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Wednesday, May 01, 2002

OpenOffice.org Team Releases Version 1.0

OpenOffice.org Team Releases Version 1.0
Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 01, @08:32AM
from the hey-641-still-works-great dept.
DenialS writes: "Congratulations to the OpenOffice.org team! Version 1.0 of the open office suite has been released. I'm downloading it now; I've had good luck with the previous stable builds. Release notes haven't been posted yet, so I can't say what the major differences are between 1.0 and the previous stable build, 641d, but I'm looking forware to finding out!"

[Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters]

10:46:57 AM

EBay Suspect's Store Goes Bankrupt. DETROIT (AP) -- An Oakland County figurine business owned by a man accused of bilking thousands of dollars out of eBay customers has filed for bankruptcy protection. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Technology]
8:21:23 AM

Linux in Education Report #69:"Microsoft published a humorous Guide to Accepting Donated Computers for Your School that's packed with misinformation. Just one example: "It is a legal requirement that pre-installed operating systems remain with a machine for the life of the machine. If a company or individual donates a machine to your school, it must be donated with the operating system that was installed on the PC."
Open Source Schools has published a Table of Equivalent Tools Under Linux and Wintel. Many of us have known about all this for a while, but it's nice to have it all listed together for easy reference."
8:20:09 AM

Site Barks About Deep Link. The Dallas Morning News demands that BarkingDogs.org stop linking to individual stories from the newspaper's website and link to the front page only. The controversy over deep-linking deepens. By Farhad Manjoo. [Wired News]

Wanna talk about not getting it. Links are what makes the web go-round. If you do not want people to 'deep link' into your site, then slap up some access protection. Requiring registration will stop it. But think about what that means. To stop someone you don't agree with from accessing your material you increase the barriers of entry to your entire site. Are the 'deep linkers' such a problem?

Scarier are the claims that 'deep linking' is somehow a violation of copyright. I took that class a few years ago, but I don't seem to remember anything that stops reference to a work, especially if there is no economic harm or substitution in the marketplace. To argue that copyright law bans 'deep linking' is just silly. If anything 'deep linking' adds value to a site by exposing its content to a wider audience.

Of course if 'deep linking' is coupled with 'framing', then you've got a horse of a different color. 'Deep linking' into a site with proper attribution and without altering the content is fine. The reader knows that they have left your site and gone to another. Pulling content from a site and 'framing' with your site's nav tools, logos, etc. in such a manner that it confuses the reader as to who owns the content is bad.

Take the link at the top of this piece. It 'deep links' into wired.com, hitting a specific article. If you follow the link, you know you're leaving this site and going somewhere else. No confusion, no economic harm. In essence I'm driving traffic (not really) to wired.com. Now if I write a frameset that captures the story inside of a wrpaper that contains my nav tools, logos, etc. so that you think you never left my site, that is bad. It is confusing. I'm still driving traffic to wired.com sort of, but the 'framing' makes it harder to tell.

8:18:25 AM