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China Upgrades from Microsoft Office
Badgerman writes "According to this Forbes article, fifteen Chinese ministries have started using a homegrown office software suite instead of Microsoft Office. The article also notes the Chinese government's encouragment of homegrown software and of a national Linux standard."
When Telstra in Australia started walking down the path towards replacing Microsoft Office with Star Office, Steve Ballmer made a uick trip out to make some incredible offers to the people concerned.
I wonder if teh ticket to CHina is booked yet.
Tp.
It does appear that the main driving force competing against Windows and associated applications is from other countries eager to save money. Once they show how it can be done, maybe the beancounters in American companies will follow their lead and take the linux plunge.
The time when such stories won't be news is at hand!
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Chinese President in his office...
Picks up phone...
"Who's this?"
"Er. My name is Daryl McBride, from SCO cororation...Is it true that there are 1 billion computers using Linux in China?"
"Yes"
"So that will be 699 billion dollars, please..."
"Ok, we'll be sending the check any time soon"
(hangs and calls defense minister)
"Capture this McBride immediatly (ha,ha,ha)"
how long until
This brings to mind an idea relating to SCO's continuing absurdities in trying to own and/or destroy Linux.
With a major communist government becoming increasingly invested in Linux, everyone can be assured there will be at least one completely unassailable source of Linux distribution and development, like:
SCO: We'd like you to pay us, oh... [spins wheel-o-pricing] $1499 for each processor you're running Linux on...
People's Republic of China: Did we mention our extensive nuclear arsenal, deployable to Utah within an hour?
SCO: Oh... yes... nevermind.
Given this, maybe Linux users can play the same game of arbitrary definition that SCO has been playing. If worse comes to worse, one could just say, "Oh, Linux? We're not running Linux here. We're running a non-infringing, custom, Linux-based operating system. Feel free to prove otherwise." And with a perpetual source of FTP servers to obtain the "Linux-based operating system", SCO would have a truly daunting task of stopping it or charging their hoped-for extortion fees.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Here are some example Chinese distros:
Red Flag
Cosix
Magic Linux
XTeam
Order given by central server: "By order of Chinese government all documents must report".
....
...
Document1: "My commerade has been typing naughty things".
Document2: "My commerade has been typing treasonous things".
Recent Chinense secret indeed
[offtopic] I can't see the problem with Osama using Linux. First day I see him using Debian, i'll say "way to go, man"... BTW, China sure has a repressive, dictatorial government, but they've come a long way in the last couple of (perhaps ten) years. I'm pretty convinved that eventually (with more bills like the DMCA or the Patriot Act) China might be a lot more free nation than the United States. (Hell, the time will come when we'll all migrate to China and ask for political asylum. Imagine the irony in that.) [/offtopic]
we discovered a new way to think.
Courtesy of Google (loads of hits on WPS Office):
1 0307/199035.html
http://www.pconline.com.cn/pcedu/soft/office/wps/
But why are they writing their own, rather than taking the already very good OpenOffice.org, and working on that?
Get your own free personal location tracker
It seems that Billy-Boy gotta call George-Boy to get this axis of evil expanded a bit..
Let me guess - you're American, and you think you're so free.
Some may remember some time ago when Germany also was going to yank MS products from being used by the German government. March 19th, 2001 - Two German government agencies have announced that they will discontinue the use of software made by Microsoft and other American companies. According to the German news publication Der Spiegel, both the German foreign office and the Bundeswehr (German Federal Armed Forces) have banned American software, saying that there are security concerns in using programs developed by other countries in sensitive applications. Instead, German companies such as Siemens and Deutsche Telekom will provide solutions (src: WinPlanet)
And now China... The government has been pushing the development of a homegrown software industry and a national standard for open-source Linux software to counter the spread of Microsoft in the last few years.
This is not a bad idea, and if others took the same route, MS could feel it down the road. Considering the problems associated with MS nowadays (even though it has actually been rampant for some time), with worms, and all sorts of security issues, how long will it be before some huge class action lawsuit based on MS negligently releasing shoddy products. Think about it... It's the kind of stuff that makes the NSA want to place backdoors on software, excuse being they're trying to secure products where vendors are failing.
I say, good for China on making that move, hopefully others will take cues from China, and send MS a message. No more shoddy work!!! Just imagine what will hapen if some investigation pointed to an MS product being at fault for the power failure. Oh boy would that be some crazy stuff to deal with for MS.
MoFscker
However this has some not so nice side-effects. Such gain cause a disbalance in world's economics. Like the colonial system ruined the countries belonging to the 3rd world today, Chinas politics will ruin the economics of their mains markets, too.
However, the situation is a little different these days. In the 18th century Europe was also a military hyperpower without any opponents of the same strength. This is very different know. China has at least 3 opponents of the same military power: US, Europe, Russia. Even more the existence of weapons of mass destruction prevents China from turning the situation towards their favour. No matter how much weapons they produce, they'll be always extinguished in the case of a military conflict.
So, I wonder were this will lead in the long term. We all know the problem China has with accepting the illectual or economic property rights of forgein people. However, the superpowers of the world will not accept this forever. Bush already demanded that China ceases the artificial devaluation of the Yong. There are GATT investigations against China and their Red Linux products. Perhaps something will change in the future.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
why else would Bill and Steve sell most of their holdings , its not like they need the money
Gates has sold over 6 million shares in August alone
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/m/msft.html
Well, this doesn't suprise me in the least.
Microsoft, a huge capitalist company, and China, a huge communist country, are direct opposites from each other.
The fact that China is dictatorial and repressive is besides the point. If you think about it, Linux and communism have a lot in common with each other, in terms of their ideals of shared ownership.
China and M$ may both be tyrants, but that is about all they have in common.
The unofficial
> Let me guess - you're American, and you think you're so free.
;-]
Before the DMCA, you mean...
The unofficial
Unless the oppression is blatant and backed by swift violence, it is not an opression. Who cares if the Americans don't own anything anymore because of the republican manifesto of rights to the big corporations. Who cares if they can't buy a DVD, but can get a license to keep a single copy of it on media that may or may not last as long as the technology. Who cares if they no longer have the freedom to travel, the freedom to choose, the freedom to think. At least they aren't run over by tanks in Tienamen Square!
One of the last repressive, dictatorial governments on the planet is using Linux. Yay. I hear that Osama Bin Laden uses Linux too, but I haven't seen a story there.
Please mod this obvious troll into oblivion. The story doesn't have a thing to do with Linux, for one thing.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
CLIPPY : I see you want to talk about evil and repressive governments using linux...
Hundreds of Iraqis civilians are being held in makeshift jails run by US troops - many without being charged or even questioned. And in these prisons are children whose parents have no way of locating them
Actually, Microsoft may have much more control over the world than the "rest of us" likes, but the US government seemingly does.
That's why the antitrust has gone apparently nowhere, and the sane world keeps replacing this MS-centric mess with something else, one by one. Have you had the luck to work with BIOS code and the associated junk-repository even some Linux code needs to work around? Many BIOS-es from few years old, but perfectly good working motherboards hang with hard disks larger than 32GB, is this silliness?
Starting this replacement with the operating system seems to be the hardest, but the most visible, and most effective for reorganizing these invisible power lines, I for one welcome our... Oh, this effort to commoditize the computer industry as it always was.
"Ten years from now, they could do it in a few seconds." -- The Racketeer of the Hellfire Club, 1993, Phrack 42
No list of Chinese Linux distributions would be complete without a link to Thiz Linux, the wonderful Chinese distro being sold on machines at Fry's ;)
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The company kingsoft in chinese only with no option to change to english it seems. Found a dictionary type program that is sold in an english version but no english pages.
However a few keyword sprung out. Linux for one. You see it seems this office suit runs on linux, this is significant because it is only hinted at in the forbes article. It means that they are not only replacing the office suite but the OS itself as well, since MS office doesn't run on linux they must have been using windows, and since this product seems only to run on linux and not on windows.
Can anyone with an understanding of chinese or with better googling skills confirm this (that wps office2003 runs only on linux)?
Also is this office product opensource or closed source?
And finally, is it any good?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
> The story doesn't have a thing to do with Linux, for one thing.
Well, from the story:
> The article also notes the Chinese government's encouragment of homegrown software and of a national Linux standard."
And, from the article:
> The government has been pushing the development of a homegrown software industry and a national standard for open-source Linux software to counter the spread of Microsoft in the last few years.
The unofficial
It is not beyond the realms of belief the MS Office could be run under WINE. All kinds of things already do.
Tp.
How on earth is 6 million shares "most of Bill and Steve's holdings"? If Bill sold most of his holdings, MSFT stock price would plummet and it'd be all over the news. It might even have ripple-on effects on the economy.
Whether it be Star Office, Open Office, Word Perfect, ABI Word, Apple Works, etc.
At a time when a lot of US Companies are looking at China as a smorgesboard of potential opportunity as it slowly evolves from a Communistic to Capitalistic society, no doubt Microsoft has looked there as well.
Personally, I don't have a problem with China inventing their own CPU, or word processing software, but if they'd like to play nicely with others in this global economy, here's hoping that they at least stick to open and published standards.
Li Nux, a spokesperson for Kingsoft told Reuters the government bought 50,000 copies of WPS software in 2002, but declined to give a value for the purchase.
I propose she change her last name to Nux, good for business. But in the long haul, Nix may be better....more names to choose from for the kids: Sco Yu Nix come here, you deserve a good spanking for that you naughty boy..take that *slap**slap*.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Al Quaida uses (presumably pirated) Windows 95, I saw it on CNN.
'upgrades' is nicely put. It's all about semantics. I always enjoy the unabashed way the MS propaganda department calls competing solutions 'legacy applications'. I think we should try to consistently refer to installing OpenOffice and Mozilla as upgrading and precede words like MS-Office and IE with the sentence 'legacy apps such as'
Also according to yahoo.com, Bill still owns 1,168,499,336 shares in MSFT. 6 million is neither here nor there,
Tp.
And I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords!
No, for real. They will be running the world soon enough.
I happen to be in Beijing right now (just visiting). This week I've gone to a lot of shopping malls and computer stores looking arround, and I can say there is a *whole* lot of Linux out here. I Guess that M$softs antipiracy efforts here have backfired bigtime, now PHB's (at least in the corporate environment I am working at) are thinking twice before using pirated copies of MS. Considering that a copy of Windoze cost as much as 1/2 a months salary for a full-time programer, it is now very appealing to move to linux.
I'd just like to say that whoever modded this flamebait is a fuckwit. Its actually quite insightful.
I just noticed that they have a homegrown version for the Office Software ...
No comments on whether that is Open Source or Open Formats or not .... And no idea of whether it is going to be compatible with Open Office and MS Office ....
Unless the chinese are adopting the "Linux Mindset" I don't think that this is necessarily a good thing .... If they are forcing an almost failed software on more than a billion people just by regulatory fiat, how could it be good ?? ....
What they should be adopting is not something that is NOT Microsoft, but something that is "effectively" BETTER than MS Products .... I don't know that WPS Office even approaches there ...
and the chinese can't get there by rejecting the linux mindset and copying the Microsoft strategy of denying free choice ....
just my two cents worth ...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
If you scroll down the list, you'll note that he's sold that many shares or more most months dating back to October 2001. He sold more than 10 million shares in both June and August of last year. The fact that he's sold 6 million shares this month is hardly an indication that he's "leaving the ship."
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Wikipedia Definition of WPS Office
Article about Kingsoft
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I think you mix up communism and socialism. They have about as much in common as the US of A and capitalism. One should not mix up ideologies and their actual implementations as they really, really, rarely meet.
Now if only someone could tell the communists the difference (i.e. what's making Linux work), communism could be the next big thing. Ahhh, Dreams.
Perhaps it's the fact that while each communist party has fallen prey to corruption while Linux/OSS refuses to do so.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Get your facts strait, although communist in name, China is more fascist than communist at the present.
Active Directory, SMS, Exchange, Fileservers, MS Office all rolled up into large bundled licenses for the corporations.
If they try to switch, they'll lose their bundled corporate licenses and have to start paying for the lot separately which is far more expensive *and* they'll have to pay for licenses for the new software at the same time.
You have to give it to the CIOs of US multinational corps, when they take the bait, they have your arm off with it.
Deleted
Don't opposites attract?
http://blog.karit.geek.nz/
Because "nearly everyone" uses Microsoft Office, it's extremely difficult for any competitor to enter the market - even if the competitor was always cheaper and manifestly superior. However, if large countries increasingly use products other than Microsoft Office, then countries will have to depend on something else than "everyone uses Microsoft Office" to exchange documents. I expect that "something else" to be either a standard document format, or to eventually standardize on some "other product".
A marketplace where there are many competing office products, but a need to exchange office documents, strongly favors open source products. That's especially true if the open source product can run on any operating system, as Open Office can. It's no big deal to say "everyone, let's install Open Office for this project so we can safely exchange documents", since Open Office is free to download. I wouldn't be surprised to see countries other than the U.S. adopt other office suites first, such as Open Office, and then U.S. companies will be forced to support those products to communicate with their international partners, suppliers, offshore sites, and so on.
I love to see real competition in any market. Perhaps this will be the start of real competition in office suites.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
we can wank eachother off whilst playing AD&D and watching FOX news.
I meant democracy, not capitalism, sorry about that.
Communism's implementation has historically been very corrupt. But Communism does have an ideology to it (no, its not simply socialism) that in theory is ok. It just fails to account for humanities failings.
The unofficial
> Perhaps it's the fact that while each communist party has fallen prey to corruption while Linux/OSS refuses to do so.
That is true. But perhaps Linux/OSS not only refuses, but is incapable of falling prey to corruption, because of the GPL.
Maybe I am just being naive, but I really don't see how it would be possible for OSS to become corrupt.
The unofficial
One of the last repressive, dictatorial governments on the planet is using Linux.
There are plenty of repressive, dictatorial governments around. The Chinese one is possibly the most significant but it's far from being alone.
Maybe you could go back and ask Soviet Russia and the US that, during the cold war...
The unofficial
One of the last repressive, dictatorial governments on the planet is using Linux.
Really ? I thought the Bush administration is running MS Windows.
What does this have to do with the fact that they've stopped using Word? I'm not saying that the Chinese government is great, far from it, but I think you are mixing things up and maybe missing the point.
:)) and get recognition for it.
The fact that you (and a lot of people, myself included) don't agree with what's going on in China doesn't mean that we can't recognize when it does something right, which I think is the aim of the article.
As I far as I can see, it is always a good thing when governments, no matter what country or political system, begin considering alternatives to M$, and even better when they actually decide to adopt them because they've seen how it can be "better" (lots of reasons for that which I'm sure have been posted on Slashdot thousands of times, so I'm not going to go into that).
This is even more significant when we're talking about one of the most important countries in Asia, and that this only shows a trend amongst siginficative countries and cities which are beginning to seriously consider OSS.
OTOH, China's government is repressive and dicatorial, which is certainly no good thing; but that doesn't mean that they can't do something right (or which some people, a lot of which hang out on Slashdot
All I hope is that more countries/governments start getting the message and move away from the "M$ is our salvation" dogma that is so common amongst not so technical people.
Don't try to fix me. I'm not broken.
Nah that was fine, I understood the point you were making.
ooh your gonna piss off the MS astroturfers
One of the last repressive, dictatorial governments on the planet is using Linux.
Georgie Jr signed up for LINUX?? When did this happen?? When he was stealing your election??
Ok, some of this didn't make any sense, my fault for not previewing - ingnore the "(or which some people, a lot of which hang out on Slashdot :))". Now that I see I don't even know what it was supossed to mean!
Don't try to fix me. I'm not broken.
except the share price is worth half of what it was last year
the markets work on trends, can you spot any ?
like the price is worth 30% of what it was in 2000
Even so, it is a major missed sales opportunity for Microsoft. Just think of the press they would have got and the money in license fees if they had managed to pull off a conversion to MS Office.
Tp.
It's how you pay for it. Microsoft is already paid for with large discounts *if you take the lot*.
If you don't take the lot, it gets expensive, and you already have the stuff in place so it's not as if you can stop paying.
With the new MS pay as you go licensing deals that may change, I don't know but the Linux vendors need to find a way round the license bundling.
Deleted
> although communist in name, China is more fascist than communist at the present.
Intriguing. Here are a couple relevant blogs, for those who are interested:
Scroll down to April 22, 2003
From Communism to Fascism?
The unofficial
Outside of China, there's an excellent benefit from China swarming all over Linux: This means there will be Linux support out of the gate for those strange, cheap, no-name peripherals you see in plain little boxes all over the computer stores. This means less reverse-engineering Windows drivers, and less hair pulling at trying to get specs from engineers all the way across the globe.
Hey! This is big news!
If they were using Microsoft, they would have been upgrading every year or so!
Moving on, the real way to look at this is that the two most populous countries on the planet (China and India) are both seriously looking at open source, free software and other non-MS software organisations for their governmental and other agencies.
Whatever you, me or anyone else thinks about MS, Linux, FreeBSD, MSOffice, and whatever else is really irrelevant. It's great to see people now having the choice which really hasn't been around (excepting other even more expensive options *cough* Apple *cough*).
Will all this work with GPL'ed software be lost because the Chineese govenment maynot respect the GPL license? They have shown in the past they don't have much consideration for others copyright laws. I hope this isn't the case.
Are we really sure that its pirated?
This is something for homeland security to look into. Perhaps Bill & Steve needs a long free vacation in Cuba.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Is this post a misplaced attempt at humour, or misplaced racism? Very poor.
Your post cracked me up. China's government is relatively benign compared to the dozens and dozens of horrible South American, African, and East Asian governments. When was the last time you heard about genocide in China?
"One of the last"? There's still plenty of repressive dictatorial governments, don't you worry about that.
Er? The Chinese have no alphabet like Western languages. Their system of language is based on ideograms where one ideogram represents a word or part of a word. It's the same with Korean, Japanese, Mayan, Egyptian, etc.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Ironic, isn't it? A communist nation is doing more to protect the free market (by fighting a monopoly) than any of the supposedly capitalistic nations.
Seriously, when did we all hand our collective balls over to the monopolies and give up the whole idea of a "free market" and "encouraging competition"?
i believe that the directories that we are talking about are based on the x.500 spec.
novell was first with NDS, Netware Directory Services sometimes called ediretory. very close to the x.500 spec including some stuff that they put into it but recommended that you don't use (r/o partitions come to mind).
ms was *very* late to the dirctory part with ads, Active Directory Services. this is an expansion of the MS domain model. it appears to not be as x.500 complient as it should.
if you want a comparision of these, there is no beter experiment than hooking up 4 or 5 servers and building something out of directory services. if you can't do that, look to the microsoft annoucement that they put 2.5 million objects in an ads network. then compare to the brainshare demo where novell put over a *billion* objects into nds.
eric
I think microsoft is right on the ball with cheap software for thailand, but perhaps already too late. Let's see if china is just strong-arming for a similar deal...or really going for linux.
Microsoft is facing a looming battle from local (asian) programmers that are used to linux. In the end it's always these kind of social choices that dictate if a business lives or dies. Combine government choices (germany, brazil, now china) with small clusters of companies like Red Hat and breeding schools like MIT and some Indian institutes and Microsoft is facing a real struggle with a strong product backed-up by dedicated companies, customers, workforce and policy.
It usually takes ten years or so for these find of impacts to unfold...every signal right now points to a slow corruption of the windows OS.
If you wanted to know whether opposites attract it'd make more sense to ask the US and some minor repressive dictatorial regime during the cold war than to ask the US and another super power. Whatever the relationship between the USA and the USSR, they certainly weren't opposites.
While Microsoft has been on an anti-piracy tirade for some time, I think they tolerated it in China. Why you ask? To allow for the entrenchment of their products. Once China became hooked and beholden to Microsoft products and as they became more integrated with the world economy, China would be pressured to enforce copyright laws because they want others to do the same. But of course we find China not wanting to become beholden to anyone. So what do they start doing? Making their own CPUs which will soon start selling worldwide (IMO). They also move towards linux as their operating system thus locking Microsoft (and the US) out of their computer loop. Any encryption needs are not crippled by the US government. China can home grow them. Software needs are the same. While India is outsourcing support, programming and more for other countries, China is also developing their highly educated middle class as well in all things computers. Will probably be a few years before they start realizing the value in making and selling software on the cheap to the rest of the world. In the end it may be globalization that really undoes Microsoft and smacks them down to a more modest company.
With this move, they can stop paying Microsoft licenses and look like they're legit. Heck, they even look trendy by supporting open source. Then someone can just go to the any subway station and pick up for $1US a copy of Windows, a copy of VMWare and a copy of Office.
Voila...They no longer need to pay MSFT. gain support from the open source community, and still run the software they're used to using.
Microsoft's perpetual problem in Asian markets is its inability to develop a character conversion system that people actually want to use. In Japanese, this is called Henkan and is the shim that converts typing on a QWERTY keyboard to Japanese (and, in the Chinese market, Chinese {traditional or Big-5]). MS has totally failed to come up with an acceptable system after years of effort, yet the local companies such as Just Systems (ATOK, et al) have no problem coming up with sophisticated predictive conversion systems whilst Microsoft blunders around with what it THINKS these markets need. MS will struggle in China because it is a US company attempting to place a Chinese veneer over its operations. Other US companies do vastly better operating overseas. Similarly, overseas companies do much better operating in the US (every Japanese company you can think of, for example).
As a sensible publishing solution, MS is handicapped by having project leaders that hav no idea what good Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese typography look like. They want a minimum-cost conversion of a US-centric package, that's what they pay for and that's what they get.
This isn't an anti-MS diatribe, it's more of a frustrated comment on how MS operates in the world. I happen to know that their internal double-byte-enabled translation tools are outstanding, for example, yet they simply don't trust the quality their translators deliver them using this tool. It's like having an agressively arrogant version of Teletubbies as clients.
Linux and communism have a lot in common with each other, in terms of their ideals of shared ownership.
Bullshit, unlike communism, Linux actually works.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
Years before Linux businesses were looking at public domain software as an easy way to cut costs.
It just seammed a no-brainner to go to an open sourced operatining system like Linux but somewhere along the way Microsoft convenced the business secter that free software was dangerous and evil full of back doors and bugs and such things could bring a business to a crushing hault.
Businesses got the idea that the needed secure and reliable software and the only way to get that was to buy it from Microsoft. I guess it's a zen thing... if it get's crappy enough it'll actually be good.
I don't actually exist.
They might be commies, but at least they have the right idea with software. (eg, getting away from billy bob)
No, the problem is OSS can be suppported by a very few as there is no per copy cost of the code. In the real world, everything has a per unit cost so a few people can't support everyone else.
I hope you mean that you'll be forced to kill yourself if it doesn't reach +4, insightful. Please post to let us know when you are about to do it. The world will then be a little better place without an idiot like you in it.
Learn to read, people.
I'm not surprised that communist countries would embrace open-source software. I think it fits well within the Communist philosophy (everyone has access to it and anyone can contribute to it).
As has been mentioned before here on Slashdot, it really doesn't make sense anymore for any nation, regardless of its economic model, to base its computing infrastructure on closed-source software and proprietary document formats. Especially from a company known for locking in its customers.
What do you mean by double-byte enabled translation tools? We're talking character-conversion (jiantizi -> fantizi, etc.), not language translation, right?
Who would have thought that "communism" means "greater good for the greater number"!?!
No, in the MS world you're translating pairs of single-byte characters, as generated by the keyboard, to double-byte pairs in a hopefully intelligent manner.
--
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Actually, MS Office XP runs perfectly under Cross Over Office. It also runs Photoshop 7 perfectly. Disney actually paid to have Photoshop 7 working since many more movies are being done with Linux and most graphical artists have Photoshop training. I just set this up for my brother-in-law who is a photographer and said he "needed" photoshop, I switched him to Red Hat 9 with OOo 1.1 (very good startup times) and Photoshop 7. It runs great. There is no slow down since Wine is NOT an emulator, it runs at native speed. I personally use Gimp 1.3.x and OOo-1.1 for all my needs. However, if you "need" one of these bigger MS Windows only apps, Cross Over works great for many of them. There is also WineX-3.x that runs more then 500 of the top games.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Actually the Microsoft IME (Input method env) is fairly sophisticated for Japanese. It is getting competitive with ATOK. I think ATOK's market share is probably in the toilet these days. Their software is better, but not so much better that it is worth paying for. Well maybe if you have to transcribe tons of text, but certainly not necessary for the average person. Just like browsers, MS will control the IME on its own platform.
The reason MS is having trouble in China is not because their software is bad, it's because China, like Japan and Korea don't want to hand their markets to a foreign company on a platter.
As a sensible publishing solution, MS is handicapped by having project leaders that hav no idea what good Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese typography look like. They want a minimum-cost conversion of a US-centric package, that's what they pay for and that's what they get.
MS is not handicapped, guess what!, they have Japanese and Chinese people working for them. They have large offices in both countries and have brought many Chinese and Japanese language experts to America to work in their research labs. They know about i18n and they know about typography. They have spent tons of money on buying people that know about it.
MS does make mistakes and does do stupid things, but they aren't quite as ignorant as you seem to make them out to be.
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
I would be tempted to chalk it up to one of the following:
1) Diversification.
B) The realization that, for years now, it hasn't been possible for Microsoft's stock to perform the way it did in the eighties.
4) Bill needs some cash on hand for the purchase of one or more of the following:
- Jet skis.
- Tahitian slave girls.
- A formidable nuclear arsenal.
- Twizzlers.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
- Korean
- Japanese
- Mayan
- Egyptian
(The main point I wanted to make is that modern Korean isn't ideographic, and Japanese and Egyptian are only partly so.)Nope. Korean used to be written in Chinese characters, but now all writing in North Korea and almost all writing in South Korea is alphabetic. (Chinese characters are occasionally scattered into highbrow writing in South Korea, but it's still mostly alphabetic.) Korean writing arranges the letters into syllables in such a way that the syllables sort of look like Chinese characters, though -- quite pretty. (Link with examples)
Japanese writing is a mix of phonetic and ideographic writing (with the ideograms borrowed from Chinese; they're called kanji, which is just Japanese-borrowed-from-Chinese for "Chinese characters").
Unless there's recent news I've missed, Mayan hieroglyphs haven't been deciphered yet. (I guess people could still have an idea whether they're likely to be phonetic or likely to be ideographic based on the variety and distribution of symbols, though -- I don't know much about them.)
Egyptian is a fascinating mix of ideographic and phonetic writing. There are symbols that are used only for their sound, and symbols that are used only for their meaning, and lots of symbols that can be used rebus-like for either. I found a neat page about it at http://www.friesian.com/egypt.htm .
Anyone who thinks the largest nation in the world does anything to "gain support from the open source community" needs to step away from the monitor for a while.
I know this might be too difficult for you to answer, but what is it like to be retarded?
They're just creating their own monopoly.
It has nothing to do with the "free market" or "encouraging competition." It's all about money. MS products cost way too much and don't do what they want, so they're comming up with singular solutions to get MS and other expensive companies out.
Once MS is out of China and more OSes and whatnot are created then we can talk about their intent to create a free market.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
"yet bitch and moan when they start to develop the slightest glimmer of innovation and drive."
Don't ever expect to see any contributions to Linux by the Communist party. Certainly they will modify it, release it and sell it, but you will never see the source.
I don't think that will happen, but if it does, it will be bad for them. By rejecting the GPL they would be creating an effective fork, and they would loss all support from the rest of the world community.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Whoops, looks like I was wrong about Mayan. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/mayan.htm says "Further progress in the decipherment was made during the 1970s and 1980s when more linguistics began to take an interest in the script. Today most Mayan texts can be read, though there are still some unknown glyphs" (and that it is in fact logographic rather than phonetic).
Well I don't read chinese but my clicking instincts are pretty good. Here are some screenshots of the software. Looks just like Office. Very Impressive.. It looks like it runs on KDE.
Screenshots
With China, we are at the same point as with the old Soviet Union. We can nuke each other, but we cannot invade each other. While the US is busy dumping $1 billion per week into Iraq, China is busy building its internal markets. America already has record-breaking deficits. Check the Chinese economy. Then check how the Soviet Union finally fell. They went broke. Just as it seems that we are trying to do.
If you have two suites with completely incompatible file formats, what happens when people need to send documents to the other side? People will learn to use neutral formats.
A Snake Can Not Eat a Dragon.
~Ancient Chinese Secret
It seems like a *lot* of their graphical style is ripped off of MS Office 2000, see for an example.
Vote for global prefs bug
Abortions for a few reproductively irresponsible individuals are very different than wiping out entire ethnic groups.
Sorry I don't have mod points, folk.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
How can he own so many shares? O_o
<br>Wouldn't his percentage of the company have steadily decreased since it went public?
Will code a sig generator for food
Hitler developed an open source office suite?
I'm not surprised to hear that Microsoft can't produce a sensibly-localised product for China, considering that after all these years their British releases of Windows say "Favorites" instead of "Favourites".
They do have Britain-specific releases of Windows, but the only change seems to be that the installer defaults to the British locale and keymap.
why else would Bill and Steve sell most of their holdings , its not like they need the money
Well, Steve is opening a chain of dance schools, and Bill decided to stop the charades and just buy the DOJ outright.
Interesting, what Microsoft will do to stop those cheap versions being exported over here and legally sold?
The obvious reason is that OpenOffice.org is a steaming pile of shit.
Yes but the bucket is getting smaller all the time. Gates is bored and terrified. Can no longer run the company and the rats are leaving the ship.
==========
Why Login?
You really didn't expect him to live on his $96 million dollar dividend, did you? The guy's got expenses.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
oh hell yeah, you mean you've never used a gestapospread?
n/t
Is because their rulers were all psychically unstable bone-headed morons from Stalin onward. I sometimes wonder how it lasted so long under such a poor guidance.
OpenOffice so does not do the same thing.
This is exactly why M$ did nothing serious about piracy in the past -- M$ wanted M$ software to be the defacto standard at the time that these countries could afford to pay for it. Standars are adopted much faster if they are effectively free.
Looks like M$ has miscalculated by bringing in the activations schemes in XP and Office too soon.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
China is promoting a local version for every software. It has it's own Instant Messenger, developing it's own Linux version, and any other popular software. In the long run, China is posed to surpass develop a counterpart for the Microsoft-Oracle-IBM treaty... but open-source will always prevail... :)
no, the company doesn't have to make all it's stock public.
AFAIK a company can ensure that there is always 51% of it's stock which is never publically traded.
I doubt gates is scared, if Microsoft crumbles to dust tommorow gates walks away a VERY VERY rich man.
Now I love linux, but lets not spread BS
About winex actually is able to run about 50 top and not top games, their database is not all working games, it's games that are even under considering for making work.
Also Cross over office is extremely buggy, it crashes every 5min in any office application. Personally I think both winex and COO should dump what they have come up with back into the true wine. Those two merged with the api ground they've made given back to wine would make for some serious advancement, seperate keepin all the true advancement to themselves it doesn't amount to much.
It's explicitly stated in the article that the software maker had to clone, in great detail, MS Office to get people to comfortably switch.
Um no. Communism *in theory* works well. Linux in theory works well. Communism however has been corrupted by it's leaders to the point where it doesn't work. Linux, save a few small examples, hasn't had that happen - yet.
Scroll to the bottom of the link you posted, and read it there.
Oh, and have you really never seen Windows XP in action, or is it just "wishful thinking" that think of KDE when you see the standard Windows XP skin?
Here's a very good babelfish.altavista.com translation:
Operating system:
* Chinese system: Win98, Win98se, WinMe, Win2000P, Win2000Server, WinXp
* English system: Win2000P (E) + sinicizes the package, Win2000Server (E) + sinicizes the package, WincXp (E) + sinicizes the package
I wonder if they can incorporate accupuncture techniques into their new office suite along with a help file that includes the contents of that little red book.
In a 100% free market, NO ONE regulates business. But monopolies do exactly that -- they regulate business, and they do it to a far greater extent than any government ever could. By preventing anyone else from competing, they effectively have complete control over an industry. They can charge any price for any level of service that the market will bear. Historically, monopolies have been terrible. The American war of independence was fought primarily to escape the power of British monopolies. Many of the worst despotisms of the last few centuries were created by monopolies to protect their interests abroad.
Ahh, the oligopoly. The great lie of the twentieth century. They create the illusion of competition where it doesn't exist, and thus de-rail the free market.
> whilst Microsoft blunders around with what it THINKS these markets need
Ah, so they use the same tactics as on this side of the pacific.
It's still quite damn sutipid conversion engine which can be written by animal. I guess MS is employing monkeys to develop it. Using MS-IME is like pounding your nail with a hammer.
I use it just because MS-IME comes with my office PC.
It's the reason why I like to write docoments in English rather than in Japanese although my native language is Japanese, I have never lived outside of Japan.
Can you please tell ATI that? Can't get my driver to work under RedHat 9 ;)
While this may be good for China, think how it affects America. Instead of buying from Microsoft, they instead use open source software to help create their own government software. Microsoft loses money, the GDP goes down, and the American economy is hurt.
When Americans create open source software and other Americans and American businesses use it, it can improve the software industry because it opens up competition and hinders one company from controlling everything. But when Americans write open source software and countries like China use it instead of buying from America, it's bad for Americans in the long run. There's nothing wrong with open source software, as long as other countries don't use it.
Before you say, well if I don't have to pay for an operating system then it's money in my pocket; wouldn't you rather have a job that wasn't lost to open source clones of the software you worked hard to create?
Russia won't fight China. They are not major enemies. Europe won't fight China either. The only conflict I can see happening is USA vs China, or India vs China.
I think if USA and China fight, the war will end VERY QUICKLY. And it will likely go nuclear (and possibly biological). I expect that to happen because each side will be taking heavy casulties and someone is not going to take it any longer (and hence revert to WMD). During WWII (the worst war so far), a typical jet was "primitive". Nowadays, even the cheapest jets can carry payloads that can wipe out small divisions of military. Also, now you have ballistic missiles, which really didn't exist in WWII (or at least were primitive). These don't even need to be nuclear armed, just a normal ballistic missile should be able to kill 500 soldiers with an average hit.
When you have 1000 soldiers dying each month (or whatever), the govt can keep the population under control (at least the mass propaganda campaigns will brainwash the people). But if 10,000 people are dying in a month or something, no one is going to take it. The war will end quickly...
War and death are interesting... when one guy dies per day, no one cares but if 30 people die at once (but just once in a month), people start caring... ah humans...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
China has huge number of infantry but their tech sucks. Even bankrupt Russia has more advanced technology than China. I don't think China can even shoot down more than 5 stealth fighters.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
How may IT jobs will be left in the USA after you start importing all your hardware and software from China?
Wow, 5291! How much did you pay for a four digit /. number?
How the hell can a rediculous mensa humping moron like this be considered insightfull.1. The bloody gatt is an American business organisation.2. Redhat does not count on selling product idiot! Military power has precious little to do with the real industrial value of a country per capita, take North Korea a GNP that is rediculous, and yet they have one of the worlds biggest standing armies that for the size of their economy is rediculous. China has every reason to be suspicious of Western economic policies and every reason not to trust large International American Corporations. The Chinese are very good business people and know that you do not listen to the western economic spin if you know what is really in your own best interest. Quit flogging at imaginary commies, the Chinese will change, it will not be over night and it will not come with huge American style World Bank sponsored mega dollar crap that handcuffs national economies. The days of total dollar dominance of the world economy are coming to an end, those who have a trade surplus will prosper. Those who think they can use cheap Chinese labour as a source of business advantage will die like the dinosaurs they are.Speak to any Chinese imigrant and they will tell you the Chinese will not be Coolies on our industrial railroads anymore. Get with the future dinosaur or the comet of truth will crush you!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Not to mention SSWord, PowerMad and Axis - wasn't it called VolksOffice? :P
there will be someone to lick them. I don't care who it is, as long as I don't end up with shoe polish on my face.
Like a cow "moo"-t
They've have a problem. Software they create and distribute makes copies of that poem for other people. Further they have the rights to infinitely copy and distribute their word files. That is Microsoft has asserted tht anyone who owns Word has the rights to create and distribute copies of that poem. Sine the number of word owners is enermous the court would hold that the poem is in essense public domain....
now how is what I just said flame bait???
Mod this up! ROFLFLL
Hitler developed an open source office suite?
Yeah. Adolf and Elvis are still coding up a storm in Argentina. On the weekends, they make crop circles together.
Table-ized A.I.
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesnt the chinese government pirate all their versions of microsoft (or any other foreign company's) software?
So if anything this just means less pirated MS stuff in China... Which I'm sure Microsoft would see as a good thing except this now means the Chinese will never pay or want to pay for MS products when they're using better stuff.
Again, correct me if I'm wrong...
I can't think of a good sig...
On the weekends, they make crop circles together.
Yep, and no sticks-and-strings crop circles either. They make crop circles with trans-phasic party cruser UFO from Tau-Ceti. It's decked out with a rotating dance floor, quantum disco-balls, and weinershnitzel bar.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Isn't (or wasn't) Wang an major US computer manufacturer from way back?
Oooh ooh I feel a conspiracy theory coming on!!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
You really have to be a non-english speaker (or even brittish/irish for that matter), to see just how US centric MS Office is.
For instance (in windows as a whole infact, but it's a good example):
There are different Keyboard settings, en-us, en-gb (us+pound sign), int-us (huh? I hear you say...), and then de (german), nl (dutch), etc.
When using the dutch keymap, the way to write an " is by pressing the '-key + SHIFT, and then . This is HIGHLY irritating when typing, but, after numerous complaints, MS has just said: We think this is the best solution.
That's why the most used keymap in holland is 'int-us'.. !
And the euro sign () is made by CTRL + ALT + 5..argh ! Why not make the shift of 4 (dollar sign, $) the euro sign, and the dollar sign in some harder to reach one (such as CTRL + ALT + 5).
Oh, and on a Linux note, SuSE had euro sign support () 2 years earlier than MS, who had it just in the nick of time...
So maybe actaully USE the product before you bash it. I have Cross Over running on three boxes and none of them have crashed. Also, WineX and Cross Over DO put their stuff back into Wine. The only stuff that does not get back into Wine are a few proprietary Driect X DLL's that Transgamming is NOT ALLOWED to put back into Wine.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
The statement that the Chinese have no alphabet is just plain incorrect. A system called "pinyin" using the same alphabet as most European languages has existed for many years and has been taught in Chinese schools. In Chinese, tone (how high or low one's voice is) is important, almost as though it is sung rather than just spoken. Accents are placed over vowels to show rising, falling, rising-falling, high, and neutral tones. Tones are not unique to Chinese. They also play a role in some European languages, such as Swedish.
I'm not sure why pinyin hasn't become the dominant way to write Chinese, since it is much more simple that the classical ideograms. Probably, it has something to do with being too closely associated with the Mandarin dialect (just one of many important dialects in China). Possibly, due to historical and cultural tradition, one is not considered "educated" unless one is fluent at reading and writing the old way. I would like to hear from someone who is actually from China as to why pinyin is not as popular as classical and simplified ideograms.
Anyone find it interesting how China got some of the source to Microsoft's code then a year later switched away from their software. Sounds like they are in the intelligence biz.
Is it that long since in Ohio some innocent students proved that we are no different? How easily you forget!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
from CyberdogX:
:-)
sure, Nazix 1.0