On Aug 27, 2010, at 1:01 PM, Mike Miller wrote: > On Fri, 27 Aug 2010, Adam Morris wrote: > >> On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 11:37:12AM -0500, Mike Miller wrote: >> >>> On Thu, 26 Aug 2010, Loren Cahlander wrote: >>> >>>> On Aug 26, 2010, at 10:14 AM, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote: >>>> >>>>> I write doco using Vim and Docbook (when it's not wiki'ed, which is >>>>> the usual route these days); tho if I knew more about XML or other >>>>> formatting tools I might go a different route. >>>> >>>> I highly recommend oXygenXML ( http://oxygenxml.com ) for editing >>>> DocBook and all XML and XQuery. It runs on GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and MS >>>> Windows. >>> >>> You had me interested for a minute, but then I realized that it is not >>> free software. I can't do that anymore. I've had too many problems >>> with lock-in. It's not about the money. >> >> Could I ask what problems you've had if its not about the money? I can >> understand not wanting to use free software (as in libre), but it sounds >> to me like you've had some other issues over the years. > > > The basic problem is that you dedicate yourself to learning the software > and then you become dependent. This has happened to me, definitely. > Consider WordPerfect 5.1 -- where is that? What good are my skills now? > When I was in grad school about 15-20 years ago I spent a lot of time on > that and now I can't use it. With free software I'd have the code and I > would hire someone to make it work if it was no longer supported and I > really wanted it. > > Related to that problem, once I have skills with some program, then I > become an advocate for it. I don't want to work for the sales or > marketing division of a software company. I especially don't want to push > students to use a program that's going to cost them an arm and a leg after > they graduate. An example of this is SAS. We used it a lot and taught > students how to use it. We never paid much for it. One day I wanted to > put SAS on a new Linux box and I expected the usual site-license pricing > but SAS Corp said no -- we could have the usual university discount, but > the site license was for other UNIX OSs, not for Linux. Now I found out > that SAS with university discount costs $3,800/year and for a student who > graduates and wants his company to buy it or wants to buy it himself for > consulting work, it would cost five times as much: $19,000/year. That > made my blood boil. I stopped using SAS and now I use GNU R. GNU R is > (A) better than SAS in most ways, (B) it is the top choice of serious > academic statisticians and (C) it is free software, both in dollars and in > terms of restrictions on the user. > > Another really important observation is that free software has grown > extremely fast in only a few years. I see Linux as a better choice than > Windows and the other UNIXes at any price, GNU R as better than all other > stat packages at any price, and most or all of the free options as good > enough to be preferred to their sometimes slightly superior (right now) > non-free competitors. I only use non-free when forced to do so by an > employer, when some hardware requires it or when it's part of a service > like Google services. > > Mike The questions is this: WTH is SAS? It's not Serial attached SCSI.