When I was in Uni (not too long ago) I was swept up by the promise posted on many a form (Linux ones mostly) that in the not-too-distant-future, we'd be living in a technological paradise where open source, open platforms reigned supreme, where proprietary standards and closed systems were the minority. This was going to occur because people wanted and were eventually going to DEMAND openness in their technology, and hence anyone who didn't capitulate would find themselves without market share.
Goddamnit. We're going backwards. Either that or we were all damn naive then. But I was in Uni I suppose, and didn't understand exactly how the human mind works.
As an aside - iPads really are quite nice, and I can definitely see the benefit in a well designed tablet. I just wish someone made a well designed Linux-based tablet at a reasonable price which could kick Apple's arse for a change. The Xoom's cost and current limitation to the US means it's not.
A guy shows how the upgrade procedure goes from DOS -> Windows 7, and instead of making comments on the robustness of the Windows upgrade system or anything even remotely related to the video, instead there are comments about how the poster doesn't use Windows anymore and brags about it.
Jeez, is there any wonder the Linux community is seen as toxic by outsiders?
I don't miss the "challenge" one bit. If you're up for a challenge there are plenty of barebones and expert-friendly distros out there to cut your teeth over. However, things have progressed enough that if you're not prepared to use up what little free time you have tinkering around with shit to get it to work, we now have a lot more friendly options for people who want to actually USE their computers to do something useful.
Companies sending documents to each other? I've had application documents for various services, invoices, technical reports, all in.doc format. Doesn't mean they wouldn't have been served better with PDFs, but I'm not going to tell people how to do their job. Better to have the tools available and ready to deal with them. I also work for a significant Government department and we use a shitload of.doc files.
Maybe you're just isolated (no offense, but geeks have a habit of not being in the environments where most of these issues appear, and hence think their experiences are typical).
Yeah, that little upstart IBM is a nobody that exists in the fake-world.
One company using.odt does not outrank the thousands of others who don't. Yes I said "no-one", yes it's a little hyperbole, but the scale as to how many places use.doc as opposed to.odt is large enough to not really matter.
How do you think the cost of cross-training from Word 2003 to OpenOffice.Org (or LibreOffice) Writer would compare to cross-training from Word 2003 to Word 2007?
Apart from the fact no-one is trained to use a word processor anymore, keep in mind that the transition from Word 2003 -> 2007 would be easier as well on the file format. Open/LibreOffice parses.doc files more accurately in every new release, but nothing compares to the real thing. No-one uses.odt in the real world, except for perhaps a newer company who uses Open/LibreOffice and can use the format for internal documents which aren't designed to be sent to MS Office users.
The title does not seem to go with the article. It sounds like Google is adding more functionality to Microsoft Office, free of charge. What am I missing?
Slashdot is no different to most mainstream media these days - everything has to be classed using aggressive words like "war", "assault" or something else dramatic. The odds of using such emotion in a headline increases when dealing with articles about Microsoft. I don't expect things to change one bit, because it seems to work.
On a side note, I hate the term "bricked" given this is a recoverable problem, although someone did point out that "bricked" is a perfectly acceptable term to describe a non-functional device during the period of time in which there is no known fix.
I know it's the most widely used disto, but compared to the number of users of Windows users which fixing bug 1 is suppose to displace, that's not a lot. I also never thought they'd get double digits quick, but 6 years is NOT OVERNIGHT.
Used to be Ubuntu was the big Linux hero, the shining knight that would drive Linux onto every desktop and kick bad old Windows to the curb. But now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux. What's going on...
Ubuntu was hailed as the distro which had everyone excited that FINALLY, Windows would have some decent competition from Linux such that Linux might actually achieve double-digit desktop percentage use. That was, after all, its prime goal: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1
After 6 years, Ubuntu has failed in this goal. It's certainly brought a lot more attention to Linux on the desktop (it was enough for me to make the switch at least), however in terms of developing a more mainstream effect on the desktop computing world - nothing much has happened. Linux is still mostly unknown when it comes to desktop systems, at least with overall market use. The goal has not been achieved, and most likely won't be achieved by the time mobile platforms/cloud operating systems outrank traditional desktop OS's.
I just know some Microsoft fanboys (they do exist, check out Neowin.net for examples) are gonna latch onto any and all problems that occur after the switchover, regardless of merit.
Perhaps a programmer/developer can explain this for me. In Linux, open source and probably the majority of software, we have version numbers with newer versions taking up a new major or minor version number increment, depending on the significance of the update.
However, I've noticed some people argue that we (who's "we" I said) should instead be moving to the more chic and modern approach which appears to be popping up with certain products, whereby a bug fix means an increment in the build number rather than the version. So a bug-fix of a package marked at version 11.1 Build 35 would become version 11.1 Build 36.
What's with the build numbers? Why use them instead of a minor version number? Are they basically the same as a version number, and whoever told me the Build nomenclature should be used instead of minor versions as some kind of standard should be shot? I don't work in the professional development field so I can't decide if this is a stupid question or not.
Off-topic, but why is it that the words "Windows" and "Microsoft" are still deliberately mangled when people who particularly dislike the product/company talk about them? It's 2011 already - it's not funny or cute anymore. Do these people distort the names of other companies and products they don't like? What makes Windows/Microsoft special?
The sign of a mature discussion is when you can refer to things you don't like without having to resort to childish mechanics like deliberate mangling of words. I doubt people who actually know enough soft skills resort to name calling, as they're aware it immediately turns people off their position.
Even if it does (which I doubt you can not get discounted), for a product that would encounter heavy use for YEARS I think the cost spread over those years would be quite reasonable.
Like I said to another poster though, whatever these 3rd-party mechanisms are to integrated with Windows Domains better, they're not from Mozilla. Frankly I don't even think IT even cares about such matters. They have a corporate firewall, carefully designed group policies, and so on. IE 7+ has tabs, and with the upcoming switch to Windows 7 will also have a sandbox for IE, which none of the other browsers even have. You'd have to find a reason for those guys to get off their arses and support Firefox to the level that IE is, and I guarantee you they won't, because there's not enough justification for the effort. We're already locked into Windows/Microsoft.
Looks nice, but it would never pass muster with those who set IT policy unfortunately. From the looks of it, it doesn't seem to be an officially authorized, Mozilla-endorsed set of templates for which Mozilla themselves can be held responsible if something fucks up (no need to mention the fallacy of believing this means anything in practice of course, but the lawmakers like to know they can shift the blame to someone). I imagine the software probably works quite well, however the 3rd-party nature of it is still a strike against it.
In the end, it's also yet another thing IT need to support which won't have a measurable improvement over something that's already built into the system, integrated and updated using pre-existing infrastructure with a very large amount of knowledgebase to fall back on. Governments are rather boring to work with when it comes to IT.:)
Actually, it sounds like IE is a standard *precisely* because of bureaucracy, specifically because it is the easiest to browser to enforce/support a bureaucracy.
Fair point. I was mostly addressing the attitude presented in the summary that the decision to stick with IE was less for technical reasons and more because of Governmental stubbornness. The latter probably does still have something to do with it, but I doubt it's the main reason, and expending the share of IE to any alternative browser shouldn't be that surprising especially in a western Government.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was in Uni (not too long ago) I was swept up by the promise posted on many a form (Linux ones mostly) that in the not-too-distant-future, we'd be living in a technological paradise where open source, open platforms reigned supreme, where proprietary standards and closed systems were the minority. This was going to occur because people wanted and were eventually going to DEMAND openness in their technology, and hence anyone who didn't capitulate would find themselves without market share.
Goddamnit. We're going backwards. Either that or we were all damn naive then. But I was in Uni I suppose, and didn't understand exactly how the human mind works.
As an aside - iPads really are quite nice, and I can definitely see the benefit in a well designed tablet. I just wish someone made a well designed Linux-based tablet at a reasonable price which could kick Apple's arse for a change. The Xoom's cost and current limitation to the US means it's not.
A guy shows how the upgrade procedure goes from DOS -> Windows 7, and instead of making comments on the robustness of the Windows upgrade system or anything even remotely related to the video, instead there are comments about how the poster doesn't use Windows anymore and brags about it.
Jeez, is there any wonder the Linux community is seen as toxic by outsiders?
I don't miss the "challenge" one bit. If you're up for a challenge there are plenty of barebones and expert-friendly distros out there to cut your teeth over. However, things have progressed enough that if you're not prepared to use up what little free time you have tinkering around with shit to get it to work, we now have a lot more friendly options for people who want to actually USE their computers to do something useful.
Ars Technica has their own piece about this phone:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/reviews/2011/03/the-motorola-atrix-4g-jack-of-three-trades-master-of-one.ars
Companies sending documents to each other? I've had application documents for various services, invoices, technical reports, all in .doc format. Doesn't mean they wouldn't have been served better with PDFs, but I'm not going to tell people how to do their job. Better to have the tools available and ready to deal with them. I also work for a significant Government department and we use a shitload of .doc files.
Maybe you're just isolated (no offense, but geeks have a habit of not being in the environments where most of these issues appear, and hence think their experiences are typical).
One company using .odt does not outrank the thousands of others who don't. Yes I said "no-one", yes it's a little hyperbole, but the scale as to how many places use .doc as opposed to .odt is large enough to not really matter.
Apart from the fact no-one is trained to use a word processor anymore, keep in mind that the transition from Word 2003 -> 2007 would be easier as well on the file format. Open/LibreOffice parses .doc files more accurately in every new release, but nothing compares to the real thing. No-one uses .odt in the real world, except for perhaps a newer company who uses Open/LibreOffice and can use the format for internal documents which aren't designed to be sent to MS Office users.
Now they'll be able to Photoshop their missile tests in record time!
Slashdot is no different to most mainstream media these days - everything has to be classed using aggressive words like "war", "assault" or something else dramatic. The odds of using such emotion in a headline increases when dealing with articles about Microsoft. I don't expect things to change one bit, because it seems to work.
Then do so; Windows Vista/7 has out-of-the-box speed recognition with the ability to launch programs once it is sufficiently trained to your voice.
http://www.neowin.net/news/bricked-wp7-this-is-how-to-fix-it
On a side note, I hate the term "bricked" given this is a recoverable problem, although someone did point out that "bricked" is a perfectly acceptable term to describe a non-functional device during the period of time in which there is no known fix.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTAyNg
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/02/03/1335213/Pirated-App-Sold-On-Mac-App-Store
It would appear that the good guys get trampled on too easily.
I know it's the most widely used disto, but compared to the number of users of Windows users which fixing bug 1 is suppose to displace, that's not a lot. I also never thought they'd get double digits quick, but 6 years is NOT OVERNIGHT.
Ubuntu was hailed as the distro which had everyone excited that FINALLY, Windows would have some decent competition from Linux such that Linux might actually achieve double-digit desktop percentage use. That was, after all, its prime goal: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1
After 6 years, Ubuntu has failed in this goal. It's certainly brought a lot more attention to Linux on the desktop (it was enough for me to make the switch at least), however in terms of developing a more mainstream effect on the desktop computing world - nothing much has happened. Linux is still mostly unknown when it comes to desktop systems, at least with overall market use. The goal has not been achieved, and most likely won't be achieved by the time mobile platforms/cloud operating systems outrank traditional desktop OS's.
People got disillusioned, that's all.
If the folder was called "ultraporn" he'd at least be able to make a Futurama reference.
Actually, yes, exactly like those Linux fanboys. I dislike fanboys of any camp.
What? You didn't think I was totally brainwashed by Slashdot did you? :)
... should have stuck with Windows eh?"
I just know some Microsoft fanboys (they do exist, check out Neowin.net for examples) are gonna latch onto any and all problems that occur after the switchover, regardless of merit.
If the list doesn't have Soldier of Fortune on it (the original AND the sequel), it's not a proper list.
Perhaps a programmer/developer can explain this for me. In Linux, open source and probably the majority of software, we have version numbers with newer versions taking up a new major or minor version number increment, depending on the significance of the update.
However, I've noticed some people argue that we (who's "we" I said) should instead be moving to the more chic and modern approach which appears to be popping up with certain products, whereby a bug fix means an increment in the build number rather than the version. So a bug-fix of a package marked at version 11.1 Build 35 would become version 11.1 Build 36.
What's with the build numbers? Why use them instead of a minor version number? Are they basically the same as a version number, and whoever told me the Build nomenclature should be used instead of minor versions as some kind of standard should be shot? I don't work in the professional development field so I can't decide if this is a stupid question or not.
Sounds like his ex-girlfriend thought he was...
/puts on sunglasses
... a little off-key.
YEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!
Off-topic, but why is it that the words "Windows" and "Microsoft" are still deliberately mangled when people who particularly dislike the product/company talk about them? It's 2011 already - it's not funny or cute anymore. Do these people distort the names of other companies and products they don't like? What makes Windows/Microsoft special?
The sign of a mature discussion is when you can refer to things you don't like without having to resort to childish mechanics like deliberate mangling of words. I doubt people who actually know enough soft skills resort to name calling, as they're aware it immediately turns people off their position.
Even if it does (which I doubt you can not get discounted), for a product that would encounter heavy use for YEARS I think the cost spread over those years would be quite reasonable.
Like I said to another poster though, whatever these 3rd-party mechanisms are to integrated with Windows Domains better, they're not from Mozilla. Frankly I don't even think IT even cares about such matters. They have a corporate firewall, carefully designed group policies, and so on. IE 7+ has tabs, and with the upcoming switch to Windows 7 will also have a sandbox for IE, which none of the other browsers even have. You'd have to find a reason for those guys to get off their arses and support Firefox to the level that IE is, and I guarantee you they won't, because there's not enough justification for the effort. We're already locked into Windows/Microsoft.
Looks nice, but it would never pass muster with those who set IT policy unfortunately. From the looks of it, it doesn't seem to be an officially authorized, Mozilla-endorsed set of templates for which Mozilla themselves can be held responsible if something fucks up (no need to mention the fallacy of believing this means anything in practice of course, but the lawmakers like to know they can shift the blame to someone). I imagine the software probably works quite well, however the 3rd-party nature of it is still a strike against it.
In the end, it's also yet another thing IT need to support which won't have a measurable improvement over something that's already built into the system, integrated and updated using pre-existing infrastructure with a very large amount of knowledgebase to fall back on. Governments are rather boring to work with when it comes to IT. :)
Fair point. I was mostly addressing the attitude presented in the summary that the decision to stick with IE was less for technical reasons and more because of Governmental stubbornness. The latter probably does still have something to do with it, but I doubt it's the main reason, and expending the share of IE to any alternative browser shouldn't be that surprising especially in a western Government.