... in the US only. It is perfectly legal where I live.
I think, there should be just two kinds of mirrors and ISO images of Ubuntu. For US and for the rest of the world. It is OK to offer sale options in the american version. It is an extortion attempt to even mention these pay-$90-to-play-mp3-and-dvd options when the user has clearly stated to be outside of the US.
And yes, the mp3/dvd should play out of the box in non-US version. No codec download.
US laws are wrong, and we, Canonical users from the rest of the world should not suffer from these pay-$90-for-what-should-work-for-everyone-but-americans-out-of-the-box options. I support you.
Those codecs should be preinstalled and be available gratis by default. Americans and only americans should have an option to either disable them or go and pay the fee.
Choices are:
0) Not offer this software at all
1) Include this software for free, with a big blinking warning for customers from some countries, that they should choose option 2)
2) Offer the same software for money
I know and use LaTeX often (and have no choice actually as I want to publish academic papers).
However, the ConTeXt seems like an interesting alternative for writing books/manuals and texts of that kind. According to what I read it in the manuals, it is easier to control layouts and typographic details in ConTeXt, but I didn't try it yet.
Could you summarize what are the advantages of ConTeXt with respect to LaTeX? (Forgetting the disadvantage of ConTeXt not being widely used by publishers).
P.S. Choosing the name "ConTeXt" was unfortunate, it is not search-engine friendly.
More exit nodes in the Tor network controlled by the governments and malicious parties (directly or indirectly with hidden remote administration tools). And then all we, Tor users, are screwed. The last hop is unencrypted and usually contains some information which helps to identify the user.
I forgot to mention, but recent versions of GIMP and EoG do support colour management. Unfortunately I do not have colour calibration device, nor colours on may laptop cannot be adjusted. So I do not have experience in this area.
If someone can tell how he includes also colour management into his photo workflow in GNU/Linux, it would be interesting.
Having tried some free, Free and non-free tools, I settled to relatively simple solutions. I just organize photos per shooting session manually.
Directories:
/year /year/YYYYMMDD-album or session name /year/YYYYMMDD-album or session name/subject (dups set or set of photos for a panorama stitching)
Having preview in most file browsers helps (I am using Nautilus). GQview or EoG launches quickly if I want to view the details.
Then I convert RAWs using UFRaw or GIMP UFRaw plugin (having file association). It is quite handy and just one click away. I save the retouched image with a different name: dscfXXXX.raf -> dscfXXXX_subject.{tif,png,jpg}. Bad shots are deleted. Dups get moved to a separate directory.
Special needs: Hugin + autopanosift + enblend for panoramas. Qtpfsgui for HDR (I am not particularly fond of). Exposure Blend GIMP plugin for HDR imitation (I like it) or enfuse. GREYCstoration GIMP plugin is usable for noise reduction, but non-free NeatImage performs better and works in Wine. Inkscape is superb for over-the-photo writing, adding speach-bubbles, notes etc.
This approach is flexible, cross-platform and does not depend on any particular tools (any may be substituted). Directory tree is easy to backup and filenames are easy to search. I can always distinguish good from bad, original from the retouched version etc.
Recently I have also given another try to digiKam. It turned out to be perfectly compatible with my photo archive structure (album == folder). A really good tool for navigating in a archive, running a slideshow and photo tagging. Also it saves tags and other metadata in IPTC (nice!) and has a bunch of useful plugins. Its editing features are not bad, but I find using UFRaw/Gimp/Hugin more convenient.
There are some other tools to consider: F-spot (too slow for me and insufficient editing tools), Blue Marine (even slower), gThumb (actually I used it and liked it a lot, it's a pity it does not save metadata in IPTC, Picasa (good interface, but proprietary, did not support UTF-8 until recently, metadata saved in a proprietary format, rather slow)
I use both (F & PW), but pay for Flickr only. Because it is just much better from social point of view. I use PW for family photos because of its album organization (it is good to represent events or visited places).
P.S. tags in picasaweb suck.
I use epiphany daily and find it much better designed than FF2 or even FF3 betas.
The killer feature in Epiphany for me is its tag-based bookmarking system. They really got it right. Places in FF3 is an attempt to catch-up, but it still has a long way to go.
I also like that URL and search box are the same thing in Epiphany. When I remember URL, I enter URL, when I want to search, I enter search request. Creating a "Smart bookmark" in Epiphany is much faster and easier than packing search engine plugin in FF. Thanks to this feature, my Epiphany is much better integrated with the sites I use.
What else? Epiphany starts faster and is more resonsive, its fonts are OK by default like in all GNOME applications (no need to tweak them like in FF), it respects GNOME settings. It is not bloated. Punto.
Earlier I lacked good adblocking extension for Epiphany. Nowdays it covers my needs. I know not all FF greasemonkey scripts work in Epiphany, but the only one I use on Flickr works well.
P.S. I still use gecko engine. I tried webkit-based engine, but found it not-ready-for-daily-use-yet. Probably it's gotten better today. Fortunately, switching rendering engines in modern Epiphany is easy for the end-user.
> But they won that market because no one else cared about search at the time. No one else was trying to make a better search engine, the competition was poor.
My impression (from the end-user point of view) is that no one (M$ and Symbian in particular) cares about really good, reliable, powerful and easy to use mobile platform. I am really dissappointed with stability of Symbian software and the choice of software. I may say the same about WinMobile (some of my friends used to use it...). I think Google has a chance in this game, because everything else sucks.
the Nokias are consumer lifestyle devices, not corporate devices
I guess I just tend to assume that the only non-geek market segment to which such a device would appeal is the corporate type.
Not true. Geeks are surely early adopters. But those around them quickly figure out what is useful and worthy. All the non-geek relatives around me are happily using Bombus IM on their Java2ME-enabled phones to chat over Jabber/Google talk. This is cheaper and more convinient than traditional SMS, and people are happy to use it when they discover this sort of technology.
The same with other devices. If they are too costly and only marginaly useful, they are doomed. Otherwise, they have a chance. I think Nokia's tablets have a chance. Not a huge one, but higher than most PDAs nowdays.
> trying to decrypt some URL using ukranian characters...
Ukranian characters are cyrillic characters. They are already in most Chinese-Japanese-Korean fonts, by the way. Copy-paste is enough to deal with them.
> or... trying to write it on his japanese keyboard...
... wasn't he a chinese guy? I guess his keyboard is not that different from yours (supposedly, US). Keyboards like this are extremely rare.
I remember I downloaded a trial version of Elements. It was a piece of crap. Elements is slow and less fun the zero cost Picasa for photo organizing and quick editing. Elements is handicapped when it goes to a little bit more advanced editing.
I stick to Picasa + GIMP combo for my amateur needs.
P.S. Yes, I used Photoshop 7 at work, long time ago. It was a good tool. But I have never tried newer versions.
Opera Mini works great for me. It has a built-in RSS reader. It renders most sites good on a small screen. Reduces traffic. Works with any mobile operator I tried (though I never used Vodafone). It compresses traffic and downscales graphics server-side. It handles Unicode and multilingual stuff. So far it is the best mobile web option for me. It works virtually anywhere, and it is good enough. I even prefer m.gmail.com-in-Opera.mini instead of gmail.app or Google Mobile.
I tried also new Nokia browser (webkit-based) on the E-series phones. It is really impressive, but requires a descent phone. Also it generates much more traffic as it loads the full-blown version of the page. Also some AJAX pages don't work nice with it (e.g. Picasaweb).
Google Mobile is a nice initiative, but it lacks polish and smoothness of Opera Mini experience. In fact it works only in built-in phone browser, which is crap in most phones (except above mentioned Nokia browser).
There are other services similar to Google Mobile (like http://www.skweezer.net/), but they are of inferior quality to plain Opera Mini.
Unicode support? The major problem with the current Picasa for Linux is that it does not support Unicode. I cannot enter cyrillic or japanese characters in it (I can if I run Picasa for Windows under Wine but it is _slow_). I cannot read even existing comments in cyrillic (they appear as UTF8-as-Latin1 in Picasa for Linux).
Another major issue is missing support for picasaweb. Thankfully, there is upload2picasa.py.
No, the group that will suffer the most will be the software developers. Even the larger game houses (like EA) can't afford to have their market split like this...
Well, too bad for those who did not make an effort to be crossplatform. Too bad for those who relied on M$ APIs. A good lesson for the others.
Slashdot Mirror
In two words: <marketspeak>blah-blah</marketspeak>
... in the US only. It is perfectly legal where I live.
I think, there should be just two kinds of mirrors and ISO images of Ubuntu. For US and for the rest of the world. It is OK to offer sale options in the american version. It is an extortion attempt to even mention these pay-$90-to-play-mp3-and-dvd options when the user has clearly stated to be outside of the US.
And yes, the mp3/dvd should play out of the box in non-US version. No codec download.
US laws are wrong, and we, Canonical users from the rest of the world should not suffer from these pay-$90-for-what-should-work-for-everyone-but-americans-out-of-the-box options. I support you.
Those codecs should be preinstalled and be available gratis by default. Americans and only americans should have an option to either disable them or go and pay the fee.
Choices are: 0) Not offer this software at all 1) Include this software for free, with a big blinking warning for customers from some countries, that they should choose option 2) 2) Offer the same software for money
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:7train_arriving.ogg
plays well in Epiphany 2.22 browser (with old good Gecko 1.8.x.x).
I know and use LaTeX often (and have no choice actually as I want to publish academic papers).
However, the ConTeXt seems like an interesting alternative for writing books/manuals and texts of that kind. According to what I read it in the manuals, it is easier to control layouts and typographic details in ConTeXt, but I didn't try it yet.
Could you summarize what are the advantages of ConTeXt with respect to LaTeX? (Forgetting the disadvantage of ConTeXt not being widely used by publishers).
P.S. Choosing the name "ConTeXt" was unfortunate, it is not search-engine friendly.
Nice toy!
I am using textogif to produce images with formulas when I happen to need them.
How is LaTeX3 going? Long time no news.
Also, is anyone using ConTeXt? Last time I checked I didn't find anything it can do the LaTeX cannot.
I am going to stick with LaTeX2e for as long as it takes for LaTeX3 to get ready.
BTW, there is a nice MediaWiki plugin for collaborative LaTeX.
More exit nodes in the Tor network controlled by the governments and malicious parties (directly or indirectly with hidden remote administration tools). And then all we, Tor users, are screwed. The last hop is unencrypted and usually contains some information which helps to identify the user.
If someone can tell how he includes also colour management into his photo workflow in GNU/Linux, it would be interesting.
Having tried some free, Free and non-free tools, I settled to relatively simple solutions. I just organize photos per shooting session manually.
Directories:
Having preview in most file browsers helps (I am using Nautilus). GQview or EoG launches quickly if I want to view the details.
Then I convert RAWs using UFRaw or GIMP UFRaw plugin (having file association). It is quite handy and just one click away. I save the retouched image with a different name: dscfXXXX.raf -> dscfXXXX_subject.{tif,png,jpg}. Bad shots are deleted. Dups get moved to a separate directory.
Special needs: Hugin + autopanosift + enblend for panoramas. Qtpfsgui for HDR (I am not particularly fond of). Exposure Blend GIMP plugin for HDR imitation (I like it) or enfuse. GREYCstoration GIMP plugin is usable for noise reduction, but non-free NeatImage performs better and works in Wine. Inkscape is superb for over-the-photo writing, adding speach-bubbles, notes etc.
This approach is flexible, cross-platform and does not depend on any particular tools (any may be substituted). Directory tree is easy to backup and filenames are easy to search. I can always distinguish good from bad, original from the retouched version etc.
Recently I have also given another try to digiKam. It turned out to be perfectly compatible with my photo archive structure (album == folder). A really good tool for navigating in a archive, running a slideshow and photo tagging. Also it saves tags and other metadata in IPTC (nice!) and has a bunch of useful plugins. Its editing features are not bad, but I find using UFRaw/Gimp/Hugin more convenient.
There are some other tools to consider: F-spot (too slow for me and insufficient editing tools), Blue Marine (even slower), gThumb (actually I used it and liked it a lot, it's a pity it does not save metadata in IPTC, Picasa (good interface, but proprietary, did not support UTF-8 until recently, metadata saved in a proprietary format, rather slow)
1) ad-space (free!)
...
2) behaviour tracking (social contacts, browsing habits)
3) ???
As I do not have network connection configured in Windows, no chance to try it now. Waiting for better release or at least wine-compatible version.
I use both (F & PW), but pay for Flickr only. Because it is just much better from social point of view. I use PW for family photos because of its album organization (it is good to represent events or visited places). P.S. tags in picasaweb suck.
I use epiphany daily and find it much better designed than FF2 or even FF3 betas.
The killer feature in Epiphany for me is its tag-based bookmarking system. They really got it right. Places in FF3 is an attempt to catch-up, but it still has a long way to go.
I also like that URL and search box are the same thing in Epiphany. When I remember URL, I enter URL, when I want to search, I enter search request. Creating a "Smart bookmark" in Epiphany is much faster and easier than packing search engine plugin in FF. Thanks to this feature, my Epiphany is much better integrated with the sites I use.
What else? Epiphany starts faster and is more resonsive, its fonts are OK by default like in all GNOME applications (no need to tweak them like in FF), it respects GNOME settings. It is not bloated. Punto.
Earlier I lacked good adblocking extension for Epiphany. Nowdays it covers my needs. I know not all FF greasemonkey scripts work in Epiphany, but the only one I use on Flickr works well.
P.S. I still use gecko engine. I tried webkit-based engine, but found it not-ready-for-daily-use-yet. Probably it's gotten better today. Fortunately, switching rendering engines in modern Epiphany is easy for the end-user.
My impression (from the end-user point of view) is that no one (M$ and Symbian in particular) cares about really good, reliable, powerful and easy to use mobile platform. I am really dissappointed with stability of Symbian software and the choice of software. I may say the same about WinMobile (some of my friends used to use it...). I think Google has a chance in this game, because everything else sucks.
> I would like to see the face of a chinese guy
Well, I would prefer a girl.
> trying to decrypt some URL using ukranian characters...
Ukranian characters are cyrillic characters. They are already in most Chinese-Japanese-Korean fonts, by the way. Copy-paste is enough to deal with them.
> or... trying to write it on his japanese keyboard...
I have a bookmark to Google on my first page, so go and search there... Yes, mobile yahoo is crappy.
I remember I downloaded a trial version of Elements. It was a piece of crap. Elements is slow and less fun the zero cost Picasa for photo organizing and quick editing. Elements is handicapped when it goes to a little bit more advanced editing. I stick to Picasa + GIMP combo for my amateur needs. P.S. Yes, I used Photoshop 7 at work, long time ago. It was a good tool. But I have never tried newer versions.
Opera Mini works great for me. It has a built-in RSS reader. It renders most sites good on a small screen. Reduces traffic. Works with any mobile operator I tried (though I never used Vodafone). It compresses traffic and downscales graphics server-side. It handles Unicode and multilingual stuff. So far it is the best mobile web option for me. It works virtually anywhere, and it is good enough. I even prefer m.gmail.com-in-Opera.mini instead of gmail.app or Google Mobile.
I tried also new Nokia browser (webkit-based) on the E-series phones. It is really impressive, but requires a descent phone. Also it generates much more traffic as it loads the full-blown version of the page. Also some AJAX pages don't work nice with it (e.g. Picasaweb).
Google Mobile is a nice initiative, but it lacks polish and smoothness of Opera Mini experience. In fact it works only in built-in phone browser, which is crap in most phones (except above mentioned Nokia browser).
There are other services similar to Google Mobile (like http://www.skweezer.net/), but they are of inferior quality to plain Opera Mini.
Another major issue is missing support for picasaweb. Thankfully, there is upload2picasa.py.