So, we have the WYSI(sometimes)WYG word editors like Work 2k and Word XP, and we have LaTeX2e. In Word, I can spend hours fiddling with colors, fonts and the like, trying to get it to display the way I want it to display. In LaTeX, I can write out the report with just a few commands that will automagically create a TOC, Index, footnotes, and bibliography. LaTeX will handle the font sizes and layout for me, letting me concentrate on getting work done.
Word can do TOC, indexes, footnotes, a bibiliography, themed font sizes, layout, et cetera as well. Maybe not as well as LaTeX can do it, but Word CAN do those things--and if you're spending more than fifteen minutes in applying any reasonable (i.e., something that you'd actually see in a book) formatting scheme, you're doing something horribly wrong.
The thing is, you have to use it properly, and if you want easy customization you're going to have to use styles... but wait, you use LaTeX, so you should be about to figure out something as simple as Word...
Windows is easier to LEARN. It is not, however, easier to USE unless the uses to which you put your computer are very trivial.
Define "trivial."
I use--and have always used--my computer to create documents, communicate with the internet, do some data-crunching, and playing games. (You know, the purposes for which computers came into everyone's homes?)
Linux has, as of yet, not proven to be easier in any of the tasks that I use my PC for. OpenOffice doesn't out-do Word; Mozilla is Mozilla, but gAIM isn't AIM; Excel & Access equivalents aren't something I've given a fair shake yet, but they're not THAT important--and as for games, it's still harder to install software on Linux than it is on Windows.
I suspect that this will change, and soon all of the places that MS beats OSS will have the situation reversed... but that day has not come yet.
Windows is easier to use than Linux. It's a bit more expensive if you want to do everything that you can in Linux, but for a lot of people, that isn't enough to make Linux worthwhile.
Wow, I had no idea that the old anti-OSS argument had been reversed. It's great that OSS is free and all--but that doesn't mean that it's better (or even as good as) the for-pay alternative.
I can work on my car for free, too--but if I want it to really work, I pay someone to do it.
If you are not completely astounded by this fact, then you have some serious entitlement issues to work out.
The fact that linux is better at some things than the MS operating systems and worse at others is insignificant in comparison.
That attitude is why MS software is simply better, for every application that I'm likely to put a computer in my home to task as in the forseeable future.
The fact that the code is free doesn't matter--not if I have to spend more of my time's value setting it up, getting used to it, and maintaining it than I would by simply purchasing / upgrading to the MS solution.
Linux can be (and is) a breeze to set up--but that doesn't mean it's a breeze to get working on it, or that just because it's free that it's worth the time to use.
So while its still not eveyones cup of tea, especially home users, you need some perspecive on why the rest of the IT commuity and well rounded linux users see what's right about it.
I'm well aware that RH 8 is an advancement... but it's not something that's about to give MS nightmares.
Case in point: the only thing that caused me to scratch it was the rather extremely hidden functionality to read the FAT partition I created for Linux & Windows to share docs on. Mandrake (and Lycoris!) did this right off the bat--I couldn't even find where the tool for this might be, and trying what few command-line commands I knew didn't work.:(
They are probably closlely looking into the latest desktop linux distros from red hat and ximian and shitting their pants.
I can't speak for Ximian, but I was rather underimpressed with Red Hat 8--and I've never really even tried Linux before. (For the curious, I've got Mandrake 9 on my Linux partition now, although I don't use it very often.)
Sure, MS has real competition for the Intel-based PC now--but that's a good thing for them, not a bad thing. Competition means that they've got a challenge, which drives innovation, and good enough competition means that they're not a monopoly, which means that they can do more things than before.
They are maintaining share in the department server market, but are aware that the eventual TOC issue is going to hand them their lunch soon.
Really? Gee, and here I was thinking that the "easy to use" aspect of Windows, and thus less of a need to hire on Linux experts, put them about even...
or that a company with $40 billion in cash can figure out a way to justify their own existance.
A company with 40 billion in cash and a 20 billion/year business doesn't write 2 page strategy documents.
Of course they do. The best strategies are simple and flexible, while having enough for the decision makers to "all be on the same page."
Now, their entire "business plan" probably is a bit more than two pages, but the "summary document" could very well fit on about two pages.
I prefer listening to musicians who play music because they enjoy it, not for the money.
Odd, I listen to music because I enjoy it. I'd rather listen to a genius who does it for the money and makes a song I like, than an "artist" who does it for themselves and makes crap.
Given the amount of money they put into it, I'd be very surprised if they didn't expect to get a healthy return on it. And given their infamous past record, I doubt that they're playing nice.
I suspect that their goal is simple: remove the stickyness from Linux & make their Office monopoly ubiquitous. (If you're running Linux on your computer for whatever reason, MS can either see you as not a potential customer--and thus get blasted by anti-trust again--or they can see you as a potential customer of their non-Windows software.).NET becomes the standard application platform, Linux becomes little more than a less reliable, less effective.NET platform.
The lower classes need something affordable, dependable, and proven, and for this reason we will continue to stick with PC manufacturers such as GateWay 2000 and DELL. I hope Apple figures this out soon.
(Gateway dropped the "2000" bit three years ago.)
The lowest priced iBook is $999. Dell's lowest priced model is $899, and Gateway's lowest priced model is $999. They've hardly got Apple beat on the "value laptop" end.
And, like a different poster said... if you're sturggling along doing dock work, what do you need a shiney new laptop for?
A portable DVD, i.e. you could end up watching region one DVDs in region two. BAD!
That's not too large an issue; it's a market division, not a geographical division. (I wager that the PXes on USAF bases in Japan sell Region 1 disks and Region 1 players.)
CD burner, aught to be illegal, makes rich artists starve. BAD!
Oddly enough, CD-burners are the least of the RIAA's new technology worries. Backing up your shiney "we will not replace this disk" CD is a justification for RIAA not offering to replace "broken licensed CDs." Mixing CDs of music you've got--especially if they're lesser quality due to the analog hole--is another thing that RIAA is probably all too happy to let you do.
Well, maybe not "happy", but "forced to allow due to the courts" sounds about right...
I know exactly what Latex is. I've considered giving it a trial run, but the UI's I've seen are about as comfortable as Mozilla's HTML editor--less, actually. (Properly done HTML is a WYGIWYM system, just like Latex; its' just meant for a differnet final medium.)
Anyway, as for WYSIWYG... Unless you do your typesetting online, WYSWIG is a preference, not a requirement. The important thing is how it comes out in the end... and how easy it is to get that final result.
I'm in the lucky position where I don't need to bother about the final end right now, so I can play around with things like Latex--but as I've been using an on-the-fly spellchecker for almost seven years now, and as there's no technical reason why a Latex editor can't have one, I think I'll simply hold out on that little experiment until I can find the right tool.
Another thought occured to me: How can the tractor beams only affect certain objects? If they have to pass through a person, why don't they move that person or object, too? Are two or more beams focused on a single point with different magnitudes/angles, so the sum total magnitude of those vectors results in the desired motion?
When has a tractor beam ever passed through an object without effecting it on the show?
While you can choose to buy another brand of car and drive on every road that any other brand of car can, the same is NOT the case with computer operating systems where MS has a monopoly.
Yes, it is.
You can buy a system with the same chips--better, actually--as a Dell, Compaq, or Gateway from a small shop or you can do it yourself. Or you can buy a Mac. Or you can buy an old system with software that you want.
And, with Apple or Linux (or BSD et al) you can do all of the same things than you can do with a windows box; you can write documents, get on the internet, watch movies, etc.
If you don't want to buy a system that includes windows, then don't. (I personally buy my system piecemeal.) Sure, your selection of OEM setups is smaller, but them's the breaks. There are less choices of "diesel car" or "hybrid car" than there are of "car."
(And I'll assume that you took the time to send the OEMs that you would have bought from if they didn't have Windows a letter stating such.)
Many of the software environments for latex also work better on Windows than they do on Linux. The best environment is probably on the MacOS, I forgot the name of it.
And finally, discarding the best solution for the problem simply because the current system exists can also be quite foolish.
Very well then.
Point me in the direction of a windows-native latex program, with an on-the-fly spellchecker, and I'll give it a whirl.;)
Trash. I've never used Micro$oft Developer Studio.NET, but somehow my employer requires that I *magically* learn it or get fired!
(You mean "bullshit" or something. Trash isn't usually used in the way that you're using it.)
Your employer's alleged stupidity is neither mine nor Microsoft's problem.
it costs $3,000 which I'd have to remortgage my house to buy... There are no.NET systems at work - but guess what - they don't give a damn, with so many software engineers out of work I can be replaced in a second by a guy who *is* willing to take a chance by learning using illegally(?) obtained software. When there's a large number of unemployed software developers, game theory dictates that the guy who breaks the law without going to jail wins. Man, no wonder people are running around with sniper rifles shooting people.
Wait--you need to remortage your house for three grand? What is that, one month's salary? Two? If you've got a real job and a house, you can probably afford to keep your skills up to par in your field. (Lawyers and doctors have to pay for their own reducation too.)
And if your employer doesn't have.net, what use are they going to make from you learning it? And if they are going to switch, pick up a book or two (or more) on it for $250, and learn the differences.
I'm not a coder, but I'm willing to bet that MS doesn't change any more between coding versions than they do between windows or office versions.
Yeah, don't use a phone, and don't use electricity. What do you think maturing IT means? I say it's a PC or other Internet-connected browsing machine becoming as critical as a phone.
And where is the not-Microsoft market going? Between Linux, Sun, Palm, Logitech, and Apple, there's an almost mainstream alternative to everything that MS does.
All calls will be recorded and kept for 100 years that go over AT&T's network, such data may be used against you in a court of law. How's that, still comfortable?
Read my sig. I'm a Christian, so as a matter of faith I have no real privacy.;)
WindowsXP and OfficeXP calls Micro$oft every now and again for activation so M$ can collect evidence on every household. Now instead of sending in the police and getting search warrants, M$ can just blackmail me and all Seators, eh voila, they're running the country without the need for a Nazi police force!
Get a sense of proportion.
Even if MS had a logon and program run log of every windows install, they'd use that to sell you something, not try and take over the USA.
Honestly, I'd love to see them try. The congresscritters might be a bit hairbrained and foolish, but they're rabidly patriotic and would dissolve MS faster than windows can crash if they tried to take over the federal government.
Microsoft gets my money without my consent. This is robery -- they are stealing from me.
There are computer shops that make a business selling Linux-based PCs. There are computer shops that will gladly sell you an OS-free PC bundle. And, if you're buying the right kind of computer, even Compaq or Dell will sell it to you sans-Microsoft.
And in any case, it's not your money that MS gets. You pay the OEM, and the money becomes their money--and then they use their money (which used to be yours, but isn't) to pay the debt that installing MS on your PC incurred with them.
(And if you think you might disagree with the license, refuse to buy from an OEM who won't let you see it all before you buy.)
My god you are confused. The printing world lives and dies by postscript. EPS has an infinite resolution. You can print it on your shitty inkjet or go to a print house and get poster size versions. Do you even know anything about dpi/lpi/etc...? I've been using latex for my papers for the last 10 years, during most of that time I have used eps for my figures because it always works beautifully.
Good for you. But making a thesis is not part of the printing industry any more than some guy writing an office macro is part of the software industry.
If someone already has office, has to have charts, and is using office already, they might as well use office to make their charts.
Failing that, if they must import the charts graphically, and they're suffering lag times in the software, the first thing to do is try a different graphic format. Open the EPS in whatever you made it in, save it as a format meant for inclusion in an electronic document, and watch your problem go away.
If you need infinite resolution, you can always go back to the original.
And note that my figures do not "translate fairly well across versions", they translate perfectly. Yes PERFECTLY. I started on a mac eons ago, and currently use a linux box, but I have typeset my papers on windows also. Everytime I did that, they worked perfectly without having to import/convert/update/fix.
Wait--you're claiming that your complex document you made on an "ancient" Mac, which includes charts and text and all that, can be opened by both Linux and Windows, and printed out to look exactly like it did on your old ancient system? You can print it out on a mac, print it out on windows, and print it out on Linux, overlap the three, and not see any inconsistencies?
If so, Goody for you. If not, stop using absolutes when you don't mean them.
Going from a working Office file to a new version of office is seamless--I routinely open files created in older versions and the changes are simply not noticeable (I'm only saying that because I'm not willing to make a claim of "perfection" that I have neither the time or the inclination to back up.)
But if you're patching together badly written files from a different program in a new program, it's inevitable that you're going to have to fix some things. Them's the breaks.
It's sad that people like you turn to windows to fix problems that have been fixed for over a decade.
You say that like the default state isn't windows. Once one is allready using a system, it's proper form to learn how to fix problems using that system. Throwing out the system because you don't understand it is foolish--and underdogs like Latex and Linux can't afford to do that, because then people will stick with Office and Windows, because they know them.
If your internet service drops out for any reason whatsoever your entire computer DIES.
Then it won't be a requirement for the OS to work--at least, not any OS that works like the ones we know today.
An OS that's a glorified cable box can, probably will, and probably should die when the cable dies. Then again, there's always DVDs... so I find it rather unlikely that MS will make an OS ISP dependant without far better ISPs than we've had so far.
While the stated purpose of DRM is fine, the problem is that is impossible to implement without (A) restricting more than it is permissable to restrict (B) creating a slew of (profitable) abuses and (C) the content escaping anyway.
Fifty years ago, the Internet was impossible. A hundred years ago, flight was impossible. Given enough time and money, a possible way will be found.
(A) A computer cannot know how you are going to use the information, and that is central to determining if it is a legally protected fair use. Since the computer can't tell, it has two choices, it can allow it (rendering the DRM worthless), or it can disallow it (denying you your rights).
Fair Use is copyright infringement that's "OK." Someone making a copywritten work is, AFAIK(IANAL), under *no* obligation to make it easy to copy. Especially in the digital sense.
(Want to quote out of an ebook? Do what you did when it was a paper book, and copy the darn quote by hand.)
(B) DRM can enforce a spyware requirement. DRM can lock out competition. DRM can leverage dominance in one area to create a monopoly in another area (only RIAA brand radios can access RIAA DRM music).
In non-monopoly situations, that's all well and good.
In monopoly situations, the government is charged with stepping in to regulate. I think I'll reserve judgement on the fed's ability to do so with how well MS is held to the spirit of the settlement.
Palladium opens a route for Microsoft to literally own the internet. Doubt it? Websites ARE content that will be protected by Palladium, patches will be protected by Palladium, internet purchases and all sorts of data will be wrapped in Palladium. Why not just Palladium the entire connection? This is layer built on top of the internet. Browsers, websites, servers, everthing that moves inside this layer can still see out to the rest of the internet. Everything outside is locked out giving everything a motivation to move inside. The less there is outside, the more useless the outside becomes.
It'll be an uphill battle. Every MS implementation has to fight against the extant OS installs. Sure, one day Palladium might be ubiquitous enough to "own" the internet--but that'll be another soon-to-be regulated monopoly on MS's behalf.
(C) Someone can always copy text over by hand, record music with a microphone, capture an image with a digital camera, or record a movie with a video camera. They can then place it on the internet in unprotected form and it can be copied infinitly.
Yes, at a lower quality--or via a traceable source.
The effort to transliterate entire copywritten works of significant length is a not-insignificant ammout. Casual piracy will dwindle, and professional "software pirates" and "media pirates" will have a suddenly higher profile.
(The effect of DRM will be to move the playing field back to pre-internet ages, when one needed to actually pay money to get a good copy.)
You are handing total control over to who ever controls the keys.
Well, yeah. People proved to be irresponsible with a heck of a lot of things, and since human nature has prooved to not be able to be trusted with IP, it's getting locked up.
Any program COULD be written to allow you to move files out to public space, but in some cases the company may find it more profitable not to.
Only in media-viewing apps. In content-creation apps, a company that makes it impossible to share your work loses (at least) half of its audience, right away.
It locks out competitors. It forces you to by their new version. The application could be provided as a service (pay per use), the program could be licened by time period, you have to buy a new licence every year.
MS has been itching for a way to do just that for quite some time.
If they can pull it off properly, it'll be a good thing. No more half-assed marketing-driven "new versions," just a real patch...
(well, good for the software anyway. Maybe not so good for the freedom zealots...)
They can sell you other applications that can access your data - can you imagine having to buy three seperate spellcheck programs because you have text documents locked within three different company's palladium spaces?
No. Proprietary formats are a killer to interoperability, and MS is showing signs that they've realized this.
I cannot imagine Microsoft making Word docs "Word only." I know that something like that would make my employers drop it in a heartbeat, and I suspect most of corporate america would act the same way.
Or your data could stay locked up because the programmer just never bothered to program in the option, or you could be denied the option in the name of piracy prevention even when you created the content and you therefore own the copyright.
MS has addressed that to, IIRC--and, as a reasonable person could guess, the answer is "not gonna happen."
EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) is a vector graphics format: PNG, JPEG and BMP are pixel-based (raster?). They *aren't* the same!
No, but for a print document at a sufficiently high resoution, they might as well be. Except that the raster-based ones will work easier.
You would have to be pretty stupid to start saving graphs and so forth in PNG/JPEG in a a document.
No stupider than someone using EPS to do the same thing.
Office has native graphing features, that translate fairly well across versions--and if you're in doubt, you can just make a new one. And you can even update it natively!
For cars you need to use public roads, so you need a licence. For a computer located inside my own personal house, what can Micro$oft do, storm my house?
If MS has reasonable suspicious that you're committing the crime of copyright infringment with their work, they can get a search warrant for you, get evidence, and then charge you. The fact that they don't because you're too small scale to matter is irrelevant, legally speaking. (AFAIK,IANAL.)
Actually I think there's illegal(?) software in everybody's house, so you better go search every house in the United States
Reasonable suspicion is a bit more than that. Plus, MS would most likely be forced to foot the bill for enforcing so many claims, even if your suspicion is true.
Now, with $4 billion in cash they certainly could do it (that's $64 per four-person household in the US), but then they'd be out of cash and the directors would get sued by the stockholders.
Not officially of course, Micro$oft has the world's top accountants that can covertly funnel the money to Micro$oft stormtroopers (Stallman-bashers especially)...
Stallman doesn't need MS to fund his bashers; he irks people all on his own.
I actually agree with a lot of what he claims--but he still turns me off to supporting the FSF just in how he handles anything that comes up.
Take your facist Micro$oft licenced state and shove it. I am NOT a MCC (Micro$oft Certified Citizen) so whatcha gonna do - take away my rights and then throw me in a Micro$oft Goulag (prison service outsourced to Russia, software service to India)?
Wow, someone's lacking a sense of proportion.
It's obscenely easy to not have a MS license, and every six months it becomes easier and easier to do so. Buy a Mac. Buy a Linux Box. Hell, don't use a PC at all--MS won't mind, and even if they did there's nothing that they can do about it.
MS is a corporation, that presently has a federal judge watching them for antitrust violations. If they tried to start up some typical criminal behavior, it wouldn't get very far.
Plus, there's the little fact that MS exists solely to profit, and that means that if you really, really want to avoid them, they'll happilly ignore you too.
And even if you do ignore MS and never purchase proprietary software at all, you still need a license to use it--even if that license is just the permission that the FSF gives for anyone to use GNU software.
Hitler also tried to penalise non-Micro$oft/Jewish/whatever citizens.
A trusted PC interface means that those-that-publish will be able to do so electronically without knowing that it's going to be pirated the next day.
Horseshit. This isn't what it's intended to do, and believe me, it won't do this. If I make a copy of your software using dd...
Who's talking about Software? Software should be open and free, just like engineering principles.
The files created by the software, on the other hand, should be able to be locked to one specific program. And it should lose access to those keys if it is simply copied off of the OS install.
(Can you tell me a legitimate reason to dd an installed piece of software, that isn't covered by one of the apps that MS bundles allready? Palladium is a low-level system change, which means that dd won't work on it.)
Anyone who runs my dd'd copy will have perfectly functional software. Or did you think TCPA would suddenly cause all unprotected computers to disappear?
MS has stated, again and again, that Palladium will not suddenly make old PCs obsolete. But its security features will require new hardware, which means that (assuming that they do it right, which they do about 60% of the time) Palladium-apps on an OS install lacking Palladium middleware won't use most of the Palladium features--and the software will be smart enough to know that, and so not certify itself to other PCs that are handing out "trusted PC only" content.
This is Slashdot, I assume you've heard of open source. To get a program signed, you have to pay someone to use their code signing keys. Signing it yourself doesn't work, because the OS doesn't trust "your" keys. That means every piece of open-source software that wants to run on these platforms has to pay to move into public space.
You're right, but for the wrong reason. OSS won't need to pay for a certificate to sign itself; people smart enough to use OSS are smart enough to work without a certificate.
What the OSS folks will have to pay for is a license to include a source code free bundle that works with the Palladium system. MS's agreement says that they have to do this, provided that the OSS companies can demonstrate a model that won't compromise security--which closed-binaries are the only way to do that.
They won't do it.
Of course they will. Maybe not all of them, but at least some will pay the fees so they can have software that really, trully works with the latest version of Windows. These will likely be the same (large) OSS developers that pay the RAND fees to get the Win32 or SAMBA specs.
The software I write is paid for by my organization, and I'm still running into the problem of code signing and paying to make something public. My project's task is to automate Office XP. Office XP won't run macros that aren't signed, which means I have to do one of two things: 1) pay to get a certificate to sign my code or 2) tell the user to install the self-signing certificate, ignoring the very loud warnings that blare when they attempt to do so.
I work in an office of six people, and the five others have their skill levels max out at using excel or photoshop. ALL of the automation done in the office is done by me, and I get it done well enough.
And even the worst of them can understand directions like "when this doc gives you this window, hit that button."
And you forgot 3) : change the macro security setting on Office, and use other means to block the random macro viruses.
If I've never taken a driving test in my life and was truant during Drivers' Ed, then what would I be guilty of if I have an accident?
Guilty? Of just what you said. Liable? Of what the courts decide.
Schoolchildren know that automobiles can be deadly dangerous. Anyone who hasn't been trained to use one who is forced to use one should be exercising extreme caution when doing so--better to idle all the way than go fast and kill someone.
Let me answer that question - driving without insurance, and driving without a licence is illegal, and a Somalian refugee who's just arrived in the US is no exception to this rule (somehow!!).
That'd be the "reasonable man" standard again. Plus, the task of immigration to catch refugees and give them a good orientation on how to operate in the US.
Do you propose a software ed, and you can't use a computer without a licence?
Funny you say that; you can't use a computer without some kind of license. Even GPL'd software is "licensed" for you to use. (Sure, it's a free, nonrestricve license, but it's still there.) It's just a differnet meaning of "license" than "driver's license."
Trash, has CNN reported that Osama binLaden donated $50million to charity? Noooooooo!
It's irrelevant, and probably wrong. "Charity" has donated a lot to Osama Bin Laden--remember, he thinks that he's doing God's work, just like the Catholic Church or the Red Cross do.
Therefore the press is biased and deliberately glosses over megacorporate malfeasance.
Osama Bin Laden is hardly "megacorporate."
Anyway, the press have hardly been ignoring "corporate malfeasance." Remember the Enron scandal? Or any of the followp atrocities?
The press, today and since the fourth branch's conception, have found and told stories that people want to read. And that includes dirt on Microsoft.
Plus DRM and stuff is in their favour, so the press won't report abuses in this area. Come on - has anybody on CNN talked about peoples' rights to play and rip whatever music they want - timeshifting and spatial shifting? Nooooooo!
Why should they? The "fair use" advocates are, by and large, the same folk who say that "information wants to be free" or that "copyright infringement's not stealing, so it's not wrong."
Even the best CD protection I've heard of can still be cracked via the analog hole--which is plenty for any real fair-use claim.
As for timeshifting--CDs and other non-broadcast media are inherently timeshiftable, while in-theather movies are by nature NOT so.
As for "spatial shifting"--there's the analog hole again. If you really must move your media to a different format, you can either put up with a bit of signal loss or just buy another copy. (And with the doctrine of first sale, you can even sell your old copy when you change media formats, or even just keep the old one as a backup...)
Content delivery, patch delivery, every time you try to view certain kinds of DRM files you'll be bouncing locked data off of an approval server. One of the feature Microsoft is hyping is that you can send locked E-mails to people.
Ok, so part of Palladium will involve internet transport--but not all of it.
Palladium's chief change, as I understand it, is a "secured disk area" where only the actual program that writes the data can read the data.
Microsoft's marketing hype about Palladium is extremely misleading. It does not do the good things they say it does, and it does do the bad things they say it's not intended to do. Palladium is Bad News (unless you happen to want to sell DRM content or you happen to want an ultimate lock-out against competition).
Sorry, I don't consider DRM a bad thing. A trusted PC interface means that those-that-publish will be able to do so electronically without knowing that it's going to be pirated the next day.
Neither do I consider a program being able to lock its own files a bad thing--since MS would be shooting themselves in the foot operatability-wise if it's impossible to tell the program to move the files to "public space."
I was once hired by a company to take several of there manuals that they did in Word 5 on Macintosh and update them to Word97 on windows.
! Ouch!
Let me tell you, it was a hoot. Each writer had there own "look". Trying to get everything down to one format with a consistant style was fun.
Of course, let's not forget that if you have an embed eps graphic on the Mac, when you bring the word document over to windows, the whole 300k of eps is still there, but the only thing that will display on screen or print, is the thumbnail image.
Double ouch!
What the @#$ were they using EPS files in documents for? Anything--ANYTHING--would be better than that! PNG, JPEG, BMP even!
Once we had converted the original eps into a decent wmf file, life still was not good. When you try to build a master document, built up of 15 subdocuments, needing a decent Table of Contents and an Index. Then toss in 30 or 40 half page size graphics. All the files corrupt.
I think the problem is in the users, not in Word. Probably be a better idea to train them on how to use Word properly and consistently; If they used Styles instead of manual formatting, it'd be simple to align all of the proper styles.
(And, as I understand it, "Master Documents" are the worst feature in Word. I don't use them myself, at home or at work, so lucky me.)
Were the task ongoing, I'd suggest using HTM (or TXT) as an intermediate format. The best cure for file corruption is to go to a format that you know is clean, and rebuild the document from "scratch." Probably be easier than trying to fix all of the mistakes...
er word crashes about every other character above 50 pages if you have more than font changes for formating...
What version? What OS? What system specs?
Not to mention the type behind of 10-15 characters at that length.
Better question--what FONT are you using, and what view is she writing in?
She should use styles for all formating, NOT allow word to create styles, and be doing the main writing either in "normal" view or a single-colum "page layout" view. Unusual fonts, heavy graphic elements, or odd column layouts can cause slowdown--but that's a user problem, not Word's problem.
I've got a Duron 700 with 128 MB of ram, running Windows XP and Word XP. No problems here, unless I open six seperate programs, tell them all to do something that takes several seconds if they're by themselves, and switch back and forth rapidly--which is a foolish thing to do if I can avoid it.
Please, stop spreading FUD and start figuring out what the problem is. Word can work with large files--but not if you're running a very old (6.0 or older, I think) version or running on very old (less than Pentium 133* or NT with too little RAM) hardware.
(I've had Office 2000 running acceptable on a P133 laptop with 32 MB of ram and Win95; it gets a bit buggy with very large documents, but that's a RAM problem, not a word problem.)
because we all know the algorithm for discovering the private keys won't be cracked within a year...
With that many eyes really wanting to break your encryption (basically everyone who can break encryption in the entire world) you stand no chance. I wouldn't doubt MS choses some retarded block style assignemnt method that allows you to throw out 90% of the private keys before you even begin to brute force.
Why does it need a key? Palladium-locked data isn't going to jump all around the net--it's going to stay right at home, and be accessed only by the program that wrote it.
Sounds like an ideal security problem to me. Each program can run its own securty functions, and that'd just be on top of the SQL filesystem that doesn't respond to any query for said files unless you're the approved program...
And MS would be foolishly lazy to make an OS-wide key be able to crack its new "trusted computing" initative. The system will no doubt be modular, scalular, and at least as secure as PGP email that never leaves your computer.
Slashdot Mirror
So, we have the WYSI(sometimes)WYG word editors like Work 2k and Word XP, and we have LaTeX2e. In Word, I can spend hours fiddling with colors, fonts and the like, trying to get it to display the way I want it to display. In LaTeX, I can write out the report with just a few commands that will automagically create a TOC, Index, footnotes, and bibliography. LaTeX will handle the font sizes and layout for me, letting me concentrate on getting work done.
Word can do TOC, indexes, footnotes, a bibiliography, themed font sizes, layout, et cetera as well. Maybe not as well as LaTeX can do it, but Word CAN do those things--and if you're spending more than fifteen minutes in applying any reasonable (i.e., something that you'd actually see in a book) formatting scheme, you're doing something horribly wrong.
The thing is, you have to use it properly, and if you want easy customization you're going to have to use styles... but wait, you use LaTeX, so you should be about to figure out something as simple as Word...
www.mvps.org/word for more info.
Windows is easier to LEARN. It is not, however, easier to USE unless the uses to which you put your computer are very trivial.
Define "trivial."
I use--and have always used--my computer to create documents, communicate with the internet, do some data-crunching, and playing games. (You know, the purposes for which computers came into everyone's homes?)
Linux has, as of yet, not proven to be easier in any of the tasks that I use my PC for. OpenOffice doesn't out-do Word; Mozilla is Mozilla, but gAIM isn't AIM; Excel & Access equivalents aren't something I've given a fair shake yet, but they're not THAT important--and as for games, it's still harder to install software on Linux than it is on Windows.
I suspect that this will change, and soon all of the places that MS beats OSS will have the situation reversed... but that day has not come yet.
Windows is easier to use than Linux. It's a bit more expensive if you want to do everything that you can in Linux, but for a lot of people, that isn't enough to make Linux worthwhile.
"It's free so it has to be better..."
Wow, I had no idea that the old anti-OSS argument had been reversed. It's great that OSS is free and all--but that doesn't mean that it's better (or even as good as) the for-pay alternative.
I can work on my car for free, too--but if I want it to really work, I pay someone to do it.
If you are not completely astounded by this fact, then you have some serious entitlement issues to work out.
The fact that linux is better at some things than the MS operating systems and worse at others is insignificant in comparison.
That attitude is why MS software is simply better, for every application that I'm likely to put a computer in my home to task as in the forseeable future.
The fact that the code is free doesn't matter--not if I have to spend more of my time's value setting it up, getting used to it, and maintaining it than I would by simply purchasing / upgrading to the MS solution.
Linux can be (and is) a breeze to set up--but that doesn't mean it's a breeze to get working on it, or that just because it's free that it's worth the time to use.
Or to put it another way:
So while its still not eveyones cup of tea, especially home users, you need some perspecive on why the rest of the IT commuity and well rounded linux users see what's right about it.
:(
I'm well aware that RH 8 is an advancement... but it's not something that's about to give MS nightmares.
Case in point: the only thing that caused me to scratch it was the rather extremely hidden functionality to read the FAT partition I created for Linux & Windows to share docs on. Mandrake (and Lycoris!) did this right off the bat--I couldn't even find where the tool for this might be, and trying what few command-line commands I knew didn't work.
They are probably closlely looking into the latest desktop linux distros from red hat and ximian and shitting their pants.
I can't speak for Ximian, but I was rather underimpressed with Red Hat 8--and I've never really even tried Linux before. (For the curious, I've got Mandrake 9 on my Linux partition now, although I don't use it very often.)
Sure, MS has real competition for the Intel-based PC now--but that's a good thing for them, not a bad thing. Competition means that they've got a challenge, which drives innovation, and good enough competition means that they're not a monopoly, which means that they can do more things than before.
They are maintaining share in the department server market, but are aware that the eventual TOC issue is going to hand them their lunch soon.
Really? Gee, and here I was thinking that the "easy to use" aspect of Windows, and thus less of a need to hire on Linux experts, put them about even...
or that a company with $40 billion in cash can figure out a way to justify their own existance.
A company with 40 billion in cash and a 20 billion/year business doesn't write 2 page strategy documents.
Of course they do. The best strategies are simple and flexible, while having enough for the decision makers to "all be on the same page."
Now, their entire "business plan" probably is a bit more than two pages, but the "summary document" could very well fit on about two pages.
I prefer listening to musicians who play music because they enjoy it, not for the money.
Odd, I listen to music because I enjoy it. I'd rather listen to a genius who does it for the money and makes a song I like, than an "artist" who does it for themselves and makes crap.
Given the amount of money they put into it, I'd be very surprised if they didn't expect to get a healthy return on it. And given their infamous past record, I doubt that they're playing nice.
.NET becomes the standard application platform, Linux becomes little more than a less reliable, less effective .NET platform.
I suspect that their goal is simple: remove the stickyness from Linux & make their Office monopoly ubiquitous. (If you're running Linux on your computer for whatever reason, MS can either see you as not a potential customer--and thus get blasted by anti-trust again--or they can see you as a potential customer of their non-Windows software.)
Sounds like a good plan to me.
The lower classes need something affordable, dependable, and proven, and for this reason we will continue to stick with PC manufacturers such as GateWay 2000 and DELL. I hope Apple figures this out soon.
(Gateway dropped the "2000" bit three years ago.)
The lowest priced iBook is $999. Dell's lowest priced model is $899, and Gateway's lowest priced model is $999. They've hardly got Apple beat on the "value laptop" end.
And, like a different poster said... if you're sturggling along doing dock work, what do you need a shiney new laptop for?
A portable DVD, i.e. you could end up watching region one DVDs in region two. BAD!
That's not too large an issue; it's a market division, not a geographical division. (I wager that the PXes on USAF bases in Japan sell Region 1 disks and Region 1 players.)
CD burner, aught to be illegal, makes rich artists starve. BAD!
Oddly enough, CD-burners are the least of the RIAA's new technology worries. Backing up your shiney "we will not replace this disk" CD is a justification for RIAA not offering to replace "broken licensed CDs." Mixing CDs of music you've got--especially if they're lesser quality due to the analog hole--is another thing that RIAA is probably all too happy to let you do.
Well, maybe not "happy", but "forced to allow due to the courts" sounds about right...
I know exactly what Latex is. I've considered giving it a trial run, but the UI's I've seen are about as comfortable as Mozilla's HTML editor--less, actually. (Properly done HTML is a WYGIWYM system, just like Latex; its' just meant for a differnet final medium.)
Anyway, as for WYSIWYG... Unless you do your typesetting online, WYSWIG is a preference, not a requirement. The important thing is how it comes out in the end... and how easy it is to get that final result.
I'm in the lucky position where I don't need to bother about the final end right now, so I can play around with things like Latex--but as I've been using an on-the-fly spellchecker for almost seven years now, and as there's no technical reason why a Latex editor can't have one, I think I'll simply hold out on that little experiment until I can find the right tool.
Another thought occured to me: How can the tractor beams only affect certain objects? If they have to pass through a person, why don't they move that person or object, too? Are two or more beams focused on a single point with different magnitudes/angles, so the sum total magnitude of those vectors results in the desired motion?
When has a tractor beam ever passed through an object without effecting it on the show?
I mean, aside from on the holodeck...
While you can choose to buy another brand of car and drive on every road that any other brand of car can, the same is NOT the case with computer operating systems where MS has a monopoly.
Yes, it is.
You can buy a system with the same chips--better, actually--as a Dell, Compaq, or Gateway from a small shop or you can do it yourself. Or you can buy a Mac. Or you can buy an old system with software that you want.
And, with Apple or Linux (or BSD et al) you can do all of the same things than you can do with a windows box; you can write documents, get on the internet, watch movies, etc.
If you don't want to buy a system that includes windows, then don't. (I personally buy my system piecemeal.) Sure, your selection of OEM setups is smaller, but them's the breaks. There are less choices of "diesel car" or "hybrid car" than there are of "car."
(And I'll assume that you took the time to send the OEMs that you would have bought from if they didn't have Windows a letter stating such.)
Many of the software environments for latex also work better on Windows than they do on Linux. The best environment is probably on the MacOS, I forgot the name of it.
;)
And finally, discarding the best solution for the problem simply because the current system exists can also be quite foolish.
Very well then.
Point me in the direction of a windows-native latex program, with an on-the-fly spellchecker, and I'll give it a whirl.
Trash. I've never used Micro$oft Developer Studio .NET, but somehow my employer requires that I *magically* learn it or get fired!
.NET systems at work - but guess what - they don't give a damn, with so many software engineers out of work I can be replaced in a second by a guy who *is* willing to take a chance by learning using illegally(?) obtained software. When there's a large number of unemployed software developers, game theory dictates that the guy who breaks the law without going to jail wins. Man, no wonder people are running around with sniper rifles shooting people.
.net, what use are they going to make from you learning it? And if they are going to switch, pick up a book or two (or more) on it for $250, and learn the differences.
;)
(You mean "bullshit" or something. Trash isn't usually used in the way that you're using it.)
Your employer's alleged stupidity is neither mine nor Microsoft's problem.
it costs $3,000 which I'd have to remortgage my house to buy... There are no
Wait--you need to remortage your house for three grand? What is that, one month's salary? Two? If you've got a real job and a house, you can probably afford to keep your skills up to par in your field. (Lawyers and doctors have to pay for their own reducation too.)
And if your employer doesn't have
I'm not a coder, but I'm willing to bet that MS doesn't change any more between coding versions than they do between windows or office versions.
Yeah, don't use a phone, and don't use electricity. What do you think maturing IT means? I say it's a PC or other Internet-connected browsing machine becoming as critical as a phone.
And where is the not-Microsoft market going? Between Linux, Sun, Palm, Logitech, and Apple, there's an almost mainstream alternative to everything that MS does.
All calls will be recorded and kept for 100 years that go over AT&T's network, such data may be used against you in a court of law. How's that, still comfortable?
Read my sig. I'm a Christian, so as a matter of faith I have no real privacy.
WindowsXP and OfficeXP calls Micro$oft every now and again for activation so M$ can collect evidence on every household. Now instead of sending in the police and getting search warrants, M$ can just blackmail me and all Seators, eh voila, they're running the country without the need for a Nazi police force!
Get a sense of proportion.
Even if MS had a logon and program run log of every windows install, they'd use that to sell you something, not try and take over the USA.
Honestly, I'd love to see them try. The congresscritters might be a bit hairbrained and foolish, but they're rabidly patriotic and would dissolve MS faster than windows can crash if they tried to take over the federal government.
Nice argument. But...
Microsoft gets my money without my consent. This is robery -- they are stealing from me.
There are computer shops that make a business selling Linux-based PCs. There are computer shops that will gladly sell you an OS-free PC bundle. And, if you're buying the right kind of computer, even Compaq or Dell will sell it to you sans-Microsoft.
And in any case, it's not your money that MS gets. You pay the OEM, and the money becomes their money--and then they use their money (which used to be yours, but isn't) to pay the debt that installing MS on your PC incurred with them.
(And if you think you might disagree with the license, refuse to buy from an OEM who won't let you see it all before you buy.)
My god you are confused. The printing world lives and dies by postscript. EPS has an infinite resolution. You can print it on your shitty inkjet or go to a print house and get poster size versions. Do you even know anything about dpi/lpi/etc...? I've been using latex for my papers for the last 10 years, during most of that time I have used eps for my figures because it always works beautifully.
Good for you. But making a thesis is not part of the printing industry any more than some guy writing an office macro is part of the software industry.
If someone already has office, has to have charts, and is using office already, they might as well use office to make their charts.
Failing that, if they must import the charts graphically, and they're suffering lag times in the software, the first thing to do is try a different graphic format. Open the EPS in whatever you made it in, save it as a format meant for inclusion in an electronic document, and watch your problem go away.
If you need infinite resolution, you can always go back to the original.
And note that my figures do not "translate fairly well across versions", they translate perfectly. Yes PERFECTLY. I started on a mac eons ago, and currently use a linux box, but I have typeset my papers on windows also. Everytime I did that, they worked perfectly without having to import/convert/update/fix.
Wait--you're claiming that your complex document you made on an "ancient" Mac, which includes charts and text and all that, can be opened by both Linux and Windows, and printed out to look exactly like it did on your old ancient system? You can print it out on a mac, print it out on windows, and print it out on Linux, overlap the three, and not see any inconsistencies?
If so, Goody for you. If not, stop using absolutes when you don't mean them.
Going from a working Office file to a new version of office is seamless--I routinely open files created in older versions and the changes are simply not noticeable (I'm only saying that because I'm not willing to make a claim of "perfection" that I have neither the time or the inclination to back up.)
But if you're patching together badly written files from a different program in a new program, it's inevitable that you're going to have to fix some things. Them's the breaks.
It's sad that people like you turn to windows to fix problems that have been fixed for over a decade.
You say that like the default state isn't windows. Once one is allready using a system, it's proper form to learn how to fix problems using that system. Throwing out the system because you don't understand it is foolish--and underdogs like Latex and Linux can't afford to do that, because then people will stick with Office and Windows, because they know them.
If your internet service drops out for any reason whatsoever your entire computer DIES.
Then it won't be a requirement for the OS to work--at least, not any OS that works like the ones we know today.
An OS that's a glorified cable box can, probably will, and probably should die when the cable dies. Then again, there's always DVDs... so I find it rather unlikely that MS will make an OS ISP dependant without far better ISPs than we've had so far.
While the stated purpose of DRM is fine, the problem is that is impossible to implement without (A) restricting more than it is permissable to restrict (B) creating a slew of (profitable) abuses and (C) the content escaping anyway.
Fifty years ago, the Internet was impossible. A hundred years ago, flight was impossible. Given enough time and money, a possible way will be found.
(A) A computer cannot know how you are going to use the information, and that is central to determining if it is a legally protected fair use. Since the computer can't tell, it has two choices, it can allow it (rendering the DRM worthless), or it can disallow it (denying you your rights).
Fair Use is copyright infringement that's "OK." Someone making a copywritten work is, AFAIK(IANAL), under *no* obligation to make it easy to copy. Especially in the digital sense.
(Want to quote out of an ebook? Do what you did when it was a paper book, and copy the darn quote by hand.)
(B) DRM can enforce a spyware requirement. DRM can lock out competition. DRM can leverage dominance in one area to create a monopoly in another area (only RIAA brand radios can access RIAA DRM music).
In non-monopoly situations, that's all well and good.
In monopoly situations, the government is charged with stepping in to regulate. I think I'll reserve judgement on the fed's ability to do so with how well MS is held to the spirit of the settlement.
Palladium opens a route for Microsoft to literally own the internet. Doubt it? Websites ARE content that will be protected by Palladium, patches will be protected by Palladium, internet purchases and all sorts of data will be wrapped in Palladium. Why not just Palladium the entire connection? This is layer built on top of the internet. Browsers, websites, servers, everthing that moves inside this layer can still see out to the rest of the internet. Everything outside is locked out giving everything a motivation to move inside. The less there is outside, the more useless the outside becomes.
It'll be an uphill battle. Every MS implementation has to fight against the extant OS installs. Sure, one day Palladium might be ubiquitous enough to "own" the internet--but that'll be another soon-to-be regulated monopoly on MS's behalf.
(C) Someone can always copy text over by hand, record music with a microphone, capture an image with a digital camera, or record a movie with a video camera. They can then place it on the internet in unprotected form and it can be copied infinitly.
Yes, at a lower quality--or via a traceable source.
The effort to transliterate entire copywritten works of significant length is a not-insignificant ammout. Casual piracy will dwindle, and professional "software pirates" and "media pirates" will have a suddenly higher profile.
(The effect of DRM will be to move the playing field back to pre-internet ages, when one needed to actually pay money to get a good copy.)
You are handing total control over to who ever controls the keys.
Well, yeah. People proved to be irresponsible with a heck of a lot of things, and since human nature has prooved to not be able to be trusted with IP, it's getting locked up.
Any program COULD be written to allow you to move files out to public space, but
in some cases the company may find it more profitable not to.
Only in media-viewing apps. In content-creation apps, a company that makes it impossible to share your work loses (at least) half of its audience, right away.
It locks out competitors. It forces you to by their new version. The application could be provided as a service (pay per use), the program could be licened by time period, you have to buy a new licence every year.
MS has been itching for a way to do just that for quite some time.
If they can pull it off properly, it'll be a good thing. No more half-assed marketing-driven "new versions," just a real patch...
(well, good for the software anyway. Maybe not so good for the freedom zealots...)
They can sell you other applications that can access your data - can you imagine having to buy three seperate spellcheck programs because you have text documents locked within three different company's palladium spaces?
No. Proprietary formats are a killer to interoperability, and MS is showing signs that they've realized this.
I cannot imagine Microsoft making Word docs "Word only." I know that something like that would make my employers drop it in a heartbeat, and I suspect most of corporate america would act the same way.
Or your data could stay locked up because the programmer just never bothered to program in the option, or you could be denied the option in the name of piracy prevention even when you created the content and you therefore own the copyright.
MS has addressed that to, IIRC--and, as a reasonable person could guess, the answer is "not gonna happen."
EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) is a vector graphics format: PNG, JPEG and BMP are pixel-based (raster?). They *aren't* the same!
No, but for a print document at a sufficiently high resoution, they might as well be. Except that the raster-based ones will work easier.
You would have to be pretty stupid to start saving graphs and so forth in PNG/JPEG in a a document.
No stupider than someone using EPS to do the same thing.
Office has native graphing features, that translate fairly well across versions--and if you're in doubt, you can just make a new one. And you can even update it natively!
For cars you need to use public roads, so you need a licence. For a computer located inside my own personal house, what can Micro$oft do, storm my house?
;)
If MS has reasonable suspicious that you're committing the crime of copyright infringment with their work, they can get a search warrant for you, get evidence, and then charge you. The fact that they don't because you're too small scale to matter is irrelevant, legally speaking. (AFAIK,IANAL.)
Actually I think there's illegal(?) software in everybody's house, so you better go search every house in the United States
Reasonable suspicion is a bit more than that. Plus, MS would most likely be forced to foot the bill for enforcing so many claims, even if your suspicion is true.
Now, with $4 billion in cash they certainly could do it (that's $64 per four-person household in the US), but then they'd be out of cash and the directors would get sued by the stockholders.
Not officially of course, Micro$oft has the world's top accountants that can covertly funnel the money to Micro$oft stormtroopers (Stallman-bashers especially)...
Stallman doesn't need MS to fund his bashers; he irks people all on his own.
I actually agree with a lot of what he claims--but he still turns me off to supporting the FSF just in how he handles anything that comes up.
Take your facist Micro$oft licenced state and shove it. I am NOT a MCC (Micro$oft Certified Citizen) so whatcha gonna do - take away my rights and then throw me in a Micro$oft Goulag (prison service outsourced to Russia, software service to India)?
Wow, someone's lacking a sense of proportion.
It's obscenely easy to not have a MS license, and every six months it becomes easier and easier to do so. Buy a Mac. Buy a Linux Box. Hell, don't use a PC at all--MS won't mind, and even if they did there's nothing that they can do about it.
MS is a corporation, that presently has a federal judge watching them for antitrust violations. If they tried to start up some typical criminal behavior, it wouldn't get very far.
Plus, there's the little fact that MS exists solely to profit, and that means that if you really, really want to avoid them, they'll happilly ignore you too.
And even if you do ignore MS and never purchase proprietary software at all, you still need a license to use it--even if that license is just the permission that the FSF gives for anyone to use GNU software.
Hitler also tried to penalise non-Micro$oft/Jewish/whatever citizens.
Hey, look--Goodwin's law, I win!
A trusted PC interface means that those-that-publish will be able to do so electronically without knowing that it's going to be pirated the next day.
Horseshit. This isn't what it's intended to do, and believe me, it won't do this. If I make a copy of your software using dd...
Who's talking about Software? Software should be open and free, just like engineering principles.
The files created by the software, on the other hand, should be able to be locked to one specific program. And it should lose access to those keys if it is simply copied off of the OS install.
(Can you tell me a legitimate reason to dd an installed piece of software, that isn't covered by one of the apps that MS bundles allready? Palladium is a low-level system change, which means that dd won't work on it.)
Anyone who runs my dd'd copy will have perfectly functional software. Or did you think TCPA would suddenly cause all unprotected computers to disappear?
MS has stated, again and again, that Palladium will not suddenly make old PCs obsolete. But its security features will require new hardware, which means that (assuming that they do it right, which they do about 60% of the time) Palladium-apps on an OS install lacking Palladium middleware won't use most of the Palladium features--and the software will be smart enough to know that, and so not certify itself to other PCs that are handing out "trusted PC only" content.
This is Slashdot, I assume you've heard of open source. To get a program signed, you have to pay someone to use their code signing keys. Signing it yourself doesn't work, because the OS doesn't trust "your" keys. That means every piece of open-source software that wants to run on these platforms has to pay to move into public space.
You're right, but for the wrong reason. OSS won't need to pay for a certificate to sign itself; people smart enough to use OSS are smart enough to work without a certificate.
What the OSS folks will have to pay for is a license to include a source code free bundle that works with the Palladium system. MS's agreement says that they have to do this, provided that the OSS companies can demonstrate a model that won't compromise security--which closed-binaries are the only way to do that.
They won't do it.
Of course they will. Maybe not all of them, but at least some will pay the fees so they can have software that really, trully works with the latest version of Windows. These will likely be the same (large) OSS developers that pay the RAND fees to get the Win32 or SAMBA specs.
The software I write is paid for by my organization, and I'm still running into the problem of code signing and paying to make something public. My project's task is to automate Office XP. Office XP won't run macros that aren't signed, which means I have to do one of two things: 1) pay to get a certificate to sign my code or 2) tell the user to install the self-signing certificate, ignoring the very loud warnings that blare when they attempt to do so.
I work in an office of six people, and the five others have their skill levels max out at using excel or photoshop. ALL of the automation done in the office is done by me, and I get it done well enough.
And even the worst of them can understand directions like "when this doc gives you this window, hit that button."
And you forgot 3) : change the macro security setting on Office, and use other means to block the random macro viruses.
If I've never taken a driving test in my life and was truant during Drivers' Ed, then what would I be guilty of if I have an accident?
Guilty? Of just what you said. Liable? Of what the courts decide.
Schoolchildren know that automobiles can be deadly dangerous. Anyone who hasn't been trained to use one who is forced to use one should be exercising extreme caution when doing so--better to idle all the way than go fast and kill someone.
Let me answer that question - driving without insurance, and driving without a licence is illegal, and a Somalian refugee who's just arrived in the US is no exception to this rule (somehow!!).
That'd be the "reasonable man" standard again. Plus, the task of immigration to catch refugees and give them a good orientation on how to operate in the US.
Do you propose a software ed, and you can't use a computer without a licence?
Funny you say that; you can't use a computer without some kind of license. Even GPL'd software is "licensed" for you to use. (Sure, it's a free, nonrestricve license, but it's still there.) It's just a differnet meaning of "license" than "driver's license."
Trash, has CNN reported that Osama binLaden donated $50million to charity? Noooooooo!
It's irrelevant, and probably wrong. "Charity" has donated a lot to Osama Bin Laden--remember, he thinks that he's doing God's work, just like the Catholic Church or the Red Cross do.
Therefore the press is biased and deliberately glosses over megacorporate malfeasance.
Osama Bin Laden is hardly "megacorporate."
Anyway, the press have hardly been ignoring "corporate malfeasance." Remember the Enron scandal? Or any of the followp atrocities?
The press, today and since the fourth branch's conception, have found and told stories that people want to read. And that includes dirt on Microsoft.
Plus DRM and stuff is in their favour, so the press won't report abuses in this area. Come on - has anybody on CNN talked about peoples' rights to play and rip whatever music they want - timeshifting and spatial shifting? Nooooooo!
Why should they? The "fair use" advocates are, by and large, the same folk who say that "information wants to be free" or that "copyright infringement's not stealing, so it's not wrong."
Even the best CD protection I've heard of can still be cracked via the analog hole--which is plenty for any real fair-use claim.
As for timeshifting--CDs and other non-broadcast media are inherently timeshiftable, while in-theather movies are by nature NOT so.
As for "spatial shifting"--there's the analog hole again. If you really must move your media to a different format, you can either put up with a bit of signal loss or just buy another copy. (And with the doctrine of first sale, you can even sell your old copy when you change media formats, or even just keep the old one as a backup...)
Content delivery, patch delivery, every time you try to view certain kinds of DRM files you'll be bouncing locked data off of an approval server. One of the feature Microsoft is hyping is that you can send locked E-mails to people.
Ok, so part of Palladium will involve internet transport--but not all of it.
Palladium's chief change, as I understand it, is a "secured disk area" where only the actual program that writes the data can read the data.
Microsoft's marketing hype about Palladium is extremely misleading. It does not do the good things they say it does, and it does do the bad things they say it's not intended to do. Palladium is Bad News (unless you happen to want to sell DRM content or you happen to want an ultimate lock-out against competition).
Sorry, I don't consider DRM a bad thing. A trusted PC interface means that those-that-publish will be able to do so electronically without knowing that it's going to be pirated the next day.
Neither do I consider a program being able to lock its own files a bad thing--since MS would be shooting themselves in the foot operatability-wise if it's impossible to tell the program to move the files to "public space."
I was once hired by a company to take several of there manuals that they did in Word 5 on Macintosh and update them to Word97 on windows.
! Ouch!
Let me tell you, it was a hoot. Each writer had there own "look". Trying to get everything down to one format with a consistant style was fun.
Of course, let's not forget that if you have an embed eps graphic on the Mac, when you bring the word document over to windows, the whole 300k of eps is still there, but the only thing that will display on screen or print, is the thumbnail image.
Double ouch!
What the @#$ were they using EPS files in documents for? Anything--ANYTHING--would be better than that! PNG, JPEG, BMP even!
Once we had converted the original eps into a decent wmf file, life still was not good. When you try to build a master document, built up of 15 subdocuments, needing a decent Table of Contents and an Index. Then toss in 30 or 40 half page size graphics. All the files corrupt.
I think the problem is in the users, not in Word. Probably be a better idea to train them on how to use Word properly and consistently; If they used Styles instead of manual formatting, it'd be simple to align all of the proper styles.
(And, as I understand it, "Master Documents" are the worst feature in Word. I don't use them myself, at home or at work, so lucky me.)
Were the task ongoing, I'd suggest using HTM (or TXT) as an intermediate format. The best cure for file corruption is to go to a format that you know is clean, and rebuild the document from "scratch." Probably be easier than trying to fix all of the mistakes...
er word crashes about every other character above 50 pages if you have more than font changes for formating...
What version? What OS? What system specs?
Not to mention the type behind of 10-15 characters at that length.
Better question--what FONT are you using, and what view is she writing in?
She should use styles for all formating, NOT allow word to create styles, and be doing the main writing either in "normal" view or a single-colum "page layout" view. Unusual fonts, heavy graphic elements, or odd column layouts can cause slowdown--but that's a user problem, not Word's problem.
I've got a Duron 700 with 128 MB of ram, running Windows XP and Word XP. No problems here, unless I open six seperate programs, tell them all to do something that takes several seconds if they're by themselves, and switch back and forth rapidly--which is a foolish thing to do if I can avoid it.
Please, stop spreading FUD and start figuring out what the problem is. Word can work with large files--but not if you're running a very old (6.0 or older, I think) version or running on very old (less than Pentium 133* or NT with too little RAM) hardware.
(I've had Office 2000 running acceptable on a P133 laptop with 32 MB of ram and Win95; it gets a bit buggy with very large documents, but that's a RAM problem, not a word problem.)
because we all know the algorithm for discovering the private keys won't be cracked within a year...
With that many eyes really wanting to break your encryption (basically everyone who can break encryption in the entire world) you stand no chance. I wouldn't doubt MS choses some retarded block style assignemnt method that allows you to throw out 90% of the private keys before you even begin to brute force.
Why does it need a key? Palladium-locked data isn't going to jump all around the net--it's going to stay right at home, and be accessed only by the program that wrote it.
Sounds like an ideal security problem to me. Each program can run its own securty functions, and that'd just be on top of the SQL filesystem that doesn't respond to any query for said files unless you're the approved program...
And MS would be foolishly lazy to make an OS-wide key be able to crack its new "trusted computing" initative. The system will no doubt be modular, scalular, and at least as secure as PGP email that never leaves your computer.