You fail to notice the very important point of the standard being broken by design: referring/pointing to unspecified behaviour (references to "the way Word95 does this or that" come to my mind).
You acknowledged that it has indeed happened that the specification needed more detail when you say that you've made Microsoft engineers amend the specification to include formulas documentation.
I do not blame them. OOXML is a superb standard and yet, it has been FUDed so badly by its competitors that serious people believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with it. This is at a time when OOXML as a spec is in much better shape than any other spec on that space. If you add the two previous paragraphs together, you'll see that the standard is broken now and it has been broken in the past, too. So I don't really understand why, on the basis that it's really simple to implement the "standard" by Microsoft, you go on and assert that it's "superb". Well, it's "superb" for them, that's for sure.
So there you have it, a mouthful of personal opinions. I bet you wanted to spend your time doing something else, like making out with your girlfriend (haha, just kidding, if you actually reading my opinion on OOXML you have no girlfriend to make out with). I'm really disappointed that you feel the need to ruin the discussion with this kind of nonsense.
Some people, including myself, are very happy with their wife and children, and have a fulfilling social life. Some people, like me, are concerned about topics like:
* how are documents going to be stored for years to come; * how governments, companies and people will cope with locked-up formats, expensive office suites and/or OSs required to access their own information, or information they should be freely entitled to access; * how people that contributes/contributed to FOSS in the past think, and how their doings may affect the future of FOSS and their users;
So, even if I'm finding your opinions very different to my own, I don't like being treated without respect.
To be honest, I expected better from you. Oh, well...
Or maybe you disregard your own opinion as something without any true value, something you produce for the masses as void entertainment.
It disgusted me to the guts. How vague and "TV-ad"-like can you make these things?
My favourite line was something like "the Open Source vendors don't give their customers the same level of protection than M$. What are they saying? That Linux is not good enough?". She's completely (and I think purposedly) missing the point.
I'd say M$ is pretty scared. They will be using the media and "research" groups/companies to support their case.
I would add that the "fear factor" is very important, too. If you read between the lines, most of the times people get quite irrational about choosing Linux/Unix/Non-Windows, and I think that's mainly because of: (a) fear of the unknown, (b) fear of what changes might bring, (c) incompetence.
(a). Some people just don't get comfortable doing anything that they feel would mean (1) effort on their part, (2) something that could prove the previous decisions they've made look bad/wrong. I don't have to ellaborate on the laziness/lack of motivation, I think that in most cases that is directly related to lack of "hard work" culture, and also that -in my opinion- most people in the IT industry don't really like IT. They like what they feel the IT industry provides: easy money, a career with future, whatever. Most people are not geeks, and I dare to say that most people have almost nothing geeky in them. The second point is more interesting, as that is a direct attack on some people's (already low) ego. You see, I've seen (many times) people get quite irrational just by the mere thought of being proved wrong, even by their own line of thought. They feel comfortable, they can find other people to "bond"/relate that go through the same process. I find this subject very interesting. Maybe sometimes the "cool" factor helps to bring some of the defensiveness down, ie. when they feel that by doing the "new thing" (ie. Install Linux/Unix/learning something that is "opposite" to what they already know/believe) they'll be "cooler" or -maybe- earn more money.
(b). This should not be underestimated. As an example, someone already pointed out that he believes ZDNet fears promoting Linux just for the possibility of pushing a change that would "hurt" them (directly or indirectly). While you could argue about this example (which I can't say it's justified or not), this example serves as just that: an example of something I'm sure we all experience quite often: seeing people fall in the strategic position of telling you: "but if what you say is right, then we'll need less people in the department for doing the same job, and that would mean *I* could be the 'expendable' one". Or, "but by using that programming language I would then 'lose' my value, so let's just keep using this language/tool/library/whatever, ok?". I'm sure you all get the idea.
Of course, change almost always means risk. It's just a matter of willing to manage yourself under different circumstances.
Businesses, on the other hand, can quantify risk and go with it. For instance, if employees are not willing to use the new technology, they can hire someone new (they should've factored that in the costs equation), train people, etc.
But ultimately, at some level people can twist facts and make up "suggestions" that they feel will prevent things from happening. In particular, think that while a CIO would think that using Linux would be a good idea, the people that will have to do the actual work can start complaining and can help undermine the proposed changes.
(c). And about incompetence, well... That's clear. I doubt a considerable number of people are really incompetent, but it's still something to consider (that someone could be saying something just because they're incompetent). You should also account for sheer corruption and strategic alliances (such as *having* to support Microsoft because the company you work for has an "agreement" with MS, etc.).
I think the whole subject is much deeper than what I'm saying here, but I suspect it's a good starting point for understanding why these things happen.
I am using Lefthack and Lefty simultaneosuly. They give you great results on most applications.
On the other hand, there are many applications (FlashPro, MailMan (or was it another mail app?), even some app launchers!)) that just don't work as expected, ie. messing up window contents, making it very hard for us to stand it.
I hope there will be hacks that will be configurable in an 'application' basis or some other more-serious scheme. Suppose I detect an ill-behaved application, I'd just select it in the 'uncompatible applications' list. This functionality extension is not that hard to do!
Slashdot Mirror
You fail to notice the very important point of the standard being broken by design: referring/pointing to unspecified behaviour (references to "the way Word95 does this or that" come to my mind).
You acknowledged that it has indeed happened that the specification needed more detail when you say that you've made Microsoft engineers amend the specification to include formulas documentation. I do not blame them. OOXML is a superb standard and yet, it has been
FUDed so badly by its competitors that serious people believe that
there is something fundamentally wrong with it. This is at a time when
OOXML as a spec is in much better shape than any other spec on that
space. If you add the two previous paragraphs together, you'll see that the standard is broken now and it has been broken in the past, too. So I don't really understand why, on the basis that it's really simple to implement the "standard" by Microsoft, you go on and assert that it's "superb". Well, it's "superb" for them, that's for sure. So there you have it, a mouthful of personal opinions. I bet you wanted to spend your time doing something else, like making out with your girlfriend (haha, just kidding, if you actually reading my opinion on OOXML you have no girlfriend to make out with). I'm really disappointed that you feel the need to ruin the discussion with this kind of nonsense.
Some people, including myself, are very happy with their wife and children, and have a fulfilling social life. Some people, like me, are concerned about topics like:
* how are documents going to be stored for years to come;
* how governments, companies and people will cope with locked-up formats, expensive office suites and/or OSs required to access their own information, or information they should be freely entitled to access;
* how people that contributes/contributed to FOSS in the past think, and how their doings may affect the future of FOSS and their users;
So, even if I'm finding your opinions very different to my own, I don't like being treated without respect.
To be honest, I expected better from you. Oh, well...
Or maybe you disregard your own opinion as something without any true value, something you produce for the masses as void entertainment.
wxWidgets (http://www.wxwidgets.org/) does the job. I know, it's not a complete abstraction layer, but it's good enough for applications such as Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/). You can see a list of some applications that use wxWidgets at http://www.wxwidgets.org/apps2.htm).
It's fast, well designed (although not *that* good, in my opinion), and mature.
Horrible and obvious, fallaciously filled video.
It disgusted me to the guts. How vague and "TV-ad"-like can you make these things?
My favourite line was something like "the Open Source vendors don't give their customers the same level of protection than M$. What are they saying? That Linux is not good enough?". She's completely (and I think purposedly) missing the point.
I'd say M$ is pretty scared. They will be using the media and "research" groups/companies to support their case.
I would add that the "fear factor" is very important, too. If you read between the lines, most of the times people get quite irrational about choosing Linux/Unix/Non-Windows, and I think that's mainly because of: (a) fear of the unknown, (b) fear of what changes might bring, (c) incompetence.
(a). Some people just don't get comfortable doing anything that they feel would mean (1) effort on their part, (2) something that could prove the previous decisions they've made look bad/wrong. I don't have to ellaborate on the laziness/lack of motivation, I think that in most cases that is directly related to lack of "hard work" culture, and also that -in my opinion- most people in the IT industry don't really like IT. They like what they feel the IT industry provides: easy money, a career with future, whatever. Most people are not geeks, and I dare to say that most people have almost nothing geeky in them. The second point is more interesting, as that is a direct attack on some people's (already low) ego. You see, I've seen (many times) people get quite irrational just by the mere thought of being proved wrong, even by their own line of thought. They feel comfortable, they can find other people to "bond"/relate that go through the same process. I find this subject very interesting. Maybe sometimes the "cool" factor helps to bring some of the defensiveness down, ie. when they feel that by doing the "new thing" (ie. Install Linux/Unix/learning something that is "opposite" to what they already know/believe) they'll be "cooler" or -maybe- earn more money.
(b). This should not be underestimated. As an example, someone already pointed out that he believes ZDNet fears promoting Linux just for the possibility of pushing a change that would "hurt" them (directly or indirectly). While you could argue about this example (which I can't say it's justified or not), this example serves as just that: an example of something I'm sure we all experience quite often: seeing people fall in the strategic position of telling you: "but if what you say is right, then we'll need less people in the department for doing the same job, and that would mean *I* could be the 'expendable' one". Or, "but by using that programming language I would then 'lose' my value, so let's just keep using this language/tool/library/whatever, ok?". I'm sure you all get the idea.
Of course, change almost always means risk. It's just a matter of willing to manage yourself under different circumstances.
Businesses, on the other hand, can quantify risk and go with it. For instance, if employees are not willing to use the new technology, they can hire someone new (they should've factored that in the costs equation), train people, etc.
But ultimately, at some level people can twist facts and make up "suggestions" that they feel will prevent things from happening. In particular, think that while a CIO would think that using Linux would be a good idea, the people that will have to do the actual work can start complaining and can help undermine the proposed changes.
(c). And about incompetence, well... That's clear. I doubt a considerable number of people are really incompetent, but it's still something to consider (that someone could be saying something just because they're incompetent). You should also account for sheer corruption and strategic alliances (such as *having* to support Microsoft because the company you work for has an "agreement" with MS, etc.).
I think the whole subject is much deeper than what I'm saying here, but I suspect it's a good starting point for understanding why these things happen.
I am using Lefthack and Lefty simultaneosuly. They give you great results on most applications.
:-)
On the other hand, there are many applications (FlashPro, MailMan (or was it another mail app?), even some app launchers!)) that just don't work as expected, ie. messing up window contents, making it very hard for us to stand it.
I hope there will be hacks that will be configurable in an 'application' basis or some other more-serious scheme. Suppose I detect an ill-behaved application, I'd just select it in the 'uncompatible applications' list. This functionality extension is not that hard to do!
Good luck to *us* all, lefties!