Well Debian['s] goal is to be Pure GNU at all costs even if it [affects] the end user.
The goal isn't exactly some abstract notion of purity, nor is it to be "The GNU Linux".
The goal, I believe, is to deliver a high-quality collection of software which is licensed compatibly with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (http://www.debian.org/social_contract).
I quote: "We will never make the system require the use of a non-free component" and "We will be guided by the needs of our users"
[Ubuntu] is a bit lax on this and its goal is to be more focused on its users
I disagree: Ubuntu isn't more focused on its users. Ubuntu is more focused on its users' pragmatic needs. Debian is more focused on its users' ideological needs.
Note: the key word is more. It's not all or nothing: "We will support people who create or use both free and non-free works on Debian. [...] We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of works that do not conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. [...] contrib and non-free"
In the firefox case, the Debian project decided that 1. shipping only free software in the base system; and 2. shipping firefox in the base system was more important than 3. shipping a branded firefox. Ubuntu decided that 3 and 2 were more important than 1. Pragmatic vs. Idealistic needs.
And my personal spin: sacrificing a cute logo and calling the rose an iceflower---really, is it that big a deal? It still smells like a good web browser, and that's what I want: good software, with good ideals. I prefer the Debian decision.
Let me relate my university experience. I'm not 100% sure about US tertiary education terminology, maybe a Danish university is what you call College?
College is about having goals
Yes. My goals. Learning (about) Computer Science in order to become a better programmer. Getting straight A's on my exams. Learning the material.
meeting deadlines
Or asking kindly and slightly embarrassed for an extension, sometimes. You know, negotiate with the people who are dependent on your work (either for grading it or for linking with your code). Or, sometimes, yeah, just meet the damn deadline.
and dealing well (i.e. obediently) with authority figures
You're quiet in class out of respect for your classmates' desire to learn. You hand in your hand-ins on time out of respect for your TA. You follow the rules about which and how many courses you must take, but the constraints on your choices are well-aligned with your own learning goals.
Then again, I'm not shy about asking for clarification or "I think you missed the special case where [...]", or "You wrote X; I think you mean Y?". Your lecturer ain't perfect, and I'm not a perfect TA. I welcome corrections, as I sense my lecturers do.
your willingness to allow them to determine the use of your time
You choose your major and minor, and have a large degree of freedom in choosing courses once you got the requirements for a bachelor satisfied.
Similarly, you can choose to not work for Google/Sun/SAS if you don't like them. Or you can move around on the job market. And you choose whether to apply for the Marketing VP or the Software Development position.
Even when you work for the University, as a TA, the TA-to-courses allocation is done in a way that tries to optimize social utility. And intra-course time slot allocation is done by negotiation. You don't choose completely freely, but the authority in question tries to give everybody what they want (to the best of its ability).
your ability to follow their detailed instructions
"Solve problems 1 through 7 on the course web page, and 16.2 through 16.5 in $BOOK". Detailed? Instruction? I take that as a suggestion to help you learn. No TA I've encountered really gave a $MAKELOVE about whether you learned, although they were willing to help if you wanted to. You're free to solve fewer exercises, or more, and if you ask questions beyond the curriculum, most TAs and professors are willing and even eager to have a fruitful discussion with you.
and your willingness to be a cog in a large institution.
In the University, the institution is there to serve you. You don't make it run, you consume its output (the output really being the process).
Yes, there are resource constraints. The courses start aligned at semester boundaries. Some courses are only held every other semester/year/period due to too low attendance if it was held more often. So what?
Maybe US Colleges are very different from Danish universities?
I think the most important thing you learn besides your subject matter (i.e. the math, programming, anthropology or whatever) is to plan and organize your own learning efforts. If you learn that. I'm on my 6th year (phd student) and I'm just beginning to need to think about what I can do besides showing up for lectures and exercise sessions in order to learn the subject matter.
You don't take advanced degrees in assembly line manufacturing. I see how the qualities you claim College teaches students might be useful there. I think the qualities I've observed are more useful in knowledge work.
But to be fair: fitting into a large organization and agreeing to use you time on what others suggest is useful if you work at a large company. Then again, you're free to seek employment at Google where you get to spend 20% of your work hours rather (more) freely. I think they see individual entrepreneurial spirit as a useful thing.
Say I write a dozen books and finally get one published then a day later die in a car accident leaving my family with nothing but the work I spent ten years writing. Are you saying they don't have the right to benefit from my work?
I'm not the same "you", but I am saying that. Or rather, I'm saying that I'd be perfectly happy if copyright didn't last longer than the life of the author.
Your family can of course read your book. They have a right to benefit in that way. I take it you think your books are beneficial to read; that's why you can get away with charging money for them, right?
Why should the public benefit but not my family?
Because the benefit the public will gain is larger than the benefit your family will gain.
If my family isn't going to be allowed to benefit from my work then I'd rather do something with my time they are allowed to retain so they can live without going on welfare if I happen to die young.
I'm glad to hear you aren't completely hung up on being a writer.
Are you raising your kids to be dependent on your ability to provide them with money? Wouldn't you rather want them to be able to earn a living on their own? If they are, why is it so important what you can leave them?
Why should the public have rights over and above the creator?
It doesn't. The public is giving away its inherent right to copy and (re)distribute information (selectively).
It does so in order to create a financial incentive for writers, musicians, film makers and software programmers (that's me) to do work which benefits the public.
The public does this (in the ideal case) based on an evaluation which says that the freedoms and right given up are less valuable than the work created by the incentive put in place by giving up the freedoms and rights.
If you don't want to play ball, you're free to not write books. You're free to tell us exactly which restrictions you want us to place on ourselves for you to write books. We're free to listen, or not, depending on what we feel like. But you're not the one to tell us which rights we can and can't exercise. We, the public, decides what our rights are. As a member of the public, you're of course welcome to participate in this decision process, but don't expect your wishes to have a disproportionate influence.
If I built investment houses for a living there wouldn't be a debate about taking them away from my family after I died.
And if you built bit strings, there wouldn't be a debate about going into your house a deleting the bit strings from your hard drive. And there isn't.
And if you built houses, there wouldn't be a debate about building identical houses, not when you're alive, and not when you're dead. And there isn't.
See, because we have efficient copying machinery for the things you produce, there's a value/cost disparity: the cost of production is almost independent of the number of copies. The value is almost linear in the number of copies (not everybody who reads your books enjoys it equally, but more copies means more enjoyment). Thus, the most valuable use of a book you've written is to make as many copies as possible, up to the point where the value is less than the cost of the electricity and disk space used to copy and store the book. (Note that we can't copy houses efficiently: it takes a lot of labour. That's why they're different.)
Do you want to destroy things of value? Do you want to sabotage the public's wealth? Why? For your own benefit? I want to dump my poisonous radioactive waste in the public river because it's cheap. Should I be allowed to do that? Why is it that nuclear power plant operations are so discriminated against?
if it only takes you 5 seconds to say "no" and it only happens one time -- it's not that big of a deal.
Right. If Google is allowed to do this, are others allowed to do it too? Will they? How many times will authors have to say "no"?
Say I set up 10000 shell companies, each saying "I'm going to do xyz with your stuff unless you say 'no'". Then suddenly it's 50000 seconds per author. Plus the author has to find all 10000 shell companies, which might take significantly more than 5 seconds per company.
Setting this precedent could open the field to an arms race of setting up shell companies vs. prohibiting them among the big companies. Any extra cost of doing business impedes the small companies. I'm not sure, but I seem to recall hearing that having a good environment for small companies helps a country's economy.
While I don't object to what Google is doing, I'm worried about what kind of precedent this might set.
Let's say I put a note on my blog, saying "Dear Microsoft; I'm going to distribute copies of any and all software you publish unless you notify me within sixty (60) day after publishing".
Let's say my blog is hosted on my own machine, and I'm diligently keeping it connected to the internet and giving it a DNS name. But I don't advertise it anywhere.
Is Microsoft now required to port-80-scan the entire internet and read everything that is posted? What if I bury the notice deep down in a maze of unrelated content (say, a hyperlinked version of the KJVB)? Are they required to traverse all the link graphs on all web servers on all machines? What about infinite link graphs?
Where's the reasonable limit? What if I advertise my blog, but in general make myself a nobody and don't drive a lot of traffic towards it?
What if I did it to the code made by the company you work for? If it ruined them and they had to fire you, would you be pissed at me? Would you feel justified in being pissed at me?
The problem with attorneys' fees is not unlike the problem in the medical profession. They usually get paid per hour. This gives them incentives to drag cases out and not do their best work up front.
If you work faster, you can have more clients per time instead of having each client longer. Then, by your per-case cost being cheaper, you have a competitive edge and clients will prefer you.
So you make the same as if you work slowly, and have more customers banging down your door.
Rather, it's the failing of the educational system for not adequately educating people regarding technology
How much technology has come out since your ~80-yo family members left school? How could school have prepared them better? What would be reasonable to ask of the schooling system? What would be possible to get? Now ask yourself the same question for ages ~70, ~60,..., ~30.
Education is a marvellous thing. A schooling can at best be a useful part of a good education. Some things you only learn "on the street".
Why can't Mozilla just implement a plugin framework, and leave it up to the user to decide whether he wants to install the h264 plugin
No, no, you don't get it: that would be smart, and convenient, and uhh...
Oh wait. Well, I recall a link to a blog post by some firefox dude a few days ago (sorry I'm being so specific ^_^) who said that this has been suggested, and that it would be problematic: if there's a security issue (or some other issue) in the third party code, then firefox can't fix it.
It doesn't make any sense to me: sooner or later, firefox is going to make a system call. If the Windows API is broken, will firefox (the mozilla foundation) fix Windows? Will they fix libgtk? Or the OS X TCP/IP stack? Why is the video codec different? And by not shipping a video codec, they force us to use flash on (e.g.) youtube. Where are all the Mozilla foundation fixes to flash?
But there's the argument: The Mozilla foundation can't fix third party code, so it (selectively) won't rely on it.
Nobody forced anyone to adopt Microsoft Windows; it just happens that it did get adopted because it actually is a good operating system. There are alternatives of varying quality and success, and even if there weren't, nothing is stopping someone from designing one and marketing it.
While not completely analogous, Microsoft isn't forcing anyone at gunpoint to buy or sell Windows. They're just using their market position to compel people to do so ("an offer you can't refuse").
A lot of people have voluntarily chosen to get locked in, and have in this way granted a lot of power to an organization that might not have their interest as its top priority.
MPEG-LA didn't take power, people just (stupidly?) gave them power. That doesn't change the fact that it now has a lot of power. And it wields it counter to our interests.
I could've sworn the caption said "Kurt Gödel, MOFO". He's a bad-ass mathematical mother fucker, than Kurt guy, as he comes and gives your neatly thought out proof system a roundhouse kick, square in its axiomatic nuts!
Thank you for sharing your story. I can't imagine what other difficulties you're going through besides the one you've mentioned, but I'm taking a wild guess here: it isn't easy being you.
And I don't think I can say anything other than this: I wish you the best of luck in living a happy, fulfilling live, whatever that means to you, and I hope your limitations won't get too much in the way of that.
I think you mean ideograms---a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept (with the connotation that different concepts each has its own ideogram).
Some hieroglyphics are actually phonetic: Carl Sagan argues so in Cosmos (I don't recall the episode), based on (iirc) the Rosetta stone, and the occurrence of "Ptolmeus" and "Kleopatra": the first symbol of "Ptolmeus" matches the fifth from "Kleopatra", etc.
Some hieroglyphics are ideograms, though: the "ra" in Kleopatra is written with an ankh, the symbol for life and the life-giving sun god, Ra.
Sorry for being all pedantic about it:) I just think it's an interesting bit of knowledge and I wanted to share it with you all.
Slashdot Mirror
OTOH, we do have a choice about where we direct resources and what effect that has on the quality and length of life.
There. We are all going to die when the universe does the heat death thing, or collapses and re-explodes.
But we might live longer, depending on where we spend resources. Or better. Or (maybe) both.
Getting off the earth might mean our species survives for longer than if we put all our (womens') eggs in one planetary basket.
Under Obama, the Space Administration will be focused on terrestrial science?
He promised change, right? ;-)
Google calling its browser "Chrome(tm)" would be like calling an operating system "Windows(tm)."
Or calling a (virtual or physical) lisp machine "Emacs(tm)" ;-)
Well Debian['s] goal is to be Pure GNU at all costs even if it [affects] the end user.
The goal isn't exactly some abstract notion of purity, nor is it to be "The GNU Linux".
The goal, I believe, is to deliver a high-quality collection of software which is licensed compatibly with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (http://www.debian.org/social_contract).
I quote: "We will never make the system require the use of a non-free component" and "We will be guided by the needs of our users"
[Ubuntu] is a bit lax on this and its goal is to be more focused on its users
I disagree: Ubuntu isn't more focused on its users. Ubuntu is more focused on its users' pragmatic needs. Debian is more focused on its users' ideological needs.
Note: the key word is more. It's not all or nothing: "We will support people who create or use both free and non-free works on Debian. [...] We acknowledge that some of our users require the use of works that do not conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. [...] contrib and non-free"
In the firefox case, the Debian project decided that 1. shipping only free software in the base system; and 2. shipping firefox in the base system was more important than 3. shipping a branded firefox. Ubuntu decided that 3 and 2 were more important than 1. Pragmatic vs. Idealistic needs.
And my personal spin: sacrificing a cute logo and calling the rose an iceflower---really, is it that big a deal? It still smells like a good web browser, and that's what I want: good software, with good ideals. I prefer the Debian decision.
I thought it'd be pining for the Martian canals.
Let me relate my university experience. I'm not 100% sure about US tertiary education terminology, maybe a Danish university is what you call College?
College is about having goals
Yes. My goals. Learning (about) Computer Science in order to become a better programmer. Getting straight A's on my exams. Learning the material.
meeting deadlines
Or asking kindly and slightly embarrassed for an extension, sometimes. You know, negotiate with the people who are dependent on your work (either for grading it or for linking with your code). Or, sometimes, yeah, just meet the damn deadline.
and dealing well (i.e. obediently) with authority figures
You're quiet in class out of respect for your classmates' desire to learn. You hand in your hand-ins on time out of respect for your TA. You follow the rules about which and how many courses you must take, but the constraints on your choices are well-aligned with your own learning goals.
Then again, I'm not shy about asking for clarification or "I think you missed the special case where [...]", or "You wrote X; I think you mean Y?". Your lecturer ain't perfect, and I'm not a perfect TA. I welcome corrections, as I sense my lecturers do.
your willingness to allow them to determine the use of your time
You choose your major and minor, and have a large degree of freedom in choosing courses once you got the requirements for a bachelor satisfied.
Similarly, you can choose to not work for Google/Sun/SAS if you don't like them. Or you can move around on the job market. And you choose whether to apply for the Marketing VP or the Software Development position.
Even when you work for the University, as a TA, the TA-to-courses allocation is done in a way that tries to optimize social utility. And intra-course time slot allocation is done by negotiation. You don't choose completely freely, but the authority in question tries to give everybody what they want (to the best of its ability).
your ability to follow their detailed instructions
"Solve problems 1 through 7 on the course web page, and 16.2 through 16.5 in $BOOK". Detailed? Instruction? I take that as a suggestion to help you learn. No TA I've encountered really gave a $MAKELOVE about whether you learned, although they were willing to help if you wanted to. You're free to solve fewer exercises, or more, and if you ask questions beyond the curriculum, most TAs and professors are willing and even eager to have a fruitful discussion with you.
and your willingness to be a cog in a large institution.
In the University, the institution is there to serve you. You don't make it run, you consume its output (the output really being the process).
Yes, there are resource constraints. The courses start aligned at semester boundaries. Some courses are only held every other semester/year/period due to too low attendance if it was held more often. So what?
Maybe US Colleges are very different from Danish universities?
I think the most important thing you learn besides your subject matter (i.e. the math, programming, anthropology or whatever) is to plan and organize your own learning efforts. If you learn that. I'm on my 6th year (phd student) and I'm just beginning to need to think about what I can do besides showing up for lectures and exercise sessions in order to learn the subject matter.
You don't take advanced degrees in assembly line manufacturing. I see how the qualities you claim College teaches students might be useful there. I think the qualities I've observed are more useful in knowledge work.
But to be fair: fitting into a large organization and agreeing to use you time on what others suggest is useful if you work at a large company. Then again, you're free to seek employment at Google where you get to spend 20% of your work hours rather (more) freely. I think they see individual entrepreneurial spirit as a useful thing.
The French would disagree with this. They have single handedly foisted on the world ever longer copyrights since the 19th century.
You're supposed to blame Canada!
Say I write a dozen books and finally get one published then a day later die in a car accident leaving my family with nothing but the work I spent ten years writing. Are you saying they don't have the right to benefit from my work?
I'm not the same "you", but I am saying that. Or rather, I'm saying that I'd be perfectly happy if copyright didn't last longer than the life of the author.
Your family can of course read your book. They have a right to benefit in that way. I take it you think your books are beneficial to read; that's why you can get away with charging money for them, right?
Why should the public benefit but not my family?
Because the benefit the public will gain is larger than the benefit your family will gain.
If my family isn't going to be allowed to benefit from my work then I'd rather do something with my time they are allowed to retain so they can live without going on welfare if I happen to die young.
I'm glad to hear you aren't completely hung up on being a writer.
Are you raising your kids to be dependent on your ability to provide them with money? Wouldn't you rather want them to be able to earn a living on their own? If they are, why is it so important what you can leave them?
Why should the public have rights over and above the creator?
It doesn't. The public is giving away its inherent right to copy and (re)distribute information (selectively).
It does so in order to create a financial incentive for writers, musicians, film makers and software programmers (that's me) to do work which benefits the public.
The public does this (in the ideal case) based on an evaluation which says that the freedoms and right given up are less valuable than the work created by the incentive put in place by giving up the freedoms and rights.
If you don't want to play ball, you're free to not write books. You're free to tell us exactly which restrictions you want us to place on ourselves for you to write books. We're free to listen, or not, depending on what we feel like. But you're not the one to tell us which rights we can and can't exercise. We, the public, decides what our rights are. As a member of the public, you're of course welcome to participate in this decision process, but don't expect your wishes to have a disproportionate influence.
If I built investment houses for a living there wouldn't be a debate about taking them away from my family after I died.
And if you built bit strings, there wouldn't be a debate about going into your house a deleting the bit strings from your hard drive. And there isn't.
And if you built houses, there wouldn't be a debate about building identical houses, not when you're alive, and not when you're dead. And there isn't.
See, because we have efficient copying machinery for the things you produce, there's a value/cost disparity: the cost of production is almost independent of the number of copies. The value is almost linear in the number of copies (not everybody who reads your books enjoys it equally, but more copies means more enjoyment). Thus, the most valuable use of a book you've written is to make as many copies as possible, up to the point where the value is less than the cost of the electricity and disk space used to copy and store the book. (Note that we can't copy houses efficiently: it takes a lot of labour. That's why they're different.)
Do you want to destroy things of value? Do you want to sabotage the public's wealth? Why? For your own benefit? I want to dump my poisonous radioactive waste in the public river because it's cheap. Should I be allowed to do that? Why is it that nuclear power plant operations are so discriminated against?
if it only takes you 5 seconds to say "no" and it only happens one time -- it's not that big of a deal.
Right. If Google is allowed to do this, are others allowed to do it too? Will they? How many times will authors have to say "no"?
Say I set up 10000 shell companies, each saying "I'm going to do xyz with your stuff unless you say 'no'". Then suddenly it's 50000 seconds per author. Plus the author has to find all 10000 shell companies, which might take significantly more than 5 seconds per company.
Setting this precedent could open the field to an arms race of setting up shell companies vs. prohibiting them among the big companies. Any extra cost of doing business impedes the small companies. I'm not sure, but I seem to recall hearing that having a good environment for small companies helps a country's economy.
While I don't object to what Google is doing, I'm worried about what kind of precedent this might set.
That's cool.
Let's say I put a note on my blog, saying "Dear Microsoft; I'm going to distribute copies of any and all software you publish unless you notify me within sixty (60) day after publishing".
Let's say my blog is hosted on my own machine, and I'm diligently keeping it connected to the internet and giving it a DNS name. But I don't advertise it anywhere.
Is Microsoft now required to port-80-scan the entire internet and read everything that is posted? What if I bury the notice deep down in a maze of unrelated content (say, a hyperlinked version of the KJVB)? Are they required to traverse all the link graphs on all web servers on all machines? What about infinite link graphs?
Where's the reasonable limit? What if I advertise my blog, but in general make myself a nobody and don't drive a lot of traffic towards it?
What if I did it to the code made by the company you work for? If it ruined them and they had to fire you, would you be pissed at me? Would you feel justified in being pissed at me?
Do you see the problem?
Why? Have they trademarked the name? Also, why would that be relevant in a discussion about copyright?
Or are you saying MrHanky is quoting South Park screenplays beyond what you think is fair use? (i.e. saying "Hooooowdy-ho" in every post).
(Also, MrHanky might arguably be a play on the name Hank rather than Hankey.)
Or is there something I'm missing? Exactly what would MrHanky need permission to do, and according to which law(s) and/or case(s)?
The problem with attorneys' fees is not unlike the problem in the medical profession. They usually get paid per hour. This gives them incentives to drag cases out and not do their best work up front.
If you work faster, you can have more clients per time instead of having each client longer. Then, by your per-case cost being cheaper, you have a competitive edge and clients will prefer you.
So you make the same as if you work slowly, and have more customers banging down your door.
Where's the downside?
Rather, it's the failing of the educational system for not adequately educating people regarding technology
How much technology has come out since your ~80-yo family members left school? How could school have prepared them better? What would be reasonable to ask of the schooling system? What would be possible to get? Now ask yourself the same question for ages ~70, ~60, ..., ~30.
Education is a marvellous thing. A schooling can at best be a useful part of a good education. Some things you only learn "on the street".
Why can't Mozilla just implement a plugin framework, and leave it up to the user to decide whether he wants to install the h264 plugin
No, no, you don't get it: that would be smart, and convenient, and uhh...
Oh wait. Well, I recall a link to a blog post by some firefox dude a few days ago (sorry I'm being so specific ^_^) who said that this has been suggested, and that it would be problematic: if there's a security issue (or some other issue) in the third party code, then firefox can't fix it.
It doesn't make any sense to me: sooner or later, firefox is going to make a system call. If the Windows API is broken, will firefox (the mozilla foundation) fix Windows? Will they fix libgtk? Or the OS X TCP/IP stack? Why is the video codec different? And by not shipping a video codec, they force us to use flash on (e.g.) youtube. Where are all the Mozilla foundation fixes to flash?
But there's the argument: The Mozilla foundation can't fix third party code, so it (selectively) won't rely on it.
Nobody forced anyone to adopt Microsoft Windows; it just happens that it did get adopted because it actually is a good operating system. There are alternatives of varying quality and success, and even if there weren't, nothing is stopping someone from designing one and marketing it.
While not completely analogous, Microsoft isn't forcing anyone at gunpoint to buy or sell Windows. They're just using their market position to compel people to do so ("an offer you can't refuse").
A lot of people have voluntarily chosen to get locked in, and have in this way granted a lot of power to an organization that might not have their interest as its top priority.
MPEG-LA didn't take power, people just (stupidly?) gave them power. That doesn't change the fact that it now has a lot of power. And it wields it counter to our interests.
I think that's what your parent was getting at.
+1/2, Funny
Hey, C sharp, fell flat... C. Ah, I get it. Ha. Ha-ha-ha...
I guess your choice of words wasn't completely accidental.
If the tax rate is 10% and you make $100 a [week], the difference between 100 and 90 is pretty significant.
You could make the tax "${fraction} times max(0, ${income} - ${threshold})", where the fraction and threshold are set by the government.
In other words, pay 20% of every dollar you earn after the first 20,000 (say).
Wouldn't that achieve the goal of being easy on the poor, while still achieving all the good goals of a flat tax?
http://xkcd.com/670/
I guess you're saying "Be the smart engineer"?
You know, if she got some glasses that were a little more stylish, did something with her hair
Maybe it's just me, but I say she's a cutie even with her current hair and glasses.
(insert obligatory about her being a minor and my not being a minor and my not feeling that way about her)
I mean at least it wasn't Star Trek, but seriously...
That's what I told the Football team captain, and then he gave me a wedgie :(
crazy dude
I could've sworn the caption said "Kurt Gödel, MOFO". He's a bad-ass mathematical mother fucker, than Kurt guy, as he comes and gives your neatly thought out proof system a roundhouse kick, square in its axiomatic nuts!
Maybe I'm misreading things.
I'm intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your Tuesday evening reality TV show!
What's it called again? Oh wait, I could never tell them apart in the first place </snark>
Hi.
Thank you for sharing your story. I can't imagine what other difficulties you're going through besides the one you've mentioned, but I'm taking a wild guess here: it isn't easy being you.
And I don't think I can say anything other than this: I wish you the best of luck in living a happy, fulfilling live, whatever that means to you, and I hope your limitations won't get too much in the way of that.
When Microsoft has its own set of hieroglyphics
I think you mean ideograms---a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept (with the connotation that different concepts each has its own ideogram).
Some hieroglyphics are actually phonetic: Carl Sagan argues so in Cosmos (I don't recall the episode), based on (iirc) the Rosetta stone, and the occurrence of "Ptolmeus" and "Kleopatra": the first symbol of "Ptolmeus" matches the fifth from "Kleopatra", etc.
Some hieroglyphics are ideograms, though: the "ra" in Kleopatra is written with an ankh, the symbol for life and the life-giving sun god, Ra.
Sorry for being all pedantic about it :) I just think it's an interesting bit of knowledge and I wanted to share it with you all.