I wouldn't go around of my manager, unless it's something REALLY worthwile... and even then I would tell them I think. Just curious, what was so urgent that you needed to go around your manager?
Well, the other day I'd figured I'd give it another shot and downloaded the latest copy of OO. Took one of the documents of the current project I'm working on, which are all saved in.DOC. Opened it, changed a word and saved it back in.DOC. Opened it again with MS Word (using CrossoverOffice). Lots of mangled stuff, including TOC and enumerations. And these are bugs that I logged april 2003... I'm sorry, but OO is just nog good enough from a professional point of view.
Spelling?? Anyway, true; the protocols stay the same except that I think that when people call the helpdesk, they should get decent support when they're running Linux.
Yeah, but I used the word flawlessly. I think OO.org is a great package and I try to do my part by logging bugs etc. But since its im/export filters are not flawless, I can only use it for trivial stuff (not work-related). I think others struggle with this as well; the other day I read about a Dutch municipality where the use of OO.org/StarOffice was voted down because documents came up mangled.
I think the key to the desktop is preloaded machines by big-vendor being available at retail stores
I think the key to the desktop is preloaded machines that can flawlessly interoperate with the existing Windows monopoly. If it would include the ability to run MS Office for instance (free CrossoverOffice included, or a better Wine), that would be good. That way, it would run most things that Windows can, and then some more.
Another interoperability issue would be internet-connection. The various ISPs should support Linux as well.
I'm working there too (and not posting AC) and I use Linux on a day-to-day basis. What problems do you have?? MS Office, IE-only websites? Check the other AC replies which links to CrossoverOffice. Development tools? If so, which?
For IBM, the biggest milestone will be porting Notes to Linux. Good luck. If the interior looks ANYTHING like the exterior, it will be an INCREDIBLE task.
moving away from MS (my current employer another example of the exodus)
In another discussion there was another thread about how the formats lock you in. So I was curious what replaced MS Office? StarOffice? Were there any file format problems with customers?
I decided to give it a shot. So I saved some Word documents of the current project in RTF. Closed MS Word, then opened them again. Flawless. Everything was in pristine order.
Now OOo, which was the point of discussion. Last time I checked OOo, it was at 1.1beta, so I downloaded and installed the new 1.1. Started Ooo Writer, opened the RTF version of the project memo: completely FUBAR. Margins, enumerations, TOC and lots more screwed up. Then I opened the original DOC in OOo; slightly better. Have the bugs been solved that I logged a year ago? Nope. Problems with the symbol font, table cells, enumerations? Yes.
Now you see why I still use MS Office (using Crossover Office)? It's because the rest is not compatible! IMHO, OOo should concentrate on getting the filters flawless. I've done my part with logging bugs but if nothing is done about them, I stop that, too.
I bet you are still in college. Do you think my manager will be happy when I receive a.DOC and save it in RTF? Do you think the customer understands this?
Unless there's really fancy crap in that.DOC file (which Open Office usually ignores gleefully) it will open the.DOC easily.
This topic has gotten on so many times, it's getting silly. YES, OOo wil open it but have you tried to write it back? And have it exactly the same as it was? No. You didn't.
So when I'm analyzing a design and cooperating with a client's analists, and the Word documents make a round-trip (i.e. I edit, she edits, I edit some more, she edits some more) then the Word document gets screwed up halfway, due to bugs in the im/export.
And that's only logical; after all, no im/export filter is completely faultless. But don't say that OOo solves the lock-in by MS Office, because it doesn't.
That's true and I think a shining example of this is CodeWeavers. They have a special page that details what works and what doesn't in their products. I've linked many times to these guys in my posts on slashdot, I love 'em.
I've seen lots of negative comments, but I would think you have a very good chance in Shanghai, China. I've worked there as part of my graduation and although I've gone home again afterwards, I always check the internal jobsite of the (huge American) company I work for, and they have lots of offerings in China.
What can you expect: a booming city with a pretty large gap between poverty and richness. It's bustling with activity, full of ambitious people. If you work against local standards, it's not bad for a few years, especially when you're single. Food and clothing is extremely cheap.
Learning Chinese is not so difficult as it sounds; if only you could speak it, it would be an enormous advantage. You don't have to be able to read and write at first. It's very easy to put a note in one of the universities, where you offer to teach English if the other person would teach you Chinese.
For every nationality, there's a very tight community in Shanghai. Everyone's there on his own, so friendships are forged very quickly with other people from your country. And I also found some cool chinese friends, who would take us out and do cool stuff and sightseeing.
IMHO there's always an opportunity for you...just look....
I'm sorry, but that's typically someone with a HR background would say. I've heard that dozens of times. I tell them, "yeah, but it's hard". And then they say that there's a chance for EVERYONE, if you would only try.
I'm not saying you SHOULDN'T go out instead of giving it up in advance. But don't deny that it's hard.
It always pains me on slashdot when these articles come up and people fall all over themselves to heap praise on people like Mitnick
I'm not praising him for his hacker skills, but I will praise him for the nice book on social engineering. It was clearly written and because of the separate short stories, easy to read.
Insurance Companies are still running mainframe systems
I read an interview in one of our national IT magazines, wherein the CIO of one of the largest insurers talked about how they were going to replace the old mainframe... with a new one! The thing did so much I/O and in that aspect there was just no other more cost-effective solution than a mainframe!
at least the educational licence for MS Office is lower than the full pricing.
Yeah, and some companies/organizations have an MS Office license which permits home usage. So when people want to use Wine/Crossover to run MS Office, they don't even have to buy the license themselves, or pirate a copy.
It's not the tool, it's the file format that the tool uses. OpenOffice 1.1 still can't flawlessly im/export MS Office 2000 which is 3 year old software
If your priority is opening MS-Office documents
Well, it's not. Otherwise, I'd have asked for "opening MS-Office documents". No, I asked for "flawless im/export". I want to be able to receive a word-document from a customer, edit it, and send it back.
For some people, OOo does the job just fine. For me it doesn't. So I paid $55 for Crossover Office.
I've seen this comment zillions of times and it's getting boring. Looking at your user page, you've been here more than twice, so you should know the editors sometimes put something there just to get the discussion started.
I really don't see why so much focus is on the tool
It's not the tool, it's the file format that the tool uses. OpenOffice 1.1 still can't flawlessly im/export MS Office 2000 which is 3 year old software.
some of the components are proprietary and closed source
For me the most interesting component would be Crossover Office.
I wonder whether some distro (Fedora, Debian, Mandrake, etc) guys couldn't concentrate on getting Wine to run MS Office (or even only Word) flawlessly and then pass it along with the distro, with a big INSTALL OFFICE icon on the desktop.
I bought Crossover Office myself, because Wine just isn't stable enough for business use for me. But when I thought about it, I suspect the Wine guys of not concentrating on running MS Office on purpose. If it would, they'd lose their funding from Codeweavers.
Note that I don't have a problem with this, it just makes me wonder if there's some kind of Gentleman's Agreement.
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I wouldn't go around of my manager, unless it's something REALLY worthwile... and even then I would tell them I think. Just curious, what was so urgent that you needed to go around your manager?
Well, the other day I'd figured I'd give it another shot and downloaded the latest copy of OO. Took one of the documents of the current project I'm working on, which are all saved in .DOC. Opened it, changed a word and saved it back in .DOC. Opened it again with MS Word (using CrossoverOffice). Lots of mangled stuff, including TOC and enumerations. And these are bugs that I logged april 2003... I'm sorry, but OO is just nog good enough from a professional point of view.
Spelling?? Anyway, true; the protocols stay the same except that I think that when people call the helpdesk, they should get decent support when they're running Linux.
Yeah, but I used the word flawlessly. I think OO.org is a great package and I try to do my part by logging bugs etc. But since its im/export filters are not flawless, I can only use it for trivial stuff (not work-related). I think others struggle with this as well; the other day I read about a Dutch municipality where the use of OO.org/StarOffice was voted down because documents came up mangled.
I think the key to the desktop is preloaded machines that can flawlessly interoperate with the existing Windows monopoly. If it would include the ability to run MS Office for instance (free CrossoverOffice included, or a better Wine), that would be good. That way, it would run most things that Windows can, and then some more.
Another interoperability issue would be internet-connection. The various ISPs should support Linux as well.
I'm working there too (and not posting AC) and I use Linux on a day-to-day basis. What problems do you have?? MS Office, IE-only websites? Check the other AC replies which links to CrossoverOffice. Development tools? If so, which?
FWIW, CodeWeavers has a commercial version of Wine which can run Lotus; it's supported too.
Suppose he used OOo's version of Excel, do you really think he'd look at the source to verify that the right things are done?
In another discussion there was another thread about how the formats lock you in. So I was curious what replaced MS Office? StarOffice? Were there any file format problems with customers?
Now OOo, which was the point of discussion. Last time I checked OOo, it was at 1.1beta, so I downloaded and installed the new 1.1. Started Ooo Writer, opened the RTF version of the project memo: completely FUBAR. Margins, enumerations, TOC and lots more screwed up. Then I opened the original DOC in OOo; slightly better. Have the bugs been solved that I logged a year ago? Nope. Problems with the symbol font, table cells, enumerations? Yes.
Now you see why I still use MS Office (using Crossover Office)? It's because the rest is not compatible! IMHO, OOo should concentrate on getting the filters flawless. I've done my part with logging bugs but if nothing is done about them, I stop that, too.
I bet you are still in college. Do you think my manager will be happy when I receive a .DOC and save it in RTF? Do you think the customer understands this?
This topic has gotten on so many times, it's getting silly. YES, OOo wil open it but have you tried to write it back? And have it exactly the same as it was? No. You didn't.
So when I'm analyzing a design and cooperating with a client's analists, and the Word documents make a round-trip (i.e. I edit, she edits, I edit some more, she edits some more) then the Word document gets screwed up halfway, due to bugs in the im/export.
And that's only logical; after all, no im/export filter is completely faultless. But don't say that OOo solves the lock-in by MS Office, because it doesn't.
That's true and I think a shining example of this is CodeWeavers. They have a special page that details what works and what doesn't in their products. I've linked many times to these guys in my posts on slashdot, I love 'em.
Some probably might. Lots of CS students working at such shops.
What can you expect: a booming city with a pretty large gap between poverty and richness. It's bustling with activity, full of ambitious people. If you work against local standards, it's not bad for a few years, especially when you're single. Food and clothing is extremely cheap.
Learning Chinese is not so difficult as it sounds; if only you could speak it, it would be an enormous advantage. You don't have to be able to read and write at first. It's very easy to put a note in one of the universities, where you offer to teach English if the other person would teach you Chinese.
For every nationality, there's a very tight community in Shanghai. Everyone's there on his own, so friendships are forged very quickly with other people from your country. And I also found some cool chinese friends, who would take us out and do cool stuff and sightseeing.
I'm sorry, but that's typically someone with a HR background would say. I've heard that dozens of times. I tell them, "yeah, but it's hard". And then they say that there's a chance for EVERYONE, if you would only try.
I'm not saying you SHOULDN'T go out instead of giving it up in advance. But don't deny that it's hard.
I can't read, you insensitive clod!
I'm not praising him for his hacker skills, but I will praise him for the nice book on social engineering. It was clearly written and because of the separate short stories, easy to read.
I read an interview in one of our national IT magazines, wherein the CIO of one of the largest insurers talked about how they were going to replace the old mainframe... with a new one! The thing did so much I/O and in that aspect there was just no other more cost-effective solution than a mainframe!
Yeah, and some companies/organizations have an MS Office license which permits home usage. So when people want to use Wine/Crossover to run MS Office, they don't even have to buy the license themselves, or pirate a copy.
For some people, OOo does the job just fine. For me it doesn't. So I paid $55 for Crossover Office.
*Yawns*
I've seen this comment zillions of times and it's getting boring. Looking at your user page, you've been here more than twice, so you should know the editors sometimes put something there just to get the discussion started.
It's not the tool, it's the file format that the tool uses. OpenOffice 1.1 still can't flawlessly im/export MS Office 2000 which is 3 year old software.
For me the most interesting component would be Crossover Office.
I wonder whether some distro (Fedora, Debian, Mandrake, etc) guys couldn't concentrate on getting Wine to run MS Office (or even only Word) flawlessly and then pass it along with the distro, with a big INSTALL OFFICE icon on the desktop.
I bought Crossover Office myself, because Wine just isn't stable enough for business use for me. But when I thought about it, I suspect the Wine guys of not concentrating on running MS Office on purpose. If it would, they'd lose their funding from Codeweavers.
Note that I don't have a problem with this, it just makes me wonder if there's some kind of Gentleman's Agreement.
It was very subtle, so yes I bited. :-)