I wouldn't be so sure. Once the Sun is gone the project might go in all sorts of different directions.
For example it has some level of TeX integration, that could be improved and suddenly you have a very powerful publishing application that can handle things like glyph replacements in Hindi (which none of the word processors do right now).
Another place it could go is adopt ideas that research.microsoft.com has been kicking around for user defined formulas that worked really really well but for some reason never made it into Excel.
Has more obscure features Better compatibility with 3rd party Office support apps Better look and feel
Open Office: Free. Better integration with tools typically found on Linux Open document formats. Most likely the right choice for a guy who doesn't use office software much.
What is so wrong with allowing your employees to express their honest opinions on issues not terribly closely related to the company? Especially when they do so in their own name.
IMHO Novell should be applauded for allowing free speech not condemned.
I never used the 1.x Linux kernel but I did use the 2.0 series. They were a lot worse, particularly in terms of most types of devices. People really did recompile back in the 2.0 days and not just load modules. In terms of performance the biggest shift in Linux was from the 2.4 series to the 2.6.
"Useless bloat" is what many end users like about Microsoft Office. There are 2 or 3 obscure features they really like.
Don't get me wrong a big advocate for Open Office, and it has tremendous progress but the idea that it is as feature rich as Microsoft Office still ain't true.
Great link. In reading Sun's response I have to wonder, what kind of open source project is worried about "stealing code". There is no stealing code. You contribute to an open source project and then other people work on it. Layer upon layer. I think there may be a culture conflict going on here and Sun and OO is not going to be meaningfully open source as long as long it is under Sun almost exclusively.
That seems to me to a a difference between the user having a standing permanent window or not having it. I.E. the difference between a GUI and a window manager. You can set up Aqua that way, or just keep your desktop clean.
Absolutely Klennex is a trademark. The question is how well it could be enforced in light of general usage. For example if Puffs sold "Puffs brand Kleenex" and not "Puffs brand facial tissue" would they lose? Until it is tested the trademark is iffy but so far Kleenex doesn't go nuts about people using it as a generic term since they see it as to their advantage.
As for the amount of time. That doesn't matter what matters is what people who use the term by it.
Finally I didn't say their was a lawsuit but the question is whether they could win one in terms of the website owners.
Well that's exactly the point of trademarking. You want to pick product name which is distinct and then hope it doesn't become a word. For example you buy "Scotch brand clear plastic tape" so their is another word for "scotch tape".
That's a good example but it seems to defend my point. Adobe is desperately trying to avoid the word "photoshop" becoming a verb for a type of photo manipulation or a noun for a type of image. That is exactly the problem Psion has, that this is happening (has happened) with netbook.
Now in Adobe's case most people who use the word photoshop still see it as deriving from or connected to the product. But sentences like
"I photoshopped off the redeye with iPhoto" are death to their trademark.
In any case even if you were to violate the above in an article, I can't see how Adobe can sue you.
They can win against "netbook" manufacturers. They can't win against websites using the term as it used in common speech. Worse, establishing the term has moved into a generic term for a whole class of computers would void their trademark.
Not only will they lose the lawsuit (assuming the site can afford to defend itself) but they will lose the trademark as well.
The term netbook is used in common speech to refer to a collection of a certain type of laptop. A bunch of websites are writing content using that term. They may be selling advertising, but they aren't netbook manufacturers. They can't tell websites not to use the term.
Psion doesn't get to regulate how a word is used in common speech only if competitors can use it. The websites can keep their content up, there is no violation.
Raven is right here. Which documents take priority is very very tricky legally. With software coming from mixed sources it gets worse. Having the english GPL be the official license and having local languages be additional documents dealing with local legal systems makes the most sense.
It is much easier to write an interpreter which is all infex notation.
a * b + c | !d is complex but (| (+ (* a b) c) (! d)) is essentially prepared. Because the parsers become so easy it becomes easier to write mini DSL's (domain specific languages) for yourself. That is your code at one level becomes the data at the next level and you start to get the advantages of an object hierarchy without all the BS.
My experience is the opposite, I start with (the equivalent of) Pat Benetar and it ends up suggesting some German rock group that sound just like her. And pretty quick I'm into this German group and....
Music is a tough business since music taste is built by repetition. Certainly though Pandora has expanded the range of music I listened and introduced me to groups that I would like but didn't know about. Classic long tail.
But Pandora doesn't sell music. iTunes conversely I don't buy from anymore after annoyance with their DRM. It looks like Pandora/Amazon cross links are starting to work better and then we'll see about the long tail.
30 years ago most newspapers had strong ideological biases. In the 70s the minor papers folded and the more "mainstream" hardnews papers picked up their readership which bought those papers years. Then the competition started to fold and most cities ended up with one major daily paper.
Newspapers during the 70s were much more like the cable news shows are today. The situation you see is recent. And I should mention just as we see today excellent detailed research from blogs in the 1950s you used to see really good research from the print media, not just repeating of the obvious stories. Again you are starting to see the system developing on cable television:
(1) minor (specialized) blog reports a story (2) other blogs get involved (3) cable news tries to verify and reports on the status (4) blogs fill in more details (5) repeat 3&4 as needed.
The student most likely is just running a script. And I don't think have to hack the binary at all. For the details I need to know how JAMF works which means I'd have to play a little.
Lets just take an example here based on the docsJamf on how they determine process names. This is good the user can't just rename the app using "get info". But if they just change the name of the app's in the info.plist bundle to something else authorized (like say TextEdit) JAMF is going to think this is authorized software. Which means they can run it and JAMF won't stop them.
Let's make this less specific. Do you think Intel, IBM, Sun, Microsoft, AMD.... invented trusted computing when a simple software solution would have worked just as well? Because that is essentially what you are arguing, if your position were correct than trusted computing is a complete waste of time and money. All you need is a little daemon process.
This ain't breaking into the Kremlin this is just the kids understand how OSX works. What I'm describing isn't close to how hard it is to write a virus and high school kids do that all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope you get modded up. You make a lot of sense.
I wouldn't be so sure. Once the Sun is gone the project might go in all sorts of different directions.
For example it has some level of TeX integration, that could be improved and suddenly you have a very powerful publishing application that can handle things like glyph replacements in Hindi (which none of the word processors do right now).
Another place it could go is adopt ideas that research.microsoft.com has been kicking around for user defined formulas that worked really really well but for some reason never made it into Excel.
I think you should take another look at Open Office. I was never a big fan but today it is very very usable.
Microsoft office:
Has more obscure features
Better compatibility with 3rd party Office support apps
Better look and feel
Open Office:
Free.
Better integration with tools typically found on Linux
Open document formats.
Most likely the right choice for a guy who doesn't use office software much.
DTP -> Representation is important content is secondary
Word Processor -> Content is primary, representation is important only so far as it assists in explicating the content
Text editor -> Content is primary and so simplistic that the representation is unimportant.
What is so wrong with allowing your employees to express their honest opinions on issues not terribly closely related to the company? Especially when they do so in their own name.
IMHO Novell should be applauded for allowing free speech not condemned.
Mac has a spreadsheet that is very different and very cool Numbers. But frankly Excel is the way it is because it fits well what people want to do.
I never used the 1.x Linux kernel but I did use the 2.0 series. They were a lot worse, particularly in terms of most types of devices. People really did recompile back in the 2.0 days and not just load modules. In terms of performance the biggest shift in Linux was from the 2.4 series to the 2.6.
Cut and paste -> Drag and Drop -> OLE.
Integration of server data
Automatic configuration of applications
I could keep going.
"Useless bloat" is what many end users like about Microsoft Office. There are 2 or 3 obscure features they really like.
Don't get me wrong a big advocate for Open Office, and it has tremendous progress but the idea that it is as feature rich as Microsoft Office still ain't true.
Great link. In reading Sun's response I have to wonder, what kind of open source project is worried about "stealing code". There is no stealing code. You contribute to an open source project and then other people work on it. Layer upon layer. I think there may be a culture conflict going on here and Sun and OO is not going to be meaningfully open source as long as long it is under Sun almost exclusively.
That seems to me to a a difference between the user having a standing permanent window or not having it. I.E. the difference between a GUI and a window manager. You can set up Aqua that way, or just keep your desktop clean.
You want less clutter on a Mac Think.app.
Matt --
Absolutely Klennex is a trademark. The question is how well it could be enforced in light of general usage. For example if Puffs sold "Puffs brand Kleenex" and not "Puffs brand facial tissue" would they lose? Until it is tested the trademark is iffy but so far Kleenex doesn't go nuts about people using it as a generic term since they see it as to their advantage.
As for the amount of time. That doesn't matter what matters is what people who use the term by it.
Finally I didn't say their was a lawsuit but the question is whether they could win one in terms of the website owners.
Well that's exactly the point of trademarking. You want to pick product name which is distinct and then hope it doesn't become a word. For example you buy "Scotch brand clear plastic tape" so their is another word for "scotch tape".
That's a good example but it seems to defend my point. Adobe is desperately trying to avoid the word "photoshop" becoming a verb for a type of photo manipulation or a noun for a type of image. That is exactly the problem Psion has, that this is happening (has happened) with netbook.
Now in Adobe's case most people who use the word photoshop still see it as deriving from or connected to the product. But sentences like
"I photoshopped off the redeye with iPhoto" are death to their trademark.
In any case even if you were to violate the above in an article, I can't see how Adobe can sue you.
They can win against "netbook" manufacturers. They can't win against websites using the term as it used in common speech. Worse, establishing the term has moved into a generic term for a whole class of computers would void their trademark.
Not only will they lose the lawsuit (assuming the site can afford to defend itself) but they will lose the trademark as well.
The term netbook is used in common speech to refer to a collection of a certain type of laptop. A bunch of websites are writing content using that term. They may be selling advertising, but they aren't netbook manufacturers. They can't tell websites not to use the term.
Psion doesn't get to regulate how a word is used in common speech only if competitors can use it. The websites can keep their content up, there is no violation.
Raven is right here. Which documents take priority is very very tricky legally. With software coming from mixed sources it gets worse. Having the english GPL be the official license and having local languages be additional documents dealing with local legal systems makes the most sense.
It is much easier to write an interpreter which is all infex notation.
a * b + c | !d is complex but
(| (+ (* a b) c) (! d)) is essentially prepared.
Because the parsers become so easy it becomes easier to write mini DSL's (domain specific languages) for yourself. That is your code at one level becomes the data at the next level and you start to get the advantages of an object hierarchy without all the BS.
My experience is the opposite, I start with (the equivalent of) Pat Benetar and it ends up suggesting some German rock group that sound just like her. And pretty quick I'm into this German group and....
Music is a tough business since music taste is built by repetition. Certainly though Pandora has expanded the range of music I listened and introduced me to groups that I would like but didn't know about. Classic long tail.
But Pandora doesn't sell music. iTunes conversely I don't buy from anymore after annoyance with their DRM. It looks like Pandora/Amazon cross links are starting to work better and then we'll see about the long tail.
You think the union did this on purpose?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
30 years ago most newspapers had strong ideological biases. In the 70s the minor papers folded and the more "mainstream" hardnews papers picked up their readership which bought those papers years. Then the competition started to fold and most cities ended up with one major daily paper.
Newspapers during the 70s were much more like the cable news shows are today. The situation you see is recent. And I should mention just as we see today excellent detailed research from blogs in the 1950s you used to see really good research from the print media, not just repeating of the obvious stories. Again you are starting to see the system developing on cable television:
(1) minor (specialized) blog reports a story
(2) other blogs get involved
(3) cable news tries to verify and reports on the status
(4) blogs fill in more details
(5) repeat 3&4 as needed.
The student most likely is just running a script. And I don't think have to hack the binary at all. For the details I need to know how JAMF works which means I'd have to play a little.
Lets just take an example here based on the docsJamf on how they determine process names. This is good the user can't just rename the app using "get info". But if they just change the name of the app's in the info.plist bundle to something else authorized (like say TextEdit) JAMF is going to think this is authorized software. Which means they can run it and JAMF won't stop them.
Let's make this less specific. Do you think Intel, IBM, Sun, Microsoft, AMD.... invented trusted computing when a simple software solution would have worked just as well? Because that is essentially what you are arguing, if your position were correct than trusted computing is a complete waste of time and money. All you need is a little daemon process.
This ain't breaking into the Kremlin this is just the kids understand how OSX works. What I'm describing isn't close to how hard it is to write a virus and high school kids do that all the time.