Have the movie producers themselves stopped to think about the possibility that they themselves are the cause of piracy?
More than ever, each one of us is constantly pounded by advertising trying to convince us that we need to buy this product or go see that movie. Then a high proportion of that advertising, especially for popular music, is aimed at teenagers and the under 25s - an age group that is very receptive to advertising but that also has limited spending power. It therefore seems perfectly logical to me that those same people are going to want to get as much of that product free of charge.
I don't support piracy but I'm in my 40s and listen to more music & watch more movies than I ever have done. Some of that has to do with having reasonable disposable income but it's mainly due to the fact that I'm more discerning in my tastes these days - I hunt down the cheapest prices for CDs and movies that I *know* are worth my spending the money on. No more do I buy a DVD of a just "reasonable" movie or a CD where I just like one song, consequently I thoroughly enjoy *every* film I see and every CD I listen to.
With movies, I read every review I can & with CDs, I'll hunt Usenet for them first, download and listen to them, then either buy the CD because I like it or delete the downloads because they're not worth the diskspace.
My point here is that piracy is giving the media companies their "just desserts" for their constant lies to the public in overhyping substandard products through advertising. But even better would be the "sheeple" in our world not falling for the "must have" messages in advertising but instead to only buy *good* value-priced products - if we all did that, prices would have to come down and quality of product would have to increase.
I've never known anyone who has paid full retail list for a legit copy of Office. The three-seat Student-Teacher Edition is available everywhere for #125-150 US, no ID required.
Sorry, but that wasn't the statement I made - I said that just about NO home PC users pay for MS Office. Here in the UK just about everyone I know has MS Office on their home PC but not one of them has paid for it. If they *had* to pay for it, even if was £50, a lot of those people would be trying out OpenOffice - and for just about all of those people, OO's features would be more than adequate.
All I'm asking is that if people are going to compare MS Office to OpenOffice then take into account that *legitimate* use of MS Office costs you money whereas legitimate use of OO does not.
The MS Office home page is colorful and inviting, with one stop shopping for tutorials and resources. Communication with end users is Microsoft's strength.
I suggest, then, that you have little or no experience of Open Source software. There is a wealth of information, FAQs, discussion boards, mailing lists, etc. on just about every OSS package there is. Sure, it's probably not "colorful" and perhaps requires a degree of searching for sometimes but, by the same fashion, as a person who knows Windows well but who is by no means an "expert" on it, I have found Microsoft's web site very difficult to find information on at times - particularly if I'm looking through the Knowledge Base to find a fix for a particular Windows issue.
So how about we put a hold on this discussion for ten years and, in 2015, I'll come back and ask you then if Microsoft are evil?
How are you going to feel in 2015 when you can't change the format of a music track to a music player that doesn't charge you a Microsoft tax for using their proprietary codecs?
How are you going to feel in 2015 when there's a monthly direct debit, alongside your utility & phone bills, going out to Microsoft that, if you don't pay, renders your PC and your data useless to you?
How are you going to feel in 2015 when you have to buy a movie as a shiny disc for your DVD player, then again as a memory cartridge for your portable movie player? Or even better, as a piece of software you download and pay for each time you view it?
Let's talk then about the evils of Microsoft, Sony, Time Warner, etc. etc...
And rather than just sitting there and moaning about OpenOffice's compatibility issues, have you actually bothered to feed back your experiences to those who develop OpenOffice?
Be under no illusions here - Open Source software will do what you want it to do only when you take an active role in telling the right people what you need that software to do; it is not just going to "drop into your lap" as an all-singing all-dancing piece of software.
There is NO remit or desire from ANYONE on any Open Source project to displace commercial software - the only desire is to create good usable software that does a particular job well. It's only when users feed back requests for compatibility that those types of features are considered for addition.
Look, I'm an Open Source freak like a lot of the rest of the Slashdot crowd - I use Linux 90% of my computing time, get a real buzz messing around with shell scripts & Perl and just *enjoy* being involved in a global movement where a lot of people just create lots of neat software simply because they can. And I love standing up in front of people at work and training them in Linux because it just happens to be the OS of choice driving all of our telephony platforms.
But I'm a geek, it's taken me years to get to the point where I can invariably do things quicker on a Linux command line than in a Windows GUI and I *really* can't see the big "hooha" with Windows XP which I find bloated, patronising & totally unusable.
However, my definition of computing is not the same as a lot of people around me. My teenage nieces, for example, want to do their homework, instant message with friends, play a few games and listen to some music. Rightly or wrongly, they've grown up using PCs on the assumption they don't need to learn too much about them. Sure, they're plagued by viruses and spyware but, to them, this is a minor inconvenience compared to what they get out of their PCs.
The point I'm trying to make here is that I'm more than happy to tell people they have an alternative to using Microsoft software but that there is no point in dropping Windows *unless* they are prepared to invest a lot of time in understanding how to open up the *real power* of a Linux system. Yes, it's more secure than Windows and not plagued by viruses and spyware but you still need to *understand* Linux to get it into a secure state.
What's more important here is to push across the message of *open standards*, not necessarily *open source*. Most home users use MS Office because they get it for free from a borrowed or copied CD which, to them, is easier than downloading OpenOffice from the Internet. If those same users had to *pay* for MS Office, then the take up of OpenOffice would be far greater and, as a side-effect of that take-up, open document standards would be more widely accepted. Consequently, it's far more important to make people realise that by using any software with closed document standards, they are ultimately handing over their control of their data to commercial organisations who only care about making as much money as they can from their user base.
Ultimately, if things continue in the way that they are, Microsoft users will find more and more that they are having to *pay* for all of their software, possibly under a rental model that they have to contine to pay into to in order to keep accessing their information - this is why *The Microsoft Way* is so bad, especially when whole countries & communities are excluded from the global information exchange simply because they cannot afford expensive software.
This is the message that cannot be restated too many times and *must* be driven home to everyone who pays into the Microsoft business model - it's *not* a Windows vs. Linux argument but a personal responsibility vs monopolistic controlling vendor argument...
If you've not got the time or skills to build your own PC and install your own OS, then a pre-built Dell PC with Windows XP on it is probably a good way to get a PC quickly, easily & relatively cheaply.
However, with a bit of hunting around, it's possible to build your own similar specification PC for about the same price with components you know will work with Linux - so I really don't see a point to buying a blank Dell machine, except for avoiding MS tax if you have no need for a Windows license.
I've not used any recent Dell machines but I'd also be concerned about future upgrades - Dell PCs used to require Dell upgrades, as was the same with Compaq, Toshiba, etc.
Then I guess when I took my RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer for those who don't know) exam, the two hours I was given to (successfully) install a Linux server from scratch (including a kernel compile & installing/configuring a few network services) was all just a dream, was it?
I suspect their "installation engineer" probably had little Linux experience in the first place.
Sounds like a troll but I'll have a little bite...
Why should I, a basic user with a home network, 2 children, 4 systems switch to Linux?
You shouldn't. You should use software tools that let you get the job you want to do done as quickly as possible... if that's MS Office, then so be it.
However, you may want to just stop and consider some of the possible implications of what you are doing.
Microsoft is rapidly coming to the conclusion that there is just *not enough* money to be made from just *selling* software. Therefore, they (and other commercial software entities) are looking at other ways of making money.
Firstly, they'll do their damnedest to keep you in an endless upgrade cycle. So they'll "break" your old software and hardware as much as they can to force you to upgrade constantly, thus generating more money.
Secondly, and preferably, Microsoft do not want you to *own* anything - they want you to *rent* it because then they have a nice monthly direct debit from your bank account as a nice guaranteed & regular source of income. The same is true of the music and movie companies who also want that nice rental income. Consequently, all parties want DRM badly so you end up paying more for products that ultimately give you less freedom than you enjoyed when those products were free of DRM and cheaper. They'll use the piracy argument as their excuse to implement this but the technology ultimately restricts the rights of the proper user, not the pirates. Plus the movie and music companies never seem to answer the questions as to why DVD and CD sales are *up* despite the effects of piracy.
Thirdly, MS Office. In my experience, 90%+ of home users have pirated versions of MS Office because they borrowed CDs from work to install it. But would those same users be so vocal about using MS Office over OpenOffice if they *had* to pay several hundred dollars/Euros/pounds for it. I think not...
Would you be so "anti" GIMP if you hadn't got Photoshop free with your printer and had to pay for it?
Fourthly, Open Source software is *not* free. It costs you no money but it puts a lot of responsibility in *your* hands. That means, to use it effectively, you have to learn how it works, ask questions and email software developers suggesting the features you want to see. Only then will it get the ease of use and functionality you want. If you're not prepared to do that then don't swap, it's that simple.
Linux is a mess.
Sorry, but how do you *know* this? Quite clearly, it's not so bad a "mess, otherwise the millions of people using it currently would presumably not be doing so. Sure, it has problems - but, in the smae vein, whilst I find Windows 2000 quite stable and usable, I consider Windows XP a "mess" due to the amount of bloat it contains and a user interface designed to sacrifice CPU cycles just for eye candy.
It's your choice whether to switch or not - in fact, Linux is *so* "willing to please", you don't actually need to "switch" - you can just sacrifice a few gigs of hard disk space and dual install it just to play with it at your leisure. And this will be an ideal opportunity for your kids to get a little more computer literate with exposure to two OSes, not just one...
So go ahead and use what software you want - after all, that's the idea of choice... but just be aware of what you *might* be sacrificing as a result of that choice, that's all I'm trying to say.
I worked in such a company with such a contract. I told one of the customers that Microsoft wasn't his best choice for the technical needs he had (big customer, lots of servers) and I almost got fired because some big shot from Microsoft got to hear about it and demanded my release or they would revoke the license advantages.
I wouldn't wait to be fired - I'd just hand in my resignation and walk out, end of story.
Sorry, but my attitude to employers is that they pay me a salary because employing me generates 2x, 3x, 4x, etc into their coffers - so it's their loss, not mine.
I'm no socialist & the employee unions in the UK got too powerful and needed to be taken down a few steps. But now the right-wing Conservatives have completely trashed the unions, all the employer bullies can now crawl out of the woodwork & all of us are now just tiny cogs in big machines so it's gone completely the other way.
Personally, I believe anyone with any IT skills should just go out and work for themselves now - there are plenty of "pickings" for anyone with wide enough skills because so many customers of big corporations are hacked off with the lower quality service their getting due to outsourcing, etc. they're just waiting to pay for more personal and better service from self-employed consultants and small businesses.
To the level at which 90% of computer owners use office packages, I don't think it matters what they're trained on if it's a corporate budget that's paying for it - if you can write a letter in Word & save it, it's not a lot of difference to do the same in OpenOffice.
But what I do object to are my taxes filling Microsoft's coffers because the health service, social services, libraries, schools, etc. have not been forced to evaluate and use free software first before spending *my* money on Windows, Office, etc. I'd much rather my taxes paid for, say, a new dialysis machine than 500 copies of Office....
Added to that, if Microsoft is happy for people to train on their products via government initiatives, then Microsoft should also support & subsidise training on virus detection, spyware removal & Windows fault-finding because those three are equally prevalent to anyone who uses a Microsoft product.
Or how about someone forces Microsoft to pay me for the time I've spent rebuilding the PCs of friends & family with an operating system that I have absolutely no faith in...
How about I queue alongside US farmers because I'll end up getting two handouts? One from US government subsidies so that I can produce "artificially cheap" foodstuffs & the other from the combined efforts of McDonald's & KFC to destroy the face of agriculture purely to make cheaper junk food...
For example unemployment rates in France and Germany are through the roof, and no sign of recovery on the horizon.
I hate to say this, buddy, but there are cities in the US with huge unemployment areas, your education system is suffering & while you have good quality healthcare, no-one on a minimum wage can afford it. So I think we cancel each other out on those bits...
We need cash, lets rape the Americans; they only gave us electricity, phones, internet, cars, planes.
Yes, quite possibly. But the longbow (a weapon that, like the aircraft, revolutionised warfare) was a French invention (I believe), the jet engine was British, Airbus will trounce Boeing & you handed over your car industry to the Japanese, just like we did. Oh, and let's not forget that what brought the Internet out of the realm of academics into the eyes of the general public was the World Wide Web, invented by Tim Berners-Lee who was *BRITISH*.
Oh and gratitude, screw it, who cares that they lost 10,000s, of 10,000s of young men bailing us out of two world wars last century, we don't like Bush now.
Erm, what about the equal numbers of European young men who died in those same wars??? And Australians, Japanese, etc. etc.??? Or were their sacrifices any less just because they weren't American? I find your statement offensive & ignorant....
Gratitude, that's not trendy, "evil Americans" is.
I've nothing against most American people - hell, I was in the US when 9/11 happened & I wept for the dead as much as any of the US citizens around me did. However, whilst most governments are just plain corrupt, the Bush administration is *EVIL* & your politicians are nothing but puppets to the corporate lobbyists. That's why anything that stops your evil corporations in their tracks is a *good* thing for the rest of the world.
Let me know when this happening because I'll happily *QUEUE* outside the gates of Heathrow Airport to volunteer to help Microsoft load their colourful shrinkwrapped boxes onto the next cargo plane back to Redmond...
Please don't fool yourself - the combined countries of the EU are a much bigger economic power than the US and it's bad laws by foolish Eurocrats that are the only things stopping that unity working as well as it should. Even so, any US company that ignores the EU does so at its own peril.
Sorry, but if you want to trade in a country or region then you play by its rules, end of story.
Sorry but do Switchfoot really expect me to believe that it's a genuine apology when it's posted on a *Sony* sanctioned site (forums.sony.com)?
Not that I've ever heard of the band anyway but it's the same as breaking into someone's house, stealing their stuff & selling it for money, spending all the money & then writing the person you robbed a letter of apology... just doesn't sit right.
I don't know why Microsoft is constantly under attack for its bundled applications.
There's an "argument" that says an operating system should only be a kernel, some hardware drivers & a few tools that allow you to communicate with the hardware. Everything else you install above that should be selectable by the user of the OS, not bundled in so tightly that it cannot be removed easily for an alternative third-party solution.
Should MS not be allowed to run their own dialup service?
That isn't the question. The real question is "Should Microsoft be allowed to leverage it's own dial-up service freely with it's OS when other dial-up services would need to pay a heavy fee to do the same."
Considering that Mosaic and Navigator were being given away for free to all but business users why must MS be berated for giving out a free IE with Windows?
Because IE was bundled into Windows far too tightly & was used as a mechanism to enforce Microsoft's own HTML extensions onto the users - this made other browsers deliberately incompatible.
Should MS be punished for bundling TCP/IP when this is a service that could be provided by third party applications?
No but then they are not being punished for this. TCP/IP is an entirely open suite of protocols into which MS can contribute as freely as anyone else as long as the protocols remain open. Microsoft was essentially *forced* to adopt TCP/IP because it's own NetBEUI protocols (and the IPX/SPX protocols it stole from Novell) were not suitable for Internet operation. The fact that they did adopt it is a good thing because it makes interoperation with other systems that much easier.
Then they have their insidious sub-licensed version of the Norton drive defragmenter.
It could be argued that MS provided this within Windows because their file systems are prone to suffering from fragmentation. But it is still an inferior tool to other 3rd-party defragmenting solutions.
Should we even allow MS to sell products that use NTFS since it "unfairly" obsoletes the defregmentation market?
It's better than FAT but NTFS still suffers from bad fragmentation over a period of time.
Shouldn't we force MS to sell an OS with just the kernel and drivers and no GUI so we can have fair competition in this important marketspace.
No, not at all. Without going into arguments about whether a GUI is good or bad, Windows has always meant "GUI". Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and ME were essentially GUIs running over MS-DOS anyway. Plus the fact that the desktop environment of a taskbar, icons and menus is essentially all provided by a single application, Explorer, which can be changed for third party alternatives (like Directory Opus or Lightstep) relatively simply.
Why isn't MS accused of unfairly dominating the plain text editor market by bundling notepad?
You could argue that it is unfair of them to bundle notepad with Windows on the same basis. Whilst it is simply a text editor, it does change the "accepted" format of text files by including an additional linefeed after every carriage return (UNIX and most other systems just use carriage return). However, apps like IE and WMP are more insidious because they respecively enforce MS'es proprietary HTML extensions and codecs on the user.
You need to remember that Microsoft's own marketing machine portrays Windows as an easy operating system to use for even the least computer-literate user. As such, it could be argued that the ability to choose and install alternative applications to those provided by Microsoft should also be made much easier.
I'm sure people are going to make comparisons here to Linux distributions including certain applications also. However, I would argue here that there are enough distros around for anyone to choose one that includes most of the apps they want to use - besides, RedHat and SuSE (and I suspect other distros) do include complex installation programs that allow you to specify individual apps that you do or don't want installed if you drill down deep enough.
You now have a concrete example of "lawful evil", for anyone who asks.
Funny you should say that because I've always thought of us "Open Sorceror" types as being of chaotic good alignment -which of course happens to be diametrically opposed to lawful evil.
Perhaps some kindly soul her will do D&D monster stats for "The Ballmer Beast" or "Bad Billy the Evil Pixie"...
Presumably Marvel Enterprises' name change to Marvel Entertainment is to serve as a reminder to us that that is what Marvel is trying to do - entertain us - and failing pretty damn dismally at it.
With the exception of the very good Spider-Man movies, every other Marvel superhero movie has been very sub-standard - even with the X-Men, I found absolutely nothing likeable about any of the characters who are just a bunch of miserable, arrogant people.
If we're talking comic-book adaptations then Marvel should take a good hard look at "Sin City" which, IMHO, was the best movie I've seen this year so far (although I'm hoping it will be surpassed by "V For Vendetta").
As for super-hero movies "Hellboy" is undoubtedly the best of the genre, a grossly under-rated movie that has an excellent balance of action, humour & good characterisation.
Marvel has always been a company that "plays it safe" when it comes to comics but with the advent of the smaller independent comic companies & the rise in popularity of Anime in the western world, they are now just a tired old company producing tired old movie adaptations - the Spider-Man movies were an exception but as had more to do with Sam Raimi's excellent direction than Marvel's tired old content.
In other words, Valve was in no way obligated to give me those things, even though I had given them $50.
Valve programmers created the expansions. Presumably they were paid for their programming time in doing this. Therefore that pay they received was factored into Valve's budget. Therefore you will have paid for it through the price of other products.
Please stop being such a blind fanboy. They are a business, just like anyone else and only "give away" stuff if it is likely to make them more money.
Wait - I can't think of a reason not to support a "save as Open-Office format".
I can.
Think about Joe Sixpack who sees this on his "Save as" menu for the first time & maybe then does a search on Google for "Open Office" only to find out it's a free office suite he can download... Then Joe Sixpack tells his friends about it...
Yes, it would be nice to see it supported in MS Office but it won't happen because MS will lose market share by doing it.
The best we can hope for are more governmental departments and service organisations applying pressure for open document formats to make MS change its mind.
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More than ever, each one of us is constantly pounded by advertising trying to convince us that we need to buy this product or go see that movie. Then a high proportion of that advertising, especially for popular music, is aimed at teenagers and the under 25s - an age group that is very receptive to advertising but that also has limited spending power. It therefore seems perfectly logical to me that those same people are going to want to get as much of that product free of charge.
I don't support piracy but I'm in my 40s and listen to more music & watch more movies than I ever have done. Some of that has to do with having reasonable disposable income but it's mainly due to the fact that I'm more discerning in my tastes these days - I hunt down the cheapest prices for CDs and movies that I *know* are worth my spending the money on. No more do I buy a DVD of a just "reasonable" movie or a CD where I just like one song, consequently I thoroughly enjoy *every* film I see and every CD I listen to.
With movies, I read every review I can & with CDs, I'll hunt Usenet for them first, download and listen to them, then either buy the CD because I like it or delete the downloads because they're not worth the diskspace.
My point here is that piracy is giving the media companies their "just desserts" for their constant lies to the public in overhyping substandard products through advertising. But even better would be the "sheeple" in our world not falling for the "must have" messages in advertising but instead to only buy *good* value-priced products - if we all did that, prices would have to come down and quality of product would have to increase.
Bon Jovi is to classic rock music what Microsoft is to classic software.
Sorry, but that wasn't the statement I made - I said that just about NO home PC users pay for MS Office. Here in the UK just about everyone I know has MS Office on their home PC but not one of them has paid for it. If they *had* to pay for it, even if was £50, a lot of those people would be trying out OpenOffice - and for just about all of those people, OO's features would be more than adequate.
All I'm asking is that if people are going to compare MS Office to OpenOffice then take into account that *legitimate* use of MS Office costs you money whereas legitimate use of OO does not.
The MS Office home page is colorful and inviting, with one stop shopping for tutorials and resources. Communication with end users is Microsoft's strength.
I suggest, then, that you have little or no experience of Open Source software. There is a wealth of information, FAQs, discussion boards, mailing lists, etc. on just about every OSS package there is. Sure, it's probably not "colorful" and perhaps requires a degree of searching for sometimes but, by the same fashion, as a person who knows Windows well but who is by no means an "expert" on it, I have found Microsoft's web site very difficult to find information on at times - particularly if I'm looking through the Knowledge Base to find a fix for a particular Windows issue.
How are you going to feel in 2015 when you can't change the format of a music track to a music player that doesn't charge you a Microsoft tax for using their proprietary codecs?
How are you going to feel in 2015 when there's a monthly direct debit, alongside your utility & phone bills, going out to Microsoft that, if you don't pay, renders your PC and your data useless to you?
How are you going to feel in 2015 when you have to buy a movie as a shiny disc for your DVD player, then again as a memory cartridge for your portable movie player? Or even better, as a piece of software you download and pay for each time you view it?
Let's talk then about the evils of Microsoft, Sony, Time Warner, etc. etc...
Be under no illusions here - Open Source software will do what you want it to do only when you take an active role in telling the right people what you need that software to do; it is not just going to "drop into your lap" as an all-singing all-dancing piece of software.
There is NO remit or desire from ANYONE on any Open Source project to displace commercial software - the only desire is to create good usable software that does a particular job well. It's only when users feed back requests for compatibility that those types of features are considered for addition.
But I'm a geek, it's taken me years to get to the point where I can invariably do things quicker on a Linux command line than in a Windows GUI and I *really* can't see the big "hooha" with Windows XP which I find bloated, patronising & totally unusable.
However, my definition of computing is not the same as a lot of people around me. My teenage nieces, for example, want to do their homework, instant message with friends, play a few games and listen to some music. Rightly or wrongly, they've grown up using PCs on the assumption they don't need to learn too much about them. Sure, they're plagued by viruses and spyware but, to them, this is a minor inconvenience compared to what they get out of their PCs.
The point I'm trying to make here is that I'm more than happy to tell people they have an alternative to using Microsoft software but that there is no point in dropping Windows *unless* they are prepared to invest a lot of time in understanding how to open up the *real power* of a Linux system. Yes, it's more secure than Windows and not plagued by viruses and spyware but you still need to *understand* Linux to get it into a secure state.
What's more important here is to push across the message of *open standards*, not necessarily *open source*. Most home users use MS Office because they get it for free from a borrowed or copied CD which, to them, is easier than downloading OpenOffice from the Internet. If those same users had to *pay* for MS Office, then the take up of OpenOffice would be far greater and, as a side-effect of that take-up, open document standards would be more widely accepted. Consequently, it's far more important to make people realise that by using any software with closed document standards, they are ultimately handing over their control of their data to commercial organisations who only care about making as much money as they can from their user base.
Ultimately, if things continue in the way that they are, Microsoft users will find more and more that they are having to *pay* for all of their software, possibly under a rental model that they have to contine to pay into to in order to keep accessing their information - this is why *The Microsoft Way* is so bad, especially when whole countries & communities are excluded from the global information exchange simply because they cannot afford expensive software.
This is the message that cannot be restated too many times and *must* be driven home to everyone who pays into the Microsoft business model - it's *not* a Windows vs. Linux argument but a personal responsibility vs monopolistic controlling vendor argument...
However, with a bit of hunting around, it's possible to build your own similar specification PC for about the same price with components you know will work with Linux - so I really don't see a point to buying a blank Dell machine, except for avoiding MS tax if you have no need for a Windows license.
I've not used any recent Dell machines but I'd also be concerned about future upgrades - Dell PCs used to require Dell upgrades, as was the same with Compaq, Toshiba, etc.
Then I guess when I took my RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer for those who don't know) exam, the two hours I was given to (successfully) install a Linux server from scratch (including a kernel compile & installing/configuring a few network services) was all just a dream, was it?
I suspect their "installation engineer" probably had little Linux experience in the first place.
It's an advertisement - just use Adblock in Firefox and it won't be there any more.
Then get on with life.
Nothing to see here.
But *please*, don't tell anyone else...
Why should I, a basic user with a home network, 2 children, 4 systems switch to Linux?
You shouldn't. You should use software tools that let you get the job you want to do done as quickly as possible... if that's MS Office, then so be it.
However, you may want to just stop and consider some of the possible implications of what you are doing.
Microsoft is rapidly coming to the conclusion that there is just *not enough* money to be made from just *selling* software. Therefore, they (and other commercial software entities) are looking at other ways of making money.
Firstly, they'll do their damnedest to keep you in an endless upgrade cycle. So they'll "break" your old software and hardware as much as they can to force you to upgrade constantly, thus generating more money.
Secondly, and preferably, Microsoft do not want you to *own* anything - they want you to *rent* it because then they have a nice monthly direct debit from your bank account as a nice guaranteed & regular source of income. The same is true of the music and movie companies who also want that nice rental income. Consequently, all parties want DRM badly so you end up paying more for products that ultimately give you less freedom than you enjoyed when those products were free of DRM and cheaper. They'll use the piracy argument as their excuse to implement this but the technology ultimately restricts the rights of the proper user, not the pirates. Plus the movie and music companies never seem to answer the questions as to why DVD and CD sales are *up* despite the effects of piracy.
Thirdly, MS Office. In my experience, 90%+ of home users have pirated versions of MS Office because they borrowed CDs from work to install it. But would those same users be so vocal about using MS Office over OpenOffice if they *had* to pay several hundred dollars/Euros/pounds for it. I think not...
Would you be so "anti" GIMP if you hadn't got Photoshop free with your printer and had to pay for it?
Fourthly, Open Source software is *not* free. It costs you no money but it puts a lot of responsibility in *your* hands. That means, to use it effectively, you have to learn how it works, ask questions and email software developers suggesting the features you want to see. Only then will it get the ease of use and functionality you want. If you're not prepared to do that then don't swap, it's that simple.
Linux is a mess.
Sorry, but how do you *know* this? Quite clearly, it's not so bad a "mess, otherwise the millions of people using it currently would presumably not be doing so. Sure, it has problems - but, in the smae vein, whilst I find Windows 2000 quite stable and usable, I consider Windows XP a "mess" due to the amount of bloat it contains and a user interface designed to sacrifice CPU cycles just for eye candy.
It's your choice whether to switch or not - in fact, Linux is *so* "willing to please", you don't actually need to "switch" - you can just sacrifice a few gigs of hard disk space and dual install it just to play with it at your leisure. And this will be an ideal opportunity for your kids to get a little more computer literate with exposure to two OSes, not just one...
So go ahead and use what software you want - after all, that's the idea of choice... but just be aware of what you *might* be sacrificing as a result of that choice, that's all I'm trying to say.
I wouldn't wait to be fired - I'd just hand in my resignation and walk out, end of story.
Sorry, but my attitude to employers is that they pay me a salary because employing me generates 2x, 3x, 4x, etc into their coffers - so it's their loss, not mine.
I'm no socialist & the employee unions in the UK got too powerful and needed to be taken down a few steps. But now the right-wing Conservatives have completely trashed the unions, all the employer bullies can now crawl out of the woodwork & all of us are now just tiny cogs in big machines so it's gone completely the other way.
Personally, I believe anyone with any IT skills should just go out and work for themselves now - there are plenty of "pickings" for anyone with wide enough skills because so many customers of big corporations are hacked off with the lower quality service their getting due to outsourcing, etc. they're just waiting to pay for more personal and better service from self-employed consultants and small businesses.
But what I do object to are my taxes filling Microsoft's coffers because the health service, social services, libraries, schools, etc. have not been forced to evaluate and use free software first before spending *my* money on Windows, Office, etc. I'd much rather my taxes paid for, say, a new dialysis machine than 500 copies of Office....
Added to that, if Microsoft is happy for people to train on their products via government initiatives, then Microsoft should also support & subsidise training on virus detection, spyware removal & Windows fault-finding because those three are equally prevalent to anyone who uses a Microsoft product.
Or how about someone forces Microsoft to pay me for the time I've spent rebuilding the PCs of friends & family with an operating system that I have absolutely no faith in...
How about I queue alongside US farmers because I'll end up getting two handouts? One from US government subsidies so that I can produce "artificially cheap" foodstuffs & the other from the combined efforts of McDonald's & KFC to destroy the face of agriculture purely to make cheaper junk food...
I hate to say this, buddy, but there are cities in the US with huge unemployment areas, your education system is suffering & while you have good quality healthcare, no-one on a minimum wage can afford it. So I think we cancel each other out on those bits...
We need cash, lets rape the Americans; they only gave us electricity, phones, internet, cars, planes.
Yes, quite possibly. But the longbow (a weapon that, like the aircraft, revolutionised warfare) was a French invention (I believe), the jet engine was British, Airbus will trounce Boeing & you handed over your car industry to the Japanese, just like we did. Oh, and let's not forget that what brought the Internet out of the realm of academics into the eyes of the general public was the World Wide Web, invented by Tim Berners-Lee who was *BRITISH*.
Oh and gratitude, screw it, who cares that they lost 10,000s, of 10,000s of young men bailing us out of two world wars last century, we don't like Bush now.
Erm, what about the equal numbers of European young men who died in those same wars??? And Australians, Japanese, etc. etc.??? Or were their sacrifices any less just because they weren't American? I find your statement offensive & ignorant....
Gratitude, that's not trendy, "evil Americans" is.
I've nothing against most American people - hell, I was in the US when 9/11 happened & I wept for the dead as much as any of the US citizens around me did. However, whilst most governments are just plain corrupt, the Bush administration is *EVIL* & your politicians are nothing but puppets to the corporate lobbyists. That's why anything that stops your evil corporations in their tracks is a *good* thing for the rest of the world.
Please don't fool yourself - the combined countries of the EU are a much bigger economic power than the US and it's bad laws by foolish Eurocrats that are the only things stopping that unity working as well as it should. Even so, any US company that ignores the EU does so at its own peril.
Sorry, but if you want to trade in a country or region then you play by its rules, end of story.
Not that I've ever heard of the band anyway but it's the same as breaking into someone's house, stealing their stuff & selling it for money, spending all the money & then writing the person you robbed a letter of apology... just doesn't sit right.
...about "putting a tiger in your tank"???
There's an "argument" that says an operating system should only be a kernel, some hardware drivers & a few tools that allow you to communicate with the hardware. Everything else you install above that should be selectable by the user of the OS, not bundled in so tightly that it cannot be removed easily for an alternative third-party solution.
Should MS not be allowed to run their own dialup service?
That isn't the question. The real question is "Should Microsoft be allowed to leverage it's own dial-up service freely with it's OS when other dial-up services would need to pay a heavy fee to do the same."
Considering that Mosaic and Navigator were being given away for free to all but business users why must MS be berated for giving out a free IE with Windows?
Because IE was bundled into Windows far too tightly & was used as a mechanism to enforce Microsoft's own HTML extensions onto the users - this made other browsers deliberately incompatible.
Should MS be punished for bundling TCP/IP when this is a service that could be provided by third party applications?
No but then they are not being punished for this. TCP/IP is an entirely open suite of protocols into which MS can contribute as freely as anyone else as long as the protocols remain open. Microsoft was essentially *forced* to adopt TCP/IP because it's own NetBEUI protocols (and the IPX/SPX protocols it stole from Novell) were not suitable for Internet operation. The fact that they did adopt it is a good thing because it makes interoperation with other systems that much easier.
Then they have their insidious sub-licensed version of the Norton drive defragmenter.
It could be argued that MS provided this within Windows because their file systems are prone to suffering from fragmentation. But it is still an inferior tool to other 3rd-party defragmenting solutions.
Should we even allow MS to sell products that use NTFS since it "unfairly" obsoletes the defregmentation market?
It's better than FAT but NTFS still suffers from bad fragmentation over a period of time.
Shouldn't we force MS to sell an OS with just the kernel and drivers and no GUI so we can have fair competition in this important marketspace.
No, not at all. Without going into arguments about whether a GUI is good or bad, Windows has always meant "GUI". Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and ME were essentially GUIs running over MS-DOS anyway. Plus the fact that the desktop environment of a taskbar, icons and menus is essentially all provided by a single application, Explorer, which can be changed for third party alternatives (like Directory Opus or Lightstep) relatively simply.
Why isn't MS accused of unfairly dominating the plain text editor market by bundling notepad?
You could argue that it is unfair of them to bundle notepad with Windows on the same basis. Whilst it is simply a text editor, it does change the "accepted" format of text files by including an additional linefeed after every carriage return (UNIX and most other systems just use carriage return). However, apps like IE and WMP are more insidious because they respecively enforce MS'es proprietary HTML extensions and codecs on the user.
You need to remember that Microsoft's own marketing machine portrays Windows as an easy operating system to use for even the least computer-literate user. As such, it could be argued that the ability to choose and install alternative applications to those provided by Microsoft should also be made much easier.
I'm sure people are going to make comparisons here to Linux distributions including certain applications also. However, I would argue here that there are enough distros around for anyone to choose one that includes most of the apps they want to use - besides, RedHat and SuSE (and I suspect other distros) do include complex installation programs that allow you to specify individual apps that you do or don't want installed if you drill down deep enough.
Funny you should say that because I've always thought of us "Open Sorceror" types as being of chaotic good alignment -which of course happens to be diametrically opposed to lawful evil.
Perhaps some kindly soul her will do D&D monster stats for "The Ballmer Beast" or "Bad Billy the Evil Pixie"...
With the exception of the very good Spider-Man movies, every other Marvel superhero movie has been very sub-standard - even with the X-Men, I found absolutely nothing likeable about any of the characters who are just a bunch of miserable, arrogant people.
If we're talking comic-book adaptations then Marvel should take a good hard look at "Sin City" which, IMHO, was the best movie I've seen this year so far (although I'm hoping it will be surpassed by "V For Vendetta").
As for super-hero movies "Hellboy" is undoubtedly the best of the genre, a grossly under-rated movie that has an excellent balance of action, humour & good characterisation.
Marvel has always been a company that "plays it safe" when it comes to comics but with the advent of the smaller independent comic companies & the rise in popularity of Anime in the western world, they are now just a tired old company producing tired old movie adaptations - the Spider-Man movies were an exception but as had more to do with Sam Raimi's excellent direction than Marvel's tired old content.
Sorry, but in my book, if a piece of software is buggy as hell, then I'd rather those bugs were fixed in the next release than have yet more features.
Valve programmers created the expansions. Presumably they were paid for their programming time in doing this. Therefore that pay they received was factored into Valve's budget. Therefore you will have paid for it through the price of other products.
Please stop being such a blind fanboy. They are a business, just like anyone else and only "give away" stuff if it is likely to make them more money.
I can.
Think about Joe Sixpack who sees this on his "Save as" menu for the first time & maybe then does a search on Google for "Open Office" only to find out it's a free office suite he can download... Then Joe Sixpack tells his friends about it...
Yes, it would be nice to see it supported in MS Office but it won't happen because MS will lose market share by doing it.
The best we can hope for are more governmental departments and service organisations applying pressure for open document formats to make MS change its mind.