microsoft publisher - nothing opens the files from that as far as i can tell... visio - nothing to open these files with either... you can only open word files because the format is so common that people have spent man-years worth of time reverse engineering the format, if it came down to it.. could you pay someone to implement a conversion tool for one of these programs? how much would it cost you? On the other hand, if the format is open, a conversion tool would be much easier to write.. xml can easily be reformatted with a valid XSLT stylesheet, there would be much less work involved and a much greater chance of someone else having already done the necessary work.
They can quite easily cave in everywhere, the development costs of their products have been recouped a thousand times over, they could sell windows and office for $5 and still make a profit.
Depends how you do it.. The unix (and by extension macosx) way of printing creates postscript as an intermediate output, which has support for most of the graphical features of pdf (embedded fonts for instance) whereas i believe windows prints very differently... postscript can embed adobe type 1 fonts (commonly used by unix systems) whereas pdf can embed truetype fonts aswell (as used on windows) so it's likely that when trying to print a document using truetype fonts the text will be converted to bezier curves as you describe.. truetype is designed for screen-fonts while the adobe fonts are designed to be printed. But admittedly, printing to pdf is a generally bad idea, and should only be done as a last resort when using software with no native export to pdf option... The pdf export function in openoffice 2.0 actually works really well however, and creates hyperlinks and tables of contents correctly..
Printing to pdf can be done natively on any unix, print to a file (which will create a postscript file) and then convert to pdf using pstopdf.. The problem here, is that things like hyperlinks get lost, since the postscript format has no support for such things (afterall, its a printing format.. you cant put hyperlinks on paper).. If you try the latest openoffice.org 2.0 beta, you can create a "tagged pdf" which will keep any hyperlinks that you had in your original document, this means that your table of contents can be clickable and links to websites can be clicked on in your pdf reader, and will open up an appropriate web browser.. very usefull
Well, the word export to html function creates very broken html that doesn't follow the standards... TEXT (yes it's spelt with an E) is just that, purely text, and i`m not so sure about rtf but i do believe it's a rather limited format, somewhere between text and html in terms of capabilities..
There are many such distributions, graphical tools offer you all the flexibility that most people will need, as do the graphical tools available in windows.. If you want additional control, you have the ability to edit configuration files just as you can modify the registry on windows. However, that's where the similarities stop... Windows has no tools to manage version dependencies, whereas several such tools exist for linux and other unixes.. The unix configuration files can be easily edited by scripts, the registry is much harder to automate. Also, windows doesn't give you the capability to modify the source code to suit your needs...
Basically, both windows and linux cater to the non-technical end user, however linux also offers a lot of flexibility for technically minded users where windows falls short.
Ehm, wouldn't it be better to not have these pests atall? The thought of having malicious code running on my system for upto 9 seconds is bad, 9 seconds is more than enough to do serious damage...
I still have one running redhat 4.2, the only service it listens on is ssh on the internal interface which has been kept up to date, and the kernel has been patched a couple of times..
LILO works fine with amd64, but you need to compile it as 32bit.. either build a static copy on a 32bit machine, or install the 32bit compatibility packages for gentoo.. gentoo doesn't support lilo on amd64 for this reason, but it definately can be done, i'm using lilo myself because grub gets on my nerves.
But it could have had openstep for solaris, the limitation with win32 is that the executeable must be a binary program with a filename ending in.exe or.com etc, openstep apps are directories ending in.app with the real binaries and support files inside, although openstep and unix based os's have no requirement on this
Well, it might be easier to make the interface using a cross-platform toolkit, and have it customiseable.. so you can choose a layout to suit your individual taste.. some of us might like the mac way of doing things, despite not having any apple hardware at work to run osx on.
Intel have always been behind on processor speed, nothing is new here.. The risc chips all used to beat intel hands down, and it took a couple of years for intel to catch up even after development on these chips stopped, the last of the alpha chips can still beat intel's finest in some areas.. Intel just can't lead, they never have, they've always been a stage behind in performance, and relied on price and existing reputation.
Well, on the mac microsoft need to compete fairly with their competition, they can't modify the os to make their competitors run like shit, and they can't shoehorn their apps into the os to force people to use them.. The only way they currently achieve marketshare on the mac, is because mac users want to be compatible with proprietary software running on windows systems.. If microsoft lost their windows monopoly, they would lose marketshare on the mac very quickly too..
High concrete walls are no use in a zoo - how would the patrons see the animals? The usual solution at every zoo where i've seen elephants, is deep trenches all the way round the elephant enclosure.
Hyperthreading is a nasty kludge, it splits the cpu into 2 virtual processors instead of a single superscaler processor.. The reasoning behind this, is that 2 poorly written apps which couldn't otherwise take advantage of a superscalar processor, can run simultaneously... The side effect, is that apps which can take advantage of superscalar processors end up only seeing half of the processor and half of the cache.. So, modern apps (or apps compiled with modern compilers) actually lose performance due to hyperthreading.. Also, hyperthreading has been the cause of a number of security issues lately.
The difference between mozilla 0.0.1 and IE, are that you can upgrade to the latest mozilla for no cost, upgrading IE may require you to buy a new OS, which may require you to buy new hardware.. Mozilla on the other hand, will still install on the same os's that version 0.0.1 did and even some newer platforms which have recieved support since.
A thin client shouldn't be running the browser anyway, the browser should be exported from the server to which the thin client connects.. Thin clients are just dumb I/O devices.. As for java causing bloat, a lot of mobile phones run java, it's not impossible to use java in a cut down environment. Aside from that, the number of people who CANT run java is much smaller than the number of people who CANT run internet explorer.. People may not want to run java, but they could almost always do so for free, it may cost people a lot of money (buying hardware, buying windows) to run internet explorer..
ActiveX will not work on a mac, activex objects are basically native windows/x86 binaries.. There is a program called gallery (gallery.sourceforge.net) which has a java applet for file uploads, which is cross platform (works well on my mac and my linux machines).. And finally, file upload forms can take multiple files anyway, you just select multiple files in the file open dialog, or type in a list of names seperated by spaces..
The mac emulators on the Amiga were more virtualizers than emulators, the processor was the same, the amiga generally had a lot of additional hardware which the mac did not, and the emulator generally really did emulate the videocards and io interfaces that a mac would expect to have.. Interestingly, the emulated mac tended to be about 5% faster than a real mac with the same cpu.. the amiga hardware was generally better designed performance wise.
And you have to think long term, the biggest mistake most people make is choosing what's suitable for them *now* without having an exit strategy.. In other areas, businesses would not choose a supplier without there being a drop-in alternative incase something bad happens with their current supplier (bankrupcy, massive price increases, lower quality of service etc).. This happens when a market matures, the hardware market has matured but software hasn't yet.. If your using something that can be trivially replaced by another vendor, your current vendor has to keep you happy or else you'l move elsewhere, we recently moved from dell (bought because they were cheap) to IBM (better quality) because that best suited our needs, and we could still switch back to dell or to anyone else at any time if the need arose.
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microsoft publisher - nothing opens the files from that as far as i can tell...
visio - nothing to open these files with either...
you can only open word files because the format is so common that people have spent man-years worth of time reverse engineering the format, if it came down to it.. could you pay someone to implement a conversion tool for one of these programs? how much would it cost you?
On the other hand, if the format is open, a conversion tool would be much easier to write.. xml can easily be reformatted with a valid XSLT stylesheet, there would be much less work involved and a much greater chance of someone else having already done the necessary work.
They can quite easily cave in everywhere, the development costs of their products have been recouped a thousand times over, they could sell windows and office for $5 and still make a profit.
Depends how you do it..
The unix (and by extension macosx) way of printing creates postscript as an intermediate output, which has support for most of the graphical features of pdf (embedded fonts for instance) whereas i believe windows prints very differently...
postscript can embed adobe type 1 fonts (commonly used by unix systems) whereas pdf can embed truetype fonts aswell (as used on windows) so it's likely that when trying to print a document using truetype fonts the text will be converted to bezier curves as you describe.. truetype is designed for screen-fonts while the adobe fonts are designed to be printed.
But admittedly, printing to pdf is a generally bad idea, and should only be done as a last resort when using software with no native export to pdf option...
The pdf export function in openoffice 2.0 actually works really well however, and creates hyperlinks and tables of contents correctly..
Printing to pdf can be done natively on any unix, print to a file (which will create a postscript file) and then convert to pdf using pstopdf..
The problem here, is that things like hyperlinks get lost, since the postscript format has no support for such things (afterall, its a printing format.. you cant put hyperlinks on paper)..
If you try the latest openoffice.org 2.0 beta, you can create a "tagged pdf" which will keep any hyperlinks that you had in your original document, this means that your table of contents can be clickable and links to websites can be clicked on in your pdf reader, and will open up an appropriate web browser.. very usefull
Well, the word export to html function creates very broken html that doesn't follow the standards... TEXT (yes it's spelt with an E) is just that, purely text, and i`m not so sure about rtf but i do believe it's a rather limited format, somewhere between text and html in terms of capabilities..
There are many such distributions, graphical tools offer you all the flexibility that most people will need, as do the graphical tools available in windows..
If you want additional control, you have the ability to edit configuration files just as you can modify the registry on windows.
However, that's where the similarities stop...
Windows has no tools to manage version dependencies, whereas several such tools exist for linux and other unixes..
The unix configuration files can be easily edited by scripts, the registry is much harder to automate.
Also, windows doesn't give you the capability to modify the source code to suit your needs...
Basically, both windows and linux cater to the non-technical end user, however linux also offers a lot of flexibility for technically minded users where windows falls short.
You can also middle click on the selected text, and it does an "i`m feeling lucky" search on google for it..
Ehm, wouldn't it be better to not have these pests atall? The thought of having malicious code running on my system for upto 9 seconds is bad, 9 seconds is more than enough to do serious damage...
I still have one running redhat 4.2, the only service it listens on is ssh on the internal interface which has been kept up to date, and the kernel has been patched a couple of times..
Or just treat it exactly the same way it has always treated the darwin kernel when running on x86 hardware..
LILO works fine with amd64, but you need to compile it as 32bit.. either build a static copy on a 32bit machine, or install the 32bit compatibility packages for gentoo..
gentoo doesn't support lilo on amd64 for this reason, but it definately can be done, i'm using lilo myself because grub gets on my nerves.
But it could have had openstep for solaris, the limitation with win32 is that the executeable must be a binary program with a filename ending in .exe or .com etc, openstep apps are directories ending in .app with the real binaries and support files inside, although openstep and unix based os's have no requirement on this
Or they could use IBM's XLC for PPC.. XLC is to PPC what ICC is to x86..
Well, it might be easier to make the interface using a cross-platform toolkit, and have it customiseable.. so you can choose a layout to suit your individual taste.. some of us might like the mac way of doing things, despite not having any apple hardware at work to run osx on.
Intel have always been behind on processor speed, nothing is new here.. The risc chips all used to beat intel hands down, and it took a couple of years for intel to catch up even after development on these chips stopped, the last of the alpha chips can still beat intel's finest in some areas..
Intel just can't lead, they never have, they've always been a stage behind in performance, and relied on price and existing reputation.
Well, on the mac microsoft need to compete fairly with their competition, they can't modify the os to make their competitors run like shit, and they can't shoehorn their apps into the os to force people to use them.. The only way they currently achieve marketshare on the mac, is because mac users want to be compatible with proprietary software running on windows systems..
If microsoft lost their windows monopoly, they would lose marketshare on the mac very quickly too..
High concrete walls are no use in a zoo - how would the patrons see the animals?
The usual solution at every zoo where i've seen elephants, is deep trenches all the way round the elephant enclosure.
The whole industry is full of situations where you're forced into spending lots of money to solve problems that shouldn't exist in the first place..
Hyperthreading is a nasty kludge, it splits the cpu into 2 virtual processors instead of a single superscaler processor.. The reasoning behind this, is that 2 poorly written apps which couldn't otherwise take advantage of a superscalar processor, can run simultaneously...
The side effect, is that apps which can take advantage of superscalar processors end up only seeing half of the processor and half of the cache.. So, modern apps (or apps compiled with modern compilers) actually lose performance due to hyperthreading..
Also, hyperthreading has been the cause of a number of security issues lately.
The difference between mozilla 0.0.1 and IE, are that you can upgrade to the latest mozilla for no cost, upgrading IE may require you to buy a new OS, which may require you to buy new hardware.. Mozilla on the other hand, will still install on the same os's that version 0.0.1 did and even some newer platforms which have recieved support since.
A thin client shouldn't be running the browser anyway, the browser should be exported from the server to which the thin client connects.. Thin clients are just dumb I/O devices..
As for java causing bloat, a lot of mobile phones run java, it's not impossible to use java in a cut down environment.
Aside from that, the number of people who CANT run java is much smaller than the number of people who CANT run internet explorer.. People may not want to run java, but they could almost always do so for free, it may cost people a lot of money (buying hardware, buying windows) to run internet explorer..
ActiveX will not work on a mac, activex objects are basically native windows/x86 binaries..
There is a program called gallery (gallery.sourceforge.net) which has a java applet for file uploads, which is cross platform (works well on my mac and my linux machines)..
And finally, file upload forms can take multiple files anyway, you just select multiple files in the file open dialog, or type in a list of names seperated by spaces..
It would be nice to see a spread of versions which people downloaded, also noting the people who used the update feature within the browser..
The mac emulators on the Amiga were more virtualizers than emulators, the processor was the same, the amiga generally had a lot of additional hardware which the mac did not, and the emulator generally really did emulate the videocards and io interfaces that a mac would expect to have..
Interestingly, the emulated mac tended to be about 5% faster than a real mac with the same cpu.. the amiga hardware was generally better designed performance wise.
And you have to think long term, the biggest mistake most people make is choosing what's suitable for them *now* without having an exit strategy..
In other areas, businesses would not choose a supplier without there being a drop-in alternative incase something bad happens with their current supplier (bankrupcy, massive price increases, lower quality of service etc)..
This happens when a market matures, the hardware market has matured but software hasn't yet..
If your using something that can be trivially replaced by another vendor, your current vendor has to keep you happy or else you'l move elsewhere, we recently moved from dell (bought because they were cheap) to IBM (better quality) because that best suited our needs, and we could still switch back to dell or to anyone else at any time if the need arose.