The problem with openoffice, is that when opening word files it seems to behave like word 2000, so it has some issues opening up files from 2003.. For instance, tables of contents get screwed and line numbering often gets messed up (as happens in word 2000 aswell)
sp2 also makes the whole thing run considerably slower.. and causes incompatibilities with certain (admittedly poorly written, but your running them on a poorly written os too) apps.. The best solution, would be to uninstall the affected software and replace it (or not use it atall, not all machines need a browser) but ms makes that as hard as possible to do.
There are many older bug reports relating to mozilla, but the security related ones get fixed quickly atleast, especially the ones serious enough to allow remote code execution.
You can already do this, windows lets you change the window manager already.. However, since 99% of users don`t a lot of apps won`t play well with other managers, unlike on unix where it`s pretty much essential to make your app aware of different window managers..
I always found something like Directory Opus on the Amiga to be about the most efficient graphical way of moving files around.. I don`t like most of the graphical file managers nowadays, finder and windows explorer not to mention kde/gnome`s efforts seem to get on my nerves.. so i use the commandline almost exclusively (tab completion, usefull)
Package market and support, not produce.. Hardware will cost you money to produce in addition, and ofcourse support will always cost money wether it`s support for hardware or software. Bill gates would like you to believe that software is more valuable than hardware, which just isn`t the case. There will always be a market for support and convenience packagers, with software commoditized there will be a COMPETITIVE market of people badging it up, marketting it and selling support... Also hardware makers will bundle software with their hardware as a matter of convenience.. This is basically what apple is doing. Bundling software with hardware is likely to cost you virtually nothing, whereas bundling hardware with software will always incur the costs of the hardware, which by the nature of physical hardware can`t be zero.
Except that linux, apache, mozilla etc, have supported 256-bit aes for years, and only support weaker ciphers in order to maintain compatibility with microsoft systems, the current versions of which don`t support anything stronger than 128-bit rc4.
Firefox and other mozilla based browsers already support 256-bit AES encryption for ssl websites, as does apache.. On the other hand, IIS and IE support nothing stronger than 128-bit RC4.. so be dropping RC4 they will lose compatibility with older versions of their own products, but maintain compatibility with their competitors.
Which is why you restart the affected processes, you can easily use lsof to determine which processes are using the library you just updated and restart them.
But inodes give you the choice, you *CAN* restart the programs, *OR* you can reboot.. I`m sure users would be even more upset if their word processor and the whole system suddenly rebooted..
That`s what bill gates wants, but the fact is it`s far more likely to be the other way round... Software can easily be given away for free, while hardware will always cost money to produce. The good thing is that competition is driving hardware prices right down as low as they can get, and hopefully the same will also happen with software (and the lowest price software can have is $0)
Unfortunately, we need a larger number of people using linux before large companies will pay attention to open standards... There is still way too much proprietary crap floating around, which often makes it very hard to use anything other than windows...
Or worse performance, because your memory bandwidth doesn`t change despite the fact that you now have to transfer twice as much data. That`s why most 64bit machines run most of their apps as 32bit (sparc, mips etc)
That's a windows problem as much as anything else, there's no centralised package management tool like you get on unix os's.. It needs a facility like RPM/APT or such, so that when the OS updates it`s core files it will also check for updates to third party packages which have been installed..
Word will convert the audio into a new format, while openoffice will embed the file in it`s existing format.. Remember that openoffice documents are zipfiles, someone without a copy of openoffice could unzip the document and play the audio seperately, you can do this with images in openoffice documents too for instance..
And openoffice is more than capable of that, the difference is that the file will be embedded as a wave file, or an mp3 etc, instead of being stored in a completely different sub-format of the containing document.. As it stands, if you store audio data (or video or anything else) into an openoffice document, it will still be retrieveable in it`s standard format and useable outside of openoffice if you see the need.. Also, you can use external tools to easily create openoffice documents including sound and video.. There are already many libraries and tools to create audio files in various existing standard formats, just like there are xml parsers and image manipulation programs.. The microsoft way would require you to write new tools to specifically handle the new format.
They may try to maintain backwards compatibility, but it often doesn`t work very well.. there are often a LOT of problems opening old word documents in the latest versions..
Not different ports, but obviously the apps need to be compiled for the appropriate architecture.. You could install gentoo on all 3 machines, and compile mostly the same apps on all 3 machines... Most of the mainstream distributions like redhat don`t support alpha anymore, the latest version of redhat for alpha is quite old and would have trouble compiling most modern software.. I suggest you install the same version of gentoo on all 3 machines, and run them side by side running the same versions of the same programs, just compiled for the appropriate platform.
But the difference here is, there is nothing which supercedes the wheel while still being easy enough (and therefore cheap) to implement.. Sure, we could build an aircraft or a helicopter but they`re far more complex... On the other hand, the same systems which implement SSL2 can easily implement SSL3 instead, there is no reason to be using an obsolete technology when a better one is available for the same cost/effort.
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The problem with openoffice, is that when opening word files it seems to behave like word 2000, so it has some issues opening up files from 2003.. For instance, tables of contents get screwed and line numbering often gets messed up (as happens in word 2000 aswell)
sp2 also makes the whole thing run considerably slower.. and causes incompatibilities with certain (admittedly poorly written, but your running them on a poorly written os too) apps..
The best solution, would be to uninstall the affected software and replace it (or not use it atall, not all machines need a browser) but ms makes that as hard as possible to do.
There are many older bug reports relating to mozilla, but the security related ones get fixed quickly atleast, especially the ones serious enough to allow remote code execution.
You can already do this, windows lets you change the window manager already..
However, since 99% of users don`t a lot of apps won`t play well with other managers, unlike on unix where it`s pretty much essential to make your app aware of different window managers..
I always found something like Directory Opus on the Amiga to be about the most efficient graphical way of moving files around.. I don`t like most of the graphical file managers nowadays, finder and windows explorer not to mention kde/gnome`s efforts seem to get on my nerves.. so i use the commandline almost exclusively (tab completion, usefull)
Package market and support, not produce..
Hardware will cost you money to produce in addition, and ofcourse support will always cost money wether it`s support for hardware or software. Bill gates would like you to believe that software is more valuable than hardware, which just isn`t the case.
There will always be a market for support and convenience packagers, with software commoditized there will be a COMPETITIVE market of people badging it up, marketting it and selling support... Also hardware makers will bundle software with their hardware as a matter of convenience.. This is basically what apple is doing.
Bundling software with hardware is likely to cost you virtually nothing, whereas bundling hardware with software will always incur the costs of the hardware, which by the nature of physical hardware can`t be zero.
Except that linux, apache, mozilla etc, have supported 256-bit aes for years, and only support weaker ciphers in order to maintain compatibility with microsoft systems, the current versions of which don`t support anything stronger than 128-bit rc4.
Firefox and other mozilla based browsers already support 256-bit AES encryption for ssl websites, as does apache..
On the other hand, IIS and IE support nothing stronger than 128-bit RC4.. so be dropping RC4 they will lose compatibility with older versions of their own products, but maintain compatibility with their competitors.
Apache2 is a lot faster than 1.x on solaris if you use it with a threaded (instead of forking) mpm..
Which is why you restart the affected processes, you can easily use lsof to determine which processes are using the library you just updated and restart them.
But inodes give you the choice, you *CAN* restart the programs, *OR* you can reboot..
I`m sure users would be even more upset if their word processor and the whole system suddenly rebooted..
That`s what bill gates wants, but the fact is it`s far more likely to be the other way round...
Software can easily be given away for free, while hardware will always cost money to produce.
The good thing is that competition is driving hardware prices right down as low as they can get, and hopefully the same will also happen with software (and the lowest price software can have is $0)
Unfortunately, we need a larger number of people using linux before large companies will pay attention to open standards... There is still way too much proprietary crap floating around, which often makes it very hard to use anything other than windows...
Or worse performance, because your memory bandwidth doesn`t change despite the fact that you now have to transfer twice as much data.
That`s why most 64bit machines run most of their apps as 32bit (sparc, mips etc)
I believe gcc requires a flag (-mregparm?) in order to do that, it won`t do it by default.. But maybe that's been changed for amd64
And msn messenger was predated by both aol (with aim and icq) and yahoo by many years
There are also a lot of people using yahoo or aol, i believe aol still has a larger marketshare than msn and they've been around a lot longer.
That's a windows problem as much as anything else, there's no centralised package management tool like you get on unix os's.. It needs a facility like RPM/APT or such, so that when the OS updates it`s core files it will also check for updates to third party packages which have been installed..
And those poor people are likely to have very old computers, if they even still have any computer at all.
Word will convert the audio into a new format, while openoffice will embed the file in it`s existing format..
Remember that openoffice documents are zipfiles, someone without a copy of openoffice could unzip the document and play the audio seperately, you can do this with images in openoffice documents too for instance..
And openoffice is more than capable of that, the difference is that the file will be embedded as a wave file, or an mp3 etc, instead of being stored in a completely different sub-format of the containing document..
As it stands, if you store audio data (or video or anything else) into an openoffice document, it will still be retrieveable in it`s standard format and useable outside of openoffice if you see the need.. Also, you can use external tools to easily create openoffice documents including sound and video.. There are already many libraries and tools to create audio files in various existing standard formats, just like there are xml parsers and image manipulation programs.. The microsoft way would require you to write new tools to specifically handle the new format.
An "excel spreadsheet" perhaps, a "spreadsheet" definately.. Openoffice can quite happily embed any other openoffice documents inside of another
They may try to maintain backwards compatibility, but it often doesn`t work very well.. there are often a LOT of problems opening old word documents in the latest versions..
Not different ports, but obviously the apps need to be compiled for the appropriate architecture..
You could install gentoo on all 3 machines, and compile mostly the same apps on all 3 machines... Most of the mainstream distributions like redhat don`t support alpha anymore, the latest version of redhat for alpha is quite old and would have trouble compiling most modern software.. I suggest you install the same version of gentoo on all 3 machines, and run them side by side running the same versions of the same programs, just compiled for the appropriate platform.
But the difference here is, there is nothing which supercedes the wheel while still being easy enough (and therefore cheap) to implement.. Sure, we could build an aircraft or a helicopter but they`re far more complex...
On the other hand, the same systems which implement SSL2 can easily implement SSL3 instead, there is no reason to be using an obsolete technology when a better one is available for the same cost/effort.