And if you're the sysadmin of a small company, and in being so, the only person who is monitoring such data pipes?:-P
Seriously, though, your scenario assumes that anyone monitoring the data can identify that. Honestly, it just looks like a nice big HTTPS stream to some webserver. Whoever was looking at the data would have to be clueful enough to know that most HTTPS streams aren't that long.:)
Oh, and finally, as far as being fired goes or prosecuted goes, that depends. Whether or not you can get fired depends on the laws of the state you're working. Michigan is an at will state (most U.S. states actually are), so you can fired there for just about any reason (short of discrimination) or no reason.
OTOH, as far as being prosecuted goes, in the United States, the burden of proof is on the prosecutor. I don't have to be able to prove that I am not smuggling confidential documents out through the pipe, the prosecuting attorney has to prove that I am.
For any but the biggest networks this is easy to stop. Institute a policy of NO filesharing programs and NO unauthorised MP3's and Movies's. Do random checks of company computers at night.
Yeah, but ssh with an HTTPS tunneling proxy (such as TransConnect or Corkscrew can be SUCH a wonderful thing. Set up a Linux or *BSD box on DSL or cable or satellite. Download and compile gtk-gnutella or similar program. Setup ssh to run on a port you can get to from the company's firewall (port 22 is often blocked) and voila! You can download and share files with people out on the Internet, download them to your work machine via scp, and delete them at the end of the day.:)
In fact, it wouldn't be hard to write a program that grabs files from the home box on demand so you don't have to even think about it.:)
Not that I've uhhh...done any of this, no not at all..
When my current manager informed me, a month before the project deadline, that oh-by-the-way, the program would have to be distributed on separate systems *on segregated networks*, and I took a deep breath and tried to meet him half way, he put held up his finger to silence me. He turned to the whiteboard and wrote the word NEGOTIATION on it. Then he turned back to me and said, "This is NOT THAT. I am the manager. I do not negotiate."
This guy doesn't know what he's doing. Any third year CS/CIS student can tell you that the only way you can be sure to get a systems development project done on time and on budget is to get ALL the requirements down before anyone writes the spec document, and well before anyone writes a SINGLE line of code. Otherwise, your project is most assuredly going to be wildly off schedule and cost way more than the budget.
If I told you to write a quick- & dirty ANSI C compiler for some platform that needed one (and you couldn't use gcc for licensing reasons) for some reason, and then one month before the deadline I told you that oh, BTW, it has to compile C++, C#, and Objective C code too, you'd probably tell me that you had to rewrite at least half the code.
That's because you started with the basic assumption that you were writing only an ANSI C compiler, and therefore didn't plan on any other languages in the interests of getting the thing done as quickly as possible.
You know this, I know this, but it's clear your boss doesn't have a clue, and therefore shouldn't be managing professional software developers. I think you don't need to be a programmer to manage programmers, but you DO have to have a grounding the basic concept of programming.
If Moore's law doesn't exist, how come it's remained fairly constant at least since the introduction of the Intel 4004? Your "miniaturization bumping into quantum effects" argument was used back in the days of the 486. Many industry analysts said at the time that we'd never get faster than a 486/66. Then they said we'd never get faster Pentium at about 500--600mhz. And so on.
They're getting around the miniaturization bumps with new manufacturing processes and new materials. Copper technology was the last breakthrough, who knows what the next one will be?
But you can be sure that if I tell my manager that it is impossible, then it really is impossible. Usually the truth is "it'll cost ya". Maybe techies need to learn to say that more often.
There's the key to successful project management right there.
As programmers, we know that you can optimize on three things: delivery time, peformance (speed), and features. Pick any two.:) Everything is a tradeoff. If you want me to deliver this program quickly and have a lot features, then I'm going to have to write major bloat code to give it to you, AKA The Microsoft Way. If you want features and optimum performance, this is going to take some time (one reason why so many Open Source projects seem to lag behind schedule.)
Knowing that is the key...and being able to explain that to upper management is the other key.
"Oh, you want XYZ feature? That's going to take us another three weeks to deliver and we'll need a budget increase of."
And a project manager that doesn't know that will have to work closely with the programmers on the project to determine these constraints. A project manager who's done programming, OTOH will already know the difference, and she will have to be the one that learns to say "It'll cost ya." The project manager is the link between management and the technical team. And that person needs to be able to speak BOTH languages.
*{Beginning, Professional} Linux Programming - Stones & Neal Somebody, et. al. (A good Wrox book that covers Perl, PHP, PostgreSQL, MySQL, C, shell programming, etc.) *The O'Reilly Perl Library - Written by the guys that write and maintain Perl. Nothing short of spectacular. Everything from Perl regex to cgi to bioinformatics to databases is covered. *Applied Cryptography - Bruce Schiener (_The_ book about crypto) *ANSI Standard Lisp - Haven't read it yet, but it looked good. *The K&R book, ANSI and Classic - 'nuff said. *The O'Reilly SQL book and database-specific books - Cover all the DBA knowledge anybody needs
Man, you'd think Slashdot readers were a bunch of HACKERS or something. Nothing in the programming section but the classic books on C, Perl and Lisp.:)
Also, sorry guys, but in the real world we sometimes use necessary evils like Visual Basic. Hence, I'd also recommend Programming Visual Basic from Microsoft Press. Or O'Reilly's Programming with Visual Basic
Yeah, but you can do this with Opera too. You can elect for popups to be opened only in the background, or refused all together.
You can't, unlike Mozilla, tell Opera to display only popups that are requested. However, you can turn this feature on and off very quickly via the F10 'quick preferences' menu.
John Walker's site, fourmilab.ch, is still up and running. fourmilab's ISP is KPNQWest, so I'd have to assume it's still running at this point. As the timestamp on this note says, its' well passed 1700 CET.
If all bosses were like you say, there wouldn't be a problem. But some bosses are less mature about this than others, and take such situations personally. Such bosses Do Not respect you for asking for what you're worth, they feel threatened by your willingness to look around and leave.
Yeah, well, if you work in a place like that, then it's probably in your best interests to leave. Any company who hires a manager that takes a situation like that personally isn't worth working for.
One of the things I thought was interesting about my introductory computer science courses in college was that they didn't let you use computers initially. You had to understand the concepts, design your approach and then prototype your program within class and without a computer. The instructor would then approve your plan and you would write the program during a lab session.
I'll agree with your here... In Intro to Software Engineering, you don't get to write a single line of code. In fact, you're told not to.
However,
Anyone can learn to program by hacking away on a computer. Those people will (in most cases) never be anything but programmers, though. Take away the computer and force them to understand underlying concepts, though, and they can take that knowledge and apply it to a variety of jobs that don't even have to be programming-related.
if you read CatB and its sequels, you will quickly understand that hackers that learn by hacking often learn problem solving skills as well. That's because most hacks are the result of a programmer scratching that proverbial itch. The itch is of course the problem, the hack is the solution to that problem.
I'm not saying you learn all the proper methodologies here, such as the systems development lifecycle (the SDLC, or "waterfall" method of systems engineering). However, those can be gleaned from any number of books on the subject.
Wisdom, by the way, is gained from trial and error. Most people chuck the wisdom they get from college out the window and go out in the real world and discover by trial and error that yes, their college professor was right when she said that the only way to do proper design is to get all the requirements upfront.:)
I worked for a 100,000+ desktop company (General Motors) and that is exactly the way they did it. Any data NOT stored on the server is NOT the responsibility of the IT department (or in this case EDS). Basic policy is if Level 1 help desk can't fix the problem with a few basic commands, followed by a reboot, the machine gets rebuilt. And the rebuilds are done by a CD that peforms a destructive OS install, followed by calling a ghosting and profile management system (in this case Tivoli) that pulls all the user's applications from the server.
You have an H: network drive that you can keep private documents, and an S: network drive you can keep shared documents on. If your H: drive is full, you need to request more space.
The only caveat with this is that at GM, EDS charges the department per megabyte for network storage. So what managers typically do is order unsupported removable drives and have people save their stuff on the C: drive (which is essentially free space), and make the users responsible for backing up their C: drives onto the unuspported removable drive.
So essentially you end up with the same problem that the article poses: what do you do about the users and their backups?:) The answer in this case is policy: If we have to rebuild your desktop and you didn't backup your data or store it on the network, too fscking bad for you.
You seem to have confused "college" with "trade school".
No, I don't. These days, for all intents and purposes a "college" and a "trade school" are the same thing. People don't go to college to learn anymore, they go to get a degree so that they can get a good job. If it weren't for the fact that most "knowledge worker" jobs require a college degree, then not nearly as many people would bother with the hassle and expense of going to college.
I had all the computer skills I needed to work in IT prior to going to college...the only reason I went was to get a degree. If it weren't for the fact that no degree looks bad on a resume, I wouldn't have bothered, because frankly colleges don't teach anything you can't learn -- in a LOT more depth-- in the real world... This includes even the general education subjects such as math...there's nothing to stop me from grabbing a textbook and working through the problems in it...why do I need a college to help me with that?
If kids can't do math through at least Algebra and Trig by hand by the time they get to COLLEGE level, they're probably not going to be able to ever.
In the *real* world, we don't do math with paper and pencil because we just don't have *time*. By the time you're in college, you need to be learning skills for coping the real world... and for most people industrialized countries that's going be in the business world. And in the business world, we do math with calculators and spreadsheets, like it or not. For a business major, a spreadsheet class is going to be WHOLE lot more useful than a class that teaches you to do Calculus by hand.
For a CS major (like I was), an algorithms class is probably more useful than that same Calculus class.:)
E-Books are available for handheld computers such as the Palm series, HP Jornada's, etc. I read eBooks all the time on my trust Palm m505. Its almost as comfortable a reading a book...no flicker on the color LCD screen, and its small and unobtrusive...I can lay back and just scroll...
Re:No Game Nights, but hacking was allowed..
on
Games in High School?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I had the same sort of thing in my high school. I became real good friends with one of the computer teachers (ok, I had a crush on her, she was hot!:-).
She set up an open lab night for me and several others who wanted to use the computers for hacking. Security cracking was allowed on the basis that you showed the attending teacher how you did it. Back then none of this was even a violation of school policy per se... there was no policy.:)
the innovator is rarely the successful party in any technology leap, usually it's the follow-ups that jump on the bandwagon and streamline/fine tune a process that make the big bucks.
Since when? I can think of a few examples that both meet and contradict your statement. GUI:
Innovator=Xerox
Followups=Apple, Microsoft
Big Bucks=Microsoft
however,
SOHO color inkjet printers:
Innovator=HP,
followups=Canon, Epson, Lexmark,
big bucks=HP.
or,
Photo Editing:
Innovator=Adobe (Photoshop)
Followups=(quite a lot)
Big Bucks=Adobe
so sometimes the innovator makes the big bucks and sometimes the innovator doesn'''t. What it depends on is if the innovator keeps up with the competition when the followups arrive. This doesn't always happen, but when it does, the innovator continues to dominate the market.
Also, the UART chip on the serial port was a big factor too. Especially when you got to 2400+BPS speeds. My old XT, with its 8250 UART couldn't keep up with my 9600 bps modem until I hacked the motherboard so it could support an I/O card with a 16550. (Heh, remember when serial ports weren't built into the motherboard?:)
How is it misleading? What I stated is exactly correct, and states precisely why I, and most other people, might choose to purchase StarOffice rather than downloading OOo. Yes, OOo doesn't include a database component. And? Not everybody needs a database component. I know I don't. I'll bet the majority of users don't either.
Besides, the StarOffice Adabase component is weak at best, IMHO.
That being said, when SO or OOo can read Word docs consistently, then there will be something to report. But that won't happen because M$ keeps changing their formats.
SO and OOo *can* read Word documents from Office 97, 2000 and XP fiarly consistently and reliably.
I routinely pull in Word documents that have tables and other 'advanced' formatting features.
Yes, there are few glitches now and then with certain 'advanced' formatting features. But most of the Word documents I get at the office don't use these features.
99% of the people who complain about SO/OOo and Word documents are complaining because they have the wrong fonts installed! It might seem like the Times font you used in OOo on your Linux desktop is the same as the Times New Roman font in Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP. Let me assure you, as someone who has done professional graphic design work, it is not. Subtle differences in the sizes, shapes, and kerning tables of the fonts cause things to wrap weird and text to fall into the wrong places, especially when you have columns, tables, or text wrapped around a picture.
With the right fonts installed, 99.5% of all Word documents will look just fine in OOo. It's that.5% that you need to fix now and then that cause frustration though...:)
Slashdot Mirror
And if you're the sysadmin of a small company, and in being so, the only person who is monitoring such data pipes? :-P
:)
Seriously, though, your scenario assumes that anyone monitoring the data can identify that. Honestly, it just looks like a nice big HTTPS stream to some webserver. Whoever was looking at the data would have to be clueful enough to know that most HTTPS streams aren't that long.
Oh, and finally, as far as being fired goes or prosecuted goes, that depends. Whether or not you can get fired depends on the laws of the state you're working. Michigan is an at will state (most U.S. states actually are), so you can fired there for just about any reason (short of discrimination) or no reason.
OTOH, as far as being prosecuted goes, in the United States, the burden of proof is on the prosecutor. I don't have to be able to prove that I am not smuggling confidential documents out through the pipe, the prosecuting attorney has to prove that I am.
For any but the biggest networks this is easy to stop. Institute a policy of NO filesharing programs and NO unauthorised MP3's and Movies's. Do random checks of company computers at night.
:)
:)
Yeah, but ssh with an HTTPS tunneling proxy (such as TransConnect or Corkscrew can be SUCH a wonderful thing. Set up a Linux or *BSD box on DSL or cable or satellite. Download and compile gtk-gnutella or similar program. Setup ssh to run on a port you can get to from the company's firewall (port 22 is often blocked) and voila! You can download and share files with people out on the Internet, download them to your work machine via scp, and delete them at the end of the day.
In fact, it wouldn't be hard to write a program that grabs files from the home box on demand so you don't have to even think about it.
Not that I've uhhh...done any of this, no not at all..
I live in Detroit. Channel 62 is our CBS affiliate. Not that I'd miss it much. :)
Nope. As others have pointed out it runs Super-UX, which is a commercial Unix variant all NEC's supercomputers run.
:)
Anyway, it probably S-UX.
When my current manager informed me, a month before the project deadline, that oh-by-the-way, the program would have to be distributed on separate systems *on segregated networks*, and I took a deep breath and tried to meet him half way, he put held up his finger to silence me. He turned to the whiteboard and wrote the word NEGOTIATION on it. Then he turned back to me and said, "This is NOT THAT. I am the manager. I do not negotiate."
This guy doesn't know what he's doing. Any third year CS/CIS student can tell you that the only way you can be sure to get a systems development project done on time and on budget is to get ALL the requirements down before anyone writes the spec document, and well before anyone writes a SINGLE line of code. Otherwise, your project is most assuredly going to be wildly off schedule and cost way more than the budget.
If I told you to write a quick- & dirty ANSI C compiler for some platform that needed one (and you couldn't use gcc for licensing reasons) for some reason, and then one month before the deadline I told you that oh, BTW, it has to compile C++, C#, and Objective C code too, you'd probably tell me that you had to rewrite at least half the code.
That's because you started with the basic assumption that you were writing only an ANSI C compiler, and therefore didn't plan on any other languages in the interests of getting the thing done as quickly as possible.
You know this, I know this, but it's clear your boss doesn't have a clue, and therefore shouldn't be managing professional software developers. I think you don't need to be a programmer to manage programmers, but you DO have to have a grounding the basic concept of programming.
If Moore's law doesn't exist, how come it's remained fairly constant at least since the introduction of the Intel 4004? Your "miniaturization bumping into quantum effects" argument was used back in the days of the 486. Many industry analysts said at the time that we'd never get faster than a 486/66. Then they said we'd never get faster Pentium at about 500--600mhz. And so on.
They're getting around the miniaturization bumps with new manufacturing processes and new materials. Copper technology was the last breakthrough, who knows what the next one will be?
Don't know what ES runs though, maybe extended mode DOS 6.2?
."
:)
"Non--system disk or disk error. Replace disk and
"Strike any key to continue . .
Shit! Where's the floppy drive on this thing!
But you can be sure that if I tell my manager that it is impossible, then it really is impossible. Usually the truth is "it'll cost ya". Maybe techies need to learn to say that more often.
:) Everything is a tradeoff. If you want me to deliver this program quickly and have a lot features, then I'm going to have to write major bloat code to give it to you, AKA The Microsoft Way. If you want features and optimum performance, this is going to take some time (one reason why so many Open Source projects seem to lag behind schedule.)
."
There's the key to successful project management right there.
As programmers, we know that you can optimize on three things: delivery time, peformance (speed), and features. Pick any two.
Knowing that is the key...and being able to explain that to upper management is the other key.
"Oh, you want XYZ feature? That's going to take us another three weeks to deliver and we'll need a budget increase of
And a project manager that doesn't know that will have to work closely with the programmers on the project to determine these constraints. A project manager who's done programming, OTOH will already know the difference, and she will have to be the one that learns to say "It'll cost ya." The project manager is the link between management and the technical team. And that person needs to be able to speak BOTH languages.
Next time what's going to come up? "Geek forced to install Windows XP after bein Abducted by Aliens"?
:)
Hey, wait...that actually happened to me! Either that or Bill Gates has a striking resemblence to the Greys in 'Close Encounters'.
Obviously 4 people got this reference, since it was scored at 5. :)
:)
What a coincidence that all 4 people that got that reference though had moderator points.
Which one is the 556th missing one?
:)
Whichever one you don't have.
*{Beginning, Professional} Linux Programming - Stones & Neal Somebody, et. al. (A good Wrox book that covers Perl, PHP, PostgreSQL, MySQL, C, shell programming, etc.)
:)
:)
*The O'Reilly Perl Library - Written by the guys that write and maintain Perl. Nothing short of spectacular. Everything from Perl regex to cgi to bioinformatics to databases is covered.
*Applied Cryptography - Bruce Schiener (_The_ book about crypto)
*ANSI Standard Lisp - Haven't read it yet, but it looked good.
*The K&R book, ANSI and Classic - 'nuff said.
*The O'Reilly SQL book and database-specific books - Cover all the DBA knowledge anybody needs
Man, you'd think Slashdot readers were a bunch of HACKERS or something. Nothing in the programming section but the classic books on C, Perl and Lisp.
How about Sommerville's Software Engineering?
Also, sorry guys, but in the real world we sometimes use necessary evils like Visual Basic. Hence, I'd also recommend Programming Visual Basic from Microsoft Press. Or O'Reilly's Programming with Visual Basic
Personally I also have Mastering Delphi.
Get the book version that matches your compiler of course.
Also, I'd learn UML or something similar. At least get UML in a Nutshell....
I'm not knocking the other books... I have most of them...but let's get real...IT isn't all about hackers now is it?
Yeah, but you can do this with Opera too. You can elect for popups to be opened only in the background, or refused all together.
:)
You can't, unlike Mozilla, tell Opera to display only popups that are requested. However, you can turn this feature on and off very quickly via the F10 'quick preferences' menu.
Of course, on the other hand, Opera is faster.
John Walker's site, fourmilab.ch, is still up and running. fourmilab's ISP is KPNQWest, so I'd have to assume it's still running at this point. As the timestamp on this note says, its' well passed 1700 CET.
If all bosses were like you say, there wouldn't be a problem. But some bosses are less mature about this than others, and take such situations personally. Such bosses Do Not respect you for asking for what you're worth, they feel threatened by your willingness to look around and leave.
Yeah, well, if you work in a place like that, then it's probably in your best interests to leave. Any company who hires a manager that takes a situation like that personally isn't worth working for.
One of the things I thought was interesting about my introductory computer science courses in college was that they didn't let you use computers initially. You had to understand the concepts, design your approach and then prototype your program within class and without a computer. The instructor would then approve your plan and you would write the program during a lab session.
:)
I'll agree with your here... In Intro to Software Engineering, you don't get to write a single line of code. In fact, you're told not to.
However,
Anyone can learn to program by hacking away on a computer. Those people will (in most cases) never be anything but programmers, though. Take away the computer and force them to understand underlying concepts, though, and they can take that knowledge and apply it to a variety of jobs that don't even have to be programming-related.
if you read CatB and its sequels, you will quickly understand that hackers that learn by hacking often learn problem solving skills as well. That's because most hacks are the result of a programmer scratching that proverbial itch. The itch is of course the problem, the hack is the solution to that problem.
I'm not saying you learn all the proper methodologies here, such as the systems development lifecycle (the SDLC, or "waterfall" method of systems engineering). However, those can be gleaned from any number of books on the subject.
Wisdom, by the way, is gained from trial and error. Most people chuck the wisdom they get from college out the window and go out in the real world and discover by trial and error that yes, their college professor was right when she said that the only way to do proper design is to get all the requirements upfront.
'
Yup.
:) The answer in this case is policy: If we have to rebuild your desktop and you didn't backup your data or store it on the network, too fscking bad for you.
I worked for a 100,000+ desktop company (General Motors) and that is exactly the way they did it. Any data NOT stored on the server is NOT the responsibility of the IT department (or in this case EDS). Basic policy is if Level 1 help desk can't fix the problem with a few basic commands, followed by a reboot, the machine gets rebuilt. And the rebuilds are done by a CD that peforms a destructive OS install, followed by calling a ghosting and profile management system (in this case Tivoli) that pulls all the user's applications from the server.
You have an H: network drive that you can keep private documents, and an S: network drive you can keep shared documents on. If your H: drive is full, you need to request more space.
The only caveat with this is that at GM, EDS charges the department per megabyte for network storage. So what managers typically do is order unsupported removable drives and have people save their stuff on the C: drive (which is essentially free space), and make the users responsible for backing up their C: drives onto the unuspported removable drive.
So essentially you end up with the same problem that the article poses: what do you do about the users and their backups?
You seem to have confused "college" with "trade school".
No, I don't. These days, for all intents and purposes a "college" and a "trade school" are the same thing. People don't go to college to learn anymore, they go to get a degree so that they can get a good job. If it weren't for the fact that most "knowledge worker" jobs require a college degree, then not nearly as many people would bother with the hassle and expense of going to college.
I had all the computer skills I needed to work in IT prior to going to college...the only reason I went was to get a degree. If it weren't for the fact that no degree looks bad on a resume, I wouldn't have bothered, because frankly colleges don't teach anything you can't learn -- in a LOT more depth-- in the real world... This includes even the general education subjects such as math...there's nothing to stop me from grabbing a textbook and working through the problems in it...why do I need a college to help me with that?
If kids can't do math through at least Algebra and Trig by hand by the time they get to COLLEGE level, they're probably not going to be able to ever.
:)
In the *real* world, we don't do math with paper and pencil because we just don't have *time*. By the time you're in college, you need to be learning skills for coping the real world... and for most people industrialized countries that's going be in the business world. And in the business world, we do math with calculators and spreadsheets, like it or not. For a business major, a spreadsheet class is going to be WHOLE lot more useful than a class that teaches you to do Calculus by hand.
For a CS major (like I was), an algorithms class is probably more useful than that same Calculus class.
E-Books are available for handheld computers such as the Palm series, HP Jornada's, etc. I read eBooks all the time on my trust Palm m505. Its almost as comfortable a reading a book...no flicker on the color LCD screen, and its small and unobtrusive...I can lay back and just scroll...
I had the same sort of thing in my high school. I became real good friends with one of the computer teachers (ok, I had a crush on her, she was hot! :-).
... there was no policy. :)
She set up an open lab night for me and several others who wanted to use the computers for hacking. Security cracking was allowed on the basis that you showed the attending teacher how you did it. Back then none of this was even a violation of school policy per se
the innovator is rarely the successful party in any technology leap, usually it's the follow-ups that jump on the bandwagon and streamline/fine tune a process that make the big bucks.
Since when? I can think of a few examples that both meet and contradict your statement. GUI:
Innovator=Xerox
Followups=Apple, Microsoft
Big Bucks=Microsoft
however,
SOHO color inkjet printers:
Innovator=HP,
followups=Canon, Epson, Lexmark,
big bucks=HP.
or,
Photo Editing:
Innovator=Adobe (Photoshop)
Followups=(quite a lot)
Big Bucks=Adobe
so sometimes the innovator makes the big bucks and sometimes the innovator doesn'''t. What it depends on is if the innovator keeps up with the competition when the followups arrive. This doesn't always happen, but when it does, the innovator continues to dominate the market.
Also, the UART chip on the serial port was a big factor too. Especially when you got to 2400+BPS speeds. My old XT, with its 8250 UART couldn't keep up with my 9600 bps modem until I hacked the motherboard so it could support an I/O card with a 16550. (Heh, remember when serial ports weren't built into the motherboard? :)
How is it misleading? What I stated is exactly correct, and states precisely why I, and most other people, might choose to purchase StarOffice rather than downloading OOo. Yes, OOo doesn't include a database component. And? Not everybody needs a database component. I know I don't. I'll bet the majority of users don't either.
Besides, the StarOffice Adabase component is weak at best, IMHO.
That being said, when SO or OOo can read Word docs consistently, then there will be something to report. But that won't happen because M$ keeps changing their formats.
.5% that you need to fix now and then that cause frustration though... :)
SO and OOo *can* read Word documents from Office 97, 2000 and XP fiarly consistently and reliably.
I routinely pull in Word documents that have tables and other 'advanced' formatting features.
Yes, there are few glitches now and then with certain 'advanced' formatting features. But most of the Word documents I get at the office don't use these features.
99% of the people who complain about SO/OOo and Word documents are complaining because they have the wrong fonts installed! It might seem like the Times font you used in OOo on your Linux desktop is the same as the Times New Roman font in Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP. Let me assure you, as someone who has done professional graphic design work, it is not. Subtle differences in the sizes, shapes, and kerning tables of the fonts cause things to wrap weird and text to fall into the wrong places, especially when you have columns, tables, or text wrapped around a picture.
With the right fonts installed, 99.5% of all Word documents will look just fine in OOo. It's that