You say that like the JFK "conspiracy" is in the same category as the "Elvis is still alive" conspiracy. There is a TON of hard evidence that the official JFK story is false, not the least of which is that the national forensics association said (just last year, using modern techniques) that the official story was impossible. As such, it really does not belong in the category as alien sightings.
This has got to be one of the lamest articles ever on Slashdot; the only thing more lame than the post itself is all the overblown, over-reaction to it.
Do any of you know... *normal* people? They don't care if their friends know about their photos. In fact, they *want* to share their photos with friends; that's why they upload them by the millions to MySpace/Facebook. All that Google is doing is making it easier for people to do what they want to do. If those people have to give up some privacy to get the advantage of all the useful online enhancements Google can add by doing so, they will all *happily* do so... even if you were to sit them all down and carefully explain all of the details of and risks associated with the privacy they are losing. They won't care.
Real privacy issues come from users not understanding what they are giving away. But when you are trying to share your photos out to your friends and family, a tool that associates their email address with the pictures they are in is a useful service, not something to fear.
Most of you probably remember Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq and went on to help lead the anti-war movement. She is fighting to try and take Pelosi's seat in the next election; if you hate Pelosi like I do, do whatever you can to help.
I started trying to learn Japanese in high school. After four years of barely getting C's, all I qualified for was Japanese 3 in college... so I took that. I then took Japanese 4, failed it, took it again, and failed it again. In other words, I spent four years of high school and a year of college learning Japanese... and I still can't understand Japanese well enough to watch Japanese TV.
You'd think that given all that, and the fact that I'm happily employed in a well-paid programming job where I NEVER have to use Japanese, I would discourage you from learning a language (or at least a non-Latin based one like Japanese). But, quite to the contrary, I strongly recommend it.
I learned SO much beyond just the Japanese language by taking those classes. I gained understanding of another culture, understanding of a different perspective on our culture, and just generally a much more cosmopolitan outlook on the world. I also got a chance to go to Japan for a couple weeks, and to host a Japanese exchange student, and both experiences changed my life for the better.
Japanese may or may not be the language for you, and studying any language will cut in to your programming and/or non-programming classes. But even if you have an experience like mine, where you barely even learn the language, I promise that it will still be worth it.
The boy scouts need morals, and not bullshit "I do exactly what a two century year old book tells me to do" morals. If the OSS community can make software that teaches them to respect their fellow man (even if he likes having sex with his fellow man) and to stand up for what's right (even if the RIAA is pressuring them to do otherwise), then I'm all for it. Otherwise, I'm with the rest of the posters here: fuck 'em.
>>Do really you think you can train a graphical designer to code with a few book >>and tutorials, and not get out results fitting for thedailywtf?
YES, I really think he can. Why? Because I did it.
Growing up, I had always been the nerdy one in my family (I was programming (in BASIC) at age 10, and haven't stopped since), and my sister was always the artistic one. But a few years ago, we both found ourselves in the same occupation: web designer. I was making web site designs for real estate agents, and she was making them for various organizations at her school.
Her designs were definitely prettier than mine. A lot prettier, which makes sense because she was a graphic design major in college, and I was a... literature major (code monkey by night). But even so, my designs were pretty good; literally hundreds of real estate agents chose my designs (as opposed to the ones made my predecessors) for their sites. And mine never had the browser-specific issues, long page loads, and other technical issues that my sister's did.
My point in this story is that an artistic bent is important. A lifelong penchant for graphics and design is a real asset in doing any kind of graphic design, whether it's web pages, catalog layouts, or whatever. And if you want to be the best designer in your industry, you'll probably need it. But if you're willing to read books and web articles, you can become an extremely competent web designer, no matter what your background is. All it takes is:
A) learning the basic rules of things like contrast, white-space, maximum line length, etc. B) learning what your clients want from a website (I found it fairly common that what was considered "good" by any respected designer was the exact opposite of what my intended audience considered "good"; hey, they're not designers either!) C) making an effort to look at other sites out there and evaluate what is good/bad about their design D) and finally, being willing to experiment. You aren't going to get added to the CSS Zen Garden with your first attempt. Hell, you're probably not even going to get something usable out of your first 5-10 attempts. But if you stick with it, constantly evaluate what you did right/wrong, and don't stop trying, eventually you'll start making designs both you and your customer can appreciate, and after you make enough "winners" you'll soon find yourself in a comfortable flow of producing quality (if not awe-inspiringly beautiful) designs.
Recommendations: Web Graphics for Non-Designers (which is really "web design for non-designers") was by far the best book I found for people like us. My copy is from 2002, but there might be a more recent one; even if there isn't, the book is still completely relevant today. If you want to learn all the basic rules, start with this book.
Try other design/usability books; I have several on my shelf that I found useful, and learned a thing or two from, but which aren't really solid enough for me to recommend. Instead, just try going to your local book store (preferably a big one with great selection) and leaf through their web design/usability offerings. Even if you don't buy any of them, just skimming the recommendations and sample designs they offer can be very valuable.
While we're talking about usability, I also strongly recommend Don't Make Me Think. Now, you might be thinking usability and design are two separate things; you'd be wrong. They are two different things, but they're not at all separate; they intertwine with each other in pivotal ways, and if you want to make successful designs you need to consider usability aspects. Don't Make Me Think is like a bible in the usability field, and it's also a relatively quick read (the author does this deliberately to make the book itself more usable).
Books are great, and the two I just named are particularly great, but you'll also want to keep tabs on various web design sites. I have an iGoogle tab filled with RSS feeds from
Re:I don't understand...
on
The Future of XML
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The "bulkiness" of XML is also it's strength: XML can be used to markup almost any data imaginable. Now it's true that for most simple two-party exchanges, a simpler format (like comma separated values or YAML or something) would require less characters, and would thus save disk space, transmit faster, etc.
However, the modern programming age is all about sacrificing performance for convenience (this is why virtually no one is using C or C++ to make web apps, and almost everyone is using a significantly poorer performing language like Python or Ruby). We've got powerful computers with tons of RAM and hard drive space, and high-speed internet connections that can transmit vast amounts of data in mere seconds; why waste (valuable programmer) time and energy over-optimizing everything?
Instead, developers choose the option that will make their lives easier. XML is widely known, easily understood, and is human readable. I can send an XML document, without any schema or documentation, to another developer and they'll be able to "grok it". There's also a ton of tools out there for working with XML; if someone sends me a random XML document, I can see it syntax colored in Eclipse or my browser. If someone sends me an XML schema, I can use JAXB to generate Java classes to interact with it. If I need to reformat/convert ANY XML document, I can just whip up an XSLT for it and I'm done.
So yes, other formats offer some benefits. But XML's universality (which does require a bit of bulkiness) makes it a great choice for most types of data one would like to markup and/or transmit.
P.S. JSON is just as usable? Try writing a schema to validate it... ok I admit, that wasn't so hard, just some Javascript right? But now you have to write a new batch of code to validate the next type of JSON you use. And another for the next, and so on. With XML, you have a choice of not one but four different schema formats; once you learn to use one of them, you can describe a validation schema far more quickly than you ever could in Javascript.
Same deal with transformations: if you want to alter your JSON data in a consistent way, you have to again write custom code every time. Sure XSLT has a learning curve, but once you master it you can accomplish in a few lines of code what any other language would need tens or even hundreds of lines to do.
Sorry all, I meant layer styles, those incredibly useful things that let you add various effects like outlines and shadows and then adjust them dynamically later. My brain was somewhere else when I wrote the original post.
The only difference between an act of terrorism and an act of rebellion is which side you're on: if you're the rebel, it's an act of rebellion, whereas if you're the imperial power it's an act of terrorism.
There IS a sequel to Maniac Mansion; it's called "Day of the Tentacle" (and you can actually play the original Maniac Mansion on a computer inside it).
Actually, even the beloved Ubuntu still has does have some problems, and just because you didn't experience them doesn't mean that the parent "has no experience with this at all." I personally just tried installing Dapper Drake the other day, and even though I have very new hardware (AMD 64 3000 and GeForce FX 5900; don't remember the motherboard), my system froze the moment the installer got to the GUI. I rebooted and installed in text mode, but even after installation, the moment I would get to the GUI everything would freeze(I'm sure it's possible to install some alternate driver or something, but since I've found Linux graphic stuff to be a giant PITA in the past, I'm just going to wait for Edgy Eft).
Now I'm not at all trying to bash Ubuntu here (my company uses it at work, and it's very nice), but I am trying to demonstrate that Linux is still not there yet in terms of being ready for non-computer savvy users. I'm a big proponent of OSS; I've always installed Firefox and Thunderbird on every computer I fix, and lately I've started adding Open Office to the mix. I explain to the owners that "yes, you could use IE/Outlook/Word instead, but I guarantee that this software can do everything that software can, is 100% free, will always remain free (meaning that you can always get all the latest upgrades without paying), and can do some things that software can't (ie. OO can make pdfs, but Word can't, or at least not without $500 Adobe software)."
IMHO, this is the kind of "missionary work" OSS needs: installing superior OSS products on existing Windows systems to demonstrate why OSS really is better. While I dream of a day when I can honestly tell people "I could re-install Windows, but I have this other free OS that I really think is better for you", that day has not yet arrived.
"You mean the copper that was subsidized by taxpayer dollars?"
"Bzzt wrong, Ma Bell (and GTE and the Rural Telco's) retained ownership of all cable and switch plant"
Actually, you can have your costs 100% subsidized, and still retain ownership, if you grease all the right palms. There is no connection between their "ownership" of the lines, and who really paid for them.
I think my favorite alternative paraphanalia(sp?) has got to be a potato. You can get one almost anywhere, and all you need is a regular knife and a little bit of time to turn it in to a fully functional pipe (with carb!).
"What keeps the spirits of dead Jedi from teaching their ways to others?"
Short answer: nothing stops them, but it would be a really slow process.
Long Answer: Qui-Gon was the first jedi to come back from the spirit realm (Yoda says something to this effect at the end of ep.3). So, at the end of ep.6 when you see Anakain/Obi-Wan/Yoda, you are seeing three of the four real-world-visiting Jedi (Qui-Gong isn't there because he didn't know Luke/because Lucas hadn't dreamt him up yet).
But why can't those four re-teach a shattered empire the ways of the jedi? Well it seems clear that they can't just travel back and forth to the living realm willy-nilly, because otherwise Obi-Wan would have hovered behind Luke all the way to Dagobah giving directions (and complaining about how fast he was flying...) instead of just appearing for ten seconds with a cryptic directive.
So at the end of ep.6 you have four dead jedi who are capable of returning as spirits very occaisionally. I suppose they might be able to teach the force very slowly to someone (Hi, I'm Qui Gong, and I'm hear for your once-a-month twenty second lightsabre training... go!), but unless they find someone with an Anakin/Luke level of natural mastery of the force, the Jedi would probably take centuries to re-grow. Which is why it's much faster to just have a near-master (Luke) teach everyone, with a little guidance from the spirits every once in awhile, which is what (I think) the Jedi Academy series of books is about.
Currently the majority of public school funding comes from property tax. The problem with this is that schools in rich areas get plenty of money, while schools in poorer areas... don't.
To some extent a school's funding does need to reflect the property values around that school, since it costs more for teachers/administrators to more expensive areas, but the current system skews things way too far in favor of rich schools. As long as parents with money can afford to move to the "good" districts, nothing will ever change in the rest of the districts. But when soccer moms have to put up with inner city quality public schools, then the world will hear a clamor like never before (and we will finally see meaningful public education improvements).
Haven't used OO in awhile, so I have no idea if this will actually help, but...
You might try saving the Word file as a.rtf ,.txt (if the document had no significant formating), or even.htm file, and then opening it with OO. My logic here is that when you save the file in a standard text format Word describes it as (please forgive the pseudo-code):
It seems OO has difficulty with losing the ID and Index of list items, which causes your problem. But if the numbers are written out, as they are in a text file, in theory OO should have no problem.
Also, if you have a document which will lose something important (bookmarks, form fields, etc.) if saved as text, save the file twice: once in.doc and once in.txt. That way you can open the.txt version, copy the list part, open the.doc version, and paste the list in.
This merger is like a dream come true for me. I've always loved how much effort Adobe's designers put in to usability, and how stable their products are compared to most mainstream Windows software. Flash, on the other hand, crashes daily and is incredibly awkward to use at times.
Unfortunately, love it or hate it, Flash is part of the web, and my clients often want it for their sites. But at least now there's a good chance that MacroDobe (or whatever) will integrate the best features of both software lines while keeping it reasonably crash free, and spit out web animation development software that doesn't make me redo 5%-10% of every project that I work on.
Slashdot Mirror
You say that like the JFK "conspiracy" is in the same category as the "Elvis is still alive" conspiracy. There is a TON of hard evidence that the official JFK story is false, not the least of which is that the national forensics association said (just last year, using modern techniques) that the official story was impossible. As such, it really does not belong in the category as alien sightings.
Elvis on the other hand ...
Man, fear really is the mind killer.
This has got to be one of the lamest articles ever on Slashdot; the only thing more lame than the post itself is all the overblown, over-reaction to it.
Do any of you know ... *normal* people? They don't care if their friends know about their photos. In fact, they *want* to share their photos with friends; that's why they upload them by the millions to MySpace/Facebook. All that Google is doing is making it easier for people to do what they want to do. If those people have to give up some privacy to get the advantage of all the useful online enhancements Google can add by doing so, they will all *happily* do so ... even if you were to sit them all down and carefully explain all of the details of and risks associated with the privacy they are losing. They won't care.
Real privacy issues come from users not understanding what they are giving away. But when you are trying to share your photos out to your friends and family, a tool that associates their email address with the pictures they are in is a useful service, not something to fear.
Most of you probably remember Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq and went on to help lead the anti-war movement. She is fighting to try and take Pelosi's seat in the next election; if you hate Pelosi like I do, do whatever you can to help.
I started trying to learn Japanese in high school. After four years of barely getting C's, all I qualified for was Japanese 3 in college ... so I took that. I then took Japanese 4, failed it, took it again, and failed it again. In other words, I spent four years of high school and a year of college learning Japanese ... and I still can't understand Japanese well enough to watch Japanese TV.
You'd think that given all that, and the fact that I'm happily employed in a well-paid programming job where I NEVER have to use Japanese, I would discourage you from learning a language (or at least a non-Latin based one like Japanese). But, quite to the contrary, I strongly recommend it.
I learned SO much beyond just the Japanese language by taking those classes. I gained understanding of another culture, understanding of a different perspective on our culture, and just generally a much more cosmopolitan outlook on the world. I also got a chance to go to Japan for a couple weeks, and to host a Japanese exchange student, and both experiences changed my life for the better.
Japanese may or may not be the language for you, and studying any language will cut in to your programming and/or non-programming classes. But even if you have an experience like mine, where you barely even learn the language, I promise that it will still be worth it.
The boy scouts need morals, and not bullshit "I do exactly what a two century year old book tells me to do" morals. If the OSS community can make software that teaches them to respect their fellow man (even if he likes having sex with his fellow man) and to stand up for what's right (even if the RIAA is pressuring them to do otherwise), then I'm all for it. Otherwise, I'm with the rest of the posters here: fuck 'em.
>>Do really you think you can train a graphical designer to code with a few book
... literature major (code monkey by night). But even so, my designs were pretty good; literally hundreds of real estate agents chose my designs (as opposed to the ones made my predecessors) for their sites. And mine never had the browser-specific issues, long page loads, and other technical issues that my sister's did.
>>and tutorials, and not get out results fitting for thedailywtf?
YES, I really think he can. Why? Because I did it.
Growing up, I had always been the nerdy one in my family (I was programming (in BASIC) at age 10, and haven't stopped since), and my sister was always the artistic one. But a few years ago, we both found ourselves in the same occupation: web designer. I was making web site designs for real estate agents, and she was making them for various organizations at her school.
Her designs were definitely prettier than mine. A lot prettier, which makes sense because she was a graphic design major in college, and I was a
My point in this story is that an artistic bent is important. A lifelong penchant for graphics and design is a real asset in doing any kind of graphic design, whether it's web pages, catalog layouts, or whatever. And if you want to be the best designer in your industry, you'll probably need it. But if you're willing to read books and web articles, you can become an extremely competent web designer, no matter what your background is. All it takes is:
A) learning the basic rules of things like contrast, white-space, maximum line length, etc.
B) learning what your clients want from a website (I found it fairly common that what was considered "good" by any respected designer was the exact opposite of what my intended audience considered "good"; hey, they're not designers either!)
C) making an effort to look at other sites out there and evaluate what is good/bad about their design
D) and finally, being willing to experiment. You aren't going to get added to the CSS Zen Garden with your first attempt. Hell, you're probably not even going to get something usable out of your first 5-10 attempts. But if you stick with it, constantly evaluate what you did right/wrong, and don't stop trying, eventually you'll start making designs both you and your customer can appreciate, and after you make enough "winners" you'll soon find yourself in a comfortable flow of producing quality (if not awe-inspiringly beautiful) designs.
Recommendations:
Web Graphics for Non-Designers (which is really "web design for non-designers") was by far the best book I found for people like us. My copy is from 2002, but there might be a more recent one; even if there isn't, the book is still completely relevant today. If you want to learn all the basic rules, start with this book.
Try other design/usability books; I have several on my shelf that I found useful, and learned a thing or two from, but which aren't really solid enough for me to recommend. Instead, just try going to your local book store (preferably a big one with great selection) and leaf through their web design/usability offerings. Even if you don't buy any of them, just skimming the recommendations and sample designs they offer can be very valuable.
While we're talking about usability, I also strongly recommend Don't Make Me Think. Now, you might be thinking usability and design are two separate things; you'd be wrong. They are two different things, but they're not at all separate; they intertwine with each other in pivotal ways, and if you want to make successful designs you need to consider usability aspects. Don't Make Me Think is like a bible in the usability field, and it's also a relatively quick read (the author does this deliberately to make the book itself more usable).
Books are great, and the two I just named are particularly great, but you'll also want to keep tabs on various web design sites. I have an iGoogle tab filled with RSS feeds from
The "bulkiness" of XML is also it's strength: XML can be used to markup almost any data imaginable. Now it's true that for most simple two-party exchanges, a simpler format (like comma separated values or YAML or something) would require less characters, and would thus save disk space, transmit faster, etc.
... ok I admit, that wasn't so hard, just some Javascript right? But now you have to write a new batch of code to validate the next type of JSON you use. And another for the next, and so on. With XML, you have a choice of not one but four different schema formats; once you learn to use one of them, you can describe a validation schema far more quickly than you ever could in Javascript.
However, the modern programming age is all about sacrificing performance for convenience (this is why virtually no one is using C or C++ to make web apps, and almost everyone is using a significantly poorer performing language like Python or Ruby). We've got powerful computers with tons of RAM and hard drive space, and high-speed internet connections that can transmit vast amounts of data in mere seconds; why waste (valuable programmer) time and energy over-optimizing everything?
Instead, developers choose the option that will make their lives easier. XML is widely known, easily understood, and is human readable. I can send an XML document, without any schema or documentation, to another developer and they'll be able to "grok it". There's also a ton of tools out there for working with XML; if someone sends me a random XML document, I can see it syntax colored in Eclipse or my browser. If someone sends me an XML schema, I can use JAXB to generate Java classes to interact with it. If I need to reformat/convert ANY XML document, I can just whip up an XSLT for it and I'm done.
So yes, other formats offer some benefits. But XML's universality (which does require a bit of bulkiness) makes it a great choice for most types of data one would like to markup and/or transmit.
P.S. JSON is just as usable? Try writing a schema to validate it
Same deal with transformations: if you want to alter your JSON data in a consistent way, you have to again write custom code every time. Sure XSLT has a learning curve, but once you master it you can accomplish in a few lines of code what any other language would need tens or even hundreds of lines to do.
Good News: ...
... in the year 2012 (give or take a few years), when the percentage of web users using IE 5, 6 or 7 finally dips below 5%.
Web developers will finally be able to develop a page once, according to standards, and have it work on all major browser
Bad News:
Sorry all, I meant layer styles, those incredibly useful things that let you add various effects like outlines and shadows and then adjust them dynamically later. My brain was somewhere else when I wrote the original post.
Sorry, I meant layer styles (end of the day = brain fried)
Nope, still missing. Guess I'm still stuck with Photoshop ... :-(
The only difference between an act of terrorism and an act of rebellion is which side you're on: if you're the rebel, it's an act of rebellion, whereas if you're the imperial power it's an act of terrorism.
There IS a sequel to Maniac Mansion; it's called "Day of the Tentacle" (and you can actually play the original Maniac Mansion on a computer inside it).
I just want to second the parent post: spamgourmet is awesome!
So our politicians have been reduced to shooting the messenger to making us feel safer ... do you?
Actually, even the beloved Ubuntu still has does have some problems, and just because you didn't experience them doesn't mean that the parent "has no experience with this at all." I personally just tried installing Dapper Drake the other day, and even though I have very new hardware (AMD 64 3000 and GeForce FX 5900; don't remember the motherboard), my system froze the moment the installer got to the GUI. I rebooted and installed in text mode, but even after installation, the moment I would get to the GUI everything would freeze(I'm sure it's possible to install some alternate driver or something, but since I've found Linux graphic stuff to be a giant PITA in the past, I'm just going to wait for Edgy Eft).
Now I'm not at all trying to bash Ubuntu here (my company uses it at work, and it's very nice), but I am trying to demonstrate that Linux is still not there yet in terms of being ready for non-computer savvy users. I'm a big proponent of OSS; I've always installed Firefox and Thunderbird on every computer I fix, and lately I've started adding Open Office to the mix. I explain to the owners that "yes, you could use IE/Outlook/Word instead, but I guarantee that this software can do everything that software can, is 100% free, will always remain free (meaning that you can always get all the latest upgrades without paying), and can do some things that software can't (ie. OO can make pdfs, but Word can't, or at least not without $500 Adobe software)."
IMHO, this is the kind of "missionary work" OSS needs: installing superior OSS products on existing Windows systems to demonstrate why OSS really is better. While I dream of a day when I can honestly tell people "I could re-install Windows, but I have this other free OS that I really think is better for you", that day has not yet arrived.
"You mean the copper that was subsidized by taxpayer dollars?" "Bzzt wrong, Ma Bell (and GTE and the Rural Telco's) retained ownership of all cable and switch plant" Actually, you can have your costs 100% subsidized, and still retain ownership, if you grease all the right palms. There is no connection between their "ownership" of the lines, and who really paid for them.
I think my favorite alternative paraphanalia(sp?) has got to be a potato. You can get one almost anywhere, and all you need is a regular knife and a little bit of time to turn it in to a fully functional pipe (with carb!).
N00b question: what open source databases can we use, that have a similiar level of power to GPL MySQL and all the commercial DBs?
"What keeps the spirits of dead Jedi from teaching their ways to others?"
Short answer: nothing stops them, but it would be a really slow process.
Long Answer: Qui-Gon was the first jedi to come back from the spirit realm (Yoda says something to this effect at the end of ep.3). So, at the end of ep.6 when you see Anakain/Obi-Wan/Yoda, you are seeing three of the four real-world-visiting Jedi (Qui-Gong isn't there because he didn't know Luke/because Lucas hadn't dreamt him up yet).
But why can't those four re-teach a shattered empire the ways of the jedi? Well it seems clear that they can't just travel back and forth to the living realm willy-nilly, because otherwise Obi-Wan would have hovered behind Luke all the way to Dagobah giving directions (and complaining about how fast he was flying ...) instead of just appearing for ten seconds with a cryptic directive.
So at the end of ep.6 you have four dead jedi who are capable of returning as spirits very occaisionally. I suppose they might be able to teach the force very slowly to someone (Hi, I'm Qui Gong, and I'm hear for your once-a-month twenty second lightsabre training ... go!), but unless they find someone with an Anakin/Luke level of natural mastery of the force, the Jedi would probably take centuries to re-grow. Which is why it's much faster to just have a near-master (Luke) teach everyone, with a little guidance from the spirits every once in awhile, which is what (I think) the Jedi Academy series of books is about.
Currently the majority of public school funding comes from property tax. The problem with this is that schools in rich areas get plenty of money, while schools in poorer areas ... don't.
To some extent a school's funding does need to reflect the property values around that school, since it costs more for teachers/administrators to more expensive areas, but the current system skews things way too far in favor of rich schools. As long as parents with money can afford to move to the "good" districts, nothing will ever change in the rest of the districts. But when soccer moms have to put up with inner city quality public schools, then the world will hear a clamor like never before (and we will finally see meaningful public education improvements).
Just leave this website up in a tab in the background whenever you can: http://www.aa419.org/vampire/ladvampire.html
Until the camera regenerates 20 (15?) seconds later ;-)
Haven't used OO in awhile, so I have no idea if this will actually help, but ...
You might try saving the Word file as a .rtf , .txt (if the document had no significant formating), or even .htm file, and then opening it with OO. My logic here is that when you save the file in a standard text format Word describes it as (please forgive the pseudo-code):
1.2.
etc., whereas with .doc files it describes:
It seems OO has difficulty with losing the ID and Index of list items, which causes your problem. But if the numbers are written out, as they are in a text file, in theory OO should have no problem.
Also, if you have a document which will lose something important (bookmarks, form fields, etc.) if saved as text, save the file twice: once in .doc and once in .txt. That way you can open the .txt version, copy the list part, open the .doc version, and paste the list in.
Good luck.
This merger is like a dream come true for me. I've always loved how much effort Adobe's designers put in to usability, and how stable their products are compared to most mainstream Windows software. Flash, on the other hand, crashes daily and is incredibly awkward to use at times.
Unfortunately, love it or hate it, Flash is part of the web, and my clients often want it for their sites. But at least now there's a good chance that MacroDobe (or whatever) will integrate the best features of both software lines while keeping it reasonably crash free, and spit out web animation development software that doesn't make me redo 5%-10% of every project that I work on.