OpenERP has issues that you might not want to deal with. Some technical like using floats where decimals should be for example, and some political, similar to what SQL Ledger went through (OpenERP is commercially backed and some fundamental needs as well as developer/integrator participation requires $$$). The real pain point is that it has no supported upgrade path between major releases, and the people who run the project actively interfere with community efforts to provide upgrade tools that are open. Upgrading seems to be seen as a primary part of their business model.

Tryton is a fork of OpenERP community edition managed by a nonprofit group of developer-users. It's code base has diverged a fair bit by now and is much more solid, and I've been able to upgrade between releases without the hassle as testing and migration abilities are considered important core priorities.

Might be worth considering...

The energy to pump the CO2 into the ground isn't wasted. The force of pushing it down a well displaces residual oil and gas and allows more petroleum to be extracted from each well. Once liquid fluids have done the fracturing the CO2 can perform some degree of enhanced oil recovery.

It could potentially reduce the carbon footprint of so called dirty American and Canadian petroleum, reduce consumption of toxic fracking fluids etc. We already push natural gas, steam, nitrogen and all sorts of stuff into the ground to help get petroleum out

The question does not have enough detail to make ultimate judgments on the approach they attempted, but what is there suggests what mistakes they made.

Firstly you don't have to yel at the m SUPPORT! Well duh, that is the first thing anyone would think (including these people as well). Purchase a support contract is obvious.

Which brings me to the other point you seemed to miss completely--that this budget surplus of $20,000 had to be "spent" AND PRODUCTS/SERVICES RENDERED within the fiscal year, which was only 4 weeks or less by the time the offers went out! I think is is quite possible that making out four $5000 invoices for just a couple WEEKS of a support contract and making it look legitimate could be a challenge without some legitimate record of services or products delivered over that short period (where are the transmittals? Reports? Bills of Lading? Meeting minutes? Receipts for expenses?). To make it unsuspicious would require some degree of fabrication (inventing face documents, back-dating, etc), and then you are in murky ethical territory.

So, making a superficial post without giving even cursory thought to what was in TFA, then b!tching about the decline in the quality of discussion of others despite the lack of effort put in by yourself, I think you've been rightfully down-modded.
 

--too much BS.

transparency != complexity. Having relatives who worked in the DND I know that it is mostly about bureaucratic inertia at best and NOT being fair at worst.

Having to follow public tender rules designed to manage huge projects for purchasing hand tools, power cords, and other sundry items is not reasonable nor is it expected. It is done because of the culture of the organisation, and sometimes to REDUCE transparency. The rules do NOT say such illogical accounting procedures that average out costs like that are mandatory. in fact the strategy in that environment is chosen to REDUCE transparency. You sign a big huge contract then single source all under that one party and do the LEAST amount of breakdown as required by law. Sometimes it is done to hide shenanigans, other times it is because of "national security" (legitimately). Then some wag asks "wow your tools budget is huge--what does a hammer cost" but there is no accounting for individual tools, so some bean counter is assigned to pull a number out of his butt (hmmm..inventory control shows 'x' hammers added, sum('quantity')='y' and total dollars spent was 'z' so hammercost=z*x/y ... hmmm that is $20k...oh well it's a number and they wanted a number so there it is). But it isn't really--they just fill out a req form for some hammers then send it to purchasing then hammers arrive...and no money or invoices or anything passes hands until the end of a fiscal period, so that is all they have to go on.

Again, it is quite the opposite of "transparent" and "fair"--it is all about "minimum compliance"...follow the law to the letter and do no more, because the more detail is available the more questions get asked. The only thing that makes it "fair" is that the rules are the same for all (the fact the rules are stupid and unworkable for many matters not).

...because I cannot figure any other reason you would thing such a practice is "ttotally normal". It does happen, it is on the fuzzy legal line where it probably wouldn't result in legal trouble yes. However, this is FAR from "totally normal".

The spending pattern you talk about *IS* a common situation, though in my experience it is mostly what happens in public institutions or perhaps a few of the largest of corporations in departments that are "revenue sinks" rather than "revenue generators". That is because of the budget cultire. Managers are compensated and their departments staffed based on a budget handed down in a political process. Such operations are not profit driven--the goal is to reach a "zero balance". Chronic deficit spending can be politically harmful, but chronic UNDERspending makes you a target for budget cutbacks--it is perverse but that is what happens--there is no incentive for efficiency in such an operation (and is why socialised industries without private competition are notoriously bureaucratic and inefficient).

In Canada political pundits call this "March Madness" because that is the fiscal year end, when federal government offices that are in surplus spend like drunken sailors, whilst at the same time politicians grandstand and court lobbyists and so forth at the same time. Until the Great Recession started it really was madness, becasue the whole government had been operating in surplus for many years and every department tried to maximise their spending to motivate expansion of their budgets. Now with a few years of deficits they've sobered up a bit, but the motivation to spend all allocations is still there to try and defend against cutbacks.

What is NOT commonplace at all these days is a trumped up "purchase" of imaginary products or services because if the Auditor General finds such items it could (and has) become a political mess--this is exactly what happened in the "sponsorship scandal" in Canada, where the federal government earmarked many millions of dollars to campaigning against a vote in Quebec to secede from Canada. a very large portion of that money was not spent on "real" materials and services, so government officials "bought" fake marketing services--worst of all the "supppliers" of those fake services were mostly supporters of the ruling Liberal party of the day who in turn made nice donations to the party ini the following elections (essentially funneling taxpayer revenue into the political party).

Since that scandal the government has been under a microscope over questionable purchases--no matter what the scale. Presently there is a bit of a scandal over expenses filed by Senate members--and though it is literally about %1 the size of the sponsorship scandal it has been very damaging politically. Now, say that a gov't department approached you unsolicited and said "here is $5000--you don't need to do anything but send us an invoice" would it not cause you to pause? Even if they wanted nothing else what would happn if it surfaced? Would you want to be associated with an unethical scheme of this nature? What if you had donated to the ruling party in the past personally? Optics of that are terrible.

I'd have to say that I woud not take this kind of "money for nothing" for just such a reason, whether it was from a gov't department or a corporate windfall. It may not be obviously illegal but it is ethically dubious and bad optics--enough to raise red flags in an audit. I would want no part of that.

There is another problem with this as well not even related to the above. If these project maintainers get money in exchange for an invoice for any reason it cannot be a "donation" or "gift" on the books--and that has significant tax implications especially if the FOSS project is a registered foundation or simply a personal project. In such cases unless proper services can be delivered and the amount is large enough it may be less trouble financially or legally to accept a "donation" in the form of a fake invoice. And in this case the amount is $5000 which really does not qualify.

My advice to the donor is to plan ahead more and to research the nature of the FOSS project more. It is certainly a noble gesture to donate $20k to FOSS projects but tryig to throw money around at the last minute is a poor approach. Is the software maintained by a non-profit foundation? In that case you have to make it a PROPER donation, for which a tax writeoff may still apply. Is it a corporation or indifidual that maintains a FOSS project, then draw up a contract at the START of the fiscal year and accept consulting invoices and make an effort of actually USING their services! That is more above-board, and approaching them like that instead of saying "if you give us an invoice we will wire you $5000! but hurry we need to get rid of this money in 3 weeks!" is far less likely to get you put into the spam filter.

Everyone on both sides of the debate includes the energy and emissions from power plants that make the electricity for EVs. What very few people take into account is the energy used to manufacture each vehicle.

Hybrids and full electric vehicles require much more energy and resources to build...the environmental impact of the use of rare earths and toxic chemicals for the battery and extra electronics is substantial. A Prius takes so much more energy to make than a Hummer H2 did that a new Prius owner doesn't break even for almost 3 years...so don't lease a Prius every 3 years because you are basically doing the same ad driving a Hummer!

After that period the Prius pulls ahead rapidly though...so keep it at least 5 years or buy a used one if you care about saving energy. Better yet buy a small diesel ... the VW Golf diesel is probably the "greenest" automobile you can buy in America at least (can you still get a diesel Smart car anywhere?). Such cars are both energy efficient to run and require less energy to build.

It is evident you don't know the psycology of a rapist, or indeed most criminals.

Most rapists, in particular, seek to exert power and control over their victim. The best way to assure success is to target the most vulnerable, because rapists are cowardly and are afraid of failing to obtain that control and power (often they lack power and control in other aspects of their life and are loathe to face that failure when they don't have to).

Rapes are virtually unheard of in public places--they happen at night or in secluded places--the chance of an innocent bystander being caught in crossfire is basically nil in those cases.

Rapists don't tend to be gun enthusiasts--they may brandish a gun or a weapon when they commit the offense but the purpose is to intimidate and control; they generally lack the courage to discharge the weapon. A dead victim can no longer be threatened or intimidated, and if they've gone and shot their victim they've lost control of the situation. If a potential victim were to pull a gun in the vast majority of cases they would flee, not fire back. If the odds are against the attacker they will flee. Rapists who are armed almost NEVER approach with a gun drawn--they will only brandish the weapon when they are very close.

The studies cited about an increase in violent rapes and assults in Australia is not really surprising at all knowing this--it isn't specific to Australia's society--though different societies would respond differently to changes in criminal laws all rapists share some common traits, and the more confident a rapist can be that a victim is defenceless the more likely they will attempt the crime.

The kind of situations you describe, where victims have their weapons used against them or are bysanders caught in crossfire, mostly happen as a result of organised crime or street gang activity. The target and the perpetrator are both criminals, and both are probably armed with illegally obtained weapons, and the motivation is not control or personal gain (like robbery--motive is to obtain something of value not to kill). Gang members kill each other out of revenge--to settle a score. Such people wouldn't go through the bother of using a 3d printer--they have their sources of illicit weapons already.

The most visible, but most rare as well, victims of gun violence are those of the emotionally disturbed, generally suicidal deviants. They are very rare cases actually, and if a bystander was to fire back the situation is proabably already exceeedingly dangerous already.

Gun control is treating a symtom generally--it is not very effective. Cun-making-control even less so. Treating the causes would work better but is more difficult and less politically expedient. Those causes are many and range from urban blight/decay to public school systems/modern "self-esteem based" teaching philosophies that foster sociopathic behaviour in children to family breakdown to lack of comunity resources to help raise children (and as a result are lured by gangs). Gun violence is a complex problem with no single easy answer. Unfortunately the media advocates quick, easy answers and people demand them, and ultimately laws are crafted on that basis.

Not having suffered as a victim of violent crime I cannot say for sure, but having known a victim ov violent sexual assult, I would say that many of them feel they would rather have been murdered, especally quickly with a gun, because the pain and suffering would be over much sooner.

Furthermore, if a rapist is fatally shot then not only could the victim have aat least a chance to avoid the rape itself, they could also avoid the prospect of facing their attacker in court during trial, appeals, victim impact statements, parole hearings, release from prison, being stalked via phone and email, etc.

So, the answer to the question is not so obvious.

Well you can never say never...we certainly could run out of economically viable fossil fuels. Big elephant in the room in his argument is that he doesn't say when. That is because nobody really does know when peak oil will happen and everybody who has ever hazarded a guess has been completely wrong.

I won't hazard a guess when we would hit a wall...but it is absolutely fact that even with factoring in large growth in demand that other is well over a century..maybe two..before we hit a wall in terms of supply.

Anyone who does not accept the fact that even when our great grandchildren are senior citizens there will be enough oil and gas for everyone is deluded...just as deluded as those who think we can burn.it all with no effect on the climate or environment are deluded.

That is why all the experts of today harp on about CO2 emissions and caps and climate. The old argument about turning your thermostat down and driving less because the oil will out that we had before was flat out wrong..the climate argument is much more convincing.

Nonetheless there is still a peak oil strategy too. The whole anti-pipeline lobby is about that. The whole think about the chance of leaks etc. Is a sham..a distraction because the risk of a serious incident is extremely small. In fact the possibility of something as bad as Exxon Valdez or deepwater horizon is pretty much impossible with pipelines. The real reason for filibustering pipeline approvals is to create "artificial peak oil"...to make sure Athabasca oil sands and Bakken shale oil and tight oil and gas fields stay uneconomical when they don't have to be...unconventional oil is in fact profitable to produce at not much more than half WTI spot. The limiting factor is transport not production with today's tech and the visible environmental effects are quite benign (3/4 of bitumen reserves in Athabasca are too far down to mine and are recovered or will be recovered in-situ...no big ugly black pits and up grader smokestacks and such and the cost.and energy differential compared to conventional oil is shrinking rapidly.

In any case I am not saying that it is OK to burn oil and gas all we want...we certainly should examine alternative energy and even more importantly focus on conservation and efficiency. However the anti pipeline and peak oil crowd are being intellectually dishonest and I find that quite sinister. I don't know the whole solution but it isn't ethical to be manipulative and misleading with the facts as this particular environmental lobby is being. There is something to be said for being reliant on energy that doesn't have to be sucked out of the ocean floor or floated across the ocean on leaky tankers from nations ruled by maniacal dictators who hate us and abuse their citizens.

In the meantime perhaps we can have our governments encourage both domestic oil and gas production and transportation properly done AND conservation efforts...perhaps making investment in the latter a condition for industry to do the former.

Lastly another little thought to ponder...perhaps it hasn't occurred to many yet...but maybe climate change is not only a fact but that we've already pushed ourselves over the tipping point...that nature has already established positive feedback loops of its own and that even if Humans suddenly vanished that the climate change that started with us would continue for centuries to come?

Just like the thought that oil might not run out the thought that climate change is now unavoidable would ruin lobbying efforts to reduce consumption...it is dangerous thought perhaps but probably another inconvenient truth that we have to face...adapt or perish.

GScanToPDF can do OCR and embed the results as annotations within the PDF. Perhaps that would help with search ability. It works well enough with a lot of my documents though it is far from perfect it is good enough for those purposes especially for bills as they are not handwritten. Best results are on scans set to line art/b&w rather than grey scale or colour.

I don't get your point. The Danes did not try to outlaw the tides. They constructed protection against them. The tides are still there.

The argument here is that by and large climate change politics is about trying to outlaw the tides. It just won't work. Sure the science is indisputable. The climate is changing and humans affect the environment. However the still overlooked inconvenient truth is that it is just as certain that climate change cannot be reversed. To survive our society will have to adapt to accommodate the changing climate.

I am not saying we should stop paying heed to our rate of carbon consumption and release into the atmosphere or that measures to curtail the same would have no effect. However credible studies on the degree of effectiveness of carbon reduction measures is conspicuously absent. In the meantime history has shown that the climate can change enough to cause great strife even in times when we had far less impact on climate than we do now. From about 1100 AD when the world was about as warm as it has been in modern times to the 1600s when other was a mini ice age to the dust bowl of the great depression we have had to adapt to conditions beyond our control.

My biggest fear is that politics and science in this debate have been so conflated that humanity is not taking in the complete picture and instead governments tilt at windmills trying to do the equivalent of outlawing the laws of nature.

So everyone who disagrees with your politics is dumb and the best way to support democracy is to have everyone fall in line and vote for the same party. That is some hot savoury troll food you are serving up there.

Maybe you should talk to some people fortunate enough to have been able to leave homelands that prescribe to such philosophies. See how places like Venezuela or Cuba or China or Libya serve their citizens under that kind of democracy that you advocate.

...about the "year of Linux desktop" never happening because it that has already happened, if you look at things from different perspectives.

There is a case to be made that this past year, 2012, is the "year of Linux on the desktop" in a sense. When you factor in mobile devices, in this past quarter, Android computing devices shipped in higher numbers than Windows computing devices (NT-kernel based and otherwise) INCLUDING THE TRADITIONAL PC. So, when you set your phone or tablet on a desk at least, Linux has finally triumphed. One thing is for sure--if it isn't the year of the Linux DESKTOP it is certainly the year of Linux PERSONAL COMPUTING.

Some might say the desktop was conquered by Linux much earlier. When a user sits at a desktop how long is it before that user opens a browser and uses Google to search or Facebook to, well, waste time I guess. Sure, most of those desktops booted into Windows by a large measure, but it was a mere shell--a runtime container for the web app that is Google or Facebook, and both would not be possible without Linux. So at a differnt level, Linux is already master of the desktop.

Still think that the above arguments are valid, and think that a Linux Desktop is nothing less than a full sized PC on a desk that boots into a Linux OS and hndles the full software stack? Well then maybe that is a cause not worth fighting for. Something is pretty evident here: It would be wrong for Linux advocates to dwell excessively on "the desktop". Though "the desktop" will never disappear completely it is clearly a mature, stagnant segment of the global computing ecosystem that is only going to become less dominant over time. As such, conquering the desktop is not the path to conquering the computing world. It might be important to you, but you are not a normal computer user. Indeed, very few slashdotters are. I am certainly not a normal computer user that is for sure. Your comments very much reveal that"

To me it looks like you are a "power user"--comfortable with computers enough but don't cope well with change. My guess is that you were satisfied with WinXP but circumstances forced you onto Vista (your old PC was too outdated to run the more contemporary bloatware, or broke down, etc and you needed a new machine, and they all came with Vista by then). There was definitely a time for many where it was acually easier to obtain and install Linux than get a legal downgrade to XP so you were motivated to go to Ubuntu. Then Ubunti changed (or got "ruined" for you), and so you picked the most conservative one out there--Debian--in an effort to resist change. But you don't have the stomach to use any "unstable" packages to support more recent hardware so you went to the next mode conservative community distro. I do see the pattern here.

There are distros and desktops out there for you. You could go back to Debian--I would suggest "testing" though (don't be scared of the name--by Debian's standards "testing" is more stable than an LTS release of Ubuntu). I can already tell you would NOT like GNOME 3--even if it was brilliant it is too different from that win95 era design pattern for you--so be sure to use XFCE and you will be right at home. Apart from that Linux Mint is another good OS--and Cinnamon or MATE are old-school enough in their design to work for the "traditionalists" among us. I like them anyways...

The puzzling thing is that you spout off all these old problems--can't get metworking going, cant get sound going, can't get video going blah blah. These are not the challenged they were 5 years ago, and even 5 years ago they were not such huge problems aside from wireless and bleeding-edge video chipsets. These days it isn't a challenge to find Linux-friendly hardware--if you have such challenges it indicates you did little to nothing in terms of validating the availabiliy of Linux drivers for your hardware before purchase. The solution for that can be easy--buy an actual Linux PC (System 7, ZaReason, etc) where the vendor has made sure all the important bits work and even install the OS for you--kind of like Apple and all Microsoft vendors do, right?

A couple of other comments I have:

I fear you may eventually become disenchanted. The Mac will "just work" because of course the hardware and software are under the full control of a single, rather domineering vendor. Don't be too fast to buy upgraded OSes--Apple is making the move towards a more iPad-like experience recently. Apple has much more control over your experience than you might be used to so you will only be satisfied as long as they do what you like. This is not the case with Linux--the Free software ecosystem is diverse enough that there is someone out there that caters to your tastes more closely.

That is a characteristic of Java, not the OS on which it is installed. My spouse has a Mac. Oracle's Java is not nice on it either. Java is unpleasant, unstable and insecure and unsuitable for desktop applications now. The only future it has is its legacy on the server side and its non-Oracle descendant Dalvik that forms the basis of the Android userland. Then solution isn't ditching Linux--indeed Java will frustrate you on a Mac too--the solution is to find alternatives to Java applications at all practical costs.

Stallman is a very special case that goes way beyond normal and extends to the hardware he uses (he does not use the WWW the way we do, and he goes to extreme lengths to make sure schematics are available for his hardware and so on). He is an idealist and refreshingly honest, if rather disagreeable to many. I am comforted that he goes to the effort he does to practice what he preaches. RMS has made it his purpose in life to defend Free software's ideals, not to commercialise it or maximise market share. That is not to say RMS wouldn't like to see GNU/Linux take over the world, but he has not made that his task. Indeed, if a Linux OS became dominant by abandoning Free software ideals the RMS would be front and centre in the effort to bring it down.

So it is up to the pragmatists to popularise Linux by striking the right compromise--RMS and Shuttleworth act as checks and balances against each other for example. And yes, it is "game over" or nearly so, but as I stated earlier I think Linux has won.

Apple already designs their application processors themselves. Thery are even more than a mere ARM licensee as well--they are a founding partner of the original joint venture and I believe they still own a significant amount of that company--they have "priviliged access" to the core IP I'd think.

However Apple is considered a "fabless design house". They rely on Samsung to actually build their deisgn, and to source other fabs is not trivial--there are significant startup and logistics issues in establishing such an agreement, and as Samsung is the sole source for Apple AP chips they are over a barrel. Perhaps Apple needs to build or buy a fab to ensure stable secure supply of components. They've pissed off Samsung, who have done the logical thing and raised the price of their goods to Apple because of increased costs--one of them being the need to pay $1billion in litigation expenses incurred by their mobility division. Seems poetic justice/lgocial business decision to recoup the cost from the customer responsible for that expense doesn't it?

Also, Apple had already sent a clear message to Samsung as various supply contracts expired that they were looking elsewhere even before Samsung adjusted the price upwards, and for more commodity-type parts Samsung has lost that business. Just like with your insurance or your cable company, you get deals when you "bundle". Since Apple is not "bundling" anymore Samsung probably feels justified in increasing the prices on remaining business. This is typical business decision, even without considering the lawsuit/rivalry.

Perhaps Apple can talk to another fab--but I bet the IDMs out there will see how Apple treated Samsung and won't want to go there so they need to work with a foundry-only company like TSMC or GlobalFoundries instead. Perhaps that will isolate them from the risk of suing a supplier directly. Nonetheless if Apple were to get TSMC to build their AP chips, then sued the biggest customers for TSMC chips that might not go too well either.

Buyers embraced the iPhone not because of its DRM/closed technology. They bought it because the whole industry SUCKED REALLY BAD. Compared to everythng else in those dark ages the iPhone WAS open. Prior to that phones had crappy UIs and if youwere lucky a handful of stupid, useless mobile-Java apps that your carrier decided you were just barely worthy of using. There was no such thing as a really USEFUL smartphone whein Apple unveiled the iPhone. The closest thing was the Blackberry--indispensible for ite email and BBM capabilities but its ecossytem was (and still is) even more closed than Apple's--and how have they been doing lately? Hardware wise, Apple largely copied and improved upon the designs of PALM and other PDAs and touchscreen "smart" phones (using PalmOS or Windows CE) but these devices had crappy OS and user experience--plus they were locked down so hard by carriers that they were even more useless (side-loading apps was posible but a task too cumbersome for non-technical folks).

When the first iPhone came out, the only "apps" available were glorified web bookmarks--remeber? Plus it couldn't do 3G and in general it was a mediocre device technically, but the touch screen was beautiful and it was easier to use than the competition so it was a moderate success. Once it had a proper app store (ie. it actually "opened up" a little) it became a true hit. Then Android came out. It is a platform OPEN to any manufacturer with OPEN app markets. It came out after Apple was a huge success and had a huge hill to climb. Guess what? 3 of 4 smartphones is now an Android device. The same will happen to the iPad. It already is--Apple's market share, once at Microsft Windows proportions, is sliding down quickly towards 50% and will continue falling. Why? Not because Android or the hardware vendors usin it copied apple, but becasue it is MORE OPEN. Apple will always do well enough but they will ALWAYS eventually end up a significant/infuential but minority player in the market--ALWAYS. Their survival long term will be due to their quality designs and stellar customer service that counter the lack of opennes. If they forget thet they will die, and the best they will ever expect with a closed, vertical model in market share long term wil be 10 to 25 percent at best. Jobs make mac computers insanely great again, and they have not managed to achieve 20% marrket share. Iphones are now below 20%. iPads are heading that way in the next few years too. It is because they are CLOSED.

Now look at MSFT DISKinect. It is intended to act as a DRM apparatus for gaming, premium television, and so on. But that industry is already "more open" (it isn't truly open but consumers do have more freedom due to the lack of ability to enforce draconian licensing terms to this point). Not like smartphones where it was truly and fully closed to start with when the iPhone came out. Nobody buys stuff that deliberately breaks itself more than what they already have EVER. DIVX failed because of that reason, and notwithstanding the granting of patents and whatnot, DISKinect is DOA as a viable product idea--at least for the broad consumer market (if it has any use at all it would be in security applications--to lock and unlock doors when a room hits maximum occupancy for fire regulations, or to sound alarms if the wrong people are in a secure area and what not).