I'm not a fanboy, and I think the right business decision in your case is to stick with Office.
However, creating the template from scratch in a given piece of software (MS Office) and then hoping it will work elsewhere... is always fraught with problems.
If your template is in an open format (this is the most important part) like RTF or ODF, then you're much more likely to be able to change software when required. MS.DOC format is what is locking you to Office, and that's the way they want it.
It seems in fact that an old document that you open with a new version remains backwards compatible, but a fresh document where editing started in the new version will not load in older versions.
Another good reason for open formats. OpenOffice, anyone?
I never had any motivation to upgrade to XP until I discovered that hardware I had bought (with Win2K drivers) didn't actually work in Win2K. So I upgraded, and it worked.
Of course, it being a USB digital TV dongle (for DVB free transmissions), I was asking for trouble.
Vista won't run on anything I own right now, so I won't be rushing out to buy it / download it / whatever.
That's a fair point. I suggested the DJB link as a talking point, and I'm glad it brought out an intelligent response. I just said it was an "interesting take" and has some ideas which are worthy of discussion.
For major businesses RSS & such would be a good way to deliver "subscriber" content. Bloggers can do the same. They can also take advantage of proxy hierarchies. Bandwidth is getting cheaper anyway. Newsletters sent massively are exploiting the same weak link that SPAMmers exploit, so it's a tough call!
The line between SPAM and opt-in newsletters is something that makes the process difficult. Most Internet protocols are based on trust, store & forward, and good network configuration. Where you can catch SPAM is to axe everything in your policy to fight it around bad config.
That is what I retain as my key point: better DNS config, better SMTP/MTA config... if marketing people have to send better formatted newsletters and run well configured DNS servers... Hotmail / GMail / Yahoo can already fix some rules for that and begin to oblige the newsletter sender's SMTP/MTA/DNS chain to be better configured.
SPAM needs a solution, but breaking SMTP isn't the way to go IMHO. I think a well configured email server, RBLs, requiring reasonable RFC compliance and such will eliminate much SPAM. Spending energy on evangelising good mail server configuration is still the best way to go.
Posts have been submitted from the past directly to today's Slashdot homepage.
As part of an experiment, Zonk set a number of stories in January 2003 while the idea of giving subscribers access to stories before the unwashed masses. Indeed, this story was seen by beta subscribers in 2003 and has suddenly re-appeared after a quantum mishap involving Cowboy Neal zapped a few posts from the database.
Today, they're showing back up as a new singularity in Cowboy Neal's SQL-Optimising-Time-Compressor caused bits originally lost in 2003 to show up in their original state three and a half years later.
Let's not forget that American slang is more widely disseminated via TV series (massively exported around the world) and Hollywood film output. I've heard British children speak with American accents because they watch American cartoons, series and films all the time.
Now, back when Neighbours and Home & Away (Aussie soap operas) were popular in England, you heard British children say things like "daggy" (uncool) and "mate" (friend) a lot, as well as other terms I now forget.
I like Aussie slang, being a Brit I think I'm more exposed to it than Americans.
I thought that if an exploit was discovered, systems that could be infected were patched, rather than worrying too much about the virus itself staying in the wild.
Sure, a lot of caches can keep very old content (the Wayback Machine www.archive.org would be a good example). But spread infection is mainly prevented by immunising systems, not by removing all known traces of the virus / trojan / etc. Bacteria and viruses can live in harsh conditions (relative to those that they require to thrive) but immunisation is how we battle them. Sterilisation is a big part of localised treatments (small to medium sized networks) but impractical across the whole net.
So this is hardly big news is it? Caches holding copies of *content* people want to suddenly make unavailable, now that's an issue.
Never forget the paranoid mode analysis of what you said, e.g. that these made up names & blogs are seeded deliberately from Nintendo's PR department to put out rumours, myths, and some stories that will be true.
Buzz around a product, whether on real features or not, is in Nintendo's interest, and planting of bloggers in a network for marketing means is nothing new.
Good point, I didn't mean that. I'm not saying that everyone's vote should be public, but that in spite of attempts to make secret ballots effective we haven't succeeded in doing so.
Vote buying, intimidation, etc. happen whether the ballot is cast secretly or not... I'm thinking more in line with open voting systems that allow transparent anonymous (and traceable) counting methods.
My experience is you can use an if-statement to verify if the script was included (I havn't tested this on remote includes, there might be non-standard-404 pages that makes it impossible to verify you got the right page) Example: // ignore the notice and evaluate the return value of the script, if any. if(@include(dirname(__FILE__)."/foo.php")) echo "foo.php included"; else echo "failed to include foo.php";
So if you need to see if the include might have worked (and not forgetting cases where testing if a file exists doesn't mean it can be included) then this type of construct might be useful. I use it to try to include a specific header file based on URL attributes, otherwise include a generic replacement file.
You are of course correct in saying that code should try not to be lazy, and ignoring errors is a Bad Thing. Sometimes you can find use for that, and in my case above I hope this is OK (feel free to post an alternative, I'd be happy to include it in my code).
You are also correct that parsing was the wrong term. The syntax is parsed, and then the execution begins which can throw errors. So it's not a question of parsing. My apologies.
I second your thoughts, a voting system should be open.
Any secret ballot voting system is flawed. Manual voting (pregnant chads, anyone?) is also fraught with errors and open for abuse. Cases of dead people voting, multiple votes, and ballot stuffing have plagued democratic history.
Computer voting may make things better, but only if an open system can be found where, like you so rightly quote : the right and the meaningful possibility to verify that that their votes are counted correctly.
Dr Lecter, my candidate for the male archetype of 1951-2000, will never win any Nice Guy awards, I fear, but he symbolizes our age as totally as Bloom symbolized his. Hannibal's wit, erudition, insight into others, artistic sensitivity, scientific knowledge etc. make him almost a walking one man encyclopedia of Western civilization. As for his "hobbies" as he calls them -- well, according to the World Game Institute, since the end of World War II, in which 60,000,000 human beings were murdered by other human beings, 193, 000,000 more humans have been murdered by other humans in brush wars, revolutions, insurrections etc. What better symbol of our age than a serial killer? Hell, can you think of any recent U.S. President who doesn't belong in the Serial Killer Hall of Fame? And their motives make no more sense, and no less sense, than Dr Lecter's Darwinian one-man effort to rid the planet of those he finds outstandingly loutish and uncouth.
On the strength of that, it's not hard to understand how he ends up being on the fringe of society. Even if he does kind of have a point.
I'd like to see some screenshots. I mean, my original copies on VHS which were recorded from a TV transmission over 15 years ago look awful, and they're pan and scan.
Then I've got stuff from paid satellite TV on VHS, widescreen but on analog TV => still look awful.
These are from an analog format, but transferred to DVD and must be way better than what I have. It's still an upgrade in quality (especially the sound) compared to my two VHS copies.
So, they could look better, but how terrible is terrible?
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Very interesting thread (including the replies so far)
This always happens when I don't have mod points... an excellent discussion.
I'm not a fanboy, and I think the right business decision in your case is to stick with Office.
.DOC format is what is locking you to Office, and that's the way they want it.
However, creating the template from scratch in a given piece of software (MS Office) and then hoping it will work elsewhere... is always fraught with problems.
If your template is in an open format (this is the most important part) like RTF or ODF, then you're much more likely to be able to change software when required. MS
Totally with you on that.
It seems in fact that an old document that you open with a new version remains backwards compatible, but a fresh document where editing started in the new version will not load in older versions.
Another good reason for open formats. OpenOffice, anyone?
Interesting and articulate reply, nice to see this on Slashdot from time to time.
I never had any motivation to upgrade to XP until I discovered that hardware I had bought (with Win2K drivers) didn't actually work in Win2K. So I upgraded, and it worked.
Of course, it being a USB digital TV dongle (for DVB free transmissions), I was asking for trouble.
Vista won't run on anything I own right now, so I won't be rushing out to buy it / download it / whatever.
I'd worry about your finances if you spell financially "financhaly". You're not reading enough about your finances...
OK, but the article is mostly about what you can do as a content provider, rather than tweaks based on changing clients...
_every_ packet you receive has to be ACKed, and so latency can affect your download speed no matter how long your connection stays open.
That's a fair point. I suggested the DJB link as a talking point, and I'm glad it brought out an intelligent response. I just said it was an "interesting take" and has some ideas which are worthy of discussion.
For major businesses RSS & such would be a good way to deliver "subscriber" content. Bloggers can do the same. They can also take advantage of proxy hierarchies. Bandwidth is getting cheaper anyway. Newsletters sent massively are exploiting the same weak link that SPAMmers exploit, so it's a tough call!
The line between SPAM and opt-in newsletters is something that makes the process difficult. Most Internet protocols are based on trust, store & forward, and good network configuration. Where you can catch SPAM is to axe everything in your policy to fight it around bad config.
That is what I retain as my key point: better DNS config, better SMTP/MTA config... if marketing people have to send better formatted newsletters and run well configured DNS servers... Hotmail / GMail / Yahoo can already fix some rules for that and begin to oblige the newsletter sender's SMTP/MTA/DNS chain to be better configured.
All of these solutions have flaws. I'm with deBoynePollard on this:
An interesting take is to make the sender responsible for storing mail: suggested by Dan Bernstein (DJB), the qmail guy.
There's always politics in it. Some people don't like DJB's attitude and they're anti-qmail and go for Postfix or sendmail.
Wietse Venema, the postfix guy, isn't too happy about SPF either: but he does provide plugins for Postfix.
SPAM needs a solution, but breaking SMTP isn't the way to go IMHO. I think a well configured email server, RBLs, requiring reasonable RFC compliance and such will eliminate much SPAM. Spending energy on evangelising good mail server configuration is still the best way to go.
Posts have been submitted from the past directly to today's Slashdot homepage.
As part of an experiment, Zonk set a number of stories in January 2003 while the idea of giving subscribers access to stories before the unwashed masses. Indeed, this story was seen by beta subscribers in 2003 and has suddenly re-appeared after a quantum mishap involving Cowboy Neal zapped a few posts from the database.
Today, they're showing back up as a new singularity in Cowboy Neal's SQL-Optimising-Time-Compressor caused bits originally lost in 2003 to show up in their original state three and a half years later.
Good points mate.
Let's not forget that American slang is more widely disseminated via TV series (massively exported around the world) and Hollywood film output. I've heard British children speak with American accents because they watch American cartoons, series and films all the time.
Now, back when Neighbours and Home & Away (Aussie soap operas) were popular in England, you heard British children say things like "daggy" (uncool) and "mate" (friend) a lot, as well as other terms I now forget.
I like Aussie slang, being a Brit I think I'm more exposed to it than Americans.
I thought that if an exploit was discovered, systems that could be infected were patched, rather than worrying too much about the virus itself staying in the wild.
Sure, a lot of caches can keep very old content (the Wayback Machine www.archive.org would be a good example). But spread infection is mainly prevented by immunising systems, not by removing all known traces of the virus / trojan / etc. Bacteria and viruses can live in harsh conditions (relative to those that they require to thrive) but immunisation is how we battle them. Sterilisation is a big part of localised treatments (small to medium sized networks) but impractical across the whole net.
So this is hardly big news is it? Caches holding copies of *content* people want to suddenly make unavailable, now that's an issue.
To where?
You can SSH tunnel anywhere, but the server on the other end has to port forward or proxy for you, which means you need control over it.
I see this reply a lot, but if you only have one machine and no friends on the outside of the network, it's not *that* simple.
I found this link on the optical information: red, green & blue lasers.
This is real, and currently the only barrier is that red lasers aren't as stable / powerful / easy to create as blue & green ones.
If Novalux have overcome this, then real TVs using this tech will be on the market in 12-24 months.
Never forget the paranoid mode analysis of what you said, e.g. that these made up names & blogs are seeded deliberately from Nintendo's PR department to put out rumours, myths, and some stories that will be true.
Buzz around a product, whether on real features or not, is in Nintendo's interest, and planting of bloggers in a network for marketing means is nothing new.
I believe the ultra-politically correct term would be "dry-wipe board".
Good point, I didn't mean that. I'm not saying that everyone's vote should be public, but that in spite of attempts to make secret ballots effective we haven't succeeded in doing so. Vote buying, intimidation, etc. happen whether the ballot is cast secretly or not... I'm thinking more in line with open voting systems that allow transparent anonymous (and traceable) counting methods.
From the PHP manual entry on including files (my example is too simple, and in fact this is where it came from):
So if you need to see if the include might have worked (and not forgetting cases where testing if a file exists doesn't mean it can be included) then this type of construct might be useful. I use it to try to include a specific header file based on URL attributes, otherwise include a generic replacement file.
You are of course correct in saying that code should try not to be lazy, and ignoring errors is a Bad Thing. Sometimes you can find use for that, and in my case above I hope this is OK (feel free to post an alternative, I'd be happy to include it in my code).
You are also correct that parsing was the wrong term. The syntax is parsed, and then the execution begins which can throw errors. So it's not a question of parsing. My apologies.
I second your thoughts, a voting system should be open. Any secret ballot voting system is flawed. Manual voting (pregnant chads, anyone?) is also fraught with errors and open for abuse. Cases of dead people voting, multiple votes, and ballot stuffing have plagued democratic history. Computer voting may make things better, but only if an open system can be found where, like you so rightly quote : the right and the meaningful possibility to verify that that their votes are counted correctly.
Not only stops it from printing an error, but ignores the error and carries on parsing the rest of the code.
Useful for including a file that might not be there, for example...
I'd like to see some screenshots. I mean, my original copies on VHS which were recorded from a TV transmission over 15 years ago look awful, and they're pan and scan. Then I've got stuff from paid satellite TV on VHS, widescreen but on analog TV => still look awful. These are from an analog format, but transferred to DVD and must be way better than what I have. It's still an upgrade in quality (especially the sound) compared to my two VHS copies. So, they could look better, but how terrible is terrible?
The changes are so good, you get them twice.