Uhh... great artist selection, there. If I have to walk down to the retail store and then choose between Britney and Barry Manilow, I would rather save my hard-earned money.
Hell, if a beautiful woman showed up on my doorstep and tried to persuade me to take those CDs, I *might* take them. And I'd likely throw them away without listening to them. I certainly wouldn't walk anywhere to get them, even if they were free.
In a time when one of the world's biggest bands is offering their new album for download and letting you name your own price, record companies are just going to have to try harder to unload their shit.
We stated that it was the file formats that were insecure, but this is actually not correct. A file format isn't insecure -- it's the code that reads the format that's more or less secure.
That quote just makes me want to ask, "And whose 'code' is that....? Whose code is insecure...?" Come on, just say it! It's not 'the code' that's insecure, it's 'your code'.
Right. One of Microsoft's volume licensing plans is called "open licensing". I think "open" theoretically is referring to the ability to add any number of licenses at any time... or something like that. Not sure, never much thought about it before.
But whatever this use of the word "open" is, it isn't new to Microsoft.
While I don't think I would call MS Word "crappy", it has some problems. It doesn't deal with structure very well, for example. I've tried making outlines where I delete one item somewhere and then the hierarchy gets all screwed around. I've had times where I mark something as a heading and somewhere along the line, that formatting gets dropped when I delete something unrelated.
It's not earth-shattering, but it's bothersome and distracting. The one thing I don't want while I'm composing my thoughts is distractions. I don't usually do real formatting while I'm writing, but I do some basic things. I mark things for organizational purposes (like mark headers as headers, indent quotes, etc) and I do bold/italics and things like that. I don't think it's too much to ask that a word processor handles that sort of thing properly, and as of Word 2000, Microsoft Word didn't. I generally stopped using Microsoft Word after that, so I'm not sure about the current state of things.
Good tools won't automatically mean good output, but crappy tools can cause problems for a master if they're crappy enough.
In the example of cars, you can't put a professional driver in a POS and expect him to win races. In the example of word processors, a good writer can get a little turned-around by a bad application. If you have to think much about your word processor while you're trying to write, you might get distracted, lose your train of thought, and writing gets harder.
Now, for some people, using a simple text editor is a good way to avoid thinking much about your word processor. Also, you might say that you can ignore all your word processor's features and just write. However, some people have different processes. Some people like to structure their documents while they write and use rudimentary formatting to keep track of things. Others take extensive notes ahead of time and their documents follow a structure that has been set before they begin. Still others like to sit down, dump the contents of their mind onto the page, and spend a lot of time editing and restructuring after the fact. Not every writer can make do with plain-text while composing.
If you want to talk about the original intent of copyright, it was to prevent publishers from reprinting each other's books and selling them for profit. At the time, there was no expectation that we would have such a thing as a "digital copy", or that private individuals would have the ability to copy and distribute millions of copies of anything for practically zero cost.
So copyrights were never intended to apply to our current situation at all, because our current situation wasn't anticipated. Applying copyright to the caching of software code in RAM in order to run that software, for example, has nothing to do whatsoever with the "original intent". And yet that's how it's being used now, which is why software vendors are able to require "licenses" in order to use their software even if you don't copy the software.
Some might argue that, regardless of the original intent of copyright law, we need the protection for content owners now. Personally, I think copyright law should never have been allowed to be used against individuals who have produced unauthorized copies without any commercial gain.
Re:Why should the labels be in control anyway?
on
Sony BMG Dropping DRM
·
· Score: 1
What I don't understand is why the labels have such influence in the sales of music
What do you want to know: how are they able to maintain that influence, or why do they choose to maintain it?
The "how" is simply because they control the licensing terms, so they can do what they way. The "why" is almost as simple: they know that if their industry was governed by simple supply/demand economics, their companies would be completely worthless. You have an limited demand of something that exists in unlimited supply. Once their production costs are recouped, continued sales cost them little more than the salaries of the accountants to count the money coming in. Insofar as their industry is "media distribution", their value-added is so small that they're scared of being run out of business by teenagers who are willing to do the job for free, for fun.
The way the record industry is a cartel which makes money by maintaining tight control and using that control to negotiate contracts that are unfair to all other parties. Take away their control and influence and they're out of business. They certainly aren't surviving based on the quality of the product they're selling (which isn't even music, but a "license" to listen to that music?).
Labels have decided that temporarily, dropping DRM is better than Apple's terms...
The odd thing is that when you read the executives of the big 4 complain about Apple, what you hear about is how Apple's DRM isn't strict enough and their prices are too low. So their solution, apparently, is to move to a company with no DRM and even lower prices.
As a consumer, I'm not complaining. Still, it seems strange, and I haven't heard anyone come up with an explanation that satisfies my curiosity. What's the plan here? Run Apple out of the business? Then what?
I don't agree with your list, but I do think that Apple and Linux (and BSDs) can help each other gain market share. They all use a lot of the same protocols (Linux can even use HFS+ volumes, use AFP), run a lot of the same software (Apache, MySQL, Samba, etc.), share multiple tools, and a lot of software can basically port over with a recompile. If your IT staff is trained on either OSX or Linux, they're going to be more accustomed to logging in with SSH, writing bash scripts, and using the GNU tools. This will mean they'll be better able to support other operating systems that involve logging in with SSH, writing bash scripts, and using GNU tools.
Yeah, i've done this sort of thing a bit. I've used Parallels on OSX, VMWare on Windows, and Codeweaver's CrossOver on Mac, Wine on Linux. It all pretty much works, but I wouldn't give it to random users that I have to support. As great as these setups are, it's just a bit too confusing to people who aren't that savvy. The only people who really seem to get the idea are old Mac users to whom I can say, "This is sort of like Classic, but it runs Windows applications instead of old Mac applications." For some reason, this makes sense to them.
But for everyone else, people who don't typically understand what an "operating system" is, they don't seem to grasp the idea too well. The virtualized applications don't quite fit (UI conventions and such) with their other applications, and interacting between applications sometimes require additional hoops to be jumped through.
I'd much rather provide people with a native application with comparable features than try to run a non-native app.
I think this opening is crucial, though. When buying a new machine, Apple is an option, and a good option at that. However, if you'd like to upgrade from Windows XP on an existing computer, OSX simply isn't an option.
Being an IT person and talking to other IT people, it seems to me that a lot of people are feeling like XP is falling slightly out of date, but that Vista isn't a good upgrade option. This is a big opening for Linux to make some headway in gaining market share. There really are people (believe it or not) who are evaluating Linux as an OS "upgrade" to existing hardware for their company.
Ultimately, there are lots of people are at least mildly interested in moving away from Windows right now. As attractive as OSX is, I think there are lots of people who won't want to be tied too closely to a single hardware/software vendor for all of their desktop machines, at least not without an escape plan.
And while I say this, I admit that I'm a very happy Apple customer, and OSX is my desktop OS of choice. I use Windows, Linux, and OSX every day, but ideally, I'd like to use only cross-platform applications, and then be free to choose which operating system I want to use willy-nilly without any vendor forcing me to a single platform. Unfortunately, very few software developers really develop cross-platform. I think Firefox is the only app that I find sufficiently native on all 3 platforms (grouping Linux with other Unix stuff as one platform). OpenOffice still doesn't have a real Aqua port (though NeoOffice is very usable), and Adobe doesn't support Linux yet. I'll have to check Office 2008, but I don't find Entourage 2004 to be a sufficient replacement to Outlook. Of course, you might consider Adium a port of GAIM, but there are some very drastic differences.
My point is that I have no intention of installing Silverlight, and therefore apparently won't have access to Microsoft's knowledgebase. It's a great motivator to get off using Microsoft products entirely, since I find it pretty much impossible to administer Windows Server without accessing the knowledgebase.
Re:Too much internet...
on
RTF Vs. OOXML
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· Score: 1
Still, it's a problem. I rarely run Windows myself, and pretty much never use IE. However, I support both Windows XP desktops and Windows 2003 servers, so I often have to use Microsoft's Knowledge Base. The KB already breaks a little in non-IE browsers (which is insanely stupid), but if they put it in Silverlight, it will become inaccessible to me.
I think this is a shitty thing to do to your customers. They're going to punish me for using some of their products but not all of their products. Since I'm not going to use all of their products, this is exactly the sort of move that makes me want to get rid of them entirely, and run a completely Linux/OSX office.
And has anyone considered that maybe Apple has been rewriting portions of the iPhone's software in conjunction with developing the SDK, and that might be part of the reason why Apple's updates break 3rd party apps?
Not to be too defensive of Apple or anything, but many have guessed that part of Apple's aversion to 3rd party application up to this point has been because the OS is still in flux, and software developed for 1.1.2 won't work with 1.1.3. Each of the iPhone updates have forced the 3rd party developers to rewrite their apps, lending some credence to this idea.
I think we should just wait until the SDK is out and see what the situation is. If the SDK is terrible, then by all means complain.
Why does the most recent Fedora seem so competitive to Ubuntu? Well probably because they're pulling their updates from a lot of the same places.
But if you want to imagine the two groups fighting it out, go right ahead. Insofar as they are competing, there's only one possible winner: us. Each group is trying to improve Linux more, each will feed off of the other's improvements, and the end result will be a better FOSS operating system that will be accessible to all of us.
Humans have not evolved to deal with the altered EM fields caused by electricity passing through ethernet cables, either. That doesn't mean it's going to hurt us.
I agree that Portal was definitely the "FPS of the year", if not the "game of the year". I was expecting a glitzed-up clone of Narbacular Drop, and got so much more. It's not just the humor and all that, or just the portal system. But it's just astounding how much story gets laid out by implication and not by exposition or dialog. All in all, it's a very clever game and I'm anxious to see what comes next.
In thinking about it though, I think one of the much under-appreciated games this year was also part of the Orange Box. Half Life 2: Episode 2 was really a very well built and well executed game. It wasn't all that hyped and didn't get massive critical acclaim, and I think part of the reason for that is that there wasn't anything that jumped out as utterly novel or revolutionary. It's not very gimmicky or wildly different from past Half Life games, but I feel like it really raised the bar for me as to what I expect out of a FPS (as the original Half Life had a long time ago, and more recently Half Life 2).
I don't know quite how to put it, because it's not very attention-grabbing, but everything about Ep2 was just extremely well-crafted. Everything was balanced, detailed, and immersive. I wouldn't quite put it as my "game of the year" (unless you bundled it together with the rest of the Orange Box), but it's just so solid that I might recommend it above some of the games that I might nominate for "game of the year".
There's pretty much no point in locking it with DRM if it's lossless. Right now, there are methods for outputting DRMed iTunes music and then recapturing it without the DRM. For example, you can burn a CD and then rip the CD. There's also a hack on Windows that does the same thing, but without actually burning a CD.
Right now, most people don't bother doing this because it means you have to transcode the file, leading to a further loss in quality. If I have a 128kbps AAC, I burn it to CD, and then re-rip it as an AAC/MP3, it's going to sound worse than the original AAC. You could rip it from the CD as FLAC/ALAC, but then you have 128kbps AAC quality with FLAC filesizes. Not good.
But if they provide a DRMed ALAC, you should be able to burn it to CD and get full CD quality. You could then re-rip it as unDRMed ALAC with full CD quality. No loss.
Under that logic, you could give everyone thin clients and have them log in via Citrix. Of course, then you're dealing with everyone's computing demands on one server, and wasting most of the computing power of the client machines. Also, you're introducing a single point of failure, reducing performance, etc.
Now, I'm not going to tell you what's good for you in your environment. However, most people have found it better to come up with imagining techniques, run local versions of their software, and use a file server.
I actually think that most of your issues point to the same truth: WYSIWYG tools are not appropriate for generating web pages.
Major tools, like Dreamweaver, generate broken HTML/XHTML: The people who have tried to make WYSIWYG web-design programs have failed to make them work properly.
CSS layout is incompatible with WYSIWYG tools: WYSIWYG can't deal appropriately with the separation between content and presentation, even though that separation is fundamental to good web design.
The Linux/open source community gave up on web design tools: most of the people who know enough to write WYSIWYG HTML editors also know enough to know that they won't work.
The only thing I might agree with is this one:
The "div/float/clear" approach to layout was a terrible mistake: Yes, CSS positioning is currently a bit of a mess. It's a bit too hard to make simply layouts, and the situation isn't helped by poor CSS implementation is certain browsers... (I'm looking at you, Microsoft). However, using tables for layout is often a bad situation too. Because tables were designed to deal with tabular data, doing complex positioning usually requires writing nesting tables within tables within tables-- on and on. It makes code that's hard to maintain and prone to breakage. There's a good reason why good web developers avoid using tables for things other than... well, tables. But yeah, CSS needs some improvement.
I'm not sure why anyone should care very much. Anyone can install OpenOffice for free, so I'm not sure what's gained by actually having it execute online. Maybe I'm missing something, but couldn't you get equivalent results by using OpenOffice locally and having some sort of syncing online? Or maybe figuring out a way to mount a remote volume and open/save documents directly to it?
I have no specific objection, but I'm just not sure I see the advantage. Well, the only advantage I can see is that not all computers have an office suit installed that's capable of reading/writing ODF files, but that's just a problem and a disappointment.
Slashdot Mirror
Plus, it's apparently only an acronym for dyslexic people, since Fast Search And Transfer would be FSAT.
Uhh... great artist selection, there. If I have to walk down to the retail store and then choose between Britney and Barry Manilow, I would rather save my hard-earned money.
Hell, if a beautiful woman showed up on my doorstep and tried to persuade me to take those CDs, I *might* take them. And I'd likely throw them away without listening to them. I certainly wouldn't walk anywhere to get them, even if they were free.
In a time when one of the world's biggest bands is offering their new album for download and letting you name your own price, record companies are just going to have to try harder to unload their shit.
That quote just makes me want to ask, "And whose 'code' is that....? Whose code is insecure...?" Come on, just say it! It's not 'the code' that's insecure, it's 'your code'.
Right. One of Microsoft's volume licensing plans is called "open licensing". I think "open" theoretically is referring to the ability to add any number of licenses at any time... or something like that. Not sure, never much thought about it before.
But whatever this use of the word "open" is, it isn't new to Microsoft.
While I don't think I would call MS Word "crappy", it has some problems. It doesn't deal with structure very well, for example. I've tried making outlines where I delete one item somewhere and then the hierarchy gets all screwed around. I've had times where I mark something as a heading and somewhere along the line, that formatting gets dropped when I delete something unrelated.
It's not earth-shattering, but it's bothersome and distracting. The one thing I don't want while I'm composing my thoughts is distractions. I don't usually do real formatting while I'm writing, but I do some basic things. I mark things for organizational purposes (like mark headers as headers, indent quotes, etc) and I do bold/italics and things like that. I don't think it's too much to ask that a word processor handles that sort of thing properly, and as of Word 2000, Microsoft Word didn't. I generally stopped using Microsoft Word after that, so I'm not sure about the current state of things.
Good tools won't automatically mean good output, but crappy tools can cause problems for a master if they're crappy enough.
In the example of cars, you can't put a professional driver in a POS and expect him to win races. In the example of word processors, a good writer can get a little turned-around by a bad application. If you have to think much about your word processor while you're trying to write, you might get distracted, lose your train of thought, and writing gets harder.
Now, for some people, using a simple text editor is a good way to avoid thinking much about your word processor. Also, you might say that you can ignore all your word processor's features and just write. However, some people have different processes. Some people like to structure their documents while they write and use rudimentary formatting to keep track of things. Others take extensive notes ahead of time and their documents follow a structure that has been set before they begin. Still others like to sit down, dump the contents of their mind onto the page, and spend a lot of time editing and restructuring after the fact. Not every writer can make do with plain-text while composing.
If you want to talk about the original intent of copyright, it was to prevent publishers from reprinting each other's books and selling them for profit. At the time, there was no expectation that we would have such a thing as a "digital copy", or that private individuals would have the ability to copy and distribute millions of copies of anything for practically zero cost.
So copyrights were never intended to apply to our current situation at all, because our current situation wasn't anticipated. Applying copyright to the caching of software code in RAM in order to run that software, for example, has nothing to do whatsoever with the "original intent". And yet that's how it's being used now, which is why software vendors are able to require "licenses" in order to use their software even if you don't copy the software.
Some might argue that, regardless of the original intent of copyright law, we need the protection for content owners now. Personally, I think copyright law should never have been allowed to be used against individuals who have produced unauthorized copies without any commercial gain.
What I don't understand is why the labels have such influence in the sales of music
What do you want to know: how are they able to maintain that influence, or why do they choose to maintain it?
The "how" is simply because they control the licensing terms, so they can do what they way. The "why" is almost as simple: they know that if their industry was governed by simple supply/demand economics, their companies would be completely worthless. You have an limited demand of something that exists in unlimited supply. Once their production costs are recouped, continued sales cost them little more than the salaries of the accountants to count the money coming in. Insofar as their industry is "media distribution", their value-added is so small that they're scared of being run out of business by teenagers who are willing to do the job for free, for fun.
The way the record industry is a cartel which makes money by maintaining tight control and using that control to negotiate contracts that are unfair to all other parties. Take away their control and influence and they're out of business. They certainly aren't surviving based on the quality of the product they're selling (which isn't even music, but a "license" to listen to that music?).
Labels have decided that temporarily, dropping DRM is better than Apple's terms...
The odd thing is that when you read the executives of the big 4 complain about Apple, what you hear about is how Apple's DRM isn't strict enough and their prices are too low. So their solution, apparently, is to move to a company with no DRM and even lower prices.
As a consumer, I'm not complaining. Still, it seems strange, and I haven't heard anyone come up with an explanation that satisfies my curiosity. What's the plan here? Run Apple out of the business? Then what?
I don't agree with your list, but I do think that Apple and Linux (and BSDs) can help each other gain market share. They all use a lot of the same protocols (Linux can even use HFS+ volumes, use AFP), run a lot of the same software (Apache, MySQL, Samba, etc.), share multiple tools, and a lot of software can basically port over with a recompile. If your IT staff is trained on either OSX or Linux, they're going to be more accustomed to logging in with SSH, writing bash scripts, and using the GNU tools. This will mean they'll be better able to support other operating systems that involve logging in with SSH, writing bash scripts, and using GNU tools.
Yeah, i've done this sort of thing a bit. I've used Parallels on OSX, VMWare on Windows, and Codeweaver's CrossOver on Mac, Wine on Linux. It all pretty much works, but I wouldn't give it to random users that I have to support. As great as these setups are, it's just a bit too confusing to people who aren't that savvy. The only people who really seem to get the idea are old Mac users to whom I can say, "This is sort of like Classic, but it runs Windows applications instead of old Mac applications." For some reason, this makes sense to them.
But for everyone else, people who don't typically understand what an "operating system" is, they don't seem to grasp the idea too well. The virtualized applications don't quite fit (UI conventions and such) with their other applications, and interacting between applications sometimes require additional hoops to be jumped through.
I'd much rather provide people with a native application with comparable features than try to run a non-native app.
When it came time for me to buy a new machine...
I think this opening is crucial, though. When buying a new machine, Apple is an option, and a good option at that. However, if you'd like to upgrade from Windows XP on an existing computer, OSX simply isn't an option.
Being an IT person and talking to other IT people, it seems to me that a lot of people are feeling like XP is falling slightly out of date, but that Vista isn't a good upgrade option. This is a big opening for Linux to make some headway in gaining market share. There really are people (believe it or not) who are evaluating Linux as an OS "upgrade" to existing hardware for their company.
Ultimately, there are lots of people are at least mildly interested in moving away from Windows right now. As attractive as OSX is, I think there are lots of people who won't want to be tied too closely to a single hardware/software vendor for all of their desktop machines, at least not without an escape plan.
And while I say this, I admit that I'm a very happy Apple customer, and OSX is my desktop OS of choice. I use Windows, Linux, and OSX every day, but ideally, I'd like to use only cross-platform applications, and then be free to choose which operating system I want to use willy-nilly without any vendor forcing me to a single platform. Unfortunately, very few software developers really develop cross-platform. I think Firefox is the only app that I find sufficiently native on all 3 platforms (grouping Linux with other Unix stuff as one platform). OpenOffice still doesn't have a real Aqua port (though NeoOffice is very usable), and Adobe doesn't support Linux yet. I'll have to check Office 2008, but I don't find Entourage 2004 to be a sufficient replacement to Outlook. Of course, you might consider Adium a port of GAIM, but there are some very drastic differences.
...wait... am I rambling? Sorry.
I think perhaps it's more about why there are no 3rd party iTunes stores?
None? Not a single alternative store to iTunes? What's this "Amazon" think I keep hearing people talk about, then?
My point is that I have no intention of installing Silverlight, and therefore apparently won't have access to Microsoft's knowledgebase. It's a great motivator to get off using Microsoft products entirely, since I find it pretty much impossible to administer Windows Server without accessing the knowledgebase.
funny, I thought, "Read the f-ing OOXML?"
Still, it's a problem. I rarely run Windows myself, and pretty much never use IE. However, I support both Windows XP desktops and Windows 2003 servers, so I often have to use Microsoft's Knowledge Base. The KB already breaks a little in non-IE browsers (which is insanely stupid), but if they put it in Silverlight, it will become inaccessible to me.
I think this is a shitty thing to do to your customers. They're going to punish me for using some of their products but not all of their products. Since I'm not going to use all of their products, this is exactly the sort of move that makes me want to get rid of them entirely, and run a completely Linux/OSX office.
And has anyone considered that maybe Apple has been rewriting portions of the iPhone's software in conjunction with developing the SDK, and that might be part of the reason why Apple's updates break 3rd party apps?
Not to be too defensive of Apple or anything, but many have guessed that part of Apple's aversion to 3rd party application up to this point has been because the OS is still in flux, and software developed for 1.1.2 won't work with 1.1.3. Each of the iPhone updates have forced the 3rd party developers to rewrite their apps, lending some credence to this idea.
I think we should just wait until the SDK is out and see what the situation is. If the SDK is terrible, then by all means complain.
That's pretty much what I came in here to say.
Why does the most recent Fedora seem so competitive to Ubuntu? Well probably because they're pulling their updates from a lot of the same places.
But if you want to imagine the two groups fighting it out, go right ahead. Insofar as they are competing, there's only one possible winner: us. Each group is trying to improve Linux more, each will feed off of the other's improvements, and the end result will be a better FOSS operating system that will be accessible to all of us.
Good luck to both of them.
Humans have not evolved to deal with the altered EM fields caused by electricity passing through ethernet cables, either. That doesn't mean it's going to hurt us.
I agree that Portal was definitely the "FPS of the year", if not the "game of the year". I was expecting a glitzed-up clone of Narbacular Drop, and got so much more. It's not just the humor and all that, or just the portal system. But it's just astounding how much story gets laid out by implication and not by exposition or dialog. All in all, it's a very clever game and I'm anxious to see what comes next.
In thinking about it though, I think one of the much under-appreciated games this year was also part of the Orange Box. Half Life 2: Episode 2 was really a very well built and well executed game. It wasn't all that hyped and didn't get massive critical acclaim, and I think part of the reason for that is that there wasn't anything that jumped out as utterly novel or revolutionary. It's not very gimmicky or wildly different from past Half Life games, but I feel like it really raised the bar for me as to what I expect out of a FPS (as the original Half Life had a long time ago, and more recently Half Life 2).
I don't know quite how to put it, because it's not very attention-grabbing, but everything about Ep2 was just extremely well-crafted. Everything was balanced, detailed, and immersive. I wouldn't quite put it as my "game of the year" (unless you bundled it together with the rest of the Orange Box), but it's just so solid that I might recommend it above some of the games that I might nominate for "game of the year".
Nice post. I'd mod you up (because I have points), but it wouldn't do much good at this point.
There's pretty much no point in locking it with DRM if it's lossless. Right now, there are methods for outputting DRMed iTunes music and then recapturing it without the DRM. For example, you can burn a CD and then rip the CD. There's also a hack on Windows that does the same thing, but without actually burning a CD.
Right now, most people don't bother doing this because it means you have to transcode the file, leading to a further loss in quality. If I have a 128kbps AAC, I burn it to CD, and then re-rip it as an AAC/MP3, it's going to sound worse than the original AAC. You could rip it from the CD as FLAC/ALAC, but then you have 128kbps AAC quality with FLAC filesizes. Not good.
But if they provide a DRMed ALAC, you should be able to burn it to CD and get full CD quality. You could then re-rip it as unDRMed ALAC with full CD quality. No loss.
Under that logic, you could give everyone thin clients and have them log in via Citrix. Of course, then you're dealing with everyone's computing demands on one server, and wasting most of the computing power of the client machines. Also, you're introducing a single point of failure, reducing performance, etc.
Now, I'm not going to tell you what's good for you in your environment. However, most people have found it better to come up with imagining techniques, run local versions of their software, and use a file server.
The only thing I might agree with is this one:
I'm not sure why anyone should care very much. Anyone can install OpenOffice for free, so I'm not sure what's gained by actually having it execute online. Maybe I'm missing something, but couldn't you get equivalent results by using OpenOffice locally and having some sort of syncing online? Or maybe figuring out a way to mount a remote volume and open/save documents directly to it?
I have no specific objection, but I'm just not sure I see the advantage. Well, the only advantage I can see is that not all computers have an office suit installed that's capable of reading/writing ODF files, but that's just a problem and a disappointment.