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RedOffice 4.0 Beta Updates OpenOffice UI
Johannes Eva writes "As IBM Lotus Symphony shows its first public version 1.0, the Chinese OpenOffice.org derivative RedOffice offers the first beta of its new version 4.0.
The open source RedOffice gets a new UI inspired from Microsoft Office 2007, with a vertical 'ribbon.'
Is this the future of OpenOffice.org?"
Here, let me correct that for you:
"Although some Russian, Chinese, Cambodian, Cuban, Yugoslavian, Romanian, and Polish leaders have demonstrated the ultimate outcome of communism for many people..."
So many people have thanked me for installing OpenOffice.org to replace the totally unusable MS Office 2007, that I really hope this remains a Chinese feature.
MS Office 2007 ribbons is the best thing MS could have done to promote OOo adoption. We should all send 'thank you' letters to uncle Steve for that.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Be that so. Although some Russian leaders have ruined the idea of communism for many people,
Who supplied you with all your news about what was going on in those Communist states? Was it Stalin, or was it your own national news?
It's not communism-the-economic-model that's the problem, it's totalitarianism-the-political-model. You can't dissociate the two in your mind because your own nation has been brainwashing you to think of them as inseparable, most likely since the time you were born.
Both democratic capitalist states and totalitarian communist states have carrots and sticks.
In the democratic state, you are dominated through economics, but liberated from autocratic government, in totalitarian communist states, you are dominated by government, but liberated from dynastic capitalist empires.
Capitalism is the same as Totalitarianism, Communism is the same as Democracy, ain't nobody free on this hunk of dirt, and very few who even know well enough how to even ask for freedom in the first place.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Well, communism works great, if there is abundance. And in case of software, there is abundance.
Capitalism works on axiom "there is infinite human needs and wants, in a world of finite resources", and it can't normally work in world where production (copying) and distribution is very cheep, so it must make resources scares artificially (DRM and such).
Anyway, what these communist countries did wrong was what Software vendors and MAFIAA did - applied good paradigm in wrong situation.
So removing people's monetary incentives to work harder or learn difficult skills is not a problem? You must have a lot of faith in people's unselfishness.
Your naive outlook makes you a perfect target for domination. ;)
Seriously? This China related alarmism on Slashdot is really saddening
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
This is a common misconception. Communism does not imply authoritarian control of the economy.
Large-scale implementations of communism have tended to use authoritarian control to force a communist economic model. This was, in my opinion, an astonishingly bad idea.
Communism simply means that the economy is managed by the community. If the community government is totalitarian, communism will be enforced through totalitarianism. If the community government is a decentralized direct democracy, then the economy will be managed through direct democratic involvement by all the people.
This is in contrast to capitalism, in which the economy is ostensibly managed by nobody, and in practice managed by those who control the lions share of money or resources. This commonly leads to a small number of successful capitalists gaining effective centralized control of the economy.
Since a capitalist economy cannot be managed by the community, there is no recourse should the economy become dominated by a small number of centralized companies or people. Despite the democratic, emergent properties of the community government, the economy can still easily slip into a model that is centralized in all but name.
P.S. - I *do* have a lot of faith in people's selfishness. And I like it when I can plainly see that their selfish motives will compel them to do something that benefits me.
When someone says "I want to give you free money for no apparent reason," I see no reason for them to be so selfless and I am suspicious. When someone says "I want to do the dirty work of fixing your car in exchange for big bucks," I understand their motives and think it's safe to trust them.
I know some wonderfully unselfish people, but when dealing with strangers, I do not assume that they're wonderfully unselfish. Do you?
Okay, we're going a bit offroad here. Medics were paid more (in a way or another) even in the communist states. :D.
The fundamental difference between capitalism and communism was that capitalism was an ecosystem with different needs and actors, each pulling for its own side, and this combined "pulling" made the system reach a stability (it's a natural stable system).
Communism, on the other hand, called for totally arbitrary pre-planning of economy (you couldn't really go and tell people "do what the fuck you want"), which were the infamous Quinquennial plans of the Soviets.
The communist approach did had one highlight: the quick electirifcation and modernization of Russia. However, on the other hand, any single mistake from the "big bosses" in the Kremlin had catastrophic consequences.
With a capitalist system, we can afford having completely dumb leaders
nbody2002:If you can read this you may be addicted to the internet
"For what it is worth, Yugoslavia under Marshall Tito worked out fairly well."
For a while - until he died and the lid blew off.
One of the reasons that Yugoslavia "worked" is that Tito ruthlessly suppressed sectarianism and ethnicities. While it appeared to be a good thing, especially to the eyes of Western liberals who regard religion as evil, it had the effect of building a pressure cooker which blew apart in the 90's, causing violence far in excess of whatever Tito did. Iraq is the same way - Saddam suppressed the Kurds and Shia, and "kept the peace". But in doing so, he set the seeds for the situation we see now, with the US popping the cork prematurely.
You can't take large populations of ethnically and religiously diverse populations, put them in close contact, and tell them "Get along - or else". It just doesn't work over the long term.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Just to nitpick, capitalism works just in a lack of scarcity. DRM and DMCA is a government and legislation thing - capitalism is an economic system.
Traditional Adam-Smith-Invisible-Hand-esque capitalist economics say MP3s should be free.
DATABASE WOW WOW
While there is a great deal of overlap between communism and police states with aggressive dictatorships, they are not synonyms.
Often, the flag of communism is used as a bait to induce an unsatisfied population to help a group to rise to power and as an excuse to create mechanisms for repression of the previous government and, ultimately, to betray those ideals and the people who supported them as soon as their help is no longer necessary or their cooperation can be obtained by other means.
It's indeed a tragedy. But let's not confuse things. Neither non-communist countries are automatically paradises of civil rights nor communist countries are inevitably police-states. Things are a lot more complex than that.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com