The old line about Office is that people only 5% of the features, but it's a different 5% for everyone.
That's MS's rebuttal to bloat complaints. Actually, from my personal experience editing files sent to me in Word by dozens of users, it's not true, rather 95% of users use ONLY the functions iconised on the formatting toolbar. Actually, most users could run Winword 2 with no loss of functionality (and a large increase in speed). Even better, spend a day tutoring them in Word 5 for DOS or WordPerfect 5.1 and they'd be twice as productive.
All that is needed is ONE (1) geek to do it and put his efforts online.
E.g.: RULE:Run Up-to-date Linux Everywhere. Though (fortunately) this is nmore than one geek. This is a version of Redhat that has all the security of the current version, with a base install that uses minimal RAM and storage.
Maybe we're the first:) Maybe any others don't have such an incredible head start on us that they've already done the exponential colonization of every square inch of the universe.
If there was intelligence with FTL in the galaxy, we would know about it -- they'd be here. Someone has to be first, but with 15 billion years since the Bang, it seems likely there would be many with an "incredible head start" on us; unless intelligence arises maybe once or less per galaxy. Even with STL travel a determined race could colonise the galaxy in a few million years, at 1% of c you can cross the galaxy in a half-million years or so, and drop off colonies (say frozen fertilized eggs with robotic nurses) on likely places. In 10 million years the whole galaxy is occupied. Consider it took over 3 billion years for multicellular life to arise here, seems it could easily have been faster. If dinosaurs had the right conditions (and no untimely asteroid) they might have achieved intelligence 50 million years ago. So though I enjoy the space opera universe of Babylon 5, Star Wars, etc, etc, teeming with intelligent life buzzing around at warp speed; I'm forced to conclude we're very likely alone, or widely separated from anyone at a similar or higher level.
How about Slashdot's own flamebait heading Linux/Unix Tops Charts for Vulnerabilities in 2005. Which was based on a similarly inflammatory Information Week article "Linux/Unix Vulnerabilities Outnumber Microsoft Windows' 3 To 1", even though in the final paragraph, they mention how fucked the counting is. All goes to show that news sites, and Slashdot, can't resist running an obviously bogus story. Integrity? They've heard of it.
the father settles the suit for as much as he intended to leave to his son. Should be tax free.
The IRS simply state that it's a transparent ploy to avoid taxes, assess you as if it were a gift, and maybe throw in a penalty. Easier to set up a trust, move money to an overseas tax shelter, etc.
If FTL is possible, that pretty much impies that intelligent life is extremely rare in the universe, maybe we're unique. Because with FTL we will colonise the entire galaxy in a few million years; that we aren't already subjects of a galactic empire means either that there have never been any aliens as smart as us; or that interstellar travel is extremely hard and rarely undertaken. Even worse, maybe we're alone AND FTL is impossible.
It's not just French. For instance, being Australian, I notice that every time Australia is mentioned in a story, the same convict, crocodile and Simpsons' toilet jokes are rolled out, and duly modded as "insightful" and "funny". And Indians of course get all the "outsourcing" gibes. Then Americans wonder why they're not universally loved. "They hate us because we're free." No, we hate you because you piss on the world. (Regardless, some of my best friends are American....)
Sometimes, in the case of newspapers, it's not even the editor, but the printer.... I once wrote a column and was furious that my summary was missing. The editor explained the practice to me.
The editor snowed you. Printers aren't allowed to make those kind of decisions. Now editors do all the layout on screen, but even 50 years ago in the days of hot lead, the printer would call the editor and tell he was running long and ask him what to do.
Obviously, they're in complementary colours -- e.g. lime-green iMac with red peppers; Bluetooth headset with orange sorbet, etc. And, happily, free too.
(Word doesn't handle vector graphics... I still can't believe that) People don't understand that word is not a publishing program!
I use a ton of Field Codes and Styles in Word. I have, by request of a client, created a 200 page parts catalog in word that was one giant table...
Getting OT a bit... but anyway, Word can use EPS files, and WMF (you may have heard of them recently) can also be vector (I think that's what Word clip art is). As for tables, these are a nightmare (I'm now converting a Word file full of them to a publishing app). I think if you must use MSOffice for such, Excel handles tables better. Finally though you probably want to print, and MS apps are pretty much RGB. Generally output to PDF, either directly via a virtual printer or distill PS gives you useable files. Printers hate jobs submitted from Word or MSPublisher.
Word is currently the most powerfull word processor of it's kind (Meaning it will never beat emacs.) I just don't see those governement workers fully willing to relearn the tools they must use every single day.
I deal with Word files from lots of different people; and hardly any of them know how to use the "tools" it offers; I'd say less than 5% ever use anything that's not on the formatting bar (which is virtually identical to the formatting bar on dozens of other word processors). And government workers aren't given a choice of which software to use anyway. Of course some do have specialised apps, these can be left alone and eventually converted (as they would have to be the next MS upgrade anyway).
And how "powerful" is Word? As far as I can see, word processing reached feature-completeness about 10 years ago, everything since then is bloat.
What you need is one Superior Hacker, like the guy with this unofficial patch. This Superior Hacker with his Superior Skills sets himself to grokking the problem fully then works out, and implements a fix. In just a few hours.
Actually, if I've understood the problem correctly, Ilfak's patch works by catching and blocking calls to the error handler in the vulnerable dll. An MS coder with the same information about the vulnerability and access to the Windpws source code could much more easily fix or disable the bad code directly.
>His self-sacrifice and idealism was real
bollocks. he watched his wife die because he refused to let her accept British medicine, then when he got ill went running straight to the
Well, yes, that was the "idealism".
he also slept with little girls
His grand-niece, Manu, but she was 19.
A great man, but not a messiah; and his family suffered greatly for his ideals.
They take the same damn story twice, but they can't accept my original one! WTF!
And they smacked you down to -1 too. Seems the eds spend more time seeking revenge than checking their stories. If you'd been Roland Piquepaille, they wouldn't have been so cavalier.
I was specifically talking about Word, a spreadsheet is another thing; there have been functions and macros attached to cells since 123 for DOS.
To say that the advanced features of Office are never used is simply not true. Not everyone needs them it's true but there are plenty of people that use the more advanced Office features.
I didn't say "never used". Just no one I've ever worked with in the last 10 years seems aware of anything beyond the formatting bar and spellcheck. If they include macros it's a mistake and/or a virus. But if you look at what I wrote, the problem is not the features as such, it's more with how they're configured, often hidden, or activated without an obvious indication of why they're doing something or how to turn them off. Many advanced features cause more grief and hairpulling than a simple crash. I frequent Word newsgroups to find out how to turn off things that are screwing up my files; often the solution is simple, but unfindable in the help. For instance, anything that looks like a hyperlink is made live by default, to turn it off select and shift-ctrl-F9. I've got a file full of stuff like that.
Gandhi was undoubtedly humane and I think we probably agree that he was humble.
Gandhi was very proud of his humility -- he drove people crazy by insisting on doing things the humble way. For instance, always travelling third class by train, oblivious to the fact that the other "peasants" crowdng the carriage were all members of his party or security. His self-sacrifice and idealism was real, but humble he was not.
Penguin FAQ
"Penguin feathers are short, overlapping and densely packed. The outer part of the feather is waterproof while the inner down section traps an insulating layer of air, keeping the penguin warm in the sometimes freezing water."
except that VBA is incredibly bloody useful and I would hate to have to use Word or Excel without it.
I'm not against macros or automation in general; it's embedding it with the document text that's the problem. There has never been a time I want to run a macro someone has sent to me along with their Word file, and hardly ever they intentionally did so. In Word 5, for instance, you had separate doc files, with the text, style files that defined the styles, and macro files. Now everything goes by default into the doc file, and it's all fucked up; macros appear unexpectedly on the toolbar when you load a document, styles change seemingly at random; by seeking greater simplicity for the user (i.e. treating him as an idiot who doesn't need to know about these things, just loading them all automatically) it has become much harder to keep control of your workspace. Either you have to become a guru to use the features effectively, or do as most users do and use it like a glorified typewriter.
I have to work with files from all kinds of users; no matter their education or skill not one in many years has known how to use macros, stlyes, or any of the "advanced" features that automation should give them. And I have to carefully check for and occasionally remove nasty macros.
Slashdot Mirror
That's MS's rebuttal to bloat complaints. Actually, from my personal experience editing files sent to me in Word by dozens of users, it's not true, rather 95% of users use ONLY the functions iconised on the formatting toolbar. Actually, most users could run Winword 2 with no loss of functionality (and a large increase in speed). Even better, spend a day tutoring them in Word 5 for DOS or WordPerfect 5.1 and they'd be twice as productive.
E.g.: RULE :Run Up-to-date Linux Everywhere. Though (fortunately) this is nmore than one geek. This is a version of Redhat that has all the security of the current version, with a base install that uses minimal RAM and storage.
If there was intelligence with FTL in the galaxy, we would know about it -- they'd be here. Someone has to be first, but with 15 billion years since the Bang, it seems likely there would be many with an "incredible head start" on us; unless intelligence arises maybe once or less per galaxy. Even with STL travel a determined race could colonise the galaxy in a few million years, at 1% of c you can cross the galaxy in a half-million years or so, and drop off colonies (say frozen fertilized eggs with robotic nurses) on likely places. In 10 million years the whole galaxy is occupied. Consider it took over 3 billion years for multicellular life to arise here, seems it could easily have been faster. If dinosaurs had the right conditions (and no untimely asteroid) they might have achieved intelligence 50 million years ago. So though I enjoy the space opera universe of Babylon 5, Star Wars, etc, etc, teeming with intelligent life buzzing around at warp speed; I'm forced to conclude we're very likely alone, or widely separated from anyone at a similar or higher level.
How about Slashdot's own flamebait heading Linux/Unix Tops Charts for Vulnerabilities in 2005. Which was based on a similarly inflammatory Information Week article "Linux/Unix Vulnerabilities Outnumber Microsoft Windows' 3 To 1", even though in the final paragraph, they mention how fucked the counting is. All goes to show that news sites, and Slashdot, can't resist running an obviously bogus story. Integrity? They've heard of it.
I do not think these words mean what you think they mean.
Seriously: president/precedent; your/you're; principal/principle. Look them up.
The IRS simply state that it's a transparent ploy to avoid taxes, assess you as if it were a gift, and maybe throw in a penalty. Easier to set up a trust, move money to an overseas tax shelter, etc.
If FTL is possible, that pretty much impies that intelligent life is extremely rare in the universe, maybe we're unique. Because with FTL we will colonise the entire galaxy in a few million years; that we aren't already subjects of a galactic empire means either that there have never been any aliens as smart as us; or that interstellar travel is extremely hard and rarely undertaken. Even worse, maybe we're alone AND FTL is impossible.
Slashback: Little Red Hoax, Firefly, Google
On December 29th, 2005 with 504 comments
It's not just French. For instance, being Australian, I notice that every time Australia is mentioned in a story, the same convict, crocodile and Simpsons' toilet jokes are rolled out, and duly modded as "insightful" and "funny". And Indians of course get all the "outsourcing" gibes. Then Americans wonder why they're not universally loved. "They hate us because we're free." No, we hate you because you piss on the world. (Regardless, some of my best friends are American....)
Imagine a thick solid plastic bracelet that cracks open when you twist it to expose a USB plug.
The editor snowed you. Printers aren't allowed to make those kind of decisions. Now editors do all the layout on screen, but even 50 years ago in the days of hot lead, the printer would call the editor and tell he was running long and ask him what to do.
Yes, it's a taco typo. And have a look at the later story on the CES Preview for more illiteracy my 8-year-old daughter would be ashamed of.
Obviously, they're in complementary colours -- e.g. lime-green iMac with red peppers; Bluetooth headset with orange sorbet, etc. And, happily, free too.
Obviously he's talking about the Google PC, but is under an NDA.
Getting OT a bit... but anyway, Word can use EPS files, and WMF (you may have heard of them recently) can also be vector (I think that's what Word clip art is). As for tables, these are a nightmare (I'm now converting a Word file full of them to a publishing app). I think if you must use MSOffice for such, Excel handles tables better. Finally though you probably want to print, and MS apps are pretty much RGB. Generally output to PDF, either directly via a virtual printer or distill PS gives you useable files. Printers hate jobs submitted from Word or MSPublisher.
I deal with Word files from lots of different people; and hardly any of them know how to use the "tools" it offers; I'd say less than 5% ever use anything that's not on the formatting bar (which is virtually identical to the formatting bar on dozens of other word processors). And government workers aren't given a choice of which software to use anyway. Of course some do have specialised apps, these can be left alone and eventually converted (as they would have to be the next MS upgrade anyway).
And how "powerful" is Word? As far as I can see, word processing reached feature-completeness about 10 years ago, everything since then is bloat.
Actually, if I've understood the problem correctly, Ilfak's patch works by catching and blocking calls to the error handler in the vulnerable dll. An MS coder with the same information about the vulnerability and access to the Windpws source code could much more easily fix or disable the bad code directly.
bollocks. he watched his wife die because he refused to let her accept British medicine, then when he got ill went running straight to the
Well, yes, that was the "idealism".
he also slept with little girls
His grand-niece, Manu, but she was 19.
A great man, but not a messiah; and his family suffered greatly for his ideals.
And they smacked you down to -1 too. Seems the eds spend more time seeking revenge than checking their stories. If you'd been Roland Piquepaille, they wouldn't have been so cavalier.
To say that the advanced features of Office are never used is simply not true. Not everyone needs them it's true but there are plenty of people that use the more advanced Office features.
I didn't say "never used". Just no one I've ever worked with in the last 10 years seems aware of anything beyond the formatting bar and spellcheck. If they include macros it's a mistake and/or a virus. But if you look at what I wrote, the problem is not the features as such, it's more with how they're configured, often hidden, or activated without an obvious indication of why they're doing something or how to turn them off. Many advanced features cause more grief and hairpulling than a simple crash. I frequent Word newsgroups to find out how to turn off things that are screwing up my files; often the solution is simple, but unfindable in the help. For instance, anything that looks like a hyperlink is made live by default, to turn it off select and shift-ctrl-F9. I've got a file full of stuff like that.
Gandhi was very proud of his humility -- he drove people crazy by insisting on doing things the humble way. For instance, always travelling third class by train, oblivious to the fact that the other "peasants" crowdng the carriage were all members of his party or security. His self-sacrifice and idealism was real, but humble he was not.
Penguin FAQ
"Penguin feathers are short, overlapping and densely packed. The outer part of the feather is waterproof while the inner down section traps an insulating layer of air, keeping the penguin warm in the sometimes freezing water."
I'm not against macros or automation in general; it's embedding it with the document text that's the problem. There has never been a time I want to run a macro someone has sent to me along with their Word file, and hardly ever they intentionally did so. In Word 5, for instance, you had separate doc files, with the text, style files that defined the styles, and macro files. Now everything goes by default into the doc file, and it's all fucked up; macros appear unexpectedly on the toolbar when you load a document, styles change seemingly at random; by seeking greater simplicity for the user (i.e. treating him as an idiot who doesn't need to know about these things, just loading them all automatically) it has become much harder to keep control of your workspace. Either you have to become a guru to use the features effectively, or do as most users do and use it like a glorified typewriter.
I have to work with files from all kinds of users; no matter their education or skill not one in many years has known how to use macros, stlyes, or any of the "advanced" features that automation should give them. And I have to carefully check for and occasionally remove nasty macros.
Since the patch is fully uninstallable (or at least claims to be -- it's certainly listed in "add/remove programs") you just uninstall it first.
On the other hand, he IS responsible for "Windows Metafile Volunerability".