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Fanshawe Colleges $28-million gift is about making people a lot more comfortable.

The donation to the school from Siemens Canada will boost its ergonomics study program, meaning students will help design products and measure workplaces, improving comfort and reducing injuries.

This investment from Siemens ensures our students are well prepared for relevant and rewarding careers upon graduation, Fanshawe President Peter Devlin said in a release.

We thank Siemens for its continued support of Fanshawe and helping us unlock the potential of our students.

Software donated by Siemens has a value of $28 million and will go to the colleges advanced ergonomic studies program in the school of public safety.

The software, called Jack, is a leading-edge human modelling and simulation program considered an industry standard. Students will design products and evaluate industrial tasks meant to improve user comfort and reduce musculoskeletal injuries.

Digitalization is rapidly changing every aspect of our lives, including how we work, said Robert Hardt, chief executive, Siemens Canada.

Were thrilled through this grant to be providing Fanshawe students in the advanced ergonomic studies program with sophisticated software tools to help develop safer, more efficient working environments for Canadians.

Mark Hunter, chair of Fanshawes school of public safety, said the technology will enable students to move directly into the workplace.

Students in our advanced ergonomic studies program will now have the opportunity to learn using leading-edge software, preparing them for careers as industry leaders upon graduation, said Hunter.

It is the second gift from Siemens in recent months. In January it donated software technology with a commercial value of $248million to the school of applied science and technology. That was for NX software used for computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering.

Having gained hands-on experience with the Jack modelling software has greatly contributed to our thorough, scientific understanding of human biomechanics when exposed to various working circumstances, as well as provided experience in applying ergonomic analysis tools for both proactive and reactive design purposes, said Anna Beenackers, an advanced ergonomic studies student.

The knowledge and experience gained from our exposure to Jack will minimize the learning curve and aid in the transition as we progress from students to working professionals in . . . ergonomics.

WHAT THEY SAID

This investment from Siemens ensures our students are well prepared for relevant and rewarding careers upon graduation.

Fanshawe President Peter Devlin

Were thrilled through this grant to be providing Fanshawe students .. . (with) tools to help develop safer, more efficient working environments for Canadians.

Robert Hardt, chief executive, Siemens Canada

The knowledge and experience gained from our exposure to Jack will minimize the learning curve and aid in the transition as we progress from students to working professionals in ... ergonomics.

Anna Beenackers, advanced ergonomic studies student

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Fanshawe gets 'Jacked' by $28M software gift - London Free Press

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has labelled some members of the free software community habitual, hateful and reflexive contrarians.

Shuttleworth added a comment to his own Google+ post thanking those who worked on Ubuntu's recently-abandoned Unity Project.

But as he read the comments on that post, his mood changed and he soon added a comment about past debate on the Mir windowing system.

The whole Mir hate-fest boggled my mind, he wrote, it's free software that does something invisible really well. It became a political topic as irrational as climate change or gun control, where being on one side or the other was a sign of tribal allegiance.

Shuttleworth thinks that was bad because We have a problem in the community when people choose to hate free software instead of loving that someone cares enough to take their life's work and make it freely available.

I came to be disgusted with the hate on Mir. Really, it changed my opinion of the free software community.

I used to think that it was a privilege to serve people who also loved the idea of service, but now I think many members of the free software community are just deeply anti-social types who love to hate on whatever is mainstream.

When Windows was mainstream they hated on it. Rationally, Windows does many things well and deserves respect for those. And when Canonical went mainstream, it became the focus of irrational hatred too. The very same muppets would write about how terrible it was that IOS/Android had no competition and then how terrible it was that Canonical was investing in (free software!) compositing and convergence.

The comment concludes with three words of profane and terse criticism: Fuck that shit.

Shuttleworth has form using strong words to describe Mir opponents: he once labelled opponents them the Open Source Tea Party.

The comment takes his ire to new levels and represents an unusually-blunt criticism of the free and/or open source software community from a senior figure in that community.

Grab some popcorn: this could get interesting.

Read more here:
Mark Shuttleworth says some free software folk are 'deeply anti ... - The Register

Ubuntu's dream of a single Linux platform across all your devices has died, swiftly, following a single gunshot to the head. Holding the revolver: founder of Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth.

Shuttleworth has shocked and surprised the open source community, even those who were critics of the Unity effort that was started six years ago.

"I'm writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell," he wrote on the official Ubuntu blog Wednesday. "We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS."

The decision came during a new-fiscal-year evaluation of Ubuntu's various projects. Unity in its eighth version but without ever having made it to public release didn't make the cut.

Developers are in shock so much so that the Ubuntu blog has been knocked offline by traffic as we write (cache of post) although Reg readers will have suspected something was coming. In an interview with us in February, Shuttleworth admitted that time was running short for the project, which he noted was already a year late.

Calling it his "white whale," Shuttleworth noted both the project's failings and his personal investment in the project. "I feel the team has earned a fair shot and I may take my carrots," he said meaning that he would have do something he didn't want to because it was the healthy choice.

In that interview, he also reflected on the dream that was Unity: "Unity 8 delivers a unified set of experiences across all the kinds of personal computers. I care about developers I need to give them a Linux environment wherever they want to do their developing if that's on a phone it needs to be on their phone. If it's on their goggles it needs to be on their goggles."

Sadly, it won't be on any phones, fondleslabs, goggles or desktops: Canonical is killing development of Ubuntu software for phones and tablets altogether including, presumably, its Mir display server and thus paving the way for a Wayland-powered GNOME experience. The irony of course is that earlier this month, the new Samsung Galaxy S8 phone came with the ability to attach it to a screen and keyboard and use it as a desktop computer Unity's dream.

"I took the view that, if convergence was the future and we could deliver it as free software, that would be widely appreciated both in the free software community and in the technology industry, where there is substantial frustration with the existing, closed alternatives available to manufacturers," Shuttleworth wrote in his post Wednesday. "I was wrong on both counts."

Despite noting that the Unity team had delivered a "beautiful, usable and solid" platform, he said he had to recognize the bigger reality. "I respect that markets, and community, ultimately decide which products grow and which disappear," he noted.

And if there was any doubt that the decision came as a blow to his dream of one Linux to bind them all, Shuttleworth wrote: "This has been, personally, a very difficult decision, because of the force of my conviction in the convergence future, and my personal engagement with the people and the product, both of which are amazing. We feel like a family, but this choice is shaped by commercial constraints, and those two are hard to reconcile."

So, it's back to GNOME and bye-bye Unity.

See more here:
Ubuntu UNITY is GNOME-MORE: 'One Linux' dream of phone, slab, desktop UI axed - The Register

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Shuttleworth said that many members of the free software community are anti-social that love to hate anything in the mainstream.

Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu, has had some strong words to share with some members of the free software community, having labelled some as muppets.

Shuttleworth, who made the comments on his own Google+ post, had originally started out with a thankful tone to say thank you, for all your spirit and intellect and energy in the Unity8 adventure, but after a number of comments about the Mir windowing system his tone changed.

The Ubuntu founder said: The whole Mir hate-fest boggled my mind its free software that does something invisible really well. It became a political topic as irrational as climate change or gun control, where being on one side or the other was a sign of tribal allegiance.

We have a problem in the community when people choose to hate free software instead of loving that someone cares enough to take their lifes work and make it freely available.

Shuttleworth continued by saying that he came to be disgusted with the hate on Mir, and that is changed his opinion on the free software community.

I used to think that it was a privilege to serve people who also loved the idea of service, but now I think many members of the free software community are just deeply anti-social types who love to hate on whatever is mainstream. When Windows was mainstream they hated on it. Rationally, Windows does many things well and deserves respect for those. And when Canonical went mainstream, it became the focus of irrational hatred too.

The very same muppets would write about how terrible it was that IOS/Android had no competition and then how terrible it was that Canonical was investing in (free software!) compositing and convergence. F**k that s**t.

The comments are likely to provoke some heated debate on the subject of Mir, with some in the community responding to the comments by saying: was taken aback by your comments on Mir haters implying theyre not smart and just complaining only because Ubuntu is main stream, while that may have been the case for a number of them Im sure, its just as sad you resort to some of the same petty argumentative attitudes and snappy remarks that started the flame war that ensued :/

Shuttleworth has previously jumped to the defence of Mir and labelled the opponents to the technology as being members of the Open Source Tea Party. The Google+ post and Open Source Tea Party comments can be found here and here.

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Mark Shuttleworth labels some free software users as "anti-social ... - Computer Business Review

The most powerful PDF editors are generally paid for, but you can often get by with a free alternative. We show you how you can edit PDFs for free with these useful tools.

By Roland Waddilove | 05 Apr 17

PDFs should be one of the most straightforward document types in the world, but unfortunately they are not so simple when it comes to editing them. Paid-for PDF editors can do it all, but do you really want to pay for a tool to complete a quick and easy editing job? As we have learned from this round-up of free tools and services, you may not need to.

Adobe invented the PDF (Portable Document Format) to solve a problem that dogged people for years: how to view and print documents without requiring the original software that document was created in or the fonts it uses. It wasn't meant to be a replacement for a word processor -it was a layout format for precise alignment of text and images.

Many programs can save documents in PDF format, but few can edit them directly. But what if you receive a document in PDF form and need to change it? Or you might save a file as a PDF but lose the original (editable) document through a disk or human error? In all of these situations, you need a PDF editor.

However, here's the thing: free PDF editors generally do not allow you to edit text. What they offer is the ability to erase (or 'whiteout') text and replace it with new text. Matching the font, both size and colour, but it's all you'll be able to do if you can't get hold of the original file used to create the PDF.

Some free PDF editors let you annotate PDFs and add or remove pages. The original content cannot be changed, but you can insert notes and comments, use a highlighter pen, strikethrough text, delete pages, fill out forms and so on.

Here are some of your options:

AbleWord is the only free PDF editor we're aware of that can import a PDF and make it completely editable. It's best when importing PDF files that were created in Word, but will attempt to replicate all PDF files. The end result won't look identical to the original but will be close.

Foxit Reader is a lightweight alternative to Adobe Reader and many people prefer it. It's more than just a PDF reader though and it has a wide range of powerful tools. You cannot edit the contents, but text can be struck through with a line and replaced by a pop-up note.

PDF-XChange Viewer offers an almost identical set of features to Foxit Reader and it is useful for annotating in a similar manner.

As long as your editing demands aren't too heavy, PDF Candy may be the quickest solution. It can convert PDFs to other formats, rotate them, split them, protect them and add watermarks.

This new online service has but one limitation: any file you upload must be under 10MB. But that's it: there are no ads or any other restrictions.

LibreOffice, the free Office alternative, is worth considering if you want to edit the text in a PDF file. It loads PDFs and it can cope with very large documents with hundreds of pages. The only snag is that each line of text is text box, which makes it awkward to edit large amounts of text.

PDF Pro is an online tool that lets you upload three PDF files per month and edit them. The latest update includes a facility to convert PDF documents to Word (.doc) format, which not many free products can do.

FormSwift is another online PDF editor. You simply drag and drop files to upload them, and you can then edit them in your browser before downloading and printing or sharing.

You can edit text by deleting and replacing it, add images or signatures. It's relatively basic, but it's free and requires only an internet connection.

PDF to Word does exactly what the name says. You select a file on your PC, upload it to the site and it emails you the Word document a minute or two later. The advantage of this is that you can use Word or another word processor to edit the text and resave the document as a PDF.

See the article here:
How to edit a PDF for free - PC Advisor