From brent_thomson at byu.edu Mon May 19 16:42:30 2003
From: brent_thomson at byu.edu (Brent Thomson)
Date: Mon May 19 15:57:47 2003
Subject: [uug] Article Input
Message-ID: <001501c31e4f$8cdb2e50$c500a8c0@laptop>
As long as we're getting input for articles, I could use some as well. I've
been asked to write a short piece for a scientific journal on using Linux as
a desktop operating system in a lab/workstation environment. I thought I'd
include the usual stuff about there being plenty of software for word
processing, spreadsheets, presentations, web browsing, email, etc. and how
Linux is stable, secure, and free. I'd like two kinds of input:
1. Examples of real people using Linux as their desktop OS at work. The
people reading the journal are primarily chemists, chemical/industrial
engineers, and patent attorneys, so anything from these fields would be even
more relevant.
2. Any applications that would be extremely helpful for these scientific
types to have that may or may not be available only on Linux.
3. Anything else that would be a compelling reason to use Linux as your OS.
Now let me put some restrictions on things. First of all, this can't be
political. "Use Linux because Windoze is the Borg" is not a convincing
argument. Most of the people reading this have probably heard of Linux and
probably know of at least one friend/coworker who uses/preaches it. I'm
looking for examples like "Dr. John Doe of the Made-up Chemical Company
chose Linux because..."
Here's your chance to make yourself heard and get yourself listed as a
contributor to an article. You can send me off-list mail at
brent_thomson@byu.edu or you can post here and get second-order input from
your peers.
-Brent
From bryan.murdock at byu.edu Mon May 19 17:38:23 2003
From: bryan.murdock at byu.edu (Bryan Murdock)
Date: Mon May 19 17:52:33 2003
Subject: [uug] Article Input
In-Reply-To: <001501c31e4f$8cdb2e50$c500a8c0@laptop>
References: <001501c31e4f$8cdb2e50$c500a8c0@laptop>
Message-ID: <1053387501.26208.9.camel@tomislav.vcd.hp.com>
On Mon, 2003-05-19 at 14:42, Brent Thomson wrote:
> As long as we're getting input for articles, I could use some as well. I've
> been asked to write a short piece for a scientific journal on using Linux as
> a desktop operating system in a lab/workstation environment. I thought I'd
> include the usual stuff about there being plenty of software for word
> processing, spreadsheets, presentations, web browsing, email, etc. and how
> Linux is stable, secure, and free. I'd like two kinds of input:
>
> 1. Examples of real people using Linux as their desktop OS at work. The
> people reading the journal are primarily chemists, chemical/industrial
> engineers, and patent attorneys, so anything from these fields would be even
> more relevant.
>
> 2. Any applications that would be extremely helpful for these scientific
> types to have that may or may not be available only on Linux.
Here's a possible little moral dilemma I ran into today. Say at work
you need to watch some windows media or sorenson movie for some reason
and you only have a Linux workstation. It's not too hard to find the
codec and watch it with mplayer, but all the places you can get the
codecs from, at least that I've seen, have this little disclaimer that
this is possibly illegal for them to distribute. At home I've had no
qualms about downloading the wind32-codecs rpm from the plf and getting
on with life, but at work I wonder if I could get me or my employer into
trouble by doing this. Something to think about.
Bryan
>
> 3. Anything else that would be a compelling reason to use Linux as your OS.
>
> Now let me put some restrictions on things. First of all, this can't be
> political. "Use Linux because Windoze is the Borg" is not a convincing
> argument. Most of the people reading this have probably heard of Linux and
> probably know of at least one friend/coworker who uses/preaches it. I'm
> looking for examples like "Dr. John Doe of the Made-up Chemical Company
> chose Linux because..."
>
> Here's your chance to make yourself heard and get yourself listed as a
> contributor to an article. You can send me off-list mail at
> brent_thomson@byu.edu or you can post here and get second-order input from
> your peers.
>
> -Brent
>
>
>
> ____________________
> BYU Unix Users Group
> http://uug.byu.edu/
> ___________________________________________________________________
> List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
From: mhalcrow at cs.byu.edu (Michael Halcrow)
Date: Mon May 19 21:16:12 2003
Subject: [uug] Article Input
In-Reply-To: < 1053387501.26208.9.camel@tomislav.vcd.hp.com>
References: < 001501c31e4f$8cdb2e50$c500a8c0@laptop>
< 1053387501.26208.9.camel@tomislav.vcd.hp.com>
Message-ID: < 20030520030438.GA14212@cs.byu.edu>
On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 04:38:23PM -0700, Bryan Murdock wrote:
> At home I've had no
> qualms about downloading the wind32-codecs rpm from the plf and getting
> on with life, but at work I wonder if I could get me or my employer into
> trouble by doing this. Something to think about.
Nobody cares, not even the guys who wrote the codecs (at least not
yet). As far as I know, no one has been reported to the police, sued,
or otherwise prosecuted for distributing codecs as part of an Open
Source media player. If you're really worried about these
trivialities, then you can just as easily get the codecs from the
authors themselves (all codecs that MPlayer uses are made freely
available by their authors anyway) and copy them into their respective
directories for MPlayer. No more moral dilemma.
Mike
--
------------------------------------------- | ---------------------
Michael Halcrow | mhalcrow@cs.byu.edu
Developer, IBM Linux Technology Center |
|
Give a man a fire, he will be warm for the |
evening. Set a man on fire, he will be warm |
for the rest of his life. |
------------------------------------------- | ---------------------
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