Microsoft has complained for years that most users request features that Office already has but can't find them according to their usability labs.
FIrst ms tried to hide the complexities with menu's that delete uncommon features unless you put the cursor over the arrows in the menu. That failed.
So MS is redoing the UI. Also even for non novices like you and I its a pain to do things like custom graphics for presentations and documentation in word.
If you need custom statistics with very accurate results then you shouldn't use Excel. ITs the same thing argument with excel supporting 1 million rows vs using a database.
I believe OO spreadsheet program is nowhere close to excel but I could be wrong.
MS Word is a pain in the butt to do custom graphics with menu options all over for the most basic styles. Infact there is one post here about someone writing documentation in html and just saving it as a.doc.
The site is down so I can't see these new features like the ribbons. One of the common complaints about MS-Office is that many users request features that are already there but just hidden under a sea of menu's. MS tried with office2k and 2k3 to delete uncommon menu items in order for users to see the more options which utterly failed. Lets hope Ribbons work. I hope more advanced features like graphics and styles will be easier to implement as a result.
BUsinesses still use Office97 so of course MS wants to innovate to help users switch. Good for Microsoft.
I would rather have MS try to redo Office in order to sell more copies to corporate america rather than raise licensing costs in order to force upgrades.
As much as I dislike windows and Microsoft's business practices I will say MS Office is a wonderfull app and one of their gems. It needs a UI overhaul and more groupware collaboration is what alot of IT departments need. I hope with VBA you can customize it too.
No I am not a MSFan boy either if you read my other posts.
THe software is built on a big server that does the packing and messing around in the registry and testing. Most developers will be fine using just a pc with regular access. I think only a few team members should be given admin access that do such things and of course the WIndows development team.
Actually ms purchased virtual pc so that could make the developers have virtual access to their machines yet lock down their desktops which is nice.
Microsoft needs to lock down their desks. One employee using azerus or frostwire to download illegal software could put the company under liability.
Also its what their customers do that are sensible.
Thats how almost all companies I have seen are run. YOu supposed to act different and special to all executives and bend over since the rules dont apply and they can fire you for company procedure.
Needless to say I disagree with this bs and refuse to follow it. Which is why I lost my job on one of them. THe job I am at now we all run and look busy when a CEO or VP comes in. I just roll my eyes and do what I normally do and work and act no different.
I agree its poor management. But in such environments everyone blows smoke up the CEO's ass and I think they get a high off it. They also know this so they act all demanding knowing that the second they walk away things will return to normal,. Whatever that is.
But you can tell with both that they were not designed with the gui in mind and have quirks for a true newbie.
For example gvim doesn't go into insert mode by default which confuses newbies when they click the buttons. Also if I recall it was a pain to get anything done in xemacs like turning autoindenting on and off and running make from within emacs.
In gvim I just do a:make.
But this discussion is dumb and I hate editor wars. The goal is learning to program and reading documentation to solve problems.
It seems most newbies like eclipse which supports several language now as editors are very 1980's and dated for programming.
Line numbers are nice in ide's or fancy editors. After learning Java last semester with notepad I can tell you its a bitch to deal with trying to find line 163, etc.
Most mistakes the user will see when compiling. At least most java ide's I have seen dont really catch errors but rather show you which methods are inherieted with X, when you type X. .
I suppose a good editor with line numbers but with decent docs to help novices learn the language is ideal.
I do agree too many things like code generation and gui builders are bad if you need to learn awt and swing and the relationship on how all the gui objects work heiracly.
Sun has javadocs and I wonder if VS.Net has a help system that is as good? I looked at msdn and the api is not as clean or organized but I admit I have not dwelled on it greatly.
Actually its already happening, though I sensed you were implying sarcasm.
Integration and business processes are huge costs that many companies overlooked when outsourcing to save a few pennies. Now its a very bi g big problem. The distance and language barrier is a nightmare.
SO instead of insourcing to rural America or Canada wouldn't it be cheaper just to have the whole IT department and all the servers in India? Think about how much money you would save?
Hmmm need some MBA's that have business skills that know your bussiness? Well hire them in India too! Many banks are already doing this.
Now comes the scary part which I like to call outsourcing partIII were the MBA's and accountants are partII. PartIII your whole business and datacenter is in Banglore and you want to leave. Now what?
If you try to insource you lose all your data and can't function. You are now hostage to India.
But the CEO is one person who is overvalued upon wallstreet. Everyone else takes in alot more money and that is who you want to outsource to satisfy wall stree,.
Why not have the hardware based in India as well? Infact if I were CEO of this Indian consulting firm I would heavily sell this idea.
Not only would it be less of a headache but it would force my customers to be hostage. Think about it? If they leave they lose their servers and data and can't function. From there I can charge whatever I want and I wont have to worry about insourcing since I own their data and computers which are essential to function.
Many corporations are stupid and do not see this. But many feel, well since we already use INdia and we are having integration problems it would make logical sense to base the whole IT operations there.
Almost all small financial security checking companies use India and China to clear and cash checks via a fax machine.
Your companies security is the last thing to worry about. When your hmo processes credit card numbers and doctor/patient priveldges its likely outsourced to Africa or India. Anyone can then pull your identity and the phb's only care about costs and where to exploit for the cheapest possible price so he can get his raise
Alot of companies just have their whole IT operations in INdia including all their mission critical servers. That way the consulting companies know that their customers are held hostage and wont leave since they would know own all their data. Very clever.
The only IT people in the states would be those servers were quick access is required or local routers. The rest can go to India where the cost is many times cheaper.
A lesson from the oil industry. Cut supply and you have raised demand.
The telecom oglopolies want to rape you as much as possible and charge the absolute maximum price possible. The only way to do this is to limit supply and lobby.
Telecoms were once a public good regulated and owned by the government with the tax payer paying for the lines and fiber. Now they made all the small ISP's go out of business, deregulated themselves, and now want to charge companies like google money for using their pipes and now charging us more.
ITs insane and I am sick and tired of the government standing up and favoring big business every single time. Is there any story here on slashdot where the Bush administration sided with consumers? Ever?
So what is this load that is supposed to be used whike the program waits? Is it a shade or blurred color of what the texture supposed to be and its used only in far away scenes?
It seems this technique would be difficult to program and could lead to strange artifacts printed on screen.
Most people who say ignorant things like debug everywhere tried java out in 98 or 97 with awt that relies on the platform's window manager to draw and use gui's. Because the platforms were so different in the way they did things bugs could show up if a programmer was used to the way windows did things but X did not.
Swing and SWT took care of most of those problems recently in modern java which makes the gui components truly reusable.
Alot of this has been credited with the introduction of Swing replacing awt which made the write once, debug everywhere true because of the way the window managers of different platforms kept getting in the way.
The GPL reminds me of communism. Communism is supposed to be a pure utopian society run by the people where everything is accessible and free or close to it like some sort of closed community.
In reality its inefficient and prone to dictatorships and corruption where the people are now restricted by communism itself.
Its the same with the GPL. The development could be more efficient proprietary as no one is making a million mp3 players and the focus is on one. Not ot mention business needs are still met better by commercial software.
I just want free software and so do most non zealots who chose to create such a community where anyone can take or contribute. ala BSD style license.
I noticed this as well. The ports from the FBSD 6.0 branch are included if you have a fast machine and time to compile gnome from scratch.
I feel the whole notion of creating seperate distro's like the whole ubuntu/kubuntu thing are just stupid and silly. Most distro's have many cd's with thousands of apps.
A good os should let the user decide what he or she wants. I have heard a podcast from www.freebsd.org from one of the developers mentioning the problems with gnome becoming too Linux centric. Especially with multimedia support. I wonder if that could be the reason?
I did read the interview and a copy of the freebsd6.0's ports are including so I guess I can install gnome from there when I have a week of time available to compile it.:-)
The automounting feature is cool and I had to write scripts to mount such devices with FBSD 4.12 which was a pain.
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Microsoft has complained for years that most users request features that Office already has but can't find them according to their usability labs.
FIrst ms tried to hide the complexities with menu's that delete uncommon features unless you put the cursor over the arrows in the menu. That failed.
So MS is redoing the UI. Also even for non novices like you and I its a pain to do things like custom graphics for presentations and documentation in word.
If you need custom statistics with very accurate results then you shouldn't use Excel. ITs the same thing argument with excel supporting 1 million rows vs using a database.
I believe OO spreadsheet program is nowhere close to excel but I could be wrong.
MS Word is a pain in the butt to do custom graphics with menu options all over for the most basic styles. Infact there is one post here about someone writing documentation in html and just saving it as a .doc.
The site is down so I can't see these new features like the ribbons. One of the common complaints about MS-Office is that many users request features that are already there but just hidden under a sea of menu's. MS tried with office2k and 2k3 to delete uncommon menu items in order for users to see the more options which utterly failed. Lets hope Ribbons work. I hope more advanced features like graphics and styles will be easier to implement as a result.
BUsinesses still use Office97 so of course MS wants to innovate to help users switch. Good for Microsoft.
I would rather have MS try to redo Office in order to sell more copies to corporate america rather than raise licensing costs in order to force upgrades.
As much as I dislike windows and Microsoft's business practices I will say MS Office is a wonderfull app and one of their gems. It needs a UI overhaul and more groupware collaboration is what alot of IT departments need. I hope with VBA you can customize it too.
No I am not a MSFan boy either if you read my other posts.
THe software is built on a big server that does the packing and messing around in the registry and testing. Most developers will be fine using just a pc with regular access. I think only a few team members should be given admin access that do such things and of course the WIndows development team.
Actually ms purchased virtual pc so that could make the developers have virtual access to their machines yet lock down their desktops which is nice.
Microsoft needs to lock down their desks. One employee using azerus or frostwire to download illegal software could put the company under liability.
Also its what their customers do that are sensible.
Thats how almost all companies I have seen are run. YOu supposed to act different and special to all executives and bend over since the rules dont apply and they can fire you for company procedure.
Needless to say I disagree with this bs and refuse to follow it. Which is why I lost my job on one of them. THe job I am at now we all run and look busy when a CEO or VP comes in. I just roll my eyes and do what I normally do and work and act no different.
I agree its poor management. But in such environments everyone blows smoke up the CEO's ass and I think they get a high off it. They also know this so they act all demanding knowing that the second they walk away things will return to normal,. Whatever that is.
so does (g)vim.
:make.
But you can tell with both that they were not designed with the gui in mind and have quirks for a true newbie.
For example gvim doesn't go into insert mode by default which confuses newbies when they click the buttons. Also if I recall it was a pain to get anything done in xemacs like turning autoindenting on and off and running make from within emacs.
In gvim I just do a
But this discussion is dumb and I hate editor wars. The goal is learning to program and reading documentation to solve problems.
It seems most newbies like eclipse which supports several language now as editors are very 1980's and dated for programming.
Line numbers are nice in ide's or fancy editors. After learning Java last semester with notepad I can tell you its a bitch to deal with trying to find line 163, etc.
Most mistakes the user will see when compiling. At least most java ide's I have seen dont really catch errors but rather show you which methods are inherieted with X, when you type X. .
I suppose a good editor with line numbers but with decent docs to help novices learn the language is ideal.
I do agree too many things like code generation and gui builders are bad if you need to learn awt and swing and the relationship on how all the gui objects work heiracly.
Sun has javadocs and I wonder if VS.Net has a help system that is as good? I looked at msdn and the api is not as clean or organized but I admit I have not dwelled on it greatly.
Actually its already happening, though I sensed you were implying sarcasm.
Integration and business processes are huge costs that many companies overlooked when outsourcing to save a few pennies. Now its a very bi g big problem. The distance and language barrier is a nightmare.
SO instead of insourcing to rural America or Canada wouldn't it be cheaper just to have the whole IT department and all the servers in India? Think about how much money you would save?
Hmmm need some MBA's that have business skills that know your bussiness? Well hire them in India too! Many banks are already doing this.
Now comes the scary part which I like to call outsourcing partIII were the MBA's and accountants are partII. PartIII your whole business and datacenter is in Banglore and you want to leave. Now what?
If you try to insource you lose all your data and can't function. You are now hostage to India.
But the CEO is one person who is overvalued upon wallstreet. Everyone else takes in alot more money and that is who you want to outsource to satisfy wall stree,.
Why not have the hardware based in India as well? Infact if I were CEO of this Indian consulting firm I would heavily sell this idea.
Not only would it be less of a headache but it would force my customers to be hostage. Think about it? If they leave they lose their servers and data and can't function. From there I can charge whatever I want and I wont have to worry about insourcing since I own their data and computers which are essential to function.
Many corporations are stupid and do not see this. But many feel, well since we already use INdia and we are having integration problems it would make logical sense to base the whole IT operations there.
Almost all small financial security checking companies use India and China to clear and cash checks via a fax machine.
Your companies security is the last thing to worry about. When your hmo processes credit card numbers and doctor/patient priveldges its likely outsourced to Africa or India. Anyone can then pull your identity and the phb's only care about costs and where to exploit for the cheapest possible price so he can get his raise
Alot of companies just have their whole IT operations in INdia including all their mission critical servers. That way the consulting companies know that their customers are held hostage and wont leave since they would know own all their data. Very clever.
The only IT people in the states would be those servers were quick access is required or local routers. The rest can go to India where the cost is many times cheaper.
A lesson from the oil industry. Cut supply and you have raised demand.
The telecom oglopolies want to rape you as much as possible and charge the absolute maximum price possible. The only way to do this is to limit supply and lobby.
Telecoms were once a public good regulated and owned by the government with the tax payer paying for the lines and fiber. Now they made all the small ISP's go out of business, deregulated themselves, and now want to charge companies like google money for using their pipes and now charging us more.
ITs insane and I am sick and tired of the government standing up and favoring big business every single time. Is there any story here on slashdot where the Bush administration sided with consumers? Ever?
So of course there is a financial intereest to lie to satisfy their shareholders willingness to rape us
So what is this load that is supposed to be used whike the program waits? Is it a shade or blurred color of what the texture supposed to be and its used only in far away scenes?
It seems this technique would be difficult to program and could lead to strange artifacts printed on screen.
You run everywhere by writting java code. ... wait a minute?
The power of opensource.
:-)
Have the community fix their broken software for free.
Now if only Nvidia and ATI could release their specs so we could stop using their bug ridden blob drivers.
Awt as well.
Most people who say ignorant things like debug everywhere tried java out in 98 or 97 with awt that relies on the platform's window manager to draw and use gui's. Because the platforms were so different in the way they did things bugs could show up if a programmer was used to the way windows did things but X did not.
Swing and SWT took care of most of those problems recently in modern java which makes the gui components truly reusable.
Alot of this has been credited with the introduction of Swing replacing awt which made the write once, debug everywhere true because of the way the window managers of different platforms kept getting in the way.
The GPL reminds me of communism. Communism is supposed to be a pure utopian society run by the people where everything is accessible and free or close to it like some sort of closed community.
In reality its inefficient and prone to dictatorships and corruption where the people are now restricted by communism itself.
Its the same with the GPL. The development could be more efficient proprietary as no one is making a million mp3 players and the focus is on one. Not ot mention business needs are still met better by commercial software.
I just want free software and so do most non zealots who chose to create such a community where anyone can take or contribute. ala BSD style license.
Enough said ..
I wonder how this compared to Desktop BSD?
I noticed this as well. The ports from the FBSD 6.0 branch are included if you have a fast machine and time to compile gnome from scratch.
I feel the whole notion of creating seperate distro's like the whole ubuntu/kubuntu thing are just stupid and silly. Most distro's have many cd's with thousands of apps.
A good os should let the user decide what he or she wants. I have heard a podcast from www.freebsd.org from one of the developers mentioning the problems with gnome becoming too Linux centric. Especially with multimedia support. I wonder if that could be the reason?
You just described NetBSD. Unless your OS has something unique that I missed besides a much simpler package system with great desktop support.
Too bad for the gnome users like myself.
:-)
I did read the interview and a copy of the freebsd6.0's ports are including so I guess I can install gnome from there when I have a week of time available to compile it.
The automounting feature is cool and I had to write scripts to mount such devices with FBSD 4.12 which was a pain.