Just try to open any Microsoft RTF document from six or seven years ago in Office 2003 or Office 2007, or any non-trivial Word 95 document in new versions
Speaking of which, something that has puzzled me about the MS-OOXML spec (and the answer may well be buried in there but I'm not about to read all 6000+ pages looking). It has a few (not well defined) tags like "SpaceLikeWord95" or such. Now, Word95 never wrote no.docx files, and isn't likely to ever read any either. So what is the fricking point of that tag? If you're going to write a converter that can read Word95.doc files, have it do the conversion of whatever "SpaceLikeWord95" means to something more meaningful.
If you open a Word95 doc in Word2007, then save it in docx, does it use that tag? Can Word2007 even open -- properly -- a Word95 doc file?
you need to read/write Word documents and have them formatted correctly. Try that without buying a copy of Word.
Hell, try that even with buying a copy of MS Word. Good luck to you. It only works if you're running exactly same version, with exactly the same fonts installed, and with the exact same model printer chosen. (And anyone who says otherwise is lying if they say they've ever actually exchanged.doc files with somebody else, or doesn't really care about "formatted correctly."
If you need that level of fidelity to a specific format, there's PDF.
"Legal action" doesn't necessarily mean immediately filing a lawsuit.
Consider Hungary where irregularities and apparent violations of the National Body's (forget the specific name) bylaws were merely brought to the attention of the appropriate government minister, who promptly investigated and demanded accountability (and got the initial contrary-to-rules "yes" vote thrown out as invalid).
Just report any irregular behaviour in the national standards bodies to the appropriate overseeing governmental body. That may not help if the gov't body is also being influenced, but it's a start.
It was expected to be "No" from the US too, up until a couple of weeks ago when Gates/Ballmer made a few calls to people in high places (Secretary of Commerce, if I remember right). Several of the other US govt groups (DOD, Homeland Security) had agreed to go along with however NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) voted. Guess who NIST reports to. Yep, it's part of the Dept. of Commerce.
I hope folks at NIST are suitably embarrassed about approving such a shoddy spec as a standard, regardless of who it came from.
That would be wonderful if true. It might even be so, but almost three decades of observing Microsoft leaves me skeptical.
The spec certainly needs a lot of cleanup to be truly useful as an ISO standard, and MS Office will need corresponding changes to comply with it (assuming it complies with what's there now, about which there's some debate given problems with e.g. Apple's implementation). But yeah, it'd nice to see a sensible ISO document standard that MS Office and other vendors' / open source applications can conform to. (Well, there is ODF...)
There's pretty good vote tracking going on here, and as of a little while ago they're calling the vote failed: too many "no" votes to get the 2/3 majority needed to pass.
That doesn't mean it's over: there's a resolution process over the next few months, culminating in a vote in February, to address the comments submitted with "no, with comments" votes. If the comments are resolved to the voter's satisfaction, the "no" vote can be changed to a "yes".
Expect Microsoft to pull out all the stops to get countries to change there votes even without the comments being resolved. You thought there were dirty tricks before? You ain't seen nothing yet.
Or perhaps they'll just fix the standard. Ha ha ha ha...er, sorry.
What's scary is, I'm betting Silverlight will be usable and well supported on 64-bit Linux before Flash is.
Depends what you mean by "64-bit Linux". Flash works fine on my AMD64 running 64-bit Linux -- it just does so as a 32-bit binary. Some 64-bit Linux systems (x86-64 and IA64) support 32-bit x86 binaries just fine.
I'd be surprised if Silverlight ever supports other 64-bit platforms (Sparc, PPC64, Alpha (if there are any of those still around -- I've got one but it hasn't been powered up in years)). Meanwhile, there's also gnash, GNU's Flash.
People that dumb shouldn't be allowed within 10 feet of a computer.
Personally I've yet to meet anyone that stupid ("get completely thrown off if you set Firefox as their default browser") who wasn't too stupid to even find the power switch to turn the computer on in the first place. (After all, it's not like all computers have their power switches in the same place).
"why should the provider CHANGE their config" Hmmmmm, to keep their CUSTOMERS, maybe?
No. If the provider changes their config that lets Microsoft customers remain Microsoft customers. Microsoft broke it, let Microsoft fix it. The provider's customers are free to use any other OS (including older Microsoft versions) while remaining provider customers.
Take an electric utility, for example, that runs house current at 220V (we're talking Europe). Should they drop that back to 120V just because a few customers bought an appliance from a company that couldn't manage to make it compliant with 220V, just to keep those customers? No, let the customers take it up with the appliance vendor. (Of course it's not an exact analogy, but at least it isn't a car analogy.)
Grandparent is correct. Since the "not object to technical errors where the meaning is still clear" is prefaced by "should", not "must", it is still "perfectly acceptable to ignore non-standard requests" per the RFC. "Should" just means "it would be nice if", "must" means "if you don't, you're non-compliant with the standard".
Since you claim to be reading the standards documents, you would be better of questioning your own reading comprehension skills.
This has to mean there's more time travel. They should have renamed the franchise "Time Trek". Let me guess, old Spock travels the to past, ie the era in which the film is set, and does something that (supposedly) ties up assorted loose plot ends. Sigh.
(Mind, I've got nothing against a good time travel yarn. Operative word being "good".)
Ack, you're probably right. It's been a long time and I tried to avoid Intel processors for as long as I could;-)
(That said, I did once use a machine with a 4004 in it, but that was basically a 2741 terminal emulator that used a daisy wheel instead of a golf ball.)
Right, I didn't mean to imply that it was, only that some designs use more cycles per instruction than others. IIRC on the 6502 most were 2 or 3 cycles, the "long" ones being maybe 5 or 6.
(Some other architectures had some really long (arbitrarily so) instructions. The LLLU (linked-list lookup) op on a Burroughs B6700 (etc) took as many cycles as necessary to traverse the list, which in the case of a (accidentally or deliberately) circular list could be forever, so there was a hardware-generated interrupt if an op-code hadn't completed execution within a given time period, something around two seconds. The VAX's "compute polynomial" was also bit of a cycle cruncher as I recall.)
There are/were single cycle designs out there, though.
I realize Microsoft is engaged in many fields other than operating systems...but unless I'm mistaken (entirely possible, please point out if so), they're not really the 800 lb gorilla anywhere else.
Office software suites. You had to have known that, but office suites != operating systems.
I think it means that somebody took the spelling of lose/loose and made the incredibly wrong assumption that English spelling was orthogonal.
Sorry, "chose" rhymes with "rose", and "loose" rhymes with "moose", but "choose" rhymes with "lose" rhymes with "ooze". No, I know it doesn't make any sense. Deal with it.
(Latter not addressed to parent, who obviously understands that.)
Nonsense. It wants a standard (for portability), that doesn't have to be provided by a monopoly. In fact there already is a standard for operating systems, ISO/IEC 9945, and most IT vendors support it (or something very close).
Microsoft (and some uninformed natterers not clear on the point) call their products "standard", but they're confusing that term with "ubiquitous". Heck, given that there are so many not very compatible versions of Microsofts own products, they can hardly be considered standard. (Is "standard Windows" Vista or XP or ???)
Well, okay, that may not be the exact reason old Leonardo invented them, but apparently he didn't have a lot of faith in either his ornithopter or helicopter designs. Probably something about an inadequate power supply.
That's a bit like saying the Star Trek Enterprise's warp engines look a lot more feasible than other types of faster-than-light travel like those totally unbelievable Hyperdrives from Star Wars.
Well, if you look at the work of Alcubierre and van den Broek, they are.
Slashdot Mirror
A base on the moon? Are you trying to stop the terrorists with that?
No, silly, it's to protect the settlers when the natives get restless.
How did you do spreadsheets in TeX 20 years ago? Or now, for that matter?
Office docs are about more than just text documents, or "desktop publishing".
Just try to open any Microsoft RTF document from six or seven years ago in Office 2003 or Office 2007, or any non-trivial Word 95 document in new versions
.docx files, and isn't likely to ever read any either. So what is the fricking point of that tag? If you're going to write a converter that can read Word95 .doc files, have it do the conversion of whatever "SpaceLikeWord95" means to something more meaningful.
Speaking of which, something that has puzzled me about the MS-OOXML spec (and the answer may well be buried in there but I'm not about to read all 6000+ pages looking). It has a few (not well defined) tags like "SpaceLikeWord95" or such. Now, Word95 never wrote no
If you open a Word95 doc in Word2007, then save it in docx, does it use that tag? Can Word2007 even open -- properly -- a Word95 doc file?
you need to read/write Word documents and have them formatted correctly. Try that without buying a copy of Word.
.doc files with somebody else, or doesn't really care about "formatted correctly."
Hell, try that even with buying a copy of MS Word. Good luck to you. It only works if you're running exactly same version, with exactly the same fonts installed, and with the exact same model printer chosen. (And anyone who says otherwise is lying if they say they've ever actually exchanged
If you need that level of fidelity to a specific format, there's PDF.
Non sequitor. So what if Windows comes preinstalled on most PCs?
We're talking office document formats, and Open Office (among others) works just fine on Windows. A lock-in to Windows != a lock-in to MS Office.
This is insightful?
"Legal action" doesn't necessarily mean immediately filing a lawsuit.
Consider Hungary where irregularities and apparent violations of the National Body's (forget the specific name) bylaws were merely brought to the attention of the appropriate government minister, who promptly investigated and demanded accountability (and got the initial contrary-to-rules "yes" vote thrown out as invalid).
Just report any irregular behaviour in the national standards bodies to the appropriate overseeing governmental body. That may not help if the gov't body is also being influenced, but it's a start.
It was expected to be "No" from the US too, up until a couple of weeks ago when Gates/Ballmer made a few calls to people in high places (Secretary of Commerce, if I remember right). Several of the other US govt groups (DOD, Homeland Security) had agreed to go along with however NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) voted. Guess who NIST reports to. Yep, it's part of the Dept. of Commerce.
I hope folks at NIST are suitably embarrassed about approving such a shoddy spec as a standard, regardless of who it came from.
That would be wonderful if true. It might even be so, but almost three decades of observing Microsoft leaves me skeptical.
The spec certainly needs a lot of cleanup to be truly useful as an ISO standard, and MS Office will need corresponding changes to comply with it (assuming it complies with what's there now, about which there's some debate given problems with e.g. Apple's implementation). But yeah, it'd nice to see a sensible ISO document standard that MS Office and other vendors' / open source applications can conform to. (Well, there is ODF...)
There's pretty good vote tracking going on here, and as of a little while ago they're calling the vote failed: too many "no" votes to get the 2/3 majority needed to pass.
That doesn't mean it's over: there's a resolution process over the next few months, culminating in a vote in February, to address the comments submitted with "no, with comments" votes. If the comments are resolved to the voter's satisfaction, the "no" vote can be changed to a "yes".
Expect Microsoft to pull out all the stops to get countries to change there votes even without the comments being resolved. You thought there were dirty tricks before? You ain't seen nothing yet.
Or perhaps they'll just fix the standard. Ha ha ha ha...er, sorry.
What's scary is, I'm betting Silverlight will be usable and well supported on 64-bit Linux before Flash is.
Depends what you mean by "64-bit Linux". Flash works fine on my AMD64 running 64-bit Linux -- it just does so as a 32-bit binary. Some 64-bit Linux systems (x86-64 and IA64) support 32-bit x86 binaries just fine.
I'd be surprised if Silverlight ever supports other 64-bit platforms (Sparc, PPC64, Alpha (if there are any of those still around -- I've got one but it hasn't been powered up in years)). Meanwhile, there's also gnash, GNU's Flash.
People that dumb shouldn't be allowed within 10 feet of a computer.
Personally I've yet to meet anyone that stupid ("get completely thrown off if you set Firefox as their default browser") who wasn't too stupid to even find the power switch to turn the computer on in the first place. (After all, it's not like all computers have their power switches in the same place).
"why should the provider CHANGE their config" Hmmmmm, to keep their CUSTOMERS, maybe?
No. If the provider changes their config that lets Microsoft customers remain Microsoft customers. Microsoft broke it, let Microsoft fix it. The provider's customers are free to use any other OS (including older Microsoft versions) while remaining provider customers.
Take an electric utility, for example, that runs house current at 220V (we're talking Europe). Should they drop that back to 120V just because a few customers bought an appliance from a company that couldn't manage to make it compliant with 220V, just to keep those customers? No, let the customers take it up with the appliance vendor. (Of course it's not an exact analogy, but at least it isn't a car analogy.)
Grandparent is correct. Since the "not object to technical errors where the meaning is still clear" is prefaced by "should", not "must", it is still "perfectly acceptable to ignore non-standard requests" per the RFC. "Should" just means "it would be nice if", "must" means "if you don't, you're non-compliant with the standard".
Since you claim to be reading the standards documents, you would be better of questioning your own reading comprehension skills.
Gee, the last time I was in St. Petersburg, prices were very reasonable.
Mind, at the start of that visit a week earlier, the city was still called Leningrad. Interesting times.
This has to mean there's more time travel. They should have renamed the franchise "Time Trek". Let me guess, old Spock travels the to past, ie the era in which the film is set, and does something that (supposedly) ties up assorted loose plot ends. Sigh.
(Mind, I've got nothing against a good time travel yarn. Operative word being "good".)
Ack, you're probably right. It's been a long time and I tried to avoid Intel processors for as long as I could ;-)
(That said, I did once use a machine with a 4004 in it, but that was basically a 2741 terminal emulator that used a daisy wheel instead of a golf ball.)
Next time, read the thread.
We were referring to the NATO code name for the MiG-15, "Faggot". Two 'g's.
Right, I didn't mean to imply that it was, only that some designs use more cycles per instruction than others. IIRC on the 6502 most were 2 or 3 cycles, the "long" ones being maybe 5 or 6.
(Some other architectures had some really long (arbitrarily so) instructions. The LLLU (linked-list lookup) op on a Burroughs B6700 (etc) took as many cycles as necessary to traverse the list, which in the case of a (accidentally or deliberately) circular list could be forever, so there was a hardware-generated interrupt if an op-code hadn't completed execution within a given time period, something around two seconds. The VAX's "compute polynomial" was also bit of a cycle cruncher as I recall.)
There are/were single cycle designs out there, though.
I realize Microsoft is engaged in many fields other than operating systems...but unless I'm mistaken (entirely possible, please point out if so), they're not really the 800 lb gorilla anywhere else.
Office software suites. You had to have known that, but office suites != operating systems.
I think it means that somebody took the spelling of lose/loose and made the incredibly wrong assumption that English spelling was orthogonal.
Sorry, "chose" rhymes with "rose", and "loose" rhymes with "moose", but "choose" rhymes with "lose" rhymes with "ooze". No, I know it doesn't make any sense. Deal with it.
(Latter not addressed to parent, who obviously understands that.)
I can save and load all prior versions of Office docs from 2007, should I choose.
Bullshit.
Try it with, oh, say, a Microsoft Office 5 for Mac doc file and see how far you get.
The OS market "wants" a near monopoly.
Nonsense. It wants a standard (for portability), that doesn't have to be provided by a monopoly. In fact there already is a standard for operating systems, ISO/IEC 9945, and most IT vendors support it (or something very close).
Microsoft (and some uninformed natterers not clear on the point) call their products "standard", but they're confusing that term with "ubiquitous". Heck, given that there are so many not very compatible versions of Microsofts own products, they can hardly be considered standard. (Is "standard Windows" Vista or XP or ???)
I don't /look/ like a MiG-15. :-)
That'd be spelled with two 'g's. And yes, some of us are familiar with the NATO designations for Soviet/Russian fighters.
That's why da Vinci invented parachutes.
Well, okay, that may not be the exact reason old Leonardo invented them, but apparently he didn't have a lot of faith in either his ornithopter or helicopter designs. Probably something about an inadequate power supply.
That's a bit like saying the Star Trek Enterprise's warp engines look a lot more feasible than other types of faster-than-light travel like those totally unbelievable Hyperdrives from Star Wars.
Well, if you look at the work of Alcubierre and van den Broek, they are.
The power supply is still a bit iffy, though.