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You seem to have misread me. I never once thought that ODF should be the default file format for any particular office suite (since MS retains the right to make their own products / file formats / etc.), merely that not supporting it at all seems kind of like refusing to include a philips-head screwdriver in the tool sets you produce simply because your company also produces (possibly technically superior) non-philips screws. Certainly implementing the standard as a native export filter (instead of an unsupported plugin) would be cheaper and easier than the amount of lobbying that MS has done in attempting to avoid implementing it.

I'll restate my case -- There should be an office document exchange standard that covers the normal use cases of normal users, and right now the only standard is ODF. If another, better standard comes along and people want to use it, then great -- even if that standard was created at MS -- as long as people using different companies' programs can continue exchanging freely without royalties. What someone's program saves to by default is not really important to me or to the people that I read who talk about this. MS argues against setting ODF as their default file format, but that's their way of reframing the argument in their favor, since I don't know of anyone who actually wants it. That MS also continues to cry that they won't support ODF because it doesn't cover all the possible uses of MS Word is a straw man that they keep throwing up, and they must know that it is since they have no problem exporting in other formats. Your and their arguments end up being orthogonal to mine.

It's just annoying that a lot of people implicitly assume that ODF is better and is the format to use without looking at it closely.
I think that the problem people have with OpenXML is that they just don't trust MS to play fair with it, and assume that there's a catch in the deal somewhere down the line. They don't give OpenXML a good look-over in just the same way that I don't bother to check whether the three card monte hustler on the corner is legit or not: I just keep walking. Given the track record of MS, I can appreciate people's reluctance -- "Fool me once ...," right?

Finally, I think that you are arguing from your heart, not your mind and letting the rhetoric get to you. If you discard the "M$ is teh sux0rs" idiots, the disingenuous "MS has the right to write their own programs" crowd, and the trolls who pose as either side, you'll come out with the government's argument for a standard -- ODF or otherwise -- which will allow free access to government documents and the consumer's argument for major office suites to handle this standard, both of which are reasonable positions. I don't want my government to publish important tax information in iPod's Protected AAC format (requiring me to buy an iPod even if I normally use another product) and I suspect that you don't, either. This despite the fact that iPods have about a 90% market share, comparable to MS Office's almost 95%.

Tell that to the people in California who got refund checks from Micro$oft being a convicted monopolist. Yes I know you are a shill apologist for corporations, but sometimes you people need to face the facts:

"Microsoft resolves class-action suit
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: January 10, 2003, 8:55 PM PST

update Microsoft said late Friday that it has settled a California class-action lawsuit for up to $1.1 billion, a move that would end the largest suit of the kind against the giant software company.

The settlement, which arose from claims that Microsoft unlawfully wielded its Windows monopoly to overcharge consumers for the operating system, allows individuals and businesses in California who bought Microsoft products during a five-year period to apply for vouchers with values of $5 to $29. The vouchers can be used to buy most hardware or software products from any manufacturer."

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-980269.html

This might have been news, sort of, back on June 30... http://news.com.com/OfficeMax+bids+farewell+to+mai l-in+rebates/2100-1047_3-6090290.html

Yes. It will follow the same process that spamming does. They only need a marginal rate of return to jusitfy the expense.

While this may be true, raising the expense changes the nature of the equation...and anything would be an improvement over the situation today.

BTW, I'm sure most are aware, but the Supreme Court is currently looking at this question (the obvious part). If any of you hang out with SC justices, mentioning this latest retardation might help us all.

"It's way too early to say whether the company would pursue licenses and litigation from its competitors," Friendster President Kent Lindstrom told RedHerring.com. "We'll do what we can to protect our intellectual property."

Though the Friendster patent could be challenged in either the patent system or the courts, opponents would face an uphill battle.

I'm not sure that the statement at the end

> ... unwanted volume licences for some Microsoft software can be transferred; but this trade must be compliant
> with Microsoft's own transfer terms and conditions.

is entirely correct - it's a "feature" of UK insolvency laws. See here:

http://news.com.com/Secondhand+Microsoft+software+ goes+on+sale/2100-1012_3-5944617.html

http://www.openfree.org/opinion/?p=31

The fact of the matter is that more people are going to believe a simple quantified statement than an abstract technical discussion; so Sophos is making the argument that will convince the most people, rather than an argument that would convince, say, the more technical folks on Slashdot.

Oh, you want the technical reasons? Okay, here goes my list:

• MacOS/X has a much more stable and mature core Operating System base (Mach). Mach is MUCH older (circa 1985) than the windows NT core (circa 1993), and has been changed less. For example NextStep, released in 1989, was based on Mach, and already did much of what MacOS/X does.
• Mach (the underlying OS) was designed with security in mind. Note however, the Mach layer doesn't define security policy, it just gives you tools with which to implement such policies. That said, if the current MacOS upper layers get the policies wrong, flexible tools are there to fix it. Contrast that with Windows which has serious design flaws in its interprocess communication mechanism.
• The MacOS command-line code, so far, also seems to have a lower bug-density (similar to Linux) in fuzz testing than the MS code, although GUI code is unfortunately sucky in both OS-es.

Google "ipod killer" -> 1,160,000 results.

We've seen iPod killers from Sony, iRiver, Dell, Nokia, and of course Creative.

Microsoft has been killing the iPod for years now. They need to get their other iPod killers out of the way to give their new device a piece of that tasty iPod flesh that Apple competitors have been feasting on for years.

You'd do well to follow your own advice. I've already posted this, but what the heck:

Q1 2001 (roughly 5.4% worldwide) and Q1 2006 (roughly 2.0% worldwide)

Mac's marketshare may not be stellar yet, but compare it to their marketshare 5 years ago.

Sure, how about 2001 vs 2005? A quick Google found this from 2002 and this for 2005 (hint: they are basically the same, maybe even lower). The rest of your post hit the nail on the head (though maybe unintentionally) - Mac's are all about perception and appearance. They seem to have a far larger market share than they actually do.

That being said, I'm also considering getting a Macbook :) (why no integrated video, why?!?).

So, yeah, there's a reason every is critical of PHP.

I'm on the other side. What is it about a language that makes it *EASY* to consider the problem at hand, and doesn't make you worry too much about implementation details?

Using PHP, you don't have to worry about things like memory management and/or memory type translation. A "1" becomes a 2 when you add a 1 to it.

Arrays and hashes are the same. Any array can be accessed as a hash, any hash is also an array. Makes it easy to define data in memory, then do loops/recursion on it to get whatever result you want.

Simple!

Time spent solving customer problems rather than implementation problems is time spent making money instead of wasting it.

I've written some really big projects with PHP. (EG: over 50,000 lines in 3+ years, with NO HTML CODE) It's done a magnificent job. It scales nicely and easily with it's "share nothing" approach, and is highly reliable. In the 6 years that I've been actively developing with PHP, the number of times that there was a bug/problem with the language I could count on one hand, with 4 of the fingers peeled down. It's reliable and scalable enough that Yahoo uses it as their preferred development language.

And, as far as security, the vast majority of issues have been with idiots writing insecure scripting, which can be done in any language. (Yes, I'm thinking of you, SPAW editor!) And, if you're using a decent operating system with an update mechanism (EG: yum) then updates to fix found security issues is a no-brainer.

With PHP-GTK you can write quick, powerful, cross-platform GUI applications with ease and speed - I've done so, managing a distributed database application among some 70 school districts with many hundreds of users - and it works marvelously.

PHP may have it's warts, but it's a damned fine tool. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.

http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-6046197.html Pretty sure macs have their fair share of security holes, they just havent been widely exploited yet.

This is just Mercata in person, isn't it?

The Sony Reader's is set to be priced between $299-$399 at Borders book store. I doubt it will deviate much from that price. I'd buy it for $500 because I hate carrying arounds tons of books.

I got your simple analogy right here: Net Neutrality is Affirmative Action for the internet.

Once you accept that analogy you can then start drawing your political conclusions. At that point the Democrats will start meddling with the economics of this up-until-now unregulated and, might I add, up-until-now highly successful entity. While on the other end of the spectrum the Republicans will continue with their fetish of shaping up what a God fearing society should be like by enforcing warning labels on porn pages. Can't people see that it's all the same? Maybe a side by side view might help? http://news.com.com/2100-1083_3-6089925.html The internet is under attack by the lizzards! http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12653 4&cid=10586063 The government is using force to change things that are fine as they are . There is a french word that correlates to this sentiment, it's called laissez faire.

IBM had server sales of more than five billion dollars last year (or three billion, if you don't count mainframes). Even lowly Sun beats out Dell, which comes in at almost $1B.

Keep in mind that this is just for one year. Pick your favorite guess for how large Googles server farm is and divide by the average age of those machines. Do you still think they're assembling more than a billion dollars of hardware per year?

Some years back the USPS was actually considering linking every snail mail address to an email address, so we could really have had email postal addresses. They seem to have let the idea die a quiet death however.

Tell that to David Coursey.

"SO, HERE I AM, sitting in a jet at 34,000 feet someplace above God-only-knows-where, using my computer and minding my own business when Microsoft threatens to essentially shut down my copy of Office. And at the very start of a week-long business trip, too."

And this coming from one of the biggest Microsoft schill sites on the planet.

Both cases Microsoft bought something like 25%.

In Apple's case, it was more like 6%:

• Microsoft invested $150 million (non voting stock BTW)
• Apple's share price was worth $19 on that day
• Apple had about 127,949,220 shares outstanding one month later.

$150,000,000 / (127,949,220 * $19) = 6.1%

The MSN/Opera thing was three years ago. Got anything more recent?

Actually, it DOES phone home: http://news.com.com/Microsofts+antipiracy+tool+pho nes+home+daily/2100-1016_3-6081286.html

In response, the office of Governor Mitt Romney issued a statement on Tuesday, saying that the executive branch would continue with the standards implementation plan. "Senator Pacheco is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. We are committed to an open-standards approach that fully takes into account all accessibility, cost and statutory requirements," said Felix Browne, an administration spokesman.

Korea's working on that. -> Cell Phones Prevent Drunken Calls

Coincidenally, TFA links to a phone for that, too.

Now, a few years down the road WGA is going to force me to reinstall--now that I have many important business apps installed.

You don't have to if you have a legal copy. You can always change the product key of an installed instance of XP using the registry and msoobe.exe. More info here: http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035_11-5034890.h tml

http://news.com.com/5208-1029-0.html?forumID=1&thr eadID=18274&messageID=157697&start=-16

With the possibility of barring access to Windows...

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/29/165 7241

... then how much of downtime must a user suffer from this?

Apple's customers are like no others--a rich blend of the most sociologically elite with those seeking elegant, simple computing... Unlike users of Intel/Windows computers, a significant portion of Apple's users are active , exploratory , avant-garde and early adopters . The activities they enjoy are unique in the way that they more often incorporate rich media such as video and music as well as more active prosumer behavior than many more passive Windows [and Linux] users.
                                          — MetaFacts, Inc.

With above-average household income and education levels, the Mac population [is] very attractive [ intellectually as well as physically .]
                                          — Nielsen/NetRatings (as quoted by C|NET)

Since when has MS released year-named products before that year?

Windows 98 release date - June 25, 1998
Windows 2000 release date - Feb 17, 2000
Office 2003 release date - Oct. 21, 2003

Gates shed some light on his own hard-nosed business philosophy. "Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

Helping people obey the law is a good thing. It seems most corporate IT people are either too lazy or too careless about their jobs to actually read and obey the license agreements of their software vendors; and I strongly encourage any automated tools to make this easier.

With automated tools to help them, perhaps more people will realize that the license agreement is one of the most important aspects of a software package, and with Windows it carries incredible risk -- both legal risk because Microsoft likes suing its customers and technical becausde thier EULA gives them the right to shut down your machines at their will with no due process or trial or anything.

But bottom line -- if you're not doing anything illegal you have nothing to fear from these microsoft programs, so quit complaining. If you are illegally copying Windows I have no sympathy for you. If you aren't sure (as most companies are), I recommend you switch to software with a license you can understand (like Red Hat's -- you bought the software - you can install it wherever you want).

Fortunatelly more of our critical systems are moving to Linux so not at risk from either of those legal and technical vulnerabilities.

A little later after posting parent I came across this: about RedHat

which is very unlike news about Sun Microsystems

But no surprise there, it's been happening for a while

now who's capitalistic ?

A little later after posting parent I came across this: about RedHat

which is very unlike news about Sun Microsystems

But no surprise there, it's been happening for a while

now who's capitalistic ?

Something tells me that Mr. Phipps is confused about which company is Sun and which is Red Hat.

Red Hat Earnings Rise on Business Sales

Meanwhile, the picture at Sun is not so sunny.

You're famous!

http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-6089125.html

Yes well, the courts have previously ruled that ADA does not apply to the web. Sure, there are other laws out there that cover similar topics, but not the ADA.

Sue them?? You intend to pay their legal fees?

resonable doubt

I can't find the document right now, but basically you agree from the time of an audit you will pay all legal fees incurred by the BSA related to your audit, even if you are found innocent.

White House demands encryption?
Well, encryption is only used by criminals, since honest people don't need to hide their activities.

A more important question is why did this shop have so many unlicensed fonts?

Were they not aware they were supposed to pay for them? Perhaps, but I doubt it.

Were they trying to stick it to the man? I suspect not.

What's more likely is that the ludicrous price of font packages drove them to two options: use them anyway or go out of business.

In a capatilist society, prices are (supposed to be) driven by demand, by what the customer will pay for them. Now I suspect these people aren't the only ones 'pirating' fonts. I would be surprised if there were any printing outfits that had all their font licences up to date. Therefore they are not priced at a level their customers are willing to pay.

I wonder if this place will follow suit with other businesses that have been bitten by the BS Alliance.

Here's one way to get even:

http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html

Gotta love the way pressure forces people to take extreme measures. :)

"When we find (piracy rings), we confiscate the products and the equipment they use to make them and turn to execute the persons or organizations involved," said the Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone's Jian."

Chinese torture is very well documented. Your inability to believe it when referenced in my simple, detailed post, and your failure to just google for details leads me to believe that you are either just in denial of Chinese tyranny, willfully ignorant, or just as naive as the reviewer I posted about.

I would have hoped I couldn't prove you wrong, that China doesn't execute pirates or torture people.

Sun Netscape AOL alliance

Sounds vaguely familiar - Just change a few terms:

Sun = Microsoft
Netscape = Google
AOL = Yahoo

Apple's customers are like no others--a rich blend of the most sociologically elite with those seeking elegant, simple computing... Unlike users of Intel/Windows computers, a significant portion of Apple's users are active , exploratory , avant-garde and early adopters . The activities they enjoy are unique in the way that they more often incorporate rich media such as video and music as well as more active prosumer behavior than many more passive Windows [and Linux] users.
                                          — MetaFacts, Inc.

With above-average household income and education levels, the Mac population [is] very attractive [ intellectually as well as physically .]
                                          — Nielsen/NetRatings (as quoted by C|NET)

> From linvir
> How long since you last used Linux?
I'm using it right now. Ubuntu on a IBM Thinkpad X41 is the environment I live in. Ubuntu rocks -- especially with Opera on top! (And Emacs right underneath.)

Even M$ doesn't believe this business plan will work. The M$ Live Exec is gone which might be an indication of how this is going to go down.

-Eric

More on the shakeup.

We're seeing this more now (think Sun and SGI) -- companies that are underperforming making changes at the top in the hopes of generating new intitiatives and pumping up the stock price. It remains to be seen if all the bloodletting will lead to any marked improvement in the short term -- new execs have to deal with things as they are and try to untangle the mess left on their desk before they can move forward.

Then people will go to signing deals with Apple"

Ah, but Google can use wireless for the last mile. Google is partnering with Earthlink to provide wireless access in San Francisco.

That's great and all, but I was kind of hoping we might see some decent speeds and competition within 10 years. That's not gonna happen at this rate.

According to CNet"Google will manage the free 300-kilobits-per-second Wi-Fi service, while EarthLink will offer the faster premium service of 1mbps for up to $20 a month." That sounds like pretty decent speeds, yes tech offers higher speeds but most people don't even have those speeds. At least in the US, most people still use dialup. Heck, I'm a subscriber to Earthlink cable and I don't know that I get 1MBPS. And definitely not at that price. Sometymes it doesn't seem that much faster than my old dialup. Heck if it were offered where I live, I'd get rid of my cable and go wireless at those prices and speeds.

Horse-drawn trolleys ruled cities, too, but had to be destroyed to make way for progress. How do we rip the telco's trolley tracks out and enable something modern and real competition?

Google may have stumbled across a very expensive but robust solution.

Lie proposed the Acid2 test in the first place. I'd say he's heard of it ;-)

http://news.com.com/The+Acid2+challenge+to+Microso ft/2010-1032_3-5618723.html