler to convert assembly language into C since most algorithms do little more than mathematics (mostly done by the co-processor, so it's easy to spot these and convert them into C function calls or C operations).
Security through obscurity is about as safe as assuming that not telling anyone that you've closed your doors and windows are closed (but not locked). Sure, it will stop the casual burglars who prefers to see that the window is open before even attempting coming in, but any burglar worth his salt wouldn't ignore a seemingly closed door (lock or no lock). If you want safety, your best approach is to use a well proven *public* design that's been hardened by public scrutiny. Like it or not, you're bound to make a mistake if you try to be too smart in security and go your own way since security is so hard to get right (it's only as strong as the weakest link).
I thought the Microsoft was correct in this matter: simply saying that no-GPLv3 work is covered by the patent covenant implies that if Novell ships GPLv3 software (i.e. SAMBA, GCC and most of the low level tool chain, or Apache since it also has a patent grant), then Novell's customers aren't covered by the Microsoft protection scheme any more than Debian users. If GPLv3 becomes popular, for all intents and purposes, the patent protection scheme is dead.
But the "GPLv2, or later" clause has changed my mind a bit. You see, Microsoft agreed to provide the patent covenant on previous versions of SUSE, even "GPLv2, or later" software. That means that unless the contract with Novell explicitly states "GPLv2 or later means GPLv2", it agreed to the "or later" **dual license**, i.e. the patent protection scheme covers GPLv3 software too. Microsoft doesn't have to distribute the software in order to be affected by it. It just had to make a patent agreement with a distributor over the software (read the license).
Besides the "good in the short term, bad in the long term" arguments presented by other people, there are other things Microsoft is worried about: * Windows XP * Piracy.
If you have Windows XP, virtualization allows you to use "Vista-only" applications in XP, but it really won't be worth it if you have to shell out big bucks and a lot of resources to do so. Cheap, resource unintensive Vista Basic allows you to eat your cake and have it too, so why bother upgrading?
Just as significant, virtualization in general is a big thorn in "Windows Genuine Advantage" because if you install a MS Vista in a virtual machine, it has no way of knowing if you've made dozen copy of the virtual machine and given them to your friends since each virtual machine is identical. Basically, there's no way Microsoft can stop MS Vista piracy if it allows Vista to run in virtual machines. Now it could try to determine it heuristically by having all copies phone home regularly and determine if their IP addresses are the same and lock them out otherwise, but that would really PO roaming users or DHCP users who reboot their machines a bit too often. This doesn't even count the cases where a virtual machine is cloned (just before entering the license key) and hundreds are copies are made and unique keygens values are entered (the keygen doesn't even have to be right most of the time since throwing away a virtual machine is cheap).
If pirated virtualizated copies of MS Vista becomes common, then it wouldn't matter what platform you were running...XP, Apple, Linux, or even OpenSolaris...so migration to other operating systems is possible, since whatever OS you use would be a boot-loader for Vista. And if that happens, as others have said, people will slowly migrate towards the native apps of the OS they end up using and virtualizated Vista will be looked at the way Java is, as a portable application layer, except a lot more resource intensive.
Personally, I think Microsoft's best bet is to stop spending resources and customer good will on DRM and "Genuine Advantage" and "out virtualize the virtualizers" by turning Vista into a portability layer that can run on Linux, XP, Apple, OpenSolaris, etc. Essentially, Windows would become (scalable) middleware that most businesses would use because they're already tied to it and likely become tied to it if they know they have a choice of deployment platforms.
Microsoft currently spends a lot of effort on the lower layers of the OS, but the lowest layers of the OS aren't where the action is these days. It's like Civil Engineering. All the major innovations were thought up years ago and the work is mostly about following established practice to solve well documented problems. If Microsoft wants to continue being unique and valuable, it has to step out of the "safe" place that it is now and venture out to the interface between, the "safe and comfortable" and the place where "new problems need to be solved" (e.g. in civil engineering, that would likely be "green" engineering, extraterrestrial civil engineering, subterranean engineering, etc).
Keep in mind that the bulk of that size is related to support for every device driver under the Sun (and x86, and PowerPC, and IBM mainframe, and iPod,...). Most people don't compile in all the options, so it is significantly smaller. And although it's possible to get a bare-bones kernel that support exactly the devices your computer supports (i.e. embedded Linux systems do this), most people are willing to trade a little bulk for the convenience of having any computer they install on or device they plug in once installed instantly recognized.
Look at it this way, freedom of speech also gives you the freedom to make a fool of yourself, which is what that museum is doing.
Misinformation, like mushrooms grows in the dark and damp, so trying to buy it does no good. It just festers, and finds justification because *THEY* want to smother "the truth" so it's your mission to spread it under *THEIR* noses.
But out in the open, it has no place to hide and no enemy so there is no self-justifying mission. One is forced to have a conversation and examine your views and see the inconsistencies.
But in order to have that conversation, you can't do a Dawkins and try to smother religion. As the saying goes, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.", only this time the "mission" becomes payback (after all, if *THEY* try to smother me, why can't I do it to them?) and entrenching yourself in your own beliefs becomes essential so that you can "do battle". The "fight or flight" response in humanity is still very strong, so don't be surprised if it shows up in the bible thumpers any more than it shows up in you.
The Socratic Method of continual questioning with humility and sincere desire for an answer (and not trying to prove them wrong) is the only way to get through. And if you do it right, you might actually learn something too (the way Socrates often did).
Here's a good conversation starter, "According to the Bible, by the end of the first day, there was no Sun. So the day was defined to be whatever God wanted it to be defined, and just as Adam lived for hundreds of years, so could a day be longer than what we currently know it to be. In Hebrew, the word used in Genesis for Day is "Yom" ( http://www.answersincreation.org/word_study_yom.ht m ) and Yom can mean a day or an eon which is God's time. Could it not be possible that, according to the Bible, that earth was created over several eons?"
So basically, the GPLv3 was designed to eliminated the need for any GPLv3-compatible license since any GPLv3 compatible license can be written as the GPLv3 license plus additional permissions. It might not be the most efficient way to specify your GPL-compatible license (e.g. the MIT license would be much longer if expressed this way), but it can be done. If the GPLv3 license existed, I doubt the GPL-like per file Mozilla license would have existed or the GPL-like for open source Qt license would have been created as independent licenses.
It's my understanding that the new GPL was created precisely to take care of the third group.
The key reason for the large number of third group licenses is that some people want to create licenses that are half way between LGPL and BSD (e.g. the Mozilla licenses which essentially is a per-file LGPL) while others want to create licenses that are between the LGPL and GPL (i.e. some creative-commons share-a-like licenses and licenses that are GPL for commercial and LGPL for liking with open source).
The key observation in the GPLv3 is that most of the licenses in the third group (LGPLv3, Apache, etc) can be written as the GPLv3 plus additional permissions. This insight renders the license fragmentation of the third group to be irrevelant. For instance, if application A is licensed under the GPLv3 + X permission + Y permission and application C is licensed under the GPLv3 + X permission + Z permission and application C is licensed under the GPLv3 + Z permission, then it's possible to combine code from any of these applications without difficulty and it's possible to easily figure out the license of the combination (i.e. Application A+B has license GPLv3 + X permission, while Applications A+C, B+C, A+B+C all have license GPLv3.
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Interestingly, the Nooxml.org web site, which is dedicated to finding any and all OOXML conspiracies that seem to legimate the broken OOXML format seems to side with GNOME on this issue:
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-30201/the-linux-com-chat-files:jeff-waugh-on-poop-and-pita
Personally, I think that the only way ODF can become a universal file format is if it's possible to convert *all* formats (broken or not, Microsoft format or not) into ODF. Conversion from ODF into broken formats isn't required nor is round-trip conversion (If you have to round-trip for OOXML, use DOC which has almost universal reverse engineered support). The reason is simple. People currently have a lot of legacy out there and late ODF adopters will have a lot of OOXML legacy. Imagine you're early adopters with a lot of legacy (not necessarily DOC or OOXML) or late adopters with a lot of OOXML legacy. Without a way of escaping the legacy trap, you'll have no choice but to give up their terabytes of legacy or forever pay Microsoft to access their legacy and force people to live (for at least 10 years since many financial and health documents require at least this much retention) with two system (and implement the necessary duplicate infrastructure and retraining). The cost of adopting ODF will likely be too high. If Y2K has taught us anything is that even when a clear problem is know, people won't do anything about it until the last minute unless it threatens to shut down the company.
ODF is a fantastic concept that will save you a lot of money and give you a lot of freedom and flexibility in the future. If there is no at least moderate fidelity legacy format to ODF conversion, sticking with OOXML or other legacy formats gives managers a whole lot less (company) political and (transition cost, legacy duplication) financially a whole lot less grief *in the present* (where bonuses are decided).
If, OTOH, there is a moderate fidelity legacy format to ODF conversion available for all popular legacy formats, the world open up to you. You can get rid of hundreds of incompatible systems and formats and have a more uniform system that is free from vendor lock-in. Managers can save *a lot* of money, especially since they no longer have to worry about being held hostage to one vendor that charges them whatever they can get away with and they don't have to support multiple incompatible systems.
Actually, it's a common tactic, especially in a weak minority government as the case in Canada at the moment.
Suppose you want Law X (because of some strong lobby), but you know know that the opposition (especially a discredited opposition that wants to win some points) will not allow Law X. How do you get your law passed?
Step 1. Propose Law X+Y+Z+W where Y, Z, and W are unacceptable to everyone, including you.
Step 2. The opposition will jump on it and demand it be changed.
Step 3. You debate or form "a royal commission" which ends up stripping the draconian Y, Z, and W provisions buy leave the milder Law X that you wanted as a "fair compromise".
Step 4. The opposition gets their bone, and you get credit for being reasonable (after all, you gave up so many provisions) without sacrificing your principles (Law X),
Step 5. The politicians are happy, and the rest of us suffer.
The only way to counteract this tactic is for the opposition to propose an "anti-X+Y+Z+W" amendment to the law you proposed which also has strong lobby and attempts to liberalize the status quo in a way that no sane person would accept. Debate happens and the end result is that nothing changes because "the status quo is the best compromise" and both sides claim victory for defending the public from "the radicals on the other side".
Unfortunately, I don't know anyone in the opposition that has the backbone to suggest an "anti-X+Y+Z+W" amendment.
"One Click" shopping is an e-commerce technique, which allows a customer to purchase products via the Internet without repeatedly entering personal information such as name and address. At the time it was introduced it eased the frustration of on-line shopping.
The problem is, the whole reason cookies were created was precisely to enable on-line shopping:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2109.txt
So soon after the RFC was *announced* Amazon requested a patent for doing what the RFC was specifically designed for. If you ignore the sleeziness of the action, it would be virtually impossible to find prior art since no implementation was possible before the standard was approved. And even if an early implementations of cookies existed, since Amazon was one of the few e-commerce site out there at the time, there would be virtually no chance of finding another prior art implementation.
Now you could go to the real-world analogy of going to a friendly store and pointing at a bunch of things and saying "Charge it", but since it's done by "a computer" it magically turns into a completely different thing.
The problem is, Windows like a free puppy--cute and cuddly but it requires massive investments in time and training, You also have to consider the support costs and (virus) medical bills and all the (non-free application) food you have to pay. And when, the puppy makes a mess on your carpet or "eats your homework", you have only yourself to blame.
Linux, OTOH is free like free-will. The more you exercise it, the more you have. As long as you don't become too complacent and let others (proprietary vendors) make your decisions for you "just this one time" (famous last words), your costs will go down in the long term as you're able to do things you previously weren't able to (because you have the source and new opportunities exist where none existed before).
The problem most people and companies and countries face now is that they've been convinced that being complacent is actually good for them. "Don't worry about the details", they're told, "it's all handled for you in your best interests. Honest.". The problem is, the details *are* important and end up biting you when your interests conflict with theirs (forced upgrades, forced obsolescence, silent changes, silent feature removals, vendor lock-in, inflexibility, increased support costs that you have to accept, privacy).
Actually, it's just three guys:
http://opendocumentfoundation.us/we.htm
Not much of a foundation.
The *real* ODF group is:
http://www.odfalliance.org/memberlist.php
I think that the only honest thing the "The OpenDocument Foundation" can do is rename
itself "The Compound Documents Format Foundation", since to do otherwise would be as
deceitful as Microsoft choosing to name OOXML "Office Open XML". But honestly, I doubt
they will. Their comparison chart between CDF and ODF betrays a few lies:
http://opendocument.foundation.googlepages.com/GOSCON_Chart.pdf
In particular:
* CDF is not OOXML compatible, nor has any implementation shown this to be possible. ODF at least has a not-100% compatible conversion.
* ODF has a lot more big vendor support than CDF
* Neither are universal formats, but ODF is supported by more vendors and software projects at the moment.
Personally, I think that the reasons for "The OpenDocument Foundation" changing it's
support from ODF to CDF is self-interest. When ODF was first introduced, there was
money to be made for a small company to write MS Office/Corel Office/Mac Office plugins
and other conversion services. But then Sun and others started offering free converters
and conversion services. There's just too much competition too quickly
CDF, OTOH is not as well supported universally, so there's a lot more room for
a small company. And if the CDF growth rate is slow, the "The OpenDocument Foundation"
has the chance to become *the CDF conversion experts* and make a lot of money.
Also, since CDF (if you believe their claims) is more web oriented, it would be good
for transactional converters of many types that need to be used for each message.
With ODF, you convert your document once and don't have to worry about going back
(by purpose....ODF is best for documents that have to be read, as is 100 years
from now). The difference in profit between one-time business and licensed per
transaction business could huge, even if CDF has a smaller market.
As far as Project replacement, the only open source competitor that even comes close to MS Project (that also reads MS Project files) is OpenProj:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openproj/
There are only two problems with it:
1) It uses an attribution license (hope they eventually wise up and switch to a better FOSS license)
2) It's a bit slow -- they *really* need to switch from Java runtime to GCJ compiled Java.
On the plus side, since it's Java, it's available on all platforms that OpenOffice is available.
(I know about GanttProject and have used it, but it still has a way to go.)
> Clear now?
Yes. It's obvious.;-)
Seriously, almost nothing is obvious to all people. Even something as basic as counting is not obvious to everyone ( http://www.bioedonline.org/news/news.cfm?art=1207 ). Even the old cliche "The only intuitive interface is the nipple" is false, since it ignores the fact that some new mothers have breast feeding problems.
On top of that, many of the "obvious" things we know are wrong in some situations. It's "obvious" that when you drop a ball, it falls down....except if you're in space or your ball is more buoyant than its environment or.....
So "obvious" only has a meaning when referring to an audience in a particular context. For anyone in the computer world, it's "obvious" that if something exists in the real world that it's also possible for the same thing to exist in the virtual world. In this case, the real world analogy of "pointing to an item and saying 'put it on my tab'" is exactly equivalent to the computer implementation of the 1-click patent. It's "obvious" even though the technology for implementation might not be for a person who's unfamiliar with Java-script, HTML, cookies, and sessions (which sound more like a cooking show than a patent application).
BTW, your quote shows precisely the problem of most patent application. They use complex wordings to describe simple concepts in order to make that patent sound like something that should be patented. As Orwell pointed out, that's intellectual dishonesty ( http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm ).
If I were in charge of the patent office (and if I believed patenting was justified, which I don't), I'd reject any patent application that couldn't be phrased in a way that could be understood by a 10 year old, yet get solicit a "cool, why didn't I think of that!" response from anyone that looked at it.
The problem is, how to do you define "Server" and "Desktop"? Suppose you're using a primary desktop. If you run an access-like database on your computer, are you a server? If you allow file sharing are you a server? If you have your own personal wiki, are you a server? Suppose that wiki is visible to other computers in an intranet?
As far as servers go, what do you call a VMWare server or terminal-server? Is it a server or a desktop?
The problem is, in the real world, there are very few "pure desktops" out there, so if you optimize for the pure desktop, everything else suffers.
It's not a new problem. HIG people face exactly this issue every time there are calls to divide a GUI into an "beginner", "intermediate", and "expert" mode since you eventually end up with beginners who need to do some expert things and experts who don't want to have to do "simple things difficult" as the normal case (which generally happens to make difficult things possible). HIG people generally agree that moded interfaces are a cop-out. If you do things right, the GUI should be simple but scalable to advanced needs.
That's what Linus and the kernel gang are trying to do. Do things right instead of copping out. Make Linux good for both the "Pure Desktop" and the "Pure Server" and everything in between. It may not be "optimal" for the "Pure Desktop" or "Pure Server", but it should be possible for it to be indistinguishable by anyone else other than the ricers.
> If you are 'slow' (don't read handicapped here), you get special teachers and special dummed down classes for you,
Personal experience. From grade 1-3 I was classified as in need of special classes for reading. There were funding cuts, so no special classes were offered after grade 3. My former teachers despaired that poor-me would be trampled under the weight of having adapt to regular classes.
My grade 4 teacher had a different attitude. He told me to forget about labels since what people say about you often has little bearing of who you are. He said that failing on something I try is not shameful. Many of the greatest people failed hundreds of times, but they learned something each time and got better. What is shameful is not trying or not living up to one's full potential, which he stated I was not. Ultimately, only I knew if I were living up to that potential and I would recognize that potential if I gave everything I had in me but still found the courage and determination to try and to keep trying to go further.
Under that teacher, I went from the bottom of the class to the top.
Given my experience, the last thing most students need is to have courses be easier for them. They need to be challenged and engaged. They need to learn to love challenges because the rewards of *FINALLY* breaking through are a thousand times more rewarding and self-confidence building than taking the easy way out and knowing "you didn't really deserve it" and assuming "if it's not easy, then it's not worth the effort".
This is especially true in the sciences, where by definition, you're investigating the unknown and you don't know if your lifetime's work will amount to anything other than an "Okay I showed that this isn't possible by the means I used, try something else" guidepost for other researchers.
> You can't just use a shorthand if it isn't completely common.
Of course you can. We do it all the time. Tell me, what is the colour *blue*. It's guarenteed that what some of what I call green, others will call blue or yellow or turquoise or even grey or red (if you're colour blind). There are few things in this world where you can get 100% agreement in, but you can get close. Which is why most religions and secular philosophies can agree on so much even though they have completely different world views on what life and existence are.
Evil exists. Whether it's caused by some red suited goatee wearing gen-x wannabee with a farm tool or it's caused by a chemical imbalance or improper nurturing or incomplete knowledge of the full impact or an underdeveloped or badly developed soul or all of the above is irrelevant.
It doesn't matter where it comes from and we shouldn't be afraid of calling a spade a spade.
What you're arguing isn't that evil isn't a meaningless concept, but that just because someone does a lot of evil things it doesn't mean that everything a person does is evil. So Jack the Ripper might have been a model parent and gave generously to charity and that Bush might actually do something good and selfless once and a while.
Personally, I don't much care for music.
My personal use is audiobooks and podcasts. There's so much free content for audiobooks and podcasts out there it's ridiculous. I also have some paid audiobooks. Even if I assumed that the levey meant it were now open season on uploading and downloading paid audiobooks, 0% of the revenue gained from the levy would go to audiobook creators. What makes music so special that it should get all the revenue for audiobooks, pictures (personal and commercial), PDFs (ebooks and personal), and other media? How on earth is this levy going to be distributed fairly?
Of course they're an open source company. They just don't advertise that they ship GLPv2 software:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interix
Actually, they're saying something quite different. They're saying the ODF is too limiting, so they'll accept ODF if they can add MS Proprietary components (e.g. OOXML components or even OOXML embedded documents) into ODF and still call it an ODF document. This, of course, makes ODF worse different than OOXML, since if everyone could embed anything into an ODF document, no-one would be able to read anyone's document, but one thing is for certain. If 90% of people use MS Word, then non-MS Word ODF extensions will be considered to be "a file saving error" by most people, so only Microsoft will be able to pull this off successfully.
Basically, the standard: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish that they've used time and time again.
It's actually worse when you consider site licenses and MSDN Universal should cover these naked PCs, so you're paying more than once for the same software.
I can provide counter-references for some of the points:
> 1. Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
Venus of Willendorf wasn't exactly skinny and many of the Renaissance drawings weren't either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf
At the other end of the spectrum, the 1960's supermodel Twiggy wasn't exactly big breasted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiggy
Men's tastes change with time.
> 2. Humans are naturally polygamous
Fuzzy argument. One can easily argue that it's naturally to poop wherever you walk like animals do, but most societies don't. Is human nature responsible? Who knows? It doesn't really matter. Society's conventions are societies conventions.
> 3. Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
It's easier to make the opposite argument, courtesy of "The Selfish" . Men can spread there seed more with polygamy and women can get a provider to protect and provide food in monogamy, thus the benefit appears opposite. Obviously both my argument and the article's argument are meaningless oversimplifications.
> 4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim
Asymmetrical warfare is as old as the hills.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assymetrical_warfare
Whenever the weak need to fight the strong and they have to alternatives, they'll resort to playing dirty. (Of course, that doesn't stop the strong from playing dirty too.)
The key reasons you didn't hear about suicide bombers in the old days is that the technology wasn't wide spread. The most you'd get was "Suicide assassinations" (which as as old as the hills) and "Suicide shooting massacres" (which started to happen when the gun was introduced). Islam is the second largest religion in the world and islamic countries are in politically strategic locations which have had their fates manipulated (Shaw of Iran, Hussein, bin Ladin, propping up the Saudi kings, etc) by the powers that be. The conditions are right for asymmetrical warfare in those islamic, so Muslims use suicide bombing (which is generally less fatal but more paranoia inducing than shooting massacres) not because they are muslims be because their conditions, and you hear about it more simply because most islamic countries are affected. Failing to recognize this fact will result in more tragic consequences down the road when the technology advances and non-muslim groups that feel opposed see suicide attacks using portable fusion devices etc as their only choice. Lord knows there are more than a few nutjobs in the US who are capable of doing this to its own citizens.
I'll leave the rest to someone elase.
Have a look at the known unresolvable issues.l
http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/features.htm
Saving to file is an inherently lossy process and conversion from one lossy format to another rarely leads to equivalent results.
I'm willing to bet Sun's plugin is better than the converter for the simple reason that Sun's plugin has access to the internal datastructures of the word document, i.e. it has access to the information before the lossy conversion happened.
> Security through obscurity is rightly derided, but not because it has no value.
You're making one mistake that non-techies commonly make....If you don't have the source code, then you don't have the algorithm. This is far from true.
Any cracker worth his salt can read assembly language and won't have any problems in converting assembly language into an algorithm. It's often even possible to use a disassembler to convert assembly language into C since most algorithms do little more than mathematics (mostly done by the co-processor, so it's easy to spot these and convert them into C function calls or C operations).
Security through obscurity is about as safe as assuming that not telling anyone that you've closed your doors and windows are closed (but not locked). Sure, it will stop the casual burglars who prefers to see that the window is open before even attempting coming in, but any burglar worth his salt wouldn't ignore a seemingly closed door (lock or no lock). If you want safety, your best approach is to use a well proven *public* design that's been hardened by public scrutiny. Like it or not, you're bound to make a mistake if you try to be too smart in security and go your own way since security is so hard to get right (it's only as strong as the weakest link).
I thought the Microsoft was correct in this matter: simply saying that no-GPLv3 work is covered by the patent covenant implies that if Novell ships GPLv3 software (i.e. SAMBA, GCC and most of the low level tool chain, or Apache since it also has a patent grant), then Novell's customers aren't covered by the Microsoft protection scheme any more than Debian users. If GPLv3 becomes popular, for all intents and purposes, the patent protection scheme is dead.
But the "GPLv2, or later" clause has changed my mind a bit. You see, Microsoft agreed to provide the patent covenant on previous versions of SUSE, even "GPLv2, or later" software. That means that unless the contract with Novell explicitly states "GPLv2 or later means GPLv2", it agreed to the "or later" **dual license**, i.e. the patent protection scheme covers GPLv3 software too. Microsoft doesn't have to distribute the software in order to be affected by it. It just had to make a patent agreement with a distributor over the software (read the license).
Besides the "good in the short term, bad in the long term" arguments presented by other people, there are other things Microsoft is worried about:
* Windows XP
* Piracy.
If you have Windows XP, virtualization allows you to use "Vista-only" applications in XP, but it really won't be worth it if you have to shell out big bucks and a lot of resources to do so. Cheap, resource unintensive Vista Basic allows you to eat your cake and have it too, so why bother upgrading?
Just as significant, virtualization in general is a big thorn in "Windows Genuine Advantage" because if you install a MS Vista in a virtual machine, it has no way of knowing if you've made dozen copy of the virtual machine and given them to your friends since each virtual machine is identical. Basically, there's no way Microsoft can stop MS Vista piracy if it allows Vista to run in virtual machines. Now it could try to determine it heuristically by having all copies phone home regularly and determine if their IP addresses are the same and lock them out otherwise, but that would really PO roaming users or DHCP users who reboot their machines a bit too often. This doesn't even count the cases where a virtual machine is cloned (just before entering the license key) and hundreds are copies are made and unique keygens values are entered (the keygen doesn't even have to be right most of the time since throwing away a virtual machine is cheap).
If pirated virtualizated copies of MS Vista becomes common, then it wouldn't matter what platform you were running...XP, Apple, Linux, or even OpenSolaris...so migration to other operating systems is possible, since whatever OS you use would be a boot-loader for Vista. And if that happens, as others have said, people will slowly migrate towards the native apps of the OS they end up using and virtualizated Vista will be looked at the way Java is, as a portable application layer, except a lot more resource intensive.
Personally, I think Microsoft's best bet is to stop spending resources and customer good will on DRM and "Genuine Advantage" and "out virtualize the virtualizers" by turning Vista into a portability layer that can run on Linux, XP, Apple, OpenSolaris, etc. Essentially, Windows would become (scalable) middleware that most businesses would use because they're already tied to it and likely become tied to it if they know they have a choice of deployment platforms.
Microsoft currently spends a lot of effort on the lower layers of the OS, but the lowest layers of the OS aren't where the action is these days. It's like Civil Engineering. All the major innovations were thought up years ago and the work is mostly about following established practice to solve well documented problems. If Microsoft wants to continue being unique and valuable, it has to step out of the "safe" place that it is now and venture out to the interface between, the "safe and comfortable" and the place where "new problems need to be solved" (e.g. in civil engineering, that would likely be "green" engineering, extraterrestrial civil engineering, subterranean engineering, etc).
I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals.
I'm not a vegetarian because I love hate vegetables.
Keep in mind that the bulk of that size is related to support for every device driver under the Sun (and x86, and PowerPC, and IBM mainframe, and iPod, ...). Most people don't compile in all the options, so it is significantly smaller. And although it's possible to get a bare-bones kernel that support exactly the devices your computer supports (i.e. embedded Linux systems do this), most people are willing to trade a little bulk for the convenience of having any computer they install on or device they plug in once installed instantly recognized.
Look at it this way, freedom of speech also gives you the freedom to make a fool of yourself, which is what that museum is doing.
t m ) and Yom can mean a day or an eon which is God's time. Could it not be possible that, according to the Bible, that earth was created over several eons?"
Misinformation, like mushrooms grows in the dark and damp, so trying to buy it does no good. It just festers, and finds justification because *THEY* want to smother "the truth" so it's your mission to spread it under *THEIR* noses.
But out in the open, it has no place to hide and no enemy so there is no self-justifying mission. One is forced to have a conversation and examine your views and see the inconsistencies.
But in order to have that conversation, you can't do a Dawkins and try to smother religion. As the saying goes, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.", only this time the "mission" becomes payback (after all, if *THEY* try to smother me, why can't I do it to them?) and entrenching yourself in your own beliefs becomes essential so that you can "do battle". The "fight or flight" response in humanity is still very strong, so don't be surprised if it shows up in the bible thumpers any more than it shows up in you.
The Socratic Method of continual questioning with humility and sincere desire for an answer (and not trying to prove them wrong) is the only way to get through. And if you do it right, you might actually learn something too (the way Socrates often did).
Here's a good conversation starter, "According to the Bible, by the end of the first day, there was no Sun. So the day was defined to be whatever God wanted it to be defined, and just as Adam lived for hundreds of years, so could a day be longer than what we currently know it to be. In Hebrew, the word used in Genesis for Day is "Yom" ( http://www.answersincreation.org/word_study_yom.h
Actually, it is mean to stop license proliferation of the 3rd type:. htmlo ftware_notes/why_gplv3_says_additional_permissions _are_removable
- transcript.en.html#lgpl
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7188273245
http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_s
http://gplv3.fsf.org/additional-terms-dd2.html
And the LGPL v3 is actually written in terms of the GPLv3:
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/barcelona-rms
http://gplv3.fsf.org/lgpl-draft-2006-07-27.html
So basically, the GPLv3 was designed to eliminated the need for any GPLv3-compatible license since any GPLv3 compatible license can be written as the GPLv3 license plus additional permissions. It might not be the most efficient way to specify your GPL-compatible license (e.g. the MIT license would be much longer if expressed this way), but it can be done. If the GPLv3 license existed, I doubt the GPL-like per file Mozilla license would have existed or the GPL-like for open source Qt license would have been created as independent licenses.
It's my understanding that the new GPL was created precisely to take care of the third group.
The key reason for the large number of third group licenses is that some people want to create licenses that are half way between LGPL and BSD (e.g. the Mozilla licenses which essentially is a per-file LGPL) while others want to create licenses that are between the LGPL and GPL (i.e. some creative-commons share-a-like licenses and licenses that are GPL for commercial and LGPL for liking with open source).
The key observation in the GPLv3 is that most of the licenses in the third group (LGPLv3, Apache, etc) can be written as the GPLv3 plus additional permissions. This insight renders the license fragmentation of the third group to be irrevelant. For instance, if application A is licensed under the GPLv3 + X permission + Y permission and application C is licensed under the GPLv3 + X permission + Z permission and application C is licensed under the GPLv3 + Z permission, then it's possible to combine code from any of these applications without difficulty and it's possible to easily figure out the license of the combination (i.e. Application A+B has license GPLv3 + X permission, while Applications A+C, B+C, A+B+C all have license GPLv3.
The GPLv3 formalizes this concept explicitly.
Actually, considering your geek license: simply say that Vista isn't any more patentable than Windows.