Since I'm not big on word processing in general — rarely do I have to write more than some bland pages in "professional" formatting — what exactly is difficult to use in OpenOffice?
Now, I've seen Microsoft Word used in government contract settings with 10,000 page documents and seven specs to cover the placement of dots in your bullet lists, so I can understand how that aspect could be painful in OOo as well, but is it really any different than Word or anything else in this regard?
These things become even more interesting for people like me — people with metal permanently inside them. Well, less permanently if we encounter magnets like these.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Such insensitive terminology like "kill" would get little Billy into the timeout corner, let alone him using that hacking program, Lunix!
I prefer pants to cover my ass, but if a lawyer does the job well enough for you and handles your paperwork, something I'll admit my pants have never done, then I may have to look into this.
While I agree with the notion of having it turned off by default, I'd just like to quip a little on how scripting has saved my inedible bacon numerous times.
Government writing often has numerous specs and requirements for document content and layout, requirements that cannot easily be met by standard features and interface in Word/Writer. Scripting provides a simple means of getting around this without actually trying to manually fudge characters or list elements in five to ten thousand page documents.
I would suspect by basic reaction tests. Take a sufficiently small but still notable object and move it very quickly at the mouse. If the mouse is blind, the movement of air and sound should be minimal enough that he can't really distinguish it above other ambient sources, so he doesn't do much of anything. If he can see, he freaks out like any sane creature would when a needle-like object is moving rapidly for them.
Of course, I may be thinking about this too complexly. Just shine a bright light in his face. If he's flinching or really buggered by it, voila, he can see.
I've actually had similar dreams of this myself, albeit I'm not sure I wanted to wait for retirement to do this. In addition to your goals, I wanted to expand on the idea. Being fond of linguistics, I pondered making it much harder by gathering a group of friends to start this project off, with the stipulation that we can't use any currently known language to communicate. It'd be an interesting, if not somewhat lopsided and rapid, look into the growth of a society on almost all levels.
Have you tried playing a video for her of yourself acting silly? I'm sure some basic editing and a budget camera would be enough to achieve a similar effect that Seasame Street has.
I don't mean to be insensitive about it, but I am curious if your idea is correct. Perhaps she would relate to you better if you were presented in a piece meal fashion through television? Granted, the only ways I can think of to get her to communicate back would be to try to encourage the viewer to play along -- something like dance along with me, or somesuch. Hm.
Not to mention if we considered how many people play Counter-Strike, for one person to sway the price to the impossible, you'd probably have to buy it at least one hundred thousand times. If you're dedicated enough for that, well. I don't think it'd be anyone's right to stop you then.
If the Wikipedia is going to require administrative approval of edits, why not offer something to help the admins out? Say the user ability to "vote" on accuracy, giving that article a higher rating in the queue. Giving the user a sort of score would allow the power of their vote to fluctuate -- raising with each article that they voted on that is approved, and dropping for each that is rejected, et cetra.
Certainly not perfect, but it would help the more popular/useful articles get through quickly, rather than all articles being weighed equally.
Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet (of course I'm lazy and haven't read everything), figured I might as well throw out Code::Blocks. It's a lightweight GUI that offers a plugin system, enabling you to add any features you should want beyond the defaults.
As copied from the site:
Syntax highlighting, customizable and extensible
Code folding for C++ and XML files.
Tabbed interface
Code completion plugin
Class Browser
Smart indent
One-key swap between.h and.c/.cpp files
Open files list for quick switching between files (optional)
I wasn't attempting to suggest that "everything we do is natural", as this would suggest that it's logical that we came to every decision we've ever come to, which is certainly not the case. I suppose I'm using the idea of "normal" moreso than "natural", which is really the idea of naturalness from a social view point -- whether or not it's healthy.
As an aside ponderment, I wonder how many corn allergies there were a hundred years ago, relative to population changes of course, compared to today. I really pity the people with them -- even common medicines are made with corn byproducts.
I really have nothing against eating organic meat -- we've bought straight from small farmers numerous times, you tend to get a better deal and much more "natural" foods, so I can agree that it's grand if it's available to you. Still, I just get irked when people try to argue the old ways over the new. The point of the new isn't that it's necessarily better than the old (though we certainly hope), it's a change that brings new experiences. And if half the population starves to death from said experience, well. That premium house you always wanted is finally vacant.
You're correct in that our diet is unnatural -- if we were still living in a pre-bronze era. For today's society, eating raw meat from a creature you just killed wouldn't only be unnatural, it would be considered something only a savage or lunatic would do. Or maybe a person who's stranded, but nonetheless, something you'd try to not do too often.
I disagree with the concept of "naturalness" being solely based on how things were before we really used our brains. The number one benefit to being human is our brain, giving us a virtually limitless resourcefulness. Suggesting that it's unnatural to use our evolutionary benefits is in itself unnatural.
But for those of us with a bit of trouble hearing, or when speaking with a person that has a thick and or foreign accent, that extra quality is the difference between a conversation and a stream of "What'd you say?"
Off topic, but reading backwards is a handy way to proof read a book. Your mind will fix many errors on its own; reading it backwards forces you to observe what you're reading as you're reading it.
And I mean starting at the bottom of the page and reading up, not like you've typed.
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Since I'm not big on word processing in general — rarely do I have to write more than some bland pages in "professional" formatting — what exactly is difficult to use in OpenOffice?
Now, I've seen Microsoft Word used in government contract settings with 10,000 page documents and seven specs to cover the placement of dots in your bullet lists, so I can understand how that aspect could be painful in OOo as well, but is it really any different than Word or anything else in this regard?
These things become even more interesting for people like me — people with metal permanently inside them. Well, less permanently if we encounter magnets like these.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Such insensitive terminology like "kill" would get little Billy into the timeout corner, let alone him using that hacking program, Lunix!
Sounds like Uchuu no Stellvia.
I prefer pants to cover my ass, but if a lawyer does the job well enough for you and handles your paperwork, something I'll admit my pants have never done, then I may have to look into this.
While I agree with the notion of having it turned off by default, I'd just like to quip a little on how scripting has saved my inedible bacon numerous times.
Government writing often has numerous specs and requirements for document content and layout, requirements that cannot easily be met by standard features and interface in Word/Writer. Scripting provides a simple means of getting around this without actually trying to manually fudge characters or list elements in five to ten thousand page documents.
You may feel like doing this by hand, I do not.
Maybe I'm just oblivious, but isn't that what PDO is included for?
Way to ruin my dream of being an hour from a spaceport.
I would suspect by basic reaction tests. Take a sufficiently small but still notable object and move it very quickly at the mouse. If the mouse is blind, the movement of air and sound should be minimal enough that he can't really distinguish it above other ambient sources, so he doesn't do much of anything. If he can see, he freaks out like any sane creature would when a needle-like object is moving rapidly for them.
Of course, I may be thinking about this too complexly. Just shine a bright light in his face. If he's flinching or really buggered by it, voila, he can see.
I've actually had similar dreams of this myself, albeit I'm not sure I wanted to wait for retirement to do this. In addition to your goals, I wanted to expand on the idea. Being fond of linguistics, I pondered making it much harder by gathering a group of friends to start this project off, with the stipulation that we can't use any currently known language to communicate. It'd be an interesting, if not somewhat lopsided and rapid, look into the growth of a society on almost all levels.
Have you tried playing a video for her of yourself acting silly? I'm sure some basic editing and a budget camera would be enough to achieve a similar effect that Seasame Street has.
I don't mean to be insensitive about it, but I am curious if your idea is correct. Perhaps she would relate to you better if you were presented in a piece meal fashion through television? Granted, the only ways I can think of to get her to communicate back would be to try to encourage the viewer to play along -- something like dance along with me, or somesuch. Hm.
Not to mention if we considered how many people play Counter-Strike, for one person to sway the price to the impossible, you'd probably have to buy it at least one hundred thousand times. If you're dedicated enough for that, well. I don't think it'd be anyone's right to stop you then.
If the Wikipedia is going to require administrative approval of edits, why not offer something to help the admins out? Say the user ability to "vote" on accuracy, giving that article a higher rating in the queue. Giving the user a sort of score would allow the power of their vote to fluctuate -- raising with each article that they voted on that is approved, and dropping for each that is rejected, et cetra. Certainly not perfect, but it would help the more popular/useful articles get through quickly, rather than all articles being weighed equally.
I wasn't attempting to suggest that "everything we do is natural", as this would suggest that it's logical that we came to every decision we've ever come to, which is certainly not the case. I suppose I'm using the idea of "normal" moreso than "natural", which is really the idea of naturalness from a social view point -- whether or not it's healthy.
As an aside ponderment, I wonder how many corn allergies there were a hundred years ago, relative to population changes of course, compared to today. I really pity the people with them -- even common medicines are made with corn byproducts.
I really have nothing against eating organic meat -- we've bought straight from small farmers numerous times, you tend to get a better deal and much more "natural" foods, so I can agree that it's grand if it's available to you. Still, I just get irked when people try to argue the old ways over the new. The point of the new isn't that it's necessarily better than the old (though we certainly hope), it's a change that brings new experiences. And if half the population starves to death from said experience, well. That premium house you always wanted is finally vacant.
You're correct in that our diet is unnatural -- if we were still living in a pre-bronze era. For today's society, eating raw meat from a creature you just killed wouldn't only be unnatural, it would be considered something only a savage or lunatic would do. Or maybe a person who's stranded, but nonetheless, something you'd try to not do too often.
I disagree with the concept of "naturalness" being solely based on how things were before we really used our brains. The number one benefit to being human is our brain, giving us a virtually limitless resourcefulness. Suggesting that it's unnatural to use our evolutionary benefits is in itself unnatural.
But for those of us with a bit of trouble hearing, or when speaking with a person that has a thick and or foreign accent, that extra quality is the difference between a conversation and a stream of "What'd you say?"
Off topic, but reading backwards is a handy way to proof read a book. Your mind will fix many errors on its own; reading it backwards forces you to observe what you're reading as you're reading it.
And I mean starting at the bottom of the page and reading up, not like you've typed.
?on, nuf si llits siht tuB
Except for the whole anal pillaging after you're arrested for trying to slay everyone in town with a glass sword, of course.