I actually use this for making presentations for church and my kids use it for school presentations. I also like using spreadsheets for budgeting and items like that for the home. Just throwing out a few situations where a cheaper license like this is useful. Before it was available I would not consider getting Office because of the price and the rest of the family did not want to learn a different (free) office suite so they did not have anything to use.
I would say that Japan was known for innovation at one time. Look back at the 80's with the "car wars". Japanese innovation in car production allowed them to out perform American car makers on quality of the final product and profits. This had a huge effect on the American car industry.
As to the original post about innovation without borders, I agree that the ideas will make things better for the overall community. However, there will be initial consequences. If one country had been the leader in a certain sector, following behind in that sector due to being stagnant could lead to loss of jobs and impacts to the overall economy. Eventually, the hope is that new innovations will continue to build upon earlier ones... but there can be losses in the short term. Of course, this is capitalism at work:)
I was just about to post the same point. From a large company perspective, the purchase of the premium JVM will most likely get you different tiers of support. For example, if you have a critical software project and for some reason the JVM is not playing nice with your project you could ring up support. The free JVM would allow you to submit bug reports I'm sure, that will then get rack and stacked in whatever priority Oracle chooses. Paying for support gets you much better, guaranteed support.
Also, this seems just like the model that larger Linux distros have been taking. Anyone can get the free version, but to get premium support and additional "features" from the companies you pay for it.
As someone who has been a development team lead (responsible for schedules, explaining budget variances, providing cost estimates etc. to upper management) and a strong developer I would agree with some of what you are saying.
However, the one item that I do have a problem with is the written status reports. I know it seems lame to the folks that really are great developers but you also have to contend with people who "think" they are really good developers. If you are having problems with individuals like that, HR and upper management cannot act on just a leads observations. They need documented evidence that either the person is or is not doing their job. Chances are, if the person really is not as good as they think and you need to get them off your team, their status reports will reflect how simple tasks are taking them extremely too long. And the best thing is, it's in their own words!
The other benefit is that with the really great developers turning in status reports you have good objective evidence to show to HR types to say, "Look everyone else on the team performs exceptionally well. How can you not agree that this individual is an issue?"
Just my 2 cents. Luckily I'm out of the team lead business for now and am having fun just being a dev and designer again:)
Agreed that we are a sound bite driven society now for the most part, but how exactly was it better before "Nowadays"? Thinking back before mass media allowed for reporting of facts real time, I'm curious how American's decided who should lead the country. Do you think they had access to detailed positions from the candidates on different topics? Even if they did, was there the balance of hearing the candidate defending that position against real questioning?
My point is media is as retarding to the democratic process as we allow it to be.
I was watching it here in the States and the NBC broadcasters said the exact same thing that Midnight Thunder said about the order. I gave up on waiting for the U.S. team after a while. I'm not sure if they re-ordered it or not, but I would be surprised based on how they had the graphics at the bottom synching up with the teams walking out.
Re:multiple sequels usually don't work too well
on
New Dune Movie Confirmed
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Your point about the Fremen I believe is intentional. When reading the novels, there is much talk about how Fremen have been corrupted with power and have lost their desert ways. This is the time frame where this decline starts.
I normally don't take the time to reply to Slashdot posts, but for some reason this response really jumped out at me.
After really reading the article, not just one paragraph out of context, the reader clearly understands that a U.S. business man proposed this demo at an international conference and has German and Swiss partners in the project. Furthermore, they are going to be using one of the uninhabited islands as a safety precaution.
The only mention of the U.S. military is that they did a 75 page study on the idea of transmitting power for military operations. After that, it only talks about the businessmen. Hardly the picture of the "war machine" pushing around a tiny nation which for some reason was scored as Informative.
Thanks for the reply. You make very good points and I totally agree with all of them. I personally have not dealt with Ubuntu, but have been a Linux user off and on for many years (mainly for development purposes at home). Once I got it setup, I loved it for its purpose. But eventually I got tired of dual booting to use all of my hardware and found Windows equivalents to what I liked in Linux.
The main point I was trying to make was that switching to Linux takes a lot of work unless you really know what you are doing. By install, I mean install something that works out of the box with just about 100% of the hardware you have and has very comparable software as well. The other hit that Linux will continue to take is that the window managers are not standardized across all installs. Given that I am comfortable with this, again no issue. However, you plop a non-computer / IT tech type down in front of a computer with a different looking system compared to windows and try to explain it to them, many will not like it.
Case in point, my sister needed a new computer and I had an old one sitting around the house. No powerhouse mind you, but enough to do what she needed. I installed Suse (this was a few years back), Mozilla, openoffice... the whole works. Sent it back to her (she lives out of state so I couldn't physically hand everything off to her) and explained how everything worked and was free and is just as good if not better than windows. Within a few months she bought a new computer because she could not deal with the "weirdness" of the system. Microsoft does a damn good job of branding, to the point that "Internet Explorer" is "the Internet" to many non-computer types.
Enough of my rambling. Point is, software and hardware should start getting easier to use out of the box and less of a pain to maintain. I know the reality of the situation is that they are not and that the open source community is continuing to improve installs and package management to address this. I agree that people that say "I don't like computers" are in the minority, but I also think a vast majority of the population are saying "Just make the damn thing work with minimal work".
Agreed that Siyavash did go a little overboard on his point, some of the point is still valid. If Linux is ever going to take over the marketplace, it's not going to do it by working well only for the initiated.
Agreed that no one attempted to dictate anything, but the fact that for most Linux installs you do have to do something along of the lines of googling for answers or having compsci 110 skills is exactly what makes it difficult for most users.
What Microsoft might lack in "bulletproofing" code and making it extensible it more than makes up for in presentation and out of the box ease of use. While this does not make for a technically better product, it does make it more popular to the masses.
You don't have to be a bastard or evil genius to want to inflict harm on critical national infrastructure. Just be pissed off enough at the target nation. It doesn't take droves of people to make something bad happen, just the right person in the right place at the right time with the right information / tools.
While we are at it, why don't we open up the software for air traffic control and powergrids? I'm sure that well meaning open source guys will, in their spare time, look over the code and make it more efficient and prevent horrible accidents from occurring. I'm also sure that in no way would a criminal ever be smarter than all of the "hobby" coders and find a bug before they do and exploit it.
I know this is probably not a popular perspective for slashdot, but do we really think that having completely open source software for something as critical as our voting machines is a good idea?
I agree that we need to find a balance so that concerned citizens can understand if their votes were correctly counted. This could include the idea of vote "receipts" being printed for every vote so that a true paper recount could occur if needed. However, I have to say that there are a lot of people around the world that do not much care for our country. Allowing anyone to have access to the source code on a whim opens up our voting system infrastructure to outside sources. How many genius hackers out there could figure out sophisticated ways to commit voter fraud if they had unlimited time to review the code?
Just my 2 cents...
Slashdot Mirror
I actually use this for making presentations for church and my kids use it for school presentations. I also like using spreadsheets for budgeting and items like that for the home. Just throwing out a few situations where a cheaper license like this is useful. Before it was available I would not consider getting Office because of the price and the rest of the family did not want to learn a different (free) office suite so they did not have anything to use.
I would say that Japan was known for innovation at one time. Look back at the 80's with the "car wars". Japanese innovation in car production allowed them to out perform American car makers on quality of the final product and profits. This had a huge effect on the American car industry.
... but there can be losses in the short term. Of course, this is capitalism at work :)
As to the original post about innovation without borders, I agree that the ideas will make things better for the overall community. However, there will be initial consequences. If one country had been the leader in a certain sector, following behind in that sector due to being stagnant could lead to loss of jobs and impacts to the overall economy. Eventually, the hope is that new innovations will continue to build upon earlier ones
I was just about to post the same point. From a large company perspective, the purchase of the premium JVM will most likely get you different tiers of support. For example, if you have a critical software project and for some reason the JVM is not playing nice with your project you could ring up support. The free JVM would allow you to submit bug reports I'm sure, that will then get rack and stacked in whatever priority Oracle chooses. Paying for support gets you much better, guaranteed support.
Also, this seems just like the model that larger Linux distros have been taking. Anyone can get the free version, but to get premium support and additional "features" from the companies you pay for it.
As someone who has been a development team lead (responsible for schedules, explaining budget variances, providing cost estimates etc. to upper management) and a strong developer I would agree with some of what you are saying. However, the one item that I do have a problem with is the written status reports. I know it seems lame to the folks that really are great developers but you also have to contend with people who "think" they are really good developers. If you are having problems with individuals like that, HR and upper management cannot act on just a leads observations. They need documented evidence that either the person is or is not doing their job. Chances are, if the person really is not as good as they think and you need to get them off your team, their status reports will reflect how simple tasks are taking them extremely too long. And the best thing is, it's in their own words! The other benefit is that with the really great developers turning in status reports you have good objective evidence to show to HR types to say, "Look everyone else on the team performs exceptionally well. How can you not agree that this individual is an issue?" Just my 2 cents. Luckily I'm out of the team lead business for now and am having fun just being a dev and designer again :)
Agreed that we are a sound bite driven society now for the most part, but how exactly was it better before "Nowadays"? Thinking back before mass media allowed for reporting of facts real time, I'm curious how American's decided who should lead the country. Do you think they had access to detailed positions from the candidates on different topics? Even if they did, was there the balance of hearing the candidate defending that position against real questioning? My point is media is as retarding to the democratic process as we allow it to be.
I was watching it here in the States and the NBC broadcasters said the exact same thing that Midnight Thunder said about the order. I gave up on waiting for the U.S. team after a while. I'm not sure if they re-ordered it or not, but I would be surprised based on how they had the graphics at the bottom synching up with the teams walking out.
Your point about the Fremen I believe is intentional. When reading the novels, there is much talk about how Fremen have been corrupted with power and have lost their desert ways. This is the time frame where this decline starts.
I normally don't take the time to reply to Slashdot posts, but for some reason this response really jumped out at me. After really reading the article, not just one paragraph out of context, the reader clearly understands that a U.S. business man proposed this demo at an international conference and has German and Swiss partners in the project. Furthermore, they are going to be using one of the uninhabited islands as a safety precaution. The only mention of the U.S. military is that they did a 75 page study on the idea of transmitting power for military operations. After that, it only talks about the businessmen. Hardly the picture of the "war machine" pushing around a tiny nation which for some reason was scored as Informative.
Thanks for the reply. You make very good points and I totally agree with all of them. I personally have not dealt with Ubuntu, but have been a Linux user off and on for many years (mainly for development purposes at home). Once I got it setup, I loved it for its purpose. But eventually I got tired of dual booting to use all of my hardware and found Windows equivalents to what I liked in Linux. The main point I was trying to make was that switching to Linux takes a lot of work unless you really know what you are doing. By install, I mean install something that works out of the box with just about 100% of the hardware you have and has very comparable software as well. The other hit that Linux will continue to take is that the window managers are not standardized across all installs. Given that I am comfortable with this, again no issue. However, you plop a non-computer / IT tech type down in front of a computer with a different looking system compared to windows and try to explain it to them, many will not like it. Case in point, my sister needed a new computer and I had an old one sitting around the house. No powerhouse mind you, but enough to do what she needed. I installed Suse (this was a few years back), Mozilla, openoffice ... the whole works. Sent it back to her (she lives out of state so I couldn't physically hand everything off to her) and explained how everything worked and was free and is just as good if not better than windows. Within a few months she bought a new computer because she could not deal with the "weirdness" of the system. Microsoft does a damn good job of branding, to the point that "Internet Explorer" is "the Internet" to many non-computer types.
Enough of my rambling. Point is, software and hardware should start getting easier to use out of the box and less of a pain to maintain. I know the reality of the situation is that they are not and that the open source community is continuing to improve installs and package management to address this. I agree that people that say "I don't like computers" are in the minority, but I also think a vast majority of the population are saying "Just make the damn thing work with minimal work".
Agreed that Siyavash did go a little overboard on his point, some of the point is still valid. If Linux is ever going to take over the marketplace, it's not going to do it by working well only for the initiated. Agreed that no one attempted to dictate anything, but the fact that for most Linux installs you do have to do something along of the lines of googling for answers or having compsci 110 skills is exactly what makes it difficult for most users. What Microsoft might lack in "bulletproofing" code and making it extensible it more than makes up for in presentation and out of the box ease of use. While this does not make for a technically better product, it does make it more popular to the masses.
You don't have to be a bastard or evil genius to want to inflict harm on critical national infrastructure. Just be pissed off enough at the target nation. It doesn't take droves of people to make something bad happen, just the right person in the right place at the right time with the right information / tools.
:)
While we are at it, why don't we open up the software for air traffic control and powergrids? I'm sure that well meaning open source guys will, in their spare time, look over the code and make it more efficient and prevent horrible accidents from occurring. I'm also sure that in no way would a criminal ever be smarter than all of the "hobby" coders and find a bug before they do and exploit it.
Of course, this is just MHO
I know this is probably not a popular perspective for slashdot, but do we really think that having completely open source software for something as critical as our voting machines is a good idea? I agree that we need to find a balance so that concerned citizens can understand if their votes were correctly counted. This could include the idea of vote "receipts" being printed for every vote so that a true paper recount could occur if needed. However, I have to say that there are a lot of people around the world that do not much care for our country. Allowing anyone to have access to the source code on a whim opens up our voting system infrastructure to outside sources. How many genius hackers out there could figure out sophisticated ways to commit voter fraud if they had unlimited time to review the code? Just my 2 cents ...