Slashdot Log In
Slashback: OpenDocuments, RFID Passports, Firefox Celebration
from the it's-bad-if-i-can-leverage-that-for-political-office dept.
Politics still muddying the water of the MA OpenDocument debate. The Commonwealth's Secretary of State William Galvin says he has "grave concerns" about the switch and told secretary of administration and finance Thomas Trimarco that "we will not be participating." Galvin is considered one of the strong candidates to run as a rival candidate for next year's gubernatorial race against incumbent Mitt Romney who supports the switch.
RFID passports still the best option. The US State Department released a final ruling on the issue of RFID technology to be included in all US passports after October 2006 which also contained some of the reasoning behind their move. Other technologies were apparently looked at and discarded due to the difficulty of implementation and several security measures have apparently been taken to try and placate the opposition.
Firefox fans at Oregon State celebrate 100 million downloads. CNet has a pictorial about a local OSU LUG that had a few interesting ways to celebrate the recent big numbers on the Firefox downloads page. Happy to show their support students both painted a giant Firefox logo and launched a weather balloon, I can't think of any better way to say congratulations.
DrDOS didn't really break, it just reverted. The FreeDOS folks have an update on their webpage stating that DrDOS 8.1 no longer exists and all links on the DrDOS webpage apparently point to DrDOS 7.03. There were some negative reactions to the release or 8.1 stating that it included software that it shouldn't have so for now the "band-aid" fix appears to be in place.
Flexbeta takes a look at Flock. Noting the roots of Flock in Mozilla's Firefox browser, the folks over at Flexbeta take a quick look at the additional functionality offered by this newcomer. This comes with the recent news that Flock has also decided to open source their browser. Looks like this Firefox offspring is fighting hard for some recognition of its own.
iTunes continues to take over the world. With the recent release of iTunes Australia and Apple's continued growth in the industry a recent announcement brings us "Standford on iTunes". This new service will give alumni and the general public access to a wide range of Stanford-specific digital audio content.
A note on OpenDocument... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A note on OpenDocument... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just thought I'd point out the obvious.
RTFL (Score:5, Insightful)
Quote: Microsoft has stated that they will support the OpenDocument format in MS Office if there is customer demand:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051016
The purpose of this petition is to quantify the customer demand for OpenDocument support. EndQuote
Parent
Re:RTFL (Score:3, Interesting)
Point two. The state of Massachusetts IS a current customer, and IS demanding this 'feature' and Microsoft is, so far, refusing to include it in any future version. So much for claims of "...will support the OpenDocument format in MS Office if there is customer demand."
Once their claim has been P
Firefox fans ... celebrate 100 million downloads (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, I've downloaded 10 myself - I'm sure many others have too.
There's no way to compare these numbers to the main competition (IE), so I'm not celebrating much myself.
ps First Post!?!
Re:Firefox fans ... celebrate 100 million download (Score:3, Insightful)
This may sound dumb but....
If you assume that this happens with all software, then you just have to assume total downloads is an arbitary figure and use it to compare with other downloads?
Re:Firefox fans ... celebrate 100 million download (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, they don't track downloads via the update feature of Firefox.
Second, while you've downloaded it ten times, there are many businesses and schools who have installed it on hundreds of workstations from a single download. So it may be one of those things that balances out in the end.
And finally, it's not so much about the exact number. It's about the general magnitude of the number. Even if they're 10 million downloads off either way, that's still an impressive number of people to reach.
Parent
Re:Firefox fans ... celebrate 100 million download (Score:4, Insightful)
No. If you have x unknown amount of additional downloads that shouldn't be counted, and y number of installations that weren't counted, then the odds of x - y = 0 (the hypothesis that it "balances out in the end") seems extremely unlikely.
Why is there this fascination with using all kinds of contorted non-logic to try and derive statistics from data that just can't support it? If you don't have the facts, the right thing to do is hold your hands up and say "I don't know", and the wrong thing to do is say "well because we don't know how many we undercount by and how many we overcount by, we'll just sweep logic under the rug and pretend that it "balances out".
Parent
That's not good enough (Score:5, Funny)
To prevent people from compiling it on their own, they could close the source so that you can only run it through the official installer and only that would be counted in the tallies. To verify transparency, they should put all the names and ID numbers in a central database that everyone can access so that independent agencies can verify the names and contact people to be sure they're actually using it. This could all be funded by selling the contact information in the database to direct marketing organizations (the legitimate ones, not the ones who harass you).
This is the only way to get an accurate, scientific count of the true number of users.
Parent
Re:That's not good enough (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Firefox fans ... celebrate 100 million download (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Firefox fans ... celebrate 100 million download (Score:2)
Any time that a friend asks for IT help of any kind, the first thing I do is d/l firefox, eradicate the links to IE, and tell them to use that instead.... even if the 'IT help' request had nothing to do with IE or the 'net.
I've even started doing it on other peoples PC's at work.
Sure IE has improved of late, but that appears to have been only due to the increased interest in the foxy lady.
And to think that ten years ago I was one of the biggest MS fanboys out there
Firefox, Flock and Flexbeta (Score:3, Informative)
I notice that the Flexbeta review is not comparing Flock to the latest nightly builds of Firefox because some features the latest nightly builds have that are similar to Flock's are missing from the screenshots. They are giving Flock credit for features Flock may have inherited from the Firefox codebase.
OSU Celebration (Score:5, Funny)
Re:OSU Celebration (Score:3, Funny)
(to keep on topic)
You're right, it was a nice way to celebrate, but I think something a bit more flashy that to grab media attention would have been good.... something to get the attention of Fox News. I'm seeing scantily clad ladies with a guy in a fox outfit releasing a hundred doves.... or maybe scantiliy clad ladies with fox masks.
I'd better get back to work.
Re:OSU Celebration (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:OSU Celebration (Score:3, Funny)
Wham!
We have another shite television program.
Too much controversy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Plaintext emails and memos work just fine. LaTeX is fantastic for more complex documents. And you can even output PDFs of documents, if you really want to make viewing easy and exact.
These new technologies seem to bring nothing but problems, especially when the existing formats work so well.
Re:Too much controversy. (Score:2)
Admittedly, I'm not necessarily in favor of creating more standards when there are existing ones that are throughly adequate, but if "they" can create one standard that everyone's needs will be met by, that works cross-platform and across the board, then I'll endorse that if it actually works. I've seen too many headaches with MS-Works, Appleworks, Lotus WordPro, and Microsoft Word writing to formats that the others can
Re:Too much controversy. (Score:3, Informative)
Indeed, it'd be great if they could come up with something better. But it seems that they can't. That's why they're running into so many problems. Indeed, being able to read the various formats is a problem, especially when they're some proprietary binary format. That's why using plaintext, LaTeX and PDF files works so well: they're well documented, non-obfuscated, and are easily transmittable.
Re:Too much controversy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Parent is not a troll, I get stuff in HTML and .doc and .rtf all the time that uses no formatting at all that couldn't be done in plaintext. (Line breaks, and...that's about it.) It's silly, it wastes bandwidth, it wastes space, and it wastes time. Even most of the posts I see here, despite the fact HTML is usable, make use of nothing but good old text and line breaks. Most of the correspondence I receive is the same. I do encourage people to send me stuff in plaintext unless they really need the formatting
Re:Too much controversy. (Score:4, Funny)
The punch line? He sent it as an attachment, in .DOC format. The fucker took around 256 KB to send an email which contained under 1 KB of content.
He was fired not very long thereafter. I remember one manager kept stating about him, "He spends too much travel time" (he was down the long hall and around the corner, and never picked up the phone, instead insisting on showing up in Scott's office and badgering him).
Parent
.doc in 1994? (Score:3, Interesting)
This probably isn't very relevant -- I presume what you mean is that he sent it as a Microsoft Word document. Back in 1994 I remember that the .DOC format was more well known for being plain ASCII text --- it was a common extension for electronic software user manuals everywhere.
Somewhere along the line, Microsoft decided to make it the default extension for Microsoft Word. I'm not sure if it was used in Word for DOS, but Word for Win
Re:Too much controversy. (Score:3, Funny)
And while were at it, let's all go back to doing everything from the command line! This whole WYSIWYG thing is waaay to complicated.
These new technologies seem to bring nothing but problems, especially when the existing formats work so well.
Which is exactly why I'm sticking to parchment and carrier pigeons. These new technologies mess up everything. Sure, instant m
Re:Too much controversy. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm all for using plain text a lot more, but using LaTeX as the only other format is foolish. Don't get me wrong, I love TeX, but it should, like Postscript/PDF be used for page layout, not for authoring content that is meant to be shared between individuals or applications.
We should use semantic markup to describe what the pieces of a document mea
Re:Too much controversy. (Score:3, Informative)
This was a concern of mine for a project that I started researching, which would have accepted source files from the web and compiled them (I still want to take it further but havn't got the time).
The most obvious problems are commands like \input, allowing files to be read, which could be disasterous (e.g. \input{/etc/passwd}).
Potentially worse is \write18, which allows you to write a file..
All is not lost however, after asking a suitably enlightened TeXnician, Tho
Three letters: X, M, L. (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides, you forgot the reason for OpenDocument to exist: Inter-operability. And you also forgot its power: XML.
Anyone with an XML parser can read opendocument. But to read LaTeX, you need a complicated parser.
OpenDocument can be transformed into HTML with an XSLT template automatically. Heck, you could render OpenDocument with Internet Explorer! (With the appropriate XSL stylesheet, of course)
Also, any XML can be transformed into PDF via XSL:FO.
You could put a bunch of OpenDocument files and index them from with a simple program that supports XML.
The point of OpenDocument is that it's EASY to handle. The EZPublish content management system ALREADY supports importing and exporting of OpenDocument files. Heck, there's even a C++ IDE [codeblocks.org] that can export the sourcefiles (syntax-highlighted) to OpenDocument.
I don't care how much you're fond of LaTeX. Is it powerful? Yes. But is it popular? Is it easy to implement?
Sorry, but I think you're stuck a few years behind.
Parent
Re:Too much controversy. (Score:4, Informative)
Does LaTeX excel at any of these? Probably not. But why not do, as others do, and choose tools which DO excel at them.Just zip the needed files together, as OpenDoc does....These are file formats. Not interfaces. There are friendly HTML and LaTeX authoring tools.This is laughable. LaTeX is VERY scriptable.No, again--the programs that grok OpenDoc have it. Not the format itself. There are LaTeX tools which can pull data from a database.
Parent
Re:Too much controversy. (Score:5, Insightful)
LaTeX actually does exceptionally good presentations if you actually know how to use it. There are some packages out there to help, or you can simply roll your own to get the best results. In fact LaTeX offers something no Office suite I've ever seen does: the ability to have a single document that is both the presentation and the full paper report at the mere toggle a switch.
I think the biggest problem is that the basic LaTeX slides package sucks (it was designed for OHP transparencies) and some of the other presentation pakages are a little underwhelming in terms of visual flair. In practice it is quite easy to quickly design "templates" (in practice documentclasses) that look as good or better than anything I've seen PowerPoint produce - I've even written the better part of a GUI tool to let you drag and drop images and text to design one - but it takes a little know how which, apparently, most LaTeX presenters don't have.
LaTeX represents a damn fine solution to the issue of presentations, especially when you are doing one as a summary of more detailed paper report.
macro language (admitedly not standardised in OpenDocument). OpenDocument has it. LaTeX fails it;
What exactly do you think TeX is? TeX is a macro language. It may not have the "live updates" that you seem to have in mind, but that more to do with the compilation step rather than any lack of macro capability of TeX's part. Run TeX again and you'll get all your updates/changes magically propogating through.
Jedidiah.
Parent
Re:Too much controversy. (Score:4, Interesting)
a single-file container format so exchange is easy which means you want a built in tarball roller? Not a bad idea. Anybody want to add a button to Kile's File/Save?
user interface that regular users can migrate to which requires you define "regular users". I agree that for highschool, and even lower division work, office products are fine. Business, all technical users, and upper division students should be able to use better tools. (Try KDE's Kile.)
macro language!!! *snort* Do you have any clue what latex even *is*? Have you heard of TeX? Did you know that LaTeX is a set of macros?
integration with other office formats is good to great for gnumeric and abiword, OpenOffice, and KOffice. Try selecting the "save as" button. It works
So unless by "regular users" you mean grandmas who have trouble sending email, or people who just want to write a quick letter, I think you underestimate LaTeX.
Parent
About ODF, Mass. (Score:3, Insightful)
The Commonwealth's Secretary of State William Galvin says he has "grave concerns" about the switch and told secretary of administration and finance Thomas Trimarco that "we will not be participating." Galvin is considered one of the strong candidates to run as a rival candidate for next year's gubernatorial race against incumbent Mitt Romney who supports the switch
I hardly think this will be a big issue in the election for Massachusetts voters, but if it becomes one, this will be a huge way to get non-techies to identify problems with the Microsoft monopoly. If this issue somehow becomes a big (if not the biggest) factor in this election, we can expect ODF to come up in elections all over the place.
Re:About ODF, Mass. (Score:3, Insightful)
If he does, I trust you'll do your duty as a citizen and enlighten the electorate with a few well written letters to the editors of the major Mass. newspapers. Ordinary folks may not know about ODF but they'll certainly know corruption when they see it.
Peace
Re:About ODF, Mass. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, and they won't care. Massachusetts has long been known for having the best politicians money can buy.
RFID justification is BS (Score:3, Interesting)
All the more reason to stick your passport in the microwave with your new shirts from Wal-Mart.
Meanwhile, bop on over to www.house.gov [house.gov] and send a quick note of outrage to your representative!
Re:RFID justification is BS (Score:2)
Re:RFID justification is BS (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I'm concerned, making it 'hard enough' to where it's more cost effective to resort to old fashioned brute force is just as good as not putting it in.
I'm not advocating in favor of this particular device either, but I'll admit that I'm kind of surprised that passports have been the way that they are for so incredibly long, when they're easily forged, easily modified, and probably fairly easily fraudulently applied for.
Parent
Re:RFID justification is BS (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RFID justification is BS (Score:2)
But noone's listening because (Insert proprietary vendor conspiracy theory here.)
come on... (Score:5, Funny)
"Standford on iTunes"
It appears ScuttleMonkey didn't just make a typo, but just has no clue that it is actually Stanford not Standford...
Re:come on... (Score:2)
Yeah! Sir Stanford Fleming must be spinning in his grave!
Would it be possible... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Would it be possible... (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps the blog editor and the rss viewer isn't there, but all the other things they were cooing over as differences between firefox and flock were all default 1.5 behaviour.
you're a mess (Score:2)
You COULD have just painted the firefox logo with sidewalk chalk, but nooo, you had to be fancy and now look what you've done!
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
They had a choice?
Wait.....Confused by parties.... (Score:5, Funny)
Damn. This must be Bush's fault somehow....
-john
DrDOS rolled _everything_ back (Score:3, Funny)
Big "Kidnap Me" Sign (Score:4, Insightful)
The "anti-skimming material" that the Dept of State references will make it harder to get exact bits off the RFID, but it sure won't stop someone from being able to at least tell if you have one of these RFID passports in your pocket.
Carrying your passport around with you (as you are required to do in most foreign countries) will be the equivalent of wearing a big sign on your back that says, "Get Your Grudge On! Kidnap Me! I'm an American!"
Short of sending hundreds of legit blank passports directly to Osama, I can't think of a passport plan likely to enable more terrorism than this cockamamie scheme.
Re:Technology Fetish (Score:2)
I got to hear a crypto presentation from a guy whose working on high-end crypto smart cards that are basically small computers that handle crypto. They are designed to be interfaced
Re:For people living in Massachussets (Score:3, Informative)
If you really want to get involved, according to Groklaw [groklaw.net] the meeting Monday, October 31, in Boston, at the State House, room A1, from 1 to 5 that's open to the public. If you can't make that kind of commitment, Mass.gov [mass.gov]. One useful page is this one [state.ma.us] which lets you type in your city and find out which state congress critters are yours. They're the ones who want your vote next time around. We also already know that Romney is in favor of ODF and Galvin (who wants
Re:100 million downloads? I guess numbers do lie (Score:3, Insightful)