It's Microsoft's fault that Word 2003 is going to cost the Word 97 user several hundred dollars.
OpenOffice 2.0 doesn't cost the OpenOffice 1.0 user anything.
It's also Microsoft's fault that if a Word2003 user opens a Word97 document, Word2003 is going to try to save it in Word2003 format, not Word97. OpenOffice doesn't play such tricks, because there's no financial incentive to. Microsoft chooses defaults to encourage users to pay for upgrades.
You're misinformed. Both versions of office from 97-2k3 can open each others files
Fixed that for you.;-)
That's because of the screaming that customers did when the 97 version broke compatibility with 95, and what that did to '97 sales once people realized.
You've always been able to save documents in previous Office versions' format, all the way back to Word 6.0 format.
Only by jumping through hoops, (ie, if you open an old Word file in a later version, said later version will try to save it in the new format unless explicitly instructed otherwise. With OpenOffice.org 2.0, if you open an older format.sxw file, it will by default save in.sxw format.
Office also never worked well cross platform (Office for Windows vs Mac). Besides, I think I've still got a bunch of Word 5.x (for Mac) files around.
The big thing that 2000 had over NT4 was USB support, that and not having to apply a bunch of service packs to support disk partitions > 4G (SP4, I think that came in).
Heck, many companies' mail filters weed out.doc,.ppt or.xls attachments from outside. Not worth the potential trouble. Certainly when we send out stuff it's as PDFs.
Hey, this is Forbes. They're a known SCO schill, always eager to publish puff pieces by their reporter whats-his-name (Dan's Lying? something like that) that are basically slightly revised SCO press-releases.
Hey, Caldera's Open Linux -- back before they turned evil -- let you play tetris while you were waiting for the OS and packages to finish copying and installing.
Beat looking at a slide show extolling the dubious virtues of the softare, like some other OS's.
And one of the big publishers of e-books, Baen Books, not only doesn't bother with DRM, they make the content available in multiple formats, and even offer entire ebooks free (see the Baen Free Library.) They occasionally put out a CD full of big name SF and fantasy books, and encourage copying (just don't charge money for it). Anything to get folks hooked;-)
The authors involved agree that this helps get their names out and generates demand for paper copies and paid-for e-copies of their work. The reduced overhead of e-publishing compared to paper publishing more than covers any "piracy", I guess. The "Baen's Universe" e-magazine pays the authors better rates than the current paper magazines (Asimov's, Analog, etc) do. (Don't know about the book payment side. I hope to find out first hand at some point;-)
a society where altruism is voluntary has so little altruism that it's beneficial effects aren't strong enough to have an impact. people must be compelled to contribute
So Torvalds was right, Linux was written by Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
You're either an idiot or a troll, or perhaps both. Good day, sir.
the agenda of libertarians is to remove those social safety nets
It is not.
To the extent that any of your assertion is true, it is that libertarians want to stop the government, with its monopoly on the initiation of force, from forcing people to provide "safety nets" (via taxation). Anything your force someone to do, they will do badly.
Libertarians have no problem whatsoever with people voluntarily providing those safety nets, as many churches and other charitable organizations already do. As you say, most people have a mix of altruism as well as selfishness.
In fact, there's no (or very little) real altruism; most altruistic gestures arise out of enlightened self interest. If somebody's dying of sepsis (to use your example), it's to my long term advantage to pay for antibiotics: it reduces the spread of disease, it restores a possibly useful contributer to society, and someday he or his friend or relative may return the favor.
The Golden Rule isn't about altruism, it's about selfishness.
(You're also very wrong about the "ultrarich", megacorps, etc. They aren't libertarians. They - conservatives and democrats both - rely on being able to leverage government power to their ends. Where would Bill Gates be without copyright enforcement and the legal fiction of the corporation?)
Am I misremembering, or wasn't it also Belgium that ruled against Lindows in the trademark lawsuit that Microsoft brought? (After a US court said essentially that since "windows" was an English word, MSFT didn't stand much chance of winning the US suit.)
If so, perhaps there's good reason that in "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", belgium is a swear word.
And a regional coldening [sic] could well be the result of changing sea currents, for example. I don't see how that would be a counter-indication of global warming either.
And a regional warming could well be the result of changing sea currents, for example. I don't see how that would be a counter-indication of global cooling either.
Global temperatures are rising. Glaciers are melting. So basically, it smells like FUD to me.
Global temperatures are dropping. Colorado is experiencing its longest continuous snowcover in history, it's freezing. So basically, it smells like FUD to me.
WAR IS PEACE - FREEDOM IS SLAVERY - IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
CO2 definitely is not the sole cause. It is, however, the main cause of the warming in the 20th century, particularly in the last 40 years. See, for instance, Fig. SPM-2 in the IPCC AR4 SPM (PDF). At different points in history, different factors have been the primary drivers of climate change. Right now, it happens to be CO2, largely due to anthropogenic emissions since the Industrial Revolution.
If you're basing that assertion on the IPCC report, then understand that you're basing it on a fundamentally flawed report. The IPCC was tasked by the UN with investigating human causes of global warming, not a broad investigation of global warming overall. When your task is to look for X, it's not surprising that you find X and not Y.
No reputible sources are disputing global warming and that humans are the cause.
Well, sure, if you define "reputable" as "supporting the truthiness of the anthropogenic global warming belief". That the cult of anthropogenic global warming immediately tries to trash the reputation of naysayers or even mere doubters has nothing to do with that, of course.
The fact is that a number of climatologists, paleoclimatologists and scientists of similar disciplines dispute global warming, and a much larger number may allow as how it's possible that, yes, something seems to be warming up the planet, but will vehemently deny that there's anything like sufficient evidence to point to human causes.
The fact remains that water vapor contributes far more to keeping the Earth warm than CO2 does, and that a fractional percentage point change in the Sun's output -- and the Sun is known to vary slightly -- will have more effect than what even the Anthropogenic Global Warming cultists are suggesting Man could do in several centuries.
Historically, the establishment science has be wrong far more often than right.
May not be quite true, but it certainly bring's Clarke's First Law to mind: "When a distinguished but elderly scientists states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
And I forget who said it (some early 20th century physicist, I think), but the observation was made that new theories don't become accepted by convincing everyone, they become accepted because the older generation of scientists who don't accept it die off.
Lots of cases in the history of science where there's an early theory X (typically proposed by a relative newbie to the field), which soon gets discredited and replaced by theory Y (proposed by distinguished expert), which ultimately hangs on in the face of mounting evidence and theory X (or slightly modified X') ultimately overturns it. Continental drift, certain theories on dinosaur physiology and locomotion, the snowball Earth theory, George Darwin's theory of the Moon's formation, etc.
Let's put the issue a little bit more concretely. Suppose some guy comes up to you with a proposal to mine gold based on a new process for leaching it from rocks other companies are ignoring. He wants you to invest money in his company but when you consult experts in chemistry, mining and geology they all tell you he is a complete quack and his idea is completely bogus. Would you invest?
That depends on whether or not those experts in mining, chemistry, etc have anything to lose if the guy is right.
Your hypothetical is very similar to the situation that a number of would-be private space launch enterprises found themselves in in the late 1980s/early 1990s. They had schemes for cheap(er) launch that would seriously undercut NASA's then-monopoly on the space launch business. Would-be investors naturally wanted independant evaluations of the proposals, so of course they went to the experts -- NASA. Guess what NASA told them? "Nope, the idea is completely bogus."
It took political pressure to force NASA out of using the Shuttle for commercial launches before that situation turned around.
Sure, some of the ideas probably were bogus, but some weren't. If you want an objective evaluation of some new idea or scheme, be careful about asking the people whose rice bowls it threatens.
*every* so-called modern Galileo can't actually be one, because a universe probably can't exist in which every whacked-out idea proposed by all of them is simultaneously correct.
I don't know about that, have you looked at string theory lately?
Slashdot Mirror
It's Microsoft's fault that Word 2003 is going to cost the Word 97 user several hundred dollars.
OpenOffice 2.0 doesn't cost the OpenOffice 1.0 user anything.
It's also Microsoft's fault that if a Word2003 user opens a Word97 document, Word2003 is going to try to save it in Word2003 format, not Word97. OpenOffice doesn't play such tricks, because there's no financial incentive to. Microsoft chooses defaults to encourage users to pay for upgrades.
One context-sensitive menu across the top of the screen is the newest Microsoft innovation
I seem to vaguely recall somebody trying something like that once before. Black and white it was, circa 1984. Wonder what ever became of it....
You're misinformed. Both versions of office from 97-2k3 can open each others files
;-)
Fixed that for you.
That's because of the screaming that customers did when the 97 version broke compatibility with 95, and what that did to '97 sales once people realized.
You've always been able to save documents in previous Office versions' format, all the way back to Word 6.0 format.
.sxw file, it will by default save in .sxw format.
Only by jumping through hoops, (ie, if you open an old Word file in a later version, said later version will try to save it in the new format unless explicitly instructed otherwise. With OpenOffice.org 2.0, if you open an older format
Office also never worked well cross platform (Office for Windows vs Mac). Besides, I think I've still got a bunch of Word 5.x (for Mac) files around.
I love to hear how that is different from the MS Office situation.
.sxc, etc), it's not OOo 1.x's fault that ODF didn't exist at the time.
For one thing, it doesn't cost any $299 (or whatever MS is charging) to upgrade from OpenOffice.org 1.x to OpenOffice.org 2.0. It's free.
OOo 2 still happily opens and saves OOo 1.x format docs (.sxw,
The big thing that 2000 had over NT4 was USB support, that and not having to apply a bunch of service packs to support disk partitions > 4G (SP4, I think that came in).
Heck, many companies' mail filters weed out .doc, .ppt or .xls attachments from outside. Not worth the potential trouble. Certainly when we send out stuff it's as PDFs.
Office 2007 at least supposedly offers a revolutionary new way to use the application. It seems that this promise has enormous appeal for people.
What, those people think that Word won't involve typing text onto the page, and Excel won't involve typing numbers into the cells?
P.T. Barnum was right, and Microsoft is the proof.
Interesting assertion, but it's ridiculous to suggest that any IBM lawyer did any such thing. I mean, there's absolutely no evidence that....
Oh, wait, this is SCO we're talking about.
Hey, this is Forbes. They're a known SCO schill, always eager to publish puff pieces by their reporter whats-his-name (Dan's Lying? something like that) that are basically slightly revised SCO press-releases.
I wouldn't take any of it too seriously.
Hey, Caldera's Open Linux -- back before they turned evil -- let you play tetris while you were waiting for the OS and packages to finish copying and installing.
Beat looking at a slide show extolling the dubious virtues of the softare, like some other OS's.
- This whole "one box contains one movie" thing is so 1980s. -
actually, more like "so 2002ish";
How quickly they forget videocassettes... Heck, I had a VCR before I had a CD player.
And one of the big publishers of e-books, Baen Books, not only doesn't bother with DRM, they make the content available in multiple formats, and even offer entire ebooks free (see the Baen Free Library.) They occasionally put out a CD full of big name SF and fantasy books, and encourage copying (just don't charge money for it). Anything to get folks hooked ;-)
;-)
The authors involved agree that this helps get their names out and generates demand for paper copies and paid-for e-copies of their work. The reduced overhead of e-publishing compared to paper publishing more than covers any "piracy", I guess. The "Baen's Universe" e-magazine pays the authors better rates than the current paper magazines (Asimov's, Analog, etc) do. (Don't know about the book payment side. I hope to find out first hand at some point
a society where altruism is voluntary has so little altruism that it's beneficial effects aren't strong enough to have an impact. people must be compelled to contribute
So Torvalds was right, Linux was written by Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
You're either an idiot or a troll, or perhaps both. Good day, sir.
You mischaracterize libertarianism.
the agenda of libertarians is to remove those social safety nets
It is not.
To the extent that any of your assertion is true, it is that libertarians want to stop the government, with its monopoly on the initiation of force, from forcing people to provide "safety nets" (via taxation). Anything your force someone to do, they will do badly.
Libertarians have no problem whatsoever with people voluntarily providing those safety nets, as many churches and other charitable organizations already do. As you say, most people have a mix of altruism as well as selfishness.
In fact, there's no (or very little) real altruism; most altruistic gestures arise out of enlightened self interest. If somebody's dying of sepsis (to use your example), it's to my long term advantage to pay for antibiotics: it reduces the spread of disease, it restores a possibly useful contributer to society, and someday he or his friend or relative may return the favor.
The Golden Rule isn't about altruism, it's about selfishness.
(You're also very wrong about the "ultrarich", megacorps, etc. They aren't libertarians. They - conservatives and democrats both - rely on being able to leverage government power to their ends. Where would Bill Gates be without copyright enforcement and the legal fiction of the corporation?)
I'm reminded that zero is a number.
;-)
Well yes, but arguably not a measurable one.
Am I misremembering, or wasn't it also Belgium that ruled against Lindows in the trademark lawsuit that Microsoft brought? (After a US court said essentially that since "windows" was an English word, MSFT didn't stand much chance of winning the US suit.)
If so, perhaps there's good reason that in "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", belgium is a swear word.
if you understand what is wrong with selfishness, you understand what is wrong with libertarianism
Okay, explain to us what's wrong with selfishness. Ayn Rand wrote a whole book about its virtue, how about a few pages in rebuttal?
Please pay attention to the difference between enlightened (ie, long range thinking) and unenlightened (short term) selfishness.
And a regional coldening [sic] could well be the result of changing sea currents, for example. I don't see how that would be a counter-indication of global warming either.
And a regional warming could well be the result of changing sea currents, for example. I don't see how that would be a counter-indication of global cooling either.
Global temperatures are rising. Glaciers are melting. So basically, it smells like FUD to me.
Global temperatures are dropping. Colorado is experiencing its longest continuous snowcover in history, it's freezing. So basically, it smells like FUD to me.
WAR IS PEACE - FREEDOM IS SLAVERY - IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
I find your sig strangely ironic.
CO2 definitely is not the sole cause. It is, however, the main cause of the warming in the 20th century, particularly in the last 40 years. See, for instance, Fig. SPM-2 in the IPCC AR4 SPM (PDF). At different points in history, different factors have been the primary drivers of climate change. Right now, it happens to be CO2, largely due to anthropogenic emissions since the Industrial Revolution.
If you're basing that assertion on the IPCC report, then understand that you're basing it on a fundamentally flawed report. The IPCC was tasked by the UN with investigating human causes of global warming, not a broad investigation of global warming overall. When your task is to look for X, it's not surprising that you find X and not Y.
No reputible sources are disputing global warming and that humans are the cause.
Well, sure, if you define "reputable" as "supporting the truthiness of the anthropogenic global warming belief". That the cult of anthropogenic global warming immediately tries to trash the reputation of naysayers or even mere doubters has nothing to do with that, of course.
The fact is that a number of climatologists, paleoclimatologists and scientists of similar disciplines dispute global warming, and a much larger number may allow as how it's possible that, yes, something seems to be warming up the planet, but will vehemently deny that there's anything like sufficient evidence to point to human causes.
The fact remains that water vapor contributes far more to keeping the Earth warm than CO2 does, and that a fractional percentage point change in the Sun's output -- and the Sun is known to vary slightly -- will have more effect than what even the Anthropogenic Global Warming cultists are suggesting Man could do in several centuries.
Historically, the establishment science has be wrong far more often than right.
May not be quite true, but it certainly bring's Clarke's First Law to mind:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientists states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
And I forget who said it (some early 20th century physicist, I think), but the observation was made that new theories don't become accepted by convincing everyone, they become accepted because the older generation of scientists who don't accept it die off.
Lots of cases in the history of science where there's an early theory X (typically proposed by a relative newbie to the field), which soon gets discredited and replaced by theory Y (proposed by distinguished expert), which ultimately hangs on in the face of mounting evidence and theory X (or slightly modified X') ultimately overturns it. Continental drift, certain theories on dinosaur physiology and locomotion, the snowball Earth theory, George Darwin's theory of the Moon's formation, etc.
Not always by any means, but too often to ignore.
Let's put the issue a little bit more concretely. Suppose some guy comes up to you with a proposal to mine gold based on a new process for leaching it from rocks other companies are ignoring. He wants you to invest money in his company but when you consult experts in chemistry, mining and geology they all tell you he is a complete quack and his idea is completely bogus. Would you invest?
That depends on whether or not those experts in mining, chemistry, etc have anything to lose if the guy is right.
Your hypothetical is very similar to the situation that a number of would-be private space launch enterprises found themselves in in the late 1980s/early 1990s. They had schemes for cheap(er) launch that would seriously undercut NASA's then-monopoly on the space launch business. Would-be investors naturally wanted independant evaluations of the proposals, so of course they went to the experts -- NASA. Guess what NASA told them? "Nope, the idea is completely bogus."
It took political pressure to force NASA out of using the Shuttle for commercial launches before that situation turned around.
Sure, some of the ideas probably were bogus, but some weren't. If you want an objective evaluation of some new idea or scheme, be careful about asking the people whose rice bowls it threatens.
*every* so-called modern Galileo can't actually be one, because a universe probably can't exist in which every whacked-out idea proposed by all of them is simultaneously correct.
I don't know about that, have you looked at string theory lately?
You can strap a bigger booster onto a capsule. You can't on a plane.
Really? What are those big things strapped alongside Shuttle when it launches, then?