Okay. Then which standards are OpenOffice.org native file formats based on? I am not talking about 'what standard is beneath the format' like the XML that's beneath some of the latest-generation MS Office formats.
I am saying: What tool besides OpenOffice itself (Star Office doesn't count, for any smart alecks who try that...) can open and readily manipulate the OpenOffice documents?
Whoops! I guess it's just another defacto standard, not really any different from the MS Office defacto standard. The proof that it's a 'standard' will come when there's a competing office suite that can open, edit, and save OpenOffice native files. Will that day ever come?
No, I am sure there are plenty of non-Americans who still grumble about a government edict coming in and declaring all their tools obsolete, if not forbidden. Every time something older than the 'metric edict' comes into their hands and needs repair or a replacement nut/bolt, they've got those 'other' thread spacings and hole sizes to worry about.
You're right. And it just pisses me off to no end that my Compound Mitre saw isn't calibrated in radians. I'll be damned if I'm going to compromise my values and have to set the saw to '30 degrees' for an angled cut, when it would be so much easier to set it to 0.52359877559829 radians. Everybody knows that whatever scientists use in a laboratory is best.
Perhaps we don't have the coercive state apparatus necessary to 'make' the metric system the primary system that we use.
Me, I have been doing a lot of woodworking lately. It's convenient to use a unit (the Foot) that divides easily into subunits that are multiples of both 3 and 4, without having to get all mired in floating point arithmetic.
But we have this metric flamefest every time the metric system comes up on Slashdot, and the same crap comes up every time.
I'm just happy that pointy-head metric zealots don't seem to have much pull in the real world of regular people. Keep on ranting, dudes.
Did you read who the grandparent comment was from? You really think somebody's gonna put on their resume 'shilled for Microsoft as Anonymous Coward on slashdot'?
Actually, to be pedantic about it, the Blue Screen of Death only occured on Windows NT. What a lot of less savvy people refer to as a 'BSOD' on Windows 9x machines is a blue-background error message unrelated to the real BSOD. The BSOD is a blue-background 'crash' screen which featured error messages and a binary dump of some memory for debug purposes. I on occasion was able to use the info on a BSOD (on NT 4.0) to figure out what caused the crash and correct it.
Many of the people who drop comments about a BSOD never ran NT and really have no clue what they're talking about.
Umm, I've never heard of a program that prompted the user to enter the instruction address to jump to. Well, I have, but only in some of my Assembly Language textbooks. I've certainly never heard of any user code that does so. Are you sure you're not just making this up as a hypothetical case?
This is topic drift, but WalMart isn't about selling ALL the goods. WalMart is about only selling goods that move fast and in large volume.
When I go into the old fashioned hardware store about a half mile from here, I can ask about a piece of pipe, or a bolt, or a hand tool that they've had in stock for years, because it's something that they don't sell a lot of, and it'll be there on a back shelf. At a WalMart if it doesn't 'move' in a matter of weeks or months it's shoved onto the clearance shelf and gone, and never re-ordered.
I don't choose to live in a world where I can only get a thing if it's popular and a mass-market item. But when places like WalMart grab all the volume business, my local Hardware Store ends up only selling the specialty items, and they can't sustain a business that way forever.
To bring it back on-topic, the same phenomenon occurs when a big Cinema Operator comes in the way this business proposes. They rent the movie at a price they can only justfy if they can be assured of a near-full house of viewers, that or they raise the price. And the revenue risk is in even considering screening films that they won't get a full house for, because they're gonna pay the big upfront rental even if nobody shows up and/or refuses to pay a lot more due to being one of the few people interested in the film.
Is it time to get rid of your PDA? Apparently yes, according to General Motors
Definitely no, according to anybody who wants to partition their personal data into a private space unconnected to snoops, spies, and busybodies.
I prefer to be the only bridge between some information and the outside world. So I say 'no thank you' to the notion that everything on my PDA should be connected in real time to a telephone/digital network every time I make a phone call.
They rent movies because most people only want to watch a movie one or two times. It wouldn't make sense for the average Blockbuster customer to buy all those VHS tapes and stack them on shelves after viewing them one or two times.
There are fundamental differences between how customers utilize Videotapes of Movies and recordings of music (which people listen to over and over and over again). So your example is irrelevant.
Unless the consumer has the right to rip, mix, and burn, you can't...
Are you allowed to type 'rip, mix, and burn' on a public forum like this without adding a notice that 'rip, mix, and burn' is an Apple Registered Trademark??
Just remember that what's being proposed here is that the theatre pay a flat fee for each playing. That means that for less popular films, there will be ten people in the theatre all splitting the same fees to the movie producer, instead of one hundred at the more popular film. That means it will be more expensive for more obscure, less mass-market films. It means many films won't get shown at all, because it's too risky for a theatre operator to pay big dollars to play a flat-fee to run a movie to a near-empty house.
What this guy is trying to do is 'WalMart' the movie business. If it doesn't have a high volume national market, it doesn't make it into a WalMart. Small hardware stores are HURT by WalMarts, but small hardware stores carry a much, much wider line of products, which become unavailable if WalMart drives them out of business.
but nobody goes to the cinema in order to be seen at the cinema
Actually, you'd be amazed at what clowns and idiots people will be at some of the big 'geek' film openings. Dressing up like Star Trek characters or Hobbits at film opening nights.
Did you think they did it purely out of an innate urge to look stupid?
My brother-in-law has been practicing a new geek obsession lately. He buys raw coffee beans and roasts his own. He screwed around with an air popper to change the temperature it regulates to for that purpose.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay. Then which standards are OpenOffice.org native file formats based on? I am not talking about 'what standard is beneath the format' like the XML that's beneath some of the latest-generation MS Office formats.
I am saying: What tool besides OpenOffice itself (Star Office doesn't count, for any smart alecks who try that...) can open and readily manipulate the OpenOffice documents?
Whoops! I guess it's just another defacto standard, not really any different from the MS Office defacto standard. The proof that it's a 'standard' will come when there's a competing office suite that can open, edit, and save OpenOffice native files. Will that day ever come?
No, I am sure there are plenty of non-Americans who still grumble about a government edict coming in and declaring all their tools obsolete, if not forbidden. Every time something older than the 'metric edict' comes into their hands and needs repair or a replacement nut/bolt, they've got those 'other' thread spacings and hole sizes to worry about.
You're right. And it just pisses me off to no end that my Compound Mitre saw isn't calibrated in radians. I'll be damned if I'm going to compromise my values and have to set the saw to '30 degrees' for an angled cut, when it would be so much easier to set it to 0.52359877559829 radians. Everybody knows that whatever scientists use in a laboratory is best.
Perhaps we don't have the coercive state apparatus necessary to 'make' the metric system the primary system that we use.
Me, I have been doing a lot of woodworking lately. It's convenient to use a unit (the Foot) that divides easily into subunits that are multiples of both 3 and 4, without having to get all mired in floating point arithmetic.
But we have this metric flamefest every time the metric system comes up on Slashdot, and the same crap comes up every time.
I'm just happy that pointy-head metric zealots don't seem to have much pull in the real world of regular people. Keep on ranting, dudes.
Did you read who the grandparent comment was from? You really think somebody's gonna put on their resume 'shilled for Microsoft as Anonymous Coward on slashdot'?
Get a clue, guy.
Actually, to be pedantic about it, the Blue Screen of Death only occured on Windows NT. What a lot of less savvy people refer to as a 'BSOD' on Windows 9x machines is a blue-background error message unrelated to the real BSOD. The BSOD is a blue-background 'crash' screen which featured error messages and a binary dump of some memory for debug purposes. I on occasion was able to use the info on a BSOD (on NT 4.0) to figure out what caused the crash and correct it.
Many of the people who drop comments about a BSOD never ran NT and really have no clue what they're talking about.
but it's hard to find an old 486 for the same price as an Xbox.
You're right. An old 486 can be had for five or ten dollars, and Xboxes are much higher.
What the hell is your point?
Ever heard of printing on transparencies?
Umm, I've never heard of a program that prompted the user to enter the instruction address to jump to. Well, I have, but only in some of my Assembly Language textbooks. I've certainly never heard of any user code that does so. Are you sure you're not just making this up as a hypothetical case?
It's not paranoia. It's just putting some things only where they're accessable by keypad and LCD.
And ask Outlook Express users about their entire address book getting sent all at the same time...
This is topic drift, but WalMart isn't about selling ALL the goods. WalMart is about only selling goods that move fast and in large volume.
When I go into the old fashioned hardware store about a half mile from here, I can ask about a piece of pipe, or a bolt, or a hand tool that they've had in stock for years, because it's something that they don't sell a lot of, and it'll be there on a back shelf. At a WalMart if it doesn't 'move' in a matter of weeks or months it's shoved onto the clearance shelf and gone, and never re-ordered.
I don't choose to live in a world where I can only get a thing if it's popular and a mass-market item. But when places like WalMart grab all the volume business, my local Hardware Store ends up only selling the specialty items, and they can't sustain a business that way forever.
To bring it back on-topic, the same phenomenon occurs when a big Cinema Operator comes in the way this business proposes. They rent the movie at a price they can only justfy if they can be assured of a near-full house of viewers, that or they raise the price. And the revenue risk is in even considering screening films that they won't get a full house for, because they're gonna pay the big upfront rental even if nobody shows up and/or refuses to pay a lot more due to being one of the few people interested in the film.
Following the same logic... ..... you can make a UNIX server out of the secretaries old Pentium 75 Word Processor...
;)
Let's not get silly and ridicule hardware hacking. It's not a lot different from software hacking, except... ummm... it's cooler.
Is it time to get rid of your PDA? Apparently yes, according to General Motors
Definitely no, according to anybody who wants to partition their personal data into a private space unconnected to snoops, spies, and busybodies.
I prefer to be the only bridge between some information and the outside world. So I say 'no thank you' to the notion that everything on my PDA should be connected in real time to a telephone/digital network every time I make a phone call.
Nope. Not interested.
They rent movies because most people only want to watch a movie one or two times. It wouldn't make sense for the average Blockbuster customer to buy all those VHS tapes and stack them on shelves after viewing them one or two times.
There are fundamental differences between how customers utilize Videotapes of Movies and recordings of music (which people listen to over and over and over again). So your example is irrelevant.
Unless the consumer has the right to rip, mix, and burn, you can't...
Are you allowed to type 'rip, mix, and burn' on a public forum like this without adding a notice that 'rip, mix, and burn' is an Apple Registered Trademark??
That's really weird, man. You think that because of copyright law, the film producers are a monopoly?
Wow. It must be some kind of a cartel and very horizontal. They must own ALL the film-making equipment and all the raw film itself, too.
Really, you anti-IP people are starting to show your hand of cards too readily. It's getting to be too easy to figure you out for who you are.
Sure. Let some cheap f*ckers who didn't even pay as much bumble in during the middle of the film. Even encourage that sort of people to show up late.
That's gonna really make the people who paid top dollar to see the film come back again....
Slashdot is riddled with teenagers, who in turn are riddled with acne.
Archetypical FUD.
Spread rumors.
Incite Fear, based on Uncertainty and Doubt.
That's what this whole article topic is about, though. It's an anti-Microsoft propaganda piece.
Just as long as everybody knows that's what it's about. . . so we are honest.
A flat income tax would mean that that lower 50% of the population would actually pay taxes to support the government.
Now how fair would that be??
Just remember that what's being proposed here is that the theatre pay a flat fee for each playing. That means that for less popular films, there will be ten people in the theatre all splitting the same fees to the movie producer, instead of one hundred at the more popular film. That means it will be more expensive for more obscure, less mass-market films. It means many films won't get shown at all, because it's too risky for a theatre operator to pay big dollars to play a flat-fee to run a movie to a near-empty house.
What this guy is trying to do is 'WalMart' the movie business. If it doesn't have a high volume national market, it doesn't make it into a WalMart. Small hardware stores are HURT by WalMarts, but small hardware stores carry a much, much wider line of products, which become unavailable if WalMart drives them out of business.
but nobody goes to the cinema in order to be seen at the cinema
Actually, you'd be amazed at what clowns and idiots people will be at some of the big 'geek' film openings. Dressing up like Star Trek characters or Hobbits at film opening nights.
Did you think they did it purely out of an innate urge to look stupid?
So they designed it the way they did to cut corners on safety?
Why doesn't this sound so good?
I can see it now.
Instead of 'who farted?' being the big question at the coffee house now, the unpleasant question everbody will ask is 'who's running the 802.11b card?
My brother-in-law has been practicing a new geek obsession lately. He buys raw coffee beans and roasts his own. He screwed around with an air popper to change the temperature it regulates to for that purpose.