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well duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:well duh (Score:4, Informative)
This was a few years back, but maybe they've changed. Then again, it's the tax office.
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Windows doesn't come free with a computer. Or maybe the first hit does - can't remember anymore
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Windows doesn't come free with a computer. Or maybe the first hit does - can't remember anymore
Hmm... Windows didn't come with the Mac I bought last year. And most likely my next computer will have Linux pre-loaded.Re: (Score:2)
Re:well duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but to run Windows in a VM you need a copy of Windows. If you buy a machine on which to run Windows, Microsoft only gets the relatively small amount they charge the OEMs. If you buy a copy of Windows retail to run in your VM, Microsoft makes more. So if your goal is to minimize the amount you give to Microsoft, buying a separate Windows machine is actually the better choice, isn't it?
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Alternatively, you can get a plugin to open/save ODF from MS Office.
Geez (Score:2, Funny)
" enhver burde ha likeverdig adgang å offentligheten beskjed : Åpen standarder bli tvangsmessig innen regjeringen. " regjeringen har bestemte det alle beskjed opp på regjeringen websites burde være anvendelig i fri luft formatter HTML PDF eller ODF. Med dette bestemmelse tidene når offentlighete
unnecessary (Score:3, Insightful)
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I think so. Gotta a friend from Stavanger. He's an ok guy and pretty sharp, apparently sharper and a little more lighthearted than
what i meant to say (I know use preview) (Score:3, Interesting)
Spot on about speaking better english than Americans though. My first reply is proof positive.
Svengelska (Score:4, Funny)
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By someone who doesn't know Norwegian, or?
That's a machine translation. The words are unusual (to say the least) and the grammar is wrong.. e.g. "åpen standarder" should read "åpne standarder". "har bestemte det" should read "har bestemt at", etc.
Re:Geez (Score:5, Funny)
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Perhaps.
But her møøse once bit my sister.
For Norwegian Readers (Score:3, Informative)
What about postscript? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does it compress better or something?
Re:What about postscript? (Score:4, Informative)
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"Whatever other reasons" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about postscript? (Score:5, Insightful)
2. PDFs are relatively tamper-resistant
3. PDFs are more widely understood
4. PDFs are lighter to render
I could go on about how they handle images and whatnot better too, but PS is a wonderful format when you still need to work with the document - I'm being completely serious here - but PDF is better as the final distribution method.
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Are they really lighter to render? My experience has been that acroread, xpdf, and such tend to bog down. Granted, this evince thingie that came installed with Ubuntu (which I just switched to, from Gentoo) seems pretty nice. (I'm a convert to "It just works!"-style Linux.)
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Re:What about postscript? (Score:5, Informative)
Does it compress better or something?
Yes. For pages of pure bitonal content, the JBIG2 image compression scheme can produce files approximately 30-40x smaller than the equivalent using CCITT G4. This is such a massive improvement that it makes it tempting to simply represent all documents in raster form with ancillary text information -- in other words, it competes with vector graphics as far as side. No other widely supported potential archival format provides JBIG2. This in itself is an enormous benefit, but not quite a deal-maker for PDF.
PDF really shines in that it is easy to parse and has a limited, well-defined graphics language. The PDF/A standard even further restricts the classes of operations a conformant file can perform. On top of other things, it spells out the requirements for fonts, to ensure that documents rendered in the future will appear as intended. It also dictates that details of the document's semantic structure be embedded to assist analysis of the archived data in the future.
I probably sound like a shill for PDF, but that isn't the case. I simply write commercial code which deals with PDF. It is a terrible shame that Adobe's viewer products have made such a bad impression on everyone. I believe PDF is a well-designed, simple, extensible format with a hell of a lot going for it, if you simply discount everything with the word "Adobe" in it.
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Re:What about postscript? (Score:5, Informative)
All of that said, proper PDF is PostScript. You can feed it to the PostScript interpreter and it will render. It's not full PostScript, but a subset that is easier to process and isn't a full interpretive language as PostScript is. I've wrtten programs in PostScript that have nothing to do with printing, it's a bit similar to Forth.
Bruce
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Re:What about postscript? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been 15 years since I've picked up the black-and-white book which defines PDF.
Thanks
Bruce
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Re:What about postscript? (Score:4, Informative)
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Summary Forgot to Mention (Score:5, Funny)
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Forget Norway... what's Kenya doing? (Score:3, Insightful)
But the idea of thomas.loc.gov all being in PDF... wow...
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Why on earth would you do it by hand?
Automating stuff like that is what computers are designed for. Open Office even has a batch converter built in.
Well, the question is, who is next? (Score:2)
Question is... will it stick? (Score:2)
What about Non-Text Documents? (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, many government employees use Excel and are using features not supported by ODF. What happens when they need to send those files to others to edit?
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Most of which don't work right in Microsoft office or OpenOffice.org.
I might add that I have received documents in PDF for many years and never did have a problem rendering them.
Sorry, you're thinking of a different format. ODF was developed by OASIS [wikipedia.org] based o
The writing's on the wall (Score:3, Interesting)
A good example would be the Finnish school system, which has consistently scored very highly in the PISA educational ratings. That had a major influence on other European countries, such as Germany, which scored much lower, and Switzerland, making them look at how they could improve their own educational systems. It's the same thing with IT. You could very well see other European countries making similar decisions in the future.
The biggest hurdle will of course be Microsoft, which will do anything it can to stop acceptance of ODF and push in OOXML through the door. They will almost certainly try to get their big business partners to bully local governments into accepting OOXML in place of ODF.
Re:The writing's on the wall (Score:4, Insightful)
These people may not be as sophisticated as a 'big city' computer company, but you don't have to be Donald Knuth to spot the kind of shadiness that took place in ISO.
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Highly Competent Engineering (Score:5, Interesting)
Most companies jealously guard their "intellectual property", Norway makes most of theirs freely available.
It ain't the books or documentation that make a project successful, it's the people.
Time to buy shares ... (Score:4, Funny)
Quite a few will be tossed about until Norway retracts this mandate, or adds "or OOXML"
M$ Hires Blackwater to Fix Norway's Terrorists (Score:3, Insightful)
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Are you implying that MSWord is "snappy and crisp" compared to other offerings? That is certainly not my experience.
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Could you elucidate on the areas in which Adobe's reader (the one you are referring to) is deficient, otherwise you risk being called a troll!
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Backspace deletes the contents of a cell without prompting you (you can still undo)
Delete brings up a dialog allowing you to delete not just the contents but also any formatting, or to choose exactly what to remove... You can make it just remove formatting, or numbers, or text, or formulae etc... Very useful to strip numbers from a large block of cells without affecting formatting or textual content.
As for web queries i don't know, tho i know quite a few peopl
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There may be a minority of people using it, but i don't believe any of those people would be forced to pay extra to be able to.
As for sending files back in the format you sent, what happens if they're sending something new and aren't aware what format you want?
Aside from the fact that the government will need to maintain a large selection of apps to support
Re:Way too Orwellian (Score:5, Insightful)
They already mandate the use of standard containers or transmission media for other types of information, you can call the government on the telephone but you can't contact them using ham radio... You can write them a letter on a piece of paper, but you can't carve them a stone tablet.
They have to standardise on one format for practical reasons, to support a wide range of formats is more expensive and more error prone. As a taxpayer, i don't want to be paying unnecessarily for the government to support multiple formats.
They should standardise on published documented standards for several reasons.
They provide the widest and lowest cost access for the population who have to deal with the government, programs for reading/writing standard formats such as PDF and ODF are available for a wide range of systems and at a wide range of pricing/support structures. Meaning, you can obtain such programs for free if you want, or if your needs/budget are different you can obtain software with varying levels of commercial support. Big vendors such as IBM, Sun and Novell provide commercial applications and support for ODF if that's what you need. Because there are multiple vendors, competition pushes the prices down and quality up.
If they were to use a proprietary format, not only would they lock themselves in but also force third parties dealing with them to get themselves locked in too. By using a proprietary format the government are forced to purchase proprietary products at whatever price is set, and the end users are similarly forced. Because they need these particular programs (and anything else they might require) to deal with the government, people have no choice but to buy them. Because of this, the vendor can charge ridiculous amounts for retail copies while potentially giving the government big discounts to discourage them from migrating.
As a taxpayer, i don't want the government to waste money dealing with multiple formats.
As a taxpayer, i want them purchasing their software in a competitive marketplace so that they get the best deal.
As an end user, i want the same ability to go for the best deal rather than being forced down a particular route.
As a taxpayer, most important of all i want a government that does the best for ITS PEOPLE... I want a government that fights for the best deal, I want a government that buys from local suppliers whenever possible (paying more to a local supplier than to a foreign one is often a better deal, since a big chunk of that money will come back as tax), I want a government that doesn't force unnecessary expenses on it's people - especially expenses that cause money to leave the country.
Any government that forces all of it's taxpayers to spend $450 on a foreign product is acting irresponsibly, that's a huge amount of money leaving the country.
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