The open office group should get together with the rest of the guys (abyword, koffice and maybe wordperfect) and work out a format that can be submitted to the ISO. Possibly based on the open office format. Then goverments and corporation will adopt it for official documents so they can read their own documents in ten years.
You are absolutely correct sir. This is something I've been ranting about for ages.
An excellent point sir. That's a great illustration of how Microsoft approaches 'open' file formats.
People that think that MS Office is going to move to open, well documented file formats are just plain nuts. But look at many of the comments in this forum - it seems MS has even managed to persuade many Slashdotters that they are going to use open formats. Poor fools.
Perhaps these announcements of XML compatible office file formats are just stalling tactics? MS has done it before.
MS now has a serious competitor in StarOffice/OpenOffice.org. And that competitor has two compelling advantages - it's cheaper/free, and open XML file formats. So when clued-up IT people say to their Pointy-Haired Bosses that they should use StarOffice/OpenOffice.org, PHBs can respond "but MS is doing that next year. We can avoid all the disruption of changing office suites just by waiting a bit and upgrading to the next version of MS Office. Besides, we're already paying for it." Then when MS actually releases Office 11, they will have used all sorts of devious and subtle devices to keep their lock-in of the file format, and MS and PHBs will be happy.
There's lots of speculation here about MS doing stuff to create lock-in with this new format, but I want to actually see the format. Is there any documentation anywhere about it? Or does someone out there have a document in the new format that we can take a look at? Of course, being XML we should be able to just open it and take a look. That would put an end to all this speculation.
Programming, or brain work in general, is not a repeatable, repetitive, explicitly definable operation which can be performed by unskilled laborours in any part of the world.
Actually the higher the quality control, the nearer programming becomes a repeatable, repetitive, explicitly definable operation. Unfortuantely this also makes it extremely boring.
I've done programming for "mission critical" systems for some major international banks. The scope for creativity was zero. Everything has a precise methodology, down to the last full stop, and everything was checked and rechecked. As a creative person, it drove me nuts. But I could see it could be something that would be ideal for outsourcing to China or India (which is what I believe many banks now do).
I mean, the government gets whatever it wants, because it has all the power. It has all the power because it has all the guns, and that is especially true in the UK.
I feel sorry for a certain type of American. You don't realise how screwed up your world-view is.
Perhaps that's good, although I'd like to see an option where you can choose to apply the feature to all links leading to HTML pages.
What would be great is if it could recognise if a page is of thumbnail images, and then automatically download the linked images. It would make browsing porn much quicker.
[..] It might not be so far fetched to think that airborn microbes could be living in similar extream enviroments on another planet.
I don't think it is far fetched. However, it seems that whenever some odd phenomenon is seem on another planet the first conculsion these days seems to be that it is a sign of life, and more probable conclusions are ignored. I don't think real scientists do themselves justice by speculating on flimsy evidence.
I mean with no offince once or ever how many people out of that 1,000,000,000 have phone, computer, internet, 60" tvs, sattlite tv with 500 channels and what ever other junk that we all crave
India has a large middle-class and many wealthy people (even some extremely weathly people). But for argument, let's say that 5% are as wealthy as your average American. That's 50 million people. You think that's trivial?
I am sure MS must be coming to the conclusion that an open development model is better. And they are masters of strategy. So what can there response to this be?
The things that Ballamer has said about their Shared-source initiative have been pretty dumb (that it proves that people don't want to see the source code, stuff like that), so it seems that at the top level they still don't get it. But they will. So what can they do? Obviously they can't GPL their stuff but is it possible for them to start using a more open development model and still maintain the leverage they currently have?
Personally I hope not. When it comes to developers developers developers, the OSS development model is currently winning and it's going to be difficult for MS to change that.
I fail to see how people in India can afford to drop 200(or 300 if you read the title of the article) on a PDA
Well, last time I was in India I met several software engineers that had worked in the USA and had moved back to India because they said the standard of living was better and that they were relatively better off working in India than they were in the USA!
India is a big place with a massive population. Even if only a small percentage are wealthy enough for electronics toys, that's still a huge market.
But where else you gonna see people climb into rickety rafts, hop barbed wire fences and make a mad dash, or store up in the holds of cargo ships for weeks, just for a chance to live?
Australia. Europe. A lot of other places too. And unfortunately this kind of migration has been happening for centuries.
the world hates us because we have so much.
Er no. One of the reason my other "first" world people find certain American's annoying (hate is perhaps too strong a word) is because of ignorant comments like this.
America is the model for the world.
There are many people who might dispute that. America has many good features, but it also has some bad features. (Yes, like everywhere else). But there are few people outside of America who would call it a model to follow.
I remember reading once that Philip K Dick (writer of Blade Runner, Minority Report) went mad at the end of his life, one of the reasons being that he was convinced that there were zillions of alien transmissions going through the air which were screwing with his mind.
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps taking lots of hard drugs allows you to tune in to alien quantum communications. Sounds like some experimenting needs to be done...
Not exactly, but close. I would like to see guidlines that are meant for all projects. I believe currently, for instance, Gnome and KDE both have their own guidelines. I would like to see a set of guidelines which has the universiality and authority of the LSB, written by people from KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice and Mozilla, etc., not just the Gnome people.
I absolutely agree. I would really like to see a good single set of guidelines (like the Apple guidelines) that all open source programmers could reference. I think this would really help with the 'peer pressure'. If you could point to respected guidelines and say, hey your interface breaks rule X, then I think a lot more programmers would listen.
Problem is of course such guidlines do not exisit, but it would be great if, for instance, the KDE, Mozilla, Gnome and OpenOffice people could each appoint a team member for a group to put something like this together. This would also be much preferable to having changes forced upon them by RedHat.
What is a Evolutionist? A Evolutionist believes that living things were created by chance, rather than an intelligent creator such as God.
No, evolutionists do not believe that living things were created "by chance". Evolution is a process. If you fill a jar with marbles then where they fall is random, but symmetrical and seemingly intelligent patterns will emerge. But you don't need a God to explain those patterns, nor do they have anything to do with chance.
So evolution is a designer and creator? Yes, this is fundamental to the beliefs of Evolutionists.
No. See above.
What is Evolution? A random sequence of low probabilities scattered over a long period of time to make them seem plausible? That's just silly. Evolution is everywhere, it is a process. You can't see it.
You demonstrate your lack of understanding of evolution here, but I'm not going to bother explaining it. Get a textbook. And yes, to an extent you can see it, at least at the microevolution level, and we have some records of it at the macro level.
What's it do it for? Erm. What? Oh I know this one! You mustn't question the doings of Science, they are unexplainable by mere mortals?
The whole point of science is to try to explain the world around us. Blind faith is completely the opposite to that.
Rather than responding to my joke dialogue by mistrepresenting the views of evolutionists, you might like to answer the points raised by it.
Slashdot Mirror
The ISO tried it. It was called ODA
and was a complete failure.
So? Formats come and go all the time. Just because the ISO failed in the early nineties doesn't mean someone else would fail today.
The open office group should get together with the rest of the guys (abyword, koffice and maybe wordperfect) and work out a format that can be submitted to the ISO. Possibly based on the open office format.
Then goverments and corporation will adopt it for official documents so they can read their own documents in ten years.
You are absolutely correct sir. This is something I've been ranting about for ages.
Why has this post been moderated as a troll? There is nothing trollish about it at all.
Just look at an HTML file exported form Word2k.
An excellent point sir. That's a great illustration of how Microsoft approaches 'open' file formats.
People that think that MS Office is going to move to open, well documented file formats are just plain nuts. But look at many of the comments in this forum - it seems MS has even managed to persuade many Slashdotters that they are going to use open formats. Poor fools.
Perhaps these announcements of XML compatible office file formats are just stalling tactics? MS has done it before.
MS now has a serious competitor in StarOffice/OpenOffice.org. And that competitor has two compelling advantages - it's cheaper/free, and open XML file formats. So when clued-up IT people say to their Pointy-Haired Bosses that they should use StarOffice/OpenOffice.org, PHBs can respond "but MS is doing that next year. We can avoid all the disruption of changing office suites just by waiting a bit and upgrading to the next version of MS Office. Besides, we're already paying for it." Then when MS actually releases Office 11, they will have used all sorts of devious and subtle devices to keep their lock-in of the file format, and MS and PHBs will be happy.
There's lots of speculation here about MS doing stuff to create lock-in with this new format, but I want to actually see the format. Is there any documentation anywhere about it? Or does someone out there have a document in the new format that we can take a look at? Of course, being XML we should be able to just open it and take a look. That would put an end to all this speculation.
Programming, or brain work in general, is not a repeatable, repetitive, explicitly definable operation which can be performed by unskilled laborours in any part of the world.
Actually the higher the quality control, the nearer programming becomes a repeatable, repetitive, explicitly definable operation. Unfortuantely this also makes it extremely boring.
I've done programming for "mission critical" systems for some major international banks. The scope for creativity was zero. Everything has a precise methodology, down to the last full stop, and everything was checked and rechecked. As a creative person, it drove me nuts. But I could see it could be something that would be ideal for outsourcing to China or India (which is what I believe many banks now do).
What is the difference between glass and the silicon crystal used in chips? Aren't they kind of similar?
I mean, the government gets whatever it wants, because it has all the power. It has all the power because it has all the guns, and that is especially true in the UK.
I feel sorry for a certain type of American. You don't realise how screwed up your world-view is.
Perhaps that's good, although I'd like to see an option where you can choose to apply the feature to all links leading to HTML pages.
What would be great is if it could recognise if a page is of thumbnail images, and then automatically download the linked images. It would make browsing porn much quicker.
[..] It might not be so far fetched to think that airborn microbes could be living in similar extream enviroments on another planet.
I don't think it is far fetched. However, it seems that whenever some odd phenomenon is seem on another planet the first conculsion these days seems to be that it is a sign of life, and more probable conclusions are ignored. I don't think real scientists do themselves justice by speculating on flimsy evidence.
I think we need a new category on Slashdot; "Wild speculation about extraterrestrial life based on insubstantial evidence".
I mean with no offince once or ever how many people out of that 1,000,000,000 have phone, computer, internet, 60" tvs, sattlite tv with 500 channels and what ever other junk that we all crave
India has a large middle-class and many wealthy people (even some extremely weathly people). But for argument, let's say that 5% are as wealthy as your average American. That's 50 million people. You think that's trivial?
I am sure MS must be coming to the conclusion that an open development model is better. And they are masters of strategy. So what can there response to this be?
The things that Ballamer has said about their Shared-source initiative have been pretty dumb (that it proves that people don't want to see the source code, stuff like that), so it seems that at the top level they still don't get it. But they will. So what can they do? Obviously they can't GPL their stuff but is it possible for them to start using a more open development model and still maintain the leverage they currently have?
Personally I hope not. When it comes to developers developers developers, the OSS development model is currently winning and it's going to be difficult for MS to change that.
It doesn't seem like it is being developed for the Indian Mass market
The level of language speaking in India is very high. Pretty much anyone who can afford one of these things will probably be able to speak English.
Its a good thing they didn't bother wasting time porting to hindi etc and pandering to all sorts of unimaginative stuck up linguistic chauvinists.
Ha! That's funny. Let me guess... English is your first language isn't it? And it's probably your only language..?
I fail to see how people in India can afford to drop 200(or 300 if you read the title of the article) on a PDA
Well, last time I was in India I met several software engineers that had worked in the USA and had moved back to India because they said the standard of living was better and that they were relatively better off working in India than they were in the USA!
India is a big place with a massive population. Even if only a small percentage are wealthy enough for electronics toys, that's still a huge market.
But where else you gonna see people climb into rickety rafts, hop barbed wire fences and make a mad dash, or store up in the holds of cargo ships for weeks, just for a chance to live?
Australia. Europe. A lot of other places too. And unfortunately this kind of migration has been happening for centuries.
the world hates us because we have so much.
Er no. One of the reason my other "first" world people find certain American's annoying (hate is perhaps too strong a word) is because of ignorant comments like this.
America is the model for the world.
There are many people who might dispute that. America has many good features, but it also has some bad features. (Yes, like everywhere else). But there are few people outside of America who would call it a model to follow.
Philip K Dick didn't write Blade Runner.
Well, he wrote "Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep", which Blade Runner was based on. Happy now?
I remember reading once that Philip K Dick (writer of Blade Runner, Minority Report) went mad at the end of his life, one of the reasons being that he was convinced that there were zillions of alien transmissions going through the air which were screwing with his mind.
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps taking lots of hard drugs allows you to tune in to alien quantum communications. Sounds like some experimenting needs to be done...
Do you think the Internet has changed the world? Is it now a better place?
Are you looking for this [gnome.org]?
Not exactly, but close. I would like to see guidlines that are meant for all projects. I believe currently, for instance, Gnome and KDE both have their own guidelines. I would like to see a set of guidelines which has the universiality and authority of the LSB, written by people from KDE, Gnome, OpenOffice and Mozilla, etc., not just the Gnome people.
I absolutely agree. I would really like to see a good single set of guidelines (like the Apple guidelines) that all open source programmers could reference. I think this would really help with the 'peer pressure'. If you could point to respected guidelines and say, hey your interface breaks rule X, then I think a lot more programmers would listen.
Problem is of course such guidlines do not exisit, but it would be great if, for instance, the KDE, Mozilla, Gnome and OpenOffice people could each appoint a team member for a group to put something like this together. This would also be much preferable to having changes forced upon them by RedHat.
But do you remember The Great Egg Race? That was on many many years ago. It was this type of show, and was great. Details here.
What is a Evolutionist?
A Evolutionist believes that living things were created by chance, rather than an intelligent creator such as God.
No, evolutionists do not believe that living things were created "by chance". Evolution is a process. If you fill a jar with marbles then where they fall is random, but symmetrical and seemingly intelligent patterns will emerge. But you don't need a God to explain those patterns, nor do they have anything to do with chance.
So evolution is a designer and creator?
Yes, this is fundamental to the beliefs of Evolutionists.
No. See above.
What is Evolution? A random sequence of low probabilities scattered over a long period of time to make them seem plausible?
That's just silly. Evolution is everywhere, it is a process. You can't see it.
You demonstrate your lack of understanding of evolution here, but I'm not going to bother explaining it. Get a textbook. And yes, to an extent you can see it, at least at the microevolution level, and we have some records of it at the macro level.
What's it do it for?
Erm. What? Oh I know this one! You mustn't question the doings of Science, they are unexplainable by mere mortals?
The whole point of science is to try to explain the world around us. Blind faith is completely the opposite to that.
Rather than responding to my joke dialogue by mistrepresenting the views of evolutionists, you might like to answer the points raised by it.