Recent Posts

626

Living Room / Re: Do universities have a claim on students' IP?

« Last post by zridling on January 25, 2011, 03:52 PM »

Since a state university -- as in this case -- is funded by the state's taxpayers, which the student is, shouldn't the school make public all its IT? Ah, that slippery slope.

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Living Room / Re: The Coolest Macintosh I've Ever Seen!

« Last post by zridling on January 25, 2011, 03:49 PM »

Great art, indeed. It is surprising that no one's come out with a laptop sticker that you can lay over the lid. Maybe they have. Back in the day I would have had Hanna Montana on mine. Oh wait, I don't have a laptop. I could still put it on my washing machine lid, right? ha!

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Living Room / Re: Microsoft Formats Causing Issues Again...

« Last post by zridling on January 25, 2011, 04:29 AM »

Yea, taxpayers shouldn't fund proprietary corporate formats, much less their operating systems, and no government division or office should dictate such. Dictate ODF and if Microsoft can't read/write to the format, then it shouldn't quality for government purchase. I also support Italy's suit against Microsoft that says by merely turning on your machine and starting the software, you've already agreed to the EULA!
http://www.channelre...umers_sue_microsoft/

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General Software Discussion / Re: LibreOffice UI Mockups (with sidebar)

« Last post by zridling on January 25, 2011, 04:13 AM »

Ubuntu follows openSUSE, Redhat, and Fedora in announcing that the distro will use LibreOffice from now on. Woohoo! 
http://www.zdnet.com...cles-openoffice/8122

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Living Room / Do universities have a claim on students' IP?

« Last post by zridling on January 24, 2011, 02:51 PM »

University of Missouri student came up with an idea in class one day that spawned an iPhone application that has had more than 250,000 downloads since its release in March 2009. The app created by Brown and three other undergraduates won them a trip to Apple headquarters along with job offers from Google and other technology companies. But the invention also raised a perplexing question when university lawyers abruptly demanded a 25 percent ownership stake and two-thirds of any profits. Who owns the patents and copyrights when a student creates something of value on campus, without a professor's help?



Not happy with overcharging you insane amounts of money, colleges and universities are racing to revamp their policies regarding student ownership of IP (intellectual property). If that's the case, then Page, Brin, Gates, Dell, Zuckerberg, et al. owe lots of money to their... schools?! Bull hockey!!

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General Software Discussion / Re: LibreOffice UI Mockups (with sidebar)

« Last post by zridling on January 23, 2011, 01:38 PM »

These are not official mockups. Just some designs by some guy at deviantart.
http://pauloup.devia...com/gallery/28216273
@OP should have posted this vital info. Renders the whole discussion useless

-InstantFundas (January 23, 2011, 10:39 AM)

Uh, I did. Right there in the first sentence: "Web Upd8 has the latest LibreOffice UI mockups...." And it's also in the subject line.  

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Living Room / Re: The Onion News Network - Funniest Satire Site on the Planet Lampoons the News

« Last post by zridling on January 23, 2011, 01:32 PM »

The production values are amazing. I'll be watching. Anyone remember HBO's late '80s ''Not Necessarily the News'' program?

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Living Room / Re: New evidence supports Oracle's case against google

« Last post by zridling on January 21, 2011, 05:18 PM »

Like so many of these, I'm sure an "agreement" will be worked out. The Italian government spent years nailing Google to the wall, and recently Italy settled very quietly. After Oracle acquired Sun, its first press release stated they would essentially become SCO and sue everyone in the tech world, and as of today, they DO have active infringement suits against 20 major companies.

Oy.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft's dropped feature is Linux's gain

« Last post by zridling on January 21, 2011, 04:28 AM »

When I first read about this I noticed that HP dropped WHS like a hot potato in its Media Server line, and is now using WebOS. (Zaine mentioned that in the original post too.) So how will that work? I thought that WebOS was just a cute name for distributed computing. So HP will have all your data online? Like on their own servers, or Amazon S3? Rather than local? Or am I misunderstanding the term?

-J-Mac (January 21, 2011, 12:06 AM)

Agam Shah helps explain: The MediaSmart Server includes software developed by HP for tasks such as remote and mobile media streaming, multimedia file collection and file conversion. The server carried a unique user interface developed by HP and allowed multimedia files to be accessed from computing resources including Windows or Mac computers.

Notably, HP's Linux-based WebOS is just HP's version of ChromeOS, iOS, etc., for its various devices, such as this upcoming tablet:
http://www.crunchgea...ike-an-hp-ifed-ipad/

As one of the commenters said, adding more OSes to the [device] market doesn't really help the consumer, since the browser is now central. Until a company like HP can lure developers to its proprietary WebOS platform, Microsoft most likely doesn't care what HP does with it.

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General Software Discussion / Re: LibreOffice UI Mockups (with sidebar)

« Last post by zridling on January 21, 2011, 04:08 AM »

However, I am in complete agreement with fenixproductions on the subject of what their dev priorities should be. I'd be a lot happier (as would potential business customers) if they could focus on stability, product 'completeness,' and doing something about load and switch speeds first.

-40hz (January 20, 2011, 09:22 AM)

The good news is that's exactly what they're doing in this version. In v3.4 they'll begin to add new features according to the dev roadmap.

636

Living Room / Re: XBox racing; mad at Microsoft

« Last post by zridling on January 19, 2011, 05:56 PM »

Interesting that Steve Ballmer said in an interview last week that XBox was the biggest seller at Microsoft in the last quarter. They went there years ago and knew they'd lose lots of money before making it, but now they're making a fortune off it. Just wish they'd let you crack those boxes without penalties.

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Living Room / Re: How to Get the Most Out of Your Laptop with Linux

« Last post by zridling on January 19, 2011, 05:53 PM »

...an aging Toshiba I was about to send to recycling. It's since been passed over to a very creative but cash-strapped young writer who is now producing some remarkable work with it. I'd call that a win.

-40hz (January 19, 2011, 06:06 AM)

Love to see people do this. I try not to recycle and sometimes go out of my way to find someone who can use my old computers rather than merely dumping them at a school, church, or nonprofit. I leave Linux on them so they won't feel the need to pirate Windows and MSOffice. If an old machine has a decent amount of memory and a good videocard, at the very least it makes a good internet machine.

638

Living Room / How to Get the Most Out of Your Laptop with Linux

« Last post by zridling on January 19, 2011, 04:12 AM »

Linux.com's Jack Wallen provides a guide for getting the most out of your Linux laptop.

The reason Linux has had such a challenge with laptops is simple — most hardware vendors choose devices based on price, not how open the hardware is. The sad fact is, many chipset vendors tend not to release open source drivers or even the specifications so that kernel developers can create drivers for them. On top of that, vendors sometimes change chipsets during a run of the same model — and the pace sometimes means that the current releases of Linux distributions don't yet have drivers for new hardware.

In addition, the seemingly endless number of possible combinations of hardware that come together to make up the laptop landscape and you can see how difficult it would be for a Linux distribution to be able to work "out of the box" with every possible laptop. Until companies that produce the laptops (and other devices) standardize on chipsets with open drivers, this will always be a challenge. That doesn't mean the situation is hopeless, though! Let's start from the top down.

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General Software Discussion / Re: LibreOffice UI Mockups (with sidebar)

« Last post by zridling on January 18, 2011, 03:40 AM »

Another, more detailed mockup.

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General Software Discussion / Re: LibreOffice UI Mockups (with sidebar)

« Last post by zridling on January 17, 2011, 04:41 PM »

well, that sounds good. Using Word with the ribbon on a laptop is a PIA. Would you recommend Libre these days Zaine? or Lotus, or ?

-tomos (January 17, 2011, 09:36 AM)

I'm a text editor guy 95% of the time, however, I've been using the RC versions of LibreOffice for a couple of months and they're fine, in some ways notably better than OpenOffice because they clean up Options and Custom dialogs. Trust me, it's a welcome update.

Looks good UI to me, but why people are abandoning old MS office 2003 style interface ?   That's very good UI IMO. I prefer more text options than icons.

-mahesh2k (January 17, 2011, 10:44 AM)

In part because screens have changed since the 90s. MSOffice 2003 is still being used by zillions around the globe (for good reason). With netbooks, more laptops, and 27" widescreen monitors that now cost $350, you've got room to reconsider the UI.

It has been noted that the 2010 office editions are moving back to sidebars and less clutter on the ribbon. I use OneNote 2010 here and the file tab is a sign of things to come, I think.

-timns (January 17, 2011, 11:02 AM)

I always thought OneNote was Microsoft's greatest software achievement. Seriously, it is incredible. Again, the Lotus Symphony office suite uses tabs throughout its UI.

I know that wide screen LCDs are now trendy but do we really want to go back to: <toolbar hell>

-fenixproductions (January 17, 2011, 04:07 PM)

No. Been there, done that.

BTW 2 I am always mad to see f*g font ComboBox being so narrow. Every office suite in the world has this issue. Wouldn't it be better to have it wider (allow to resize)? With font preview, perhaps?

-fenixproductions (January 17, 2011, 04:07 PM)

Son, you USE the [default] font you're given and you like it!    No, but I figure the reason it's not done is because it would make sense.

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Living Room / Re: Miss America Hates Wikileaks, Might Be An Idiot =D

« Last post by zridling on January 17, 2011, 04:26 PM »

I guarantee she's never visited the site, much less read any one of the recent cables. Confirmed: Idiot.

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General Software Discussion / Re: LibreOffice UI Mockups (with sidebar)

« Last post by zridling on January 17, 2011, 08:00 AM »

For those unfamiliar, LibreOffice is the fork of OpenOffice after Oracle acquired Sun.

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General Software Discussion / LibreOffice UI Mockups (with sidebar)

« Last post by zridling on January 17, 2011, 07:58 AM »

Web Upd8 has the latest LibreOffice UI mockups, inspired by the Blender UI. These shots are closer to the Lotus Symphony UI than Blender. Oh well, at least they're taking advantage of widescreens rather than reducing vertical space.






Same as the first, only dark.

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Living Room / Re: 8 stupid amazon products with impressively sarcastic reviews

« Last post by zridling on January 15, 2011, 04:08 AM »

Don't say I didn't warn you. Here's one of mine on a "romance" novel, which is NSFW:

Spoiler

http://www.amazon.co...R/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

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Living Room / Re: Link: Why Google does not qualify for searching the web anymore

« Last post by zridling on January 12, 2011, 05:12 PM »

As the web gains more spam, search becomes less and less useful, and takes too damn long. I judge a search engine not by the ordinary/common links it can find, but by the extraordinary ones. There's the google for ordinary folks, then there's the google for expert users, i.e., those who use Boolean operators to narrow or expand their search. So you can make it better. Here's the most common I've found that works like a charm:

Use quotations around specific word/term you are searching
"-" sign in front of the word you want to exclude
OR capitalized is inclusive
"~" use in front of the search word when you want to include results that contain similar words or synonyms.
( ) parentheses are a delimiting phrase search, but you can expand the search after the delimiter by adding AND/OR operators.

If I use the phonebook search, I can see a list of people and/or places that have had my phone number before me. (Or who now has my old number.)

I could go on, but here's a guided tour site based on one's level:
http://www.googleguide.com/

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Living Room / Re: Are You Ready to Switch to GNU/Linux?

« Last post by zridling on January 11, 2011, 05:34 AM »

Whether you're ever going to use Linux or not, it's informative to read and understand what Free Software is about by Richard Stallman: "Asking about the practical advantages of free software is like asking about the practical advantages of not being handcuffed." Even if you think the guy is nuts, you should fully understand his arguments for free software.

The Advantages
http://www.gnu.org/p...losophy/free-sw.html

Free Software Philosophy
http://www.gnu.org/p...losophy/free-sw.html

Why Software Should Not Have Owners
http://www.gnu.org/p...osophy/why-free.html

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Living Room / Re: Fantastic Rant ...

« Last post by zridling on January 08, 2011, 07:02 AM »

Incredible. Thanks for sharing!

648

Living Room / Re: Are You Ready to Switch to GNU/Linux?

« Last post by zridling on January 05, 2011, 10:36 PM »

My big goal for this year is to distill my work environment down to it's absolute essence. I feel I'm using far too many software tools to get my work done lately. (But I'd suspect that's  a fairly common 'occupational hazard' for folks like us.)
  Simplify, simplify, simplify...    (Man, I really must be getting old if I'm talking like that...  )

-40hz (January 05, 2011, 09:32 AM)

Yea, but it's still an honorable goal, much like clearing the clutter out of your house or apartment. Been playing around with Nepomuk within Linux/KDE and REALLY like it, but don't use it enough to keep on the system. And I truly like Kate text editor, but again, Kwrite fills the need 95% of the time. Not having as much to administer leaves more time for content consumption.

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Living Room / Re: Are You Ready to Switch to GNU/Linux?

« Last post by zridling on January 05, 2011, 12:27 AM »

Don't underestimate the value of social coding, which not only allows people to reuse a bunch of code out there, but provided the [GNU] tools for Linux to be built, and then for it to be refined and quickly upgraded to version 1.0. Before the decade was over (the 1990s, that is), many Fortune 500 companies saw the advantage of the Linux kernel and put their coders to work, customizing versions to their respective industries. As Edvard repeatedly hammers: don't shut doors based on old or second-hand misinformation about Linux. Immersion is the trick. Only when I stopped dual-booting and playing back and forth between my old Windows computer and the Linux system years ago did things finally start clicking.
________
Finally, candy. Found this neat cross-platform word processor called FocusWriter. It hides its UI, has themes, live stats and word count, and even document tabs. Simple and free, and in the spirit of Donationcoder, the author has a donation link right on the page. Nice!!

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Living Room / Re: My Challenge to you in the New Year (2011) - Donate to a content creator

« Last post by zridling on January 04, 2011, 11:44 PM »

Been doing it for many years, and it feels good man. It's not the amount, it's the feedback, the recognition, or appreciation that is worth a lot.