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I don't know if it's because I've never used goog-411, and I read this article _first_ -- but when I listen to that sound, I think it _sounds_ like someone trying to mimick a computer. Which annoys the piss out of me. I listened to it twice and I think if I heard it a third time I'd get angry.

And the article talks about how they've turned down a jeopardy-like theme song, along with a fake conversation. So this was #1 of 3 ideas? Those ideas are *all* horrible. I can think of a million ideas that would be better off the top of my head.

None of them involve a human pretending to be a computer, badly.

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Even the audio from this would be better.
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It's ok to be disrespectful to someone who deigns to teach you, so long as they are the absolute worst examples of role-models, have horrible teaching skills and can't engage anybody with their lessons.

Let me put it another way: The school and the school board shouldn't be allowed to throw anybody at a room full of students and say, 'yeah we did our duty'. Which is exactly what they want to do, zero effort on the curriculum, zero effort with the staff - blame the students for ruining the school.

If these same students want this teacher replaced with a better teacher - what recourse do they have? Pretty much none. What more can they do but make light of the situation and tell the entire world they don't respect or want to be taught by this teacher? Sometimes Humour, as in this case, is the last resort of people that are fed up with no ability to stand up for themselves. And when that's not the case, the case is usually dropping out or methodically moving from classroom to classroom with double-barreled sawed off shotguns.

Then we can all watch t.v. and say, 'wow, those kids were really f*#*#ed up. Its amazing the -teachers- that dealt with them everyday didn't pick up on the warning signs. I guess that's not their job.'

what the hell is their job? I've had a lot of great teachers - and none of them would have requested this woman be transferred to work with them.

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engaging!

The school should be embarrased to have her working there. The video points out she's unhygienic, the classroom looks disgusting, nobody respects her. That's just what I got in the first 60 seconds.

The school is alleging the video disrupted class - so that's why the student was suspended. So how disrupted was the class that they had to find the video on YouTube to know about it? Did the teacher not mention how 'disrupted' her class was? Ok then fire her.

Allowing this to go on is a disgusting example of a school board as a whole.

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Bride of Mongzilla?

You're correct about everything you say, except the fact that this shouldn't be made public.

If I were the kingpin in a multi-million dollar drug bust and I wanted to kill the 'informant' (ok, let's pretend we're in a movie) - don't you think I would hire the $1000 private investigator to go find this 'so hard to discover' information?

This entire site is made up of very very easily obtained information. They didn't subpoena anybody, beg a judge, pay people off. They just looked at publicly available documents. Maybe the error is in these documents being publicly available - and more than that, maybe the error is that we're blaming the messenger.

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Subpoena sounds like a South American donkey sex show

Sterno's gonna save my life one day, me and that child that won't shut up!

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won't shut up!

Ok, I know this is an overplayed argument - the 'humanity' card. Like when NASA announces they've found a way to get 3 men to the moon for just under 8 billion dollars - and people say, "Umm, couldn't we use 8 billion dollars in Florida for our worst-in-the-country school system?"

Obviously, that's a long and involved argument. But in this case - factoring a very large prime number - just by using methods we *knew* would work - but had never dedicated the resources to - what kind of real progress is that? We haven't really learned anything - have we?

Wouldn't that computing time have been way way more valuable to any of the 'potentially useful' distributed computing projects floating around out there? This sounds like a monumental waste of sciences new most-precious resource - CPU time.

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monumental waste!

I'm 28 and I don't get what it is that you do. Why don't you see if you can explain it to one of your neighbors first. There's all different levels of understanding, I mean if I were your neighbor and you said anything close to 'physicist' I would start the 'uh huh, ok' nodding ritual until you were done. Tell your son you measure things all day - I'm sure he'll see you for the exciting frat party you truly are.

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Frat party?

lol, 'hooked on windows' - that's awesome.

"Hey kid - I know you think it's important that your mother died from aids and your dad was shot trying to raid a food depot, and you can't raise enough money to go to school. But this evil corporation, called Microsoft - are the people that made part of what makes that computer you're holding work. Unfortunately they just want to make money off of you, because they know one day - you'll have saved up $100, 10,000 times the cost of eating everyday - and they'll want that $100 from you. Because they're evil.

We tried to stop them from making that laptop work, and now your whole world is destroyed. Sorry buddy."

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whole world destroyed?

They're destroying us! By advertising a better product!

I thought the article was going to be about how Intel had raised the price of the chip they need, or how they refused to deliver the chips on time, or how they did something to stop them from selling their laptops.

This is awesome, they're actually crying because Intel is advertising a more expensive laptop to the same customers. How ridiculous.

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Talk about ridiculous

Seriously, was there ever any doubt? Did _anybody_ believe the government over all of the eye witnesses, the drawn out court-case, the ridiculous implausible explanation required, or the pristine perfect bullet found OUTSIDE his body?

It's good somebody finally _proved_ they were lying, but we still don't know why they lied - and really, what moron ever thought the case was closed.

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this moron

Thank you.

I thought maybe the article was correct, but I didn't understand how it could be.

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incorrect!

The article makes it sound like transactions are on a cost-per basis, "[Francis Feldman] estimates the move will halve the cost of transactions" -- does that make any sense?

I think the author of the article got into a tangent with him about how many transactions they do, and what their operating costs are and then incorrectly made the correlation that there is a cost-per-transaction from a computing stand-point. That can't be true. You don't insert fifties into the A: drive.

Look at it this way: If they make the big switch, and all of a sudden they can handle double-the-transactions per day - that would halve the cost of transactions. Only there's not going to all of a sudden be double-the-transactions. They're still working with the same number of transactions.

If they halve their staff, and they do the same number of transactions than that halves their costs. But what if tuesday is a slow day, and they only do 60% of their normal business? They're still paying for all the staff, electricity and third party support.

Am I wrong, or is it unlikely they can correlate a cost per transaction in this case?

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This is completely free.

What does the Securities Exchange Commission have to say about all of this? It would be interesting to know who has recently shorted a tonne of Apple Stock - as they would have the most to gain from a temporary smear campaign.

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This doesn't smear

The article mentions that a new round of global-warming may be taking place on Mars - does this lend any credence to the theory that global warming is an unavoidable solar event? Maybe Mars and Earth switch off and on in turns - making one hospitable to life while the other becomes a desolate barren wasteland. Maybe we all just need to move 35 Million Miles away.

Sometimes I feel like I need to.

Also, The slashdot write-up says a, 'wrong command to the wrong computer address'. It was the right command, to the wrong computer address. If you're going to just play 'telephone' entering stories, pay attention. You made it more complicated and wrong. Maybe you should go work for NASA; got some diapers and surgical tubing?

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Diapers and surgical tubing!

Everybody here is arguing about whether or not this is feasible, and how the parent company has so much money they should just be funding this themselves. Obviously there's more to the story than what we're seeing here, it would be interesting to find out what the investment prospectus was -- how were the residents of new mexico convinced to vote, by majority for this tax increase.

Since when do americans vote for a tax increase? That's the real story.

One thing all the media hype fails to really point out, is that this is a first for self-sustaining floating platforms. The potential for a massive, relatively heavy platform that can 'float freely' in the air is really an untapped medium for commercial applications of all types.

And not to sound too, "one day we'll all be driving clean, fuel efficient nuclear cars" -- but once you can place very large turbines at the altitude where massive amounts of air are moving - it isn't going to be too far fetched to see some engineers and dreamers trying to correct CO2, Ozone, and general pollution problems using similar technology.

I remember reading, way way back about how "We can't just release Ozone from airplanes because it would take too many flights and airplanes don't fly at a high enough altitude". Imagine now if you could have a mini-power station, on a massive air-born platform generating and spewing out ozone.

My big question is, how will these tethered 'generating stations' handle the power differential between those high up clouds and the earth. It seems like they're focusing right now on 'generated electricity' without considering the inevitable (and potentially valuable) power spikes they will get from charged clouds and air-current, traveling down that tether.

Another question would be, theoretically speaking - if we had tonnes of these things floating high above the earth, would lightening discharges diminish - and then, would ozone creation actually diminish? I think the potential here could be a very hot topic for engineers for decades to come.

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Now this is a hot topic

I'm sort of surprised that hasselhoff himself isn't buying the car.

I know he really hated that show near the end, and after it was canceled he started referring to his 'gigs' showing up with the car as 'the dog and pony show'. Still though, how funny would it be to throw on a leather jacket and go cruising in your old talking car?

He might not get the babes, but what cop in his right mind would give him a speeding ticket? He's the KnightRider!

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Knight Ride This!

Watch them put together their first prototype crystal radio with their new 'filter' and find an entire cosmos of alien phone calls, television broadcasts and quasar's giving off travel-instructions to nearby ships.

Some people here have said, this is very old news and the article is the equivalent of saying, 'one day railroad lines will cover this great country of ours' -- but seriously, how many average people - like myself, are aware that we're still not using the full EM spectrum available to us. I thought we conquered radio waves in the 50s and everything since then has just been 'computing speed'. I think this is pretty interesting.

It will be cool to see what new forms of cancer and mental disease equipment broadcasting in this spectrum doesn't cause.

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WRONG frequency!

The site is available in english via its primary mirror:

http://douginadress.com/mirrors/omvi_new/en/ufolog y/

Looks like the site has been slashdotted. Lol. I've mirrored the article here if anybodies having trouble getting it.

http://www.douginadress.com/news/2007/032207-bill- gates-to-finally-receive.html

There's a much better, and more recent article on this simulation hosted at www.nasa.gov - but the site is unbelievably slow to load as of late. You can see the nasa.gov article mirrored at http://douginadress.com/news/spaceexploration/berk eley_labs_supernova_data_crunching.html

This story is a little old ; but relevant none the less.

Slashdot's write up neglects to link to the social sciences network chart with an interactive display featuring temporary user-based input nodes and a simple web-gui connection and filtering algorithm. This network model lets you view the original chart, referenced in the article, and then get a feel for the mapping algorithm by submitting your own input on social networks.

It also has an explanation of the hierarchal design employed by wikipedia as explained using the exact same networking algorithm.

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Mod Parent Up!

This story is a little old ; but relevant none the less.

Slashdot's write up neglects to link to the social sciences network chart with an interactive display featuring temporary user-based input nodes and a simple web-gui connection and filtering algorithm. This network model lets you view the original chart, referenced in the article, and then get a feel for the mapping algorithm by submitting your own input on social networks.

It also has an explanation of the hierarchal design employed by wikipedia as explained using the exact same networking algorithm.

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Mod Parent Up!

I've said this about 40 times in other threads on microsoft cracking down on piracy, or implementing some ridiculous piracy protection scheme. They want you to pay for your software, and barring that - they want you to use their software for free.

A long time ago a small, nobody 'heavy metal' rock group made a recording of their 'jam sessions', labelled it 'garage days' and told people to distribute it like crazy. copy copy copy - give it out for free. They're now known as metallica, the clueless sods chasing down music pirates and doing horrible PR campaigns against Napster.

Microsoft is exactly the same. If they weren't the #1 operating system in the world, do you think they could attempt to charge such ridiculous prices for software and 'require' that you purchase a new computer every three years? Not likely.

I hope people quote this article from now on, every single time microsoft fucks over their customer base and tries to claim they're 'losing money' from piracy. What a joke.

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Nothing funny about this joke.

The slashdot write-up doesn't seem to make a lot of sense on the surface, but I think this is a reasonable observation. It's not that having a computer-science degree is useless, but in the past everybody was getting their degree to head the development of major, proprietary software packages for companies. Packages that handled customer relationship management, accounting, shipping receiving, etc. And every week there would be a meeting of the office dullards with some new 'idea' on how to improve things, ultimately requiring another development project.

Cut to today where most companies rely on the software packages of only a few developers, like goldmine, microsoft office, whatever -- you've cut out the need for computer science degree's in all but a small handful of successful companies.

Someone commented in this thread, "And where do these software packages come from?" -- they come from computer science degree's. About 5. 5 dime a dozen computer science degree's. And where do they come from next year? The same company ; meaning they can cut-out 4 of those computer science degrees and keep 1 for maintenance.

This is an oversimplified explanation of software in general, but it's fairly accurate. I'm in the middle of porting a visual-basic application to a web based PHP application for a Toronto, Ontario based company. The VB application might have required a CS degree, but it also cost $15,000 to produce. My web based version on a bad day won't go over $3000 to produce, and I'll be paid well for what I'm doing.

When languages keep getting higher level you cut the 'degree' out of the equation completely. University (in canada) and ivy-league colleges (in the states) focus on calculating cpu-cycles and low level mechanics of development. PHP focuses on asking a computer to do something in plain english. Community college is about all you need for that ; or in the case of most slashdotters - common sense.

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This degree is too much!

Hahaha, "John Sankus and his techno-gang ..."

Watch out for the techno-gang! At least he didn't use the word 'thugs' to legitimize their ridiculous waste of money on sort-of slowing down the completely victimless crime the 'gang' was committing. Would anybody cheer if they arrested Coca-Cola shareholders for competing with Pepsi? Because this is essentially major tax money going to 'protect' the rights of very very big business, and nothing else.

Do you think the FBI would start a case on somebody pirating Forest Blog ? Because that's what they should be doing. If it's about rights and freedom's being protected, make a point of protecting the little guy for once. Just once. After all, they're the ones paying your salaries. You think Microsoft is paying 50% of it's income to taxes?

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Fight piracy, link to this site

It would be nice if the article actually identified why these patterns have to be based on a complicated mathematical principle, and if they're not - how they could have been made and still represent that mathematical principle. According to the article, the patterns aren't even exact but quasi-crystalline-structures.

I can do a quasi-fractal-pattern by accident if I have enough time to create random patterns, like say an entire country's worth of structures covered in patterns.

Can some statistics-guru figure out the odds of this being a random accident, considering how few examples they have, and how the examples aren't even exact representations of the mysterious mathematical formula(s) they mention? I really don't get why this is believable based on the article.

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Pre-Roman Crystalline Structure Dance

I'm so sick of all the left-wing zealots going crazy over news like this.

Global Warming is a simple, natural phenomenon whereby the planet destroys a large percentage of it's population - including humanity, and then starts over again.

Nothing to worry about.

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Too large a percentage?

Just so everybody knows, this story does have a happy ending. The MPAA responded, finally, to his inquiries after a very long wait - by saying essentially that they were only using his software for 'testing' purposes and that the offending site was never made live, advertised on the internet etc.

The Forest Blog Author retorted, in his update to this story, that he doubts they would have been so kind if he 'borrowed' some movies for 'testing' purposes but never distributed them to anybody. He makes a valid point.

The entire trial over those dvd-codec software coders was based on them 'circumventing' a DVD's protection mechanism - it had nothing to do with them actually committing piracy, and were it not for the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act the MPAA would have had no case at all. Essentially they sued and won, establishing for the first time in history that you can purchase intellectual property but essentially not have ownership of the rights to even use it, however you see fit.

Remember that all laws previous to the DMCA were to protect against piracy, (bootlegging, distribution, etc). But now the DMCA actually limits your freedom of use, even for personal use. And it's been proven. If they can do that, why can they abuse fair-use of software they essentially got just by agreeing to it's terms of use?

I say he still send his case to the EFF and hope that they can use something in this as ammunition against the MPAA.

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DMCA Doesn't Protect Against This!

... I don't think the most uneducated, dying children in africa think food is scarce. They know there's better places in the world, with food.

The problem isn't that it's scarce, because it's not - the problem is that african's have no money.

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Ethiopian Yam Festival Dance

I don't think I can remember fruits and vegetables ever tasting so horrible as they do now. Strawberries and Tomato's that split before fully-ripe, have almost no flavour what-so-ever (if anything they both taste like the white-tasteless-heart of a strawberry) -- and generally don't cost any damned less than they would have with inflation from the 1980's. Organic foods just cost _more_ than they ever have, and now have a fancy name. Surprise! They were always organic! You shouldn't have to search for it.

GM foods make money for the large corporations that grow them, the same companies that have put every decent farmer out of business. It's not like GM foods are necessary to 'feed our planet' or whatever their marketing slant is -- do you think they now grow too much and ship the excess off to africa? yeah... I didn't think so either.

The most common GM chickens hardly have any flavour, and nobody that grows or markets them even disputes that. They will tell you flat-out they just grow-faster. That's the attraction. From now on, I'm growing all of my own fruits and vegetables and at least a significant portion of my livestock.

I've already had cancer once, why even take the risk. Why take the risk of any adverse side effects that is very real with any GM food. You don't have to be a scientist to know it's a bad idea, they do it because it makes money - not because it's healthier, or tastes better. What the hell do they care about your health?

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Not genetically modified

The article mentions that potential 'threat asteroids' are being tracked, and hopefully all potential threats will soon be identified for closer observation.

I remember reading years ago on slashdot about a near-miss that occured during daylight hours, when a global-catastrophe sized asteroid approached earth from the sun and passed between the moon and earth. Does anybody remember this? And the asteroid wasn't even detected until it had already passed.

What about asteroids that can be slingshot from behind the sun, or elude detection as that one did (because the sun was in our eyes?). The article doesn't mention if there's always going to be an un-trackable region of space. Does anybody more versed in this know, with current technology and a little more time, will we really be able to track all potential, immediate threats?

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This is an immediate threat!

clever!

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Penicillin this coward!

This is insightful?

    Have you ever heard of the flu vaccine - released every single year? The one that cures the flu and it's mutations, every single year?

It _cures_ the flu, in it's specific mutations. If you could do that with AIDS you would have to be re-infected for it to come back.

See the difference? I think curing 1 virus every year is pretty impressive.

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can't cure this!

My post was actually edited, I don't know how. I did put in an apostrophe, after the s - its' , which is a strange way i was taught to apostrophize possessive its'. Canadian English? Or a bad grade 1 teacher?

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Bad teacher! bad!

I made a mistake when I said it was discovered sometime in the 1970's. What I meant was, sometime in the 1970's the first few victims of the disease discovered they were deathly ill, and then died, after taking antibiotics and cold and flu medicine. Therefore, we have been fighting the disease since the first known infection and people 'discovered' it when they got it.

My write-up does imply it was 'identified by scientists' in the 1970's and that's not what I meant, but it was 4am.

It sounds ridiculous to say, "We tried penecilan against HIV and nothing happened!" - but that is what happened, and I'm not re-writing history.

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Fight This Disease!

I'm not running an apple ; mostly because I have a pc right here in front of me so why pay more money. But is there any reason now NOT to run an apple? Microsoft would have done better to not release vista ; they're ensuring people hate them and try the competition.

If I were a shareholder, i would sell sell sell.

I think it's a safe bet to say every shareholder should short-sell before every major release of windows. They do this every single time. Hype it up, stock goes up, release it, disappointing everyone, stock goes down, holding pattern, start all over again.

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SELL SELL SELL! | Sometimes I'm bored

Citing recent sales numbers, local used car dealer frank "the lone testicle" johnson has declared that he is in fact the best car dealer in all of north america.

"It was a toss up between me and every single other person, that is until I decided on the criteria by which we were all graded.", said the lone testicle.

Some other sales people are confused by the unanimous victory, but have to admit that Johnson is the best at dealing cars he himself is authorized to sell - in all of north america. One of johnson's opponent dealerships claims, "He only gets those numbers because he's counting sales of the very rare 'Delorian' cars that he sells. Of course when they offered 2 delorians for sale this year, his numbers doubled and every single other dealer in north america that doesn't sell those got a zero on his rating scale."

Confused by semantics, my editor has decided to just give free publicity to Mr. Johnson because he came up with a self-fellating story that almost sounds legitimate. congratulations lone testicle, please take all of my readers and try to sell them your over-priced crap.

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lone testicle?

Yeah.... this is pretty much the epitome of American policy makers watching too many retarded hacker-movies. They think that as they're being hacked, some guy is going to be sitting in a warehouse - typing his ass off, for 20 minutes to 3 days straight - all the while connected to their server and going deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of the Gibson.

That's... pretty much the only way you could 'bomb' them or... notify them of an imminent bombing. Somebody really should consult common sense before they make these ridiculous and embarrassing 'announcements'.

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ridiculous and embarrassing

I've read this article about 5 times now, and I must be totally retarded. Where in the article does it explain how refrigerators actually act as batteries?

It looks to me like they're talking about 'conserving electricity' which is far different from turning a refrigerator into a large battery. For example : if I unplug my fridge, how do I make it start producing electricity?

Maybe they _are actually_ talking about turning fridges into power-cells, but it would be excellent if they could explain where the conversion back to electricity comes into play. If it does at all.

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must be totally retarded ...

Any ideas on how this well thought-out vault will survive a doomsday scenario? When the ice caps melt, will the temperature of the vault rise? because that would destroy the seeds.

I hope they have an, actual, answer to that.

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No seeds for you!

" By adopting the name 'Windows Live Hotmail,' we believe we're bringing together the best of both worlds--new and old "

What ever happened to just updating software. Is microsoft claiming that windows live hotmail whatever is going to be so 'new and improved' it's actually a different software product? Here's an idea, don't change the name - don't confuse people - just update the damned thing.

As an end-user, there is absolutely no difference in functionality between Windows version 1 and Windows XP. XP windows didn't *do more*, it just *had more*. It still shows you neat little pictures, and you click on them, and software runs and then crashes and then so does your computer.

Windows live hotmail extra 2-in-the-pink-1-in-the-stink beta alpha theta radiation flux capacitor is no different. It's a messenger client. If it's so different, why the hell do hotmail users want to use it?

Microsoft's days really are numbered.

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two in the pink

I hope sites like adultfriendfinder and lavalife don't incorporate this software into their user-options.

wait a minute ...

yes I do, I do hope sites like that make this feature available to their users. .... <runs away>

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adult friend finder?

protected by copyright in the united states. a few people in the world don't live there.

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doug?

Isn't this sort of like walking outside naked and asking people not to look at you. It was already available, now we all know it's _going to be_ censored. What if the way-back machine actually recorded google maps, you would have little blurry pin-pointed areas to KNOW ARE OF GREAT CONCERN TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA.

How stupid. Do you think the CIA isn't drooling over the exact locations they don't want made available? Or... every single intelligence agency on earth for that matter. So hard to believe they're going to ID sensitive areas already photographed.

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Sensitive areas? ewww.

If anybody is wondering, the quote unquote correct way to perform The Electric Slide is available here.

This is awesome, it looks like the 'inventor' of the electric slide is actually serious but no matter ; we need something this ridiculous for the courts to go, "oh wait, maybe that was retarded of us to pass that ridiculous legislation in the first place". My only complaint about the whole thing is that the case itself, as the article points out - is on shaky ground solely because the videos may fall under fair-use rights.

The problem is that you can copyright a dance (any damned dance) in the first place. I'm going to go copyright 20 different punches, kicks and acrobatic moves then get paid by every single kung-fu movie producer in the world. This is totally ridiculous.

The best quote from the article, " I don't want future generations having to learn it wrong and then relearn it as I am being faced with now ". Seriously? This guy's got to be a complete idiot. Like this would ever be a scenario:

"Hi there guy that invented the electric slide. Wow, I'd love to take dance lessons from you"
"Great, let's get started - I'm going to show you the electric slide"
"Ohhh, I don't need to learn that one - I already know how to do it"
"show me"......... "you're doing it wrong"
"Oh MY GOD! WRONG? NOW I HAVE TO LEARN IT ALL OVER AGAIN!"

moron.

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The Electric Slide Performed Correctly

There's so many ways to measure the qualities of a material, I don't think anybody would be surprised to know steel is more than 7 times denser than water. But some people would be amazed to find Mercury is almost twice as dense as steel.

This, "resistant to bending" terminology seems like a real stretch of imagination to me. When do we, as average people ever consider the force involved in -bending- a diamond? It really doesn't sound like a practical thought experiment, and therefore doesn't sound even mildly interesting.

Spider's Silk is 'stronger' than steel - we've all heard. But there's about 1000 reasons you can't build a ship, or a building or even a walking-cane out of spider's silk.

This just sounds like bad hype to me ; what I want to know, and what I think everybody wants to know is - will you be able to CUT THE DIAMOND with this material. Diamonds have been the upper-limit of our prowess with cutting-wheels ; do you have a better material for grinding and cutting? Don't confuse the issue.

Unfortunately I couldn't read the article (slashdotted? what the hell) so I'm going based on the write-up available. don't hate me if the article answers my question.

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hate me? nahhh

How can you even ask who's fault it is? Man, if the story-authors on slashdot spent like 10% less time blindly bashing Microsoft, the 80% of the time they spend accurately bashing Microsoft would actually be taken seriously. To say, "Who's fault do you think it is" doesn't imply Apple or Microsoft is at fault - but it opens up a debate that can't possibly be intelligently executed.

There's no evidence of anything ; we don't even know what happened.

You might as well sprinkle M&M's all over a busy freeway beside a Richard Simmons retreat. People are going to rush into this one and end up looking pretty stupid.

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Don't even get me started on looking stupid.

I'm not going to argue semantics because you're right - but I know what XML is. My _point_ once again is what is the practical use? OpenOffice and KWord import and export from Microsoft Office format.

Speaking of something end users shouldn't care about, my whole question is, why care about this?

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Definitely don't care about this