But your original post seemed more that it was arguing that MS is not pursuing this. The cache argument is much more geared against Intel than MS.
I still think Itanium's 32bit issues would stall it in this market... AMD's Hammer or Intel's supersecret-incase-Itanium-fails 32bit/64bit hybrid processor have a much better chance in this market.
It is not implausible that they would force all:80 traffic out through their web proxy and intercept the HTML code and possibly email to insert ads.
In essence, it would be the opposite of alot of client-side proxys that intercept HTML and -remove- ads. I would expect the system to add text and graphics, possibly even Java aps to try and make sure you see them.
Not polite, but hey, it's their network. Not completely enfoceable (since someone will surely write a client-side proxy to remove the ads), but neither is any other form of advertising.
Unless you're in a tech saturated market I don't expect you'll see this for a long time. The guy standing on the corner with a sign is much more effective.
Unless I read it wrong, that pricelist shows the cheapest Itanium as the Itanium 2 , 900Mhz w/ 1.5MB cache at $1,338.
The most expensive Pentium 4 (2.8Ghz) is $508 and the 2.8Ghz Xeon is $562.
The difference is $836, more than double the cost of the Pentium 4. I definitely do find that runs more than the Pentium 4, even if I could find the Itanium at that price (I haven't found many places that list Itanium processors, and those that do rarely list the versions with less than full cache, which lists over $4K).
In a market where most people are buying entire machines (minus monitor if you want a fast machine, but in many cases with monitor) for the difference between those CPUs, I would say Itanium is priced way out of that market.
Intel's plans (read somewhere, sorry, I don't remember where) are not to bring Itanium below the $3,000 average purchase price market, and they don't plan to reach -that- level until 2005.
Hammer is the only 64bit solution that is currently planned for a very long time in the consumer market. Plus, from what I remember the Itanium provides poor 32bit performance where Hammer actually excels there.
Not that the Itanium isn't a purer 64bit solution, just that it does not fit the markets this thread is aimed at.
So, most people seem to be in agreement that you don't need a faster processor to run today's applications. I would agree with that for the most part. I'm able to subsist on a desktop P3-800 and a laptop P3-600.
However, it's important to realize that the drop in sales will also result in a corresponding drop in research.
I'm kind of not happy about that... since I think it will slow down the pace of technology, at least on the client-side (versus server side, which was just beginning to be penetrated by the desktop architectures).
It may have 2 very cool side-effects, though:
1) Pervasive computing may become more... pervasive? It will be possible for the embedded computing to catch-up to the desktop power because more time will be allowed for miniaturization -and- embedded platforms will last longer (example: AMD is killing it's AMD K6-2 line because it's too slow... this will hurt alot of embedded products because the market isn't strong enough to allow redevelopment onto newer platforms)
2) Network/Telecom/etc infrastructure can finally catch-up. I strongly believe one of the things that caused the Internet boom was that a majority of people had access to modern telephone lines and most could scrounge up a computer. Since then, computing technology has outpaced infrastructure development (by that I mean -many- people currently still can't get xDSL, and yet your average new computer could completely swamp a T3). If things slow down and stabilize, we can again let the infrastructure mature and saturate the market, which is often the recipe needed for a new technological boom.
However, I am going to be upset if I can't buy a 32/64bit Hammer in a year at a decent cost, just because I want it:)
#!/usr/bin/perl # filename:/usr/bin/DeNiro/MovieScript.pl # somebody had to stoop this low... # Script may need editing, currently it lasts slightly over 2 hours $timer = 0; $count = 7201;
while ($timer $count) {
$time++;
print "Cowboy Neal saves the World!\n\n";
sleep 1; # Hey, wake up! It's a movie! }
You're talking about forwards compatibility of the HTML code (being able to render properly on future browsers, where the onus of compatibility is on the HTML author).
The parent was talking about backwards compatibility of the browsers (being able to properly render old HTML code in a new browser, where the onus of compatibility is on the browser author).
It's semantics, but I didn't start the nitpick:) Either term works for this application as long as you are looking from the correct side of the issue.
As for the parent that wanted browsers to be backwards compliant... that works, but only if you write your code compliant 100% to standards. That means leaving out all the proprietary cruft (which became especially prevalent in the "4.0s" of Netscape and IE) -as well as- all of the stuff that doesn't work in a cross-browser environment.
This is very hard to do if you want interactive sites, or at least was until recently when most browsers began to pay more attention to standards such as the DOM (document object model).
Again, we're back to a very basic problem. Do you write your page to work in old browsers or do you use the latest standards? I'm less concerned with this (as the author of the book seems to be) than I am with the idea of writing code to today's standards and having it work in future browsers.
I as a user understand that I'm taking my experience in to my own hands if I try to load a modern page into Netscape 1.0 (but it is fun some times:).
However, words can't express my frustration when I have the most modern browsers available and I can't load a page because it was written for an older browser. This happened to me yesterday when trying to sign up for a service from my phone company. The reps kept saying "I see that option, you should have it to". 30 minutes later I decided to load the same page into a 2 year old browser and it worked fine. It had used some tags that were horribly broken, not in any standard, and later abandoned by all involved.
If the modern browsers had had to be compatible with everything since the dawn of the web, they would be twice as large and 4 times as buggy. I would much rather that web authors stick to published standards and not rely on proprietary tags for public pages.
From what I see, this is what the book's author meant by "obsolete" and I agree. Most websites, if locked down and not changed for 3 years, would no longer render in the browsers that are new in 3 years.
While they will naturally work to fix these issues as the new browsers are released, they would not have to if they wrote to the basics. And the problem with fixing things as they evolve is that some pages (like that damned phone company page) get ignored and by the time they're found no one knows how to fix them.
I was an admin at a mid-level (statewide) ISP for about 4.5 years in the mid-late 1990's. I had a similar situation to yours and didn't know where to go.
Turns out, if you are willing to move out of admin and more into marketing and research, the skillset is highly valued by many companies.
I ended up going to work for a small linux-based ISP equipment manufacturer that within a year got aquired by a major telecomm equipment manufacturer. I'm still with the larger company, though they have had some layoffs during the tech crunch of the last couple of years.
I started out as a field technician for technical support doing remote problem diagnosis and some travel for on-site issues. I was transferred to Sales (not my choice) for a couple of years as a Sales Engineer, where I basically worked as a system engineering consultant helping customers define exactly what products they needed (in many ways, this position can be the antithesis of the dreaded sales rep position since I got to say when the rep was wrong and both sides valued the fact that I was honest in my recommendations). During this time I started working with the product groups to define new products right before the smaller company was aquired. Later, after the aquisition, I found an opportunity to exit Sales (yay!) and went to work for the product definition group as someone who helps define various technical areas of a product that they were not familiar with, as well as provide real-world feedback on feature requests.
All of the above areas are good for someone with practical experience in the field who doesn't mind public speaking. I still work from remote and have moved twice in 3 years. Lately my company has faced lowered travel budgets, so I'm expected to travel less and get to stare out my back office window at the rocky mountains on a daily basis.
During this time I've been approached a number of times (without scouting for them) by other companies who are looking for a similar combination of problem solving/technical knowledge/public speaking for similar jobs. Note that you don't particularly enjoy crowds of people (I don't), but you do need to be able to hold technical discussions with strangers and write/give presentations to large groups (250 is my largest crowd so far) intelligibly and warmly. I usually retire to my hotel room after such a gig and chill out with a movie and room service while the sales and marketing folks go out and party.
I have been considering finishing my degree (I started working at the ISP and dropped out of school due to lack of time) so that if my company cuts more workers I feel confident going back into the IT workplace, but so far it appears that marketing and product definition jobs get cut at a far less rapid rate than remote sales positions at my particular company.
Admittedly things may have changed in the 14 years since, but I didn't have a SS# until I was almost 18 years old. I only got the SS# so that I could get a driver's license (in Kansas).
It's not the SS# system itself that is scary, it's the driver's license system. AFAIK, every driver's license is attached to a SS#. The SS# database may not have all of your relevant details, but your DL does. In one state (Alabama) they even printed the SS# by default on my DL. In Tennessee and Colorado it was optional, but they print it if you don't explicitely say "no".
AFAIK, all of the states have linked their DL databases... which means we effectively already have the same type of system as just went live in Japan.
Everything doesn't have to be cool to everyone... if it were it wouldn't be as "cool".
If you're happy with your 160K MP3s, keep them... if you're happy with your MP3 encoding solution, make more MP3s with it.
If not... then look into it. Some people, myself included, have held off doing a full digitization of our CDs until we had a product we liked to do it... now we have it... so to use this is cool.
I'd have to agree and it is a welcome change. I was dreading being able to play Neverwinter Nights on my 800Mhz P3+Radeon All-in-Wonder, which is 2 years old now.
Turns out it runs fine at nearly the maximum settings. I'm quite pleased that I don't need to buy a 2+ Ghz machine just to do my preferred games.
Sure... it would make things even speedier, but I got tired of having to upgrade every 12 months just to play the latest FPS or RPG.
It gives me a bit more confidence that around Xmas this year I can buy a 2+ Ghz machine and state of the art GPU and have a solid machine for 2+ years, which makes the upgrade far more worth it. Plus, it means there is a chance the new games will be worth playing through more than once.
That's interesting... my father is/was with Boeing military as a programmer/analyst/admin and his management structure was removed and replaced with MD personnel.
Additionally alot of long-standing Boeing policies got replaced by MD style policies. To this day he's hates travelling for them as he has to expense his stuff and pay any credit interest rather than the way Boeing used to give a daily allowance. I'm stuck expensing my stuff and I can attest to how much I hate having to file expense reports that can take weeks or months to be fully reimbursed.
If I can get a window seat, this thing will be awesome since one of my major wishes when flying (too often) is to be able to see out front.
But if I can't get near the window, and with 800 person capacity most likely I won't, I'm going to have a claustrophobic fit. Some people simply -need- to be able to see outside while on a plane. I don't get logically fearful but sometimes I do just have that crammed-in crazy feeling.
I wonder if there will be a noticable rise in air rage incidents per person on these?
BZZT... the B49 and B2 are full flying wing designs. The Blended Wing is a cross between a traditional swept-wing design and the flying wing concept. Aerodynamically all 3 designs have very different performance characteristics.
And Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, and it was a merger in name only... if you hear tell from the old time Boeing employees, Boeing died that day and McDonnell just kept the Boeing name so that people would realize that management was being taken over.
Ah, the lessons of youth
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 2
I tried to report this same issue regarding Javascript 1.0 waaaaaay back when that was something new. I got completely trounced on the newsgroup I posted to (interestingly, the person responsible for the implementation was the only one who was reasonably nice in his explanation).
Lucky for me/. didn't exist then... it was embarrassing enough to get trounced by developers on a reasonably obscure newsgroup:)
I would find that useful. My wife wants me to stop and pause my FFX game everytime I find a new boss so that she can come in and watch. It doesn't bug me much, but it would be convenient for both of us if I could simply capture the battle and let her watch it later.
Of course, she already records twice the number of programs on our Tivo as I do (and she was scared of it just 3 months ago), so maybe I don't need to contribute to my having even less space on our DVR.
That said, I still have 0 interest in sinking more money into Microsoft while there are viable alternatives. I would be happy if I could just get my Tivo to record Svideo from my PlayStation2.
Don't feel too bad, that is the first right of passage when working on Digital Unix. Overall, though, next to linux it was my favorite OS to admin. And as far as stability, it was my favorite by far.
True, but how many different times does this need to be sorted out on/.? The "Star Office isn't free anymore" and "Open Office is free and open source and is 99% the same as Star Office" discussions have been covered for literally months. Seems like every 2 weeks or so something gets posted about it.
Star Office still has the Adabas database component and some extra file/print filters.
These items were proprietary code that Sun could not open source because they were not part of the Star Office purchase.
Open Office doesn't have these items, but most people won't need them. That along with commercial support are the only real differences. If you don't need a GUI database and you don't need commercial support, get Open Office.
Sun is not counting on Star Office to be a cash cow ($76Million isn't chump change, but it won't change the world either). The cost associated with Star Office is to help pay for support infrastructure, which in turn makes companies who feel that only supported software is worth using (a logical concept for an Enterprise level company) feel comfortable buying Star Office.
I've been using Open Office for months and, especially because of the last 2 releases, have gone ahead and removed Office 2000 and Star Office 5.2.
Is there a GPS card that also works on the Zaurus including routing software? If so, then this would settle which PDA is next for me.
I'm looking for a device that will help me get from place to place, play my (mp3|ogg) files, and be 802.11b capable when I'm at home.
note: by "routing" I mean I can pick a point on the map and the GPS device will give me point-by-point directions... I know there is GPS software that will pinpoint my location, but I need more.
Slashdot Mirror
But your original post seemed more that it was arguing that MS is not pursuing this. The cache argument is much more geared against Intel than MS.
... AMD's Hammer or Intel's supersecret-incase-Itanium-fails 32bit/64bit hybrid processor have a much better chance in this market.
I still think Itanium's 32bit issues would stall it in this market
It is not implausible that they would force all :80 traffic out through their web proxy and intercept the HTML code and possibly email to insert ads.
In essence, it would be the opposite of alot of client-side proxys that intercept HTML and -remove- ads. I would expect the system to add text and graphics, possibly even Java aps to try and make sure you see them.
Not polite, but hey, it's their network. Not completely enfoceable (since someone will surely write a client-side proxy to remove the ads), but neither is any other form of advertising.
Unless you're in a tech saturated market I don't expect you'll see this for a long time. The guy standing on the corner with a sign is much more effective.
Unless I read it wrong, that pricelist shows the cheapest Itanium as the Itanium 2 , 900Mhz w/ 1.5MB cache at $1,338.
The most expensive Pentium 4 (2.8Ghz) is $508 and the 2.8Ghz Xeon is $562.
The difference is $836, more than double the cost of the Pentium 4. I definitely do find that runs more than the Pentium 4, even if I could find the Itanium at that price (I haven't found many places that list Itanium processors, and those that do rarely list the versions with less than full cache, which lists over $4K).
In a market where most people are buying entire machines (minus monitor if you want a fast machine, but in many cases with monitor) for the difference between those CPUs, I would say Itanium is priced way out of that market.
Intel's plans (read somewhere, sorry, I don't remember where) are not to bring Itanium below the $3,000 average purchase price market, and they don't plan to reach -that- level until 2005.
Hammer is the only 64bit solution that is currently planned for a very long time in the consumer market. Plus, from what I remember the Itanium provides poor 32bit performance where Hammer actually excels there.
Not that the Itanium isn't a purer 64bit solution, just that it does not fit the markets this thread is aimed at.
So, most people seem to be in agreement that you don't need a faster processor to run today's applications. I would agree with that for the most part. I'm able to subsist on a desktop P3-800 and a laptop P3-600.
... since I think it will slow down the pace of technology, at least on the client-side (versus server side, which was just beginning to be penetrated by the desktop architectures).
... pervasive? It will be possible for the embedded computing to catch-up to the desktop power because more time will be allowed for miniaturization -and- embedded platforms will last longer (example: AMD is killing it's AMD K6-2 line because it's too slow ... this will hurt alot of embedded products because the market isn't strong enough to allow redevelopment onto newer platforms)
:)
However, it's important to realize that the drop in sales will also result in a corresponding drop in research.
I'm kind of not happy about that
It may have 2 very cool side-effects, though:
1) Pervasive computing may become more
2) Network/Telecom/etc infrastructure can finally catch-up. I strongly believe one of the things that caused the Internet boom was that a majority of people had access to modern telephone lines and most could scrounge up a computer. Since then, computing technology has outpaced infrastructure development (by that I mean -many- people currently still can't get xDSL, and yet your average new computer could completely swamp a T3). If things slow down and stabilize, we can again let the infrastructure mature and saturate the market, which is often the recipe needed for a new technological boom.
However, I am going to be upset if I can't buy a 32/64bit Hammer in a year at a decent cost, just because I want it
#!/usr/bin/perl /usr/bin/DeNiro/MovieScript.pl ...
# filename:
# somebody had to stoop this low
# Script may need editing, currently it lasts slightly over 2 hours
$timer = 0;
$count = 7201;
while ($timer $count) {
$time++;
print "Cowboy Neal saves the World!\n\n";
sleep 1; # Hey, wake up! It's a movie!
}
You're talking about forwards compatibility of the HTML code (being able to render properly on future browsers, where the onus of compatibility is on the HTML author).
:) Either term works for this application as long as you are looking from the correct side of the issue.
... that works, but only if you write your code compliant 100% to standards. That means leaving out all the proprietary cruft (which became especially prevalent in the "4.0s" of Netscape and IE) -as well as- all of the stuff that doesn't work in a cross-browser environment.
:).
The parent was talking about backwards compatibility of the browsers (being able to properly render old HTML code in a new browser, where the onus of compatibility is on the browser author).
It's semantics, but I didn't start the nitpick
As for the parent that wanted browsers to be backwards compliant
This is very hard to do if you want interactive sites, or at least was until recently when most browsers began to pay more attention to standards such as the DOM (document object model).
Again, we're back to a very basic problem. Do you write your page to work in old browsers or do you use the latest standards? I'm less concerned with this (as the author of the book seems to be) than I am with the idea of writing code to today's standards and having it work in future browsers.
I as a user understand that I'm taking my experience in to my own hands if I try to load a modern page into Netscape 1.0 (but it is fun some times
However, words can't express my frustration when I have the most modern browsers available and I can't load a page because it was written for an older browser. This happened to me yesterday when trying to sign up for a service from my phone company. The reps kept saying "I see that option, you should have it to". 30 minutes later I decided to load the same page into a 2 year old browser and it worked fine. It had used some tags that were horribly broken, not in any standard, and later abandoned by all involved.
If the modern browsers had had to be compatible with everything since the dawn of the web, they would be twice as large and 4 times as buggy. I would much rather that web authors stick to published standards and not rely on proprietary tags for public pages.
From what I see, this is what the book's author meant by "obsolete" and I agree. Most websites, if locked down and not changed for 3 years, would no longer render in the browsers that are new in 3 years.
While they will naturally work to fix these issues as the new browsers are released, they would not have to if they wrote to the basics. And the problem with fixing things as they evolve is that some pages (like that damned phone company page) get ignored and by the time they're found no one knows how to fix them.
I was an admin at a mid-level (statewide) ISP for about 4.5 years in the mid-late 1990's. I had a similar situation to yours and didn't know where to go.
Turns out, if you are willing to move out of admin and more into marketing and research, the skillset is highly valued by many companies.
I ended up going to work for a small linux-based ISP equipment manufacturer that within a year got aquired by a major telecomm equipment manufacturer. I'm still with the larger company, though they have had some layoffs during the tech crunch of the last couple of years.
I started out as a field technician for technical support doing remote problem diagnosis and some travel for on-site issues. I was transferred to Sales (not my choice) for a couple of years as a Sales Engineer, where I basically worked as a system engineering consultant helping customers define exactly what products they needed (in many ways, this position can be the antithesis of the dreaded sales rep position since I got to say when the rep was wrong and both sides valued the fact that I was honest in my recommendations). During this time I started working with the product groups to define new products right before the smaller company was aquired. Later, after the aquisition, I found an opportunity to exit Sales (yay!) and went to work for the product definition group as someone who helps define various technical areas of a product that they were not familiar with, as well as provide real-world feedback on feature requests.
All of the above areas are good for someone with practical experience in the field who doesn't mind public speaking. I still work from remote and have moved twice in 3 years. Lately my company has faced lowered travel budgets, so I'm expected to travel less and get to stare out my back office window at the rocky mountains on a daily basis.
During this time I've been approached a number of times (without scouting for them) by other companies who are looking for a similar combination of problem solving/technical knowledge/public speaking for similar jobs. Note that you don't particularly enjoy crowds of people (I don't), but you do need to be able to hold technical discussions with strangers and write/give presentations to large groups (250 is my largest crowd so far) intelligibly and warmly. I usually retire to my hotel room after such a gig and chill out with a movie and room service while the sales and marketing folks go out and party.
I have been considering finishing my degree (I started working at the ISP and dropped out of school due to lack of time) so that if my company cuts more workers I feel confident going back into the IT workplace, but so far it appears that marketing and product definition jobs get cut at a far less rapid rate than remote sales positions at my particular company.
Enough that this would be an unacceptable method. Remember that most people would rather get 1 spam than lose 1 real email.
Admittedly things may have changed in the 14 years since, but I didn't have a SS# until I was almost 18 years old. I only got the SS# so that I could get a driver's license (in Kansas).
... which means we effectively already have the same type of system as just went live in Japan.
It's not the SS# system itself that is scary, it's the driver's license system. AFAIK, every driver's license is attached to a SS#. The SS# database may not have all of your relevant details, but your DL does. In one state (Alabama) they even printed the SS# by default on my DL. In Tennessee and Colorado it was optional, but they print it if you don't explicitely say "no".
AFAIK, all of the states have linked their DL databases
Yes, but when you get lucky enough to find a girl who uses a modified "click-wrap" process to activate her EULA, things can be fun ;)
Why should we take the time to educate you?
... if it were it wouldn't be as "cool".
... if you're happy with your MP3 encoding solution, make more MP3s with it.
... then look into it. Some people, myself included, have held off doing a full digitization of our CDs until we had a product we liked to do it ... now we have it ... so to use this is cool.
Everything doesn't have to be cool to everyone
If you're happy with your 160K MP3s, keep them
If not
I'd have to agree and it is a welcome change. I was dreading being able to play Neverwinter Nights on my 800Mhz P3+Radeon All-in-Wonder, which is 2 years old now.
... it would make things even speedier, but I got tired of having to upgrade every 12 months just to play the latest FPS or RPG.
Turns out it runs fine at nearly the maximum settings. I'm quite pleased that I don't need to buy a 2+ Ghz machine just to do my preferred games.
Sure
It gives me a bit more confidence that around Xmas this year I can buy a 2+ Ghz machine and state of the art GPU and have a solid machine for 2+ years, which makes the upgrade far more worth it. Plus, it means there is a chance the new games will be worth playing through more than once.
All welcome shifts in the gaming world.
That's interesting ... my father is/was with Boeing military as a programmer/analyst/admin and his management structure was removed and replaced with MD personnel.
Additionally alot of long-standing Boeing policies got replaced by MD style policies. To this day he's hates travelling for them as he has to expense his stuff and pay any credit interest rather than the way Boeing used to give a daily allowance. I'm stuck expensing my stuff and I can attest to how much I hate having to file expense reports that can take weeks or months to be fully reimbursed.
If I can get a window seat, this thing will be awesome since one of my major wishes when flying (too often) is to be able to see out front.
But if I can't get near the window, and with 800 person capacity most likely I won't, I'm going to have a claustrophobic fit. Some people simply -need- to be able to see outside while on a plane. I don't get logically fearful but sometimes I do just have that crammed-in crazy feeling.
I wonder if there will be a noticable rise in air rage incidents per person on these?
BZZT ... the B49 and B2 are full flying wing designs. The Blended Wing is a cross between a traditional swept-wing design and the flying wing concept. Aerodynamically all 3 designs have very different performance characteristics.
... if you hear tell from the old time Boeing employees, Boeing died that day and McDonnell just kept the Boeing name so that people would realize that management was being taken over.
And Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, and it was a merger in name only
I tried to report this same issue regarding Javascript 1.0 waaaaaay back when that was something new. I got completely trounced on the newsgroup I posted to (interestingly, the person responsible for the implementation was the only one who was reasonably nice in his explanation).
/. didn't exist then ... it was embarrassing enough to get trounced by developers on a reasonably obscure newsgroup :)
Lucky for me
I would find that useful. My wife wants me to stop and pause my FFX game everytime I find a new boss so that she can come in and watch. It doesn't bug me much, but it would be convenient for both of us if I could simply capture the battle and let her watch it later.
Of course, she already records twice the number of programs on our Tivo as I do (and she was scared of it just 3 months ago), so maybe I don't need to contribute to my having even less space on our DVR.
That said, I still have 0 interest in sinking more money into Microsoft while there are viable alternatives. I would be happy if I could just get my Tivo to record Svideo from my PlayStation2.
Don't feel too bad, that is the first right of passage when working on Digital Unix. Overall, though, next to linux it was my favorite OS to admin. And as far as stability, it was my favorite by far.
So compare 32bit code to the P4 and 64bit code to the Itanium, which is commercially available and is what the Opteron will be going after.
Yep, you're right. And as soon as you have that standardization, someone will come along and create a "better" distro that breaks everything again.
That's probably the biggest (IMO) disadvantage to such an anarchistic system.
True, but how many different times does this need to be sorted out on /.? The "Star Office isn't free anymore" and "Open Office is free and open source and is 99% the same as Star Office" discussions have been covered for literally months. Seems like every 2 weeks or so something gets posted about it.
Gods I hate spoilers.
Not EVERYONE has seen the damned movie yet. Some consideration please.
Star Office still has the Adabas database component and some extra file/print filters.
These items were proprietary code that Sun could not open source because they were not part of the Star Office purchase.
Open Office doesn't have these items, but most people won't need them. That along with commercial support are the only real differences. If you don't need a GUI database and you don't need commercial support, get Open Office.
Sun is not counting on Star Office to be a cash cow ($76Million isn't chump change, but it won't change the world either). The cost associated with Star Office is to help pay for support infrastructure, which in turn makes companies who feel that only supported software is worth using (a logical concept for an Enterprise level company) feel comfortable buying Star Office.
I've been using Open Office for months and, especially because of the last 2 releases, have gone ahead and removed Office 2000 and Star Office 5.2.
Is there a GPS card that also works on the Zaurus including routing software? If so, then this would settle which PDA is next for me.
... I know there is GPS software that will pinpoint my location, but I need more.
I'm looking for a device that will help me get from place to place, play my (mp3|ogg) files, and be 802.11b capable when I'm at home.
note: by "routing" I mean I can pick a point on the map and the GPS device will give me point-by-point directions
Bah-hah ... and it got a "+1 Informative", too ... nice joke.