[Discuss] An interesting win with the Canadian government

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2006-05-14 01:40-0700 Corey Burger wrote:

> On 5/13/06, David Bronaugh <dbronaugh at linuxboxen.org> wrote:
>> Looks like Stats Can will let us complete our census online with Linux
>> after all.
>> 
>> http://www12.statcan.ca/IRC/english/advisory_e.htm
>> 
>> I'd say that's a big win :)
>> 
>> David Bronaugh
>
> Yep, looks like we won, but only partially. Now we need to get the
> blind and disabled groups to join us and get the Java killed as well.

Java is a viable and useful language.  It is just that the proprietary
version by Sun has all the usual deficiencies of proprietary software, and
Java has got a bad reputation from that.  So use free Java (the combination
of the gcj, gij, and classpath packages) instead.  I have read that free
Java is good enough for a lot of situations (e.g., the java parts of
OpenOffice).  It certainly works fine in the specific PLplot case I am
familiar with. Does anybody know if it works for the census form?

Sorry, I cannot test that myself since I already filled out the paper form.
It's too bad my handwriting is so terrible that Lockheed Martin's machines
should have grave difficulty in reading it and reporting the results to the
US government as required by that government's "patriot" act.  A Canadian
human should be able to read my handwriting, and I am sure they will honour
the secrecy oath they took to protect census data.  However, when they input
my data I wonder if their "superiors" have arranged for it still to be
"processed" by Lockheed Martin.

Alan
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Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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