Of course it didn't render you a computer-illiterate idiot. It just introduced a learning curve without the help of a teacher on hand to give you pointers. It took up your working time, when you could have been working. It would be a shallow victory for OO if it was in schools instead of MS Office.
Obviously your spreadsheet needs are different from mine.
Calc's functions are poor in comparison to Excel, for regular users and those leet hackers you talk of. Teaching kids how to use spreadsheets with Calc over Excel will at best offer no benefits, and at worse leave the kids somehow incapable of using the de facto standard.
And that's not going to happen. By the time MP3 disappears, something newer will have taken over. Ogg Vorbis has hit a plateau from which it's unlikely to move up from.
It's not the iPod plus. It has a better screen, sure, but the storage capacity is WAY down. Plus, it can't be used as such, as once the battery runs out, you're screwed. At least when the iPod ran out of juice you weren't stuck trying to get home or missing calls. As for just wanting a simple phone that's easy to use and dial, you don't have to drop hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a locked handset to get that. You can get free ones that will actually fit in your pocket.
NOW it's on par, sure, but not back when it first came out. Firewire?? Jog wheel? Smooth, quick updating via slick software? That was literally years ahead of the competition. Remember iPods came out over 5 years ago, and their features haven't increased much at all, and they're still at the top of the list. Back then alternative players had ridiculously-expensive flash memory, or massive hard disks, and USB1 connections for uploading your tracks. Then came the iPod which could suck up music at 400Mb/s, and take 5 gigs. If you think people were doing that before the iPod came along, you should re-evaluate just how well you remember;)
hahaha! I'm a web developer. I still have to use office tools, as I work in a fucking OFFICE. I'm not a shill - I have tried to use OO in lieu of MS Office, and each time I try, I've had to stop very quickly. It is fine for opening documents and printing them (but then so is the free Word document viewer), but as soon as you try to save something, it'll fuck up for everyone else. Not to mention the whole Calc debacle. Learning generic tools of the trade, as office suites are, is essential. They're not just for secretaries and assistants. I'm sorry that doesn't fit your "Microsoft = bad" ideology.
OO and MS office are interchangeable for the most part. Just don't think Excel is the same as Calc. There really are some differences that make a massive difference. If I learned OpenOffice at school, I wouldn't have learned about Excel's massive function library, and how to use it properly. And now that Office is in its '07 phase and has left OpenOffice behind in the UI front, they're growing more and more apart than together.
I'm really not trying to troll here - I really don't see why kids should be at the short-end of trying to right perceived wrongs that have nothing to do with them. Teaching kids what they "should" know, as opposed to what they need to know is retarded.
People making massive generalisations about communism, a system encompassing billions of people, from a few isolated incidents. Did you know someone was killed in the US last year? That means all Americans are murderers, and America is forever destined to live out its existence as a country full of murderers.
Remember that not too long ago, the US deemed homosexuality a mental disorder, one you could be punished or forcefully treated for having.
Next time don't listen to your Dad bang on about the red menace so much. I know he's your Dad, and surely a straight-up guy, but he's not right.
Surely schools should teach what kids are most likely to use? Coming out of school knowing all there is to know about Open Office, then being put in front of your first work computer and it's running Microsoft Office, you'd be fucked. Schools shouldn't be about ideology, but preparation. I'd applaud any second school teaching Philosophy instead of home economics, as it's clear which one is the most help to man-kind, but any kid coming out of secondary school unable to boil an egg or make beans-on-toast will be screwed.
I think clearing up your comment might be helpful. If it's off-limits to third-party developers, then yes - it won't make any difference. Being closed itself doesn't preclude it from changing the landscape. Windows Mobile is closed, yet it really has changed the mobile landscape (either way you look at it), simply because they released an SDK for it, and didn't control how software gets on the phone in any centralised, pre-vetted way.
MP3 players were clumsy, big, and with low storage when the iPod first came out. The iPod did a LOT more than other MP3 players, and in a package that was clearly the result of better engineering and R&D. The iPhone isn't that far ahead of the pack to justify its price. It has *less* features than other mobile phones, less a pretty screen and more storage space. Is that going to be enough to encourage people? Considering it's twice as expensive as a competing phone (with the competitor having better features), it doesn't have the iPod advantage over its competitors.
At best, religion makes people do the right thing for the wrong reason. It can, however, make people do fucked up things for fucked up reasons. And that goes for ALL religions. Including Pastafarians:-P
Religions were the first books of law for societies to live by. Not having courts and police forces, they had to make the punishment unavoidable and harsh, so they came up with Gods being vengeful and angry. Conveniently the same Gods they claimed make toads croak the tuesday before, as no-one knew what was in a toad, let alone how or why they croak. It's self-perpetuating. It sows the seeds for its own survival. Ironically, it has evolved greatly since the beginning.
religion == bollocks.
It has the 7950, which is as powerful as notebook GPUs get, so it's not as if it has some shitty onboard Intel video:) Getting upset with Dell for not magically summoning yet-to-be-created parts is pretty funny, though:)
As not *all* closed-source software does any of the stuff you mention (not even much of it), you've just demonstrated you're putting some ridiculously ignorant notion of what constitutes "better" before actual practical use. You are, by your own admission, a fanboy. You relegate technical ability in favour of whatever bandwagon you subscribe to. Ridiculous. You are willing to let some great software miss you by, even though it can perform whatever task you want of it perfectly, possibly even better than open-source, just because it's closed? You're keeping the open-source movement back with that attitude.
30 seconds is ages? That might not be XP's fault but (and I'm not trying to be rude here) your hardware. I've got a modest 2+ year old system (3.2 prescott, currently heating my house as we speak), with a SATA hard disk, and XP simply flies on my machine. I did actually put thougt into "liberating", but I can understand how it doesn't apply to everyone:)
And your post is FUD, too! There are many folks in many companies who could, indeed, be called the "shadow IT" group. I've seen it personally. Stretched IT departments offering little to no timely support demands users to stand up and become the shadow IT group. Saying all folks who want to download their own apps are just using toolbars etc. is ridiculous. Some of those Shadow IT guys might even be Cisco certified for all you fucking know.
They have a watershed, after which you can show pretty much whatever you want. However, before the watershed, no gratuitous violence, sex or swearing. Watching movies on daytime TV in the US, I was appauled that the FCC seems to judge whether a film is suitable for that audience by how many times someone gets violently killed on screen - every other aspect of the movie is left intact, which seems pretty fucked up, as the actual violent scenes are not as half as violent as some of the (non-swearing) language and personal interactions also depicted. I always found US TV censors to be fucking ridiculous, to be honest. Laughable, in fact. No swearing, but you can hear this guy go on about how much he wants to kill a bunch of people for no apparent reason, then never get his comeuppance, leading kids to believe violence is cool. Kids aren't stupid, and it's their lack of stupidity which means they have to be shielded from violence. Kids learn about their world from watching adults interact. We're not born with all our social graces hard-wired. If kids are allowed to watch TV (or even sneak off to watch it on their own), then there's a very good chance they're going to see something that could skew their perspective on life.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course it didn't render you a computer-illiterate idiot. It just introduced a learning curve without the help of a teacher on hand to give you pointers. It took up your working time, when you could have been working. It would be a shallow victory for OO if it was in schools instead of MS Office.
Obviously your spreadsheet needs are different from mine.
Calc's functions are poor in comparison to Excel, for regular users and those leet hackers you talk of. Teaching kids how to use spreadsheets with Calc over Excel will at best offer no benefits, and at worse leave the kids somehow incapable of using the de facto standard.
And that's not going to happen. By the time MP3 disappears, something newer will have taken over. Ogg Vorbis has hit a plateau from which it's unlikely to move up from.
It's not the iPod plus. It has a better screen, sure, but the storage capacity is WAY down. Plus, it can't be used as such, as once the battery runs out, you're screwed. At least when the iPod ran out of juice you weren't stuck trying to get home or missing calls. As for just wanting a simple phone that's easy to use and dial, you don't have to drop hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a locked handset to get that. You can get free ones that will actually fit in your pocket.
NOW it's on par, sure, but not back when it first came out. Firewire?? Jog wheel? Smooth, quick updating via slick software? That was literally years ahead of the competition. Remember iPods came out over 5 years ago, and their features haven't increased much at all, and they're still at the top of the list. Back then alternative players had ridiculously-expensive flash memory, or massive hard disks, and USB1 connections for uploading your tracks. Then came the iPod which could suck up music at 400Mb/s, and take 5 gigs. If you think people were doing that before the iPod came along, you should re-evaluate just how well you remember ;)
hahaha! I'm a web developer. I still have to use office tools, as I work in a fucking OFFICE. I'm not a shill - I have tried to use OO in lieu of MS Office, and each time I try, I've had to stop very quickly. It is fine for opening documents and printing them (but then so is the free Word document viewer), but as soon as you try to save something, it'll fuck up for everyone else. Not to mention the whole Calc debacle. Learning generic tools of the trade, as office suites are, is essential. They're not just for secretaries and assistants. I'm sorry that doesn't fit your "Microsoft = bad" ideology.
OO and MS office are interchangeable for the most part. Just don't think Excel is the same as Calc. There really are some differences that make a massive difference. If I learned OpenOffice at school, I wouldn't have learned about Excel's massive function library, and how to use it properly. And now that Office is in its '07 phase and has left OpenOffice behind in the UI front, they're growing more and more apart than together.
I'm really not trying to troll here - I really don't see why kids should be at the short-end of trying to right perceived wrongs that have nothing to do with them. Teaching kids what they "should" know, as opposed to what they need to know is retarded.
People making massive generalisations about communism, a system encompassing billions of people, from a few isolated incidents. Did you know someone was killed in the US last year? That means all Americans are murderers, and America is forever destined to live out its existence as a country full of murderers. Remember that not too long ago, the US deemed homosexuality a mental disorder, one you could be punished or forcefully treated for having. Next time don't listen to your Dad bang on about the red menace so much. I know he's your Dad, and surely a straight-up guy, but he's not right.
There's no 1080p on those boxes... drats! they look very nice indeed.
Surely schools should teach what kids are most likely to use? Coming out of school knowing all there is to know about Open Office, then being put in front of your first work computer and it's running Microsoft Office, you'd be fucked. Schools shouldn't be about ideology, but preparation. I'd applaud any second school teaching Philosophy instead of home economics, as it's clear which one is the most help to man-kind, but any kid coming out of secondary school unable to boil an egg or make beans-on-toast will be screwed.
I think clearing up your comment might be helpful. If it's off-limits to third-party developers, then yes - it won't make any difference. Being closed itself doesn't preclude it from changing the landscape. Windows Mobile is closed, yet it really has changed the mobile landscape (either way you look at it), simply because they released an SDK for it, and didn't control how software gets on the phone in any centralised, pre-vetted way.
MP3 players were clumsy, big, and with low storage when the iPod first came out. The iPod did a LOT more than other MP3 players, and in a package that was clearly the result of better engineering and R&D. The iPhone isn't that far ahead of the pack to justify its price. It has *less* features than other mobile phones, less a pretty screen and more storage space. Is that going to be enough to encourage people? Considering it's twice as expensive as a competing phone (with the competitor having better features), it doesn't have the iPod advantage over its competitors.
At best, religion makes people do the right thing for the wrong reason. It can, however, make people do fucked up things for fucked up reasons. And that goes for ALL religions. Including Pastafarians :-P
Religions were the first books of law for societies to live by. Not having courts and police forces, they had to make the punishment unavoidable and harsh, so they came up with Gods being vengeful and angry. Conveniently the same Gods they claimed make toads croak the tuesday before, as no-one knew what was in a toad, let alone how or why they croak. It's self-perpetuating. It sows the seeds for its own survival. Ironically, it has evolved greatly since the beginning.
religion == bollocks.
You'll be fine. China will be taking over the US's position soon, and they're atheists :)
Of course you can! Just stay out of kansas.
It has the 7950, which is as powerful as notebook GPUs get, so it's not as if it has some shitty onboard Intel video :) Getting upset with Dell for not magically summoning yet-to-be-created parts is pretty funny, though :)
As not *all* closed-source software does any of the stuff you mention (not even much of it), you've just demonstrated you're putting some ridiculously ignorant notion of what constitutes "better" before actual practical use. You are, by your own admission, a fanboy. You relegate technical ability in favour of whatever bandwagon you subscribe to. Ridiculous. You are willing to let some great software miss you by, even though it can perform whatever task you want of it perfectly, possibly even better than open-source, just because it's closed? You're keeping the open-source movement back with that attitude.
Then you're missing out on a lot of really, really good software :)
None of which is fully compatible with MS's offerings, which the rest of the world uses. Yay. Hooray for fanboys!
30 seconds is ages? That might not be XP's fault but (and I'm not trying to be rude here) your hardware. I've got a modest 2+ year old system (3.2 prescott, currently heating my house as we speak), with a SATA hard disk, and XP simply flies on my machine. I did actually put thougt into "liberating", but I can understand how it doesn't apply to everyone :)
Nope - XP's sweet spot is 2 gigs. 1 gig does make it better over .5, but 2 gigs is straight-up liberating.
And your post is FUD, too! There are many folks in many companies who could, indeed, be called the "shadow IT" group. I've seen it personally. Stretched IT departments offering little to no timely support demands users to stand up and become the shadow IT group. Saying all folks who want to download their own apps are just using toolbars etc. is ridiculous. Some of those Shadow IT guys might even be Cisco certified for all you fucking know.
Thank you! You beat me to it :) -1 for allowing the apostrophe in "1970's", though :-P
They have a watershed, after which you can show pretty much whatever you want. However, before the watershed, no gratuitous violence, sex or swearing. Watching movies on daytime TV in the US, I was appauled that the FCC seems to judge whether a film is suitable for that audience by how many times someone gets violently killed on screen - every other aspect of the movie is left intact, which seems pretty fucked up, as the actual violent scenes are not as half as violent as some of the (non-swearing) language and personal interactions also depicted. I always found US TV censors to be fucking ridiculous, to be honest. Laughable, in fact. No swearing, but you can hear this guy go on about how much he wants to kill a bunch of people for no apparent reason, then never get his comeuppance, leading kids to believe violence is cool. Kids aren't stupid, and it's their lack of stupidity which means they have to be shielded from violence. Kids learn about their world from watching adults interact. We're not born with all our social graces hard-wired. If kids are allowed to watch TV (or even sneak off to watch it on their own), then there's a very good chance they're going to see something that could skew their perspective on life.
QUIT is OK, as we like ETLAs, too.