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Linux and OpenOffice save Microsoft Presentation
EvilGrinUK writes "A presentation about Shared Source (SSI) by the head of Microsoft Ukraine was almost ruined when the Windows machine (a Tablet PC) linked to the projector developed problems. The solution was to adopt OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 and ALT Linux Compact 2.3, which was already running on the presenter's laptop (an IBM Thinkpad). Here's a picture."
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<speech>
<voice>Nelson Muntz</voice>
<voiceArtist>Nancy Cartwright</voiceArtist>
<text>Ha-Ha!</text>
</speech>
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
The original link is fster than the cache
2 544.sized.jpg
http://paq.osdn.org.ua/~mike/img/MS-uses-OOo/hpim
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
Can somebody verify that the info is accurate?
The irony is delicious!
It looks like Open Office didn't open the presentation properly. Look at all of those crazy symbols.
/. ++
Let's just hope they [MSFT] don't get all miffy about it, eh?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...and at the same time embarassed Microsoft. Maybe now the mighty Goliath can be slain!
How many Slashdotters now have to change their shorts?
--bitter
What's the big deal here? Right tool for the job. The other laptop wasn't working during crunch time, so why not?
He is so fired
Be careful, Microsoft might think this counts as a Shared Source Initiative.
Will this appear in ANYWHERE but slashdot? I mean, will common people know about it? And more important... will they even care?
This reminds me of a time in college during a MS presentation when the MS powerpoint crashed into an Apple desktop. Oh well, its business, you do what you need to do. Microsoft is relativly pragmatic these days.
This story seems a little skinny on details. Does anyone have any more information?
ahh the irony.. "shared source initiative"..... :D
what is it with slashdot running all these captchas lately ? "To confirm you're not a script, please type the text shown in this image:" I did this yesterday, shouldn't there be a period of grace for logged in users ?
And not one story about all the presentations given at Linux World that were done using Power Point on Windows.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Can we see a schedule for this conference and where it took place? All we have is links to organization web sites and this photo at the moment.
If this is supposed to be proof of something, I want confirmation. Then I'll really start laughing.
Because honestly, who is to ay it wasn't just one guy putting up a slide and snapping a photo?
That's almost on an par with the infamous Windows 98 crash video!
That was the case... now 4 mins later the /. effect looms :-)
I cleaned the photograph up in Photoshop, and I made it MUCH better looking, so you can actually SEE what's going on in the image.
e d.jpg
http://www.collegechixors.com/images/hpim2544.siz
in soviet ukraine, microsoft uses linux?
forty-two
Come on, let's be honest here. How many times has Windows saved the day for a Linux application, or even install?
i.e. For myself, back when trying to install Red Hat 8.0 on my machine at home, I had to constantly reboot back into Win2K to download patches/rpms, or read up about bugs and errata, get network drivers, configuration minutae, etc.
It's stable now, but having a working (out of the box) Win2K install to fall back on was crucial to "save" my Linux installation.
Let's not be too smug here, would this have been news if they'd been bailed out by a different Windows version?
[MSFT-Tablet]"Damn, I am crapping out."
[lin-laptop]"I can save the day."
[MSFT-Tablet]"I will never be saved by riff-raff the likes of you. You are open source and therefore evil. I was created using millions of dollars in r&d capitol. You were made from donations, and other open source contributors, and are therefore an inferior product."
[lin-laptop]"Yeah, but I can do something you can't right now."
[MSFT-Tablet]"What's that?"
[lin-laptop]"Run your presentation."
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Microsoft's public failures are always amusing.
I believe Bird-Person can arrange that.
I devoted long hours to a PowerPoint presentation. In about hour 12 or 13, PowerPoint 2002 kept crashing whenever I tried to open the file. Unfortunately I did not have any previous revisions before the save which messed things up.
I thought I was hosed, but I tried opening it in OpenOffice and it worked fine. Then a friend suggested I run "Office Update". Once I did this, PowerPoint opened the file without problems.
Did this dude bother to update his PowerPoint?
. . .for when our shit don't work. It'll save your butterfly's arse. What would you like to boot that actually runs today?
KFG
I'm the sysadmin of a company of about 100. The other day I was in the CEO's office waiting to give him a presentation on the latest version of the Intranet. The boss came in very upset, he had been having some problems with his laptop and hadn't been able to boot into windows all morning. There was a very important document on his drive that he just had to have for a meeting later that afternoon. I turned off the projector and started to attempt to recover his documents.
First I tried Bart PE, a Windows XP bootable CD. It allowed me to see the hard drive, but the file sizes were all wrong. I tried to connect it to the network but it wouldn't recognize the network card. I tried plugging in a USB flash drive but it wouldn't recognize that either.
DOS was out of the question as the drive was NTFS. Then it hit me, I had a copy of Knoppix 3.8 on me. I booted it up and it saw the network and thumbdrive instantly. I saved the boss's files and he was very impressed. While I was setting him up on a spare notebook he was playing with the menus in KDE and we made small talk about governments and businesses saving tons of cash by switching to Linux, Open Office, and other free software.
So Linux saved the day for his poor broken Windows box, just a little ironic. Now this sysadmin is never leaving without a copy of Knoppix again.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
... it's clearly an operating system problem on the tablet, not a hardware problem. Linux to the rescue!
...us; another funny thing is that Microsoft proposed to sponsor the conference too but we decided to politely decline the generous offer) ;-) ;-)
------------------
From the README on the site:
Intro
[...]
1. This is old news: the event happened on October 9, 2004.
2. Microsoft rep in Ukraine had to use free software to get on with a presentation on a free software conference since his munition failed to cooperate with projector.
3. See below (also posted to the places I could track down).
[...]
As for the facts:
* it was not Master but ALT Linux Compact 2.3 (page|ISO|ML)
* it was Third Ukrainian Free Software Developers' and Users' Conference
* it was sponsored by IBM, Novell and EMT (yeah, I work for
* it is the head of Microsoft Ukraine, Mr. Valery Lanovenko
* it is the Tablet PC which failed to feed the projector on the secondary head properly to blame
* and indeed it's OpenOffice.org on our Linux/ThinkPad running their PowerPoint presentation
* IMG_0395 has Mr. Lanovenko's personal comment -- he tries to make an impression that it was PDF (we as the conference staff recommended to keep those at hand) but all of us know OOo doesn't display PDFs
[...]
--
Michael Shigorin
mike at osdn dot org dot ua
EMT.Com.UA * OSDN.Org.UA * Linux.Kiev.UA * ALTLinux.ORG
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Sorry, I for one do NOT "KNOW" that Impress mangled a powerpoint file. My experience has been, on Linux, that the view has been fine.
I figured the comments would be full of negative little "ha ha" moments.
But, if you've ever given a presenation, then you *know* how tough it can be. Demos and talks which have been working fine for days, weeks, and months have a way of suddenly breaking down when you need them most. Don't know why this is.
So, this guy (if this is true) did what he had to so that the presentation could continue.
Is that really something worth laughing at?
Plus, it just goes to show that not everybody at Microsoft feels the same way about certain... "other" technologies. Yeah, it might be a fine "ha ha" for other people at the company, but those of you who are pushing the OSS agenda should really be congratulating this guy for sticking his neck out.
And, had this been a presentation on some Linux subject and something had gone wrong with the presentation machine (Linux machines *do* crash, too, you know), then what would the presenter have done?
People are laughing, but many of us on the Windows side of things have no problem firing up an alternative operating system. We have our loyalties, but it doesn't mean we're all totally pig-headed.
- Rory [Microsoft Employee] | Free dirt: neopoleon.com
This isn't the first OpenOffice Impress slide show I see people running in non-full-screen windowed mode. So, remember, F9 starts the slide show in full screen.
In Acroread, it's Ctrl+L. I learned this only after a two-hour presentation in windowed mode.
Disappointinly, you apparently can't get full screen mode at all in xpdf nor gv. I've seen a lecturer do his entire course with windowed xpdf under Linux.
The original article was at PCLinuxOnline and contains a lot more information. http://www.pclinuxonline.com/article.php?sid=9792
They're just demonstrating their superior error handling.
I don't remember the exact problem we were having in my lab, but someone was preparing to give a presentation which they made in PowerPoint on one of our PowerMacs. They took it over to a Windows box because the room for the presentation only had that available, and the damned presentation wouldn't load.
You can imagine the amount of cussing that ensued.
I don't have MS Office on my Windows laptop, but I do have OO.o, and lo and behold, I was able to open my labmate's presentation. But the real kicker is that I was able to Save as... and the file popped out in a format MS Office on the Windows box would read.
It was about the most bizarre file compatibility thing I've ever seen.
what was more embarrassing is how badly open office mangled the powerpoint presentation, and you KNOW it did.
;-)
Powerpoint presentations usually look pretty mangled anyway. I had endless problems with NeoOffice/J seemingly scrambling the formatting of work-related presentations, documents and so on, until I borrowed a Windows machine with Microsoft Office and discovered that was how the documents were supposed to look...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
that's microsoft's fault for not using an open standard document format.
i'm looking forward to castigating MS regularly now, until they fully support the standard.
who is she? leave a comment!
Someone actually used Coral Cache in a direct image link from a slashdot story?!?
... dogs and cats living together ... mass hysteria...
World... ending... pigs flying
(-1: Silly)
o/~ Join us now and share the software
The bottleneck ATM is the shaper, we enjoy sponsored colocation and hardware (by WNet ISP) and current outbound traffic is around 512Kbps.
Otherwise, our ALT Linux server that's serving you now is perfectly OK, given it's 4-way Xeon with a meg cache per CPU with a gig of RAM and SmartArray. So load average is more like: 0.19, 0.14, 0.12.
Here's a postcard from Apache (no nginx on top of it even ;-) -- 167 requests currently being processed, 8 idle servers (I've upped MaxClients from 150 to 250, hope it's enough for some time -- seen 180+ max today).
and here's top's top:
CPU0 states: 1.1% user, 4.4% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% iowait, 93.3% idle
CPU1 states: 0.2% user, 0.2% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% iowait, 99.1% idle
CPU2 states: 0.3% user, 0.0% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% iowait, 99.2% idle
CPU3 states: 0.0% user, 0.1% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% iowait, 99.4% idle
Mem: 1033300k av, 680024k used, 353276k free, 0k shrd, 4168k buff
346864k active, 246712k inactive
Swap: 522072k av, 2240k used, 519832k free 482032k cached
PS: we'll be doing 4th conference like that this October, feel free to contact me during next weeks if you're eager to travel to Kiev and roll a speech on Free Software!
Michael Shigorin EMT.Com.UA * OSDN.Org.UA * Linux.Kiev.UA * ALTLinux.ORG
"At a presentation on the progress of the linux kernel, Linus Torvalds Linux-based laptop it the dust. The presentation was saved by a kind audience member who volunteered his Windows XP laptop to finish displaying the remainder of the presentation." Ever seen this article? Of course not. It doesnt exist. and THATS why this is a big deal.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
I had a similar experience when a user in my organization couldn't open an Excel workbook -- Excel 2002 crashed whenever the user tried that specific XLS file. I checked first that Office XP was fully patched (it was); then I opened the offending file in Calc and identified the problem: a column which normally contained a simple formula somehow got corrupted. Instead of the formula, there was a long string of gobbledygook in each cell in that column. I replaced the string with the correct formula, saved it in XLS format and voilá! The user thanked me and I informed all of the IT support folks to keep a copy of OpenOffice handy for just such an occasion.
Sometimes I have to say to hell with it and just eat my jellybeans.
It must be nice to be caught in a reality distortion field. There is no excuse for Linux World presenters not to be using Linux/OSS for their presentations. The "projection equipment" is not dependent on Powerpoint - it simply uses the VGA output port. BTW, this story is a hoax. The last time it supposedly occurred in September during a joint MS/Novell conference. But dont let reality creep in!
Facts (below)
As for the facts:
You bet there was some debate afterwards but no tomatoes flying (which was quite the fear of Mr. Lanovenko's coworkers) :-)
Shameless plugs
BTW, there's going to be 4th such conference this autumn (first weekend of October), you're welcome! (details at the conference site, see above)
Michael Shigorin EMT.Com.UA * OSDN.Org.UA * Linux.Kiev.UA * ALTLinux.ORG
it's possible that the Linux World Expo had crufty projection equipment and did not let anyone boot anything else.
It's possible, but not true.
One developer (yes, well-respected developer) simply stated (expecting flames) that Power Point was better and said he would not take any questions on that during his presentation.
Though that was a few years back. The last time I saw him at LWCE he was using a Mac with some other presentation software.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Then I guess it wont help to tell you that the next week on our quarterly conference call I received the quarterly champion award complete with glass trophy. Find a job where the boss is an old fortran guru.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
n/t
just a simple hardware substitution in the middle of a presentation.
They teach you that on the first day of MCSE training. Always blame the hardware.
Yes, that's right.
Shame on Microsoft. And how rude that Office 2003 doesn't implement and utilize the wonderful and open OASIS file format that was ratified 3 days ago.
I don't expect much from Microsoft these days (god knows I'd be constantly disappointed if I did) but I somehow feel time travel is probably asking a bit much - even for them.
It's Microsoft's fault, but it's our problem. Unless you value only gloating, the one who can change is the one who must. OOo must support even Microsoft's secret formats - Microsoft will only open them when they gain less advantage from them than they lose in their extra cost. By upgrading our open apps, we'll force Microsoft to change, even if it's too late for them.
--
make install -not war
Saw this one in Las Vegas -- Windows XP virtual memory error.
Here's one for you: Bill Gates is pretty famous.
:)
You were asking for famebates, right?
Proud owner of BOT2K3 [ bot2k3.net ]
Not that I'm Microsoft's biggest fan or anything; but there may be a reason that PowerPoint may not display its own slideshows correctly.
Say you create a PowerPoint presentation and then open it in OpenOffice or NeoOffice or whatever, it then is mangled by the program. You save it in its mangled state and then open it on PowerPoint again. This mangles it even more.
I manage a few non-profit computer labs for seniors and low-income families and in one of my labs I installed OpenOffice (didn't feel like shelling out $200-$300 for each of the eight computers, nor did I have the funding), while at the two other labs and at home I have Microsoft Office. So when I type up some documentation at home and try to edit it at the OpenOffice lab, the Word document always get mangled. Any kind of formatting beyond the basic (font, font size, bold, italic, underline, text alignment) gets screwed so badly that I have to redo all the formatting. It is easier to leave it unformatted and do the formating in OpenOffice. I hope OpenOffice 2.0 fixes this.
That having been said, I do recommend OpenOffice to those who need basic wordprocessing and do not want to dish out $300. We teach basic computer skills at our labs and we teach (and give out CDs of) OpenOffice.
score YOU -1, sometimes being three steps ahead means being one step behind
Thank you Dave Raggett
Shame on Microsoft. And how rude that Office 2003 doesn't implement and utilize the wonderful and open OASIS file format that was ratified 3 days ago.
You have a sort of point, but in this case the standard has been in development and draft form for literally years. Microsoft has had plenty of chances to follow along with the development and provide 99% complete support for the format, even before it was ratified. Then all they'd have to do is put some tweaks in a patch for 100% support after the standard is finalized. The OpenOffice.org formats have been around and in active use for years now, but I don't see Microsoft supporting those either, and aren't they remarkably similar to the final ratified OpenDocument standards? Hmm, I think so. In other words, they've had their chance. It's not like the developing standards were kept secret until the day they were ratified, giving them only 3 days to work on it.
So yes, shame on Microsoft, as usual. Especially as we move into the future. If it's impossible for them to provide a simple drop-in translator for new file formats in their state-of-the-art office suite it doesn't speak highly of their software design, does it? Somehow I feel this is something well within their reach. I, like the GP poster, am also looking forward to castigating Microsoft at every opportunity until they fully support open document standards. It's a fool's errand, but someone has to do it.
Knoppix has saved me a few times. I can honestly say that it was the only thing I came out of my operating systems (read: Unix / Linux) course with, that has been of any use. Everything else was just pro-OSS / anti-MS diatribe.
I'm all for teaching people the value of MS alternatives, but adopting a holier-than-thou attitude in regards to yourself -vs- Windows users isn't how to ingratiate people to your cause.
Thankfully, Knoppix -- and other distros -- are good enough products that they've allowed me to ignore the Linux zealots and continue trying out the various OSS products I come across.
As far as the story goes; good showing on OO's part, but hardware issues can affect anyone. Don't get too cocky.
Two weeks, without warning, would be an incredibly short time for any large migration let alone major servers. Given that they've been unable to port Hotmail off of BSD and on to their own crufty products for going on a decade, I think that the proxy trick is more likely than real migration.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.