Just got my dad a Pantech Breeze from AT&T. It's quad-band GSM, nop gadgety features (like media/mp3/etc), does voice tags, has large buttons, has 3 dedicated speed-dial buttons (actual buttons, not softkeys), has good battery life, and does bluetooth.
It's designed for old people, not blind people, but it has everything you described.
Once again, OS X is being given short schrift with this release. 2.0.0 never made it past RC3, and all the download links still point to it with not even a link to a 2.0.1 RC or Final.
I need it in order to solve the 0.05pt/0.50pt lineweight issue. (issue 52047)
Ever since the 1.4a OS X builds were patched to work again with profiles on NFS volumes, there has been a severe dataloss bug (it eats bookmarks.html) Please see bug 215089 for details and how to reproduce it. Some bugzilla searching will reveal LOTS of similar reports, which are being similarly ignored (some were tracked in meta-bug 203343).
This is a SEVERE problem - a browser that can't maintain bookmarks from one launch to the next is pretty useless, especially for corporate use, where home directories are likely to be on non-local volumes. Requests for blocking 1.4b, 1.4 and now 1.5b were all denied, and no one seems willing to investigate where exactly the problem lies.
While I appreciate speed, bloat reduction and fixes for really obscure bits of CSS in order to make someone's 'blog render nicely, I feel that data loss is a more critical issue. If I could code, I'd help do that. Instead, I'm happy to work with any developer to rest and resolve this. If voting carries any weight, please vote for bug 215089. Thanks...
You wrote: > Find a *nix based CAD package that compares > to AutoCAD.
ArrisCAD Architectural Studio (www.arriscad.com). We have about 35 seats of it all running on SunBlade workstations, Solaris 8 and KDE. I'm not going to go into a point-by-point of Arris vs. AutoCAD, but if you make me I'll turn my CAD manager loose on you.
If in three years we decide to change CAD packages (not going to happen, but for the sake of argument...), it sure won't be to AutoCAD. We'll 'switch' to a BSD-based system (www.apple.com/macosx) and run GraphiSoft ArchiCAD. ArchiCAD is so indescribably better than AutoCAD, AND it runs on Windows and OS-X. (Someone I know outside of work just switched from being a 15-year AutoCAD user to ArchiCAD 7, and is completely blown away by it's quality, features, ease-of-use, etc.)
> Tax and Accounting packages (QuickBooks, > TurboTax, etc.) - not there.
AppGEN MyBooks is a quality replacement for QuickBooks. (www.appgen.com)
Yes, the PGX64 graphics system isn't great, but you can order it with 'good' card straight from sun. No 'Wintel PCI' + linux needed.
When you say 'impossible as a workstation', we run 2D CAD (Arris), KDE 2.2.2, and StarOffice. We drive 19" monitors at 1280x1024 @ 85Hz. No flicker, no redraw issues in the CAD software at all... You don't need the latest Radeon card to run a spreadsheet, after all.
To keep this on the original topic, any medical software (www.synitech.com - it's HIPAA compliant) is going to be glorified text-entry anyway. Also, If (unlikely) the original poster was going to switch to a unix solution, he could be running shared-memory graphics on a Celeron 500 for all we know, so don't make like the Blade100 is 'unusable' (it's not!).
Solaris boxen expensive? Not really - Get a Sun Blade100 for $995.00, order your RAM upgrade elsewhere, and you have a real workstation at Dell prices. OK, the MHz is lower, but do you really *need* 2.4GHz if you're not gaming? Besides, you can run the Sun Grid Engine (free) and aggregate your computing cycles as needed.
I am well aware of the 'logging' flag, and use it on all our systems. However, the/var filesystem would still frequently come up unclean, and prompt for '...root password to enter single-user mode, or control-D to continue...'
Hammer? Maybe, but after getting the umpteenth call from users saying 'my system says to hit control-D and I do but nothing happens...' it was a fast, simple, once-and-forget-it approach (the change to rcS is applied with the JumpStart script).
One of the 'issues' in setting up Sun Blade100 workstations for 30 Architects was how to handle unclean shutdowns, power failures, etc. Integrity of the OS isn't an issue (if it breaks we simply JumpStart it, and/usr/local &/opt are nfs mounts) - and integrity of the user data isn't an issue either (~, etc are all NFS mounts). All I wanted was for it to NOT prompt for a root password for fsck on bootup EVER. The following solves this problem on Solaris 8:
Open/etc/rcS in your favourite editor
Find the line that contains the comment: # Determine fsck options by file system type
Underneath that, you will see a construct which says: case $2 in
ufs) foptions="-o p";;
s5) foptions="-y -t/tmp/tmp$$ -D";;
*) foptions="-y";; esac
The 'foptions' are the arguments passed to fsck man fsck for further details. Change the ufs line to read: ufs) foptions="-y"...save and exit. Now test this by pulling the plug, and rebooting. It will see your hosed-up filesystem, run fsck with the -y argument, fix a whole bunch of crap without any user intervention, then proceed with the bootup when it's done.
You may be able to apply something similar to your needs.
I know about administrative installation points, (been there, done that), but you can only push out changes to Office by using the Office Resource Kit to create OPS (settings) files, which you deploy using the group-policy snapin on a Win2K Domain Controller.
Have you ever *done* this? I have, it's a pain in the butt! It also requires a W2k PDC, which people running small serverless (or NAS) workgroups, or Novell, or SaMBa, etc. don't necessarily have (hence expen$ive). Editing SO6's Common.xml, Writer.xml, Calc.xml, etc. files can be done with (vi|notepad|kwrite) and deployed with simple scripts. Server-based installs under unix all use a common set of preferences, so one change instantly covers everyone.
Let me clarify: Internally, we all use SO6, so there's no incompatibility with source documents. Our policy is that anything that goes out of the company is PDF , so that eliminates translation issues with outsiders (sending things out editable is an exposure to risk that we choose not to take for contracts, spec's, etc., and memos, meeting minutes, etc. don't need to be editable for the recipients.)
All working copies are SO6, stuff sent outside and legacy archives are all PDF. If you want to reuse some text in a new document, open PDF/select/copy, Create new SO6 document/paste.
Ever open up a 3-year-old Word document with the date as a macro and have the date change to today's? Or text reflows because you have a different printer selected or it's just all *&%^-up because it was created in a different version of Word? PDF eliminates that for archive and finished-versions of documents, and PDF creation (via ghostscript) is built into SO6. On Windows we use PDFMAILER (www.pdfmailer.com) to create-attach-and-email PDFs in one step.
So no, we don't edit PDFs directly. We just don't keep thousands of legacy documents in a Microsoft-controlled format.
In my tests staroffice was much slower than office.
If you're referring to 5.x, yes. With 6.0, it's a different world.
On Windows, MS Office 'preloads' a lot of itself to provide the illusion of speedy launch. StarOffice on Windows does the same thing (although it gives you the option to disable the QuickStarter if you so desire, which MS Office doesn't), and is pretty much equally speedy.
I honestly wish a similar daemon existed on the Solaris & Linux versions, so my users would stop whining that their workstations are 'slower' than Windows.
Unless launch time is under 200 ms (human reaction time), users will select the faster product, all other things being equal.
Ah, but everything isn't equal. $75 != ~$400. If you're a home user, and you get it bundled free with your Mac/PC, you'll be happy to wait an extra second or two to keep cash in your pocket (Yes, Dell bundles MS Office, no it isn't 'free', it's a $199 upgrade from the Small Business version to the Professional version, and even more if you add it to a system that didn't have it at all). Also, this article is about MacOS-X.... if MS Office X goes away, what equality is there?
Users in an office environment will need full compatibility with office (for document sharing). How can that be accomplished, when Microsoft can change file formats at a whim, knowing that users will update like lemmings to get the new "features" provide along with the thwarting format changes?
As Microsoft changes formats, so will StarOffice update its filters for compatibility. It's a chicken-and-egg situation: Enough deployment of SO6 can shift the critical mass away from Microsoft.
Folks won't choose because of cost because cost is not a big issue. In an office environment, it makes sense to pay a day's salary (on tools), to save 10 days of work. In a home environment, people use (cheap) bundled Microsoft products or they steal them.
You make $400/day? Cool. Now how about a month's salary to cover the cost of administration and deployment.
Management-wise, SO6 is a dream! Don't like the default settings & behaviours? Want to customise it for mass deployment? All of SO6's preferences are in text files that can easily be edited to make your deployment exactly the way your company needs it to be, without expen$ive deployments tools (MMC, etc).
See my comment above about the 'cheap (bundled)' Microsoft products. Steal them? Well... I'm sure some people at the BSA would like to talk to you! Furthermore, I'd like to see you pirate OfficeXP. You'll be amused at the dialogue box that says "Sorry, but this copy has already been activated on another computer". So, you'll have to stick with pirating Office2000 (oops, that conflicts with your compatibility-forced-upgrade scenario, above) or Office X for Macs (until Microsoft either adds anti-piracy features equivalent to Windows' activation, or discontinues it altogether.)
Even then, you don't really 'own' your data if it's in their proprietary file format, which you can only get at with software that you 'licence', not 'own'. If you're not going to move to SO6, at least do yourself a favour and save copies of all of your files in PDF. At least it's an open-standard format.....
For what it's worth, I've moved an entire firm of ~60 people and tens of thousands of documents to StarOffice 6 & PDF, and management is VERY happy with the productivity increase, stability, data accessibility and cost savings.
Slashdot Mirror
... you insensitive clod!
Just got my dad a Pantech Breeze from AT&T. It's quad-band GSM, nop gadgety features (like media/mp3/etc), does voice tags, has large buttons, has 3 dedicated speed-dial buttons (actual buttons, not softkeys), has good battery life, and does bluetooth.
It's designed for old people, not blind people, but it has everything you described.
ash nag durbatuluk
ash nag gimbatul
ash nag thrakatuluk
og burzum-ishi krimpatul
Its not hard to build a modulator that can every possible standard you'd like. You can even make it software controllable, if you wish.
For $12? Multi-system TV's that cover every corner case planet-wide sure aren't cheap....
"...plug directly into a standard television."
*What* 'standard'?
NTSC? PAL? SECAM? PAL-M? SECAM-M? MESCAM? The 20-something variations thereof? Or one of the new digital/HD/etc. 'standards'?
Once again, OS X is being given short schrift with this release. 2.0.0 never made it past RC3, and all the download links still point to it with not even a link to a 2.0.1 RC or Final.
I need it in order to solve the 0.05pt/0.50pt lineweight issue. (issue 52047)
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=
Actually, it works worth several damns if the w*****s user is running Trillian Pro.
Switchvox http://www.switchvox.com/ will do it for you. Talk to David Podolsky there.
Email me if you have questions, I've already done the research. len at kitchenandassociates.com
Ever since the 1.4a OS X builds were patched to work again with profiles on NFS volumes, there has been a severe dataloss bug (it eats bookmarks.html) Please see bug 215089 for details and how to reproduce it. Some bugzilla searching will reveal LOTS of similar reports, which are being similarly ignored (some were tracked in meta-bug 203343).
This is a SEVERE problem - a browser that can't maintain bookmarks from one launch to the next is pretty useless, especially for corporate use, where home directories are likely to be on non-local volumes. Requests for blocking 1.4b, 1.4 and now 1.5b were all denied, and no one seems willing to investigate where exactly the problem lies.
While I appreciate speed, bloat reduction and fixes for really obscure bits of CSS in order to make someone's 'blog render nicely, I feel that data loss is a more critical issue. If I could code, I'd help do that. Instead, I'm happy to work with any developer to rest and resolve this. If voting carries any weight, please vote for bug 215089. Thanks...
You wrote:
> Find a *nix based CAD package that compares
> to AutoCAD.
ArrisCAD Architectural Studio (www.arriscad.com). We have about 35 seats of it all running on SunBlade workstations, Solaris 8 and KDE. I'm not going to go into a point-by-point of Arris vs. AutoCAD, but if you make me I'll turn my CAD manager loose on you.
If in three years we decide to change CAD packages (not going to happen, but for the sake of argument...), it sure won't be to AutoCAD. We'll 'switch' to a BSD-based system (www.apple.com/macosx) and run GraphiSoft ArchiCAD. ArchiCAD is so indescribably better than AutoCAD, AND it runs on Windows and OS-X. (Someone I know outside of work just switched from being a 15-year AutoCAD user to ArchiCAD 7, and is completely blown away by it's quality, features, ease-of-use, etc.)
> Tax and Accounting packages (QuickBooks,
> TurboTax, etc.) - not there.
AppGEN MyBooks is a quality replacement for QuickBooks. (www.appgen.com)
Actually, we have 30 Blades.
Yes, the PGX64 graphics system isn't great, but you can order it with 'good' card straight from sun. No 'Wintel PCI' + linux needed.
When you say 'impossible as a workstation', we run 2D CAD (Arris), KDE 2.2.2, and StarOffice. We drive 19" monitors at 1280x1024 @ 85Hz. No flicker, no redraw issues in the CAD software at all... You don't need the latest Radeon card to run a spreadsheet, after all.
To keep this on the original topic, any medical software (www.synitech.com - it's HIPAA compliant) is going to be glorified text-entry anyway. Also, If (unlikely) the original poster was going to switch to a unix solution, he could be running shared-memory graphics on a Celeron 500 for all we know, so don't make like the Blade100 is 'unusable' (it's not!).
Solaris boxen expensive? Not really - Get a Sun Blade100 for $995.00, order your RAM upgrade elsewhere, and you have a real workstation at Dell prices. OK, the MHz is lower, but do you really *need* 2.4GHz if you're not gaming? Besides, you can run the Sun Grid Engine (free) and aggregate your computing cycles as needed.
I am well aware of the 'logging' flag, and use it on all our systems. However, the /var filesystem would still frequently come up unclean, and prompt for '...root password to enter single-user mode, or control-D to continue...'
Hammer? Maybe, but after getting the umpteenth call from users saying 'my system says to hit control-D and I do but nothing happens...' it was a fast, simple, once-and-forget-it approach (the change to rcS is applied with the JumpStart script).
One of the 'issues' in setting up Sun Blade100 workstations for 30 Architects was how to handle unclean shutdowns, power failures, etc. Integrity of the OS isn't an issue (if it breaks we simply JumpStart it, and /usr/local & /opt are nfs mounts) - and integrity of the user data isn't an issue either (~, etc are all NFS mounts). All I wanted was for it to NOT prompt for a root password for fsck on bootup EVER. The following solves this problem on Solaris 8:
/etc/rcS in your favourite editor
;; /tmp/tmp$$ -D" ;; ;;
...save and exit. Now test this by pulling the plug, and rebooting. It will see your hosed-up filesystem, run fsck with the -y argument, fix a whole bunch of crap without any user intervention, then proceed with the bootup when it's done.
Open
Find the line that contains the comment:
# Determine fsck options by file system type
Underneath that, you will see a construct which says:
case $2 in
ufs) foptions="-o p"
s5) foptions="-y -t
*) foptions="-y"
esac
The 'foptions' are the arguments passed to fsck man fsck for further details. Change the ufs line to read:
ufs) foptions="-y"
You may be able to apply something similar to your needs.
Yeah, yeah, forgot the
when using the html formatting.....
My bad, I meant SMS, not MMC.
. htm
Reference: http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/xp/two/adma03
I know about administrative installation points, (been there, done that), but you can only push out changes to Office by using the Office Resource Kit to create OPS (settings) files, which you deploy using the group-policy snapin on a Win2K Domain Controller.
Have you ever *done* this? I have, it's a pain in the butt! It also requires a W2k PDC, which people running small serverless (or NAS) workgroups, or Novell, or SaMBa, etc. don't necessarily have (hence expen$ive). Editing SO6's Common.xml, Writer.xml, Calc.xml, etc. files can be done with (vi|notepad|kwrite) and deployed with simple scripts. Server-based installs under unix all use a common set of preferences, so one change instantly covers everyone.
Let me clarify:
Internally, we all use SO6, so there's no incompatibility with source documents. Our policy is that anything that goes out of the company is PDF , so that eliminates translation issues with outsiders (sending things out editable is an exposure to risk that we choose not to take for contracts, spec's, etc., and memos, meeting minutes, etc. don't need to be editable for the recipients.)
All working copies are SO6, stuff sent outside and legacy archives are all PDF. If you want to reuse some text in a new document, open PDF/select/copy, Create new SO6 document/paste.
Ever open up a 3-year-old Word document with the date as a macro and have the date change to today's? Or text reflows because you have a different printer selected or it's just all *&%^-up because it was created in a different version of Word? PDF eliminates that for archive and finished-versions of documents, and PDF creation (via ghostscript) is built into SO6. On Windows we use PDFMAILER (www.pdfmailer.com) to create-attach-and-email PDFs in one step.
So no, we don't edit PDFs directly. We just don't keep thousands of legacy documents in a Microsoft-controlled format.
In my tests staroffice was much slower than office. If you're referring to 5.x, yes. With 6.0, it's a different world. On Windows, MS Office 'preloads' a lot of itself to provide the illusion of speedy launch. StarOffice on Windows does the same thing (although it gives you the option to disable the QuickStarter if you so desire, which MS Office doesn't), and is pretty much equally speedy. I honestly wish a similar daemon existed on the Solaris & Linux versions, so my users would stop whining that their workstations are 'slower' than Windows. Unless launch time is under 200 ms (human reaction time), users will select the faster product, all other things being equal. Ah, but everything isn't equal. $75 != ~$400. If you're a home user, and you get it bundled free with your Mac/PC, you'll be happy to wait an extra second or two to keep cash in your pocket (Yes, Dell bundles MS Office, no it isn't 'free', it's a $199 upgrade from the Small Business version to the Professional version, and even more if you add it to a system that didn't have it at all). Also, this article is about MacOS-X.... if MS Office X goes away, what equality is there? Users in an office environment will need full compatibility with office (for document sharing). How can that be accomplished, when Microsoft can change file formats at a whim, knowing that users will update like lemmings to get the new "features" provide along with the thwarting format changes? As Microsoft changes formats, so will StarOffice update its filters for compatibility. It's a chicken-and-egg situation: Enough deployment of SO6 can shift the critical mass away from Microsoft. Folks won't choose because of cost because cost is not a big issue. In an office environment, it makes sense to pay a day's salary (on tools), to save 10 days of work. In a home environment, people use (cheap) bundled Microsoft products or they steal them. You make $400/day? Cool. Now how about a month's salary to cover the cost of administration and deployment. Management-wise, SO6 is a dream! Don't like the default settings & behaviours? Want to customise it for mass deployment? All of SO6's preferences are in text files that can easily be edited to make your deployment exactly the way your company needs it to be, without expen$ive deployments tools (MMC, etc). See my comment above about the 'cheap (bundled)' Microsoft products. Steal them? Well... I'm sure some people at the BSA would like to talk to you! Furthermore, I'd like to see you pirate OfficeXP. You'll be amused at the dialogue box that says "Sorry, but this copy has already been activated on another computer". So, you'll have to stick with pirating Office2000 (oops, that conflicts with your compatibility-forced-upgrade scenario, above) or Office X for Macs (until Microsoft either adds anti-piracy features equivalent to Windows' activation, or discontinues it altogether.) Even then, you don't really 'own' your data if it's in their proprietary file format, which you can only get at with software that you 'licence', not 'own'. If you're not going to move to SO6, at least do yourself a favour and save copies of all of your files in PDF. At least it's an open-standard format..... For what it's worth, I've moved an entire firm of ~60 people and tens of thousands of documents to StarOffice 6 & PDF, and management is VERY happy with the productivity increase, stability, data accessibility and cost savings.