OK, I give up. It's perfectly true that if you use Google Docs, this change will screw you over for sharing docs with customers who use Office 2003. So now the question becomes: how many of your customers are still stuck on a decade-old version of Office? One that won't even run on any system manufactured in the last couple of years.
Whenever I argue that Apple's crusade against Android vendors will give them a smartphone monopoly, somebody says, "No, there's still Windows 8." The good news here is that I no longer have to point out how lame that alternative is.
OK, that's a good point. But if I were working for a company that only used Google Docs (which I have to admit I'm not a big fan of) and I had a customer that was still using Office 2003 and thus couldn't handle docx, pptx, or xslx, I'd have three choices:
— Tell management that they blew it when they chose Google Docs and demand that they switch to MS Office. — Complain to Google for dropping support for doc, ppt, xls import/export. — Talk to the customer about installing the free MS filters that allow them to read and write docx, pptx, and xslx files.
Now, which of these strategies, in your opinion, is most likely to be productive?
We're not in love with technology, we're in love with saving money. A battleship needs 1900 people to run her, That's enough people to man 6 destroyers (1/10 of the current U.S. destroyer fleet).
Survivability? The battleship's biggest asset in that department is its armor, which is useful against guns on another battleship. It's useless against missles and plane-delivered bombs. Destroyers are vulnerable too, but no more so than battleships — and destroyers can dodge.
BTW, in the run up to WW II, the Iowa class was seen as seriously outgunned by huge Japanese battleships.. The "black shoe" Navy wanted to build Montana class battleships with even more armor and armament, to counter this "threat." Fortunately, the war started before any ships were actually built, and the real world fighting in the Pacific demonstrated the uselessness of battleships in modern naval warfare, which is dominated by carriers and other ships that can proect destruction at great distances.
I'll admit they're beautiful. If I'm ever in New Joisy, I'm absolutely gonna pay my respects. But they've been obsolete for 75 years now.
There are ground, air, and naval organizations within the IDF, but all report to the same general staff and draw on the same pool of personnel.
Same with the US.
You're lecturing me on military organization, and you don't even know how the DOD is structured? Each service has its own it's own staff. (You've heard of the joint chiefs of staff?) They even have their own civilian oversight With very few exceptions, they do not share personnel,. If you're recruited by the Air Force, you will serve in an Air Force unit. An Air Force mechanic doesn't normally get transferred from his USAF air base to a Navy or Marine Corps air base, even though they have pretty much the same planes. There are inter-service transfers, of course, but those are rare. A few years ago, the USAF loaned the Army some airmen to help guard bases in Iraq. This minimal cooperation was considered a major except to normal "interservice rivalry".
I'm saying that given our track record in S.E. Asia, intervening in Cambodia probably would have made things worse.
Not that there was any chance of such an intervention. You think that the U.S.tolerated the Khmer Rouge because of wimpy politicians? Totally wrong. The U.S. wanted an ally in the area to offset it's loss of South Vietnam, so it destabilized the neutral government of Cambodia. The U.S. sponsored military dictatorship that was supposed to take over didn't last, but once the Khmer Rouge came to power, U.S. policy favored them as a counterweight to the pro-Soviet Vietnamese. This included blocking action against them and even shipping them arms.
Spare me the "sweet boy". Personal remarks aggravate your appearance of historical ignorance. I suggest you crack an actual history book instead of listening to Fox News.
Wikipedia calls these the "Israeli Air Force", etc. (Wikipedians live to shove things into familiar categories, however poorly they apply). Israelis call the the whole thing the Israel Defense Forces. There are ground, air, and naval organizations within the IDF, but all report to the same general staff and draw on the same pool of personnel. There are no branch-specific uniforms or ranks.
Oh please. We killed a million Vietnamese trying to win the Vietnam war, so don't talk to me about the killing fields. And BTW, the Khmer Rouge came to power with U.S. help.
Hey, I'm not even 60, and I came close (though not very close), to fighting in that thing. Last U.S. troops left about 40 years ago. Most of the nastiest U.S. involvement, including including the deployment of the New Jersey occurred about 5 years earlier.
Certainly no sane person would try to do serious input with an on-screen keyboard. But as I just pointed out, you can use a regular keyboard with a tablet. I personally find that much better for writing (which I do for a living) than your typical laptop keyboard.
Your use of the word "battleship" reveals your lack of military background. Only civilians call all warships battleships. To a military person a battleship is a big armored seagoing gun platform that lines up with other battleships (originally "line of battle ships") and dukes it out with enemy battleships. Obsolete ever since naval warfare became about airplanes and missiles rather than guns.
Who cares? Probably the very vets they were trying to honor. Recognizing military hardware (especially the hardware of a nation the U.S. spend over 40 years preparing to fight) is part of their training.
There's another side to your story. Ask yourself, why do we have all these separate military services that were designed for roles that were standard 200 years ago? Armies fought on land, Navies fought on water, and Marines fought on ships. All of these roles have blended into each other, and all the traditional services compete with the Air Force for a role in air power. So why not just get rid of all these different services, and have a unified service, like Israel? Save a ton of money on duplication.
I'm sure you're already muttering the answer: tradition. Military services live on the stuff. Navy recruits need to hear about John Paul Jones and Midway, Marines about Chosin Reservoir, etc., etc., or morale goes all to hell. The Canadians discovered that when they went to a unified service.
But if an officer doesn't even know about that stuff, you have to wonder how hard his service is working to maintain traditions.
None of us have our own TV shows, so none of are "talking heads". On the other hand, you can be sure that right-wing talking heads will be reminding of this one until the end of time.
What, none of your customers can read.docx,.xlsx, or.pptx? These have been the default since Office 2007. And earlier versions (back to Office 2000) can handle them with a simple filter upgrade.
Not a peril of cloud computing. This is a peril of outsourced cloud-based applications. That leaves you at the mercy of the outsourcee. If you manage the cloud application yourself (license it and deploy it on your own private or public cloud) you still control it.
Anyway, what's the big deal? Why would somebody on Google Docs need to import or export a.doc file? The.docx format has been the default since Word 2007, and MS provides filters for this format for all versions of Word back to Word 2000. So if you're sharing documents with somebody, and they can't handle.docx files, somebody needs to tell them that Bill Clinton is no longer president.
Well, you might be right about the speed issue. But I don't see USB on the GO replacing memory cards. I'm not walking around with a thumb drive dangling from my tablet. People might misunderstand!
Ok, whatever works for you. A little dumb to bring that attitude to a discussion on color tablets and assume that everybody else you're talking to shares it.
I share your prejudice for Nexus and similar devices. But I have to point out that you can't completely avoid bookseller ecosystems. The best you can do is buy a device that lets you participate in multiple ecosystems. Nexus 7 and Kobo Arc both fit the bill; Kindle and Nook do not.
Also not all bookseller ecosystems are equal. Such an ecosystem is determined by the combination of file format and DRM. (Non-DRM support is nice to have, but 99% of the books that are available for sale are DRMed.) Amazon uses AZW, which combines the old MobiPocket format (now their property) with proprietary DRM. This is the only DRM format Kindles support, which gives amazon.com a nice monopoly on content for it.
The biggest competing ecosystem uses a combination of ePub format and Adobe DRM. This is vendor neutral: it's what most eBooks that aren't sold through Amazon use. And it's available on a lot of different devices, including Kobo's. So there's competition and alternatives, both notably lacking in the Amazon ecosystem. Unless DRM goes away completely, this is the ecosystem I most want to suceed. I'm not optimistic though: Amazon has shown itself very hard to beat in this kind of market war.
Absurdly, B&N has decided it wants an ecosystem all its own. There goes any chance I'll ever buy a Nook.
Slashdot Mirror
... but it's just a silly, useless toy.
I am so getting one!
OK, I give up. It's perfectly true that if you use Google Docs, this change will screw you over for sharing docs with customers who use Office 2003. So now the question becomes: how many of your customers are still stuck on a decade-old version of Office? One that won't even run on any system manufactured in the last couple of years.
Yeah, really.
Whenever I argue that Apple's crusade against Android vendors will give them a smartphone monopoly, somebody says, "No, there's still Windows 8." The good news here is that I no longer have to point out how lame that alternative is.
OK, that's a good point. But if I were working for a company that only used Google Docs (which I have to admit I'm not a big fan of) and I had a customer that was still using Office 2003 and thus couldn't handle docx, pptx, or xslx, I'd have three choices:
— Tell management that they blew it when they chose Google Docs and demand that they switch to MS Office.
— Complain to Google for dropping support for doc, ppt, xls import/export.
— Talk to the customer about installing the free MS filters that allow them to read and write docx, pptx, and xslx files.
Now, which of these strategies, in your opinion, is most likely to be productive?
We're not in love with technology, we're in love with saving money. A battleship needs 1900 people to run her, That's enough people to man 6 destroyers (1/10 of the current U.S. destroyer fleet).
Survivability? The battleship's biggest asset in that department is its armor, which is useful against guns on another battleship. It's useless against missles and plane-delivered bombs. Destroyers are vulnerable too, but no more so than battleships — and destroyers can dodge.
BTW, in the run up to WW II, the Iowa class was seen as seriously outgunned by huge Japanese battleships.. The "black shoe" Navy wanted to build Montana class battleships with even more armor and armament, to counter this "threat." Fortunately, the war started before any ships were actually built, and the real world fighting in the Pacific demonstrated the uselessness of battleships in modern naval warfare, which is dominated by carriers and other ships that can proect destruction at great distances.
I'll admit they're beautiful. If I'm ever in New Joisy, I'm absolutely gonna pay my respects. But they've been obsolete for 75 years now.
There are ground, air, and naval organizations within the IDF, but all report to the same general staff and draw on the same pool of personnel.
Same with the US.
You're lecturing me on military organization, and you don't even know how the DOD is structured? Each service has its own it's own staff. (You've heard of the joint chiefs of staff?) They even have their own civilian oversight With very few exceptions, they do not share personnel,. If you're recruited by the Air Force, you will serve in an Air Force unit. An Air Force mechanic doesn't normally get transferred from his USAF air base to a Navy or Marine Corps air base, even though they have pretty much the same planes. There are inter-service transfers, of course, but those are rare. A few years ago, the USAF loaned the Army some airmen to help guard bases in Iraq. This minimal cooperation was considered a major except to normal "interservice rivalry".
Bored now.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/09/27/0311209/terabit-ethernet-is-dead-for-now
Your nephew is probably about as mature as most geeks.
I'm saying that given our track record in S.E. Asia, intervening in Cambodia probably would have made things worse.
Not that there was any chance of such an intervention. You think that the U.S.tolerated the Khmer Rouge because of wimpy politicians? Totally wrong. The U.S. wanted an ally in the area to offset it's loss of South Vietnam, so it destabilized the neutral government of Cambodia. The U.S. sponsored military dictatorship that was supposed to take over didn't last, but once the Khmer Rouge came to power, U.S. policy favored them as a counterweight to the pro-Soviet Vietnamese. This included blocking action against them and even shipping them arms.
Spare me the "sweet boy". Personal remarks aggravate your appearance of historical ignorance. I suggest you crack an actual history book instead of listening to Fox News.
Wikipedia calls these the "Israeli Air Force", etc. (Wikipedians live to shove things into familiar categories, however poorly they apply). Israelis call the the whole thing the Israel Defense Forces. There are ground, air, and naval organizations within the IDF, but all report to the same general staff and draw on the same pool of personnel. There are no branch-specific uniforms or ranks.
Oh please. We killed a million Vietnamese trying to win the Vietnam war, so don't talk to me about the killing fields. And BTW, the Khmer Rouge came to power with U.S. help.
Hey, I'm not even 60, and I came close (though not very close), to fighting in that thing. Last U.S. troops left about 40 years ago. Most of the nastiest U.S. involvement, including including the deployment of the New Jersey occurred about 5 years earlier.
Certainly no sane person would try to do serious input with an on-screen keyboard. But as I just pointed out, you can use a regular keyboard with a tablet. I personally find that much better for writing (which I do for a living) than your typical laptop keyboard.
Actually, big gun battles did take place in Korea and Vietnam. They were kind of one-sided...
Your use of the word "battleship" reveals your lack of military background. Only civilians call all warships battleships. To a military person a battleship is a big armored seagoing gun platform that lines up with other battleships (originally "line of battle ships") and dukes it out with enemy battleships. Obsolete ever since naval warfare became about airplanes and missiles rather than guns.
Who cares? Probably the very vets they were trying to honor. Recognizing military hardware (especially the hardware of a nation the U.S. spend over 40 years preparing to fight) is part of their training.
There's another side to your story. Ask yourself, why do we have all these separate military services that were designed for roles that were standard 200 years ago? Armies fought on land, Navies fought on water, and Marines fought on ships. All of these roles have blended into each other, and all the traditional services compete with the Air Force for a role in air power. So why not just get rid of all these different services, and have a unified service, like Israel? Save a ton of money on duplication.
I'm sure you're already muttering the answer: tradition. Military services live on the stuff. Navy recruits need to hear about John Paul Jones and Midway, Marines about Chosin Reservoir, etc., etc., or morale goes all to hell. The Canadians discovered that when they went to a unified service.
But if an officer doesn't even know about that stuff, you have to wonder how hard his service is working to maintain traditions.
Of course you kid. Nowadays not even the commies are commies.
None of us have our own TV shows, so none of are "talking heads". On the other hand, you can be sure that right-wing talking heads will be reminding of this one until the end of time.
It's never too late to say nasty things about those socialist fascist democrat partiers!
Uh, did you notice that I was replying to a post about the Kobo (see the subject) and comparing it with the Nexus?
What, none of your customers can read .docx, .xlsx, or .pptx? These have been the default since Office 2007. And earlier versions (back to Office 2000) can handle them with a simple filter upgrade.
Not a peril of cloud computing. This is a peril of outsourced cloud-based applications. That leaves you at the mercy of the outsourcee. If you manage the cloud application yourself (license it and deploy it on your own private or public cloud) you still control it.
Anyway, what's the big deal? Why would somebody on Google Docs need to import or export a .doc file? The .docx format has been the default since Word 2007, and MS provides filters for this format for all versions of Word back to Word 2000. So if you're sharing documents with somebody, and they can't handle .docx files, somebody needs to tell them that Bill Clinton is no longer president.
Well, you might be right about the speed issue. But I don't see USB on the GO replacing memory cards. I'm not walking around with a thumb drive dangling from my tablet. People might misunderstand!
What? eReader tablet = epaper/eink
Ok, whatever works for you. A little dumb to bring that attitude to a discussion on color tablets and assume that everybody else you're talking to shares it.
I share your prejudice for Nexus and similar devices. But I have to point out that you can't completely avoid bookseller ecosystems. The best you can do is buy a device that lets you participate in multiple ecosystems. Nexus 7 and Kobo Arc both fit the bill; Kindle and Nook do not.
Also not all bookseller ecosystems are equal. Such an ecosystem is determined by the combination of file format and DRM. (Non-DRM support is nice to have, but 99% of the books that are available for sale are DRMed.) Amazon uses AZW, which combines the old MobiPocket format (now their property) with proprietary DRM. This is the only DRM format Kindles support, which gives amazon.com a nice monopoly on content for it.
The biggest competing ecosystem uses a combination of ePub format and Adobe DRM. This is vendor neutral: it's what most eBooks that aren't sold through Amazon use. And it's available on a lot of different devices, including Kobo's. So there's competition and alternatives, both notably lacking in the Amazon ecosystem. Unless DRM goes away completely, this is the ecosystem I most want to suceed. I'm not optimistic though: Amazon has shown itself very hard to beat in this kind of market war.
Absurdly, B&N has decided it wants an ecosystem all its own. There goes any chance I'll ever buy a Nook.