<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> <div class="moz-signature">_______________________________ Do you <a href="http://www.gnu.org">GNU</a>? <a href="http://www.cmosnetworks.com">Microsoft Free since 2003</a>--the ultimate antivirus protection! </div> Robert Arkiletian wrote: <blockquote cite="mida18d8e260801261119h7252440p7f97d24cfd56ece6@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <pre wrap="">On Jan 26, 2008 5:33 AM, Peter Scheie <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:peter@scheie.homedns.org"><peter@scheie.homedns.org></a> wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">Agreed, proprietary formats are bad. How many people recall email 20 years ago, where business cards had three or four email addresses on them, for Sprint, CompuServe, et al, because none of the systems talked to each other? Nowadays no one would even consider a closed email system. Audio and video need to be likewise. </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> There are simply too many problems posted on this list due to Flash. It's the only closed piece of software that everyone wants. I'm hoping Gnash will solve this dependence soon. <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2008-01/msg00024.html">http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnash-dev/2008-01/msg00024.html</a> </pre> </blockquote> <SOAPBOX> For that, you can thank careless teachers and their administrators for buying software and signing contracts without talking with their tech folks (i. e. folks like us) *BEFOREHAND*. For all their Ph.D's and Masters' degrees that they prance around with, you'd think they'd be smart enough to consult with us before dropping the cash. That's also how you're getting dependency on United Streaming with their damned .WMV love affair. Same for Standards of Learning (SOL) online testing that requires QuickTime. Same for the IE-only "web browser" applications. No, not *all* teachers/administrators are that way. But too many are. </SOAPBOX> --TP </body> </html>