I worry about how readily people throw away email, photos and stuff like that. Most of my literary friends think nothing of erasing email; of course, some email is just mundane, akin to laundry lists. There really exists no easy and quick to backup things.
The concerns you speak about suggest a IT niche for people who do document and file conversion. It could be a big market. My concern is with proprietary formats such as MS Word. On the other hand, I have been pleasantly surprised about how later versions of word processors seem able to open almost archaic file formats. When our data resides in virtual places, it will become easier to use third party tools to convert data.
There is something gratifying about holding an old photograph or letter in one's hands. We are humans. We like to touch and to hold. Old fashioned cameras and pen and paper give us this feeling of control over the creative process. Perhaps, as Walter Benjamin wrote, it is good for art like this to lose its magical aura. But at least with physical objects, one is more likely to view them on different occasions. On the other hand, people rarely reread emails (I'm not saying this is a good thing, merely describing behavior).
As a former Dell employee, I can say I really sympathize with this comment. However, I wouldn't attribute it to any anti-Linux conspiracy or even the need to sell newer hardware. I think the reason has to do with Microsoft PC's having a higher profit margin than Linux PC's. There's really no real markup for Linux, and so there's no incentive for Dell to aggressively sell Linux boxes (except as standalone servers as part of a bigger package).
It's hard for manufacturers to add value to PC's with Linux on it. Getting rights to install star/open office on a dell linux box doesn't increase dell's profitability; selling office xp, on the other hand, does accomplish this.
I suspect that solutions providers (aka IBM) might be more inclined to recommend Linux boxes than Windows. But that doesn't show up in desktop sales.
This piece made some interesting points about linux losing the desktop. It is certainly true that Outlook/Exchange Servers are awesome (though buggy and insecure) business applications, and the Linux world has no real equivalent. But the latest Star Office is adequate for most simple to intermediate documents. (The comment about Linux office apps not having a good spellchecker is not true for the latest Star Office. And besides, even if it were true, Spellcheck is hardly an important feature in the office environment---it never has been a particularly efficient way to correct mistakes).
Linux now has many free components: a first class browser (Mozilla), an almost first class office app (Star Office), several decent mail programs, adobe acrobat, a free almost firstclass cdburn program, a first class windows interface (KDE), an almost first class graphics program (gimp), real player, several instant messenger programs (kyahoo, jabber), fairly good hardware detection (finally), a firstclass documentation project (which admittedly is not tightly integrated into linux--one needs to use search engines (my favorite link is Linux How-to Index .
The main weaknesses, as I see it are 1)poor font support (which I've been told has been fixed in the latest KDE release), difficulty installing things (although rpm's are not really that hard once you figure it out), and difficulty upgrading (there is no equivalent of windows update, although one could upgrade to a later distribution release). Also, Mozilla seems not to have default support for plugins (although Netscape 6.1 does include this support). Another significant problem is Windows/Linux compatibility issues. How do you dual boot? How do you share files? How do you set up samba permissions?
Another basic problems has to do with the difficulty of setting up users and LDAP support. These things are not insurmountable. Basically, if a sys admin were to set up Linux and the network connections before handing it over to the user, I could teach any user to be productive in Linux in 2 hours or less. Guess what, guys? The same is true for Windows desktops as well.
Robert Nagle, Austin Texas idiotprogrammer
I have been using star office and openoffice pretty intensively over the past few weeks. Here are some things I have found:
1. star/open have lousy support for hyperlinks. It's hard to use, confusing and often produces errors (such as attaching "http://" before relative url's.
2. Starwriter has a pretty sophisticated stylist, and a good GUI for figuring out the hierarchy of styles. However, applying styles is not always easy, and often two different styles conflict with one another, causing bad results.
3. Using starwriter as a wysiwig html editor is a real disappointment. You can't add css easily, and often the styles in the stylist don't appear in the code as a style (a la css) but rather as a inline style (with font tags and things like that). If you add custom css in html source, when you change to wysiwig mode, it demolishes the code additions.
4. 5.2 crashes an awful lot, especially in Windows.
5. People who use Star/Open to create documents are forced into using styles rather than doing direct formatting (which is good).
6. The filters (MS Office, etc) work perfectly. Easiest thing to do is to save all documents in rtf format.
7. Open Office in Linux lacks a lot of proprietary filters and spell checkers and fonts. Apparently the plan is for staroffice to incorporate them, but openoffice never to include them.
8. I've been coming to the conclusion that for simple web page editing and creating, the Mozilla composer editor is a much better alternative. Except for the fact that Mozilla doesn't provide any ability to work with css stylesheets, its 4 different views and its ability to display css styles and make simple tables make it a clear pick for simple web pages.
9. Star/Open haven't had good readymade web templates.
I am a real fan of star office and open office. But these days, I find that I'm making more web pages than word processed documents. So why is openoffice focused on the traditional word processor functions?
I take exception to the aspersions cast on the Amazon critic community.
1. Professional book reviewers make trivial amounts of money. (I know I did it for a while).
2. Advancement in the field of professional book criticism depended on the ability to turn out mediocre revews on a regular basis. A professional critic (whose reviews I think are top rate) has confessed to me not even having read the book all the way through most of the time.
3. Newspapers and journals costs money to print. Therefore, they can only accept a finite number of reviews.
4. With Amazon, there is no money involved, simply a desire to inform and to enthuse over things. Sure, some of the reviews are trivial, but the majority are helpful and very insightful.
5. The best critics are writing for Amazon. Unlike the New York Review of Books or the NYTBR, Amazon has a pretty karma system in place to give more prominent to respected reviewers.
Say whatever you will about Amazon's control of one-click patenting, (I hate it), they still have the best source of book criticism anywhere in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
I worry about how readily people throw away email, photos and stuff like that. Most of my literary friends think nothing of erasing email; of course, some email is just mundane, akin to laundry lists. There really exists no easy and quick to backup things.
The concerns you speak about suggest a IT niche for people who do document and file conversion. It could be a big market. My concern is with proprietary formats such as MS Word. On the other hand, I have been pleasantly surprised about how later versions of word processors seem able to open almost archaic file formats. When our data resides in virtual places, it will become easier to use third party tools to convert data.
There is something gratifying about holding an old photograph or letter in one's hands. We are humans. We like to touch and to hold. Old fashioned cameras and pen and paper give us this feeling of control over the creative process. Perhaps, as Walter Benjamin wrote, it is good for art like this to lose its magical aura. But at least with physical objects, one is more likely to view them on different occasions. On the other hand, people rarely reread emails (I'm not saying this is a good thing, merely describing behavior).
As a former Dell employee, I can say I really sympathize with this comment. However, I wouldn't attribute it to any anti-Linux conspiracy or even the need to sell newer hardware. I think the reason has to do with Microsoft PC's having a higher profit margin than Linux PC's. There's really no real markup for Linux, and so there's no incentive for Dell to aggressively sell Linux boxes (except as standalone servers as part of a bigger package).
It's hard for manufacturers to add value to PC's with Linux on it. Getting rights to install star/open office on a dell linux box doesn't increase dell's profitability; selling office xp, on the other hand, does accomplish this.
I suspect that solutions providers (aka IBM) might be more inclined to recommend Linux boxes than Windows. But that doesn't show up in desktop sales.
This piece made some interesting points about linux losing the desktop. It is certainly true that Outlook/Exchange Servers are awesome (though buggy and insecure) business applications, and the Linux world has no real equivalent. But the latest Star Office is adequate for most simple to intermediate documents. (The comment about Linux office apps not having a good spellchecker is not true for the latest Star Office. And besides, even if it were true, Spellcheck is hardly an important feature in the office environment---it never has been a particularly efficient way to correct mistakes). Linux now has many free components: a first class browser (Mozilla), an almost first class office app (Star Office), several decent mail programs, adobe acrobat, a free almost firstclass cdburn program, a first class windows interface (KDE), an almost first class graphics program (gimp), real player, several instant messenger programs (kyahoo, jabber), fairly good hardware detection (finally), a firstclass documentation project (which admittedly is not tightly integrated into linux--one needs to use search engines (my favorite link is Linux How-to Index .
The main weaknesses, as I see it are 1)poor font support (which I've been told has been fixed in the latest KDE release), difficulty installing things (although rpm's are not really that hard once you figure it out), and difficulty upgrading (there is no equivalent of windows update, although one could upgrade to a later distribution release). Also, Mozilla seems not to have default support for plugins (although Netscape 6.1 does include this support). Another significant problem is Windows/Linux compatibility issues. How do you dual boot? How do you share files? How do you set up samba permissions? Another basic problems has to do with the difficulty of setting up users and LDAP support. These things are not insurmountable. Basically, if a sys admin were to set up Linux and the network connections before handing it over to the user, I could teach any user to be productive in Linux in 2 hours or less. Guess what, guys? The same is true for Windows desktops as well. Robert Nagle, Austin Texas idiotprogrammer
I have been using star office and openoffice pretty intensively over the past few weeks. Here are some things I have found:
1. star/open have lousy support for hyperlinks. It's hard to use, confusing and often produces errors (such as attaching "http://" before relative url's.
2. Starwriter has a pretty sophisticated stylist, and a good GUI for figuring out the hierarchy of styles. However, applying styles is not always easy, and often two different styles conflict with one another, causing bad results.
3. Using starwriter as a wysiwig html editor is a real disappointment. You can't add css easily, and often the styles in the stylist don't appear in the code as a style (a la css) but rather as a inline style (with font tags and things like that). If you add custom css in html source, when you change to wysiwig mode, it demolishes the code additions.
4. 5.2 crashes an awful lot, especially in Windows.
5. People who use Star/Open to create documents are forced into using styles rather than doing direct formatting (which is good).
6. The filters (MS Office, etc) work perfectly. Easiest thing to do is to save all documents in rtf format.
7. Open Office in Linux lacks a lot of proprietary filters and spell checkers and fonts. Apparently the plan is for staroffice to incorporate them, but openoffice never to include them.
8. I've been coming to the conclusion that for simple web page editing and creating, the Mozilla composer editor is a much better alternative. Except for the fact that Mozilla doesn't provide any ability to work with css stylesheets, its 4 different views and its ability to display css styles and make simple tables make it a clear pick for simple web pages.
9. Star/Open haven't had good readymade web templates.
I am a real fan of star office and open office. But these days, I find that I'm making more web pages than word processed documents. So why is openoffice focused on the traditional word processor functions?
I take exception to the aspersions cast on the Amazon critic community. 1. Professional book reviewers make trivial amounts of money. (I know I did it for a while). 2. Advancement in the field of professional book criticism depended on the ability to turn out mediocre revews on a regular basis. A professional critic (whose reviews I think are top rate) has confessed to me not even having read the book all the way through most of the time. 3. Newspapers and journals costs money to print. Therefore, they can only accept a finite number of reviews. 4. With Amazon, there is no money involved, simply a desire to inform and to enthuse over things. Sure, some of the reviews are trivial, but the majority are helpful and very insightful. 5. The best critics are writing for Amazon. Unlike the New York Review of Books or the NYTBR, Amazon has a pretty karma system in place to give more prominent to respected reviewers. Say whatever you will about Amazon's control of one-click patenting, (I hate it), they still have the best source of book criticism anywhere in the world.