The OpenOffice.org Project on Thursday released OpenOffice.org 2.0, adding new features that the group claim will resonate with users from business and governments right down to the home desktop. The product will be simultaneously released for a range of operating systems including Linux and Microsoft Windows.
Great news for everyone, everywhere that could be helped by technology.
Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs, has been outlining designs for a sub-$100 PC.
The laptop will be tough and foldable in different ways, with a hand crank for when there is no power supply.
…
The laptops will be encased in rubber to make them more durable, and their AC adaptors will also act as carrying straps.The Linux-based machines are expected to have a 500MHz processor, with flash memory instead of a hard drive which has more delicate moving parts.
The laptop will be more rugged and flexible than ordinary ones
They will have four USB ports, and will be able to connect to the net through wi-fi – wireless net technology – and will be able to share data easily.It will also have a dual-mode display so that it can still be used in varying light conditions outside. It will be a colour display, but users will be able to switch easily to monochrome mode so that it can be viewed in bright sunlight, at four times normal resolution.
Sounds like a great piece of hardware to me, and only achievable thanks to the worldwide contributions of the GNU/Linux community.
simple solution to the IDN overflow bug just found. Synopsis: type about:config in your address bar, search for ‘network.enableIDN’ and set the value to false (double click on the entry to do it)
Massachusetts government officials announced plans yesterday to phase out their install base of Microsoft Office in favor of suites such as OpenOffice and StarOffice which support the newly ratified OpenDocument format. Peter Quinn, CIO for the state of Massachusetts, said that the state will support the OASIS-developed standard in a statement on their website. OpenDocument is an XML-based file format that covers the feature required by text, spreadsheets, charts and graphical documents.
The decision to adopt the OpenDocument standard came after “a series of discussions with industry representatives and experts about our future direction,” according to Quinn’s statement.
The migration is a huge undertaking for the state, and the various departments of the state are expected to develop phased migration plans with an implementation date of January 1, 2007.
As expected, a Microsoft spokesperson said “We support open formats too!”, adding that the public sector should not force a single document format on its agencies, especially one that may be less functional than what they are already using.
Awesome! Every public org and office should be using open source programs, it’s not only good software practice, it’s democratic. MS is toast, and their proprietary programs and formats will be their undoing.
And to think of all that time me and my group spent doing outreach with the Massachusetts Attorney General … well, I guess it keeps the MA AG from the antitrust actions at least,hey?
From Orwell, this time. MS Calls On Kids to Stop Thought Thieves. Thought Thieves?
Send us your short film on intellectual property theft by 1st July 2005 for your chance to win ?2,000 worth of film and video equipment vouchers. And finalists will be invited to attend a special screening of their films and presentation ceremony in London.
As an extra special irony bonus, if you make a film and it wins… you agree to license all IP rights in that film to MS.
MS Office 98 Mac Edition – New- Lot of 4… $80.
That’s 8 year old software (they came out the year before they were numbered) for $80? hahahaha!!! You know NeoOffice is free and open, right?
Said on NPR today, that MS didn’t change their position, they just chose not to get involved.
Which is complete and utter horseshit. Shame on you, Gates. What kind of pussy monopoly are you if you can’t stand up to one threatened boycott?
What, you need another reason to use Free/Open software? Or even a Mac? Ditch the doze, now!
and blogging about it. They stopped dev after IE6 because all the other browsers were “dead.”
Well, well, well. What have we here?
Behold, the benefits of competition! We’ll all benefit from the browser competition and I think we can all agree that the drawbacks to monopoly have been laid bare right here with this little browser “war.”
That said, it’s going to have to come with a personal masseuse to get me to switch from firefox. IE blows and always will blow. Insecure and if it goes bad… so does windows.
and if you haven’t already,
Check out the user agents to my site. I’ve watched IE’s share go from 98% when I started tracking down to what it is today. This is the first time it has ever been below 50%, and the Mozilla/5.0 is allllll firefox.
So go download firefox now, people. It’s free, it’s open, it rules.
HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux. Oh. My.
and GPL’d (or at least using GPL libraries). It’s feature-complete at 1.0 and available for Linux, OS X, and the doze. Might have to give that puppy a try.
MS partner fingered in Windows code leak, Linux box implicated
Looks like the source came from Mainsoft, not Microsoft.
[ballmer]See, I told you that you can't share code with anybody! They're out to get ya![/ballmer]
Firebird 0.8 Released, New Name too (now called Firefox)
I wish they'd quit it with the name changes already, but the worlds best browser just got a new milestone release. Hey, there's even a windows installer now (I liked the old just-a-folder method, though).
More nails in MS's coffin … this is from AMS consulting's SVP and CTO, and appears in CIO magazine.