While I feel your pain regarding how much PM sucked, I think it's too early to write the next movie. I think it's possible that even Lucas learned from the first movie. Hard to say; either he will learn from his mistakes and the next movie will have a lot more plot, or he will go the other direction -- the dark side, let's call it -- and make Jar Jar even more annoying:
"They thought PM was juvenile? I'll show them juvenile... how about Jar Jar fart jokes throughout the whole damn movie??"
I'm really, really hoping that he learned from the disaster.
However, if you increase it to about 100ms, which is my typical ping for my cable modem, my maximum bandwidth is a mere 640KB/s. Ow. Biiig difference. So, there's where my numbers come from.
Well, that would be true if morons designed TCP/IP, but fortunately that sort of protocol hasn't been used since XMODEM. TCP/IP will continue to transmit packets without waiting for an ACK of the previous one. This is referred to as a "sliding window" protocol. Of course, it will transmit only so many packets before it has to wait, which is the "window size".
Look up "sliding window" in your TCP/IP book ("Internetworking with TCP/IP by Comer is the usual recommendation) or you might even try a web search.
And you call yourself Reality Master? Have you seen anything that's happened since around 1995? "People like me" are starting to take the tech industry away from Microsoft. Why do you think Linux is getting big? Not because we follow "de facto standards"--it's because we like quality software AND the freedom to do what we want. And we aren't ashamed to say it.
Let's check the Linux scorecard:
Servers: Good success. Clearly this is the area where Linux has succeeded the most, with apps such as Apache.
Desktop: Moderate success. Clearly they have come a long way, but still are not up to the quality of Windows or even the Mac. Difficult to say whether they ever will for the average user, simply because the "average user" is not a priority to the people who work on them. In fact, there is a noted hostility toward making things easier for the non-tech-elite.
Applications: Poor success. Yes, there are some that are moderately useful, but there is no end user app that is better than the equivalent on Windows or the Mac. Many apps are held back by the lack of tech infrastructure on Linux (such as a print rendering subsystem, multimedia, etc). It's actually remarkable that there is NO end-user app that one can point to as an application success story, other than server apps such as Apache.
Desktop Penetration: Abject failure. Given that people use applications to get work done, not operating systems, it's difficult to say whether Linux will ever succeed in this space. There are so many things that have to come together, including desktop usability, applications, hardware support, corporate penetration (most important), etc.
There is no question that you can point to the server space as a successful space for Linux (which is where I use it), but the subject is Office Suites. I think you make the mistake of assuming that server success means success in all areas, and that is simply false. Otherwise secretaries would all have Sun workstations on their desktops.
It's pretty clear from this series of posts and others that you like to think of yourself as a "counter-revolutionary": "The sheep like MS, the slightly less-sheeplike hate MS, but *I* (in my level-transcending wisdom) like MS--for the 'right' reasons." But guess what? Just because you condescending to "the masses" AND "non-conformist" among the "elite" doesn't make you right.
Hmmm; you're right, but for the wrong reasons. You think I take the stands that I do out of some political sense, like I stick my finger in the wind and figure out where the extremes are, and go in the perpendicular direction. Sorry to disappoint your attempt to pigeonhole me, but I take the stands I do because it's what I believe. I believe in taking rational stands, irrespective of what is "conventional wisdom". Sometimes I even believe in the conventional wisdom, and sometimes I don't. I usually only post when I have something reasonably unique to add to a discussion, so it probably seems like I'm always against the grain. Frankly, it's boring to post an "I Agree" post, unless someone says something particularly well and I feel an urge to congratulate it.
But I do agree with you in this way: I do tend to look down on extremists on both sides, primarily because they usually don't know why they believe what they do. Microsoft is a perfect example. Most of the hatred on Slashdot is totally irrational, and done just to "fit in" with the culture. On the other hand, RMS is an extremist whom I rarely agree with, but I respect him because he can tell you exactly why he believes what he does (misguided as it is).
You're right. We had one: text. It was used to exchange information--you know: data, useful stuff, what is needed. Now we have.doc, which is used for the interchange of data covered in dressing, gravy and all the fixins. Why? What is added by allowing every second-rate secretary to use seven fonts in a purchase order?
You know, I have another idea. Who needs houses with colors, windows, landscaping, etc. What's wrong with caves? You know, shelter, useful stuff, what is needed. Now we have all this useless "dressing and gravy". Why? What is added by allowing every second-rate homeowner to see outside, have landscaping that you know they won't maintain, and other useless amenities.
Give me gray, featureless stone caves any day.
By the way, kind of hard to have charts and diagrams in text-only files. Yeah, yeah, I know, ASCII art should be good enough for anyone.
Oh give me a cave no longer a slave to the grass that needs to be mowed a nice gray slate is all that I rate and a nice, soft pillow of stone!
Just how do you think this emergence is going to take place? A magic wand waved near Bill Gates and suddenly he decides to play nice with others?
Not that I'm necessarily saying that Microsoft is a nice company for the most part, but what's your theory on why MS is converting to XML? Not that they've done it yet, but I think the reason is that the.doc format has grown too unwieldly even for Microsoft.
Of course, I'm sure in 5 years you'll be telling everyone how your "cooperative attitude" allowed you to overturn the MS Office dominance "from the inside"--when it was really people who just refused to take it anymore.
Oh, I guarantee you that people like you are irrelevent to how the industry is going to evolve on this matter. I don't think you realize how little the general population cares about this issue. Got news for you: business likes Microsoft Office. Hell, I like Microsoft office. It is far superior to any other office suite.
Now, would I like to be able to parse the.doc format easily? Sure, but it's still going to be complex even if it goes to XML. Word does a lot. Given that it's not going to be that easy even ASCII-ized, I can't get too excited about it.
The industry will clearly evolve. But what's going to move the evolution is what business uses. That's how Microsoft won. They catered to business to an unbelievable degree by listening to them and giving high priority to their feature requests (which is how it should be done, by the way, but I'm sure you'll criticize listening to users). If a better solution comes along that gives a company a business advantage, then the industry will change.
Frankly, I don't know what that better solution will be. What I do know is that business is extremely happy with the MS/Office solution. The better solution is going to have to be a lot better to make a dent. Maybe it will be Java-based browser word processors that store the docs on a central Internet server, and the advantage of being able to access docs anywhere in the world will be the big killer advantage. I doubt it, simply because that doesn't sound like enough of an advantage.
But "anything but Microsoft" is not an advantage, as much as you would like it to be.
Besides, what is so bad about politely informing people that you won't accept non-standard document formats?
There is a difference between "politely" lecturing someone about non-standard document formats, and simply saying that you don't have access to Word. One is being a religous snob, and the other is simple practicality. I was taking issue with the former, which is what the original poster said.
When dealing with a large document, with multiple authors, and three dozen text styles, all that hidden sophistication becomes a nightmare of sloppy organization that is hard to fix because it's hard to see. Doing something like changing a heading can break the rest of the document. God how I pray that I could dump Word files to text and clean them up like I clean up the crap generated by WYSIWYG HTML editors.
Fix the styles, and you've fixed the document. It's not as if they're hidden. Where's the need for Reveal Codes?
It will be a beautiful world when all documents are XML, especially Word documents, because it will become relatively trivial to convert the content into a meaningful form using XSLT.
I agree that an XML format would be way better than the complex Word document (not that the complexity will go away...). However, people think.doc files are big now, way until they are XML-ized. At least they'll compress nicely.
Does it benefit the user to be able to share documents with co-workers? Yes. Does msword offer this feature? Yes. Do other formats offer this feature? Yes. Can they be used in the place of.doc? Yes.
Does anyone use any formats other than.doc universally? No. Any argument you can muster doesn't matter to the fact that 95% of business uses Word. That makes it a de-facto standard, and yes, to the benefit of users. This is not a Microsoft-centric fact, it's an industry-centric fact. Business has picked a format.
Now I know where you get your viewpoints from and I know that you're an avid reader of ms rags (reads msBob power Dev monthly) and like a trained seal barking for food, you've been trained to spout the ms line whenever you can.
Translation: If someone disagrees with me, it can't be that I'm wrong, it has to be that he is a mind-controlled robot. Nice logic.
What I'm asking you to review is who benifits from the continued use of.doc benifits and why.
Who benefits? Microsoft, obviously. So what? I'm interested in getting work done. You are interested in religious arguments.
And the industry benefits. There is no question that there is a benefit to a universal document exchange format that everyone understands. Would there be more benefit to a simpler format? Of course. But life is seldom perfect. You only have to look at Linux to see how imperfect life can be.
On the one hand, you complain that users don't know how to use the features that are in Word, and then later you say that they should be fired if they can't learn to use a less user-friendly tool. Either way, incompetent people are going to screw things up. What else is new?
Pasting of images has to work that way, because otherwise the average user wouldn't understand that they had to send all the various linked files along with the original document. You know that will never happen. Better to have a big, but complete, document than a small one with zillions of broken links. Advanced users can still do linking, but it's far more intuitive to have a single monolithic document.
I have to admit, I've never understood this "bloated" argument. Which features do you want to delete? I guarantee for every one you name, there are a lot of people that use and depend on that feature. In fact, that's how features generally got added -- someone asking for them.
I used WordPerfect up until version 6. 6.0 was so screwed up and buggy compared to 5.2 that I decided to give Word a try. Guess what? It was far superior. I hated it at first because they took away my beloved "reveal codes" function until I realized that "reveal codes" was window dressing for an inelegent interface. If you use styles properly with inheritence, etc, they are extremely powerful.
No, I mean tools like ispell, TeX/LaTeX, grep, sed, etc. Put these (especially *TeX) together right and you can do anything Word can do. Plus, you can do it more modularly AND deterministicly than Word will ever be.
That's like saying that with 'vi' and a good Postscript book, you can do anything Word can do. Or with a good manual typewriter, you can do anything Word can. Technically true, but very, very painful.
TeX/LaTeX has its uses, particularly for technical documents, but is not a good solution for the average business user. Maybe if someone wrapped a good WYSIWYG interface around it, but you would still be lacking things like revision histories, app embedding (spreadsheets in particular), and other modern business necessities (yes, necessities).
And you can't credit Word with good printing while denying it to Unix. That's comparing apps to os's. Word itself doesn't do ANY printing.
Technically, you're right, but the average user doesn't see the distinction, so I think it's fair if you are comparing "user experiences". Your original statement was "Name one useful feature that Word has that can't be done on Unix". From a user perspective, printer independent printing can't be done on Unix in any practical sense.
I'll leave it to others to counter the ridiculous claim that I should follow Word just because other people do.
Well, let's say I'm an architect. I use L33tCAD, which has a fabulous open CAD format. However, for some odd reason my customers keep sending me stuff in AutoCAD format, which as you know is closed. Unfortunately, L33tCAD doesn't have all the features of AutoCAD, and doesn't really import properply, but heck, I am going to take a stand and tell my customers to shove it even though AutoCAD owns the CAD market.
Yes, I would look like an unprofessional fool.
That is the situation. If 95% of the business world like Word, then if you are in business, you need to be able to exchange Word documents. Hey, the legal professional standardized on WP. You think they're happy that they had to retrain to use Word? But lawyers are pragmatic, and realize that it was in everyone's best interest to have a common document format.
That format has been picked. Your whining does nothing to change reality. Would it be better to have a simpler format? Clearly, yes, and maybe if MS goes to XML, it will be. But in the meantime, I see no reason to make everyone else's life miserable. The emergence of a standard format is clearly a big plus.
And maybe we should ask you why you think that any business will act in a way that preserves competition, when it has the opportunity to crush all competitors and then release shoddy products at inflated prices?
No one thinks that they do. A company's job is to drive their competitors out of business.
The idea that preventing a company from exercising monopoly power in an anticompetitve way is somehow "picking winners and losers" boggles the mind.
Again, most people don't argue that antitrust laws are never needed. I cited Standard Oil as an example of a case where they held way too much power. In SO's case, they owned most of the transportation infrustructure, and competitors simply couldn't enter the market.
Contrast that with Microsoft where competitors can, did, and do enter the market (Mac, Linux, Be, OS/2, Netscape, etc). The difference is that the Microsoft competitors are, for the most part, incompetent. Microsoft has understood since day 1 that compatitibility was the single most important feature of their operating system, because that gives everyone an upgrade path.
Of course, in Netscape's case, their products were (and STILL are) absolute crap, particularly the browser. It's ironic that the DOJ cited Microsoft giving away the browser, even though Netscape did that for years. Microsoft did screw up their argument, though. They should have argued that a browser is an expected utility in a modern operating system (same as Linux, Be, etc, etc), and they would have won. It was stupid to distract everyone with the "it can't be removed" argument.
As soon as MS's competitors realize that, and come out with an OS that was "absolutely, positively, 100% compatible, only better", we will see real competition. OS/2 had the best shot, but IBM was too stupid to 1) invest the resources in Win32 capability, and 2) provide a compatibility layer for Window's device drivers.
Of course the Macophiles will hypocritically say that Mac is a viable alternative, and you don't need Microsoft, while at the same time claiming they are a monopoly (Linux people do the same thing, but their argument is weaker).
Maybe we should ask the Democratic party (and socialists of all stripes) why they think the federal government is smart enough to micromanage the economy?
What frightens me is that you think the government should be MORE intrusive into the free market. You couch your arguments into "pro-competition" terms, but when government steps in and starts picking winners and losers (i.e., anti-trust law), that is not pro-competition.
I will agree, however, that some of the laws being passed are not particularly good for consumers, more government intervention is not the answer. Government is a blunt instrument, and should only be used in the most extreme cases (and Microsoft is really pretty borderline). Microsoft is a piker compared to how powerful Standard Oil was.
Besides, what am I *supposed* to do? Ignore the document?
Depends. If you're in business, what you are supposed to do is get Office for Windows or the Mac. The business world has standardized on Word format. Resent it all you want, but welcome to the real world.
At least until the competing office suites get a clue and realize that Office compatibility is the ONLY feature that matters. That should be the number 1 priority. It is absolute idiocy that import/export of Office is so brain-damaged in all these suites, after all this time (in WP's case). They should not put in one more feature until that is rock solid.
Name one useful feature that Word has that can't be done on Unix.
"Unix" has no word processing features. Oh, you mean some of the office apps available for Unix?
Let's see... I believe StarOffice does not have revision capability. Not sure about WP.
WP does not have Styles as advanced as Word. It still forces you to have to use that lame "Reveal Codes" nonsense (yes, I know a lot you think that's a feature not a bug, but you're wrong. Presentation should be separate from content).
Other features: Autoformat (great for converting plain text docs), advanced embedding (All the suites are way behind on this, although KOffice is trying), underlining of misspelled words (why others don't copy this feature is beyond my understanding), Master Document capability (splitting of docs into multiple files), etc, etc. This is just off the top of my head. Anyone who doesn't think Word is light years ahead of any other office suite has not really explored everything it can do. A hint -- it does way more than you think, but most of it stays out of your way until you need it.
However, the biggest thing Word can do is print reliably to just about any cheap printer. Unix is way, way, way WAY WAY behind on having a comprehensive print rendering subsystem. I think the Gnome guys are working on something, but that's the part of Unix that has biggest piece of brain damage.
Finally, the most important feature that Word has is -- Word compatibility. Face it; Word is the defacto industry standard document interchange format. The other suites are pathetic when it comes to compatibility.
Even if this manages to survive, all it means is that manufacturers will rush the next generation of memory without patent problems into computers. It's happened before, and it'll happen again. I seem to recall IBM tried to squeeze the industry with Microchannel and Apple tried to squeeze with Firewire. The industry will survive.
it's been mentioned in comp.risks numerous times - ms word files by default are saved by revisions.
Tracking revision is not activated by default, although there may be an option to make it the default. A standard Word installation will have it off, however.
being a unix user I of course send back the usual note about proprietory formats etc etc..
This attitude is one of the main reasons that Linux will have extreme trouble making it onto the mainstream desktop. Rather than recognize that Word is the defacto industry standard document interchange format, you preach to people about "proprietary formats".
Guess what? People don't care. They are interested in getting work done, and you are preventing them from getting work done. This attitude of yours just tells people "Unix is useless, it can't even read standard documents. Boy, I'm sure going to stay away from *that*!"
It's just frustrating to those of us who would like to see alternatives. Unfortunately, it takes 10 reasonable people to undo the damage caused by 1 fanatic such as yourself. Even if/when the office suites under Unix catch up with MS/Office and offer full compatibility, people will still remember that "arrogant Unix asshole" who told them that Unix couldn't read their Word docs.
and it's like no one up here has any idea what a turn signal is for. I see people backing out of their driveways into the street without even looking. 7/10 people talking on their cellphone while driving. People weaving in and out of traffic like madmen. [...] We need to move towards smaller vehicles, a small toyota truck is enough to haul anything the suburbanites want to carry.
Er, how does driving a smaller car automatically make people better drivers? But moving on...
My experience here in So Cal is exactly the opposite. It's the little micro-cars that weave in and out of traffic, because they can. It's hard for a behemoth to nimbly slice through traffic.
Hey, if you want to drive a crackerbox death trap, more power to you. But you make my point for me. There are huge numbers of idiot drivers out there, armed with huge machines of death. However, I don't drive like a maniac, so if I get into an accident, it's much more likely that it's going to be some other fool's fault. And if that fool is going to try to take me out, I feel no guilt in doing everything in my power to win the battle.
then send you the bill for $1.00 per Word doc you opened,
I don't know why everyone is so automatically against this. It boils down to economics. It's not going to be a $1/doc. What if it was a penny per doc, and you had access to every application in the entire industry? I think that would be mighty cool.
For example, I don't have a copy of Visio, but there have been times that I would really have liked to have access to it. But it's never been worth going out and buying it [and there is nothing like Visio in the OSS world, but that's another story]. If I could pay a penny on an as-need basis, it would make great economic sense.
Again, it all boils down to the cost. If the cost is low enough, it makes a lot of sense.
Oh, but I forgot, it's not about *avoiding* accidents, is it?
Oh, I'm all for avoiding accidents. Funny how the insane drivers tend to avoid very large, high visibility objects when they are recklessly weaving in and out of traffic.
By the way, that article was pretty damn funny. Yep, that's how I feel about it -- I can afford it, therefore I will drive a tank.
P.S. Excuse if this is a duplicate -- Slashdot is being wacky.
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, I posted it on the Pentium story, might as well put one here. I think it's time for some Weird Al.
All Al all the time!
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I think it's time for some Weird Al
Favorite line: "I should do the world a favor and cap you like Old Yeller"
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While I feel your pain regarding how much PM sucked, I think it's too early to write the next movie. I think it's possible that even Lucas learned from the first movie. Hard to say; either he will learn from his mistakes and the next movie will have a lot more plot, or he will go the other direction -- the dark side, let's call it -- and make Jar Jar even more annoying:
I'm really, really hoping that he learned from the disaster.
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Or even perhaps the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulatoor
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However, if you increase it to about 100ms, which is my typical ping for my cable modem, my maximum bandwidth is a mere 640KB/s. Ow. Biiig difference. So, there's where my numbers come from.
Well, that would be true if morons designed TCP/IP, but fortunately that sort of protocol hasn't been used since XMODEM. TCP/IP will continue to transmit packets without waiting for an ACK of the previous one. This is referred to as a "sliding window" protocol. Of course, it will transmit only so many packets before it has to wait, which is the "window size".
Look up "sliding window" in your TCP/IP book ("Internetworking with TCP/IP by Comer is the usual recommendation) or you might even try a web search.
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They have an "unsigned" type. That was one of my pet peeves with Java. :)
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And you call yourself Reality Master? Have you seen anything that's happened since around 1995? "People like me" are starting to take the tech industry away from Microsoft. Why do you think Linux is getting big? Not because we follow "de facto standards"--it's because we like quality software AND the freedom to do what we want. And we aren't ashamed to say it.
Let's check the Linux scorecard:
Servers: Good success. Clearly this is the area where Linux has succeeded the most, with apps such as Apache.
Desktop: Moderate success. Clearly they have come a long way, but still are not up to the quality of Windows or even the Mac. Difficult to say whether they ever will for the average user, simply because the "average user" is not a priority to the people who work on them. In fact, there is a noted hostility toward making things easier for the non-tech-elite.
Applications: Poor success. Yes, there are some that are moderately useful, but there is no end user app that is better than the equivalent on Windows or the Mac. Many apps are held back by the lack of tech infrastructure on Linux (such as a print rendering subsystem, multimedia, etc). It's actually remarkable that there is NO end-user app that one can point to as an application success story, other than server apps such as Apache.
Desktop Penetration: Abject failure. Given that people use applications to get work done, not operating systems, it's difficult to say whether Linux will ever succeed in this space. There are so many things that have to come together, including desktop usability, applications, hardware support, corporate penetration (most important), etc.
There is no question that you can point to the server space as a successful space for Linux (which is where I use it), but the subject is Office Suites. I think you make the mistake of assuming that server success means success in all areas, and that is simply false. Otherwise secretaries would all have Sun workstations on their desktops.
It's pretty clear from this series of posts and others that you like to think of yourself as a "counter-revolutionary": "The sheep like MS, the slightly less-sheeplike hate MS, but *I* (in my level-transcending wisdom) like MS--for the 'right' reasons." But guess what? Just because you condescending to "the masses" AND "non-conformist" among the "elite" doesn't make you right.
Hmmm; you're right, but for the wrong reasons. You think I take the stands that I do out of some political sense, like I stick my finger in the wind and figure out where the extremes are, and go in the perpendicular direction. Sorry to disappoint your attempt to pigeonhole me, but I take the stands I do because it's what I believe. I believe in taking rational stands, irrespective of what is "conventional wisdom". Sometimes I even believe in the conventional wisdom, and sometimes I don't. I usually only post when I have something reasonably unique to add to a discussion, so it probably seems like I'm always against the grain. Frankly, it's boring to post an "I Agree" post, unless someone says something particularly well and I feel an urge to congratulate it.
But I do agree with you in this way: I do tend to look down on extremists on both sides, primarily because they usually don't know why they believe what they do. Microsoft is a perfect example. Most of the hatred on Slashdot is totally irrational, and done just to "fit in" with the culture. On the other hand, RMS is an extremist whom I rarely agree with, but I respect him because he can tell you exactly why he believes what he does (misguided as it is).
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You're right. We had one: text. It was used to exchange information--you know: data, useful stuff, what is needed. Now we have .doc, which is used for the interchange of data covered in dressing, gravy and all the fixins. Why? What is added by allowing every second-rate secretary to use seven fonts in a purchase order?
You know, I have another idea. Who needs houses with colors, windows, landscaping, etc. What's wrong with caves? You know, shelter, useful stuff, what is needed. Now we have all this useless "dressing and gravy". Why? What is added by allowing every second-rate homeowner to see outside, have landscaping that you know they won't maintain, and other useless amenities.
Give me gray, featureless stone caves any day.
By the way, kind of hard to have charts and diagrams in text-only files. Yeah, yeah, I know, ASCII art should be good enough for anyone.
Oh give me a cave
no longer a slave
to the grass that needs to be mowed
a nice gray slate
is all that I rate
and a nice, soft pillow of stone!
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Just how do you think this emergence is going to take place? A magic wand waved near Bill Gates and suddenly he decides to play nice with others?
Not that I'm necessarily saying that Microsoft is a nice company for the most part, but what's your theory on why MS is converting to XML? Not that they've done it yet, but I think the reason is that the .doc format has grown too unwieldly even for Microsoft.
Of course, I'm sure in 5 years you'll be telling everyone how your "cooperative attitude" allowed you to overturn the MS Office dominance "from the inside"--when it was really people who just refused to take it anymore.
Oh, I guarantee you that people like you are irrelevent to how the industry is going to evolve on this matter. I don't think you realize how little the general population cares about this issue. Got news for you: business likes Microsoft Office. Hell, I like Microsoft office. It is far superior to any other office suite.
Now, would I like to be able to parse the .doc format easily? Sure, but it's still going to be complex even if it goes to XML. Word does a lot. Given that it's not going to be that easy even ASCII-ized, I can't get too excited about it.
The industry will clearly evolve. But what's going to move the evolution is what business uses. That's how Microsoft won. They catered to business to an unbelievable degree by listening to them and giving high priority to their feature requests (which is how it should be done, by the way, but I'm sure you'll criticize listening to users). If a better solution comes along that gives a company a business advantage, then the industry will change.
Frankly, I don't know what that better solution will be. What I do know is that business is extremely happy with the MS/Office solution. The better solution is going to have to be a lot better to make a dent. Maybe it will be Java-based browser word processors that store the docs on a central Internet server, and the advantage of being able to access docs anywhere in the world will be the big killer advantage. I doubt it, simply because that doesn't sound like enough of an advantage.
But "anything but Microsoft" is not an advantage, as much as you would like it to be.
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Besides, what is so bad about politely informing people that you won't accept non-standard document formats?
There is a difference between "politely" lecturing someone about non-standard document formats, and simply saying that you don't have access to Word. One is being a religous snob, and the other is simple practicality. I was taking issue with the former, which is what the original poster said.
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When dealing with a large document, with multiple authors, and three dozen text styles, all that hidden sophistication becomes a nightmare of sloppy organization that is hard to fix because it's hard to see. Doing something like changing a heading can break the rest of the document. God how I pray that I could dump Word files to text and clean them up like I clean up the crap generated by WYSIWYG HTML editors.
Fix the styles, and you've fixed the document. It's not as if they're hidden. Where's the need for Reveal Codes?
It will be a beautiful world when all documents are XML, especially Word documents, because it will become relatively trivial to convert the content into a meaningful form using XSLT.
I agree that an XML format would be way better than the complex Word document (not that the complexity will go away...). However, people think .doc files are big now, way until they are XML-ized. At least they'll compress nicely.
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Does it benefit the user to be able to share documents with co-workers? Yes. Does msword offer this feature? Yes. Do other formats offer this feature? Yes. Can they be used in the place of .doc? Yes.
Does anyone use any formats other than .doc universally? No. Any argument you can muster doesn't matter to the fact that 95% of business uses Word. That makes it a de-facto standard, and yes, to the benefit of users. This is not a Microsoft-centric fact, it's an industry-centric fact. Business has picked a format.
Now I know where you get your viewpoints from and I know that you're an avid reader of ms rags (reads msBob power Dev monthly) and like a trained seal barking for food, you've been trained to spout the ms line whenever you can.
Translation: If someone disagrees with me, it can't be that I'm wrong, it has to be that he is a mind-controlled robot. Nice logic.
What I'm asking you to review is who benifits from the continued use of .doc benifits and why.
Who benefits? Microsoft, obviously. So what? I'm interested in getting work done. You are interested in religious arguments.
And the industry benefits. There is no question that there is a benefit to a universal document exchange format that everyone understands. Would there be more benefit to a simpler format? Of course. But life is seldom perfect. You only have to look at Linux to see how imperfect life can be.
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On the one hand, you complain that users don't know how to use the features that are in Word, and then later you say that they should be fired if they can't learn to use a less user-friendly tool. Either way, incompetent people are going to screw things up. What else is new?
Pasting of images has to work that way, because otherwise the average user wouldn't understand that they had to send all the various linked files along with the original document. You know that will never happen. Better to have a big, but complete, document than a small one with zillions of broken links. Advanced users can still do linking, but it's far more intuitive to have a single monolithic document.
I have to admit, I've never understood this "bloated" argument. Which features do you want to delete? I guarantee for every one you name, there are a lot of people that use and depend on that feature. In fact, that's how features generally got added -- someone asking for them.
I used WordPerfect up until version 6. 6.0 was so screwed up and buggy compared to 5.2 that I decided to give Word a try. Guess what? It was far superior. I hated it at first because they took away my beloved "reveal codes" function until I realized that "reveal codes" was window dressing for an inelegent interface. If you use styles properly with inheritence, etc, they are extremely powerful.
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No, I mean tools like ispell, TeX/LaTeX, grep, sed, etc. Put these (especially *TeX) together right and you can do anything Word can do. Plus, you can do it more modularly AND deterministicly than Word will ever be.
That's like saying that with 'vi' and a good Postscript book, you can do anything Word can do. Or with a good manual typewriter, you can do anything Word can. Technically true, but very, very painful.
TeX/LaTeX has its uses, particularly for technical documents, but is not a good solution for the average business user. Maybe if someone wrapped a good WYSIWYG interface around it, but you would still be lacking things like revision histories, app embedding (spreadsheets in particular), and other modern business necessities (yes, necessities).
And you can't credit Word with good printing while denying it to Unix. That's comparing apps to os's. Word itself doesn't do ANY printing.
Technically, you're right, but the average user doesn't see the distinction, so I think it's fair if you are comparing "user experiences". Your original statement was "Name one useful feature that Word has that can't be done on Unix". From a user perspective, printer independent printing can't be done on Unix in any practical sense.
I'll leave it to others to counter the ridiculous claim that I should follow Word just because other people do.
Well, let's say I'm an architect. I use L33tCAD, which has a fabulous open CAD format. However, for some odd reason my customers keep sending me stuff in AutoCAD format, which as you know is closed. Unfortunately, L33tCAD doesn't have all the features of AutoCAD, and doesn't really import properply, but heck, I am going to take a stand and tell my customers to shove it even though AutoCAD owns the CAD market.
Yes, I would look like an unprofessional fool.
That is the situation. If 95% of the business world like Word, then if you are in business, you need to be able to exchange Word documents. Hey, the legal professional standardized on WP. You think they're happy that they had to retrain to use Word? But lawyers are pragmatic, and realize that it was in everyone's best interest to have a common document format.
That format has been picked. Your whining does nothing to change reality. Would it be better to have a simpler format? Clearly, yes, and maybe if MS goes to XML, it will be. But in the meantime, I see no reason to make everyone else's life miserable. The emergence of a standard format is clearly a big plus.
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And maybe we should ask you why you think that any business will act in a way that preserves competition, when it has the opportunity to crush all competitors and then release shoddy products at inflated prices?
No one thinks that they do. A company's job is to drive their competitors out of business.
The idea that preventing a company from exercising monopoly power in an anticompetitve way is somehow "picking winners and losers" boggles the mind.
Again, most people don't argue that antitrust laws are never needed. I cited Standard Oil as an example of a case where they held way too much power. In SO's case, they owned most of the transportation infrustructure, and competitors simply couldn't enter the market.
Contrast that with Microsoft where competitors can, did, and do enter the market (Mac, Linux, Be, OS/2, Netscape, etc). The difference is that the Microsoft competitors are, for the most part, incompetent. Microsoft has understood since day 1 that compatitibility was the single most important feature of their operating system, because that gives everyone an upgrade path.
Of course, in Netscape's case, their products were (and STILL are) absolute crap, particularly the browser. It's ironic that the DOJ cited Microsoft giving away the browser, even though Netscape did that for years. Microsoft did screw up their argument, though. They should have argued that a browser is an expected utility in a modern operating system (same as Linux, Be, etc, etc), and they would have won. It was stupid to distract everyone with the "it can't be removed" argument.
As soon as MS's competitors realize that, and come out with an OS that was "absolutely, positively, 100% compatible, only better", we will see real competition. OS/2 had the best shot, but IBM was too stupid to 1) invest the resources in Win32 capability, and 2) provide a compatibility layer for Window's device drivers.
Of course the Macophiles will hypocritically say that Mac is a viable alternative, and you don't need Microsoft, while at the same time claiming they are a monopoly (Linux people do the same thing, but their argument is weaker).
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Maybe we should ask the Democratic party (and socialists of all stripes) why they think the federal government is smart enough to micromanage the economy?
What frightens me is that you think the government should be MORE intrusive into the free market. You couch your arguments into "pro-competition" terms, but when government steps in and starts picking winners and losers (i.e., anti-trust law), that is not pro-competition.
I will agree, however, that some of the laws being passed are not particularly good for consumers, more government intervention is not the answer. Government is a blunt instrument, and should only be used in the most extreme cases (and Microsoft is really pretty borderline). Microsoft is a piker compared to how powerful Standard Oil was.
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Besides, what am I *supposed* to do? Ignore the document?
Depends. If you're in business, what you are supposed to do is get Office for Windows or the Mac. The business world has standardized on Word format. Resent it all you want, but welcome to the real world.
At least until the competing office suites get a clue and realize that Office compatibility is the ONLY feature that matters. That should be the number 1 priority. It is absolute idiocy that import/export of Office is so brain-damaged in all these suites, after all this time (in WP's case). They should not put in one more feature until that is rock solid.
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Name one useful feature that Word has that can't be done on Unix.
"Unix" has no word processing features. Oh, you mean some of the office apps available for Unix?
Let's see... I believe StarOffice does not have revision capability. Not sure about WP.
WP does not have Styles as advanced as Word. It still forces you to have to use that lame "Reveal Codes" nonsense (yes, I know a lot you think that's a feature not a bug, but you're wrong. Presentation should be separate from content).
Other features: Autoformat (great for converting plain text docs), advanced embedding (All the suites are way behind on this, although KOffice is trying), underlining of misspelled words (why others don't copy this feature is beyond my understanding), Master Document capability (splitting of docs into multiple files), etc, etc. This is just off the top of my head. Anyone who doesn't think Word is light years ahead of any other office suite has not really explored everything it can do. A hint -- it does way more than you think, but most of it stays out of your way until you need it.
However, the biggest thing Word can do is print reliably to just about any cheap printer. Unix is way, way, way WAY WAY behind on having a comprehensive print rendering subsystem. I think the Gnome guys are working on something, but that's the part of Unix that has biggest piece of brain damage.
Finally, the most important feature that Word has is -- Word compatibility. Face it; Word is the defacto industry standard document interchange format. The other suites are pathetic when it comes to compatibility.
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Even if this manages to survive, all it means is that manufacturers will rush the next generation of memory without patent problems into computers. It's happened before, and it'll happen again. I seem to recall IBM tried to squeeze the industry with Microchannel and Apple tried to squeeze with Firewire. The industry will survive.
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it's been mentioned in comp.risks numerous times - ms word files by default are saved by revisions.
Tracking revision is not activated by default, although there may be an option to make it the default. A standard Word installation will have it off, however.
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being a unix user I of course send back the usual note about proprietory formats etc etc..
This attitude is one of the main reasons that Linux will have extreme trouble making it onto the mainstream desktop. Rather than recognize that Word is the defacto industry standard document interchange format, you preach to people about "proprietary formats".
Guess what? People don't care. They are interested in getting work done, and you are preventing them from getting work done. This attitude of yours just tells people "Unix is useless, it can't even read standard documents. Boy, I'm sure going to stay away from *that*!"
It's just frustrating to those of us who would like to see alternatives. Unfortunately, it takes 10 reasonable people to undo the damage caused by 1 fanatic such as yourself. Even if/when the office suites under Unix catch up with MS/Office and offer full compatibility, people will still remember that "arrogant Unix asshole" who told them that Unix couldn't read their Word docs.
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and it's like no one up here has any idea what a turn signal is for. I see people backing out of their driveways into the street without even looking. 7/10 people talking on their cellphone while driving. People weaving in and out of traffic like madmen. [...] We need to move towards smaller vehicles, a small toyota truck is enough to haul anything the suburbanites want to carry.
Er, how does driving a smaller car automatically make people better drivers? But moving on...
My experience here in So Cal is exactly the opposite. It's the little micro-cars that weave in and out of traffic, because they can. It's hard for a behemoth to nimbly slice through traffic.
Hey, if you want to drive a crackerbox death trap, more power to you. But you make my point for me. There are huge numbers of idiot drivers out there, armed with huge machines of death. However, I don't drive like a maniac, so if I get into an accident, it's much more likely that it's going to be some other fool's fault. And if that fool is going to try to take me out, I feel no guilt in doing everything in my power to win the battle.
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then send you the bill for $1.00 per Word doc you opened,
I don't know why everyone is so automatically against this. It boils down to economics. It's not going to be a $1/doc. What if it was a penny per doc, and you had access to every application in the entire industry? I think that would be mighty cool.
For example, I don't have a copy of Visio, but there have been times that I would really have liked to have access to it. But it's never been worth going out and buying it [and there is nothing like Visio in the OSS world, but that's another story]. If I could pay a penny on an as-need basis, it would make great economic sense.
Again, it all boils down to the cost. If the cost is low enough, it makes a lot of sense.
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I did NOT submit this as anonymous. Slashdot is wacky.
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Oh, but I forgot, it's not about *avoiding* accidents, is it?
Oh, I'm all for avoiding accidents. Funny how the insane drivers tend to avoid very large, high visibility objects when they are recklessly weaving in and out of traffic.
By the way, that article was pretty damn funny. Yep, that's how I feel about it -- I can afford it, therefore I will drive a tank.
P.S. Excuse if this is a duplicate -- Slashdot is being wacky.
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