Microsoft need fear no "Office Alternative". If LibreOffice couldn't kill the inferior and more expensive Microsoft Office, after OpenOffice couldn't do it, after StarOffice and Word Perfect and LotusNotes or whatever Lotus' foray into a word processor was called, and KOffice, and on and on all the way back past Enable O/A, WordStar, and Format ][ couldn't stop the M$ Office juggernaut, how is an app for a stinking PAD going to do it? No one in his right mind would try to use a touchscreen to do any real typing. I want to hear of someone writing a 500+ page novel entirely on a stinking PAD, then editing it, etc.
Except those had to compete with MS Office, so they never gain market share.
On the iPad, on the other hand, people are forced to look for alternatives if they want to read office docs, instead of falling back to what they know. And that can be dangerous if they find that those same companies have desktop versions which are Good Enough and much cheaper.
People will continue to use laptops/desktops to create office docs, no doubt. But many will also use tablets to view/read documents.
Right now, plenty of people have the idea that you need Microsoft Office to work with documents. But as they look for alternatives for the tablets, they may find out that the same company produces a desktop version that while it isn't as feature full as MSOffice, it's much cheaper.
The author is saying the MS should create Office for every relevant platform in order to prevent people from searching for alternatives.
The fact that you were compelled to find and install (and pay for?) an Office alternative is exactly what the author is saying: it destroys the idea that many people have that you need Microsoft Office(tm) to do real work (Yes, reading documents counts as real work).
If you find OnLive's performance acceptable and they release a desktop version for much less than Office, maybe you won't buy Office for your next desktop either.
And unless your city is really a small town, it probably has thousands of intersections with traffic lights.
No, it doesn't. It's a city of 50k inhabitants. Not only it doesn't have anywhere near that number of intersections, many of them are only 3-way and don't have traffic lights.
Roundabouts are extremely common here in Portugal. One of our cities has alone 35 of them. I doubt there are many places where you can drive 20km without going through one.
(Silly question, but I'm no Windows admin -- isn't there an equivalent of the "noexec" mount option, to prevent any binaries within certain subtree of the filesystem from being executed?)
Yes. I don't know exactly how it's done, but I know it can be done, since the public computers on my university prevent it.
If you're ticked off against Chrome, then I hope you don't find out about PortableApps. Oh, oops.
Rule #3 of IT that should never be broken: Never, ever, ever, EVER give a regular user administrative rights on their machine. Ever. Chrome breaks this rule with a wrecking ball.
Chrome isn't able to give anyone any rights. It uses the rights the user already has. Maybe you should look at the people you configured that machine (maybe a mirror would be helpful?).
It's bad enough that as an admin I am constantly harassed by Windows 7, "Do you want to allow...?" Yes, I'm a fucking admin, just install the damn thing!
If you can't find out how to disable the UAC, you're in the wrong job.
But on a locked down machine, nothing should be able to be installed without the admins knowing about it.
No. "Installed" is just a detail and means nothing. On a locked down machine, nothing should be to run from user-writable directories. Clearly your machine was locked down by incompetents; you can be sure that in my university, Chrome wouldn't be able to "install" itself, since no code at all would be allowed to run.
Then it's just a patent, the licensing of an invention.
No, it's not. A contract applies to whoever signed it. A patent applies to everyone.
Well no, you have to find out where that leak came from, it could be from anywhere, then you have to prove it, and even then the best you've got is a breach of contract suit. The inventor is not protected, it's big business that gets all the advantage.
Even if you don't find the leak, the company is still bound by contract and therefore can't produce the invention. So why would they leak again?
Or at least they wouldn't be getting divorced this early. Had they not shared email or cell bills, someone might have gotten away with what ever they were up to for quite a bit longer.
There are other reasons for a divorce besides betrayal of trust, you know?
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's not. Small is relative. Our fifth largest city has less than four times that.
Chrome is being just as stupid as the W3C could implement something differently than Chrome making IE and FF render the site differently.
W3C? Try the WHATWG. They've been leading the spec design for a couple years now.
And for a web-app you need to be compatible to the browser, which comes from, guess who, Google.
Most web apps are written in this language called "JavaScript"; you might have heard of it, it's standardized by an organization called W3C.
One is open technology, the other is an effort at establishing closed technology under the control of a single provider.
Are you talking about Dart? Yeah, it's so closed it has its own repository with its source under the BSD license. Oh, wait...
but all this stuff looks very much like the anti-competitive evil Microsoft is so famous for.
Yeah, I'm sure you'll be able to point where has MS shared the source of ActiveX and similar technologies under a free software license. I'll wait.
I'm not sure if it's necessary or not, but in this particular case, it's a Tetris game, not a remote controller for sharks with freakin' lasers.
Nitpick: It's not an EULA, just a copyright license.
EULA means End-User license agreement, while this license doesn't apply to end users, just to people re-distributing the software.
It doesn't have to be approved to be considered open source by the OSI, just comply with the definition.
It's on the FSF licenses list, though.
Despite the similar name, they're not the same. Mono supports Visual Basic .NET, which is a language both syntactically and semantically different.
That are now pirated-software free
How so, if they contain Windows?
Right, sorry.
Microsoft need fear no "Office Alternative". If LibreOffice couldn't kill the inferior and more expensive Microsoft Office, after OpenOffice couldn't do it, after StarOffice and Word Perfect and LotusNotes or whatever Lotus' foray into a word processor was called, and KOffice, and on and on all the way back past Enable O/A, WordStar, and Format ][ couldn't stop the M$ Office juggernaut, how is an app for a stinking PAD going to do it? No one in his right mind would try to use a touchscreen to do any real typing. I want to hear of someone writing a 500+ page novel entirely on a stinking PAD, then editing it, etc.
Except those had to compete with MS Office, so they never gain market share.
On the iPad, on the other hand, people are forced to look for alternatives if they want to read office docs, instead of falling back to what they know. And that can be dangerous if they find that those same companies have desktop versions which are Good Enough and much cheaper.
Missing the point, you are.
People will continue to use laptops/desktops to create office docs, no doubt. But many will also use tablets to view/read documents.
Right now, plenty of people have the idea that you need Microsoft Office to work with documents. But as they look for alternatives for the tablets, they may find out that the same company produces a desktop version that while it isn't as feature full as MSOffice, it's much cheaper.
The author is saying the MS should create Office for every relevant platform in order to prevent people from searching for alternatives.
So many people here seem to be missing the point.
The fact that you were compelled to find and install (and pay for?) an Office alternative is exactly what the author is saying: it destroys the idea that many people have that you need Microsoft Office(tm) to do real work (Yes, reading documents counts as real work).
If you find OnLive's performance acceptable and they release a desktop version for much less than Office, maybe you won't buy Office for your next desktop either.
It's all about having mindshare.
And unless your city is really a small town, it probably has thousands of intersections with traffic lights.
No, it doesn't. It's a city of 50k inhabitants. Not only it doesn't have anywhere near that number of intersections, many of them are only 3-way and don't have traffic lights.
Here, have the aerial view (the circles are roundabouts): http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GC1M396
So why claim that roundabouts are "extremely common" when your own experience is that they aren't?
Why claim to know stuff when you have absolutely no fucking idea of what you're talking about? Roundabouts *are* extremely common where I live.
Roundabouts are extremely common here in Portugal. One of our cities has alone 35 of them. I doubt there are many places where you can drive 20km without going through one.
It's now at +5. Your argument is invalid.
So not everyone is fired, just the majority of workers. That's much better.
(Silly question, but I'm no Windows admin -- isn't there an equivalent of the "noexec" mount option, to prevent any binaries within certain subtree of the filesystem from being executed?)
Yes. I don't know exactly how it's done, but I know it can be done, since the public computers on my university prevent it.
Google tells me it's called a Software Restriction Policy.
If you're ticked off against Chrome, then I hope you don't find out about PortableApps. Oh, oops.
Rule #3 of IT that should never be broken: Never, ever, ever, EVER give a regular user administrative rights on their machine. Ever. Chrome breaks this rule with a wrecking ball.
Chrome isn't able to give anyone any rights. It uses the rights the user already has. Maybe you should look at the people you configured that machine (maybe a mirror would be helpful?).
It's bad enough that as an admin I am constantly harassed by Windows 7, "Do you want to allow...?" Yes, I'm a fucking admin, just install the damn thing!
If you can't find out how to disable the UAC, you're in the wrong job.
But on a locked down machine, nothing should be able to be installed without the admins knowing about it.
No. "Installed" is just a detail and means nothing. On a locked down machine, nothing should be to run from user-writable directories. Clearly your machine was locked down by incompetents; you can be sure that in my university, Chrome wouldn't be able to "install" itself, since no code at all would be allowed to run.
If it was properly locked down, the Chrome installer wouldn't be able to run at all. And if it able to run, then it doesn't need an exploit.
The last item can't be solved. It's impossible to prove the engineer didn't look at the patent when he was developing a similar solution.
Worse for some inventors. Better for all the other getting sued by patent trolls, obvious patents, independent inventions, etc.
"Yeah, great idea" and "you'd have to be a monumental idiot" are not arguments.
Then it's just a patent, the licensing of an invention.
No, it's not. A contract applies to whoever signed it. A patent applies to everyone.
Well no, you have to find out where that leak came from, it could be from anywhere, then you have to prove it, and even then the best you've got is a breach of contract suit. The inventor is not protected, it's big business that gets all the advantage.
Even if you don't find the leak, the company is still bound by contract and therefore can't produce the invention. So why would they leak again?
Or at least they wouldn't be getting divorced this early. Had they not shared email or cell bills, someone might have gotten away with what ever they were up to for quite a bit longer.
There are other reasons for a divorce besides betrayal of trust, you know?