OOo spreadsheets can export to PDF just fine. I realize that doesn't help anyone on the receiving end edit, but if they're just viewing the information you should have no problem.
The sad truth is that at the moment an overwhelming majority of random users turn to Excel as their default spreadsheet. That makes any differences between the two OOo's problem, not Excel's.
I still respectfully disagree. Especially if you're not in an office environment and they can download and install OOo just as easily as anyone else.
I really believe if people would just get over the fact that these are two different application suites (one of which uses non-documented binary formatting deliberately to break compatibility) and stop pouring so much effort into.xls and.doc compatibility, maybe OOo could actually, y'know, innovate.
And at the moment accurate document exchange with Excel is a make-or-break requirement for OOo.
Not for everyone. If you absolutely must have perfect.xls files, use Excel. I've heard it does that.
Because Excel is defective (yes, by design), you gave up on OOo and use Excel?
I'm not trying to talk you down here or anything, I understand the necessity if you work an an MS shop, I live in the real world too. But I do take umbrage in your describing this as "your biggest problem with OOo."
FWIW, I have experienced some of the same formatting issues you describe. I am lucky enough to have the freedom where I could say "Well, fuck Excel then."
Have you tried KOffice? It's got some ground to make up on the "ease-of-use" front, but it's surprisingly speedy and responsive, and beats the piss out of Abiword/Gnumeric for features.
I agree. But the fact remains that the software is out there, it costs US$0, and if it's not on the laptop when you buy it, you bet your ass Dell should get a phone call. The isn't a "Linux" problem. This is a "lazy OEM" problem.
Spreadsheets are not a basic windows function. That is MS Office - an advanced user's add-on.
"Advanced user's add-on?" Hell, half the people I run into on a daily basis don't even know that MS Office is not, in fact, a component of Windows. As far as Joe Luser is concerned, if he buys a computer that doesn't make a spreadsheet, that fucker's broken, and I agree. Both you and GP are correct. Spreadsheets are not a "basic Windows function." Therefore, Windows is broken.
Once again, we aren't talking about Outlook, which is an Office item.
See above. If the computer doesn't do these things out of the box and without hassle, it is broken. Why Windows boosters see this clearly w/r/t (to pull an example from TFA) touchpad configuration or video acceleration, but not spreadsheets and email, is totally beyond me.
But I used my wife's iPod, and it is simply a better, more user-friendly experience.
I don't get it. They drive me insane. I can't use them without looking at them, and I'm always scrolling too far or not far enough. Ironically, I actually have a Cowon player (an iAudio X5), and love it. I find the joystick to be a good middle ground between the "buttons" idea and the "wheel" idea. Totally subjective, I know.
Itunes is another reason for the casual user.
I'll see your generalization and raise you two anecdotes. Most of the people I know who own iPods (early to mid twenties people, mostly) say they loathe iTunes but use it anyway because "that's what comes with it." 'Struth: one acquaintance of mine, upon seeing me plug my player into a USB drive and have it come up as a drive, actually asked me "How'd you do that?" I am not kidding.
I could see this being a generational difference, though. People who didn't grow up (and I mean as a small child) with a computer at hand tend much more toward the whole "computer as appliance" idea, and thus probably like the idea of iTunes a lot more.
should a software license control what you can do with the hardware?
Of course not, and neither should a corporation. It's not TiVo's hardware anymore. I paid money. If it wasn't enough to cover their bottom line, too damn bad. (Note this is hypothetical. I don't even own a television.)
People want cell phones with a service contract. People want to lease cars rather than pay the full price up front. People want a low cost game console that only plays high-priced games. The market shows this.
"The market?" Let's take the easiest example to shoot down (because it's the one I'm more knowledgeable about), game consoles. If four megacorporations decide that they are going to sell their consoles for (let's say) $200 - $400, and games for $50 - $75, and there are no alternatives to these four products because smaller concerns don't have the economy of scale necessary to build their own consoles at any competitive price (circuit boards are expensive to make unless you're making them 5,000,000 at a time), that's not a free market. All that shows is that given one of those four options or nothing at all, people will buy one of them.
Please correct any flaws in my logic. I fuck up sometimes.
That means no welfare, social security, free/reduced lunch programs, universal health care, special programs for minorities, etc. That's what prevents Libertarians from joining up with the Left.
Well then, that's just fucking stupid. And if/when you finally get your dream society and all the people who used to (make your burger/pump your gas/mop your office/etc.) die of scurvy through malnutrition and lack of health care and you actually have to do those things yourself, you'll see why.
And besides, that's not libertarianism. That's classic Head-In-Ass Republicanism, and it's been an utter failure to accomplish anything good in this country, ever.
You know, someone gave me this very argument in 2004. I did end up voting Democratic, holding my nose and hating myself the whole time, but I had bought the "lesser of two evils" argument. Incidentally, my party of choice (not Libertarian) did not get the necessary 5% to assure further state funding in the next election. Now you tell me, in this scenario, who wasted whose vote and when?
You see, the command line or text messages with a black background mean nothing to the user. For all purposes, if they don't see something that resembles their desktop, they think their computer is broken. They also don't care if they have to type in one command to fix it because to them, learning that the command line exists and that you can even enter text commands is too much to deal with.
Not true. Maybe to a ten year old, but anyone over the age of consent remembers having an Apple II in their elementary school. I said this already in another post, but to reiterate: we were all navigating directory structures via CLI at age six. And I've found that, with my clients (I install and service desktop Linux machines), that metaphor goes a long way because they do remember that.
I just don't think people are as stupid as you seem to think they are.
most college age computer users have never used a PC without a mouse and GUI, ever.
I just don't think that's true. I am a "just-post-college-age computer user" (I'm 26), and I came up on the Apple Deuce and MS-DOS, and later, in my teens, OS/2 and Windows. I think it would be much more accurate to say "this is the last generation of college age computer users who remember life before point-and-click." I don't think this generation is as scared of the prompt as you seem to think. I mean, c'mon, we were navigating directory structures via command line when we were six years old.
Years ago, Minnesota mandated highly costly smoking section ventilation. Business owners rushed out to comply with the new regulations, spending tens of thousands of dollars to bring their diner/bar/coffee shop/strip club up to code. This year, Minnesota passed the statewide smoking ban which will go into effect on October 1. Think anyone's getting their $10k back? I fucking doubt it.
Re: The oft-brandished "right of the poor waiter," ask any construction worker if he thinks he's got the "right" to not work in the sun (high exposure to which has been proven to cause cancer). Ask the dental assistant if he's got the "right" to not work with X-ray equipment. I mean, Jesus Christ, if you don't want to work in a smoky bar, go wait tables somewhere that doesn't have a smoking section. They're everywhere. If enough customers and employees want non-smoking establishments, they appear. This is Free Market 101, and it's been working great for decades.
Yeah, I mean come on Microsoft. You guys should have drivers for every single piece of hardware out there already
Which is the selfsame logic that MSFT drones have been applying to Linux for ten fucking years. Can someone turn on the ceiling fan? The irony's getting a little thick in here.
Users don't want 4 media players they can't figure out, they just want one good one.
Not so. I'm a very demanding user as far as AV applications go (no, I don't make music or movies, but half of my use of this computer is probably music-related, listening, tagging, sharing, etc.). And I want four good media players. I use JuK and Amarok (and sometimes gmusicbrowser) depending on whether I'm listening to a song or hanging out listening to music all day, and likewise with Kaffiene and Noatun for video, although that much less frequently. I see what you're saying there, but to just off-handedly say "Users want $THIS_THING" is oversimplistic.
Also, to speak to your general sentiment,
They WANT standards, they WANT one way to do things.
I can see what you're saying here. Even friends of mine who use the same distribution I do have, and who are fairly savvy people, have a moment of disorientation when sitting down at my desktop, because it is visually very far away from the defaults. But to say "That's the problem," I think, overlooks the fact that most of the mass market (including the entire corporate market) isn't going to tweak their desktop at all.
Along those lines there's things like the insistence of open source drivers.
But that pressure works. Look at Intel's new graphics chips. It hasn't worked everywhere, yet. And graphics especially is one arena where it's not just geek pressure, it's a big push from the gamers too, who want and damn well deserve to know what they're spending their $300 on. I gotta disagree with you, particularly in the area of GPUs, but drivers in general. Open drivers will happen, bet on it.
As I see it, the gist of your point boils down to the following...
"To a driver, ignition makes the car run - is it sufficient to have the average user need to understand further principles of ignition and internal combustion in order to be considered an adequate user of a driving vehicle?"
Yes. Hell yes.
Complex shit is complex. If you try to treat it like it's simple shit, you're going to break it. That's all there is to it.
[GPLv2] puts some pretty serious restrictions on what can be done with modified code, for instance. It actually takes away a lot of freedom, when we think of freedom as measured for the entire community, and not just the developers/users of the GPL'ed software.
Wait a minute. If the "developers and users" aren't the community, then exactly who else are you referring to? Not a troll, serious question.
Fiscally, it is a disaster, as lifespans increase and the working population decreases.
Let me fix this for you. "Fiscally, it didn't have to be a disaster, but as several consecutive administrations have unashamedly raided the Social Security coffers to pay for such follies as the Iraq war, to name only one, there has been less and less seed money to invest, leaving the otherwise perfectly healthy system in a hole from which it will probably never recover."
Wouldn't do it. The big dogs would pay the "tax" on everything they produced whether it was worth money or not, and the little guy wouldn't, whether it was worth money or not, at which point the big dog would snatch it up and lock it down. Status quo.
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OOo spreadsheets can export to PDF just fine. I realize that doesn't help anyone on the receiving end edit, but if they're just viewing the information you should have no problem.
.xls and .doc compatibility, maybe OOo could actually, y'know, innovate.
.xls files, use Excel. I've heard it does that.
The sad truth is that at the moment an overwhelming majority of random users turn to Excel as their default spreadsheet. That makes any differences between the two OOo's problem, not Excel's.
I still respectfully disagree. Especially if you're not in an office environment and they can download and install OOo just as easily as anyone else.
I really believe if people would just get over the fact that these are two different application suites (one of which uses non-documented binary formatting deliberately to break compatibility) and stop pouring so much effort into
And at the moment accurate document exchange with Excel is a make-or-break requirement for OOo.
Not for everyone. If you absolutely must have perfect
Because Excel is defective (yes, by design), you gave up on OOo and use Excel?
I'm not trying to talk you down here or anything, I understand the necessity if you work an an MS shop, I live in the real world too. But I do take umbrage in your describing this as "your biggest problem with OOo."
FWIW, I have experienced some of the same formatting issues you describe. I am lucky enough to have the freedom where I could say "Well, fuck Excel then."
Have you tried KOffice? It's got some ground to make up on the "ease-of-use" front, but it's surprisingly speedy and responsive, and beats the piss out of Abiword/Gnumeric for features.
I couldn't find any info on that either, but presumably, as it is based on OpenOffice, it'll be GPL.
I'll be happy to match your contribution to the fund. Shit or get off the pot.
I agree. But the fact remains that the software is out there, it costs US$0, and if it's not on the laptop when you buy it, you bet your ass Dell should get a phone call. The isn't a "Linux" problem. This is a "lazy OEM" problem.
Spreadsheets are not a basic windows function. That is MS Office - an advanced user's add-on.
"Advanced user's add-on?" Hell, half the people I run into on a daily basis don't even know that MS Office is not, in fact, a component of Windows. As far as Joe Luser is concerned, if he buys a computer that doesn't make a spreadsheet, that fucker's broken, and I agree. Both you and GP are correct. Spreadsheets are not a "basic Windows function." Therefore, Windows is broken.
Once again, we aren't talking about Outlook, which is an Office item.
See above. If the computer doesn't do these things out of the box and without hassle, it is broken. Why Windows boosters see this clearly w/r/t (to pull an example from TFA) touchpad configuration or video acceleration, but not spreadsheets and email, is totally beyond me.
But I used my wife's iPod, and it is simply a better, more user-friendly experience.
I don't get it. They drive me insane. I can't use them without looking at them, and I'm always scrolling too far or not far enough. Ironically, I actually have a Cowon player (an iAudio X5), and love it. I find the joystick to be a good middle ground between the "buttons" idea and the "wheel" idea. Totally subjective, I know.
Itunes is another reason for the casual user.
I'll see your generalization and raise you two anecdotes. Most of the people I know who own iPods (early to mid twenties people, mostly) say they loathe iTunes but use it anyway because "that's what comes with it." 'Struth: one acquaintance of mine, upon seeing me plug my player into a USB drive and have it come up as a drive, actually asked me "How'd you do that?" I am not kidding.
I could see this being a generational difference, though. People who didn't grow up (and I mean as a small child) with a computer at hand tend much more toward the whole "computer as appliance" idea, and thus probably like the idea of iTunes a lot more.
should a software license control what you can do with the hardware?
Of course not, and neither should a corporation. It's not TiVo's hardware anymore. I paid money. If it wasn't enough to cover their bottom line, too damn bad. (Note this is hypothetical. I don't even own a television.)
People want cell phones with a service contract. People want to lease cars rather than pay the full price up front. People want a low cost game console that only plays high-priced games. The market shows this.
"The market?" Let's take the easiest example to shoot down (because it's the one I'm more knowledgeable about), game consoles. If four megacorporations decide that they are going to sell their consoles for (let's say) $200 - $400, and games for $50 - $75, and there are no alternatives to these four products because smaller concerns don't have the economy of scale necessary to build their own consoles at any competitive price (circuit boards are expensive to make unless you're making them 5,000,000 at a time), that's not a free market. All that shows is that given one of those four options or nothing at all, people will buy one of them.
Please correct any flaws in my logic. I fuck up sometimes.
best wishes-
p.
I can't help but note the irony of your sig right now.
That means no welfare, social security, free/reduced lunch programs, universal health care, special programs for minorities, etc. That's what prevents Libertarians from joining up with the Left.
Well then, that's just fucking stupid. And if/when you finally get your dream society and all the people who used to (make your burger/pump your gas/mop your office/etc.) die of scurvy through malnutrition and lack of health care and you actually have to do those things yourself, you'll see why.
And besides, that's not libertarianism. That's classic Head-In-Ass Republicanism, and it's been an utter failure to accomplish anything good in this country, ever.
You know, someone gave me this very argument in 2004. I did end up voting Democratic, holding my nose and hating myself the whole time, but I had bought the "lesser of two evils" argument. Incidentally, my party of choice (not Libertarian) did not get the necessary 5% to assure further state funding in the next election. Now you tell me, in this scenario, who wasted whose vote and when?
You see, the command line or text messages with a black background mean nothing to the user. For all purposes, if they don't see something that resembles their desktop, they think their computer is broken. They also don't care if they have to type in one command to fix it because to them, learning that the command line exists and that you can even enter text commands is too much to deal with.
Not true. Maybe to a ten year old, but anyone over the age of consent remembers having an Apple II in their elementary school. I said this already in another post, but to reiterate: we were all navigating directory structures via CLI at age six. And I've found that, with my clients (I install and service desktop Linux machines), that metaphor goes a long way because they do remember that.
I just don't think people are as stupid as you seem to think they are.
most college age computer users have never used a PC without a mouse and GUI, ever.
I just don't think that's true. I am a "just-post-college-age computer user" (I'm 26), and I came up on the Apple Deuce and MS-DOS, and later, in my teens, OS/2 and Windows. I think it would be much more accurate to say "this is the last generation of college age computer users who remember life before point-and-click." I don't think this generation is as scared of the prompt as you seem to think. I mean, c'mon, we were navigating directory structures via command line when we were six years old.
Years ago, Minnesota mandated highly costly smoking section ventilation. Business owners rushed out to comply with the new regulations, spending tens of thousands of dollars to bring their diner/bar/coffee shop/strip club up to code. This year, Minnesota passed the statewide smoking ban which will go into effect on October 1. Think anyone's getting their $10k back? I fucking doubt it.
Re: The oft-brandished "right of the poor waiter," ask any construction worker if he thinks he's got the "right" to not work in the sun (high exposure to which has been proven to cause cancer). Ask the dental assistant if he's got the "right" to not work with X-ray equipment. I mean, Jesus Christ, if you don't want to work in a smoky bar, go wait tables somewhere that doesn't have a smoking section. They're everywhere. If enough customers and employees want non-smoking establishments, they appear. This is Free Market 101, and it's been working great for decades.
Yeah, I mean come on Microsoft. You guys should have drivers for every single piece of hardware out there already
Which is the selfsame logic that MSFT drones have been applying to Linux for ten fucking years. Can someone turn on the ceiling fan? The irony's getting a little thick in here.
CHINA!!!! We're talking about CHINA!!!! CHINA CHINA CHINA!!!!11!!one1 Read the fucking article! It's about China!
Apparently, "+1 Interesting" is the new "-1 Off-Topic." You didn't even mention China in that post.
lack of specialized apps
Such as?
shaky hardware support
Such as?
and the usual suspects are to blame
Such as?
Users don't want 4 media players they can't figure out, they just want one good one.
Not so. I'm a very demanding user as far as AV applications go (no, I don't make music or movies, but half of my use of this computer is probably music-related, listening, tagging, sharing, etc.). And I want four good media players. I use JuK and Amarok (and sometimes gmusicbrowser) depending on whether I'm listening to a song or hanging out listening to music all day, and likewise with Kaffiene and Noatun for video, although that much less frequently. I see what you're saying there, but to just off-handedly say "Users want $THIS_THING" is oversimplistic.
Also, to speak to your general sentiment,
They WANT standards, they WANT one way to do things.
I can see what you're saying here. Even friends of mine who use the same distribution I do have, and who are fairly savvy people, have a moment of disorientation when sitting down at my desktop, because it is visually very far away from the defaults. But to say "That's the problem," I think, overlooks the fact that most of the mass market (including the entire corporate market) isn't going to tweak their desktop at all.
Along those lines there's things like the insistence of open source drivers.
But that pressure works. Look at Intel's new graphics chips. It hasn't worked everywhere, yet. And graphics especially is one arena where it's not just geek pressure, it's a big push from the gamers too, who want and damn well deserve to know what they're spending their $300 on. I gotta disagree with you, particularly in the area of GPUs, but drivers in general. Open drivers will happen, bet on it.
best-
p.
What's an Acrobat?
What's an Excel?
What's a Macintosh?
What's an XP?
What's a Quicktime?
What the fuck is an iPod?
This is the dumbest fucking thing I've read today. I lost three IQ points and forty five seconds on this, and I'd like them back.
As I see it, the gist of your point boils down to the following...
"To a driver, ignition makes the car run - is it sufficient to have the average user need to understand further principles of ignition and internal combustion in order to be considered an adequate user of a driving vehicle?"
Yes. Hell yes.
Complex shit is complex. If you try to treat it like it's simple shit, you're going to break it. That's all there is to it.
[GPLv2] puts some pretty serious restrictions on what can be done with modified code, for instance. It actually takes away a lot of freedom, when we think of freedom as measured for the entire community, and not just the developers/users of the GPL'ed software.
Wait a minute. If the "developers and users" aren't the community, then exactly who else are you referring to? Not a troll, serious question.
regards-
p.
Fiscally, it is a disaster, as lifespans increase and the working population decreases.
Let me fix this for you. "Fiscally, it didn't have to be a disaster, but as several consecutive administrations have unashamedly raided the Social Security coffers to pay for such follies as the Iraq war, to name only one, there has been less and less seed money to invest, leaving the otherwise perfectly healthy system in a hole from which it will probably never recover."
Wouldn't do it. The big dogs would pay the "tax" on everything they produced whether it was worth money or not, and the little guy wouldn't, whether it was worth money or not, at which point the big dog would snatch it up and lock it down. Status quo.