In the olden days that was how you claimed a new colony. What is the leal status of the moon, if any.
It's international property, same as LEO and the open sea.
Now, we _could_ have a "you get it, you got it" policy, wherein everyone who gets anywhere has "squatter's rights." But we'd need about a thousandfold increase in space travel technology to do it.
IMO, this would be a good thing. For too long has space been about "science." From MIR it was about achievement and adventure--let dreams that are grander than return-to-the-womb drive space travel, and we'll do it. Leave it to emotionless science, and we won't get there at all.
You cannot allow companies to trademark common names or words, I don't want to have to pay royalties everytime I use the word pie.
Of course you can allow companies to trademark common words. You just limit their control of the word to its uncommon use.
If, for example, the USPTO were to grant a trademark on a line of pies to be branded "PIE", they'd be able to sue anyone else who called their pies "PIE"--but not if the word were merely used as part of another mark, like "Mom's PIEs"
(Please read the above capitalization as if you were a Windows machine; I used all caps for emphasis.)
This (trademarking generic names) should be a case of the market limiting them, rather than the law.
wish that you could put the Run... item next to log off (where it used to be)
You can. Switch to the "Use Classic Start Menu", enable the RUN function, and it'll show up at the bottom.
XP's Explorer/Taskbar/Start Menu overhaul is very possibly the best UI advancement MS has had since Win95. You can turn on or off not only all of the new flashy @%#%, but you can do the same for all of the old standbys!
You can't really be easy to use *and* ultra-customizable at the same time.
The hell you can't. Simple three-step process:
1: Make a simple default state, just like you would use if you weren't going to follow #2. 2: Take every configurable thing you've got, and let the user tweak it to their heart's content. 3: Have "reset settings" function that's universal for the system--heck, make it a keybinding, and have it pop up on "first run" or somesuch.
The above program may grow to mammoth program sizes, or be horrendiously expensive to write, but it's sure as hell possible.
Mechanisms for such tracking already exist and do not depend on Napster for implementation
Then they're not part of the system, and are as irrelevant to the system's design and purpose as an artist's ogrish bodyguard.
Then boom, you catch your file-sharer red-handed. It's a time-honored technique in law enforcement: you get the idea that someone is doing something illegal, you pay attention until you catch them at it, then you bust them.
There's another time-honored tradition in polite society that P2P really should honor--do what's necessary so the cop's don't get involved. If that means staying small, stay small. If that means tracking who's sharing what, do that.
Napster was a content neutral system insofar as it treated all mp3 files equally. There is no way to tell from an mp3 file whether the current file owner has a legal right to share that file.
That's where the registration, feedback, and tracking come in. It should be feasable to track what pseudoanonymous user first shared a file, and if the file is proven to be infringment it'd then (1) be dropped from the network and (2) the angry angst-ridden artist-laywer could subpoena the original file contributor's contact info.
A system like this would have been possible BEFORE napster, and it may be possible once Kazaa et al are sent the way of Napster (through legal action or just time), but as long as there's promiscuous anonymous file sharing, a proper replacement just isn't about to happen.
If I want to download an.rpm for instance, or any other file that I can legally download, why does my download need to be tracked to be legal
It doesn't, unless you want to voice your "legal download" or "good download" vote.
If I want to share an mp3 of my bands latest single why do I need tracking.
Because the default should be "someone doesn't want this copied" and you'll need to prove against the default.
If there are things lying on a shelf, the default is that they aren't free for the taking unless a sign says that there is. P2P _SHOULD_ work this way--and until it does, I won't believe that they're intended for any real purpose other than illegal trading of files.
This *is* about civil liberties because it has a chilling effect among other things. The unauthorized duplication has been and continues to be used to prevent legitimate filesharing on otherwise neutral systems (i.e. Napster).
Napster was not an "otherwise neutral system." They had a judge issue a preliminary (pre-trial!) injunction against them!
A P2P system that really wanted to facilitate legal data transfer would have mandatory permanent pseudoanonymous tracking and feedback, and use this as a fundamental aspect of the network.
Napster, Kazaa, Gnutella, et al were designed rather purposefully to encourage sharing of files that the government doesn't want shared--which is a "revolution"-esque way to say "illegal file sharing."
However, the nature of my romantic feelings in that case did not align 100% with what society considers to be normal, and there are some people who would see that as a perfectly good reason to deny me a job, or housing, or service.
As of very recently, if someone denies you anything in New York, you can sue them. As for the rest--well, if any of those three describe you... nah, can't finish that sentence with someone who's probably just gay.
My point is, you CAN be different--but you can only be so different. Society is a lot more tolerant and open than it once was--but we don't know it, because semitransparancy and privacy are locked in a vicious cycle with identity theft and stalking. (Think about it--if the system were truly transparant, both stalking and identity theft would essentially never happen.)
Fully automatic small-caliber weapons are crap when it comes to hunting very large game or for home defense.
Odd. For home defense, I'd think that an automatic small-caliber weapon designed to wound a person would be ideal.
Against very large game a fully automatic small-caliber weapon is going to have a very angry very large animal stomping on your head and in your home all it does it tear up your precious belongings and make a lot of noise.
Are you sure? I know that a single-shot small-caliber weapon won't work against "large game" (I'm talking bears and moose, not elephants), but I have a hard time buying that 20-100 smallish bullets won't stop them as well as 1 or 2 large bullets.
They are not against the law, however, in the USA
Ok, so I was wrong about the law.
Up the caliber, then, and the point still stands. Automatic weapons are illegal because they have substantial illegal uses that outweight their legal uses.
The Civil War was way bloodier than the crap that happened during prohibition so I call bullshit on that aspect of the discussion too.
The Civil War didn't happen during the 20th century. And outside of wars, I can't think of any squabble that was as bloddy as prohibition.
You are destroying any credibility the rest of your semi-accurate post may have by using these lies.
They're not lies. They may be inaccurate, but if I believe that they are true, then they are quite simply NOT lies.
I'm not confused. I have a different opinion than you.
I'm rather confident that, even if you were a judge on the US Supreme Court, you could not say in a/. post was was or was not illegal.;)
Using Kazaa to trade completely legal MP3s, AVIs, etc, is what it was created to do. Just b/c its users decided to use it for something illegal doesn't mean anything.
Are cars illegal b/c people use them to traffick drugs? And yes, that is a valid comparison for those of you that are going to flame b/c you think it's apples to oranges.
Napster could have said the _exact same thing_, but the illegal uses outweighted the legal uses by far.
Fully automatic small-caliber weapons are perfectly viable arms for hunting very large game or for home defense, but they are illegal because of their substantial criminal use--Gangland smugglers during prohibition used military-grade automatic weapons, and turned what should have been a game of smuggling and small arms became a war bloodier than any other domestic struggle this century. Thus, the arms were banned.
If KaZaa had a mechanism for filtering out unapproved content, that'd be one thing. But it's virtually impossible to casualy browse Kazaa for PD material--they should be taken to court fairly, not exempted because they're hiding in three other countries.
"Don't like it? Don't use credit cards." is possibly not entirely unreasonable.
Of course it isn't. And if you're someone that they're pursuing, you can probably get that TOS clause expunged from your agreement.
"Don't like it? Don't shop anywhere, ever." is unconscionable.
I re-issue my statement. If enough people complain, a viable alternative will arise. If you don't like credit card TOS, you can use cash and get a line-of-credit at a bank for short-term loans.
If enough people don't like RIFD tags, viable alternatives (extreme example: mail-order, webshopping, or even a personal shopper) will arise.
No thanks, I am not paying $23 + $4 - $x for songs when Kazaa is still fucking free.
1: You allready pay approx $23 for music as-is. 2: The prices quoted seem to be for the service as-is. AOL subscribtion, if it affects MusicNet at all, would liekly count towards all or part of the music. 3: Kazaa is fucking illegal, and if there was an effective way to ban a software program from a different country it'd be banned by now.
What choice will there be if (if not when) every store decides to search your stuff on the way out?
Simple. People will either object, and smart stores will start NOT searching customers, or people will acccept it as "no big deal." Just like having to sign a contract every time they buy something with a credit card.
I do have a right to privacy when patronizing their store. They can't strip search me, they can't search through my property, they can't search my bags from other stores even if they put up signs saying they can.
You don't have a right to be in the store, though. While they can ask to search your bags, and you have the right to refuse, they can tell you to leave then.
"Privacy zealot", thank God, is not a protected class of citizen.
As you mentioned yourself, that HTML output was utter crap. Nobody was or is expected to use that feature for any meaningful data storage or presentation purposes. Did anyone?
Actually, it's very good for backing up Word Documents. The simplest way to attempt to clean a corrupted file is to save it as HTML, then open it in a new Word session from HTML and save as DOC again.
I use Office 2000 in conjunction with the website I have to update for work. The HTML works reasonably well, despite having all of that bloat.
Very annoying hiding menus - many have pointed out that when menu options that are not used are hidden, user is likely to never find out about those options, thus sticking to what they did know - Office 97 functionality.
Most users only use a subset of the features of any given program because _that's all that they need._
Those hiding menus and toolbars are annoying when you want to use a button for display, but not for input. *grumble grumble.*
Everyone seems to be saying this was an improvement in Office 2000, but if I recall correctly, I remember using this in Office 97 w/service pack update.
We just upgraded to 2000 last year, and the clipboard was new for us. I'm pretty sure that the clipboard wasn't universal in the latest 97 service pack--though I don't doubt that it may have showed up in a subset of service packs, or that there was a third-party utility for it.
Anyway, these features are hardly worth few hundred bucks per pop for upgrade, or $500 or so for full release. Especially when most of the new actual useful features never get used. Combine that with MS' one product fits all strategy, and it looks even less valuable.
You're completely right. If you have a massive discount or "software assurance" it makes sense to upgrade, but other than that--well, skipping a few "generations" of office is probably not a bad idea.
However, since Easter is a coopted pagan holiday, I don't think Jesus would be too keen on it for a bunch of other reasons... Well, considering what people do in his name, he'd probably be siding with the pagans...
AFAIK, there were several hundred years of sliding years--counted using a calendar that didn't sync with the real years, thus causing quite an ammount of confusion for the early (persectued) Christians.
Considering that they didn't have exact dates (or the proper techniques for finding the correct dates), the church could do worse than co-opt holidays that were already being celebrated.
I suspect that J.C. doesn't really care, and would approve if He cared to comment. I mean, the church did at least get rid of the Beltane Orgies--too bad they couldn't come up with something else to replace it that would stick in society.:-/
Yeah.. the multiple item clipboard that you have to hack the registry to get it to stop popping up everything you copy something! I mean really! its kinda neat and all if you actually would use something like that, but they didn't include a way to disable it. Hopefully they will include that "feature" in the new version, but I haven't been able to see the site yet due to slashdotting.
Yes they did. It's either on the "Options" window, or it's something you can alter from the system tray.
In 2k at work, I have the problem that the clipboard keeps deciding that I don't want it, and it keeps disabling its auto-popup!
There was virtually no difference between Office and Office 97. The differences between Office 97 and 2000 were mostly visual (and the addition of broken compatibilities). The differences between Windows 98 and Windows ME were just pointless. I still consider Windows XP an expensive, restrictively licensed downgrade to Windows 2000.
In all that, you're right on the money for 98/ME; ME never should have been, and if not for RAMBUS it wouldn't have been. But as for the rest: MS has got lots of small improvements in each iteration of office. Blame planned obsolescence.
* Office 97 was the first package with reasonable HTML built-in. Yes, it's bloated HTML with all of the Office metadata, and yes, they'd have been better if they copied Acrobat's Word-UI. But that's neither here nor there.
* Office 2000 introduced a whole heck of new features--most notably for most of us, those auto-hiding menus, multiple windows in the taskbar, and a built-in clipboard that can hold twelve "cuts."
* Office XP doubled the size of the clipboard, gave word discontinuous selection ability, and introduced that somewhat-useful task pane.
* Windows XP, over 2000, has a major improvement just in explorer.exe. You can customize your start menu to your heart's content, the system tray auto-hide (or mannualy hide) icons, and the gooy GUI is, if nothing else, "new." (And being able to turn off all of the above is rather nice, too.)
Other than Outlook, I haven't seen an improvement in Office since Office 97, and even THAT was iffy over Office95...
Word XP can do non-consecutive text selections (you have _no_ idea how nice this is until you have it). 2000 introduced a multiple-item clibboard, and it doubled in size in XP--in addition to an overhaul of the word mail-merge wizard, and numerous other small improvements (like the HTML export being almost standard).
Not sure of these are $100 upgrades, but they ARE improvements.
Hell during the crusades it was fashionable for people to walk around with blood past the elbows.
The crusades were a war; valor in war was widely respected by those taking place in the war, be it Europeans trying to carve out kingdoms in the holy land or Native North Americans feuding amongst their own tribes.
They were just making the world a better place!
Odd that you pick the Crusades as an example of "a bad war," when they were started because of pilgrims being killed in the Holy Land--and the miliary strucutre was only there because Muslims tried to conquer Europe first.
Slashdot Mirror
If IBM's faulty product caused you to lose house, home, and family, get yourself a god damn lawyer and shut up about it.
In the olden days that was how you claimed a new colony. What is the leal status of the moon, if any.
It's international property, same as LEO and the open sea.
Now, we _could_ have a "you get it, you got it" policy, wherein everyone who gets anywhere has "squatter's rights." But we'd need about a thousandfold increase in space travel technology to do it.
IMO, this would be a good thing. For too long has space been about "science." From MIR it was about achievement and adventure--let dreams that are grander than return-to-the-womb drive space travel, and we'll do it. Leave it to emotionless science, and we won't get there at all.
You cannot allow companies to trademark common names or words, I don't want to have to pay royalties everytime I use the word pie.
Of course you can allow companies to trademark common words. You just limit their control of the word to its uncommon use.
If, for example, the USPTO were to grant a trademark on a line of pies to be branded "PIE", they'd be able to sue anyone else who called their pies "PIE"--but not if the word were merely used as part of another mark, like "Mom's PIEs"
(Please read the above capitalization as if you were a Windows machine; I used all caps for emphasis.)
This (trademarking generic names) should be a case of the market limiting them, rather than the law.
wish that you could put the Run... item next to log off (where it used to be)
You can. Switch to the "Use Classic Start Menu", enable the RUN function, and it'll show up at the bottom.
XP's Explorer/Taskbar/Start Menu overhaul is very possibly the best UI advancement MS has had since Win95. You can turn on or off not only all of the new flashy @%#%, but you can do the same for all of the old standbys!
You can't really be easy to use *and* ultra-customizable at the same time.
The hell you can't. Simple three-step process:
1: Make a simple default state, just like you would use if you weren't going to follow #2.
2: Take every configurable thing you've got, and let the user tweak it to their heart's content.
3: Have "reset settings" function that's universal for the system--heck, make it a keybinding, and have it pop up on "first run" or somesuch.
The above program may grow to mammoth program sizes, or be horrendiously expensive to write, but it's sure as hell possible.
Mechanisms for such tracking already exist and do not depend on Napster for implementation
Then they're not part of the system, and are as irrelevant to the system's design and purpose as an artist's ogrish bodyguard.
Then boom, you catch your file-sharer red-handed. It's a time-honored technique in law enforcement: you get the idea that someone is doing something illegal, you pay attention until you catch them at it, then you bust them.
There's another time-honored tradition in polite society that P2P really should honor--do what's necessary so the cop's don't get involved. If that means staying small, stay small. If that means tracking who's sharing what, do that.
Napster was a content neutral system insofar as it treated all mp3 files equally. There is no way to tell from an mp3 file whether the current file owner has a legal right to share that file.
That's where the registration, feedback, and tracking come in. It should be feasable to track what pseudoanonymous user first shared a file, and if the file is proven to be infringment it'd then (1) be dropped from the network and (2) the angry angst-ridden artist-laywer could subpoena the original file contributor's contact info.
A system like this would have been possible BEFORE napster, and it may be possible once Kazaa et al are sent the way of Napster (through legal action or just time), but as long as there's promiscuous anonymous file sharing, a proper replacement just isn't about to happen.
If I want to download an .rpm for instance, or any other file that I can legally download, why does my download need to be tracked to be legal
It doesn't, unless you want to voice your "legal download" or "good download" vote.
If I want to share an mp3 of my bands latest single why do I need tracking.
Because the default should be "someone doesn't want this copied" and you'll need to prove against the default.
If there are things lying on a shelf, the default is that they aren't free for the taking unless a sign says that there is. P2P _SHOULD_ work this way--and until it does, I won't believe that they're intended for any real purpose other than illegal trading of files.
This *is* about civil liberties because it has a chilling effect among other things. The unauthorized duplication has been and continues to be used to prevent legitimate filesharing on otherwise neutral systems (i.e. Napster).
Napster was not an "otherwise neutral system." They had a judge issue a preliminary (pre-trial!) injunction against them!
A P2P system that really wanted to facilitate legal data transfer would have mandatory permanent pseudoanonymous tracking and feedback, and use this as a fundamental aspect of the network.
Napster, Kazaa, Gnutella, et al were designed rather purposefully to encourage sharing of files that the government doesn't want shared--which is a "revolution"-esque way to say "illegal file sharing."
What probably makes it special and innovative is that it has the words using a computer somewhere in the definition.
Don't forget _automatically_.
Any human can play Go. But if you come up with an algorhythm to let a computer play Go by itself, then that's a patentable invention.
More "successful" does not mean "better".
Often, it does.
"Survivor" was an exception, based on the "it's real!" shtick.
Considering that I can't even FIND Angel, I'll be happy with whatever happens--just as long as it's in a predictable time slot.
However, the nature of my romantic feelings in that case did not align 100% with what society considers to be normal, and there are some people who would see that as a perfectly good reason to deny me a job, or housing, or service.
So, which are you:
* Man-boy lover
* Bestiality freak
* Incestuous
* Homosexual
As of very recently, if someone denies you anything in New York, you can sue them. As for the rest--well, if any of those three describe you... nah, can't finish that sentence with someone who's probably just gay.
My point is, you CAN be different--but you can only be so different. Society is a lot more tolerant and open than it once was--but we don't know it, because semitransparancy and privacy are locked in a vicious cycle with identity theft and stalking. (Think about it--if the system were truly transparant, both stalking and identity theft would essentially never happen.)
Fully automatic small-caliber weapons are crap when it comes to hunting very large game or for home defense.
Odd. For home defense, I'd think that an automatic small-caliber weapon designed to wound a person would be ideal.
Against very large game a fully automatic small-caliber weapon is going to have a very angry very large animal stomping on your head and in your home all it does it tear up your precious belongings and make a lot of noise.
Are you sure? I know that a single-shot small-caliber weapon won't work against "large game" (I'm talking bears and moose, not elephants), but I have a hard time buying that 20-100 smallish bullets won't stop them as well as 1 or 2 large bullets.
They are not against the law, however, in the USA
Ok, so I was wrong about the law.
Up the caliber, then, and the point still stands. Automatic weapons are illegal because they have substantial illegal uses that outweight their legal uses.
The Civil War was way bloodier than the crap that happened during prohibition so I call bullshit on that aspect of the discussion too.
The Civil War didn't happen during the 20th century. And outside of wars, I can't think of any squabble that was as bloddy as prohibition.
You are destroying any credibility the rest of your semi-accurate post may have by using these lies.
They're not lies. They may be inaccurate, but if I believe that they are true, then they are quite simply NOT lies.
No, it's not illegal. Please don't be confused.
/. post was was or was not illegal. ;)
I'm not confused. I have a different opinion than you.
I'm rather confident that, even if you were a judge on the US Supreme Court, you could not say in a
Using Kazaa to trade completely legal MP3s, AVIs, etc, is what it was created to do. Just b/c its users decided to use it for something illegal doesn't mean anything.
Are cars illegal b/c people use them to traffick drugs? And yes, that is a valid comparison for those of you that are going to flame b/c you think it's apples to oranges.
Napster could have said the _exact same thing_, but the illegal uses outweighted the legal uses by far.
Fully automatic small-caliber weapons are perfectly viable arms for hunting very large game or for home defense, but they are illegal because of their substantial criminal use--Gangland smugglers during prohibition used military-grade automatic weapons, and turned what should have been a game of smuggling and small arms became a war bloodier than any other domestic struggle this century. Thus, the arms were banned.
If KaZaa had a mechanism for filtering out unapproved content, that'd be one thing. But it's virtually impossible to casualy browse Kazaa for PD material--they should be taken to court fairly, not exempted because they're hiding in three other countries.
"Don't like it? Don't use credit cards." is possibly not entirely unreasonable.
Of course it isn't. And if you're someone that they're pursuing, you can probably get that TOS clause expunged from your agreement.
"Don't like it? Don't shop anywhere, ever." is unconscionable.
I re-issue my statement. If enough people complain, a viable alternative will arise. If you don't like credit card TOS, you can use cash and get a line-of-credit at a bank for short-term loans.
If enough people don't like RIFD tags, viable alternatives (extreme example: mail-order, webshopping, or even a personal shopper) will arise.
No thanks, I am not paying $23 + $4 - $x for songs when Kazaa is still fucking free.
1: You allready pay approx $23 for music as-is.
2: The prices quoted seem to be for the service as-is. AOL subscribtion, if it affects MusicNet at all, would liekly count towards all or part of the music.
3: Kazaa is fucking illegal, and if there was an effective way to ban a software program from a different country it'd be banned by now.
What choice will there be if (if not when) every store decides to search your stuff on the way out?
Simple. People will either object, and smart stores will start NOT searching customers, or people will acccept it as "no big deal." Just like having to sign a contract every time they buy something with a credit card.
I do have a right to privacy when patronizing their store. They can't strip search me, they can't search through my property, they can't search my bags from other stores even if they put up signs saying they can.
You don't have a right to be in the store, though. While they can ask to search your bags, and you have the right to refuse, they can tell you to leave then.
"Privacy zealot", thank God, is not a protected class of citizen.
As you mentioned yourself, that HTML output was utter crap. Nobody was or is expected to use that feature for any meaningful data storage or presentation purposes. Did anyone?
Actually, it's very good for backing up Word Documents. The simplest way to attempt to clean a corrupted file is to save it as HTML, then open it in a new Word session from HTML and save as DOC again.
I use Office 2000 in conjunction with the website I have to update for work. The HTML works reasonably well, despite having all of that bloat.
Very annoying hiding menus - many have pointed out that when menu options that are not used are hidden, user is likely to never find out about those options, thus sticking to what they did know - Office 97 functionality.
Most users only use a subset of the features of any given program because _that's all that they need._
Those hiding menus and toolbars are annoying when you want to use a button for display, but not for input. *grumble grumble.*
Everyone seems to be saying this was an improvement in Office 2000, but if I recall correctly, I remember using this in Office 97 w/service pack update.
We just upgraded to 2000 last year, and the clipboard was new for us. I'm pretty sure that the clipboard wasn't universal in the latest 97 service pack--though I don't doubt that it may have showed up in a subset of service packs, or that there was a third-party utility for it.
Anyway, these features are hardly worth few hundred bucks per pop for upgrade, or $500 or so for full release. Especially when most of the new actual useful features never get used. Combine that with MS' one product fits all strategy, and it looks even less valuable.
You're completely right. If you have a massive discount or "software assurance" it makes sense to upgrade, but other than that--well, skipping a few "generations" of office is probably not a bad idea.
I like your sig.
:-/
Thank you.
However, since Easter is a coopted pagan holiday, I don't think Jesus would be too keen on it for a bunch of other reasons... Well, considering what people do in his name, he'd probably be siding with the pagans...
AFAIK, there were several hundred years of sliding years--counted using a calendar that didn't sync with the real years, thus causing quite an ammount of confusion for the early (persectued) Christians.
Considering that they didn't have exact dates (or the proper techniques for finding the correct dates), the church could do worse than co-opt holidays that were already being celebrated.
I suspect that J.C. doesn't really care, and would approve if He cared to comment. I mean, the church did at least get rid of the Beltane Orgies--too bad they couldn't come up with something else to replace it that would stick in society.
Yeah.. the multiple item clipboard that you have to hack the registry to get it to stop popping up everything you copy something! I mean really! its kinda neat and all if you actually would use something like that, but they didn't include a way to disable it. Hopefully they will include that "feature" in the new version, but I haven't been able to see the site yet due to slashdotting.
Yes they did. It's either on the "Options" window, or it's something you can alter from the system tray.
In 2k at work, I have the problem that the clipboard keeps deciding that I don't want it, and it keeps disabling its auto-popup!
Isn't the goal to do better?
Ideally. But "exactly as good as" is a nice goal to shoot for first.
There was virtually no difference between Office and Office 97. The differences between Office 97 and 2000 were mostly visual (and the addition of broken compatibilities). The differences between Windows 98 and Windows ME were just pointless. I still consider Windows XP an expensive, restrictively licensed downgrade to Windows 2000.
In all that, you're right on the money for 98/ME; ME never should have been, and if not for RAMBUS it wouldn't have been. But as for the rest: MS has got lots of small improvements in each iteration of office. Blame planned obsolescence.
* Office 97 was the first package with reasonable HTML built-in. Yes, it's bloated HTML with all of the Office metadata, and yes, they'd have been better if they copied Acrobat's Word-UI. But that's neither here nor there.
* Office 2000 introduced a whole heck of new features--most notably for most of us, those auto-hiding menus, multiple windows in the taskbar, and a built-in clipboard that can hold twelve "cuts."
* Office XP doubled the size of the clipboard, gave word discontinuous selection ability, and introduced that somewhat-useful task pane.
* Windows XP, over 2000, has a major improvement just in explorer.exe. You can customize your start menu to your heart's content, the system tray auto-hide (or mannualy hide) icons, and the gooy GUI is, if nothing else, "new." (And being able to turn off all of the above is rather nice, too.)
Other than Outlook, I haven't seen an improvement in Office since Office 97, and even THAT was iffy over Office95...
Word XP can do non-consecutive text selections (you have _no_ idea how nice this is until you have it). 2000 introduced a multiple-item clibboard, and it doubled in size in XP--in addition to an overhaul of the word mail-merge wizard, and numerous other small improvements (like the HTML export being almost standard).
Not sure of these are $100 upgrades, but they ARE improvements.
Personally, i like the office interface, but perhaps that's just because i'm so familiar with it.
I like the office (WORD!) interface too, but I also like QWERTY, my mouse, and video game controllers with the movement-control on the left.
Office is the default, and the various OSS clones can do worse than just copy it's major interface.
OoO is good and all, but not being able to make it look like Office is rather annoying.
Hell during the crusades it was fashionable for people to walk around with blood past the elbows.
The crusades were a war; valor in war was widely respected by those taking place in the war, be it Europeans trying to carve out kingdoms in the holy land or Native North Americans feuding amongst their own tribes.
They were just making the world a better place!
Odd that you pick the Crusades as an example of "a bad war," when they were started because of pilgrims being killed in the Holy Land--and the miliary strucutre was only there because Muslims tried to conquer Europe first.