IMHO, without a doubt the best animated and written episode ever, beating even Space Madness and The Happy Helmet. The final shot of the musical number with all the woodland creatures singing, and a disembodied large intestine flying up into the air with a turd shooting out of one end had me clutching my stomach in pain from the laughter.
Yeah, Gary left Dave's name off AD&D, and honestly there wasn't enough of a difference to merit that. Gary just put his spin on the D&D rules he and Dave made, and called it a new game.
Jim Ward wrote some of the best stuff that TSR put out, even though Metamorphisis Alpha was basically a rip off of that Heinlein story, whose name I can't remember. MA and Gamma World were a blast to play.
I haven't looked at his new stuff yet, but if it's anything like the last game he wrote (Dangerous Dimensions?), I'll pass. Way too much renaming things, just for the sake of being named different. Far too much die rolling for my tastes.
The other interviews that I remember (the BIG article in Dragon slamming people for using house rules and still calling it AD&D), he came off sounding a lot like RMS does now, when he's bitching about the whole GNU/Linux thing. Gary seems to have mellowed with age, but calling the GM the Lejend Master??? Come on Gary, get over the names.
I was thinking something like "ChuChe Linux" or "Pi Pim Tux" or "Dear Linux" (instead of the Dear Leader... Kim Jong Il reference... it's a homonym...)
We ran four clusters: two file server and two database. The fileservers were using Microsoft Clusters and the database clusters were using Digital Clusters all of it running on Compaq hardware.
The Digital Clusters were stable enough, but they continually dropped the ball on automatic failover, load balanacing was all done manually. The fileservers were supposed to auto load balance and failover, and did neither. We continually had to reapply permissions and recreate shares on the file servers whenever we would manually failover drives, and BSOD's were an almost daily fact of life.
I would hope that things would be better under Win2k, but the technology under NT was just not there at all.
I know, I'm looking through mine now. I bought Win95 as an upgrade to Win3.1 (and let it spin through my hard drive for 4 hours installing on my 486DX33) the week it came out. IE shipped MUCH later on, but it was not on the original CD's. They didn't even get Spyglass's source until Netscape was starting to take off.
Now, NT4.0 did ship with IE 2.0, so they were make progress by '96, but IE 1.0 was not on the first Win95 CD's out the gate.
Are the folks at RedHat really Slashdot trolls in their spare time? From their comment:
"Open source and free software is distinct from traditional (proprietary) software in that it is produced by a generally voluntary, collaborative process, and accompanied by a license that pants users the right to..."
A CTLR-F failed to find references to Natalie Portman or Grits, but maybe they were only on the cover sheet of the fax.
I'll go with October of next year. But yeah, the quality of these images are just downright amazing for digital, or hell, even scanned analog images. I, for one, am suitably impressed.
Now imagine a beo^H^H^H this type of sensor attached to a video camera and a quick way to suck it all into an AVID, and I think the death of film may really just be around the corner.
The responses of "Put your money where your mouth is." are aboslutely true, so here's my contribution. Even if the DoJ remedy is implemented, I can at least say I tried.
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Scott Ricketts, I am a 13-year veteran of the United States Air Force, now a civilian, and I would like to comment on the ongoing proceedings in the United States vs. Microsoft remedy phase now underway.
I would like to begin, by saying that I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Systems Technology, I have been a computer user since 1982, and a personal computer enthusiast since 1992. I am currently employed as computer professional, and the majority of my work involves using and designing programs for use on Microsoft operating systems and development platforms.
I would first like to comment on, what I believe, the good that Microsoft has done for the personal computing industry. Microsoft has successfully created standard Application Programming Interfaces that have allows software and hardware makers alike to create devices and programs that can easily and successfully interface with devices created by other programmers and designers without ever seeing or touching the other person's work. I feel this standardization is what helped the personal computing industry become the giant economic and social force that it is today.
However, in creating these standards, I believe that Microsoft has overreached the bounds of common decency and abused the defacto standards they helped create. Previously, the United States settled with Microsoft in regards to their practice of Original Equipment Manufacturer licensing fees and contracts and the bundling of Internet browsing software designed to increase the market share and adoption of Microsoft proprietary technology. This was to prevent what the United States government saw as Microsoft's abusing of its monopoly among personal computer operating systems and productivity software.
The years since that settlement have seen Microsoft grow in its demands towards Original Equipment Manufacturer and the recent exclusion of non-Microsoft Internet browsers from Microsoft websites. In my opinion, this does not reflect the behavior of a company that understands its duty to not abuse its position as a monopoly.
In reading both proposed settlements from the Department of Justice and the remaining states, I feel that while neither goes to the lengths that I would recommend, the states' proposal goes much father in the right direction in reaching a state whereby Microsoft's position cannot be leveraged against any potential competitors again.
The Department of Justice settlement has, to my mind, a major flaw that prevents it from being considered as an acceptable remedy. Microsoft has shown, by its conduct regarding the previous settlement, and its behavior that was upheld by the appeals court which branded Microsoft an illegal monopoly, that it will, whenever possible, circumvent rules, laws, and any barriers that prevent it from controlling its areas of interest. There are no provisions for actually punishing past or future infractions of the law by Microsoft. If Microsoft continues to abuse its position as an illegal monopoly, the Justice Department's remedy merely lengthens the term of surveillance. The states' settlement, however, provides a very exacting and appropriate punishment: disclosure of computer source code for the offending program. This would be an extremely painful measure for Microsoft, as they view their copyrighted and closely guarded computer source code as their crown jewels: very simply this is how they generate revenue. If that revenue stream is blocked, or they are forced to reveal how their programs work, that opens a new area for competition.
Microsoft has shown repeated contempt for legal agreements, hiring armies of legal minds to comb over documents trying to find potential weak areas. In 1996, when Netscape Navigator was the number one Internet browser, Microsoft signed a licensing agreement with a company called Spyglass. In exchange for a small sum of money upfront and a portion of each sale, Microsoft would receive the computer source code for Spyglass' Internet browser. This would allow Microsoft to quickly get a functional and full-featured browser into the marketplace without a lengthy development delay. However, the anticipated revenue stream Spyglass expected never arrived. Why? Because Microsoft chose not to sell their Internet browser, they gave it away for free. This allowed them to not pay further royalties to Spyglass, achieve quick market penetration for their product, which they could then use to leverage their proprietary technologies (such as ActiveX) into defacto standards.
This deal, I think, creates a very compelling picture of Microsoft's corporate character. In an interview regarding past dealings with Utah-based software company Novell, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer smugly commented "They made a mistake, they trusted us." I am writing this letter in the hopes that my government does not make the same mistake that Novell did. Any settlement must contain explicit, detailed language that leaves no room for ambiguity, and exacting, painful punishment for future and past infractions.
This, to me, is going to be the greatest thing about this. I discovered these books 25 years ago, and now I get to take my ten year-old to this movie. We've already read The Hobbit as a prelude to the movie, but we're both stoked about seeing the film big as all get out. We've been counting the days, and I think he's more excited about seeing this than he was bout Harry Potter. (Score one for culture)
Maybe it's a sign of my old age, but taking the boy to this and seeing the look on his face as the film unfolds is going to be a true joy, sharing something this close to me with him, and watching him enjoy it as much as I did.
I will see the movie just for that.
Well, that, and I've been waiting 25 years to see a version that didn't include "Frodo of the Nine Fingers".
Okay, let me understand this, the plotline is so bad, that Cameron won't have anything to do with it anymore, BUT, they won't bother to make the flick that Arnold was dying for I am Legend???? The script alone has had me jonesing for this flick for the last three years, for the best adaptation yet of Matheson's book, one the THE best vampire stories ever.
People like Ximian and Mandrake are doing a DAMN GOOD JOB of fixing it. I don't run GNOME/Sawfish, I like WindowMaker (it appeals to my minimalist nature), but having forced myself to make the switch from Win2k to Linux (Mandrake 8.0) about five months ago, I have to say it isn't as hard as people make it out to be.
Most of what I've learned, I've done on my own, Google is my friend, but I have to say that I was amazed when I drug an MP3 out of Nautilus and dropped it onto xmms and it fired right up! Today, reading the States proposal against Microsoft, I clicked on the link, without realizing that it's a PDF, and WHAMMO! Galeon fired Acrobat Reader right up in the same damn window, just like I was using IE on Windows!
That seemless interoperability is right there, and it's just not publicized enough. So much of what users like my wife need is already there, someone just needs to show them. Granted, I've spent way too much time fscking around with rpm and change file permissions quickly on share through my trust Eterm, but with a little more work, I probably wouldn't have to. Hell, Red-Carpet does a great job of sliding in updates to my system, and I don't have to do anything except click "OK" when it's done.
People do make it out to be harder than it really is.
Except that MS isn't going to develop Office for Linux, the source code and code for all the underlying OS calls is going to be auctioned off to three seperate companies, who will then do the porting.
I think the States have really nailed this one on the head, they realized that MS has no incentive to make this project actually work, so why bother to make them do it? Turn it over to someone who does, and then, just to make sure it gets done correctly, throw parallel processing at it by allowing three different companies the right to do it.
Read the filing, the States have their heads squared on straight enough to see most of the loopholes in the DOJ agreement. File formats get left out, but bundling, phasing out old versions of Windows just to get people to upgrade, embrace-and-extend, closed API's, tying, OEM preference, they all get hit. It's a very good read.
This is MUCH better than the DOJ agreement. Addresses pretty much all the issues except File Formats, but with the mandatory licensing of the Office source code, this can be gleaned by the people who get it and then exposed in certain ways (making the import/export code open source would work).
I have hope now that there will be a good settlement of this case.
I have to say that Access is the ONLY program I miss at home. It's a very nice little personal database engine that has alot of fexibility and power to it. We've used it at work for countless projects and it does work, so long as you're limiting the number of users to something it can handle.
I know people keep taking about pgaccess, but it doesn't have evn close to the functionality that Access does. Anymore, I think this is the second app that is stopping a mass migration to Linux (Exchnage being the other).
Remember when the first thing you did when you bought a game was play it? The only games I've bought in the last three years that didn't require a patch before I played it were Black and White, and Unreal Tournament.
It can access the MAPI.dll needed to break open the.pst files that Outlook generates. At that point, zap all the mobx files over to a share that your Linux box can see, and Evolution will import them, attachments and all.
I did this about three weeks ago and while it took about 30 mins from start to finish (three years worth of Outlook messages clocking in at about 3000 seperate emails), it worked like a charm.
Actually, I think Office X is a Carbonized app, making it near impossible, even if you had the code, to make it run, as is, on Linux or BSD. Cocoa and Carbon are API layers, not widget sets, with Carbon being the "cleaned up" version of the Classic Macintosh API that will run without the emulation layer on OS X.
Quartz is the display engine built around Display PDF, a superset of Display Postscript. Considering that Display Ghostscript is basically done, I don't know if the GNUStep guys are thinking about expanding it to encompass the new API's and functions exposed through Display PDF.
So my theory is no way, no day, not anytime soon. And really, except for Access, what is there that OpenOffice doesn't offer you that MS Office might?
In my experience it's been because they don't care about the underlying OS, so long as it meets their security needs (C2, ACLs, and such), it's what you do with it (look at pretty pictures, record whispered conversations) that really matters.
Even in the days of ballooning military budgets, DoD systems RARELY used a custom OS. Do you realize the manhours it takes to do something like that??
Having been a wage slave (read: enlisted) for the DoD for the last 13 years, I've never used a customized OS, and I'm in Intel! Currently, my day-to-day OS is WinNT, and we just installed an NT network to replace our beloved VAX cluster running VMS. Before that, I've worked on Sun, SGI and HP boxen, using lots of custom written apps, but always using the native OS to get basic jobs done.
As a part of the "machine" that allows you the freedom to bitch about it, you're welcome.
Now, for just a moment, pop yourself out of the comfortable little shell you've built for yourself where your wonderfully self-righteous attitudes keep you warm and satiated at night and think about this experience I had, for just a moment.
When I was serving in the Republic of Korea, I was riding on the subway one day, when sitting on a bench next to me, (I was standing, anyone over 15 and under 35 stands) an older gentleman taps me on the leg and says "Excuse me, are you an American?" I answered yes, and he took my hand in his, shook it and said "Thank you.". I asked, for what? He replied "When my country needed it, your country sent it's sons to die for me and my children. You sent us the young men who should have been building your country, and those of us that lived through it, never forget. Don't pay attention to these young kids, they don't know any better. But we remember."
For every instance of exploitation you can name, I can find more to show that Americans are the most compationate, caring, and and concerned citizens on the planet. So much so, that even total screwheads like yourself can rant about the evils of corporate America and how horrible this place is. Not to sound like a total military goober here, but go try and complain about the state of the nation in some other countries and see how far you get.
We are attacking (at least) Kabul, Afghanistan as I sit here. My hope is that evidence from the flight recorder of the plane that crashed in PA led to this and it's not just a "shoot first ask questions later" kinda thing.
Access!! Finally Someone Else Sees This!
on
Linux Office Suites
·
· Score: 1
The MS Office application (after Word) that gets used the most (and gives the most in productivity gains) is Access. We've made quick databases with nice input forms and spiffy reports that have made our jobs so much easier, and did it all from the desktop. This is the only area that I have seen OpenOffice fail for me.
The OpenOffice 633 release is darn nice, and for doing word processing and slide presentations, apart from being able to recognize all my true type fonts. This is (for now) a minor quibble, one that I'm sure will be fixed, or maybe already is and I just don't know how to get to it.
Regardless, some sort of user-level database tool with the ability to quickly create forms and reports would be the finishing touch and only real request I could make of the OpenOffice team. The average user doesn't understand SQL syntax, but can lay a table out with a grid and drag columns to form links. Slap that in, and MS Office users have nothing to miss.
Slashdot Mirror
IMHO, without a doubt the best animated and written episode ever, beating even Space Madness and The Happy Helmet. The final shot of the musical number with all the woodland creatures singing, and a disembodied large intestine flying up into the air with a turd shooting out of one end had me clutching my stomach in pain from the laughter.
Yeah, Gary left Dave's name off AD&D, and honestly there wasn't enough of a difference to merit that. Gary just put his spin on the D&D rules he and Dave made, and called it a new game.
Jim Ward wrote some of the best stuff that TSR put out, even though Metamorphisis Alpha was basically a rip off of that Heinlein story, whose name I can't remember. MA and Gamma World were a blast to play.
I haven't looked at his new stuff yet, but if it's anything like the last game he wrote (Dangerous Dimensions?), I'll pass. Way too much renaming things, just for the sake of being named different. Far too much die rolling for my tastes.
The other interviews that I remember (the BIG article in Dragon slamming people for using house rules and still calling it AD&D), he came off sounding a lot like RMS does now, when he's bitching about the whole GNU/Linux thing. Gary seems to have mellowed with age, but calling the GM the Lejend Master??? Come on Gary, get over the names.
I was thinking something like "ChuChe Linux" or "Pi Pim Tux" or "Dear Linux" (instead of the Dear Leader... Kim Jong Il reference... it's a homonym...)
We ran four clusters: two file server and two database. The fileservers were using Microsoft Clusters and the database clusters were using Digital Clusters all of it running on Compaq hardware.
The Digital Clusters were stable enough, but they continually dropped the ball on automatic failover, load balanacing was all done manually. The fileservers were supposed to auto load balance and failover, and did neither. We continually had to reapply permissions and recreate shares on the file servers whenever we would manually failover drives, and BSOD's were an almost daily fact of life.
I would hope that things would be better under Win2k, but the technology under NT was just not there at all.
I know, I'm looking through mine now. I bought Win95 as an upgrade to Win3.1 (and let it spin through my hard drive for 4 hours installing on my 486DX33) the week it came out. IE shipped MUCH later on, but it was not on the original CD's. They didn't even get Spyglass's source until Netscape was starting to take off.
Now, NT4.0 did ship with IE 2.0, so they were make progress by '96, but IE 1.0 was not on the first Win95 CD's out the gate.
This guy not only has cred, but picks apart the RPFJ AND shows where and how the loopholes should be fixed.
Well worth the read.
Are the folks at RedHat really Slashdot trolls in their spare time? From their comment:
"Open source and free software is distinct from traditional (proprietary) software in that it is produced by a generally voluntary, collaborative process, and accompanied by a license that pants users the right to..."
A CTLR-F failed to find references to Natalie Portman or Grits, but maybe they were only on the cover sheet of the fax.
I'll go with October of next year. But yeah, the quality of these images are just downright amazing for digital, or hell, even scanned analog images. I, for one, am suitably impressed.
Now imagine a beo^H^H^H this type of sensor attached to a video camera and a quick way to suck it all into an AVID, and I think the death of film may really just be around the corner.
The responses of "Put your money where your mouth is." are aboslutely true, so here's my contribution. Even if the DoJ remedy is implemented, I can at least say I tried.
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Scott Ricketts, I am a 13-year veteran of the United States Air Force, now a civilian, and I would like to comment on the ongoing proceedings in the United States vs. Microsoft remedy phase now underway.
I would like to begin, by saying that I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Systems Technology, I have been a computer user since 1982, and a personal computer enthusiast since 1992. I am currently employed as computer professional, and the majority of my work involves using and designing programs for use on Microsoft operating systems and development platforms.
I would first like to comment on, what I believe, the good that Microsoft has done for the personal computing industry. Microsoft has successfully created standard Application Programming Interfaces that have allows software and hardware makers alike to create devices and programs that can easily and successfully interface with devices created by other programmers and designers without ever seeing or touching the other person's work. I feel this standardization is what helped the personal computing industry become the giant economic and social force that it is today.
However, in creating these standards, I believe that Microsoft has overreached the bounds of common decency and abused the defacto standards they helped create. Previously, the United States settled with Microsoft in regards to their practice of Original Equipment Manufacturer licensing fees and contracts and the bundling of Internet browsing software designed to increase the market share and adoption of Microsoft proprietary technology. This was to prevent what the United States government saw as Microsoft's abusing of its monopoly among personal computer operating systems and productivity software.
The years since that settlement have seen Microsoft grow in its demands towards Original Equipment Manufacturer and the recent exclusion of non-Microsoft Internet browsers from Microsoft websites. In my opinion, this does not reflect the behavior of a company that understands its duty to not abuse its position as a monopoly.
In reading both proposed settlements from the Department of Justice and the remaining states, I feel that while neither goes to the lengths that I would recommend, the states' proposal goes much father in the right direction in reaching a state whereby Microsoft's position cannot be leveraged against any potential competitors again.
The Department of Justice settlement has, to my mind, a major flaw that prevents it from being considered as an acceptable remedy. Microsoft has shown, by its conduct regarding the previous settlement, and its behavior that was upheld by the appeals court which branded Microsoft an illegal monopoly, that it will, whenever possible, circumvent rules, laws, and any barriers that prevent it from controlling its areas of interest. There are no provisions for actually punishing past or future infractions of the law by Microsoft. If Microsoft continues to abuse its position as an illegal monopoly, the Justice Department's remedy merely lengthens the term of surveillance. The states' settlement, however, provides a very exacting and appropriate punishment: disclosure of computer source code for the offending program. This would be an extremely painful measure for Microsoft, as they view their copyrighted and closely guarded computer source code as their crown jewels: very simply this is how they generate revenue. If that revenue stream is blocked, or they are forced to reveal how their programs work, that opens a new area for competition.
Microsoft has shown repeated contempt for legal agreements, hiring armies of legal minds to comb over documents trying to find potential weak areas. In 1996, when Netscape Navigator was the number one Internet browser, Microsoft signed a licensing agreement with a company called Spyglass. In exchange for a small sum of money upfront and a portion of each sale, Microsoft would receive the computer source code for Spyglass' Internet browser. This would allow Microsoft to quickly get a functional and full-featured browser into the marketplace without a lengthy development delay. However, the anticipated revenue stream Spyglass expected never arrived. Why? Because Microsoft chose not to sell their Internet browser, they gave it away for free. This allowed them to not pay further royalties to Spyglass, achieve quick market penetration for their product, which they could then use to leverage their proprietary technologies (such as ActiveX) into defacto standards.
This deal, I think, creates a very compelling picture of Microsoft's corporate character. In an interview regarding past dealings with Utah-based software company Novell, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer smugly commented "They made a mistake, they trusted us." I am writing this letter in the hopes that my government does not make the same mistake that Novell did. Any settlement must contain explicit, detailed language that leaves no room for ambiguity, and exacting, painful punishment for future and past infractions.
Thank you for time.
Scott RickettsMy address
This, to me, is going to be the greatest thing about this. I discovered these books 25 years ago, and now I get to take my ten year-old to this movie. We've already read The Hobbit as a prelude to the movie, but we're both stoked about seeing the film big as all get out. We've been counting the days, and I think he's more excited about seeing this than he was bout Harry Potter. (Score one for culture)
Maybe it's a sign of my old age, but taking the boy to this and seeing the look on his face as the film unfolds is going to be a true joy, sharing something this close to me with him, and watching him enjoy it as much as I did.
I will see the movie just for that.
Well, that, and I've been waiting 25 years to see a version that didn't include "Frodo of the Nine Fingers".
Yeah, but after reading the script for this latest remake, it blows the other two out of the water.
Okay, let me understand this, the plotline is so bad, that Cameron won't have anything to do with it anymore, BUT, they won't bother to make the flick that Arnold was dying for I am Legend ???? The script alone has had me jonesing for this flick for the last three years, for the best adaptation yet of Matheson's book, one the THE best vampire stories ever.
Hollywood truly is intelectually bankrupt.
People like Ximian and Mandrake are doing a DAMN GOOD JOB of fixing it. I don't run GNOME/Sawfish, I like WindowMaker (it appeals to my minimalist nature), but having forced myself to make the switch from Win2k to Linux (Mandrake 8.0) about five months ago, I have to say it isn't as hard as people make it out to be.
Most of what I've learned, I've done on my own, Google is my friend, but I have to say that I was amazed when I drug an MP3 out of Nautilus and dropped it onto xmms and it fired right up! Today, reading the States proposal against Microsoft, I clicked on the link, without realizing that it's a PDF, and WHAMMO! Galeon fired Acrobat Reader right up in the same damn window, just like I was using IE on Windows!
That seemless interoperability is right there, and it's just not publicized enough. So much of what users like my wife need is already there, someone just needs to show them. Granted, I've spent way too much time fscking around with rpm and change file permissions quickly on share through my trust Eterm, but with a little more work, I probably wouldn't have to. Hell, Red-Carpet does a great job of sliding in updates to my system, and I don't have to do anything except click "OK" when it's done.
People do make it out to be harder than it really is.
Except that MS isn't going to develop Office for Linux, the source code and code for all the underlying OS calls is going to be auctioned off to three seperate companies, who will then do the porting.
I think the States have really nailed this one on the head, they realized that MS has no incentive to make this project actually work, so why bother to make them do it? Turn it over to someone who does, and then, just to make sure it gets done correctly, throw parallel processing at it by allowing three different companies the right to do it.
Read the filing, the States have their heads squared on straight enough to see most of the loopholes in the DOJ agreement. File formats get left out, but bundling, phasing out old versions of Windows just to get people to upgrade, embrace-and-extend, closed API's, tying, OEM preference, they all get hit. It's a very good read.
This is MUCH better than the DOJ agreement. Addresses pretty much all the issues except File Formats, but with the mandatory licensing of the Office source code, this can be gleaned by the people who get it and then exposed in certain ways (making the import/export code open source would work).
I have hope now that there will be a good settlement of this case.
I have to say that Access is the ONLY program I miss at home. It's a very nice little personal database engine that has alot of fexibility and power to it. We've used it at work for countless projects and it does work, so long as you're limiting the number of users to something it can handle.
I know people keep taking about pgaccess, but it doesn't have evn close to the functionality that Access does. Anymore, I think this is the second app that is stopping a mass migration to Linux (Exchnage being the other).
Remember when the first thing you did when you bought a game was play it? The only games I've bought in the last three years that didn't require a patch before I played it were Black and White, and Unreal Tournament.
Where has quality control gone?
It can access the MAPI.dll needed to break open the .pst files that Outlook generates. At that point, zap all the mobx files over to a share that your Linux box can see, and Evolution will import them, attachments and all.
I did this about three weeks ago and while it took about 30 mins from start to finish (three years worth of Outlook messages clocking in at about 3000 seperate emails), it worked like a charm.
Actually, I think Office X is a Carbonized app, making it near impossible, even if you had the code, to make it run, as is, on Linux or BSD. Cocoa and Carbon are API layers, not widget sets, with Carbon being the "cleaned up" version of the Classic Macintosh API that will run without the emulation layer on OS X.
Quartz is the display engine built around Display PDF, a superset of Display Postscript. Considering that Display Ghostscript is basically done, I don't know if the GNUStep guys are thinking about expanding it to encompass the new API's and functions exposed through Display PDF.
So my theory is no way, no day, not anytime soon. And really, except for Access, what is there that OpenOffice doesn't offer you that MS Office might?
In my experience it's been because they don't care about the underlying OS, so long as it meets their security needs (C2, ACLs, and such), it's what you do with it (look at pretty pictures, record whispered conversations) that really matters.
Even in the days of ballooning military budgets, DoD systems RARELY used a custom OS. Do you realize the manhours it takes to do something like that??
Having been a wage slave (read: enlisted) for the DoD for the last 13 years, I've never used a customized OS, and I'm in Intel! Currently, my day-to-day OS is WinNT, and we just installed an NT network to replace our beloved VAX cluster running VMS. Before that, I've worked on Sun, SGI and HP boxen, using lots of custom written apps, but always using the native OS to get basic jobs done.
Not here, jumped on and started fragging after a quick zip through in dedicated server mode to get the hang of it.
Runs very snappy in 1024X768 on 1GHz T-Bird & GeForce 2 GTS using the nVidia drivers.
As a part of the "machine" that allows you the freedom to bitch about it, you're welcome.
Now, for just a moment, pop yourself out of the comfortable little shell you've built for yourself where your wonderfully self-righteous attitudes keep you warm and satiated at night and think about this experience I had, for just a moment.
When I was serving in the Republic of Korea, I was riding on the subway one day, when sitting on a bench next to me, (I was standing, anyone over 15 and under 35 stands) an older gentleman taps me on the leg and says "Excuse me, are you an American?" I answered yes, and he took my hand in his, shook it and said "Thank you.". I asked, for what? He replied "When my country needed it, your country sent it's sons to die for me and my children. You sent us the young men who should have been building your country, and those of us that lived through it, never forget. Don't pay attention to these young kids, they don't know any better. But we remember."
For every instance of exploitation you can name, I can find more to show that Americans are the most compationate, caring, and and concerned citizens on the planet. So much so, that even total screwheads like yourself can rant about the evils of corporate America and how horrible this place is. Not to sound like a total military goober here, but go try and complain about the state of the nation in some other countries and see how far you get.
I'm sorry, but sit down, shut up and grow up.
We are attacking (at least) Kabul, Afghanistan as I sit here. My hope is that evidence from the flight recorder of the plane that crashed in PA led to this and it's not just a "shoot first ask questions later" kinda thing.
The MS Office application (after Word) that gets used the most (and gives the most in productivity gains) is Access. We've made quick databases with nice input forms and spiffy reports that have made our jobs so much easier, and did it all from the desktop. This is the only area that I have seen OpenOffice fail for me.
The OpenOffice 633 release is darn nice, and for doing word processing and slide presentations, apart from being able to recognize all my true type fonts. This is (for now) a minor quibble, one that I'm sure will be fixed, or maybe already is and I just don't know how to get to it.
Regardless, some sort of user-level database tool with the ability to quickly create forms and reports would be the finishing touch and only real request I could make of the OpenOffice team. The average user doesn't understand SQL syntax, but can lay a table out with a grid and drag columns to form links. Slap that in, and MS Office users have nothing to miss.