Comment Re::Sex (Score 4, Informative) 702
:help sex
:Sexplore[!] [dir]... Split&Explore directory of current file *:Sexplore*
e.g. it give you a file exploring pane above the buffer you are currently using.
Submission + - What is a Good Programming Font? 1
Jhyrryl writes: My new laptop needs a good font for programming. While I prefer small, I'll sacrifice some size to maximize readability. Obviously each character need to be unique to avoid mistaking O for 0, an l for 1, but it can't be too busy either. Oh, and free (as in beer) is a requirement.
Submission + - Microsoft tries to takeover Open Document Format (groklaw.net)
what about writes: If this is true, as it seems, it is makeing me angry !
Groaklaw writes if the takeover were to succeed, that SC 34 would get to maintain ODF as well as Microsoft's competing parody "standard," OOXML. How totally smooth and shark-like. Under the guise of "synchronised maintenance", without which they claim SC 34 can't fulfill its responsibilities, they get control of everything. So utterly Microsoft. Microsoft yearns for interoperability, it seems. More like yearning for ODF's air supply to be ... well, you know. Microsoft never seems to change, does it? Yoo hoo! EU Commission! Are you watching? You can read all the public resolutions of the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 Plenary Meeting, 2008-10-01, held in Jeju, Republic of Korea. It will either make you laugh or throw up. I did both. Sequentially.
Groaklaw writes if the takeover were to succeed, that SC 34 would get to maintain ODF as well as Microsoft's competing parody "standard," OOXML. How totally smooth and shark-like. Under the guise of "synchronised maintenance", without which they claim SC 34 can't fulfill its responsibilities, they get control of everything. So utterly Microsoft. Microsoft yearns for interoperability, it seems. More like yearning for ODF's air supply to be
An Open Source Legal Breakthrough 292
jammag writes "Open source advocate Bruce Perens writes in Datamation about a major court victory for open source: 'An appeals court has erased most of the doubt around Open Source licensing, permanently, in a decision that was extremely favorable toward projects like GNU, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and Linux.' The case, Jacobsen v. Katzer, revolved around free software coded by Bob Jacobsen that Katzer used in a proprietary application and then patented. When Katzer started sending invoices to Jacobsen (for what was essentially Jacobsen's own work), Jacobsen took the case to court and scored a victory that — for the first time — lays down a legal foundation for the protection of open source developers. The case hasn't generated as many headlines as it should."
Submission + - Orphan works bill passed by the Senate (blogspot.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday, the visual arts community was buzzing with news that the Senate was "hot lining" the Orphan Works Bill (S2913) for a vote that afternoon, and that the House was expected to follow suit.
We've now learned that the Senate bill was passed.
It is troubling indeed that this legislation was pushed through in this manner, the last day of the Congressional term, and a time when the Congress is embroiled in responding to an economic crisis. As our colleagues at the Advertising Photographers of America (APA) have declared, in their email alert posted at Friday midnite: "Passing controversial legislation by this process, i.e. under the radar, is deeply troubling to say the least and every Senator needs to be held accountable."
Submission + - Senate passes Orphan Works Act of 2008 on to House (deseretnews.com)
pope523 writes: The Orphan Works Act of 2008 (sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch R-Utah) has been looming over us for a while now, and has been passed by the US Senate on to the House of Representatives. If made law, it will allow anyone to take any copyrighted material they find, and after "a thorough and documented good-faith search, they are unable to locate the copyright owners" they can "exhibit" it. This means any company that wants to use material they've found on the Internet (like a photograph for instance) can make "a thorough and documented good-faith search" and then use it without paying the creator and copyright owner.
US citizens can e-mail their Representatives and let them know they're opposed to this.
US citizens can e-mail their Representatives and let them know they're opposed to this.
Submission + - Thomson Reuters (Endnote) Sues Open Source Zotero (courthousenews.com)
Noksagt writes: "Thomson Reuters, the owner of the Endnote reference management software, has filed a $10 million lawsuit and a request for injunction against the Commonwealth of Virginia. Virginia's George Mason University develops Zotero, a free and open source plugin to Mozilla Firefox that researchers may use to manage citations. Thomson alleges that GMU's Center for History and New Media reversed engineered Endnote and that the beta version of Zotero can convert (in violation of the Endnote EULA) the proprietary style files that are used by Endnote to format citations into the open CSL file format."
Submission + - Academic applications of OCR 4
kg1794 writes: "In my recent PhD research, I've been looking at a 1,200 page typed but unpublished manuscript from a (unfortunately now deceased) political science professor. The end goal is to eventually bring this work to publication, but I don't have the original file he created this manuscript with (it was completed back in 1979). The document needs a degree of editing and re-arranging, but what's the best way of getting these pages into digital form that doesn't involve typing the whole lot out? How and who can do such a large scale OCR task for a nominal (read: university humanities research grant) fee? How feasible is a home-brew system with some kind of auto-document feeder? Any academics or researchers who have digitized source collections in the past would be very welcome to assist. I'm in the UK, but understand solutions for this may be more efficient from across the pond. Thanks."
Submission + - Chandler 1.0 released - vision neutered (ostatic.com)
ruphus13 writes: What was once touted as the next best Personal Information Manager that would fix the woes of all past and present information management systems has finally launched version 1.0. Released on Aug 8, the product is positioned as a " a 'Note-to-Self Organizer' designed for personal and small-group task management and calendaring. Chandler consists of a desktop application and Chandler Hub, a free sharing service and web application. You can also download and run your own Chandler Server." From the article, "Certainly, the original vision for Chandler, back when it was started as one of Mitch Kapor's projects, hasn't come to pass: "a new application to manage personal information including notes, mail, tasks, appointments and events, contacts, documents and other personal resources" What they've delivered instead is a combination online/offline to-do list and scheduling application, with some interesting synching hooks and connections to other projects. But this doesn't make the project a failure.". A great concept when originally launched 5+ years ago, the emergence of services like Google Docs result in mainly one reaction today — meh.
Submission + - SPAM: Free software tools for archivists
Roland Piquepaille writes: "University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) archivists have developed a free software kit named Archon to help other librarians to manage their collections. This software has been designed for archivists with limited access to technological resources. It's free and you can download it to manage your own music or book collection even if you're not a librarian. But all the materials in the collection need to be available with descriptions and tags. One interesting feature of the software is that it will build a searchable website for you. But read more for many additional details and references."
Journal Journal: Cory Doctorow Alarmed by Silverlight Library of Congress. 1
Cory Doctorow sounds the alarm over a Library of Congress deal with M$ that will have collections locked up in Silverlight.
Submission + - Orrin Hatch - Software copyright violater (fudreport.com) 2
fudreporter writes: "Wired.com has an article referring to comments Senator Orrin Hatch(R-Utah) made about downloading copyrighted material from the Internet...
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) suggested Tuesday that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed.
But Hatch himself is using unlicensed software on his official website, which presumably would qualify his computer to be smoked by the system he proposes.
The senator's site makes extensive use of a JavaScript menu system developed by Milonic Solutions, a software company based in the United Kingdom. The copyright-protected code has not been licensed for use on Hatch's website.
"It's an unlicensed copy," said Andy Woolley, who runs Milonic. "It's very unfortunate for him because of those comments he made.""
Submission + - UK scientists plan to build a lunar mobile network 3
Stony Stevenson writes: British scientists are planning to build a mobile phone network that operates on the Moon. The proposal was contained in a report compiled by Nasa and the British National Space Centre on joint co-operation for exploration of the Moon in the coming years. Plans include a space probe called MoonLITE (Moon Lightweight Interior and Telecoms Experiment) which will fire probes into the lunar surface and communicate using a mobile phone protocol to send back information on earthquake activity.
Submission + - Ubuntu goes live in Canada (www.dell.ca)
Anonymous Coward writes: "Dell shall start shipping machines in Canada, preloaded with the Ubuntu operating system by the end of this week.
System models to be sold with the Ubuntu implementation of Linux include the XPS 1330, and the Inspiron range of Desktops.
More info at www.dell.ca by Thursday!"
Submission + - Is Copyrigtht Infringement Stealing? 1
gooman writes: An interesting opinion piece in the L.A. Times today regarding file sharing semantics. It also happens to be one of the Times rare opportunities to "Discuss" the topic, so don't forget to share your thoughts with them. It seems to me that the major media outlets have a lot of catching up to do on this subject.
