This is tangental but not completely unrelated to your question (I hope)
Some companies have built entire vertical applications with Office/VBA. This source of inertia isn't often discussed: the amount of person-hours that go into developing and maintaining documents, templates, spreadsheets, megabytes of corporate presentations (ick) are staggering. Licensing savings alone wouldn't justify a move to even mostly-compatible software.[1]
Unfortunately, if Office document/spreadsheet/presentation/database migration isn't point and shoot, then anyone considering the widespread deployment of OO.o is going to pause. So it's not just the training issue associated with creating new documents and spreadsheets, etc. from this point on, it's also the myriad issues which surround the recovery and maintenance of information which an organization has already developed.
Plans to migrate from Office to OO.o/SO needs to take this backwards compatibility thing into consideration [2]. An organization could easily lose their licensing savings several times over when they run into the fortress of documentation they've already developed and relied upon. As a specific data point, I'm working in a program monitoring capacity for a gov't department. Some of our spreadsheets are actual applications with deeply integrated VBA, complex pivot tables, etc. We'd almost have to fund a second position to focus on migration while I continued to crunch the numbers needed by management to make their "critical path" decisions.
Sometimes there's more to this than the sterotypical PHBs and clueless drones. I have nine years of experience using MS Office for extensive document preparation and business process management using Excel/Access. I also use OO.o at home though not quite as intensively. I don't know anyone who really uses Word or Excel and doesn't wind up hating both, but I shudder to think of the effort that would be involved with converting our day-to-day docs, spreadsheets and database mini-apps away from Office products.
I agree with a previous poster who said that it's smaller organizations which are going to have an easier time getting off the MS tit, either that or they can't be in the documentation business. Maybe it's just been my bad luck but everywhere I've been employed, the documents were the business.
Finally, don't underestimate the importance of fear of change. Most of the people I deal with want a set of tools which they learn and then can use to do their actual jobs. This isn't really laziness or selfishness on their part: they're being paid to do something other than learn a new office suite. Despite the fact that I can pick up OO.o with a few days of use, others may not even have the inclination to do so, never mind the time.
I hope that adoption by the education sector and smaller or medium sized organizations will provide the critical mass for both OO.o and free software in general. Unfortunately for me, I expect my daily login to have a Windows splash screen for a long time to come.
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1. Compatibility has to mean 100% success on conversion.
2. Yes, I know that different versions of Office aren't even compatible with themselves. This is a minor annoyance compared to the fun of trying to get a vertical app migrated to a completely different platform (remember how much fun it was to get the damn thing working in the first place?)!
Except pot smokers aren't being sued by large corporations for failing to bogart and the DEA isn't blowing the heads off of neighbors of file traders by mistake.
If that's the case then there's no reason to argue.
You and I may be having two different conversations. I took issue with this statement:...
Every copy that is stored on someone's hard drive, is lost revenue.
...because only a single data point (mine) was required to disprove it.
And your analogy still doesn't support your argument because the owner of a MegaWraps franchise can say to the City Council: "Last year my sales were $foo for March and April. Since you started construction work on March 17, I've seen a 60% drop in sales and all of my customers complain that they can't park close enough. This road resurfacing project is killing me!" The RIAA cannot make the the same kind of specific assertion because they can't prove that P2P is causing a loss in sales. Any argument about who has the right to distribute copyrighted materials is separate from the tortious issue of supposed loss of revenue.
I'm not arguing about the ethical or legal correctness of P2P. I am pointing out that however "right" your position is, you're not presenting it effectively.
Every copy that is stored on someone's hard drive, is lost revenue.
I have copies of songs stored as files on the hard drive in my computer. This is perfectly legal according to the concept of "fair use" and the conventions of copyright in the country in which I reside. Neither the artist nor the record company has lost any revenue since each file is a digital copy from a CD which I own. Until a clear legal precedent has been established, the line between unsanctioned distribution of copyrighted material(illegal) and "sharing" (legally protected) is blurred to the point of obscurity.
You have made a common mistake while attempting to argue one side of this issue: no analogy works given the current state of technology, when discussing the legalities of how and by who copyrighted material gets distributed.
These businesses, to which your analogy refers, are selling physical goods or services. Barriers to access have a demonstrable effect on their ability to generate revenue. Recording companies cannot demonstrate that file sharing has a corresponding impact. We may "think" it's the same, we may "want" it to be the same but the link has not been proven, either in the eyes of the judiciary (in my country) nor in the eyes of market observers.
Well said. I have no empirical evidence to support this, but I suspect that someone who spends 14 years writing a "great" book was probably motivated by something other than potential profit
A Canadian court recently ruled that downloading is *not* illegal, I assume because the law is all about distribution and when you download you're not the distibutor.
Despite the fact that this is being interpreted as carte blanche for filesharers in Canada, things aren't so cut and dried.
The Canadian decision really didn't address the issue of downloading rather that the fact of a file being available for download was not proof that infringement was occuring. Justice von Finckenstein's decision denied the Canadian Recording Industry Association's request for information about suspected uploaders and it was only his editorializing which implies that file sharing is legally protected. The actual legal decision was only about the burden of proof needed to establish that copyright infringement was taking place.
Justice von Finckenstein ruled that the CRIA had not met this burden of proof that and ISPs such as Sympatico, Shaw and Rogers did not have to surrender identifying information about alleged infringers.
That this has placed a large hurdle in the path of the CRIA in it's attempt to identify and litigate against file sharers is not the same as saying it legitimizes downloading. The legality of file sharing in Canada hasn't been decided because it hasn't been tested in court yet. Expect the CRIA to muster their forces and try again.
According to several US Supreme Court decisions (see U.S. v Guest, Shapiro v Thomson, et. al.), the right to travel freely is enjoyed by all citizens. As the primary purpose of driving is to travel from one point to another, it must therefore be a right. As far as I have been able to determine, there have been no USSC cases that, by abridging the right to drive, relegate it to "priviledge" status.
Does the fact that this took place in a Canadian province which may (haven't verfied this) treat driving as a privilege, do anything to frame this discussion properly?
I'm a resident of an adjacent province where driving is indeed privilege irrespective of any right to free passage. While this decision, which happened in a Quebec Provincial Court, will undoubtably affect rulings in Ontario, it's not going to automatically cascade into the U.S. Court systems.
Stand easy, good and faithful Defender of Freedom[TM]!
Cola is a type of nut, high in methylxanthine alkaloids (also found in coffee, some teas, cocoa, etc.). It was native to West Africa but has been transplanted to South and Central America, among other places.
You use the word "cola" with its commonly understood meaning: "a drink made with cola extract."
Trademarking "cola" is possible in these End Times[TM], but hasn't been done yet. So, yes, "cola" is a generic in the same way that "soda pop" or "drink" is.
While "Crack Cola" would probably be safe, "Crack-a-Cola" would get you a Cease and Desist order since it's well over the infringement line. The same standard which slapped down "Lindows" would apply in this situation.
oh i don't know....microchips? like the kind in your computer...
I reckon the various ICBM programs pushed the computing envelope farther and faster than the manned spaceflight programs. There's just no spur to prick the sides of innovation like the possibility of delivering bigger and bigger bang over longer and longer distances to kill more and more people.
Surely, until there's an easy and foolproof way of doing this, the up-take of linux as a desktop OS is going to be slower.
In the corporate world, which is where I predict that Linux will make more immediate inroads, normal users will not have to worry any more about upgrading a kernel than they do about installing the latest Windows service pack. If that's what you mean by a "desktop", then congratulations, the straw man is down.
If, by "desktop" you mean "consumer desktop", then the future is probably in "hand-holding" distros like Libranet, Mandrake, Lindows, etc., and "normal" people will download "service packs" which upgrade their kernels and/or whole distros.
Anyone who understands the 2.6 kernel well enough to realize that there's a "must have" feature or two is probably capable of getting it compiled and installed all by his lonesome.
I do see your point; I just don't think you mean what you think you mean.
Slashdot Mirror
You have a relationship with the defendant? Thank you for setting up my appeal for me. Talk about "reversible error..."
"Objection, your Honor! Hearsay!"
Can you give some examples?
This is tangental but not completely unrelated to your question (I hope)
Some companies have built entire vertical applications with Office/VBA. This source of inertia isn't often discussed: the amount of person-hours that go into developing and maintaining documents, templates, spreadsheets, megabytes of corporate presentations (ick) are staggering. Licensing savings alone wouldn't justify a move to even mostly-compatible software.[1]
Unfortunately, if Office document/spreadsheet/presentation/database migration isn't point and shoot, then anyone considering the widespread deployment of OO.o is going to pause. So it's not just the training issue associated with creating new documents and spreadsheets, etc. from this point on, it's also the myriad issues which surround the recovery and maintenance of information which an organization has already developed.
Plans to migrate from Office to OO.o/SO needs to take this backwards compatibility thing into consideration [2]. An organization could easily lose their licensing savings several times over when they run into the fortress of documentation they've already developed and relied upon. As a specific data point, I'm working in a program monitoring capacity for a gov't department. Some of our spreadsheets are actual applications with deeply integrated VBA, complex pivot tables, etc. We'd almost have to fund a second position to focus on migration while I continued to crunch the numbers needed by management to make their "critical path" decisions.
Sometimes there's more to this than the sterotypical PHBs and clueless drones. I have nine years of experience using MS Office for extensive document preparation and business process management using Excel/Access. I also use OO.o at home though not quite as intensively. I don't know anyone who really uses Word or Excel and doesn't wind up hating both, but I shudder to think of the effort that would be involved with converting our day-to-day docs, spreadsheets and database mini-apps away from Office products.
I agree with a previous poster who said that it's smaller organizations which are going to have an easier time getting off the MS tit, either that or they can't be in the documentation business. Maybe it's just been my bad luck but everywhere I've been employed, the documents were the business.
Finally, don't underestimate the importance of fear of change. Most of the people I deal with want a set of tools which they learn and then can use to do their actual jobs. This isn't really laziness or selfishness on their part: they're being paid to do something other than learn a new office suite. Despite the fact that I can pick up OO.o with a few days of use, others may not even have the inclination to do so, never mind the time.
I hope that adoption by the education sector and smaller or medium sized organizations will provide the critical mass for both OO.o and free software in general. Unfortunately for me, I expect my daily login to have a Windows splash screen for a long time to come.
---
1. Compatibility has to mean 100% success on conversion.
2. Yes, I know that different versions of Office aren't even compatible with themselves. This is a minor annoyance compared to the fun of trying to get a vertical app migrated to a completely different platform (remember how much fun it was to get the damn thing working in the first place?)!
Your browser may not display sarcasm tags correctly.
Hackers? Hell, I'm worried about buffer overflows.
Except pot smokers aren't being sued by large corporations for failing to bogart and the DEA isn't blowing the heads off of neighbors of file traders by mistake.
You forgot the word "yet".
If that's the case then there's no reason to argue.
You and I may be having two different conversations. I took issue with this statement: ...
Every copy that is stored on someone's hard drive, is lost revenue.
...because only a single data point (mine) was required to disprove it.
And your analogy still doesn't support your argument because the owner of a MegaWraps franchise can say to the City Council: "Last year my sales were $foo for March and April. Since you started construction work on March 17, I've seen a 60% drop in sales and all of my customers complain that they can't park close enough. This road resurfacing project is killing me!" The RIAA cannot make the the same kind of specific assertion because they can't prove that P2P is causing a loss in sales. Any argument about who has the right to distribute copyrighted materials is separate from the tortious issue of supposed loss of revenue.
I'm not arguing about the ethical or legal correctness of P2P. I am pointing out that however "right" your position is, you're not presenting it effectively.
Every copy that is stored on someone's hard drive, is lost revenue.
I have copies of songs stored as files on the hard drive in my computer. This is perfectly legal according to the concept of "fair use" and the conventions of copyright in the country in which I reside. Neither the artist nor the record company has lost any revenue since each file is a digital copy from a CD which I own. Until a clear legal precedent has been established, the line between unsanctioned distribution of copyrighted material(illegal) and "sharing" (legally protected) is blurred to the point of obscurity.
You have made a common mistake while attempting to argue one side of this issue: no analogy works given the current state of technology, when discussing the legalities of how and by who copyrighted material gets distributed.
These businesses, to which your analogy refers, are selling physical goods or services. Barriers to access have a demonstrable effect on their ability to generate revenue. Recording companies cannot demonstrate that file sharing has a corresponding impact. We may "think" it's the same, we may "want" it to be the same but the link has not been proven, either in the eyes of the judiciary (in my country) nor in the eyes of market observers.
Well said. I have no empirical evidence to support this, but I suspect that someone who spends 14 years writing a "great" book was probably motivated by something other than potential profit
When's this guy going to get some credit for moving on?
Shortly after you RTFA.
A Canadian court recently ruled that downloading is *not* illegal, I assume because the law is all about distribution and when you download you're not the distibutor.
Despite the fact that this is being interpreted as carte blanche for filesharers in Canada, things aren't so cut and dried.
The Canadian decision really didn't address the issue of downloading rather that the fact of a file being available for download was not proof that infringement was occuring. Justice von Finckenstein's decision denied the Canadian Recording Industry Association's request for information about suspected uploaders and it was only his editorializing which implies that file sharing is legally protected. The actual legal decision was only about the burden of proof needed to establish that copyright infringement was taking place.
Justice von Finckenstein ruled that the CRIA had not met this burden of proof that and ISPs such as Sympatico, Shaw and Rogers did not have to surrender identifying information about alleged infringers.
That this has placed a large hurdle in the path of the CRIA in it's attempt to identify and litigate against file sharers is not the same as saying it legitimizes downloading. The legality of file sharing in Canada hasn't been decided because it hasn't been tested in court yet. Expect the CRIA to muster their forces and try again.
...to give up amphetamines.
According to several US Supreme Court decisions (see U.S. v Guest, Shapiro v Thomson, et. al.), the right to travel freely is enjoyed by all citizens. As the primary purpose of driving is to travel from one point to another, it must therefore be a right. As far as I have been able to determine, there have been no USSC cases that, by abridging the right to drive, relegate it to "priviledge" status.
Does the fact that this took place in a Canadian province which may (haven't verfied this) treat driving as a privilege, do anything to frame this discussion properly?
I'm a resident of an adjacent province where driving is indeed privilege irrespective of any right to free passage. While this decision, which happened in a Quebec Provincial Court, will undoubtably affect rulings in Ontario, it's not going to automatically cascade into the U.S. Court systems.
Stand easy, good and faithful Defender of Freedom[TM]!
And given that "cola" has become generic
Cola is a type of nut, high in methylxanthine alkaloids (also found in coffee, some teas, cocoa, etc.). It was native to West Africa but has been transplanted to South and Central America, among other places.
You use the word "cola" with its commonly understood meaning: "a drink made with cola extract."
Trademarking "cola" is possible in these End Times[TM], but hasn't been done yet. So, yes, "cola" is a generic in the same way that "soda pop" or "drink" is.
While "Crack Cola" would probably be safe, "Crack-a-Cola" would get you a Cease and Desist order since it's well over the infringement line. The same standard which slapped down "Lindows" would apply in this situation.
rands > T PANTS DO YOU KNOW WE CAN GO TO JAIL FOR THIS (ROUGHLY)
pants > T RANDS I HAVE THOUGHTFULLY CONSIDERED YOUR QUESTIONrands > AND
pants > SORRY I FELL ASLEEP
pants > OKAY WHAT WAS THE QUESTION AGAIN (ULTIMATELY I HAVE NO IDEA)
rands > T PANTS MIST?
pants > OMG HLUGALUGALUGALUG! WE COULD ALL GO TO JAIL HLUGALUGALUGALUG
What kind of bias trying to sell you report afterward would force?
Sorry Yoda, but what did you just say?
You do know where Astroglide came from, right?
oh i don't know....microchips? like the kind in your computer...
I reckon the various ICBM programs pushed the computing envelope farther and faster than the manned spaceflight programs. There's just no spur to prick the sides of innovation like the possibility of delivering bigger and bigger bang over longer and longer distances to kill more and more people.
However, the majority of open source projects are not at the stage (and may never be) where someone makes the effort to publish documentation.
Those that are mature enough are probably using $EDITOR + DOCBOOK.
Quanta may be a killer app for this in the very near future.
In the corporate world, which is where I predict that Linux will make more immediate inroads, normal users will not have to worry any more about upgrading a kernel than they do about installing the latest Windows service pack. If that's what you mean by a "desktop", then congratulations, the straw man is down.
If, by "desktop" you mean "consumer desktop", then the future is probably in "hand-holding" distros like Libranet, Mandrake, Lindows, etc., and "normal" people will download "service packs" which upgrade their kernels and/or whole distros.
Anyone who understands the 2.6 kernel well enough to realize that there's a "must have" feature or two is probably capable of getting it compiled and installed all by his lonesome.
I do see your point; I just don't think you mean what you think you mean.
Not on case-sensitive systems, anyway. Might work on DOS.
You lost them at "On the command prompt..."