This is a fair call. There are a lot of issues that are outstanding for a long time. I do notice however that lately there are a lot more open source developers coming into OOo. Some of these will "scratch the itch" and fix some of these older problems.
So far a lot of the developers have been working on the word processing component getting it up to speed. The focus will naturally shift into spreadsheets soon.
Why are we not developing Coding in exponential fashion. When I started you had to script everything from scratch. Now with a window manager you get the abilities of the manager with a little research in the API.
Programming as an art has not leapt forward but the tools we use now are far advanced from the ones we had 25 years ago. Think of coding machine code and the order of magnitude of the assembler, then the order of magnitude of the high level language and the compiler. We are making those leaps however it is not measured in easy Mhz and Flops like hardware.
I am currently paid strictly because of my value to answer questions on a huge array of questions. I am not a brilliant coder, I am a horrible networker, I understand MS Windows only on a superficial basis. So what am I paid for my ability to answer the questions off the cuff, cut through the he said she said arguments between Networking and programming when there is a problem.
There is a definite role for "intergration specialists" which are not integration specialists but computer generalists that understand a little about everything.
Most important question is not what you know but whether you can apply that knowledge to the questions at hand.
The file structure is XML however once it is read into memory it is another structure entirely. If it really was that simple someone would have done it already.
The latest releases of OpenOffice.org are much more stable with regard to openning other vendors files. This has been a major push from the very beginning of openoffice.org and it is now becoming a reality, subject to a deliberatly slippery slope created by other vendors.
StarOffice used a proprietary Word filter and was better in the beginning, this is less so now.
I believe that this is more of an issue of comfort zone than a limitation in Word or OOo.
If you are happy using WP then stick to it, truly but reveal codes will NOT stop the new upcoming writers picking WP over any other product. The reality is that it is a "geek" feature and people do not want to know how the document works under the covers. I love geek detail, it looks like you find it important however it is not a requirement of writers as a whole.
Reveal codes worked for the original WP because there really were codes in the document. The issue now is that the format of OpenOffice.org does not have codes as such therefore creating these code would come from internal memory structures and be totally fake.
I am sure that someone will eventually provide a patch to do reveal codes in OOo but I don't expect it to be a lovely clean idea, just a WP clone for the sake of it.
The trick is not to provide exactly the same interface but find out what the user really wants it for. I have used WP and the only thing I used it for was removing a code because I happened to pick a space that was italics. The same situation not I highlight the line and click the italics button a couple of times. Same problem different solution.
There is always resistance to change, the important thing is to figure out what it is really used for and whether there is a better way to implement it.
There has been some people working on a set of macros that convert the keyboard into a word keystrokes. I doubt this will ever be an install option due to legal issues and also "we are not competing with word" issues. I would prefer to inovate and provide the best solution to problems than duplicate choices made years ago on totally different hardware by a "legacy" software provider.
Overall for most users they simply do not have this level of competance (Shift F3 in word anyone). A conversion to OOo is fairly painless.
We should have expected the first. This is definitely a project to cover the existing tests and results out there to preempt these questions.
The second is a two level process. If they must write windows then it must run under wine, this would stop the vendors having to retool and lower the entry barrier. Eventually a native application will arrive and be better then the transition to native linux for everything will begin.
The important issue here is to lower the barriers as low as possible.
Don't make any excuses just drop it from your resume. The important thing is that your resume is the key to the door not "buying the house". If there are lots of resumes in a pile the manager will hand it to his secretary and say get rid of anyone without a qualification or who looks like a job hopper. You will never get to the person who will really make sense of it.
When you get face to face, let them know what happened and lay it on the line that you did not consider 3 weeks in a company imploding as experience, except for a personal one. Then ask them targetted questions on their ability to give you full time employment.
A deck of questions from you is the best sales point you can have. I walked into interviews and asked the hard questions, I got respect from the interviewer and I eliminated a couple of job offers because they were not what I wanted. (By the looks of it, simply "a job" is what you are after but do ask the questions!)
"nobody's actually managed to get that code shipped to end-users as part of an official release" As far as we know. The likelyhood is relatively small however we should not be complacent.
That aside the picture of the model is flawed. Anyone can pick up and modify the code however a relative few are allowed to modify the code base in EVERY opensource project I am aware of.
You have just cause for requesting an authorised party to independantly verify the code in Microsoft. Given that Microsoft has acknowledged that it is a copy. Would take a court order though.
I wrote a series of tests for code I have written for what I would term a trivial application. Took me about 3 months to develop. The series of tests for about 50% of the code and missed 50%. The vast majority of the bugs came from the second half of the code.
Second. The tests themselves act as documentation. I am anoyed that I pick up generic routines like a CSV file reader and there is subroutines but no way to figure out how to use them. A test suite acts as sample code as well.
This process is balance, you don't test every detail but you do codify some tests. When you find a bug you codify a test and then you NEVER reintroduce the same bug. I find that in general I reintroduce bugs about once for every month of coding. Since this application only gets worked on in random blocks of a week here and there I am not focussed on the whole application and I simple forget. Use the computer to validate that you have not made a mistake.
These sort of tests saves my reputation, does not frustrate my users.
If you wish FSF to act on your behalf then you must assign copyright to FSF in order for them to proceed. I don't see any real downside if you need their help but follow the gently gently approach first to get it resolved.
There is a book on additives and food related character changes.
Fed Up sue dengate ISBN 0-09-183698-0
"Understanding how food affects your child and what you can do about it."
My son was tagged ADHD and we looked at lots of things, naturapath included. It turned out that the behaviour was related to a reading problem that was caused by poor schooling we went into an intensive reading program run by Macquarie University (Sydney Aust) it was literally incredible the results. We still have interesting times but they got better because the confidence boost made my son a new person.
Ritalin is a panacia to all the behaviour problems lately, I would advise against it's use except when you have exhausted the other avenues. Think about this, why do you slow the kid down when you ply them with speed (what ritalin actually is). This is a Naturapath type answer, the doctors don't actually know why it works. If the doctor wants to prescribe and not monitor the result then they are not doing you or your child any favours.
REad there is a lot of cool development going on in OpenSource and it is hard to backport to Windows. We must make this easy so there is less reason to move to Linux.
Personally I love the idea. I have to break nice clean C code all the time to make it compile on Windows again. I wonder if they implemented file locking in POSIX manner?
Not strictly true. My firewall NAT's everything and will not allow a connection unless I originate it. If the firewall on the other side has teh same rule the only alternative that I can see is to effectively bounce through a third party.
Now I could set up a static route for a specific incoming port to enable this but it would require special knowledge and access by myself. This is not a user task.
This is an interesting question for the future... I wonder how this will be worked out.
You are NOT legally allowed to copy the whole thing. You are legally allowed to copy a percentage of the artical under the fair use clause of most copyright acts (note we are international!). You are also allowed to seek permission from one of the copyright owners the right to copy a particular article. As with code there may be more than one, the original author or the magazine that the article was sold to.
for more information on copyright law you might want to go to groklaw.net where PJ is talking about the SCO case. There is a recent thread on copyright.
You are not "legally" allowed to tape off radio. It is just impossible to track and prosecute.
I don't think that there is a pay for play radio cost either, unless there are different rules in your country. The basic argument was that the radio stations simply stopped playing the music and the public stopped buying so the record industry decided they could not do this.
In fact I found out that there is a scheme for major radio stations to get paid by the record companies for playing their music. There are intermediaries to make it legal because direct payment is not.
The joys fo the record industry.
Why not simply burn the whole thing onto a CD, get one of the students to do it so time is not the issue and a CD costs less than $1.00. Most students would be dial up so asking them to download would be costly for them.
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There was a guy ball or something that got fined by Microsoft and threw out all M$ proucts. This is the major one I know of.
I go to a meeting every month to meet the other geeks.
This is a fair call. There are a lot of issues that are outstanding for a long time. I do notice however that lately there are a lot more open source developers coming into OOo. Some of these will "scratch the itch" and fix some of these older problems.
So far a lot of the developers have been working on the word processing component getting it up to speed. The focus will naturally shift into spreadsheets soon.
There are already lessons plans available for OOo. Ask on users@OOo for more information.
Why are we not developing Coding in exponential fashion. When I started you had to script everything from scratch. Now with a window manager you get the abilities of the manager with a little research in the API.
Programming as an art has not leapt forward but the tools we use now are far advanced from the ones we had 25 years ago. Think of coding machine code and the order of magnitude of the assembler, then the order of magnitude of the high level language and the compiler. We are making those leaps however it is not measured in easy Mhz and Flops like hardware.
I am currently paid strictly because of my value to answer questions on a huge array of questions. I am not a brilliant coder, I am a horrible networker, I understand MS Windows only on a superficial basis. So what am I paid for my ability to answer the questions off the cuff, cut through the he said she said arguments between Networking and programming when there is a problem.
There is a definite role for "intergration specialists" which are not integration specialists but computer generalists that understand a little about everything.
Most important question is not what you know but whether you can apply that knowledge to the questions at hand.
The file structure is XML however once it is read into memory it is another structure entirely. If it really was that simple someone would have done it already.
The latest releases of OpenOffice.org are much more stable with regard to openning other vendors files. This has been a major push from the very beginning of openoffice.org and it is now becoming a reality, subject to a deliberatly slippery slope created by other vendors.
StarOffice used a proprietary Word filter and was better in the beginning, this is less so now.
I believe that this is more of an issue of comfort zone than a limitation in Word or OOo.
If you are happy using WP then stick to it, truly but reveal codes will NOT stop the new upcoming writers picking WP over any other product. The reality is that it is a "geek" feature and people do not want to know how the document works under the covers. I love geek detail, it looks like you find it important however it is not a requirement of writers as a whole.
Reveal codes worked for the original WP because there really were codes in the document. The issue now is that the format of OpenOffice.org does not have codes as such therefore creating these code would come from internal memory structures and be totally fake.
I am sure that someone will eventually provide a patch to do reveal codes in OOo but I don't expect it to be a lovely clean idea, just a WP clone for the sake of it.
The trick is not to provide exactly the same interface but find out what the user really wants it for. I have used WP and the only thing I used it for was removing a code because I happened to pick a space that was italics. The same situation not I highlight the line and click the italics button a couple of times. Same problem different solution.
There is always resistance to change, the important thing is to figure out what it is really used for and whether there is a better way to implement it.
There has been some people working on a set of macros that convert the keyboard into a word keystrokes. I doubt this will ever be an install option due to legal issues and also "we are not competing with word" issues. I would prefer to inovate and provide the best solution to problems than duplicate choices made years ago on totally different hardware by a "legacy" software provider.
Overall for most users they simply do not have this level of competance (Shift F3 in word anyone). A conversion to OOo is fairly painless.
PS: Shift F3 changes case, really handy...
We should have expected the first. This is definitely a project to cover the existing tests and results out there to preempt these questions.
The second is a two level process. If they must write windows then it must run under wine, this would stop the vendors having to retool and lower the entry barrier. Eventually a native application will arrive and be better then the transition to native linux for everything will begin.
The important issue here is to lower the barriers as low as possible.
SCO today anounced the licenses were finally available. Today they received heavy interest in these licenses with many customers expressing interest.
Don't make any excuses just drop it from your resume. The important thing is that your resume is the key to the door not "buying the house". If there are lots of resumes in a pile the manager will hand it to his secretary and say get rid of anyone without a qualification or who looks like a job hopper. You will never get to the person who will really make sense of it.
When you get face to face, let them know what happened and lay it on the line that you did not consider 3 weeks in a company imploding as experience, except for a personal one. Then ask them targetted questions on their ability to give you full time employment.
A deck of questions from you is the best sales point you can have. I walked into interviews and asked the hard questions, I got respect from the interviewer and I eliminated a couple of job offers because they were not what I wanted. (By the looks of it, simply "a job" is what you are after but do ask the questions!)
Someone has put them on their team and they have put groklaw as one of the job specifications.
Now that is supporting Open Source.
"nobody's actually managed to get that code shipped to end-users as part of an official release" As far as we know. The likelyhood is relatively small however we should not be complacent.
That aside the picture of the model is flawed. Anyone can pick up and modify the code however a relative few are allowed to modify the code base in EVERY opensource project I am aware of.
You have just cause for requesting an authorised party to independantly verify the code in Microsoft. Given that Microsoft has acknowledged that it is a copy. Would take a court order though.
I wrote a series of tests for code I have written for what I would term a trivial application. Took me about 3 months to develop. The series of tests for about 50% of the code and missed 50%. The vast majority of the bugs came from the second half of the code.
Second. The tests themselves act as documentation. I am anoyed that I pick up generic routines like a CSV file reader and there is subroutines but no way to figure out how to use them. A test suite acts as sample code as well.
This process is balance, you don't test every detail but you do codify some tests. When you find a bug you codify a test and then you NEVER reintroduce the same bug. I find that in general I reintroduce bugs about once for every month of coding. Since this application only gets worked on in random blocks of a week here and there I am not focussed on the whole application and I simple forget. Use the computer to validate that you have not made a mistake.
These sort of tests saves my reputation, does not frustrate my users.
There is no contract. Take a look at http://www.groklaw.net there was a discussion about GPL and how to enforce it.
If you wish FSF to act on your behalf then you must assign copyright to FSF in order for them to proceed. I don't see any real downside if you need their help but follow the gently gently approach first to get it resolved.
There is a book on additives and food related character changes.
Fed Up
sue dengate
ISBN 0-09-183698-0
"Understanding how food affects your child and what you can do about it."
My son was tagged ADHD and we looked at lots of things, naturapath included. It turned out that the behaviour was related to a reading problem that was caused by poor schooling we went into an intensive reading program run by Macquarie University (Sydney Aust) it was literally incredible the results. We still have interesting times but they got better because the confidence boost made my son a new person.
Ritalin is a panacia to all the behaviour problems lately, I would advise against it's use except when you have exhausted the other avenues. Think about this, why do you slow the kid down when you ply them with speed (what ritalin actually is). This is a Naturapath type answer, the doctors don't actually know why it works. If the doctor wants to prescribe and not monitor the result then they are not doing you or your child any favours.
REad there is a lot of cool development going on in OpenSource and it is hard to backport to Windows. We must make this easy so there is less reason to move to Linux.
Personally I love the idea. I have to break nice clean C code all the time to make it compile on Windows again. I wonder if they implemented file locking in POSIX manner?
Not strictly true. My firewall NAT's everything and will not allow a connection unless I originate it. If the firewall on the other side has teh same rule the only alternative that I can see is to effectively bounce through a third party.
Now I could set up a static route for a specific incoming port to enable this but it would require special knowledge and access by myself. This is not a user task.
This is an interesting question for the future... I wonder how this will be worked out.
You are NOT legally allowed to copy the whole thing. You are legally allowed to copy a percentage of the artical under the fair use clause of most copyright acts (note we are international!). You are also allowed to seek permission from one of the copyright owners the right to copy a particular article. As with code there may be more than one, the original author or the magazine that the article was sold to.
2 81 63637431
for more information on copyright law you might want to go to groklaw.net where PJ is talking about the SCO case. There is a recent thread on copyright.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200312
You are not "legally" allowed to tape off radio. It is just impossible to track and prosecute.
I don't think that there is a pay for play radio cost either, unless there are different rules in your country. The basic argument was that the radio stations simply stopped playing the music and the public stopped buying so the record industry decided they could not do this.
In fact I found out that there is a scheme for major radio stations to get paid by the record companies for playing their music. There are intermediaries to make it legal because direct payment is not.
The joys fo the record industry.
Why not simply burn the whole thing onto a CD, get one of the students to do it so time is not the issue and a CD costs less than $1.00. Most students would be dial up so asking them to download would be costly for them.