GIF got popular because everyone *thought* it was free for a long time before Unisys unearthed their submarine.
Flash and Real Audio are crap.
The PDF format is completely open and documented, and you arent required to agree to any licenses to use it or to write software that reads or writes it (And in fact there is quite a bit of software that does just that - you could go an entire life using PDF *without* using any software from Adobe)
Not arguing with you, just further debunking some of the MS spew you quoted.
"Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody."
Even this is MS classic twisting of words.
Open Source work *is* available to everybody. It is so available that no one (commercial company or not) is allowed to take it and lock it up into something that is NOT available to everybody.
"The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source."
You can *USE* any (Free and/or "Open") software you want, and no requirements are imposed. However, you are not permitted to make that software *part* of *your* software unless *your* software is also 'available to everybody'
Contrast this with proprietary software, where you aren't permitted to use it unless you fork over dough to its 'owners', you arent allowed to inspect it or modify it, or heaven forbid make it part of your software, at all.
RMS isnt excoriating Sun - he is trying to unconfuse people who misunderstood and thought Sun was releasing their java as Free or 'Open Source' software, when that it not even remotely close to what they are doing.
And a website that consisted of nothing but a PDF would be just as stupid as one consisting of nothing but flash.
PDF is for distribution of documents, and it works well for that
Flash is for.. well.. ever hear the phrase 'all flash and no substance'? lets just say that 'flash' is aptly named. And it is NOT well-designed for use as an 'interface'. I have never seen anything designed in flash that I would consider 'well designed to be usable' - its all awkward, slow, ugly, and designed for a specific screen resolution and completely unusable at anything notabley higher or lower.
So getting back to usability (not GOOD usablity, mind you, just basic) - even *with* a flash plugin, none of the form labels showed up when I tried to look at lazslo mail. Great portabilty there. I suppose it depends on Windows system fonts installed on the workstation. So much for "portable"
Flash is 'ok' for entertainment (cartoons/etc). It is utter crap for anything else, period.
It requires a 'flash' plugin, therefore doesnt work in a browser without it. When I saw the screenshot of laszlomail, I thought that maybe this was similar in quality and usefulness as Gmail's interface (which does NOT rely on flash [or swf, or whatever, it doesnt require any plugins]) but it turned out to be dismal instead.
EVERY 'interactive' website based on flash I have ever seen is slow, awkward, doesnt allow you to resize the text, and tried to turn everything into graphics instead of letting the browser render the text. Also, while I'm not blind myself, how the heck is a screenreader that someone is blind supposed to be able to 'read' the 'pictures of text' that these things use? If any government agency is using this as its public interface to anything important, without an alternate W3C html compliant interface, they should be smacked over the head.
Anyone using this crap should be forced to read the information at anybrowser.org (no, not my site, but one I highly recommend) for information on *useable* professional web development.
Well, it appears to be flash based, and while it sort of works, when I tried the laszlomail demo, none of the 'form' fields had labels, eg, I had no idea what to enter in each one. (FireFox, WITH the latest flash plugin, on FC5)
If it was truly portable, it wouldnt depend on flash. And to be honest, flash is a horrific thing for anything interactive. Its great for cartoons and entertainment, but nothing that you actually need to use for anything serious.
Perhaps you missed the part where 'Urge' files play ONLY in WMP, and *NOT* any other player. Not that iTunes is so much better - basically MS is (again) copying Apple.
In any case, they both suck. The only use for either would be as a means to (more easily than buying a CD) obtain the music to begin with, and then either through the inevitable break for the DRM, via an audio card with an unlocked digital-out, or perhaps via the DRM-software running in a VM with the host having a psuedo sound card device that does the capturing, so that one can end up with a non-DRM, more-widely supported format, which right now is MP3 (Yeah there may be tons of better formats, but right now about the only compressed format that almost *everything* can play is MP3)
Re:Developers can get a little annoyed about this
on
The CVS Cop-Out
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· Score: 1
Perhaps someone with your problem should elaborate further (like you just did in this post, about how you've fixed the problem, but you don't control the release process) instead of just saying 'Fixed in CVS'. And perhaps reroute each and every complaint or person complaining to the person that does control the release. Let them get the grief instead of you.
The US Airways message COULD well be spam, if you didnt specifically authorize or request US Airways to send you email.
Also, unless you work in the Internet/email field, are intensely aware of phishes and get six dozen of them a day, you CANNOT determine if a message is a phish or real just by looking at its rendered appearance in a typical end-user email program.
If the message is advertising something, you didnt specifically authorize or request the sender to send it to you, and you didnt want it, then it is spam.
Anyway, here are some simple rules for the average consumer regarding phishes. Please feel free to copy/print/reproduce as desired.
If you get a message requesting any personal info that you were not specifically expecting to receive, it is MOST likely fraudulent. Do NOT reply to or fill out any forms, click on any links, or call any phone numbers contained in any unsolicited message claiming to be from your bank, credit card company, the government, or any other business that is at all related to your financial matters, credit, identity, or other information you want to keep private and secure.
If you get an email claiming to be from a bank/business/other entity which you DO have an account with, and it suggests that there is any problem with your account(s), *CALL* them (using the number on your paper statement or that you previously obtained directly from them - NOT any number in the email), describe the email, be clear that you suspect it may be fraudulent, and ask for help. If you deal exclusively with them via a website, then go to that website in the manner that you have always normally done so (by hand-entering their direct address in your browser) and log in and check your account(s) there, and if anything suggests any problem communicate with them in whatever manner you usually would to request help - if nothing suggests a problem, then the email was probably fraudulent)
If you get an email claiming to be from a bank/business which you do NOT have an account with, absolutely ignore it, or if you feel compelled, report it to some appropriate authority.
PayPal and eBay are popular fraud targets.
IGNORE any email that claims to be from either of these that does not address you by your full name. Real emails from them will ALWAYS include your full name.
It IS ok to follow the instructions in an email if you were specifically expecting to receive that email message from that entity at that email address (for instance the account signup procedure for both of them utilizes an email confirmation process)
If you do get an email that you do think might be real but that you were NOT expecting, do NOT follow its instructions - instead log in to your PayPal/eBay account in the normal way (by directly hand-entering their address into your browser.) If the email is legitimate then the same information should be presented to you from within their website - use the instructions (including any links) contained there, NOT any from the email.
Then the 'content provider' and the ISP that they choose to get their connectivity from need to negotiate terms acceptable to each.
End users and the ISP's that they choose (cough, where any choice exists, that is) need to negotiate (more cough) their terms as well.
The end user's ISP and the content provider have no need to be involved in any transactions if that ISP is not also the 'content providers'.
Inter-ISP and inter-backbone peering is something they have to work out.
If an end-user ISP wants to offer some sort of special delivery service to on-demand video providers that is desirable to them thats fine (and I would suggest it should involve a direct connection between them) as long as its an *adding* concept, as opposed to *subtracting* from others.
They are 'looking for testers' but nowhere on either article are any instructions or linked forms for anyone interested in being a tester. I also didn't find anything on their own site about them 'looking for testers'. They did have a normal 'contact us' page, but you'd think if they were actively seeking testers they'd actually say that somewhere and have some specific contact instructions - even so much as 'Call us and ask for Dr. So-and-so'
Banks demand it eve if you are only opening a non-interest bearing account (eg checking).
They especially demand it if you are opening an interest-charing account (eg a credit card), becuase the CRA's have improperly used it as the key to their files.
As for your last statement about the 74 act - I wholeheartedly agree.
Under the current law you are not required to give your SSN to any private business. However, there is no law prohibiting them from refusing to do business with you if you dont give it willingly.
A law prohibiting private businesses from demanding SSN as a condition of doing business would be nice, since that number is supposed to be used ONLY for administration of Social Security. Sam's Club, the gas company, the phone company, etc, have nothing to do with the administration of SS.
The SSA's requirement and authorization to use the SSN is obvious.
The IRS and employers use is slightly less, but not terriby debatable.
Banks are required by law to collect it for anyone that opens any type of account. This law could be in conflict with the original promised use of the SSN.
Insurance companies are not *required* to use SSN's by any law, but have chosen on their own to refuse to do business with you if you dont give it to them.
And that last applies to phone companies (wired and cell), cable companies, other utilities, and many other businesses that all report it to credit reporting agencies. All of this conflicts with the original promised use, as they are using it as a universal identifier so that if any of them have a dispute with you they report it to the central agency and then the others can all refuse to do business with you. Add in identity theft, and their uncaring attitude, and its a mess. There is NO reason Sam's Club and your phone company should have access to an official unique identifier tying each of their records about you together.
So you have a problem with being forced to buy hardware you'd rather not, but you are ok with being forced to buy software you'd rather not.
I don't like the Apple model either - but what you are missing is that the closed hardware drivers model *leads* to the Apple model. I wouldnt be surprised if MS was secretly leveraging the HW makers not to release their specs (except of course to MS itself) (regardless of what either of them claims in public)
Also, OSX, as nice as it may be, isn't Free Software either. That said, I'd love if it were (officially) possible to run it on stock x86 hardware. (Perhaps you didnt realize you can do it unofficialy)
"That's good, because it caused Microsoft to respond by opening up Office 2007's formats as a standard too (a move that OO.o and their allies didn't foresee)."
Ah, but thats where you are wrong. MS *pretended* to open up their formats. In reality, there will still be XML-encoded binary portions that will only be understandable using MS provided Windows-only libraries, and their licensing terms prohibit GPL software from implementing it.
ODF had to have somwhere to start - it would have taken quite a bit longer if they started from scratch, and Oo's format already existed, and was already full open and unrestricted, so it was a reasonable place to start.
Personally, I consider 'Word Processing' something you do with text that you intend to print (or to dump to a print ready format such as PDF or PS) not something you publish directly or share with anyone except someone you are specifically sharing the task of preparing the text for print. Plain text is so much more suitable for email and for short electronically distributed communication where a PDF would be overkill.
A word processor format is really a poor choice for communication between organizations, wether its restricted (MS) or free for anyone to implement (ODF), but if they are going to do it, they should certainly use one that fits the latter category, becuase then they arent forcing other businesses choice of software brand. Up until ODF's approval, none existed in that category. Now that an unrestricted standard exists, everyone can start using it, MS will eventually be forced to support it natively, and the 'Word Processor' market will hopefully have a chance to someday regain its health and competitiveness.
Yes, its absolutely inane to buy an expensive Mac to run Windows on - but if enough people are inane enough to do that, and eventually realize that OSX sucks a whole lot less that Windows, thats good. Call it a 'backwards compatible upgrade path' - for people that want to try OSX but may be tied to some old legacy Windows-only application.
It would be infinitely more useful in the long run to be able to run OSX on stock x86 hardware, and avoid both the expensive MS tax *and* the expensive Mac hardware, *and* get an OS that doesnt suck, *and* hardware that was more upgradable and flexible.
For the record, I was able to hit their site (FireFox on Fedora), register with a throwaway email address (as always), and navigate to their free music and play it, without a hitch. I havent figured out exactly how they are doing it, but it seems to be using flash. Someone else mention extracting the (apparently very low quality) music from the flash file, and one could always use a capture-to-file sound driver as well. Presumably they know this, and presumably whoever owns the (C) on the music has signed off on it. Wether the songs will be scraped from the free plays and redistributed remains to be seen.
The problem is that once a monopoly is acheived, it is IMPOSSIBLE for any other legitimate business to ever exist, and the monopolist has no incentive to make their pruducts more useful to their customers, and EVERY incentive to make it harder to interoperate with anything else that might manage to barely exist.
Just becuase there are 'lots of computers' doesnt mean the technology is what it could be. IMNSHO, MS has actually hindered the advancement of technology. It is a thriving competitive industry that drives useful innovation, not one company's monopolistic drive to innovate new ways to prevent competition.
And yes, I recognize that I am at the extreme end. When there is a 10 million pound gorilla on one side of a see-saw, the more you can get on the other end the better. Unfortunately, the side that MS sits on is still on the floor, and its almost impossible to actually stay in the middle - most people that try have a very hard time staying there and often dont realize that they are slowly slipping toward MS, and so many dont bother trying, and just happily slide down toward MS end, helping to ensure that MS side of the see-saw stays firmly on the ground. To even hope to have a chance of helping those in the middle be able to stay there, many people have built on extensions to the non-MS end, making it longer in the hopes of getting more leverage to try and balance the see-saw to give folks in the middle a chance to stay level.
Personally, I'd much rather that more and more people see how bad it is for the average person to have only one choice, and actively help to rebalance the see-saw. But so many people don't realize that the tipped see-saw isnt the normal condition, and just don't care.
Unfortunately, the 'try some MS, you'll like it' sounds all too familiar.
Also, if the industry/market was a normal competitive market, I wouldnt have a problem with MS itself. I personally don't like their interface, the way their system works - I prefer unix. But my position is about more than that. Its about trying to bring the market back to a healthy competitive state. And that requires actively boycotting MS, and encouraging anyone I can to do so as well.
MS will NOT play fair unless they are forced to, either through legislation, or organized opposition. Only once they no longer have the near unlimited monopoly power they do now will I consider them a reasonable choice for anything (and then still, not for my personal use - I absolutely hate the Windows-way of doing things - this applies all the way back to 3.1 as well - When it came out, I tried it, it sucked, I ditched it, and then eventually needing a way to do TCP/IP (which DOS just didnt do), I went to Linux, and have never gone back to the MS way.
I didn't 'grade' your paper. I just pointed out some errors that might make you seem illiterate. By all means write and spell however you want. People often judge your intelligence, and wether its worth listening to (or reading) you by how well you do.
For another, I was merely replying to you. I wasn't commenting on the original issue (as you correctly noted, the thread has gone somewhat offtopic)
And I really do hope that you don't really think that it would be ok for Bill Gates to murder or steal - this may be a free nation, but we are also a nation of laws. And while there may be some morality topics that are the subject of debate, murder and theft are fairly universally agreed to be 'wrong.'
And yes, educating people that they have a choice is good. But the monopolist has the power to make it very difficult to impossible for people to make those choices, or at least, once they have chosen, to prevent them from making a different choice in the future. So that is one reason to make the choice now, and not in the monopolist's favor.
Also educating people about why they should make certain choices is important. Some choose becuase they like to use software that isn't susceptible to the latest 'virus or trojan of the hour'. Some choose becuase they like software that doesn't crash or doesn't force you into a particular way of doing things. Some choose because they don't like their data stored in secret formats that might prevent them from making a differnt choice in the future. Some are unable to, becuase they have to exchange data with others that are too short-sighted to make the choice, and instead of using openly documented file formats and communications protocols, the MS software they use can only communicate with other MS software. Can you imagine if in order to make a phone call to someone you had to have the exact same brand of telephone? In the real world it would never fly - there are many different brands of phone, and one that didnt work with other brands would be DOA. It flies in the 'Word Processor' and 'Spreadsheet' worlds, ONLY becuase MS has an illegal monopoly. The end of the monopoly will mean open formats, and open formats will mean the end of the monopoly. Not today, not in the next year or two. But eventually it will, unless MS manages to get Palladium (or whatever they are calling it today) slipped into every commodity PC or motherboard made that lets them restrict what software can run. Then we will all be stuck and it will be too late to do anything about it.
Some do it for Software Freedom (RMS' kind). Some because they lament the sorry state that computer software and technology is in under MS control, and wait for the day that industry will be a healthy, competitive market. And quite frankly, MS in its current state couldn't compete in that kind of market. They are FAR better at marketeering and 'FUD' than they are at actually making useful reliable software.
Slashdot Mirror
GIF got popular because everyone *thought* it was free for a long time before Unisys unearthed their submarine.
Flash and Real Audio are crap.
The PDF format is completely open and documented, and you arent required to agree to any licenses to use it or to write software that reads or writes it (And in fact there is quite a bit of software that does just that - you could go an entire life using PDF *without* using any software from Adobe)
Not arguing with you, just further debunking some of the MS spew you quoted.
"Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody."
Even this is MS classic twisting of words.
Open Source work *is* available to everybody. It is so available that no one (commercial company or not) is allowed to take it and lock it up into something that is NOT available to everybody.
"The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source."
You can *USE* any (Free and/or "Open") software you want, and no requirements are imposed. However, you are not permitted to make that software *part* of *your* software unless *your* software is also 'available to everybody'
Contrast this with proprietary software, where you aren't permitted to use it unless you fork over dough to its 'owners', you arent allowed to inspect it or modify it, or heaven forbid make it part of your software, at all.
*They* contacted *him* asking him some tech questions. He *did* specifically tell them he was NOT interested in participating in any case.
RMS isnt excoriating Sun - he is trying to unconfuse people who misunderstood and thought Sun was releasing their java as Free or 'Open Source' software, when that it not even remotely close to what they are doing.
And a website that consisted of nothing but a PDF would be just as stupid as one consisting of nothing but flash.
PDF is for distribution of documents, and it works well for that
Flash is for.. well.. ever hear the phrase 'all flash and no substance'? lets just say that 'flash' is aptly named. And it is NOT well-designed for use as an 'interface'. I have never seen anything designed in flash that I would consider 'well designed to be usable' - its all awkward, slow, ugly, and designed for a specific screen resolution and completely unusable at anything notabley higher or lower.
So getting back to usability (not GOOD usablity, mind you, just basic) - even *with* a flash plugin, none of the form labels showed up when I tried to look at lazslo mail. Great portabilty there. I suppose it depends on Windows system fonts installed on the workstation. So much for "portable"
Flash is 'ok' for entertainment (cartoons/etc). It is utter crap for anything else, period.
It requires a 'flash' plugin, therefore doesnt work in a browser without it. When I saw the screenshot of laszlomail, I thought that maybe this was similar in quality and usefulness as Gmail's interface (which does NOT rely on flash [or swf, or whatever, it doesnt require any plugins]) but it turned out to be dismal instead.
EVERY 'interactive' website based on flash I have ever seen is slow, awkward, doesnt allow you to resize the text, and tried to turn everything into graphics instead of letting the browser render the text. Also, while I'm not blind myself, how the heck is a screenreader that someone is blind supposed to be able to 'read' the 'pictures of text' that these things use? If any government agency is using this as its public interface to anything important, without an alternate W3C html compliant interface, they should be smacked over the head.
Anyone using this crap should be forced to read the information at anybrowser.org (no, not my site, but one I highly recommend) for information on *useable* professional web development.
Well, it appears to be flash based, and while it sort of works, when I tried the laszlomail demo, none of the 'form' fields had labels, eg, I had no idea what to enter in each one. (FireFox, WITH the latest flash plugin, on FC5)
If it was truly portable, it wouldnt depend on flash. And to be honest, flash is a horrific thing for anything interactive. Its great for cartoons and entertainment, but nothing that you actually need to use for anything serious.
I may have led a sheltered life, but I have yet to hear of a Doctor writing a prescription for music.
Perhaps you missed the part where 'Urge' files play ONLY in WMP, and *NOT* any other player. Not that iTunes is so much better - basically MS is (again) copying Apple.
In any case, they both suck. The only use for either would be as a means to (more easily than buying a CD) obtain the music to begin with, and then either through the inevitable break for the DRM, via an audio card with an unlocked digital-out, or perhaps via the DRM-software running in a VM with the host having a psuedo sound card device that does the capturing, so that one can end up with a non-DRM, more-widely supported format, which right now is MP3 (Yeah there may be tons of better formats, but right now about the only compressed format that almost *everything* can play is MP3)
Perhaps someone with your problem should elaborate further (like you just did in this post, about how you've fixed the problem, but you don't control the release process) instead of just saying 'Fixed in CVS'. And perhaps reroute each and every complaint or person complaining to the person that does control the release. Let them get the grief instead of you.
The US Airways message COULD well be spam, if you didnt specifically authorize or request US Airways to send you email.
Also, unless you work in the Internet/email field, are intensely aware of phishes and get six dozen of them a day, you CANNOT determine if a message is a phish or real just by looking at its rendered appearance in a typical end-user email program.
If the message is advertising something, you didnt specifically authorize or request the sender to send it to you, and you didnt want it, then it is spam.
Anyway, here are some simple rules for the average consumer regarding phishes. Please feel free to copy/print/reproduce as desired.
If you get a message requesting any personal info that you were not specifically expecting to receive, it is MOST likely fraudulent. Do NOT reply to or fill out any forms, click on any links, or call any phone numbers contained in any unsolicited message claiming to be from your bank, credit card company, the government, or any other business that is at all related to your financial matters, credit, identity, or other information you want to keep private and secure.
If you get an email claiming to be from a bank/business/other entity which you DO have an account with, and it suggests that there is any problem with your account(s), *CALL* them (using the number on your paper statement or that you previously obtained directly from them - NOT any number in the email), describe the email, be clear that you suspect it may be fraudulent, and ask for help. If you deal exclusively with them via a website, then go to that website in the manner that you have always normally done so (by hand-entering their direct address in your browser) and log in and check your account(s) there, and if anything suggests any problem communicate with them in whatever manner you usually would to request help - if nothing suggests a problem, then the email was probably fraudulent)
If you get an email claiming to be from a bank/business which you do NOT have an account with, absolutely ignore it, or if you feel compelled, report it to some appropriate authority.
PayPal and eBay are popular fraud targets.
IGNORE any email that claims to be from either of these that does not address you by your full name. Real emails from them will ALWAYS include your full name.
It IS ok to follow the instructions in an email if you were specifically expecting to receive that email message from that entity at that email address (for instance the account signup procedure for both of them utilizes an email confirmation process)
If you do get an email that you do think might be real but that you were NOT expecting, do NOT follow its instructions - instead log in to your PayPal/eBay account in the normal way (by directly hand-entering their address into your browser.) If the email is legitimate then the same information should be presented to you from within their website - use the instructions (including any links) contained there, NOT any from the email.
Then the 'content provider' and the ISP that they choose to get their connectivity from need to negotiate terms acceptable to each.
End users and the ISP's that they choose (cough, where any choice exists, that is) need to negotiate (more cough) their terms as well.
The end user's ISP and the content provider have no need to be involved in any transactions if that ISP is not also the 'content providers'.
Inter-ISP and inter-backbone peering is something they have to work out.
If an end-user ISP wants to offer some sort of special delivery service to on-demand video providers that is desirable to them thats fine (and I would suggest it should involve a direct connection between them) as long as its an *adding* concept, as opposed to *subtracting* from others.
They are 'looking for testers' but nowhere on either article are any instructions or linked forms for anyone interested in being a tester. I also didn't find anything on their own site about them 'looking for testers'. They did have a normal 'contact us' page, but you'd think if they were actively seeking testers they'd actually say that somewhere and have some specific contact instructions - even so much as 'Call us and ask for Dr. So-and-so'
Instead of offering VoIP, instead offer content-neutral Internet access, and let customers use their own choice of VoIP providers.
Banks demand it eve if you are only opening a non-interest bearing account (eg checking).
They especially demand it if you are opening an interest-charing account (eg a credit card), becuase the CRA's have improperly used it as the key to their files.
As for your last statement about the 74 act - I wholeheartedly agree.
Under the current law you are not required to give your SSN to any private business. However, there is no law prohibiting them from refusing to do business with you if you dont give it willingly.
A law prohibiting private businesses from demanding SSN as a condition of doing business would be nice, since that number is supposed to be used ONLY for administration of Social Security. Sam's Club, the gas company, the phone company, etc, have nothing to do with the administration of SS.
The SSA's requirement and authorization to use the SSN is obvious.
The IRS and employers use is slightly less, but not terriby debatable.
Banks are required by law to collect it for anyone that opens any type of account. This law could be in conflict with the original promised use of the SSN.
Insurance companies are not *required* to use SSN's by any law, but have chosen on their own to refuse to do business with you if you dont give it to them.
And that last applies to phone companies (wired and cell), cable companies, other utilities, and many other businesses that all report it to credit reporting agencies. All of this conflicts with the original promised use, as they are using it as a universal identifier so that if any of them have a dispute with you they report it to the central agency and then the others can all refuse to do business with you. Add in identity theft, and their uncaring attitude, and its a mess. There is NO reason Sam's Club and your phone company should have access to an official unique identifier tying each of their records about you together.
So you have a problem with being forced to buy hardware you'd rather not, but you are ok with being forced to buy software you'd rather not.
I don't like the Apple model either - but what you are missing is that the closed hardware drivers model *leads* to the Apple model. I wouldnt be surprised if MS was secretly leveraging the HW makers not to release their specs (except of course to MS itself) (regardless of what either of them claims in public)
Also, OSX, as nice as it may be, isn't Free Software either. That said, I'd love if it were (officially) possible to run it on stock x86 hardware. (Perhaps you didnt realize you can do it unofficialy)
Instead realize the truth - it is only yourself that bends.
We're not here because we're free, we're here because we're not free.
"That's good, because it caused Microsoft to respond by opening up Office 2007's formats as a standard too (a move that OO.o and their allies didn't foresee)."
Ah, but thats where you are wrong. MS *pretended* to open up their formats. In reality, there will still be XML-encoded binary portions that will only be understandable using MS provided Windows-only libraries, and their licensing terms prohibit GPL software from implementing it.
ODF had to have somwhere to start - it would have taken quite a bit longer if they started from scratch, and Oo's format already existed, and was already full open and unrestricted, so it was a reasonable place to start.
Personally, I consider 'Word Processing' something you do with text that you intend to print (or to dump to a print ready format such as PDF or PS) not something you publish directly or share with anyone except someone you are specifically sharing the task of preparing the text for print. Plain text is so much more suitable for email and for short electronically distributed communication where a PDF would be overkill.
A word processor format is really a poor choice for communication between organizations, wether its restricted (MS) or free for anyone to implement (ODF), but if they are going to do it, they should certainly use one that fits the latter category, becuase then they arent forcing other businesses choice of software brand. Up until ODF's approval, none existed in that category. Now that an unrestricted standard exists, everyone can start using it, MS will eventually be forced to support it natively, and the 'Word Processor' market will hopefully have a chance to someday regain its health and competitiveness.
Yes, its absolutely inane to buy an expensive Mac to run Windows on - but if enough people are inane enough to do that, and eventually realize that OSX sucks a whole lot less that Windows, thats good. Call it a 'backwards compatible upgrade path' - for people that want to try OSX but may be tied to some old legacy Windows-only application.
It would be infinitely more useful in the long run to be able to run OSX on stock x86 hardware, and avoid both the expensive MS tax *and* the expensive Mac hardware, *and* get an OS that doesnt suck, *and* hardware that was more upgradable and flexible.
For the record, I was able to hit their site (FireFox on Fedora), register with a throwaway email address (as always), and navigate to their free music and play it, without a hitch. I havent figured out exactly how they are doing it, but it seems to be using flash. Someone else mention extracting the (apparently very low quality) music from the flash file, and one could always use a capture-to-file sound driver as well. Presumably they know this, and presumably whoever owns the (C) on the music has signed off on it. Wether the songs will be scraped from the free plays and redistributed remains to be seen.
The problem is that once a monopoly is acheived, it is IMPOSSIBLE for any other legitimate business to ever exist, and the monopolist has no incentive to make their pruducts more useful to their customers, and EVERY incentive to make it harder to interoperate with anything else that might manage to barely exist.
Just becuase there are 'lots of computers' doesnt mean the technology is what it could be. IMNSHO, MS has actually hindered the advancement of technology. It is a thriving competitive industry that drives useful innovation, not one company's monopolistic drive to innovate new ways to prevent competition.
And yes, I recognize that I am at the extreme end. When there is a 10 million pound gorilla on one side of a see-saw, the more you can get on the other end the better. Unfortunately, the side that MS sits on is still on the floor, and its almost impossible to actually stay in the middle - most people that try have a very hard time staying there and often dont realize that they are slowly slipping toward MS, and so many dont bother trying, and just happily slide down toward MS end, helping to ensure that MS side of the see-saw stays firmly on the ground. To even hope to have a chance of helping those in the middle be able to stay there, many people have built on extensions to the non-MS end, making it longer in the hopes of getting more leverage to try and balance the see-saw to give folks in the middle a chance to stay level.
Personally, I'd much rather that more and more people see how bad it is for the average person to have only one choice, and actively help to rebalance the see-saw. But so many people don't realize that the tipped see-saw isnt the normal condition, and just don't care.
Unfortunately, the 'try some MS, you'll like it' sounds all too familiar.
Also, if the industry/market was a normal competitive market, I wouldnt have a problem with MS itself. I personally don't like their interface, the way their system works - I prefer unix. But my position is about more than that. Its about trying to bring the market back to a healthy competitive state. And that requires actively boycotting MS, and encouraging anyone I can to do so as well.
MS will NOT play fair unless they are forced to, either through legislation, or organized opposition. Only once they no longer have the near unlimited monopoly power they do now will I consider them a reasonable choice for anything (and then still, not for my personal use - I absolutely hate the Windows-way of doing things - this applies all the way back to 3.1 as well - When it came out, I tried it, it sucked, I ditched it, and then eventually needing a way to do TCP/IP (which DOS just didnt do), I went to Linux, and have never gone back to the MS way.
I didn't 'grade' your paper. I just pointed out some errors that might make you seem illiterate. By all means write and spell however you want. People often judge your intelligence, and wether its worth listening to (or reading) you by how well you do.
For one, no matter what you 'feel', MS *IS* a monopolist. They *HAVE* been convicted: http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit019.html
For another, I was merely replying to you. I wasn't commenting on the original issue (as you correctly noted, the thread has gone somewhat offtopic)
And I really do hope that you don't really think that it would be ok for Bill Gates to murder or steal - this may be a free nation, but we are also a nation of laws. And while there may be some morality topics that are the subject of debate, murder and theft are fairly universally agreed to be 'wrong.'
And yes, educating people that they have a choice is good. But the monopolist has the power to make it very difficult to impossible for people to make those choices, or at least, once they have chosen, to prevent them from making a different choice in the future. So that is one reason to make the choice now, and not in the monopolist's favor.
Also educating people about why they should make certain choices is important. Some choose becuase they like to use software that isn't susceptible to the latest 'virus or trojan of the hour'. Some choose becuase they like software that doesn't crash or doesn't force you into a particular way of doing things. Some choose because they don't like their data stored in secret formats that might prevent them from making a differnt choice in the future. Some are unable to, becuase they have to exchange data with others that are too short-sighted to make the choice, and instead of using openly documented file formats and communications protocols, the MS software they use can only communicate with other MS software. Can you imagine if in order to make a phone call to someone you had to have the exact same brand of telephone? In the real world it would never fly - there are many different brands of phone, and one that didnt work with other brands would be DOA. It flies in the 'Word Processor' and 'Spreadsheet' worlds, ONLY becuase MS has an illegal monopoly. The end of the monopoly will mean open formats, and open formats will mean the end of the monopoly. Not today, not in the next year or two. But eventually it will, unless MS manages to get Palladium (or whatever they are calling it today) slipped into every commodity PC or motherboard made that lets them restrict what software can run. Then we will all be stuck and it will be too late to do anything about it.
Some do it for Software Freedom (RMS' kind). Some because they lament the sorry state that computer software and technology is in under MS control, and wait for the day that industry will be a healthy, competitive market. And quite frankly, MS in its current state couldn't compete in that kind of market. They are FAR better at marketeering and 'FUD' than they are at actually making useful reliable software.