No, I think this issue is pretty clear-cut. Don't get me wrong, I think MSO is a lot better than OOo at a lot of things, but editing equations is not one of them, at least with the built-in editor.
If most people need correct PDF rendering, they shouldn't be using FoxIt. It's been shown that Adobe (and also GSView) render PDFs more correctly than FoxIt, xpdf, evince, etc. Just ask the Scribus people.
I'm somewhat intrigued by the idea of true roleplaying, but I haven't had any D&D or boardgame experience. It sounds to me, though, that the definition of "true roleplaying" is simply to completely assume the role of the character you're playing as if that character was really you. Talk like the character, do things the character would really do, etc. All in-game, of course.
But when I tried "roleplaying" with some people in an MMO I was in (SWG, to be precise), it simply came across as forced. People started talking differently, formally, calling themselves sir and madame and talking like lords in a royal court.
To me, true roleplaying is assuming whatever character you've taken on for yourself. Why do you have to call the other character "lord"? Was it a medieval game and you were actually his servant? What if he really did want to be called Tom? Why do you suddenly have to use proper "olde englishe" when you're roleplaying? Do Star Wars characters not use slang and speak in fragments?
So in short, roleplaying is interesting, yes, but different people see it different ways. And the way I've seen it does just seems... well, silly.
And as an aside, if I were making an MMORPG, I'd have an RP tag or something that each character could turn on and off easily. It would show up beside messages in the chatrooms to mark RP comments as opposed to RL comments.
If you want 100% in-kernel support with no non-free firmware blobs or anything of the sort, one suggestion to buy an old mPCI Dell Truemobile 1150 on ebay, if you can find one. The drawback is that it's an 802.11b card and doesn't support WPA. Otherwise though, you've got a seamless Orinoco-based card that's completely free and open.
"I most likely will have to write a thesis & won't be able to use Excel for my plots. I don't want to stress learning the software I'd need for my thesis at the last minute. I'm told that the software I'd learn will also make my lab reports faster to generate and look nicer. I will therefore learn that software as soon as possible."
Such thinking requires incredible foresight. What exactly will I do my thesis on? Will I need to generate plots? Will I need to generate regression lines? Will it be easier to do this in a package that does other thesis-topic-related things, or will I end up using a dedicated plotting package? Which plotting package will be the best for me to use for this several years down the road when I do end up doing a thesis?
No, a thesis will be several years down the road, and several years in the making. Learning how to make plots is such a small part of such a thing that the time spent on it is essentially negligable. And if I say "Hmm, I think I'll use gnuplot for any statistical stuff I do on a thesis I might do a few years in the future", what should I focus on? Will things change between then and now? What if while I'm doing my research, I realize gnuplot isn't the best tool for the job? I'll have to learn something else anyway, right?
Right now, however, I have a stack of homework and a lab report due. The professor accepts Excel, everyone else is doing it in Excel, and it's such a simple plot that Excel couldn't possibly screw it up. Should I waste an hour or so getting it the way I want it in gnuplot (because I don't know gnuplot, and would have to read manuals and such), spend even longer learning R, or just whip it out in Excel and call it a day?
OpenOffice could fill the role of Excel here, except that it makes things sufficiently hard and frustrating that it's not worth it.
"Some actually do. Or, at the very least, they set the bar higher than is easily achievable in Excel. You, yourself, acknowledged that it is generally not acceptable for theses, papers, or significant reports. Why not use the same program for ALL of this? Unless your University never required you to do anything "serious," it appears to me that you'd become more proficient in the "serious" programs for when you needed them & would also be able to use them faster when you just needed something quick."
Because it's worth it to me to spend a while learning a "serious" package when it's my thesis I'm talking about. If it's a lab report, not so much. And lab reports come before theses chronologically.
Besides, there's nothing broken about Excel for what I was doing. Why spend valuable time learning something that will fix what's not broken?
The problem is that while you can easily have a trendline, you can't easily show the equation of that line or the R^2 value on the graph itself (like in Excel). Take that how you want, but at least in my department, professors wanted to see that information on the graph.
I just graduated with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, and I have to say, we used Excel for generic data processing a hell of a lot more than Matlab, Python, R, or any other "serious" software package. There are a few things Excel does better than other methods, and they all involve ease of use. Typically, when a lab that requires some graphs and charts is due, you don't have time (or want to take the time) to mess around with Matlab. You want to whip out the chart quickly, throw it in your report, and go work on other stuff. Excel does this kind of thing much better than Matlab, unless you happen to already be a Matlab wizard from previous experience.
Again, we're not talking about Masters theses, journal papers, or even large project reports. If I have a lab report due, it's just plain easier and less of a hassle to open up my CSV in Excel and click the graph button, especially if the most involved thing you're doing is adding a trendline.
If you think students should start using Matlab or R for all their graphs, well, you'll have to start with getting the professors to require it.
Yeah, and what about charts in general? As far as I know, the only way to create a multi-series graph is to manually reformat your data in the spreadsheet, moving around columns and stuff. This is completely unacceptible, especially when Excel has that extremely easy-to-use series editor.
NASA's been partnering with Russia, Japan, and the EU for years. Why only when they start partnering with India do people suddenly scream "outsourcing!"?
You're right that fruit juices have all the sugar that soft drinks do, but at least it's naturally-occuring sugar, not the processed stuff. That's good enough for me, and I avoid the caffeine as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I crack out the Beatles and CSNY LPs every few weeks or so. Vinyls are nice.
No, I think this issue is pretty clear-cut. Don't get me wrong, I think MSO is a lot better than OOo at a lot of things, but editing equations is not one of them, at least with the built-in editor.
Read the description; it does a whole lot more than capture video.
Note that I don't know if this is the first to do all these things or not.
"But your right.. anyone who does a /msg nickserv these days is an idiot."
Hmm? The opening message when you connect to Freenode tells you to do just that.
What's the best way, and what's the risk of not doing it that way?
If most people need correct PDF rendering, they shouldn't be using FoxIt. It's been shown that Adobe (and also GSView) render PDFs more correctly than FoxIt, xpdf, evince, etc. Just ask the Scribus people.
That's an AP article, not a FOX article.
I just want to say that I find it humorous that torrentspy.com has this at the bottom of their site:
"Copyright 2005. All rights reserved."
I'm somewhat intrigued by the idea of true roleplaying, but I haven't had any D&D or boardgame experience. It sounds to me, though, that the definition of "true roleplaying" is simply to completely assume the role of the character you're playing as if that character was really you. Talk like the character, do things the character would really do, etc. All in-game, of course.
But when I tried "roleplaying" with some people in an MMO I was in (SWG, to be precise), it simply came across as forced. People started talking differently, formally, calling themselves sir and madame and talking like lords in a royal court.
To me, true roleplaying is assuming whatever character you've taken on for yourself. Why do you have to call the other character "lord"? Was it a medieval game and you were actually his servant? What if he really did want to be called Tom? Why do you suddenly have to use proper "olde englishe" when you're roleplaying? Do Star Wars characters not use slang and speak in fragments?
So in short, roleplaying is interesting, yes, but different people see it different ways. And the way I've seen it does just seems... well, silly.
And as an aside, if I were making an MMORPG, I'd have an RP tag or something that each character could turn on and off easily. It would show up beside messages in the chatrooms to mark RP comments as opposed to RL comments.
PNG and MNG don't answer any of those.
Oh come on people, it's a joke. Just look at the foot.
I mean, quality control from a piracy organization? Ha ha ha.
Lots of people believe that indiscriminately sharing someone else's copyrighted material is wrong and should be illegal.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but what's your source for this? I'd like to reference it in other conversations.
They pay standard royalty rates to the appropriate organizations ($0.08 per song, according to the article). So the same cut everyone else gives them.
Another nice thing about eMusic is that once you download a song, you can download it again and again without it counting against your monthly cap.
And not only that, it's not even convenient to type on a cell phone numpad: m (5), o (6-6-6), b (2-2), i (4-4-4).
While understandably inappropriate, at least 'wap' was easy to type (9-2-7).
If you want 100% in-kernel support with no non-free firmware blobs or anything of the sort, one suggestion to buy an old mPCI Dell Truemobile 1150 on ebay, if you can find one. The drawback is that it's an 802.11b card and doesn't support WPA. Otherwise though, you've got a seamless Orinoco-based card that's completely free and open.
Yeah, it's web data (i.e. using the built-in browser, Opera Mini, Google Maps Mobile, etc.)
"I most likely will have to write a thesis & won't be able to use Excel for my plots.
I don't want to stress learning the software I'd need for my thesis at the last minute.
I'm told that the software I'd learn will also make my lab reports faster to generate and look nicer.
I will therefore learn that software as soon as possible."
Such thinking requires incredible foresight. What exactly will I do my thesis on? Will I need to generate plots? Will I need to generate regression lines? Will it be easier to do this in a package that does other thesis-topic-related things, or will I end up using a dedicated plotting package? Which plotting package will be the best for me to use for this several years down the road when I do end up doing a thesis?
No, a thesis will be several years down the road, and several years in the making. Learning how to make plots is such a small part of such a thing that the time spent on it is essentially negligable. And if I say "Hmm, I think I'll use gnuplot for any statistical stuff I do on a thesis I might do a few years in the future", what should I focus on? Will things change between then and now? What if while I'm doing my research, I realize gnuplot isn't the best tool for the job? I'll have to learn something else anyway, right?
Right now, however, I have a stack of homework and a lab report due. The professor accepts Excel, everyone else is doing it in Excel, and it's such a simple plot that Excel couldn't possibly screw it up. Should I waste an hour or so getting it the way I want it in gnuplot (because I don't know gnuplot, and would have to read manuals and such), spend even longer learning R, or just whip it out in Excel and call it a day?
OpenOffice could fill the role of Excel here, except that it makes things sufficiently hard and frustrating that it's not worth it.
T-Mobile does unlimited data for an extra $6/mo.
"Some actually do. Or, at the very least, they set the bar higher than is easily achievable in Excel. You, yourself, acknowledged that it is generally not acceptable for theses, papers, or significant reports. Why not use the same program for ALL of this? Unless your University never required you to do anything "serious," it appears to me that you'd become more proficient in the "serious" programs for when you needed them & would also be able to use them faster when you just needed something quick."
Because it's worth it to me to spend a while learning a "serious" package when it's my thesis I'm talking about. If it's a lab report, not so much. And lab reports come before theses chronologically.
Besides, there's nothing broken about Excel for what I was doing. Why spend valuable time learning something that will fix what's not broken?
The problem is that while you can easily have a trendline, you can't easily show the equation of that line or the R^2 value on the graph itself (like in Excel). Take that how you want, but at least in my department, professors wanted to see that information on the graph.
I just graduated with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, and I have to say, we used Excel for generic data processing a hell of a lot more than Matlab, Python, R, or any other "serious" software package. There are a few things Excel does better than other methods, and they all involve ease of use. Typically, when a lab that requires some graphs and charts is due, you don't have time (or want to take the time) to mess around with Matlab. You want to whip out the chart quickly, throw it in your report, and go work on other stuff. Excel does this kind of thing much better than Matlab, unless you happen to already be a Matlab wizard from previous experience.
Again, we're not talking about Masters theses, journal papers, or even large project reports. If I have a lab report due, it's just plain easier and less of a hassle to open up my CSV in Excel and click the graph button, especially if the most involved thing you're doing is adding a trendline.
If you think students should start using Matlab or R for all their graphs, well, you'll have to start with getting the professors to require it.
Yeah, and what about charts in general? As far as I know, the only way to create a multi-series graph is to manually reformat your data in the spreadsheet, moving around columns and stuff. This is completely unacceptible, especially when Excel has that extremely easy-to-use series editor.
NASA's been partnering with Russia, Japan, and the EU for years. Why only when they start partnering with India do people suddenly scream "outsourcing!"?
You're right that fruit juices have all the sugar that soft drinks do, but at least it's naturally-occuring sugar, not the processed stuff. That's good enough for me, and I avoid the caffeine as well.