No offense, but to hear someone calling themselves snorklewacker complain about the name chungles made me laugh. After all, could you imagine introducing your boss to someone called snorklewacker? Or, mentioning to your boss that someone online named snorklewacker helped you fix a problem?
Agreed, mhesseltine, except...you haven't considered Google.
1) He says barriers to entry of startups is low. Wrong. Barriers to entry of web services is low; most other startups still require huge infusions of capital, e.g. anybody that wants to do actual manufacturing or sell actual hardware. Are web based startups different from hardware manufacturing startups? Absolutely.
Rent for floor space when you have little choice over location and come back to me.
Add to that having to own a manufacturing facility is costly in both time and effort. Once you own it, it isn't your's -- you're it's!
Sub contracting to another company is a cheap way to start and both you and the contracting company benifit. If things work out, you buy them or simply keep working with them...if not, you get another sub contractor. Even Microsoft doesn't press/burn all of it's own CDs and DVDs.
3) Why should bigger companies buy startups when they can just partner with them or outsource company services to them?
Because most larger companies are stuck in a routine. Try and change a single person's habbits and you will realize how difficult dealing with groups can be.
Repeat after me: 'Institutions exist to perpetuate themselves'. Get any group of people together for long enough, and the goals of the group will drift toward keeping the group itself intact.
4) Yeah, starting a web based startup doesn't cost significantly more than just being a slacker. But if you haven't noticed, 99% of us can't afford to just set around and be a slacker either! SOMEBODY has got to be paying your food and rent. Apparently Mr. Graham thinks most students graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in the bank and can afford to not have any income for several years. I've got about $130,000 in student loans that say otherwise...
So, what you're saying is that you'll work to pay off existing debt? Great. You won't be thinking about what I'll end up paying you as long as I can keep you busy. (No, I'm not like that though you can bet that nearly every other boss (or your boss' boss) is.)
For anything which requires reading more than a single page of text at a time, absorbing it, and using it to build the next page of text on, the printed text is far superior.
While there are clear advantages to using reference materials on computers, the choice of using paper materials for reading longer texts comes from the habit(!) of having done so in the past.
I used to agree with you and did prefer printed materials -- even considering it 'more natural'. I don't anymore, even for long hours-on-end studying or fiction -- let alone brief reviews of reference materials. Printed text isn't natural -- it's man made just like the display you're looking at.
My change in opinion came when the resolution went to about 1024x768 for me.
"For many people, the mind can often search, cross-reference, and make sense of data in hard copy MUCH faster than cumbersome electronic documentation."
I used to be that way. It's a trained habit. You get over it. Electronic only suffers if you want to read it in your bathtub or when on the couch...not an issue for technical docs.
Re:Why paper? Because it won't kill my eyes
on
Printing (Big) Manuals?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Here's a good reason: reading stuff on paper is easier on my eyes.
I used to agree...now, I've entirely adjusted. The last time I had eye strain was back when displays were below 1024x768.
"It's a psychology issue. Maybe in another generation or so this won't be as much of a problem but human beings are trained to index things, in their minds, in book form. That book form has a TOC, an index, chapters, and pages which are physically turned."
I used to love hard bound books. Now, I can't stand paper in just about any form. If paper forms of written texts were about as practical as electronic forms, I would likely prefer paper. They aren't except in very narrow cases. For example;
Dictionary
Thesaurus
Magazines
Encyclopedia
...and just about any other reference text are useless because they aren't easily searchable or discoverable as electronic versions -- and the results aren't as up-to-date or as rich. There are exceptions, true, though those are becoming more rare as time goes on.
I wasn't saying what Microsoft would designate to be a BSOD or an RSOD. Who knows what rules if any they follow. The standard definitions outside of the Redmond Distortion Field are well known, though, so I stated what 'really bad' basically means to anyone who takes problem categorization seriously (aka "Severity levels").
If this were a contract, the definitions would be a bit more complete and legally binding.:p
Well, if they follow IEEE, US Military, SEI CMM, and other related standards 'really bad' is a 'critical'/'show stopper' roughly defined as 'System can not perform a necessary function or data loss occurs'. One step below that is 'high' meaning basically 'problem can be avoided, though it's a PITA'.
Critical errors can be categorized from 'system or application crashes before it can be used completely but no data loss occurs' (bad) to 'system silently corrupts data' (nasty).
If you want better definitions, check the specs for any of the above and look for a rating system called "Severity levels". (Note: not the same as priority levels.) Typically there are 4 levels of severity.
Like many agnostics and atheists I dislike all religion.
I don't like or hate religion. That would require some emotional involvement. Instead, I look at the supernatural/superstitious parts the same way an anthropologist would. That it stuns me that others from my own society think that these are real is bizarre to me -- though people have other strange thoughts, so I let those slide.
Religious teachings and morals are often useful and wise from the context that they were created. In some cases, the religious view is strange since it does not address modern society and issues.
(Like any good advertisement, highly religious people will promote the 'timelessness' and 'universality' of what they promote, and will scoff at 'relativism'...while practicing it themselves. Promote what isn't true in the hope that it might become reality...while privately wishing that it won't happen -- or won't be so strictly enforced on them.)
What angers me is when the literalists want to impose the literal beliefs on others without those beliefs. I wouldn't be surprised if 1/2 of the figureheads of those movements didn't actually think the literal words were true but were an expedient way to gain power.
Why not treat opensource the same way too. Most opensource projects have similar rules like closed source vendors.
It information cuts both ways, it protects those who know how to secure, and sacrifices those who do not know how to secure.
Can you give an example? I can't think of one OSS project that handles security issues like Microsoft -- either in the past or if there is any meat to this new proposal.
And someone do something about the Gimp at the same time please!;D
Sure! (OK, it's not The Gimp with a different name, but it's a damn nice fork with some high end features.)
Re:I truly wished they have given a different name
on
KDE Switches to Subversion
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· Score: 2, Insightful
My managers simply refuse to use anything proposed by us, the development team, and named subversion.
You think that's hard...try and get sign off on something called Double Choco Latte!
My manager at the time had this comment; "It's a great program, and exactly what we need, though I can't tell anyone about it here -- they'd laugh in my face! I'm just not going to do it!" In order to 'sell' it to other groups, we renamed it to "DCL" and swapped out the default logo. Nobody laughed, though we weren't complete enough and someone noticed a reference to "Double Choco Latte" and the begining support simply evaporated.
Abiword does have import/export support for OpenOffice files, but it is currently rather poor.
Yep. A known issue.
Abiword does have a native format -.abw files.
True, though one of the developers made it a point that changing the default to something else is encouraged and that, for all intents and purposes, the native format was not promoted as something special...and OpenDocument isn't either (thus part of the reason why OpenDocument isn't well supported).
They also have extremely good support for RTF files (far better than OpenOffice.org does), but.abw is the only format they really guarantee will work perfectly.
There are multiple problems with RTF that make it problematic for moderately complex documents and in some cases even simple ones. Frames, for example tend to cause conversion problems (though I avoid frames if possible for all document types). Even converting to/from RTF and Microsoft's own Word and Wordpad/Write can lead to strange problems. For these reasons, I stay away from RTF and only use it if I know it is acceptable in for a specific set of circumstances.
"Right now OO has a 600 page document to explain their "open" format. Yeah, that's open. Open like CORBA and like SGML. Open, but a huge chunk of time to learn when there are other perfectly good ways to do it that don't take all of your time."
Only 600 pages? (checks...680+, 28 for the table of contents alone plus executive overviews here and there) Still, at 680 pages, that's not bad! After all, OpenDocument covers word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and graphics and all the elements in those formats including forms, dates, curved graphical elements, text flow -- both as raw data structures and printable output.
If you've ever worked on specifications before -- including raw specs that are not project/product specific -- you know that even to tell somone how scratch thier ass takes a good 15 pages. 15 pages if you skip defining what a hand is, what fingers are, and which specific person(s) are responsible for ass scratching and what the job titles are. Double the number of pages if it's in any way government related.
No one licence -- BSD, GPL, other oss, or any of the closed source licences -- are always ideal. Anyone who thinks there is one true licence isn't very smart. Advocate what is appropriate.
The content comes out fine, but when you save an OpenOffice document in.doc format then open it in Word, the formatting often doesn't come out exactly the same. OOo2 is better but still far from perfect.
I've found that if the document is created in OpenOffice.org, exporting it to Word works well.
Taking an existing Word file, saving it as OpenDocument, and exporting it back out as Word is where problems occur.
.rtf is a fairly limited but widely supported format. And, do you really need to put that animation in your resume?
RTF is a non-standard standard; documents tend to get mangled in meaningful ways if passed along as an RTF. I've been bitten by this a few times (doing just as you suggest) and won't do it again.
If anyone does this, treat the original document like an ASCII text file and only when absolutely necessary add any kind of polish that isn't supported by ASCII. Test the results in a few different RTF aware apps to be certian.
"Nowadays I just store information in Wiki's. A directory tree with documents is an outdated structure for storing (shared) knowledge. Because of Wiki's associative nature you can create multiple views of your information, and you can collaborate to very high degree.
BTW: The only formatting that is really relevant are headers, bullets, and simple tables."
EXACTLY! Mods: Please moderate the parent post up (but not this post).
Paper focused documents are next to useless. I can't count the number of times this week I've been personally frustrated by them.
Dealing with contract issues as I've been dragged into typically means many hours looking at outdated old revisions and searching for 'missing' documents and bits of faxes(!?!?!) and emailed memos. A Wiki usually means that you have version control and for those who need it the whole mess can be exported though that is highly discouraged.
It is crucial that as many non-MS Office suites as possible adopt this format natively and by default if it is to become a serious competitor. There is absolutely no advantage for the underdogs to each use their own format.
I agree...though only two will for sure; Koffice and OpenOffice.org.
Abiword has an export/import support, though 'does not have a single native format'. Gnumeric doesn't currently support it, and I found no reference in the mailing list since 2003 about OASIS.
Let's hope that this turns around since the only alternative is to use Word and Excel as the main formats and convert to/from the others using that.
I agree in general with the other responses. To add to them, OpenDocument has a few main benifits;
Archival integrity; the format is public and well documented so documents created or saved in it can be reviewed and edited indefinately w/o having to worry about product shelf life.
Rosetta stone-like document format translation; if a document in one format can be convereted to OpenDocument, it can be converted from OpenDocument to yet another format. The filters are getting better for OpenOffice.org, though OpenDocument specifically provides a solid defined standard that reduces the conversion headaches.
Highly adaptable: XML through and through means that an OpenDocument file can be created with any variety of tools or template systems. You could use a small shell script to make a report, for example. From there...we're back to the rosetta stone.
Slashdot Mirror
Worth a try...
Agreed, mhesseltine, except...you haven't considered Google.
Rent for floor space when you have little choice over location and come back to me.
Add to that having to own a manufacturing facility is costly in both time and effort. Once you own it, it isn't your's -- you're it's!
Sub contracting to another company is a cheap way to start and both you and the contracting company benifit. If things work out, you buy them or simply keep working with them...if not, you get another sub contractor. Even Microsoft doesn't press/burn all of it's own CDs and DVDs.
3) Why should bigger companies buy startups when they can just partner with them or outsource company services to them?
Because most larger companies are stuck in a routine. Try and change a single person's habbits and you will realize how difficult dealing with groups can be.
Repeat after me: 'Institutions exist to perpetuate themselves'. Get any group of people together for long enough, and the goals of the group will drift toward keeping the group itself intact.
4) Yeah, starting a web based startup doesn't cost significantly more than just being a slacker. But if you haven't noticed, 99% of us can't afford to just set around and be a slacker either! SOMEBODY has got to be paying your food and rent. Apparently Mr. Graham thinks most students graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in the bank and can afford to not have any income for several years. I've got about $130,000 in student loans that say otherwise...
So, what you're saying is that you'll work to pay off existing debt? Great. You won't be thinking about what I'll end up paying you as long as I can keep you busy. (No, I'm not like that though you can bet that nearly every other boss (or your boss' boss) is.)
While there are clear advantages to using reference materials on computers, the choice of using paper materials for reading longer texts comes from the habit(!) of having done so in the past.
I used to agree with you and did prefer printed materials -- even considering it 'more natural'. I don't anymore, even for long hours-on-end studying or fiction -- let alone brief reviews of reference materials. Printed text isn't natural -- it's man made just like the display you're looking at.
My change in opinion came when the resolution went to about 1024x768 for me.
I used to be that way. It's a trained habit. You get over it. Electronic only suffers if you want to read it in your bathtub or when on the couch...not an issue for technical docs.
I used to agree...now, I've entirely adjusted. The last time I had eye strain was back when displays were below 1024x768.
I used to love hard bound books. Now, I can't stand paper in just about any form. If paper forms of written texts were about as practical as electronic forms, I would likely prefer paper. They aren't except in very narrow cases. For example;
...and just about any other reference text are useless because they aren't easily searchable or discoverable as electronic versions -- and the results aren't as up-to-date or as rich. There are exceptions, true, though those are becoming more rare as time goes on.
If this were a contract, the definitions would be a bit more complete and legally binding. :p
Well, if they follow IEEE, US Military, SEI CMM, and other related standards 'really bad' is a 'critical'/'show stopper' roughly defined as 'System can not perform a necessary function or data loss occurs'. One step below that is 'high' meaning basically 'problem can be avoided, though it's a PITA'.
Critical errors can be categorized from 'system or application crashes before it can be used completely but no data loss occurs' (bad) to 'system silently corrupts data' (nasty).
If you want better definitions, check the specs for any of the above and look for a rating system called "Severity levels". (Note: not the same as priority levels.) Typically there are 4 levels of severity.
I don't like or hate religion. That would require some emotional involvement. Instead, I look at the supernatural/superstitious parts the same way an anthropologist would. That it stuns me that others from my own society think that these are real is bizarre to me -- though people have other strange thoughts, so I let those slide.
Religious teachings and morals are often useful and wise from the context that they were created. In some cases, the religious view is strange since it does not address modern society and issues.
(Like any good advertisement, highly religious people will promote the 'timelessness' and 'universality' of what they promote, and will scoff at 'relativism'...while practicing it themselves. Promote what isn't true in the hope that it might become reality...while privately wishing that it won't happen -- or won't be so strictly enforced on them.)
What angers me is when the literalists want to impose the literal beliefs on others without those beliefs. I wouldn't be surprised if 1/2 of the figureheads of those movements didn't actually think the literal words were true but were an expedient way to gain power.
Mobile is the best of the lot. The other two don't have the same impact.
Can you give an example? I can't think of one OSS project that handles security issues like Microsoft -- either in the past or if there is any meat to this new proposal.
A good sys admin -- properly appreciated by management $$$ -- would or at a minimum lock the systems down so that this isn't an issue.
Sure! (OK, it's not The Gimp with a different name, but it's a damn nice fork with some high end features.)
You think that's hard...try and get sign off on something called Double Choco Latte!
My manager at the time had this comment; "It's a great program, and exactly what we need, though I can't tell anyone about it here -- they'd laugh in my face! I'm just not going to do it!" In order to 'sell' it to other groups, we renamed it to "DCL" and swapped out the default logo. Nobody laughed, though we weren't complete enough and someone noticed a reference to "Double Choco Latte" and the begining support simply evaporated.
Yep. A known issue.
Abiword does have a native format - .abw files.
True, though one of the developers made it a point that changing the default to something else is encouraged and that, for all intents and purposes, the native format was not promoted as something special...and OpenDocument isn't either (thus part of the reason why OpenDocument isn't well supported).
They also have extremely good support for RTF files (far better than OpenOffice.org does), but .abw is the only format they really guarantee will work perfectly.
There are multiple problems with RTF that make it problematic for moderately complex documents and in some cases even simple ones. Frames, for example tend to cause conversion problems (though I avoid frames if possible for all document types). Even converting to/from RTF and Microsoft's own Word and Wordpad/Write can lead to strange problems. For these reasons, I stay away from RTF and only use it if I know it is acceptable in for a specific set of circumstances.
Only 600 pages? (checks...680+, 28 for the table of contents alone plus executive overviews here and there) Still, at 680 pages, that's not bad! After all, OpenDocument covers word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and graphics and all the elements in those formats including forms, dates, curved graphical elements, text flow -- both as raw data structures and printable output.
If you've ever worked on specifications before -- including raw specs that are not project/product specific -- you know that even to tell somone how scratch thier ass takes a good 15 pages. 15 pages if you skip defining what a hand is, what fingers are, and which specific person(s) are responsible for ass scratching and what the job titles are. Double the number of pages if it's in any way government related.
No one licence -- BSD, GPL, other oss, or any of the closed source licences -- are always ideal. Anyone who thinks there is one true licence isn't very smart. Advocate what is appropriate.
That's good, though it means that not all programs will show your HTML document as you intend.
I've found that if the document is created in OpenOffice.org, exporting it to Word works well.
Taking an existing Word file, saving it as OpenDocument, and exporting it back out as Word is where problems occur.
RTF is a non-standard standard; documents tend to get mangled in meaningful ways if passed along as an RTF. I've been bitten by this a few times (doing just as you suggest) and won't do it again.
If anyone does this, treat the original document like an ASCII text file and only when absolutely necessary add any kind of polish that isn't supported by ASCII. Test the results in a few different RTF aware apps to be certian.
BTW: The only formatting that is really relevant are headers, bullets, and simple tables."
EXACTLY! Mods: Please moderate the parent post up (but not this post).
Paper focused documents are next to useless. I can't count the number of times this week I've been personally frustrated by them.
Dealing with contract issues as I've been dragged into typically means many hours looking at outdated old revisions and searching for 'missing' documents and bits of faxes(!?!?!) and emailed memos. A Wiki usually means that you have version control and for those who need it the whole mess can be exported though that is highly discouraged.
I agree...though only two will for sure; Koffice and OpenOffice.org.
Abiword has an export/import support, though 'does not have a single native format'. Gnumeric doesn't currently support it, and I found no reference in the mailing list since 2003 about OASIS.
Let's hope that this turns around since the only alternative is to use Word and Excel as the main formats and convert to/from the others using that.
You have to mangle quite a bit to come to that conclusion.