I've used mandrake linux for specific tasks (mostly using xfig), but one of the things that surprised me the first time I booted up was significantly lower font quality than what I had in windows. It seems to me that is a hurdle for desktop adoption.
I know that quality fonts are difficult to create. What is the prospect for linux getting screen fonts of Windows quality?
The previous poster is correct that corruption can occur in Wordperfect although I believe it is rare. I started writing a book using WP and one of my chapters became corrupted. I lost a few days work. I retreated to a previous version of the file, and it became corrupted in the same way. I sent the file to Corel and actually spoke with a Wordperfect programmer who had examined my file, reexamined the WP source code to check for bugs, and explained the problem but said he had no clue about the cause.
That was the week I obtained wp2latex and started to learn latex. It's been a long haul but I have never looked back and have been delighted by the switch.
Re:Freedom from macro viruses is also a feature.
on
KOffice 1.1 Rolls Out
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· Score: 1
Not only could it be argued, it has been argued:-)
I agree with you on all counts and apart from Excel I almost never use office. (I use Eudora for e-mail, Ecco as a PIM, and I do almost all of my word processing and presentations in emacs/latex.) None of this changes the fact that, given the environment (what my students know, who hires them, and what their employees expect them to know), VBA has been invaluable. And it is a real block to anyone who wants to produce an office competitor.
It's too bad, but it's also too bad that spreadsheet competitors didn't long ago understand the value of custom functions.
I couldn't agree more. In addition to the features you mention, VBA is incredibly valuable (and not incidentally, tough for Microsoft competitors to duplicate).
I teach several MBA courses where we do moderately sophisticated financial calculations. The ability to create simple custom functions in Excel using VBA makes it so much easier to create powerful, easy to debug spreadsheets. I could never get away with using Matlab (I use it but the students don't have the background). But even students who have never programmed understand that they will be more marketable if they become Excel experts, and that means learning VBA. I simply don't see any reasonable alternatives, and the truth is that Excel plus VBA is a powerful tool for the back-of-the-envelope calculation.
You're right that it would be nice for the patient, but it's actually not a minor issue. Pharmacists do make mistakes from misreading prescriptions. Also a device creating a digital prescription can automatically check for patient allergies and interactions with other drugs the patient is taking. It's hard for doctors to stay up-to-date on those interactions.
Here are a few of the ways technology can help a doctor's office:
--Electronic prescriptions (avoid errors from poor physician handwriting. Don't laugh, it happens.)
--Databases to check for drug interactions
--Databases to assist with differential diagnoses (what possible ailments correspond to these symptoms)
--Availability of medical records and lab results at multiple offices (what happens when patient A is typically seen at location X and comes instead to location Y)
--Maintain a practice web site which is a medical portal for current issues (example: pediatricians should have a link to this site).
And come on/.ers, the level of venom in some of these replies isn't necessary. How many of you put your lives on hold to work 36-hour shifts at slave wages for 8 years... oh, uh, never mind.:-)
Your statement that "anyone who tries to use it for anything but Text-with-two-figures documents needs to budget a good day just to make it come our right" is simply not correct. LaTeX is not for desktop publishing, that's true. But lots of documents don't require DTP.
I am writing a book and have about 700 pages so far. LaTeX has made my life far simpler, and I never experience graphics getting flushed to the end of the chapter. But then I'm using floats, and not trying to use LaTeX as a desktop publisher. And my publisher is delighted that I'm using LaTeX since that apparently makes things simpler for them, even at the point where they do switch to DTP mode.
The right tool for the job. It all depends on what you're trying to do...
When an employee exercises a so-called non-qualified compensation option (which is what most of Microsoft's are), the difference between the stock price and the price they pay for the stock (called the option's strike price) is a deduction for the company and ordinary income for the employee. This is the same thing that happens with cash compensation: a deduction for the company and taxable income for the employee. If the stock appreciates further, those *subsequent* gains are taxed as capital gains.
So the bottom line is that Microsoft is getting a deduction for that portion of profits transferred to the pockets of employees. As other posters have noted, taxes _are_ paid (by employees) and other shareholders in effect foot the bill by selling shares at a below-market price.
Bill Gates is not getting a break from this, unless paying big bucks to employees makes them more dedicated and productive.
Let me first agree that university policies are generally just good guesses, as the university legal folks are the first to admit.
Part 1 seems clear. Part 2 (the nature of the copyrighted work) seems to me to require a lawyer; at least I don't know how it is interepreted. Parts 3 and 4 seem critical in considering case packets. Book and journal publishers do routinely charge reproduction fees for chapters and articles. Free reproduction of them therefore seems to me to destroy a part of the market for the work. Brevity (as you note) is essential to fair use.
I'm waiting to see a lawsuit involving periodical publishers. Now that some newspapers and magazines have a mechanism to charge $2.50 for yesterday's article, I wonder if distributing that article from last month's newspaper may be deemed a violation of fair use.
>> Basically, IIRC, it's perfectly alright for
>> professors or students to copy works for some
>> educational purpose.
This is absolutely not true, at least according to my university's lawyers.
There is a "fair use" clause in the copyright act which permits copying for personal use, and is interpreted by many to mean that short, current periodical items (such as newspaper clippings) may be copied and distributed to a class.
However, journal articles and book chapters *always* require copyright permission. Moreover, newspaper clippings require permission from the publisher if they are to be used more than one time (more than one use exceeds "fair use").
Different universities have somewhat different views on this, but the notion that unlimited copying for educational purposes is OK, is simply not correct.
There is a laundry list of advanced features which create problems, but for my money VBA seems especially problematic. When you create custom functions in Excel, the VBA code can become the essential part of what the spreadsheet is doing. True, most users don't use VBA. But if there's any chance you'll need VBA compatability, you're going to stick with MS Office.
Is there any chance at all of getting VBA compatability in Star Office or the Gnome suite? Is anyone working on it? I assume there are thorny technical issues.
I'm curious: why doesn't anyone mention TeX and LaTeX when discussing open source? Am I missing some distinction? The code is out there, it's free (though commercial versions are available), and it's well-documented. It is also software that has made a real difference. A very large percentage of mathematical manuscripts are produced using LaTeX. I am writing a book and currently talking to commercial publishers. Their production people are thrilled that I'm using LaTeX.
Seems to me that this is what linux advocates should want: direct, high-profile comparisons to NT. That's how you get mindshare. This won't be the last test like this. NT will "win" some, Linux will "win" some, there will always be arguments about how the test was conducted. But it will get people thinking that it's reasonable to speak of both OS's in the same breath.
In fact bandwidth does share similarities with gas (and electricity). At a point in time, the supply of gas is pretty much fixed (it's very expensive to store). In the short run you can get big swings in the price depending on changes in demand and supply. Quality of service is important to buyers. Yes you can always build more bandwidth but it takes time. Given the fixed supply of bandwidth in the short-run, the question is how do you allocate it? This is what bandwidth trading is all about.
Enron is an extraordinary company. Their bandwidth initiative is outlined here. Jeff Skilling, the President, has vision and the ability to put the resources together to pull things off. Under his leadership they were one of the companies which have shaped the market for natural gas since deregulation in the '80s, they have been a key player in the market for electricity, and they were one of the first to trade weather contracts (for example allowing one to speculate on the average temperature in St Louis in April -- you wouldn't use a contract like this, but think about utilities). I heard Skilling give a talk; he said that Enron is working with the New York Mercantile Exchange about creating a bandwidth futures contract!).
For the reasons others have mentioned in this thread, bandwidth trading is inevitable. Check out band-x as an example of what is happening now.
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I've used mandrake linux for specific tasks (mostly using xfig), but one of the things that surprised me the first time I booted up was significantly lower font quality than what I had in windows. It seems to me that is a hurdle for desktop adoption.
I know that quality fonts are difficult to create. What is the prospect for linux getting screen fonts of Windows quality?
The standard LaTeX command for bold text is \textbf{}. I do agree with you that LaTeX is terrific.
The previous poster is correct that corruption can occur in Wordperfect although I believe it is rare. I started writing a book using WP and one of my chapters became corrupted. I lost a few days work. I retreated to a previous version of the file, and it became corrupted in the same way. I sent the file to Corel and actually spoke with a Wordperfect programmer who had examined my file, reexamined the WP source code to check for bugs, and explained the problem but said he had no clue about the cause.
That was the week I obtained wp2latex and started to learn latex. It's been a long haul but I have never looked back and have been delighted by the switch.
I agree with you on all counts and apart from Excel I almost never use office. (I use Eudora for e-mail, Ecco as a PIM, and I do almost all of my word processing and presentations in emacs/latex.) None of this changes the fact that, given the environment (what my students know, who hires them, and what their employees expect them to know), VBA has been invaluable. And it is a real block to anyone who wants to produce an office competitor.
It's too bad, but it's also too bad that spreadsheet competitors didn't long ago understand the value of custom functions.
Obviously, YMMV.
I teach several MBA courses where we do moderately sophisticated financial calculations. The ability to create simple custom functions in Excel using VBA makes it so much easier to create powerful, easy to debug spreadsheets. I could never get away with using Matlab (I use it but the students don't have the background). But even students who have never programmed understand that they will be more marketable if they become Excel experts, and that means learning VBA. I simply don't see any reasonable alternatives, and the truth is that Excel plus VBA is a powerful tool for the back-of-the-envelope calculation.
Anyone who finds this question intriguing should certainly read Walter M. Miller Jr.'s wonderful book about the aftermath of nuclear war.
You're right that it would be nice for the patient, but it's actually not a minor issue. Pharmacists do make mistakes from misreading prescriptions. Also a device creating a digital prescription can automatically check for patient allergies and interactions with other drugs the patient is taking. It's hard for doctors to stay up-to-date on those interactions.
--Electronic prescriptions (avoid errors from poor physician handwriting. Don't laugh, it happens.)
--Databases to check for drug interactions
--Databases to assist with differential diagnoses (what possible ailments correspond to these symptoms)
--Availability of medical records and lab results at multiple offices (what happens when patient A is typically seen at location X and comes instead to location Y)
--Maintain a practice web site which is a medical portal for current issues (example: pediatricians should have a link to this site).
And come on /.ers, the level of venom in some of these replies isn't necessary. How many of you put your lives on hold to work 36-hour shifts at slave wages for 8 years ... oh, uh, never mind. :-)
Your statement that "anyone who tries to use it for anything but Text-with-two-figures documents needs to budget a good day just to make it come our right" is simply not correct. LaTeX is not for desktop publishing, that's true. But lots of documents don't require DTP.
I am writing a book and have about 700 pages so far. LaTeX has made my life far simpler, and I never experience graphics getting flushed to the end of the chapter. But then I'm using floats, and not trying to use LaTeX as a desktop publisher. And my publisher is delighted that I'm using LaTeX since that apparently makes things simpler for them, even at the point where they do switch to DTP mode.
The right tool for the job. It all depends on what you're trying to do...
Do macros work under WINE? VBA is a big part of the compatability hurdle.
When an employee exercises a so-called non-qualified compensation option (which is what most of Microsoft's are), the difference between the stock price and the price they pay for the stock (called the option's strike price) is a deduction for the company and ordinary income for the employee. This is the same thing that happens with cash compensation: a deduction for the company and taxable income for the employee. If the stock appreciates further, those *subsequent* gains are taxed as capital gains.
So the bottom line is that Microsoft is getting a deduction for that portion of profits transferred to the pockets of employees. As other posters have noted, taxes _are_ paid (by employees) and other shareholders in effect foot the bill by selling shares at a below-market price.
Bill Gates is not getting a break from this, unless paying big bucks to employees makes them more dedicated and productive.
Let me first agree that university policies are generally just good guesses, as the university legal folks are the first to admit.
Part 1 seems clear. Part 2 (the nature of the copyrighted work) seems to me to require a lawyer; at least I don't know how it is interepreted. Parts 3 and 4 seem critical in considering case packets. Book and journal publishers do routinely charge reproduction fees for chapters and articles. Free reproduction of them therefore seems to me to destroy a part of the market for the work. Brevity (as you note) is essential to fair use.
I'm waiting to see a lawsuit involving periodical publishers. Now that some newspapers and magazines have a mechanism to charge $2.50 for yesterday's article, I wonder if distributing that article from last month's newspaper may be deemed a violation of fair use.
>> Basically, IIRC, it's perfectly alright for
>> professors or students to copy works for some
>> educational purpose.
This is absolutely not true, at least according to my university's lawyers.
There is a "fair use" clause in the copyright act which permits copying for personal use, and is interpreted by many to mean that short, current periodical items (such as newspaper clippings) may be copied and distributed to a class.
However, journal articles and book chapters *always* require copyright permission. Moreover, newspaper clippings require permission from the publisher if they are to be used more than one time (more than one use exceeds "fair use").
Different universities have somewhat different views on this, but the notion that unlimited copying for educational purposes is OK, is simply not correct.
There is a laundry list of advanced features which create problems, but for my money VBA seems especially problematic. When you create custom functions in Excel, the VBA code can become the essential part of what the spreadsheet is doing. True, most users don't use VBA. But if there's any chance you'll need VBA compatability, you're going to stick with MS Office.
Is there any chance at all of getting VBA compatability in Star Office or the Gnome suite? Is anyone working on it? I assume there are thorny technical issues.
I'm curious: why doesn't anyone mention TeX and LaTeX when discussing open source? Am I missing some distinction? The code is out there, it's free (though commercial versions are available), and it's well-documented. It is also software that has made a real difference. A very large percentage of mathematical manuscripts are produced using LaTeX. I am writing a book and currently talking to commercial publishers. Their production people are thrilled that I'm using LaTeX.
Seems to me that this is what linux advocates should want: direct, high-profile comparisons to NT. That's how you get mindshare. This won't be the last test like this. NT will "win" some, Linux will "win" some, there will always be arguments about how the test was conducted. But it will get people thinking that it's reasonable to speak of both OS's in the same breath.
In fact bandwidth does share similarities with gas (and electricity). At a point in time, the supply of gas is pretty much fixed (it's very expensive to store). In the short run you can get big swings in the price depending on changes in demand and supply. Quality of service is important to buyers. Yes you can always build more bandwidth but it takes time. Given the fixed supply of bandwidth in the short-run, the question is how do you allocate it? This is what bandwidth trading is all about.
Enron is an extraordinary company. Their bandwidth initiative is outlined here. Jeff Skilling, the President, has vision and the ability to put the resources together to pull things off. Under his leadership they were one of the companies which have shaped the market for natural gas since deregulation in the '80s, they have been a key player in the market for electricity, and they were one of the first to trade weather contracts (for example allowing one to speculate on the average temperature in St Louis in April -- you wouldn't use a contract like this, but think about utilities). I heard Skilling give a talk; he said that Enron is working with the New York Mercantile Exchange about creating a bandwidth futures contract!).
For the reasons others have mentioned in this thread, bandwidth trading is inevitable. Check out band-x as an example of what is happening now.
rmcd