And with regards to net. gain, many people would benefit from less complexity, and specialized tools seldom help that. Therefore your statement is true when looking at the individual tasks but not when looking at the bigger picture.
When I learn to use a specialized tool, I have learned something that I will need in a few situations and that is not usefull at all outside those situations. Good when I am interested in whatever the tool is used for still, but otherwise it is simply a waste of time if there is a generic tool that fits my requirements already.
Note that this has nothing whatsoever to do with how difficult/easy it is to learn soemthing, but with not wanting to put time into learning something specialized when the requirements can be met by either applying knowledge I already have, or learning something that is generally usefull.
It has nothing to do either with design philosophies, quality of any specialized program, comparson between them, it has to do with NOT NEEDING THEM and having a tool that fits the needs and many more needs already, and also simply not having the desire to still use a specialized tool for the point of using it because it is not in an area that interests me at all.
So again, it has simply nothing whatsoever to do with whatever or not the idea is behind LaTeX and how much or little you have to think about layout when using it.
The day learnign LaTeX becomes very usefull for using a computer in general I will change my mind on that, and you will fidn many users changing their mind on that.
Repeat after me: Most people do not need or even want specialized tools for everyday jobs.
Did you actually read what I wrote? or did you just stop at the 10% stuff.
What you say about information workers in corporate environments is likely to be true, but I think that you shouldn't underestimate the scale of the home and small business 'markets'
Anyway, if you actually did read my post you would have seen that it is not an argument for or against OO (which I use myself) nor about users beign able to switch over or not.
It was against the claim that all most people need is write.
> Word layout is tolerable if you're making a seventh grade science project. Any more sophisticated than that and it starts looking crappy.
It is limited, at times quirky and unreliable when used with complex or large documents. It does however seem to match the needs of a very large group of users.
Most people don't write books or professional papers or other things that need a very complex layout, they write relatively simple business letters, personal letters, small articles and a small brochure and such, in many cases with the help of wizards or macros.
With regards to TeX.. if I had a need for producing lots of highly professional documents, I would definitely use it, as long as I don't have that need my time is better spent on other things (and as a geek I know of a lot more fun technical challanges then document layout, but I bet that is a matter of taste).
Making anything large or complex is troublesome in Word (crashes, corrupts documents, layout getting messed up at random), but OO doesn't seem to have much trouble with larger and slightly more complex documents as long as I keep them in native format.
Oh, and I have used Quark Express for the few cases where I did need it.
At any rate, I wasn't saying a general purpose office suite is the best there is, rather the opposite, its at best mediacore at most things and decent at some things, maybe even good at one thing. Fact is that it meets the needs of a huge group of users who do need a bit of everything and have other things to do with their time then learning to use a whole bunch of specialized programs to fit their needs.
It will never do for a DTP professional or serious graphics artist or mathematisian or such, which incidentely are the prime markets for more specialized products.
Its pretty similar to how most people have a relatively simple and not so powerfull electrical drill at home, and a professional will have an alltogether more serious device, and a serious hobbyist will have something inbetween.
If there is oen thing to learn from Microsoft, it is that for most users mediacore functionality will do as long as: 1. It is relatively easy to use. 2. It provides virtually anything the user will ever need.
Note that mediacore functionality is not the same as mediacore quality.
MS makes the assumption that we want more than a write-clone and a basic spreadsheet.MS believes in the extreme abundance of features. I don't care for gazillions of features, myself. I want essentially Write from Win 3.1. Anything more tends to be utterly unused.
When writing text, write will do but for doing layout? not at all.
You can go 2 ways there:
Use seperate layout software (alternatives exist for almost every plaform)
Use a program that allows doing layout together with content.
When you don't care about layout, you wont need either. When you are writing for some kind of professional publication, you should end up with the first solution, but for all those who write things that must look decent on paper, but for whom writing and layout is simply not their profession, nor somethign they need to do a lot professionally, an intergrated content/layout program is really what you want.
Do MS Office and OpenOffice have a lot of features that you personally have no need for? most likely. Do most users only use some 10% of the features? sure. The problem is that they do not use the same 10%, and as a result a lot more features are needed to serve the entire potential userbase then the few that you specifically use, and no, you are not going to see the need for those features, but try to get it into your head that there are many features that others do need, and thus the features you need are very likely not representative for the majority of users.
Having said that, I believe both OO and MS Office have features that are used by so few that not havign them wouldn't hurt either. Also, as soon as the basic feature requirements are covered, features themselves become more of a marketing then a usability issue.
At any rate, suggesting that all most users ever need is write and a very simple spreadsheet is like saying that noone will ever need more then 640kbyte memory. We know how stupid the later turned out to be.
I think that Microsoft Office won in the marketplace, and did have quite a bit of serious competition untill relatively recently, and now got some again with OO.
I'd say that MS Office won from its competition because Microsoft actually offered combinations of features that people found practical, and despite my rather strong dislike of Microsoft, I did agree at the time that their Office suite was simply more usable then anythign the competition had to offer. That said, I am using OO now since it offers all the usability that I personally need.
I don't mind the idea of a whitelist for smtp servers, what I simply fail to see is why it has to cost $2000.
I run my own DNS, and before I can tell my registar that I want to use it, I have to register the DNS itself as a valid DNS. That however is free.
I don't see any reason why we cannot have a similar solution (with or without.mail TLD) for smtp servers in that domain and why I'd have to pay some seperate entity an insane amount for it.
Best would be imho an IETF standard for DNS records to handle trusted/authoritive smtp servers for each domain.
SPF doesn't discriminate based on if you can pay a fee or not, and puts it into the hands of the domain owner to publish which servers can send mail for a specific domain. That seems to be a much better solution then havign someone run a TLD for this purpose. The whole idea of a central authority on this is alien to the nature of the internet.
Let me try to explain it a bit further because it is not exactly black/white.
Basicly, from age 12, there are situations in which sexual conduct can be legal, provided that there is no possible doubt about full consent of all involved and it is not for comemrcial purposes. The one and only purpose of this is to not make it illegal by definition that 2 people between 12 and 16 have sex with eachother. You are outside that age group? Don't even think about it.
Get involved in this as an adult and you are toast for sure, courts have without exception decided that there is always doubt about full concent in such a case.
Things get a bit less strict at age 16, nothing will happen unles the person under 18 complains to the police or when done for commercial purposes.
So, its not a black/white issue, but for as far as things like prostitution or being a model for pornography is concerned, 18 is the minimum age. As far as age of consent is concerned, that is 18, but there are provisions for people under 18 to not have peopel end up in trouble over something that is not a problem at all.
> but don't you think any body of laws represents a moral code?
Many do or try to at least.
> Every law legislates morality in some form or another. Killing a man, stealing what he earned, etc are all wrong because we believe them to be morally reprehensible and thus created laws to punish those who do it.
THe funny thing with those 2 examples is that they do not really depend on any system of morality but on the recognition that the group as a whole is better off that way.
Note how such rules are seldom upheld when dealing with 'others' (ie, people who are not recognized as part of the group or society)
> So let's see. The age of consent in the Netherlands is 12.
If you post an example, at least post one that is correct.
The age of consent in the Netherlands is 18. Sexual conduct under that age is not in all cases illegal, but it definitely is when done for commercial reasons.
So, Dutch law explicitly forbids your example with people under 18.
Of course, that still can mean a US citizen may do something that is illegal in their state when having a sexually explicit conversation with someone between 18 and 21.
> Bottom line, we can do it because we have the power and the might. We don't need to play well with others, others need to play well with us.
Not that I support terrorism in any way, but let me show you how stupid that reasoning is.
What is the USA going to do when all other countries in the world decide to ignore the USA and support anti-american terrorism? You are really sure you don't need to play nice with them to ensure they also play nice with you?
Remember that no army is going to stop people from hiding in the crowd and blowing things up. The few things that can help are ensuring such peopel will nto find support anywhere, and preventing the conditions that cause such ideas to get a foodhold to begin with.
Thinking that 5% of the world population can ignore the other 95% is a big part of what makes peopel see the USA as an enemy.
*chuckle* I think theres quite a few people who actually dispute that he won any elections legally;P
Anyway, I'm not American, so I didn't vote for or against him, and honestly, if I had been American, I would have found it a very difficult choice, neither the current or past alternative has convinced me of being anywhere more capable.
Hmm, I think that the real problem is that PCs come standard with keyboard and mouse, and console like controllers for PCs are cheap and easy to get. Also, usually a PC is setup such that they keyboard and mouse are positioned for intensive user. Both are somewhat unusual for consoles, hence, a console conversion often must take into account that the game controller is all they can use.
That simply makes that you are rather lmitied in what you can do, and converting a game that simply needs 30 buttons + 2 seperate direction controls to a console that has at best 10 buttons and 2 directional controls on a single controller is not going to work withotu serious redesign of the game.
That worked for me untill ID decided to port its Q3 engine to Linux and some peopel decided to build things like RTCW and Enemy Territory with it:P
Oh, and consoles replacing PCs for gaming? thats usually very temporarey... it lasts untill the PCs get fast enough to emulate that particular console;P
I do not see any violations of the Geneva convention in the attack itself, tho there are some doubtfull situations regarding treatment of civilian prisoners that might be.
The UN charter for as far as I know counts as international treaty, and was used as basis for the resolutions to kick Iraq out of Kuwait for example. I think it is one of the more binding treaties also seeing how it does allow military intervention in extreme situations against parties that don't comply.
Like I already explained in other posts as well: 1. I do not mind a new protocol, rather the opposite. 2. I do not mind a whitelist or similar measures. 3. I DO mind a senseless measure like havign peopel pay $2k because it will not stop any spam but will put control in the hands of bigger corporations.
Whenever they come up with the suggestion that paying a lot of money to a domain registry will stop spam I suggest lookign very carefully at if they actually want to stop spam or just see it as a rather easy way to get a new revenue stream.
At any rate, I don't object to protocol changes, whitelists, and anti spam measures in general, I do object to a measure that will just cause more proffit for a few while takign away usefull features from the enduser and not solving the real problem.
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Matter of the right tool for the task at hand.
And with regards to net. gain, many people would benefit from less complexity, and specialized tools seldom help that. Therefore your statement is true when looking at the individual tasks but not when looking at the bigger picture.
You really really do not get the point.
When I learn to use a specialized tool, I have learned something that I will need in a few situations and that is not usefull at all outside those situations. Good when I am interested in whatever the tool is used for still, but otherwise it is simply a waste of time if there is a generic tool that fits my requirements already.
Note that this has nothing whatsoever to do with how difficult/easy it is to learn soemthing, but with not wanting to put time into learning something specialized when the requirements can be met by either applying knowledge I already have, or learning something that is generally usefull.
It has nothing to do either with design philosophies, quality of any specialized program, comparson between them, it has to do with NOT NEEDING THEM and having a tool that fits the needs and many more needs already, and also simply not having the desire to still use a specialized tool for the point of using it because it is not in an area that interests me at all.
So again, it has simply nothing whatsoever to do with whatever or not the idea is behind LaTeX and how much or little you have to think about layout when using it.
The day learnign LaTeX becomes very usefull for using a computer in general I will change my mind on that, and you will fidn many users changing their mind on that.
Repeat after me: Most people do not need or even want specialized tools for everyday jobs.
Did you actually read what I wrote? or did you just stop at the 10% stuff.
What you say about information workers in corporate environments is likely to be true, but I think that you shouldn't underestimate the scale of the home and small business 'markets'
Anyway, if you actually did read my post you would have seen that it is not an argument for or against OO (which I use myself) nor about users beign able to switch over or not.
It was against the claim that all most people need is write.
> Word layout is tolerable if you're making a seventh grade science project. Any more sophisticated than that and it starts looking crappy.
It is limited, at times quirky and unreliable when used with complex or large documents. It does however seem to match the needs of a very large group of users.
Most people don't write books or professional papers or other things that need a very complex layout, they write relatively simple business letters, personal letters, small articles and a small brochure and such, in many cases with the help of wizards or macros.
With regards to TeX.. if I had a need for producing lots of highly professional documents, I would definitely use it, as long as I don't have that need my time is better spent on other things (and as a geek I know of a lot more fun technical challanges then document layout, but I bet that is a matter of taste).
Making anything large or complex is troublesome in Word (crashes, corrupts documents, layout getting messed up at random), but OO doesn't seem to have much trouble with larger and slightly more complex documents as long as I keep them in native format.
Oh, and I have used Quark Express for the few cases where I did need it.
At any rate, I wasn't saying a general purpose office suite is the best there is, rather the opposite, its at best mediacore at most things and decent at some things, maybe even good at one thing. Fact is that it meets the needs of a huge group of users who do need a bit of everything and have other things to do with their time then learning to use a whole bunch of specialized programs to fit their needs.
It will never do for a DTP professional or serious graphics artist or mathematisian or such, which incidentely are the prime markets for more specialized products.
Its pretty similar to how most people have a relatively simple and not so powerfull electrical drill at home, and a professional will have an alltogether more serious device, and a serious hobbyist will have something inbetween.
If there is oen thing to learn from Microsoft, it is that for most users mediacore functionality will do as long as:
1. It is relatively easy to use.
2. It provides virtually anything the user will ever need.
Note that mediacore functionality is not the same as mediacore quality.
When writing text, write will do but for doing layout? not at all.
You can go 2 ways there:
- Use seperate layout software (alternatives exist for almost every plaform)
- Use a program that allows doing layout together with content.
When you don't care about layout, you wont need either. When you are writing for some kind of professional publication, you should end up with the first solution, but for all those who write things that must look decent on paper, but for whom writing and layout is simply not their profession, nor somethign they need to do a lot professionally, an intergrated content/layout program is really what you want.Do MS Office and OpenOffice have a lot of features that you personally have no need for? most likely. Do most users only use some 10% of the features? sure. The problem is that they do not use the same 10%, and as a result a lot more features are needed to serve the entire potential userbase then the few that you specifically use, and no, you are not going to see the need for those features, but try to get it into your head that there are many features that others do need, and thus the features you need are very likely not representative for the majority of users.
Having said that, I believe both OO and MS Office have features that are used by so few that not havign them wouldn't hurt either. Also, as soon as the basic feature requirements are covered, features themselves become more of a marketing then a usability issue.
At any rate, suggesting that all most users ever need is write and a very simple spreadsheet is like saying that noone will ever need more then 640kbyte memory. We know how stupid the later turned out to be.
I think that Microsoft Office won in the marketplace, and did have quite a bit of serious competition untill relatively recently, and now got some again with OO.
I'd say that MS Office won from its competition because Microsoft actually offered combinations of features that people found practical, and despite my rather strong dislike of Microsoft, I did agree at the time that their Office suite was simply more usable then anythign the competition had to offer. That said, I am using OO now since it offers all the usability that I personally need.
> Notice how of all the intelectual fields the only ones that are anal about spelling are the technical fields?
Now.. am I just the exception to the rule or are you hearing a very loud but small minority...
I don't mind the idea of a whitelist for smtp servers, what I simply fail to see is why it has to cost $2000.
.mail TLD) for smtp servers in that domain and why I'd have to pay some seperate entity an insane amount for it.
I run my own DNS, and before I can tell my registar that I want to use it, I have to register the DNS itself as a valid DNS. That however is free.
I don't see any reason why we cannot have a similar solution (with or without
Best would be imho an IETF standard for DNS records to handle trusted/authoritive smtp servers for each domain.
SPF doesn't discriminate based on if you can pay a fee or not, and puts it into the hands of the domain owner to publish which servers can send mail for a specific domain.
That seems to be a much better solution then havign someone run a TLD for this purpose. The whole idea of a central authority on this is alien to the nature of the internet.
Heh, I agree.
I am from the Netherlands if that helps.
Let me try to explain it a bit further because it is not exactly black/white.
Basicly, from age 12, there are situations in which sexual conduct can be legal, provided that there is no possible doubt about full consent of all involved and it is not for comemrcial purposes. The one and only purpose of this is to not make it illegal by definition that 2 people between 12 and 16 have sex with eachother. You are outside that age group? Don't even think about it.
Get involved in this as an adult and you are toast for sure, courts have without exception decided that there is always doubt about full concent in such a case.
Things get a bit less strict at age 16, nothing will happen unles the person under 18 complains to the police or when done for commercial purposes.
So, its not a black/white issue, but for as far as things like prostitution or being a model for pornography is concerned, 18 is the minimum age.
As far as age of consent is concerned, that is 18, but there are provisions for people under 18 to not have peopel end up in trouble over something that is not a problem at all.
That is very easy when postign blindly patriotic statements regarding the USA ;P
> but don't you think any body of laws represents a moral code?
Many do or try to at least.
> Every law legislates morality in some form or another. Killing a man, stealing what he earned, etc are all wrong because we believe them to be morally reprehensible and thus created laws to punish those who do it.
THe funny thing with those 2 examples is that they do not really depend on any system of morality but on the recognition that the group as a whole is better off that way.
Note how such rules are seldom upheld when dealing with 'others' (ie, people who are not recognized as part of the group or society)
> So let's see. The age of consent in the Netherlands is 12.
If you post an example, at least post one that is correct.
The age of consent in the Netherlands is 18.
Sexual conduct under that age is not in all cases illegal, but it definitely is when done for commercial reasons.
So, Dutch law explicitly forbids your example with people under 18.
Of course, that still can mean a US citizen may do something that is illegal in their state when having a sexually explicit conversation with someone between 18 and 21.
> Bottom line, we can do it because we have the power and the might. We don't need to play well with others, others need to play well with us.
Not that I support terrorism in any way, but let me show you how stupid that reasoning is.
What is the USA going to do when all other countries in the world decide to ignore the USA and support anti-american terrorism? You are really sure you don't need to play nice with them to ensure they also play nice with you?
Remember that no army is going to stop people from hiding in the crowd and blowing things up. The few things that can help are ensuring such peopel will nto find support anywhere, and preventing the conditions that cause such ideas to get a foodhold to begin with.
Thinking that 5% of the world population can ignore the other 95% is a big part of what makes peopel see the USA as an enemy.
Thanks for the info :)
*chuckle* ;P
I think theres quite a few people who actually dispute that he won any elections legally
Anyway, I'm not American, so I didn't vote for or against him, and honestly, if I had been American, I would have found it a very difficult choice, neither the current or past alternative has convinced me of being anywhere more capable.
Hmm, I think that the real problem is that PCs come standard with keyboard and mouse, and console like controllers for PCs are cheap and easy to get. Also, usually a PC is setup such that they keyboard and mouse are positioned for intensive user. Both are somewhat unusual for consoles, hence, a console conversion often must take into account that the game controller is all they can use.
That simply makes that you are rather lmitied in what you can do, and converting a game that simply needs 30 buttons + 2 seperate direction controls to a console that has at best 10 buttons and 2 directional controls on a single controller is not going to work withotu serious redesign of the game.
That worked for me untill ID decided to port its Q3 engine to Linux and some peopel decided to build things like RTCW and Enemy Territory with it :P
;P
Oh, and consoles replacing PCs for gaming? thats usually very temporarey... it lasts untill the PCs get fast enough to emulate that particular console
because I actually want the mail to show up as being from me@mydomain maybe?
Not at all, just that his rant is typical for the neo-conservative one.
I do not see any violations of the Geneva convention in the attack itself, tho there are some doubtfull situations regarding treatment of civilian prisoners that might be.
The UN charter for as far as I know counts as international treaty, and was used as basis for the resolutions to kick Iraq out of Kuwait for example. I think it is one of the more binding treaties also seeing how it does allow military intervention in extreme situations against parties that don't comply.
> Its my opionion that GW Bush is the greatest prez we've had since Ronald Reagan
You are entitled to your opinion of course but hrm..
> So, all of you attacking Bush, I suggest you shut the hell up until you know what you are talking about!
Well, you do sound like you know what you are talking about!
I suggest tho that you go get some mental help. It seems that the neo conservative thought police has been meddling with your brain.
Why is it that being critical about President Bush makes you think people bash the USA?
Is he the only American out there? I thought there were some 225m of them around..
Get some things into your head please, disagreeing is not the same as bashing, and President Bush is not America.
> If the American public doesn't like what he's doing, he'll be replaced in the next election.
If only the alternative wasn't worse.
Must be a hard choice.. a neo conservative puppet or an unliberal clown.
The USA is a party to the Geneva convention and the UN charter.
International treaties are to eb considered part of the law of the country.
Hence, the USA acted against international treaties it is a party to, and as a result against its own laws.
> who knows if I'm a spammer or not?
Like I already explained in other posts as well:
1. I do not mind a new protocol, rather the opposite.
2. I do not mind a whitelist or similar measures.
3. I DO mind a senseless measure like havign peopel pay $2k because it will not stop any spam but will put control in the hands of bigger corporations.
Whenever they come up with the suggestion that paying a lot of money to a domain registry will stop spam I suggest lookign very carefully at if they actually want to stop spam or just see it as a rather easy way to get a new revenue stream.
At any rate, I don't object to protocol changes, whitelists, and anti spam measures in general, I do object to a measure that will just cause more proffit for a few while takign away usefull features from the enduser and not solving the real problem.