Unfortunately, I mostly tried to make presentations and had to compare with Powerpoint. It was very frustrating trying to make even basic presentations. Everything from lack of templates, animation or even plain and simple editing was lacking.
My colleagues had a similar experience when trying to switch from Excel.
And we were actually the ones who took it upon ourselves to make try to make a switch and then convince others.
.NET has met with great success, C# along with VS is perhaps the most productive development environment, MS Office has a revamped interface that people really like once they've used it for a while, Vista is steadily gaining acceptance, IE7 has a better interface IMHO and is faster than Firefox or Safari, IIS has greatly eroded the dominance of Apache . . .
And Windows is on a majority of smartphones around the world.
World leaders they still are, no country has actually "rejected" MS. Their market value is still intact.
The only rotting corpse on the sidewalk is perhaps "Linux on the desktop".
But alternate views are not appreciated on Slashdot and I expect to be immediately modded down sub-zero.
Having made an honest effort for more than a year to switch to something other than MSOffice (removed MSOffice from Vista and installed OpenOffice, also installed NeoOffice on Mac), I have recently gone back to MSOffice.
There is such a huge difference in features and usability that there is no way that OpenOffice would gain any ground over Microsoft, in my opinion.
OpenOffice was an absolute torture. I had originally expected that after moving to OpenOffice, I would be able to convince everyone else in my office to make a move as well (eventually).
I think you meant to say, "60s and 70s". Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin, Doors, Beatles, Elvis . . .
Re:Upscaling DVD is good enough....
on
Bad Signs For Blu-ray
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
That's what I used to think, that upscaled DVD would be good enough. But now that I actually have a large HD TV and a Blue-Ray player, the difference is significant. I am not sure what "upscaling is just fine" means, but it is not even close to HD if you actually care to open your fucking eyes.
I buy Blue-Ray exclusively now. Just wish they would release LOTR on Blue-Ray soon!
Yes Blue-Ray is a more expensive than DVD (by a couple hamburgers) but this would go down soon and in the meantime, you are missing a lot by sticking to DVD.
You can argue that Blue-Ray is significantly more expensive than DVD, but please remove your blinkers because there is a huge difference between the two as far as the image and overall effect is concerned.
"Apple says "yes" because they try to be nice to customers . . . "
I beg to disagree. I own a MacBook Pro and Apple has deliberately and maliciously worked hard to make the Windows experience on the Mac undesirable. They have crippled the MacBook Pro touch pad (I'm not talking about multi-touch or any other Apple proprietary stuff, I'm talking about not being able to tap on the touch pad for a simple fucking left mouse click).
They refuse to even acknowledge that this is a problem (it has been a problem since the introduction of Bootcamp).
So Apple isn't trying to be "nice" to their customers, they are basically saying "fuck you if you're trying to use Windows, we don't give a shit"
Actually, COBOL is one of the easiest languages to learn and be productive in. As someone who started his career in COBOL, I was writing actal business applications within 3 months. But modifying an old application may not be very easy depending on how complex it is and how badly it was written.
With rampant use of GOTO ("procedures" were added a bit late to COBOL) many COBOL applications are a nightmare.
And if the application in question was ported from punched cards to magnetic tapes to hard disks (and a number of operating systems along the way), you can understand the problem. Also, there is probably zero documentation of the code!
So in your opinion, it will only be innovation if Microsoft employees were to produce offsprings by sexual intercourse within Microsoft premises and then these offsprings were to be bred and educated inside a Microsoft commune without any contact with the outside world and then they would create technology completely from scratch in absolute isolation?
If this wasn't designed by inter-galactic aliens, i'll eat my hat. I can't think of any purpose of this machine other than them beaming down their armies as soon as the thing is fully powered. Search for exotic particles? Yeah right!
March 2007, I bought a HP laptop for my wife with Vista. Originally I wanted a Mac for her as she has almost zero experience on computers and I thought Mac might be better.
More than a year on, there have been almost zero problems. I have only had to intervene remotely (since I'm mostly away) once when TCP/IP changed configuration to use SSL3 exclusively.
The performance is fine, wireless networking is fine, all my old peripherals (some hp scanners, printers, etc.) work fine, my home network with XP, Vista and Mac work fine. I don't think she even turns off the laptop, just closes the cover.
I use Vista on a Macbook pro and the only problem is the Bootcamp drivers for the touchpad which Apple refuses to fix or even acknowledge.
Yes, there was crapware installed by HP and I had to remove the most irritating ones.
Vista in my experience is prettier, more stable and responsive than Leopard.
I remember when I was in EE (late 80s). Every year we had a programming contest between EE and CS and every year EE won.
I'm not sure why, but I suppose while the CS guys were thinking about the most elegant design pattern to solve the problem, the EE guys were already halfway through the actual solution.
In actual work over two decades, I found that it doesn't matter where the guy/girl came from as far as programming prowess was concerned.
Just my two bits as far as daily mundane computer programming is concerned.
The "genius" bar is mostly full of clueless people, in my experience. Apart from answers to common questions, they don't offer anything. Microsoft too has online and email support (equally inane), so my comparison isn't entirely irrelevant nor pointless.
(and I develop software for Unix systems, but prefer.Net/C# and like to web browse on Mac Safari)
Microsoft has a ton of patents but I don't recall them pursuing many lawsuits. I suppose it is just a preemptive mechanism in case they get snared in some ridiculous case.
But Apple on the other hand . . .
Wow! And all the other responses are pretty much similar. Bashing FSF, giving succinct and logical reasons for doing so.
Now I wonder if the word "Apple" was substituted for "Microsoft", what the overwhelming Slashdot response would have been.
Only to read an incoming text.
For out going, I know kids who can do it from their pant pockets without EVER looking at the screen. Unbelievable as it sounds, I've seen it done pretty accurately.
Yes it is pretty stupid to store clear PINs on servers and I'm not sure how this bank was doing it and what happened.
These days, it is usually PIN offsets that are stored on servers in encrypted form. The encryption is done on a separate hardware device. The encryption keys are also generated and kept on the hardware device itself and the server has no access to it.
I suspect that PINs were NOT stolen from the banks servers but "skimmed" from the ATM itself.
This is a tried and tested fraud where they install a skimming device on top of the ATM card reader. When you use your card on the ATM, the device reads the card data. In addition, they put install a small hidden camera on the ATM which records the PIN you enter. After that, it is a simple process to encode blank cards with your data and use the PIN you entered to withdraw cash from your account.
This ("they hate us because of what we did to them") was true a decade ago. But now, it has completely mutated.
Now, they don't give a fuck until they have achieved their goal of imposition of their brand of thought all over the world. They can not be reasoned with.
And what continues to fuel their "jihad" is what "we" continue to do in the part of the world that "they" live in.
On a slightly divergent note, what is "unfortunate" about Silverlight? I would have assumed that any invention that gets rid of the plague named "flash" would be welcome to the Slashdot crowd? Even something from Microsoft.
Although, unfortunately I was using Safari on a Mac, Silverlight downloaded and installed automatically without a hitch. Much better than most Mac applications where I have to spend time in first minimizing the browser, resizing the downloads window, openning the Mac HD folder, openning the applications folder and then "carefully" dragging and dropping the new software to the applications folder. Only to find out later that the application was dropped somewhere else.
I'm a new Mac user and I'm sure the Mac fanboys would point out the flaw in my method, but then, isn't the Mac just supposed to WORK?
Yeah right!
Except, all it will always take is one attack by Alqaeda in the US for the public opinion to turn. People generally are pretty stupid and it doesn't take much to manipulate them.
All they (alqaeda) need to do is to keep attacking the US once every few years and very soon it will turn into a complete police state. Another benefit would be that the US would retaliate against some other completely unrelated fucked up country, thereby increasing alqaeda's power base.
That seems to be a logical strategy and I expect game, set and match for them within my lifetime.
Too bad for the rest of the world.
And to run OSX leopard, at least $1,099. So Vista still comes out cheaper.
But then, this is slashdot and no one gives a damn as long as what you're venting is against Microsoft.
Yes, why not one way mission. I'm surprised this hasn't been seriously suggested before. This unhealthy obsession with safety and human life is a real impediment to space exploration. I mean really, wouldn't there be a large number of volunteers for such a mission? I would volunteer in a blink, and I would assume there would be countless more qualified who would as well.
Consider how much we could accomplish by sending one person to Mars (and keep him/her alive for, say a month on the planet) as compared to sending a semi-autonomous robot.
And humans would be way cheaper, there are already 6 billion of them to choose from!
We need to start taking risks again if we want to rapidly explore the solar system. And one way missions sound perfectly reasonable.
So what if we loose some human lives? We're only talking about a few per year at best. Compare that to the number of casualties in the smallest of conflicts on Earth even today. At least this way the human lives would have been worth something.
Why waste decades developing automated rovers when humans are available and can do a far better job and perhaps accomplish more in a single visit than all non-human explorations so far.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose you're right if all you want to do is write simple letters (use wordpad instead).
But for more complex documents, I can't find an alternative that is as usable.
I would love to try something else.
Unfortunately, I mostly tried to make presentations and had to compare with Powerpoint. It was very frustrating trying to make even basic presentations. Everything from lack of templates, animation or even plain and simple editing was lacking.
My colleagues had a similar experience when trying to switch from Excel.
And we were actually the ones who took it upon ourselves to make try to make a switch and then convince others.
"is the sound of a company dieing . . ."
.NET has met with great success, C# along with VS is perhaps the most productive development environment, MS Office has a revamped interface that people really like once they've used it for a while, Vista is steadily gaining acceptance, IE7 has a better interface IMHO and is faster than Firefox or Safari, IIS has greatly eroded the dominance of Apache . . .
in your wet dream, most likely.
"in the last 5 years"
And Windows is on a majority of smartphones around the world.
World leaders they still are, no country has actually "rejected" MS. Their market value is still intact.
The only rotting corpse on the sidewalk is perhaps "Linux on the desktop".
But alternate views are not appreciated on Slashdot and I expect to be immediately modded down sub-zero.
Having made an honest effort for more than a year to switch to something other than MSOffice (removed MSOffice from Vista and installed OpenOffice, also installed NeoOffice on Mac), I have recently gone back to MSOffice.
There is such a huge difference in features and usability that there is no way that OpenOffice would gain any ground over Microsoft, in my opinion.
OpenOffice was an absolute torture. I had originally expected that after moving to OpenOffice, I would be able to convince everyone else in my office to make a move as well (eventually).
I guess that takes care of that.
Unfortunately, most people would have no clue what to add to the OS, much less what is meant by an "application" or even an OS.
I think you meant to say, "60s and 70s". Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin, Doors, Beatles, Elvis . . .
That's what I used to think, that upscaled DVD would be good enough. But now that I actually have a large HD TV and a Blue-Ray player, the difference is significant. I am not sure what "upscaling is just fine" means, but it is not even close to HD if you actually care to open your fucking eyes.
I buy Blue-Ray exclusively now. Just wish they would release LOTR on Blue-Ray soon!
Yes Blue-Ray is a more expensive than DVD (by a couple hamburgers) but this would go down soon and in the meantime, you are missing a lot by sticking to DVD.
You can argue that Blue-Ray is significantly more expensive than DVD, but please remove your blinkers because there is a huge difference between the two as far as the image and overall effect is concerned.
Apple wont blame Vista. They will never even acknowledge that there is a problem in the first place!
And then quietly, they will release an upgrade.
"Apple says "yes" because they try to be nice to customers . . . "
I beg to disagree. I own a MacBook Pro and Apple has deliberately and maliciously worked hard to make the Windows experience on the Mac undesirable. They have crippled the MacBook Pro touch pad (I'm not talking about multi-touch or any other Apple proprietary stuff, I'm talking about not being able to tap on the touch pad for a simple fucking left mouse click).
They refuse to even acknowledge that this is a problem (it has been a problem since the introduction of Bootcamp).
So Apple isn't trying to be "nice" to their customers, they are basically saying "fuck you if you're trying to use Windows, we don't give a shit"
Actually, COBOL is one of the easiest languages to learn and be productive in. As someone who started his career in COBOL, I was writing actal business applications within 3 months. But modifying an old application may not be very easy depending on how complex it is and how badly it was written.
With rampant use of GOTO ("procedures" were added a bit late to COBOL) many COBOL applications are a nightmare.
And if the application in question was ported from punched cards to magnetic tapes to hard disks (and a number of operating systems along the way), you can understand the problem.
Also, there is probably zero documentation of the code!
So in your opinion, it will only be innovation if Microsoft employees were to produce offsprings by sexual intercourse within Microsoft premises and then these offsprings were to be bred and educated inside a Microsoft commune without any contact with the outside world and then they would create technology completely from scratch in absolute isolation?
If this wasn't designed by inter-galactic aliens, i'll eat my hat. I can't think of any purpose of this machine other than them beaming down their armies as soon as the thing is fully powered.
Search for exotic particles? Yeah right!
March 2007, I bought a HP laptop for my wife with Vista. Originally I wanted a Mac for her as she has almost zero experience on computers and I thought Mac might be better.
More than a year on, there have been almost zero problems. I have only had to intervene remotely (since I'm mostly away) once when TCP/IP changed configuration to use SSL3 exclusively.
The performance is fine, wireless networking is fine, all my old peripherals (some hp scanners, printers, etc.) work fine, my home network with XP, Vista and Mac work fine. I don't think she even turns off the laptop, just closes the cover.
I use Vista on a Macbook pro and the only problem is the Bootcamp drivers for the touchpad which Apple refuses to fix or even acknowledge.
Yes, there was crapware installed by HP and I had to remove the most irritating ones.
Vista in my experience is prettier, more stable and responsive than Leopard.
I remember when I was in EE (late 80s). Every year we had a programming contest between EE and CS and every year EE won.
I'm not sure why, but I suppose while the CS guys were thinking about the most elegant design pattern to solve the problem, the EE guys were already halfway through the actual solution.
In actual work over two decades, I found that it doesn't matter where the guy/girl came from as far as programming prowess was concerned.
Just my two bits as far as daily mundane computer programming is concerned.
The "genius" bar is mostly full of clueless people, in my experience. Apart from answers to common questions, they don't offer anything. Microsoft too has online and email support (equally inane), so my comparison isn't entirely irrelevant nor pointless.
.Net/C# and like to web browse on Mac Safari)
(and I develop software for Unix systems, but prefer
Microsoft has a ton of patents but I don't recall them pursuing many lawsuits. I suppose it is just a preemptive mechanism in case they get snared in some ridiculous case.
But Apple on the other hand . . .
Wow! And all the other responses are pretty much similar. Bashing FSF, giving succinct and logical reasons for doing so.
Now I wonder if the word "Apple" was substituted for "Microsoft", what the overwhelming Slashdot response would have been.
Only to read an incoming text.
For out going, I know kids who can do it from their pant pockets without EVER looking at the screen. Unbelievable as it sounds, I've seen it done pretty accurately.
Yes it is pretty stupid to store clear PINs on servers and I'm not sure how this bank was doing it and what happened.
These days, it is usually PIN offsets that are stored on servers in encrypted form. The encryption is done on a separate hardware device. The encryption keys are also generated and kept on the hardware device itself and the server has no access to it.
I suspect that PINs were NOT stolen from the banks servers but "skimmed" from the ATM itself.
This is a tried and tested fraud where they install a skimming device on top of the ATM card reader. When you use your card on the ATM, the device reads the card data. In addition, they put install a small hidden camera on the ATM which records the PIN you enter. After that, it is a simple process to encode blank cards with your data and use the PIN you entered to withdraw cash from your account.
This ("they hate us because of what we did to them") was true a decade ago. But now, it has completely mutated. Now, they don't give a fuck until they have achieved their goal of imposition of their brand of thought all over the world. They can not be reasoned with. And what continues to fuel their "jihad" is what "we" continue to do in the part of the world that "they" live in.
On a slightly divergent note, what is "unfortunate" about Silverlight? I would have assumed that any invention that gets rid of the plague named "flash" would be welcome to the Slashdot crowd? Even something from Microsoft. Although, unfortunately I was using Safari on a Mac, Silverlight downloaded and installed automatically without a hitch. Much better than most Mac applications where I have to spend time in first minimizing the browser, resizing the downloads window, openning the Mac HD folder, openning the applications folder and then "carefully" dragging and dropping the new software to the applications folder. Only to find out later that the application was dropped somewhere else. I'm a new Mac user and I'm sure the Mac fanboys would point out the flaw in my method, but then, isn't the Mac just supposed to WORK? Yeah right!
Microsoft has already denied this: http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9938650-56.html?tag=nefd.top But since this is slashdot, let's just ignore it while there is an opportunity for MS bashing.
Except, all it will always take is one attack by Alqaeda in the US for the public opinion to turn. People generally are pretty stupid and it doesn't take much to manipulate them. All they (alqaeda) need to do is to keep attacking the US once every few years and very soon it will turn into a complete police state. Another benefit would be that the US would retaliate against some other completely unrelated fucked up country, thereby increasing alqaeda's power base. That seems to be a logical strategy and I expect game, set and match for them within my lifetime. Too bad for the rest of the world.
And to run OSX leopard, at least $1,099. So Vista still comes out cheaper.
But then, this is slashdot and no one gives a damn as long as what you're venting is against Microsoft.
Yes, why not one way mission. I'm surprised this hasn't been seriously suggested before. This unhealthy obsession with safety and human life is a real impediment to space exploration. I mean really, wouldn't there be a large number of volunteers for such a mission? I would volunteer in a blink, and I would assume there would be countless more qualified who would as well.
Consider how much we could accomplish by sending one person to Mars (and keep him/her alive for, say a month on the planet) as compared to sending a semi-autonomous robot.
And humans would be way cheaper, there are already 6 billion of them to choose from!
We need to start taking risks again if we want to rapidly explore the solar system. And one way missions sound perfectly reasonable.
So what if we loose some human lives? We're only talking about a few per year at best. Compare that to the number of casualties in the smallest of conflicts on Earth even today. At least this way the human lives would have been worth something.
Why waste decades developing automated rovers when humans are available and can do a far better job and perhaps accomplish more in a single visit than all non-human explorations so far.