To be honest, that's not a very large spreadsheet. Though I'm sure someone can beat me, I am currently working with a ~50x10x500 workbook, and it takes Excel 30 seconds to a minute just to save the thing. Sometimes it stops updating cells, and I have to constantly update manually (ctrl+alt+f9). I would be interested to see if an Open Source implementation could do it better, but I cannot change what is used at work.
There are many differences, mostly in usability. In Word, there is the Task Pane, which can be used for many things like Styles and Reveal Formatting. There is also a much better Track Changes system. In Excel there is Evaluate Formula, which is absolutely the best thing, ever. It allows you to step through a formula, to see where you've screwed it up.
Simply put, YES. There are tons of new features in both 2000, and XP, that are very useful for power users. If you're only writing a letter, then yes, 97 will still cut it. But I can no longer live without the Styles Task Pane, or the Evaluate Formula tool.
Well if excel was open source, and it isn't, but you can write your own custom functions (in VB, which isn't great, but still capable), I would say "that's the beauty of open source. You can write your own and release it to everyone so they have a more accurate integral."
Excel isn't open source, but can still be extended. Don't forget that.
Pickup sports do seem to have less popularity now. Part of it has to do with population density. It's hard to get 10 guys together for a spontaneous game if you all live a quarter mile from each other. In cities, however, you are correct, basketball and soccer rule (for the record, I grew up in a suburb, and now live in a city). I object, as does the other reply, to your view that basketball and soccer are somehow more simplistic sports. Both sports certainly have the type of "movements by an entire team" that you mention.
I'm not saying that your conclusion is incorrect, merely questioning how you got there.
-Nature of amusements - compare board games and pencil/paper RPGs to the lowest common denominator video games of today in terms of brainpower required for comprehension.
This seems to imply that board games and RPGs were as highly popular "then" as video games now. I don't know if that's true, as I was too young. In terms of the "geek" crowd, I wouldn't doubt it, but the conclusion is about the general public. One cannot discount that there are many activities you can do outside, like sports, that are still widely done today.
Very hard to say. 25 years ago the personal computer didn't exist. The game console was in its infancy. It's practically impossible to compare entertainment of 25 years ago to today, and come out with a rational conclusion on the intelligence of the people.
the Congress would have easily overridden the veto
This is very simplistic, and too simplistic, imo. If the president vetoes a bill, the members of his party are not going to jump for joy at the chance to override the veto. And in the real world, if the president was (publicly) against the bill, chances are his party would have opposed it in the legistlature to begin with.
While I'm not saying that blame should go only to the president, one must not forget that the president and members of his party in Congress work together.
They won't. The analog systems are certified and tested. The reason they are still there is so that if something like a Windows box crashes, the techs are not in the dark about plant conditions.
Because this application was not "mission-critical" or "life-threatening". It was one of several monitoring systems. The other systems, based on older hardware, are certainly certified.
Well if there's a problem in the actual system and you're at speed, you're already SOL. If you start the train in movement without the monitoring system in place, you're taking a risk.
There should be no assumption of privacy when one is posting to a public forum. Robots.txt and the like are useful, but they are only suggestions to people who want to play nice.
robots.txt is a well-established suggestion. Remember that robots.txt will not stop people who want your data no matter what. To be honest, if Microsoft wants to scan newsgroups, they shouldn't have to provide a mechanism for you to "opt-out". It would be nice, but remember that you opt-in to a lot of things when you post a message to a public forum.
Not to mention that, as a Windows specialist, she has a vested interest in keeping its market share large enough that it remains newsworthy,
Let's not fool anyone. Even with an unreal amount of growth in Linux use, Windows would still be the most used OS by far. Also, I don't think very many companies are sitting around saying "Well we were going to develop this for Linux, but not anymore", etc.
Yes. There was *one* article about *one* company that put off using Linux due to this. What did they use instead? A Unix.
No matter which way this case goes, it's not going to affect Windows market share very much. If "Linux"/OSS wins, then not much changes. If SCO wins, then companies using Linux will go to a Unix, not to Windows.
Well you must remember, the gaming board is political. A board member is not going to come out and say "we'll never let the casinos do this". Instead they will hint at it with language like "we've been telling them" and "shouldn't", hoping that the casinos will back off and there won't be a big ado about it. The quote makes it clear that the gaming board is against the system, but the question remains if they will use their power to actually stop it.
Chance? No. It changes nothing about the chance of the event. Counting cards merely better informs the player of his chance to win. It is only an observation of the game.
Still, this sounds like its being misused, tracking them like animals. They are human beings, and this violates their human rights to improper search. You would not want a police officer to be able to access your medical or personal information whenever they want
You're out of touch. With the exception of medical information, you are already "tracked" and "violated". If the police wanted your personal information for any reason, there's nothing stopping them right now. Why isn't this a huge deal? Because most of us don't consider information like our birth date to be very private to begin with. We fill out hundreds of forms each year with Name, SSN, Birth day, Address, Phone, etc. Why is this any different?
Many homeless don't want housing
I hear far too much of this in this thread. It simply isn't true.
Sorry, but you're paranoid. I'm a liberal and was against TIA, but I don't have any problem with seeing who is getting what handouts from the government. If the program goes farther than that, I may start to have problems with it, but to de-anonymize shelters is not a privacy concern. If this truly outrages you, do you put your social security number on your tax forms, or applications for federal aid?
Because providing information allowing yourself to be tracked should be voluntary, not mandatory.
Okay. And getting free money and food from the government is voluntary as well. Those who don't want to be "tracked" (because this is not a 24/7, 1984, style tracking) don't have to be.
Slashdot Mirror
What flamebait. You should be ashamed of yourself if you modded this up.
To be honest, that's not a very large spreadsheet. Though I'm sure someone can beat me, I am currently working with a ~50x10x500 workbook, and it takes Excel 30 seconds to a minute just to save the thing. Sometimes it stops updating cells, and I have to constantly update manually (ctrl+alt+f9). I would be interested to see if an Open Source implementation could do it better, but I cannot change what is used at work.
There are many differences, mostly in usability. In Word, there is the Task Pane, which can be used for many things like Styles and Reveal Formatting. There is also a much better Track Changes system. In Excel there is Evaluate Formula, which is absolutely the best thing, ever. It allows you to step through a formula, to see where you've screwed it up.
Simply put, YES. There are tons of new features in both 2000, and XP, that are very useful for power users. If you're only writing a letter, then yes, 97 will still cut it. But I can no longer live without the Styles Task Pane, or the Evaluate Formula tool.
Well if excel was open source, and it isn't, but you can write your own custom functions (in VB, which isn't great, but still capable), I would say "that's the beauty of open source. You can write your own and release it to everyone so they have a more accurate integral."
Excel isn't open source, but can still be extended. Don't forget that.
Pickup sports do seem to have less popularity now. Part of it has to do with population density. It's hard to get 10 guys together for a spontaneous game if you all live a quarter mile from each other. In cities, however, you are correct, basketball and soccer rule (for the record, I grew up in a suburb, and now live in a city). I object, as does the other reply, to your view that basketball and soccer are somehow more simplistic sports. Both sports certainly have the type of "movements by an entire team" that you mention.
(n/t)
I'm not saying that your conclusion is incorrect, merely questioning how you got there.
-Nature of amusements - compare board games and pencil/paper RPGs to the lowest common denominator video games of today in terms of brainpower required for comprehension.
This seems to imply that board games and RPGs were as highly popular "then" as video games now. I don't know if that's true, as I was too young. In terms of the "geek" crowd, I wouldn't doubt it, but the conclusion is about the general public. One cannot discount that there are many activities you can do outside, like sports, that are still widely done today.
Very hard to say. 25 years ago the personal computer didn't exist. The game console was in its infancy. It's practically impossible to compare entertainment of 25 years ago to today, and come out with a rational conclusion on the intelligence of the people.
Actually, Chuck Palahniuk has said that the film version of Fight Club is better than the book. And he wrote the book.
the Congress would have easily overridden the veto
This is very simplistic, and too simplistic, imo. If the president vetoes a bill, the members of his party are not going to jump for joy at the chance to override the veto. And in the real world, if the president was (publicly) against the bill, chances are his party would have opposed it in the legistlature to begin with.
While I'm not saying that blame should go only to the president, one must not forget that the president and members of his party in Congress work together.
They won't. The analog systems are certified and tested. The reason they are still there is so that if something like a Windows box crashes, the techs are not in the dark about plant conditions.
Because this application was not "mission-critical" or "life-threatening". It was one of several monitoring systems. The other systems, based on older hardware, are certainly certified.
This was not a critical control system. There were redundant monitors on-line which did not run Windows, or *nix.
Read. This was not "mission-critical" equipment. It was a monitor station whose capabilites were backed up by other hardware.
Well if there's a problem in the actual system and you're at speed, you're already SOL. If you start the train in movement without the monitoring system in place, you're taking a risk.
There should be no assumption of privacy when one is posting to a public forum. Robots.txt and the like are useful, but they are only suggestions to people who want to play nice.
robots.txt is a well-established suggestion. Remember that robots.txt will not stop people who want your data no matter what. To be honest, if Microsoft wants to scan newsgroups, they shouldn't have to provide a mechanism for you to "opt-out". It would be nice, but remember that you opt-in to a lot of things when you post a message to a public forum.
Not to mention that, as a Windows specialist, she has a vested interest in keeping its market share large enough that it remains newsworthy,
Let's not fool anyone. Even with an unreal amount of growth in Linux use, Windows would still be the most used OS by far. Also, I don't think very many companies are sitting around saying "Well we were going to develop this for Linux, but not anymore", etc.
Yes. There was *one* article about *one* company that put off using Linux due to this. What did they use instead? A Unix.
No matter which way this case goes, it's not going to affect Windows market share very much. If "Linux"/OSS wins, then not much changes. If SCO wins, then companies using Linux will go to a Unix, not to Windows.
Well you must remember, the gaming board is political. A board member is not going to come out and say "we'll never let the casinos do this". Instead they will hint at it with language like "we've been telling them" and "shouldn't", hoping that the casinos will back off and there won't be a big ado about it. The quote makes it clear that the gaming board is against the system, but the question remains if they will use their power to actually stop it.
Chance? No. It changes nothing about the chance of the event. Counting cards merely better informs the player of his chance to win. It is only an observation of the game.
Still, this sounds like its being misused, tracking them like animals. They are human beings, and this violates their human rights to improper search. You would not want a police officer to be able to access your medical or personal information whenever they want
You're out of touch. With the exception of medical information, you are already "tracked" and "violated". If the police wanted your personal information for any reason, there's nothing stopping them right now. Why isn't this a huge deal? Because most of us don't consider information like our birth date to be very private to begin with. We fill out hundreds of forms each year with Name, SSN, Birth day, Address, Phone, etc. Why is this any different?
Many homeless don't want housing
I hear far too much of this in this thread. It simply isn't true.
Sorry, but you're paranoid. I'm a liberal and was against TIA, but I don't have any problem with seeing who is getting what handouts from the government. If the program goes farther than that, I may start to have problems with it, but to de-anonymize shelters is not a privacy concern. If this truly outrages you, do you put your social security number on your tax forms, or applications for federal aid?
Holy shit you're right. The government shouldn't know my social security number! This is ridiculous!
Because providing information allowing yourself to be tracked should be voluntary, not mandatory.
Okay. And getting free money and food from the government is voluntary as well. Those who don't want to be "tracked" (because this is not a 24/7, 1984, style tracking) don't have to be.