> Corel tried the Linux route, producing their own distribution and a few Linux native versions of their apps. That endeavour failed miserably and they abandonded the effort completey, similar to their plan to port all their apps to Java.
Corel's attempt at Linux were not successful by themselves, but the 'heirs' of Corel in the Linux world (i.e. Xandros) managed to turn it into a pretty effective product; at least for what I hear from people that have been trying the various distributions, Xandros is one of the easiest to install, most user friendly and it's rather complete too.
The most dangerous competitors for Corel now are precisely those in the open source world: for example, OpenOffice.org is in a good position to steal market from WordPerfect Office, even though Writer is not as good as WordPerfect and QuattroPro doesn't suffer from the size limitations that haunt Calc (or Excel).
Yup. There was a D&D module that was published that contained dawizard tables. Because the guy that wrote the module wrote about mages but the editor decided to call them wizards and did a search-and-replace.
Of course a smart someone would have used "whole words only" (\<mage\>) for you RegEx fans).
There is to my knowledge no open source (3D) CAD program out there, possibly with full AutoCAD compatibility. Somebody care to put up a foundation to buy DesignCAD 3D? That would make a nice base...
I was going to write more or less the same stuff, then I noticed your post. So here we go...
"...designed to last as much as 10 times longer than a standard lithium-ion battery..."
What about recharging? The techdocs of my battery claim an average of 400 full discharge/charge cycles before I can throw it away. This means that, if I often am on battery rather than AC power, I can throw the battery away in 2 years or less, and then have to buy a new one (because I was dumb enough to only get one.)
Now, if a fuel cell can withstand the same number of recharges, but still lasts 10 times as much each time, this means I'm gonna buy a new laptop before I'm gonna buy a new battery --not something they prefer.
Something designed to last for a lifetime has big selling problems --you sell it only once. (That's the reason why stuff is usually designed to *need* an upgrade or a total rebuying every N years... it's called "programmed obsolescence".) Lightbulbs are an example.
Another example is chemical soap. There are more efficient cleaning and cleansing techniques than the chemical soaps commonly used, based e.g. on ultrasound, and they are also more efficient (really provide "cleaner" stuff), less polluting... it's used e.g. in hi-tech labs where "clean" is really important. But give one of these to the avreage housewife, and one is going to last for her whole lifetime... no you don't want that if you *sell* soap.)
No, Ogg is to MP3 what PNG is to GIF. I think JPG counterpart is JNG, but I'm not sure. And yes you need all of MNG to "consume" all of the GIF features (PNG lacks animation).
BTW what about FLAC? FLAC is to MP3 what PNG is to JPEG in the sense that FLAC (and PNG) are lossless, while MP3 (and JPEG) are lossy.
Is FLAC (going to be) supported by these Java codecs?
Uh... yes, the XML file formats gives you complete control, and I've used that to solve some formatting quirks, but not having it available at editing time really spoils it. I think OOo should provide (1) a Reveal Codes window feature a la WordPerfect and (2) a "raw editing" feature a la XyWrite.
I still use them. Quick, fast, read/write, universally bootable. Everything else comes after that.
Don't get rid of apparently obsolete hardware. Remember ink pens that didn't write in low gravity conditions, remember the money spent by NASA --just because pencils were "obsolete"
WordPerfect, absolutely (currently owned by Corel); and possibly Envoy as well (currently owned by Novell, who decided to kill). In the case of Envoy, it would be enough to see its specifications published, so that anyone could write coders and decoders (just like for PDF).
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Corel's attempt at Linux were not successful by themselves, but the 'heirs' of Corel in the Linux world (i.e. Xandros) managed to turn it into a pretty effective product; at least for what I hear from people that have been trying the various distributions, Xandros is one of the easiest to install, most user friendly and it's rather complete too.
The most dangerous competitors for Corel now are precisely those in the open source world: for example, OpenOffice.org is in a good position to steal market from WordPerfect Office, even though Writer is not as good as WordPerfect and QuattroPro doesn't suffer from the size limitations that haunt Calc (or Excel).
Of course a smart someone would have used "whole words only" (\<mage\>) for you RegEx fans).
There is to my knowledge no open source (3D) CAD program out there, possibly with full AutoCAD compatibility. Somebody care to put up a foundation to buy DesignCAD 3D? That would make a nice base ...
Site slashdotted when I tried to connect. Not so good advertising, after all, if I can't have a look at it, is it?
I was going to write more or less the same stuff, then I noticed your post. So here we go ...
"...designed to last as much as 10 times longer than a standard lithium-ion battery..."
What about recharging? The techdocs of my battery claim an average of 400 full discharge/charge cycles before I can throw it away. This means that, if I often am on battery rather than AC power, I can throw the battery away in 2 years or less, and then have to buy a new one (because I was dumb enough to only get one.)
Now, if a fuel cell can withstand the same number of recharges, but still lasts 10 times as much each time, this means I'm gonna buy a new laptop before I'm gonna buy a new battery --not something they prefer.
Something designed to last for a lifetime has big selling problems --you sell it only once. (That's the reason why stuff is usually designed to *need* an upgrade or a total rebuying every N years ... it's called "programmed obsolescence".) Lightbulbs are an example.
Another example is chemical soap. There are more efficient cleaning and cleansing techniques than the chemical soaps commonly used, based e.g. on ultrasound, and they are also more efficient (really provide "cleaner" stuff), less polluting ... it's used e.g. in hi-tech labs where "clean" is really important. But give one of these to the avreage housewife, and one is going to last for her whole lifetime ... no you don't want that if you *sell* soap.)
No, Ogg is to MP3 what PNG is to GIF. I think JPG counterpart is JNG, but I'm not sure. And yes you need all of MNG to "consume" all of the GIF features (PNG lacks animation). BTW what about FLAC? FLAC is to MP3 what PNG is to JPEG in the sense that FLAC (and PNG) are lossless, while MP3 (and JPEG) are lossy. Is FLAC (going to be) supported by these Java codecs?
Uh ... yes, the XML file formats gives you complete control, and I've used that to solve some formatting quirks, but not having it available at editing time really spoils it. I think OOo should provide (1) a Reveal Codes window feature a la WordPerfect and (2) a "raw editing" feature a la XyWrite.
I still use them. Quick, fast, read/write, universally bootable. Everything else comes after that. Don't get rid of apparently obsolete hardware. Remember ink pens that didn't write in low gravity conditions, remember the money spent by NASA --just because pencils were "obsolete"
WordPerfect, absolutely (currently owned by Corel); and possibly Envoy as well (currently owned by Novell, who decided to kill). In the case of Envoy, it would be enough to see its specifications published, so that anyone could write coders and decoders (just like for PDF).
Even assuming they *do* get their patent claims right, making JPEG YAG (Yet Another GIF), would those same patents hold for the JNG format?