>Microsoft is charging like $20 for the Windows 8 upgrade.
That's because they want to move as many people onto Windows Marketplace as soon as they can. They've seen Apple lock folks in and want some of that action. This is pretty clearly a 'loss leader' move my Microsoft - and most people don't know and don't care about it - suckers.
It was obvious this was coming (I periodically check MS' quarterly financials). Microsoft need money, fast. They have to find a way to move the happy users off WinXP and get more revenue.
Mate, I hear you - ditching old operating systems and software is always easier for developers. In the ideal world we'd only have to support the latest and greatest stuff. However, Microsoft overcharges for the O/S (meaning the price is high and set arbitrarily without regard to any market forces) and people expect support until 2014.
> It's much easier to just take, say, D2D and DWrite, and get all the usual 2D primitives with all bells and whistles (like gradients) for free.
Actually, it is easier to take Java and have Oracle (and Apple, for a little while longer) and the Open Source Hordes do the QA of that - and then your stuff is hardware accelerated without you (as an application developer) having to lift a finger. Even if the O/S changes, or the driver model changes then your source still doesn't change. Proper abstraction was something Microsoft never got (eg. I remember them years ago contorting aspects of their system so that they'd get a 5% speed improvement on a 386 but it was an abomination that hampered their later versions of Windows - designing like this is madness, yet publicly they seem to prize such backward short-term thinking as kinda 'heroic').
> It depends on how much you're willing to do yourself.
Well, Microsoft has never felt compelled to use the public APIs when squeezing performance out of their core products. Office is a big enough product that whatever needed to be done would be done. I think again that you are making the assumption that the reason for not doing this is technical. There are a lot of non-technical reasons they could have used in the decision - moving people of WinXP is one of them - it is not technically necessary but it suits their purposes.
Of course ant fellow shader writer knows that anti-aliasing is a very straightforward operation to implement, and DirectX 9 shaders are more than adequate for the task. Sun was able to do this for all operations in Java2D for three platforms and two graphics APIs (OpenGL and DirectX) despite not making the 70 billion a year that Microsoft does. Hell, in the OpenGL fixed-function pipeline you can do supersamping with a single line of code, and the multitude of anti-aliasing shaders are not tricky. Note that other operating systems manage to do hardware anti-aliasing with no significant problem and have done so for very many years.
> Why 7 and not Vista is a better question.
Vista does GDI in software is a possible reason, although I'd be surprised if the Office team are worried about that. Note that WinXP does GDI in hardware (as does Win7). This is still not a relevant *technical* reason to force the vast mass of WinXP users to buy a new operating system when they buy Office.
Yes, but Appple upgrades are $40 (of my local dollars) not $400. You see Microsoft has been obscenely gouging for a long time - since there is no significant competition in the market and they collude with OEMs to keep it that way. It is not unreasonable for users to expect that software that can be trivially be made to run on their existing operating system be made to do so, since they already effectively paid for a very long period of support when they bought the overpriced operating system (in most cases they had no choice, they couldn't buy a machine without it). Now for a car analogy, if you had a 10 year old car why should you change to a new car just becase there are newer models out - at least in the car industry there is standardization and competition to prevent what Microsoft are doing (kinda like changing the fuel used so you have to change car).
> Why would they release a new version of office that will only be supported for a year?
Because that is what people are using. The end of general support for WinXP does not mean products cannnot be made for it (or indeed that patches will no longer be made for it - you'll just have to pay to get specific things done).
Yes, but you don't need DirectX 11 to do the 2D operations do you? This was my point (countering the poster before me) - the tying of Office to newer versions of DirectX (and hence, newer versions of Windows) are not due to technical reasons but are instead due to Microsoft's own reasons (hence, twisting the arms of its customers and effectively shaking those customers down for more cash - which is not actually mandated by *technical* cosiderations).
That's the second time I've had to correct you in the last 24-hours. That's cool, but I'm a little surprised as I rate your knowledge higher than that. You might want to read the previous posts a little more clearly next time before you post.
Your analogy is incorrect. The correct analogy would be if your 'USB' device was no longer able to work on your machine because your software vendor decided not to support it anymore and supported only Thunderbolt. Now there is no technical reason for this change (since MS Offiice can have effects accelerated using a 2D accelerator and advanced 3D effects to DirectX11 level are completely unnecessary for office productivity type work) but the software vender was experiencing a bit of a cash crunch so they throught they'd drop support for your perfectly capable platform just cause they wanted to get you to cough up.
Bro, have you seen Microsoft's financials? Yes they are still very profitable but the 'growth' is looking dangerously like it will go backwards - and MS are completely unable to compete with Apple and Google in the important spaces those company cover. They need to ditch Vista support to get revenue quickly. Funny to think of Microsoft as needing cash quickly to make their financial statements look better but that is exactly what it looks like. Plus, they really, really want people to move to Windows 8 where Microsoft's marketplace can get some good lock-in on customers and developers.
You are speculating. GPGPU computing is not very well suited to spreadsheet computation since the overhead of moving data between the CPU and GPU is fairly expensive for spreadsheet type problems, and in-fact is very badly suited to the GPU since spreadsheet cells depend on other cells, and must be evaluated in order, which goes against the whole SIMD premise of most GPU shader programs.
Alpha-blending, gradients and fonts can all be hardware accelerated by 2D accelerated cards (for example, Java2D does this for all Java drawing since JVM 1.6.0 u10 years ago). These are not 3D operations. No, the reason Microsoft are doing this is to move people off XP when those folks don't actually need to for functionality. Please don't confuse 2D acceleration with 3D acceleration (it is ridiculous!).
Adobe make an entire suite of products (eg Acrobat et al) that are excellent for publishing. Word is slow an unreliable - at least that is my experience on my Mac with MS Office 2011. On that platform LibreOffice is much nicer to use [although lacking some of the nice default styles that Word has].
> (see the hardware acceleration on DX10 class hardware mentioned).
Nope, that is entirely a ploy by Microsoft to mov people off WinXP. There is no technical reason why you can't get DX11 effects on WinXP provided your video hardware supports it. How do I know this? well OpenGL will give you DX11 effects no matter what the operating system. But Microsoft had to find ways to move users clinging on to XP (and bring in more revenue even though users won't be doing much different with Win7 that they aren't doing with WinXP) and holding back newer versions of DirectX/Direct3D was one way of milking the cow. Unfortunately the vast bulk of Windows users don't know about that and have been played (again) by Microsoft (although, most won't care I suppose, but that is up to them - the point is that Microsoft gave them no choice for their own cashflow reasons, not technical ones as you allude to).
Once MS decided to abandon support for XP with newer DirectX versions I'm sure I gave them more technical flexibility in what they could do - but it was not technical limitations in XP that stop you having 'DirectX 11' style effects - like I said, OpenGL can do the same effects on Windows XP and many more operating systems - since OpenGL is no longer subject to the whims of any single company (unlike Microsoft and DirectX). Hence, I'm developing my modern jet combat simulator in OpenGL with GLSL shaders - just as the X-Plane developer famously did too: http://techhaze.com/2010/03/interview-with-x-plane-creator-austin-meyer/ read how chosing OpenGL over DirectX resulted in business opportunities that personally made him $US 3.5 million dollars in a few months when his OpenGL code was very easily ported to the iPad/iPhone unlike DirectX apps that are stuck on the Windows desktop [which is the whole reason Microsoft tricked developers into building workflows using DirectX, since MS knew this would make it hard for game developers to leave, which makes it hard for gamers to leave - it is all about the 'lock-in'].
Windows has an 84% *desktop* marketshare. Meanwhile servers, tablets, phones and embedded devices of all kinds run all sorts of operating systems (if they have one), that are mostly not Windows. It turns out that most of computing is actually not on the desktop (eg. servers running the Internet, telephony and corporate environments like banks etc). Of course, because it is invisible and mostly *just works*(TM) people don't know about it - they only know about Windows on their lil' desktop and how it is in their consciousness a lot since it requires so much effort to keep working properly.
> So, one way of dealing with this is to go the Apple App Store route.
An App Store doesn't prevent viruses and it doesn't improve the administration of computers. It is simpler computing interfaces that achieves this. Please don't confuse the two. Mac computers have a simpler interface and generally have much better virus resistance than Windows (sure, not perfect, but much much better). These Macs aren't as locked down as an iPad. You don't have to give away control of your computer to get better administrability (and reliability - which is actually why consumer-types like the iPads). This is my point - you don't have to have a straight-jacket (iPad) to get a better computing experience. You could have a more open device, with *proper security and a reliable design* and get the same benefits. So don't give away (or argue for giving away) your computing freedom for the wrong reasons.
Lol. The quote that the bottom of Slashdot is:
"This generation may be the one that will face Armageddon." -- Ronald Reagan, "People" magazine, December 26, 1985
Like I said, the hippies had a role in preventing nuclear calamity, but bringing the possible consequences. Just because it didn't come to pass doesn't mean it wouldn't have if they had not made a noise about it (in fact, if you read about Stanislav Petrov you'll see how there were events that made it come very close to happening - fortunately the noise the public made in forced nuclear forces to introduce much stricter safety measures than they otherwise they would have). You think that protestors had no effect because there was no thermonuclear war, yet it was the social pressure from such protesters that prompted the political leaders to see sense and conduct arms reduction measures (that is, the public wasn't so jingoistic trying to win wars, they were pressuring the politicians to avoid them).
You do realise that protesters serve a purpose, even if you do not agree with their views. Without the 60's folks protesting global thermonuclear war the general public would not have the potential devastation and long term effects brought to their attention - the military-industrial complex certainly would not tell the public what they knew about long-term fallout risks and that large scale nuclear war was essentially 'unwinnable' from a sane definition. [Note: I actually see a place for nuclear weapons in the World, but I do recognize the role that protesters play in counter-balancing the military]. Similarly, global corporations have their place but folks like Richard Stallman have their place in pointing out the actual and potential risks in giving these corps unbridled dominance. This is insightful of him, without him bugging us we would have far less debate on the ethics of software - software on which we have come to increasingly depend, and can expect to do moreso in the future. In fact, without people like him (whether you agree with his thesis or not) we would have a different, and much worse world now. eg. I'm not a fan of the hippies but the 'outlandish' claims they made in the 60's regarding the environment are now taken are sensible things to consider for a sustainable World. Without the hippies/Greens counterbalancing industrial interests there is every chance that Europe and the US would not have cleaned up their environmental acts (and remained as badly polluted as China is becoming today where counter-balancing views are not permitted). Similarly Galileo was a 'heretic' despite his analysis being correct. Stallman is no different, just because he is an 'uncool fuck' and is not orthodox does not mean his warnings are incorrect - increasingly they have been shown to be prophetic, almost everything he analysed would happen has or is coming to pass.
> "Dont be a dishonest uncool fuck."
I understand your point, but surely you could have made it without needing to curse? I hope my expansion of my position shows I'm not being uncool, I'm just trying to point out that unorthodox and radical thinkers (which are *totally* different to crackpots making unverifiable claims) can often be right but their thoughts are only accepted by the mainstream at some point in the future. This indeed makes them insightful (and it is, IMHO, also insightful to recognize these people as it requires challenging your own views). Does that clarify things now?
By "Iotala" do you mean Ayatollah? In that case the Ayatollah's or some faction of the Iranian Government (eg. the Quds Force, which has a will of its own and not necessarily the same as the rest of the Iranian Government) would certainly like to strike Israel at every opportunity it can (hence all the billions it is sending at the moment to prop up Hezbollah, Hamas and the Syrian Government, despite the Iranian people desperately needing the money). The only reason they have not been able to do it is because Israel maintains a strong defense forces (including intelligence forces) - you see, after the Holocaust (which they call 'Shoah') they realised that they cannot rely on the will of the rest of the World (UN etc) to keep them safe. It also means the Israelis react very forcefully when provoked, which many Westerners don't like (from the comfort of their armchairs thousands of miles away, safe from daily rocket attacks). [nb. let's not discuss the Occupation of the West Bank here as it is off-topic, but I think we can agree that this is a bad thing that should stop - which is being debated in Israel right now].
> "Sony at least owns the hardware they're fucking."
No, *you* own the hardware - it was your money that payed for it. Stop buying into and repeating the corporate propaganda, that's why they can get away with this anti-social stuff.
> And when that happens, you will have a good reason to get upset. Until then it's just speculation.
speculation true.... but also foresight. Why wait until the obvious happens before you do something about it - it is pretty clear the direction that technology is headed in at the moment, "THE CONSUMER IS THE ENEMY". It is like this with game consoles, TVs, media players, phones, music, movies, iPads etc etc. Isn't is obvious that the open-ness of the general purpose computer is something that the big corporations are angling to lock down - to prevent users from having full control over their own hardware (which Stallman has been talking about all along - he has more foresight that most of us). Despite all the locking down of computer devices and software there are still people like yourself who think people complaining about it (or what will obviously happen next) is overblown. There are very good reasons to "be upset" with current trends. Just you wait and see what the future will bring.
Actually, psychologically almost everyone finds way that others are to blame and they themselves are innocent. It is a hard thing to do to recognize this subjective behavior in yourself, and understand that people will also be doing this to blame you (even in their own minds) no matter what the facts are.
If you like the feature set of Office 2000 then LibreOffice becomes a viable option for you. Plus, you'll save on licensing costs (assuming you license it in an enterprise setting) and you can ensure everyone gets a copy of the same software (since it can be freely distributed). You can also send documents to other people who are still trapped on Office (since LibreOffice's Word inter-version compatibility is not usually any worse that the existing inter-version compatibility issues in MS Office).
Did they improve PDF export? PDF export from Word is very unreliable. You end up getting a different PDF than the document on your screen, and the mere act of exporting to PDF can reformat your document in weird ways. Perhaps this is not a universal experience but I certainly notice this a lot with MS Office 2011 on my MacBook Pro. OpenOffice does a much better job at PDF conversion for me.
That's the old and insecure way of doing it. The up-to-date way these days is for 'everybody' (that is office suites, including newer versions of MS Office) is to embed XML instead (where the XML is then interpreted to perform the desired calculations). More open, more secure.
Slashdot Mirror
Not in my country.
>Microsoft is charging like $20 for the Windows 8 upgrade.
That's because they want to move as many people onto Windows Marketplace as soon as they can. They've seen Apple lock folks in and want some of that action. This is pretty clearly a 'loss leader' move my Microsoft - and most people don't know and don't care about it - suckers.
Lol, first article on BBC News today "Microsoft makes its first ever loss "
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18917906
It was obvious this was coming (I periodically check MS' quarterly financials). Microsoft need money, fast. They have to find a way to move the happy users off WinXP and get more revenue.
Mate, I hear you - ditching old operating systems and software is always easier for developers. In the ideal world we'd only have to support the latest and greatest stuff. However, Microsoft overcharges for the O/S (meaning the price is high and set arbitrarily without regard to any market forces) and people expect support until 2014.
> It's much easier to just take, say, D2D and DWrite, and get all the usual 2D primitives with all bells and whistles (like gradients) for free.
Actually, it is easier to take Java and have Oracle (and Apple, for a little while longer) and the Open Source Hordes do the QA of that - and then your stuff is hardware accelerated without you (as an application developer) having to lift a finger. Even if the O/S changes, or the driver model changes then your source still doesn't change. Proper abstraction was something Microsoft never got (eg. I remember them years ago contorting aspects of their system so that they'd get a 5% speed improvement on a 386 but it was an abomination that hampered their later versions of Windows - designing like this is madness, yet publicly they seem to prize such backward short-term thinking as kinda 'heroic').
> It depends on how much you're willing to do yourself.
Well, Microsoft has never felt compelled to use the public APIs when squeezing performance out of their core products. Office is a big enough product that whatever needed to be done would be done. I think again that you are making the assumption that the reason for not doing this is technical. There are a lot of non-technical reasons they could have used in the decision - moving people of WinXP is one of them - it is not technically necessary but it suits their purposes.
Of course ant fellow shader writer knows that anti-aliasing is a very straightforward operation to implement, and DirectX 9 shaders are more than adequate for the task. Sun was able to do this for all operations in Java2D for three platforms and two graphics APIs (OpenGL and DirectX) despite not making the 70 billion a year that Microsoft does. Hell, in the OpenGL fixed-function pipeline you can do supersamping with a single line of code, and the multitude of anti-aliasing shaders are not tricky. Note that other operating systems manage to do hardware anti-aliasing with no significant problem and have done so for very many years.
> Why 7 and not Vista is a better question.
Vista does GDI in software is a possible reason, although I'd be surprised if the Office team are worried about that. Note that WinXP does GDI in hardware (as does Win7). This is still not a relevant *technical* reason to force the vast mass of WinXP users to buy a new operating system when they buy Office.
Yes, but Appple upgrades are $40 (of my local dollars) not $400. You see Microsoft has been obscenely gouging for a long time - since there is no significant competition in the market and they collude with OEMs to keep it that way. It is not unreasonable for users to expect that software that can be trivially be made to run on their existing operating system be made to do so, since they already effectively paid for a very long period of support when they bought the overpriced operating system (in most cases they had no choice, they couldn't buy a machine without it). Now for a car analogy, if you had a 10 year old car why should you change to a new car just becase there are newer models out - at least in the car industry there is standardization and competition to prevent what Microsoft are doing (kinda like changing the fuel used so you have to change car).
> Why would they release a new version of office that will only be supported for a year?
Because that is what people are using. The end of general support for WinXP does not mean products cannnot be made for it (or indeed that patches will no longer be made for it - you'll just have to pay to get specific things done).
Yes, but you don't need DirectX 11 to do the 2D operations do you? This was my point (countering the poster before me) - the tying of Office to newer versions of DirectX (and hence, newer versions of Windows) are not due to technical reasons but are instead due to Microsoft's own reasons (hence, twisting the arms of its customers and effectively shaking those customers down for more cash - which is not actually mandated by *technical* cosiderations).
That's the second time I've had to correct you in the last 24-hours. That's cool, but I'm a little surprised as I rate your knowledge higher than that. You might want to read the previous posts a little more clearly next time before you post.
Your analogy is incorrect. The correct analogy would be if your 'USB' device was no longer able to work on your machine because your software vendor decided not to support it anymore and supported only Thunderbolt. Now there is no technical reason for this change (since MS Offiice can have effects accelerated using a 2D accelerator and advanced 3D effects to DirectX11 level are completely unnecessary for office productivity type work) but the software vender was experiencing a bit of a cash crunch so they throught they'd drop support for your perfectly capable platform just cause they wanted to get you to cough up.
Is this the position you are trying to defend?
Bro, have you seen Microsoft's financials? Yes they are still very profitable but the 'growth' is looking dangerously like it will go backwards - and MS are completely unable to compete with Apple and Google in the important spaces those company cover. They need to ditch Vista support to get revenue quickly. Funny to think of Microsoft as needing cash quickly to make their financial statements look better but that is exactly what it looks like. Plus, they really, really want people to move to Windows 8 where Microsoft's marketplace can get some good lock-in on customers and developers.
You are speculating. GPGPU computing is not very well suited to spreadsheet computation since the overhead of moving data between the CPU and GPU is fairly expensive for spreadsheet type problems, and in-fact is very badly suited to the GPU since spreadsheet cells depend on other cells, and must be evaluated in order, which goes against the whole SIMD premise of most GPU shader programs.
Alpha-blending, gradients and fonts can all be hardware accelerated by 2D accelerated cards (for example, Java2D does this for all Java drawing since JVM 1.6.0 u10 years ago). These are not 3D operations. No, the reason Microsoft are doing this is to move people off XP when those folks don't actually need to for functionality. Please don't confuse 2D acceleration with 3D acceleration (it is ridiculous!).
Adobe make an entire suite of products (eg Acrobat et al) that are excellent for publishing. Word is slow an unreliable - at least that is my experience on my Mac with MS Office 2011. On that platform LibreOffice is much nicer to use [although lacking some of the nice default styles that Word has].
> (see the hardware acceleration on DX10 class hardware mentioned).
Nope, that is entirely a ploy by Microsoft to mov people off WinXP. There is no technical reason why you can't get DX11 effects on WinXP provided your video hardware supports it. How do I know this? well OpenGL will give you DX11 effects no matter what the operating system. But Microsoft had to find ways to move users clinging on to XP (and bring in more revenue even though users won't be doing much different with Win7 that they aren't doing with WinXP) and holding back newer versions of DirectX/Direct3D was one way of milking the cow. Unfortunately the vast bulk of Windows users don't know about that and have been played (again) by Microsoft (although, most won't care I suppose, but that is up to them - the point is that Microsoft gave them no choice for their own cashflow reasons, not technical ones as you allude to).
Once MS decided to abandon support for XP with newer DirectX versions I'm sure I gave them more technical flexibility in what they could do - but it was not technical limitations in XP that stop you having 'DirectX 11' style effects - like I said, OpenGL can do the same effects on Windows XP and many more operating systems - since OpenGL is no longer subject to the whims of any single company (unlike Microsoft and DirectX). Hence, I'm developing my modern jet combat simulator in OpenGL with GLSL shaders - just as the X-Plane developer famously did too: http://techhaze.com/2010/03/interview-with-x-plane-creator-austin-meyer/ read how chosing OpenGL over DirectX resulted in business opportunities that personally made him $US 3.5 million dollars in a few months when his OpenGL code was very easily ported to the iPad/iPhone unlike DirectX apps that are stuck on the Windows desktop [which is the whole reason Microsoft tricked developers into building workflows using DirectX, since MS knew this would make it hard for game developers to leave, which makes it hard for gamers to leave - it is all about the 'lock-in'].
Windows has an 84% *desktop* marketshare. Meanwhile servers, tablets, phones and embedded devices of all kinds run all sorts of operating systems (if they have one), that are mostly not Windows. It turns out that most of computing is actually not on the desktop (eg. servers running the Internet, telephony and corporate environments like banks etc). Of course, because it is invisible and mostly *just works*(TM) people don't know about it - they only know about Windows on their lil' desktop and how it is in their consciousness a lot since it requires so much effort to keep working properly.
> So, one way of dealing with this is to go the Apple App Store route.
An App Store doesn't prevent viruses and it doesn't improve the administration of computers. It is simpler computing interfaces that achieves this. Please don't confuse the two. Mac computers have a simpler interface and generally have much better virus resistance than Windows (sure, not perfect, but much much better). These Macs aren't as locked down as an iPad. You don't have to give away control of your computer to get better administrability (and reliability - which is actually why consumer-types like the iPads). This is my point - you don't have to have a straight-jacket (iPad) to get a better computing experience. You could have a more open device, with *proper security and a reliable design* and get the same benefits. So don't give away (or argue for giving away) your computing freedom for the wrong reasons.
Lol. The quote that the bottom of Slashdot is:
"This generation may be the one that will face Armageddon." -- Ronald Reagan, "People" magazine, December 26, 1985
Like I said, the hippies had a role in preventing nuclear calamity, but bringing the possible consequences. Just because it didn't come to pass doesn't mean it wouldn't have if they had not made a noise about it (in fact, if you read about Stanislav Petrov you'll see how there were events that made it come very close to happening - fortunately the noise the public made in forced nuclear forces to introduce much stricter safety measures than they otherwise they would have). You think that protestors had no effect because there was no thermonuclear war, yet it was the social pressure from such protesters that prompted the political leaders to see sense and conduct arms reduction measures (that is, the public wasn't so jingoistic trying to win wars, they were pressuring the politicians to avoid them).
You do realise that protesters serve a purpose, even if you do not agree with their views. Without the 60's folks protesting global thermonuclear war the general public would not have the potential devastation and long term effects brought to their attention - the military-industrial complex certainly would not tell the public what they knew about long-term fallout risks and that large scale nuclear war was essentially 'unwinnable' from a sane definition. [Note: I actually see a place for nuclear weapons in the World, but I do recognize the role that protesters play in counter-balancing the military]. Similarly, global corporations have their place but folks like Richard Stallman have their place in pointing out the actual and potential risks in giving these corps unbridled dominance. This is insightful of him, without him bugging us we would have far less debate on the ethics of software - software on which we have come to increasingly depend, and can expect to do moreso in the future. In fact, without people like him (whether you agree with his thesis or not) we would have a different, and much worse world now. eg. I'm not a fan of the hippies but the 'outlandish' claims they made in the 60's regarding the environment are now taken are sensible things to consider for a sustainable World. Without the hippies/Greens counterbalancing industrial interests there is every chance that Europe and the US would not have cleaned up their environmental acts (and remained as badly polluted as China is becoming today where counter-balancing views are not permitted). Similarly Galileo was a 'heretic' despite his analysis being correct. Stallman is no different, just because he is an 'uncool fuck' and is not orthodox does not mean his warnings are incorrect - increasingly they have been shown to be prophetic, almost everything he analysed would happen has or is coming to pass.
> "Dont be a dishonest uncool fuck."
I understand your point, but surely you could have made it without needing to curse? I hope my expansion of my position shows I'm not being uncool, I'm just trying to point out that unorthodox and radical thinkers (which are *totally* different to crackpots making unverifiable claims) can often be right but their thoughts are only accepted by the mainstream at some point in the future. This indeed makes them insightful (and it is, IMHO, also insightful to recognize these people as it requires challenging your own views). Does that clarify things now?
By "Iotala" do you mean Ayatollah? In that case the Ayatollah's or some faction of the Iranian Government (eg. the Quds Force, which has a will of its own and not necessarily the same as the rest of the Iranian Government) would certainly like to strike Israel at every opportunity it can (hence all the billions it is sending at the moment to prop up Hezbollah, Hamas and the Syrian Government, despite the Iranian people desperately needing the money). The only reason they have not been able to do it is because Israel maintains a strong defense forces (including intelligence forces) - you see, after the Holocaust (which they call 'Shoah') they realised that they cannot rely on the will of the rest of the World (UN etc) to keep them safe. It also means the Israelis react very forcefully when provoked, which many Westerners don't like (from the comfort of their armchairs thousands of miles away, safe from daily rocket attacks). [nb. let's not discuss the Occupation of the West Bank here as it is off-topic, but I think we can agree that this is a bad thing that should stop - which is being debated in Israel right now].
> "Sony at least owns the hardware they're fucking."
No, *you* own the hardware - it was your money that payed for it. Stop buying into and repeating the corporate propaganda, that's why they can get away with this anti-social stuff.
> And when that happens, you will have a good reason to get upset. Until then it's just speculation. .... but also foresight. Why wait until the obvious happens before you do something about it - it is pretty clear the direction that technology is headed in at the moment, "THE CONSUMER IS THE ENEMY". It is like this with game consoles, TVs, media players, phones, music, movies, iPads etc etc. Isn't is obvious that the open-ness of the general purpose computer is something that the big corporations are angling to lock down - to prevent users from having full control over their own hardware (which Stallman has been talking about all along - he has more foresight that most of us). Despite all the locking down of computer devices and software there are still people like yourself who think people complaining about it (or what will obviously happen next) is overblown. There are very good reasons to "be upset" with current trends. Just you wait and see what the future will bring.
speculation true
Actually, psychologically almost everyone finds way that others are to blame and they themselves are innocent. It is a hard thing to do to recognize this subjective behavior in yourself, and understand that people will also be doing this to blame you (even in their own minds) no matter what the facts are.
If you like the feature set of Office 2000 then LibreOffice becomes a viable option for you. Plus, you'll save on licensing costs (assuming you license it in an enterprise setting) and you can ensure everyone gets a copy of the same software (since it can be freely distributed). You can also send documents to other people who are still trapped on Office (since LibreOffice's Word inter-version compatibility is not usually any worse that the existing inter-version compatibility issues in MS Office).
Did they improve PDF export? PDF export from Word is very unreliable. You end up getting a different PDF than the document on your screen, and the mere act of exporting to PDF can reformat your document in weird ways. Perhaps this is not a universal experience but I certainly notice this a lot with MS Office 2011 on my MacBook Pro. OpenOffice does a much better job at PDF conversion for me.
Thanks for the post. I'd mod you +1 Interersting but you're replying to my comment.
Actually it does matter, a lot, from a security perspective.
That's the old and insecure way of doing it. The up-to-date way these days is for 'everybody' (that is office suites, including newer versions of MS Office) is to embed XML instead (where the XML is then interpreted to perform the desired calculations). More open, more secure.