Applix Announces Its Linux-Based Office Suite Demo to Ship With Storm Linux 2000
biz.yahoo.com
Stormix Technologies is a Linux based software development company based in Vancouver, Canada
The download area of stromix is interesting. They allow you to download iso file to burn a local cdrom. I really like it. I successfully download the 450 meg total package iso on my first ftp try.
stormix.com
Tom Watson tosiwmee
PS E. Most intelligent people know enough speak about others only when they have something good to say. For example Bill Clinton was one of the most successful rapist's who has ever lived.
Who was Robert Baden-Powell ????? Open Source, Open Mind, creativity.
LEADERS & SUCCESS
Scouting's Robert Baden-Powell His Innovations Helped Build Better Troops
Date: 9/16/99
Author: Curt Schleier
Lord Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941) wanted to pack as much into his life as he could.
Best known as the founder of the international Boy Scouting movement, Baden-Powell was also a prolific author and a career military officer who rose to lieutenant general during 30 years in the British cavalry.
How did he do it? First, he made a conscious decision not to waste a minute. He rose at 5 a.m. daily, for 'there is nothing like early morning for getting (a good start on) work.'
In an article for a Boy Scouts magazine he wrote: 'Mind you, if you only (wake up and work) an hour extra per day it means 365 hours per annum - or three weeks longer of waking time than your average neighbors get. . . . Personally, I reckon to get 13 months of life into each year.'
He was the son of an Oxford University professor who died when Robert was 3, leaving the family in modest circumstances.
Though only an average student, Baden-Powell won a scholarship to Charterhouse, a British public school, the equivalent of a private American prep school. At graduation, however, when he failed to win a scholarship to Oxford, his future looked less than promising.
But Baden-Powell was determined to stay optimistic. 'Something will turn up,' he reassured his anxious mother.
It did. He heard about an exam to qualify for an army commission, took the test and finished fifth out of 718 'gentlemen examined.'
Baden-Powell got his commission as a sublieutenant in September 1876 and went to India, assigned to the 13th Hussars. During his formal military training there, Baden-Powell realized he needed to find positive role models. From then on, everywhere he went he sought out men he wanted to pattern himself after.
Early in his career, he served under an unorthodox colonel, Baker Russell. Russell led by common sense and, according to 'Baden- Powell: The Two Lives of a Hero' by William Hillcourt, 'had an uncanny ability for bringing out the intelligence and initiative and self-reliance of his men.'
Following Russell's example, Baden-Powell made it a top priority to look out for the welfare of his men.
He knew one of the worst enemies of troops at overseas stations was boredom and that low morale could ruin a fighting force. So he organized plays and other amusements for the soldiers, painted scenery, even dressed up in costume and starred in his own productions. This was a practice he continued wherever he was billeted.
Baden-Powell realized that one can capture more flies with honey than with vinegar.
In 1897, he was transferred from duty in Africa back to India and given command of the Fifth Dragoon Guards. By now a lieutenant colonel, he found the unit below standard efficiency levels, with many of the troops suffering from a fever. He ordered all sanitary precautions taken, but that didn't seem to help.
Baden-Powell analyzed the situation and was convinced a local bazaar where his men purchased food and drink when off duty was the problem.
He could have simply ordered his men to stay away from the bazaar. But while in Africa he'd learned an Ashanti saying he thought appropriate: 'Softly, softly catchee monkey.' He decided a reasoned approach was better.
So he called his men together, explained his theory and suggested they conduct an experiment to see whether he was correct. The men voluntarily agreed to stay out of the bazaar for two weeks. The strategy worked - the men's fevers cleared.
To keep the men healthy, Baden-Powell had amusement facilities built on the base so the men no longer had reason to go to the bazaar.
He tried to learn from mistakes. While stationed in Afghanistan in 1885, he saw that British troops lost the element of surprise because standard operating procedure required officers to yell their orders to their men. Clearly, the practice wasn't working.
Back in England in 1886, Baden-Powell reviewed what had happened and tried to think of a way to communicate orders quietly. He came up with hand signals and introduced them to his troops. The idea caught the attention of his commanding general, who requested a demonstration. Soon, hand communications were used in the rest of the regiment as well.
Baden- Powell often tried to find a better way to do something. When he heard the government was considering buying a new model of machine gun, he persuaded the inventor to lend him one and developed special cavalry tactics using the gun.
His demonstration of these techniques at the 1887 Golden Jubilee Celebration of Queen Victoria's reign was so successful that the adjutant general of the British army ordered Baden-Powell's methods to be adopted by every cavalry unit.
Baden-Powell didn't believe in being confined to the drill book or regulations. Once on an exercise in Ireland, he wanted to divert some entrenched troops opposing his. It had been a dry summer, and the trails were dusty. He sent six men racing down a lane, each trailing a tree branch behind them.
Convinced that only a large force of cavalry could create so great a dust storm, the entrenched soldiers set off in pursuit - leaving their cannons behind them for Baden-Powell to capture.
His love of the outdoors, which he had from his youth, and his experience in the military prepared Baden- Powell for what Hillcourt refers to as his second life, as founder of the Boy Scouts.
In the army, Baden-Powell was often called on to scout the enemy. He wrote about his scouting assignments and how he lived and survived in the wilderness when carrying them out in 'Aid to Scouting,' published in 1899. The book achieved great success, in no small measure because of Baden-Powell's renown in the Boer War (1899-1902).
With just a small garrison, he withstood a much larger and better armed force during the 217-day siege of Mafeking, which the British considered one of the major turning points in the war.
He returned to England after the war as a major general. There, he suffered through a number of ceremonial duties - including reviewing the Boys' Brigade, a type of junior army corps begun in Scotland two decades earlier.
Baden-Powell didn't think much of the brigade - it didn't seem to teach the boys anything except drilling.
Why not an organization that taught boys citizenship and responsibility, that taught them scouting skills and love of nature? Baden-Powell remembered how much fun he'd had outdoors. He figured that the boys could be trained in small groups and learn to take initiative, just as Baden-Powell's
troops did.
He immediately started planning how to train the boys, and began with the Boys' Brigade, which he renamed the Boy Scouts in 1907. When the ranks grew because the new program proved so popular, Baden-Powell, who retired from active duty in 1910, persuaded other former soldiers to help him lead the boys.
Baden-Powell always tried to keep learning. He wanted to teach Scouts just that - while Scouting was a combination of adventure and education, education was the key. |
