Tactical Bloggers?

[Stan]

Hello Rob,
I enjoyed your story. It reminds me of daily situations here in Tallinn shortly following EU and NATO membership status.

The Estonian's that I socialize and work with were constantly telling me about the need to join NATO before the Russians decide to once again come calling. Most Estonians, even to this day, don't care much for the EU. Too many rules and things only got more expensive.

I told them about opening Pandora's Box and to be careful what you wish for. The Turks are here and in the hundreds. They are somewhat laid back and get by with Russian in the event one needs to communicate. There are no marginal or extremist views, it's just business.

They occupy almost all the unskilled labor areas, such as trash, sanitation and for some strange reason, all the car washes . These labor positions however have some obvious fringe benifits with access to (your) car parts, your personal belongings, and even stranger, electrical wiring (your $800 breaker) and water pipes .

Scrap metal is big business in Estonia - One of my neighbors returned home to find all of his ground wires gone (the thick ones on the sides of the building normally attached to lightning rods on the roof )

Regards, Stan

[Rob Thornton]

We're talking big $$$ here too. The last team had brought in wire to do the perimeter lights I guess, when we went out to fix them, we found out most of it had been stolen from the adjacent neighborhood side some time ago (this time we wired it a little differently.). When we were passing through Kuwait, the vast scrapyards of destroyed Iraqi equipment (destroyed during the Persia Gulf War) which had been gathered up was being sold by the lot to the Chinese - a steady stream of trucks was coing and going - very efficient. When we took the IA to the CF FOB (some people go hiking - we go to the CF dump allot) they would go crazy with the stuff CF just through out. Go to a range aywhere (no matter if you set it up or what) in the Middle East, and folks are there in 5 minutes waiting to pick up the brass. Poverty is a fact, but its still pretty sad.

[marct]

I just got this press release and I think it has some interesting implications

The ODF Toolkit Project, OpenOffice.org

The future of OpenOffice.org extends beyond the office suite. With the creation of our new ODF Toolkit Project (http://odftoolkit.openoffice.org/), which we are announcing today, we are inviting developers everywhere to take the source of the world's leading Free and Open office productivity suite in bold new directions. These may include technologies that engage tools for collaboration, communication and content creation of every kind; tools that will complement and even transcend the already powerful productivity suite. The anchor of this new project is the OpenDocument Format (ODF), the ISO and OASIS standard format for office applications and the most flexible and adaptable format for the future.

Any application can be engineered to express its files in the ODF and any application can open and edit ODF files created by another compliant application. Vendor lock-in, in which the user must continue to use expensive and proprietary software only because the files created using it are unreadable by other applications, has been the bane of governments, businesses, and individuals for at least the last twenty-five years. With the ODF users reclaim their works and vendor lock-in is eliminated. It is for this reason that governments and businesses are looking to the ODF and OpenOffice.org. The stakes are too high.

The ODF Toolkit Project takes that freedom even further. Developers are not bound by the legacy constraints of the office suite; they will be able to more easily include ODF in their applications or create new applications that use ODF. It does not matter whether it extracts, manages, creates, or integrates information. The ODF Toolkit Project lowers the barriers to working with and implementing the ODF for all.

Users will obviously benefit, and almost immediately. To give just an example: The future of collaboration and communication, not to mention much of commerce, depends on applications that can exchange files without the hassle of incompatibility; the future depends on truly open and flexible standards and formats. But much of what is created today and almost all that is exchanged uses proprietary formats, effectively limiting collaboration.

With the ODF Toolkit Project, any suitable application, large or small, will find it easier to implement the ODF, allowing users to create and exchange, collaborate on or simply save their files as they please, without the fear of vendor lock-in or file obsolescence.

Developers and others interested in contributing are invited to join us now and make something new!

To learn more go to http://odftoolkit.openoffice.org.

Marc

[Stan]

Hey Rob,
You're so correct. Even here where the economy grew so quickly, USAID pulled out 2 years earlier than previously planned.

Who shovels the snow in the winter? 60-plus-year old homeless people. They also show up in some of the most expensive shopping malls on the top floor where most of us sit, eat, smoke and drink.

When you take your tray to the racks at the entrance of the dishwashing area, they will casually meander over and begin the collection process, to include dirty forks and knives. Plop down and commence eating.

Most here have a hard time with that, but I had already served in far worse places, and hardly took notice.

Yes it's sad, but it is as you so well stated, a fact of life anywhere today.

I'm glad my father insisted I go to school

Regards, Stan