I'm not positive, but I believe Office does read Works spreadsheets and word-processing files. I don't remember if Works has some other kind of files beyond that, and I don't have either a copy of MS Office or MS Works in front of me to investigate.
However, I'm quite sure that Works does not read MS Word files. At least, the last time I saw a copy of Works, which was around 2 years ago, that was the case. Instead, they sold a product called something like "Works Deluxe" which included a copy of Word.
Or OpenOffice, for christ's sake. I mean, come on, MS Works doesn't even read MS Office documents. It doesn't have the features of a full office suite. There is absolutely no good reason to continue using this crap, even if it's free.
Well, for Apple/IBM/Microsoft, the current patent system is probably sort of OK. It's not just about money. These companies have each build up large patent portfolios, so to some extent they have their weapons and shields. When they get into legal wrangling, they have the money to buy lawyers, and those lawyers can probably find some way in which their opponents are infringing on their own companies patents.
The situation is a bit worse for the little guy or the newcomer. Google isn't little, but they are a relative newcomer.
I don't know though-- I like both companies in general. Neither seems highly evil. I wouldn't necessarily take their lawyers' views as a general mission statement for running their companies or anything.
If an inventor can't get a valid patent for a (let's assume) perfectly novel and new invention on their own with reasonable cost and chance of success then the system is BROKEN. That's how it should be defined.
I do like this way of thinking of things. It could be productive to think of situations which would cause us to say the thing is broken. Some ideas come to mind:
If an individual inventor can't reasonably get a patent in spite of having a truly novel design
If that same individual inventor can't reasonably protect that patent once granted
If people can get patents to things that are obvious and unoriginal designs
If people can get patents to ideas rather than designs
If people can get patents for designs that are inevitable (meaning it is *THE* solution to a known problem which will be solved in the course of normal progress)
If whole industries, scientific progress, or the productivity and well-being of a society can be held up by a patent
These are just suggestions, and you might disagree. However, even if you do agree, I still don't know what should be done about it. How can we improve our current system or build a new one which won't have these problems?
IANAL, but it doesn't seem to me that the concept of fair use was well-defined in the first place (and therefore has never been anything but blurry). Certainly there have been decisions by courts that some particular use is fair, but it does not necessarily follow that all other uses are unfair and punishable. My understanding is that even a conservative legal attempt to define "fair use" would be a bit like trying to define "self defense". It's not a cut-and-dry issue, but rather one that has to be interpreted a bit on a case-by-case basis.
Because as I've said the majority that are happy with it are not posting. People are VERY vocal when they want to complain about something; not so much when they like something.
And where's your research to support these assertions? The fact is, people tend to be vocal whenever they have strong feelings. I bet you that I can find plenty of people online talking about how happy they are with their iPhones, for example. And I can also find some people complaining about them. Reading various people's opinions, reviews, and experiences is a valid source of information. When a product receives lots of negative reviews online and in various publications, and few positive reviews, it's usually indicative of some sort of problem.
I didn't say that there was a lack of drivers for Vista. I said one particular company didn't make drivers for a particular model we have here.
You said you were having problems with a printer, and implied that other people's problems were also the result of poor driver support. Yes... that's a problem. I don't doubt that there is a lot of hardware that has Vista drivers, but I myself have had multiple problems with Vista drivers, including major hardware vendors failing to release Vista drivers for common hardware. Some old Windows XP/2000 drivers work, but others don't. I'm sorry, but failing to support common hardware is a problem. Really, it is.
Hmm.. I didn't think reading stories counted as research anymore, but I guess it does nowadays.
That's an empty objection. Why wouldn't reading about other people's experiences count as one aspect of research?
Ahh, one test machine and you've written off Vista. I had print drivers that don't install, but that's because the manufactor hasn't released any Vista drivers for the printer.
Lack of good drivers is a huge problem for an OS. I don't care how cool an OS is, if it won't run well on my hardware, I won't use it.
I would say "many will stick with the Windows they have", certainly, but I'm not sure I would call 8% or 4% 'many'
What about if you say it this way: for as many people as have upgraded to Vista, 6 times as many plan to migrate to Linux or OSX. More people are planning to leave Windows than are planning to upgrade to the latest Microsoft OS.
4% doesn't sound like a lot, but it depends on how many people that is. If Microsoft were to lose 4% of their OS market share to OSX, it would certainly be "many people".
Really, I think the last must-upgrade version of Windows was 2000. Windows 2000 offered much better hardware support than NT, but much better stability and security than Windows 98. For many business, there still isn't any compelling reason to upgrade beyond Win2k.
Now, honestly part of that is because Windows 2000 was a pretty good OS for its time. On the other hand, I don't know what it says about Microsoft's future that they haven't developed anything compelling in the last 7 years.
Well I don't know how I'm going to prove that I have an iPhone or how you're going to pay me, but pay up. I got a 8GB model the first weekend.
Anyway, I don't want to "hack" anything. I have better things to do than fuck around with things getting them to do things that they aren't supposed to do. Still, I'd like to get a SSH client running on my iPhone. I don't care if I can get a bash prompt to the iPhone itself (locally), but it would be helpful if I could run scripts on some of my servers.
Yes, Evolution is a pretty good program IMHO. When using Linux, I use Evolution, and often wish it was available for other platforms.
Personally, I think people should consider keeping Thunderbird as it is, just an e-mail client, and put their effort into making better Evolution ports to Windows and OSX.
Trouble is, most OSS developers don't work in that kind of World (which is good for them admittedly), which does mean though that they don't really have much insight into ways to improve these softwares. Exchange is practical, but it's sure as hell not sexy -- working on browsers is more fun.
I agree. Even in some of the buttoned-down corporate sort of businesses I've worked in, the geeks tend to hack their own solutions and never really pay attention to how the managers and admin assistants (i.e. secretaries) work day-to-day. For better or worse, the people who really need good organization tools are often relying on Outlook, Exchange, and Project. If you try to switch them to something else, the new solution better damned well provide the same features and functionality, or better.
I don't think it's always a problem with FOSS projects, but I don't think it's a coincidence that OSS is often terrific when it comes to technical issues but falls a little short in non-geek areas. When I want to do technical processing an images, I can use GIMP or Imagemagic and they're great tools. If I want to put a designer in front of an editor and have them feel comfortable and be productive, I pretty much *have to* shell out for a Photoshop license. Likewise with E-mail. If I just want ordinary IMAP e-mail to function well, I'm much better off with an open source solution. However, I pretty much *need* Exchange/Outlook if I'm running a business and need a robust solution for IMAP, webmail, calendars (and meeting requests), todo lists (and task assignments), contact management, sharing each of these things, assigning delegates that can act on your behalf, mobile connectivity, etc.
I'm not a Microsoft fan, mind you. I don't even like Outlook or Exchange. But so far... I haven't found another solution that's as well supported, easy to install, easy to maintain, and provides the same functionality.
I don't believe that Thunderbird is a bad e-mail client. If you just want a simple POP3/IMAP client, I don't think I've used anything that's much superior to Thunderbird. I think it could also use some improvements, though, and I don't think IMAP on Thunderbird can compete in business environments with Outlook+Exchange.
I'm not saying Outlook/Exchange is anywhere near perfect, but an awful lot of businesses live and breath Outlook. Until it's easy for semi-decent IT people to put another solution in place that will provide all the functionality of Outlook/Exchange, I don't think they'll be displaced.
I find it fast and a much better program than Outlook. Now if you compare it to Outlook plus Exchange then it really isn't in the same league.
To me that is the problem.
I think you're right-- that's the problem. How to solve that problem, I don't know, but that is most likely the reason why Thunderbird doesn't have a larger user base.
I think most people who use e-mail fall into a couple groups.
The first is the business power user, for whom nothing matches Outlook+Exchange+Blackberry/WindowMobile. This is a huge market
The second group would be very casual users, for whom being able to read their e-mail is sufficient. They'll just use whatever comes on their computer, or else webmail. They really don't care as long as they can send and receive e-mail. This is a huge market.
For the sake of the discussion, I'll lump everyone else into a third group, and those are people with particular preferences or specialized needs. These people use the e-mail client they choose or else the e-mail client they need to. This group probably goes to Thunderbird pretty often, but there are still people using things like Pine, or some totally random client.
The only real group that Thunderbird could go after would be the business users. However, in order to do that, you need to be able to connect to Exchange and do calendars, notes, task lists, and Exchange contact lists. Of course, you could also replace Exchange with something else, but that something else would have to have the same sorts of features, and Thunderbird would still have to connect to it.
Contrary to what many geeks think, Exchange/Outlook is very helpful for a lot of businesses. Connecting tasks, calendars, e-mail, and contacts all together, and making that available through client software, on the web, and on mobile devices has turned out to be the big-business killer app.
Also, when you go to a web page and browse for Firefox extensions, you're doing it in Firefox. You click on the link to an extension, it automatically installs, and takes effect immediately. The Thunderbird, you still browse for extensions in your web browser, you have to download them, and then install them into Thunderbird through Thunderbird.
My immediate thought when I read the headline was, "And this is the answer to all those people who asked, 'Why should I care if Dell sells computers with Ubuntu?"
I remember when that story broke, and loads of people were saying, "I use Linux, but I'm not going to buy a Dell," or "Well I don't use Ubuntu, I use [insert distro here], so this doesn't help me!"
I don't see the point in having a split anyway-- the current kernel is fine. They should work on streamlining Windows, making it run faster, making it smaller, etc. Don't start over from scratch, just work on rounding out the rough edges. There are LOADS of things in Windows (both desktop and server) that simply don't work very well-- there's plenty of work that MS can do to make the current OS work better that don't include starting over.
Yeah, I think even the split between server vs. desktop is questionable (assuming you're putting a GUI into the server version), but that should really be the only split an OS developer considers IMO.
It's not hard. If the work was created by someone other than you, you probably don't own it. If the work was created by someone other than you and you did own it, you'd probably know for sure, because there'd have to be some contract or sale.
I don't understand what the question is. You know what a copyright is, right?
Its not yours to distribute if it's copyrighted and you don't have the copyright or have a license to distribute. Plagiarism is a different issue.
I'm just talking about the issue of enforcement. It's very rare that copyrights are enforced against infringers who only possess unlicensed copies. They'll usually only go after you if you're distributing unlicensed copies.
Yes, Microsoft has chosen not to improve performance as part of their "upgrades". I'm just saying that they could have. The fact that it's newer doesn't necessarily dictate that it must be slower.
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I'm not positive, but I believe Office does read Works spreadsheets and word-processing files. I don't remember if Works has some other kind of files beyond that, and I don't have either a copy of MS Office or MS Works in front of me to investigate.
However, I'm quite sure that Works does not read MS Word files. At least, the last time I saw a copy of Works, which was around 2 years ago, that was the case. Instead, they sold a product called something like "Works Deluxe" which included a copy of Word.
Or OpenOffice, for christ's sake. I mean, come on, MS Works doesn't even read MS Office documents. It doesn't have the features of a full office suite. There is absolutely no good reason to continue using this crap, even if it's free.
Well, for Apple/IBM/Microsoft, the current patent system is probably sort of OK. It's not just about money. These companies have each build up large patent portfolios, so to some extent they have their weapons and shields. When they get into legal wrangling, they have the money to buy lawyers, and those lawyers can probably find some way in which their opponents are infringing on their own companies patents.
The situation is a bit worse for the little guy or the newcomer. Google isn't little, but they are a relative newcomer.
I don't know though-- I like both companies in general. Neither seems highly evil. I wouldn't necessarily take their lawyers' views as a general mission statement for running their companies or anything.
If an inventor can't get a valid patent for a (let's assume) perfectly novel and new invention on their own with reasonable cost and chance of success then the system is BROKEN. That's how it should be defined.
I do like this way of thinking of things. It could be productive to think of situations which would cause us to say the thing is broken. Some ideas come to mind:
These are just suggestions, and you might disagree. However, even if you do agree, I still don't know what should be done about it. How can we improve our current system or build a new one which won't have these problems?
IANAL, but it doesn't seem to me that the concept of fair use was well-defined in the first place (and therefore has never been anything but blurry). Certainly there have been decisions by courts that some particular use is fair, but it does not necessarily follow that all other uses are unfair and punishable. My understanding is that even a conservative legal attempt to define "fair use" would be a bit like trying to define "self defense". It's not a cut-and-dry issue, but rather one that has to be interpreted a bit on a case-by-case basis.
Because as I've said the majority that are happy with it are not posting. People are VERY vocal when they want to complain about something; not so much when they like something.
And where's your research to support these assertions? The fact is, people tend to be vocal whenever they have strong feelings. I bet you that I can find plenty of people online talking about how happy they are with their iPhones, for example. And I can also find some people complaining about them. Reading various people's opinions, reviews, and experiences is a valid source of information. When a product receives lots of negative reviews online and in various publications, and few positive reviews, it's usually indicative of some sort of problem.
I didn't say that there was a lack of drivers for Vista. I said one particular company didn't make drivers for a particular model we have here.
You said you were having problems with a printer, and implied that other people's problems were also the result of poor driver support. Yes... that's a problem. I don't doubt that there is a lot of hardware that has Vista drivers, but I myself have had multiple problems with Vista drivers, including major hardware vendors failing to release Vista drivers for common hardware. Some old Windows XP/2000 drivers work, but others don't. I'm sorry, but failing to support common hardware is a problem. Really, it is.
Hmm.. I didn't think reading stories counted as research anymore, but I guess it does nowadays.
That's an empty objection. Why wouldn't reading about other people's experiences count as one aspect of research?
Ahh, one test machine and you've written off Vista. I had print drivers that don't install, but that's because the manufactor hasn't released any Vista drivers for the printer.
Lack of good drivers is a huge problem for an OS. I don't care how cool an OS is, if it won't run well on my hardware, I won't use it.
I would say "many will stick with the Windows they have", certainly, but I'm not sure I would call 8% or 4% 'many'
What about if you say it this way: for as many people as have upgraded to Vista, 6 times as many plan to migrate to Linux or OSX. More people are planning to leave Windows than are planning to upgrade to the latest Microsoft OS.
4% doesn't sound like a lot, but it depends on how many people that is. If Microsoft were to lose 4% of their OS market share to OSX, it would certainly be "many people".
Really, I think the last must-upgrade version of Windows was 2000. Windows 2000 offered much better hardware support than NT, but much better stability and security than Windows 98. For many business, there still isn't any compelling reason to upgrade beyond Win2k.
Now, honestly part of that is because Windows 2000 was a pretty good OS for its time. On the other hand, I don't know what it says about Microsoft's future that they haven't developed anything compelling in the last 7 years.
Well I don't know how I'm going to prove that I have an iPhone or how you're going to pay me, but pay up. I got a 8GB model the first weekend.
Anyway, I don't want to "hack" anything. I have better things to do than fuck around with things getting them to do things that they aren't supposed to do. Still, I'd like to get a SSH client running on my iPhone. I don't care if I can get a bash prompt to the iPhone itself (locally), but it would be helpful if I could run scripts on some of my servers.
Great. Wake me up when I can get SSH on my iPhone without strange and dangerous hacks. And not web-based SSH.
Yes, Evolution is a pretty good program IMHO. When using Linux, I use Evolution, and often wish it was available for other platforms.
Personally, I think people should consider keeping Thunderbird as it is, just an e-mail client, and put their effort into making better Evolution ports to Windows and OSX.
Trouble is, most OSS developers don't work in that kind of World (which is good for them admittedly), which does mean though that they don't really have much insight into ways to improve these softwares. Exchange is practical, but it's sure as hell not sexy -- working on browsers is more fun.
I agree. Even in some of the buttoned-down corporate sort of businesses I've worked in, the geeks tend to hack their own solutions and never really pay attention to how the managers and admin assistants (i.e. secretaries) work day-to-day. For better or worse, the people who really need good organization tools are often relying on Outlook, Exchange, and Project. If you try to switch them to something else, the new solution better damned well provide the same features and functionality, or better.
I don't think it's always a problem with FOSS projects, but I don't think it's a coincidence that OSS is often terrific when it comes to technical issues but falls a little short in non-geek areas. When I want to do technical processing an images, I can use GIMP or Imagemagic and they're great tools. If I want to put a designer in front of an editor and have them feel comfortable and be productive, I pretty much *have to* shell out for a Photoshop license. Likewise with E-mail. If I just want ordinary IMAP e-mail to function well, I'm much better off with an open source solution. However, I pretty much *need* Exchange/Outlook if I'm running a business and need a robust solution for IMAP, webmail, calendars (and meeting requests), todo lists (and task assignments), contact management, sharing each of these things, assigning delegates that can act on your behalf, mobile connectivity, etc.
I'm not a Microsoft fan, mind you. I don't even like Outlook or Exchange. But so far... I haven't found another solution that's as well supported, easy to install, easy to maintain, and provides the same functionality.
I don't believe that Thunderbird is a bad e-mail client. If you just want a simple POP3/IMAP client, I don't think I've used anything that's much superior to Thunderbird. I think it could also use some improvements, though, and I don't think IMAP on Thunderbird can compete in business environments with Outlook+Exchange.
I'm not saying Outlook/Exchange is anywhere near perfect, but an awful lot of businesses live and breath Outlook. Until it's easy for semi-decent IT people to put another solution in place that will provide all the functionality of Outlook/Exchange, I don't think they'll be displaced.
I read it as the most odd collection of ideas, like, "Hungry Officials RAID 'Microsoft Office XP'.
I find it fast and a much better program than Outlook. Now if you compare it to Outlook plus Exchange then it really isn't in the same league. To me that is the problem.
I think you're right-- that's the problem. How to solve that problem, I don't know, but that is most likely the reason why Thunderbird doesn't have a larger user base.
I think most people who use e-mail fall into a couple groups.
The only real group that Thunderbird could go after would be the business users. However, in order to do that, you need to be able to connect to Exchange and do calendars, notes, task lists, and Exchange contact lists. Of course, you could also replace Exchange with something else, but that something else would have to have the same sorts of features, and Thunderbird would still have to connect to it.
Contrary to what many geeks think, Exchange/Outlook is very helpful for a lot of businesses. Connecting tasks, calendars, e-mail, and contacts all together, and making that available through client software, on the web, and on mobile devices has turned out to be the big-business killer app.
Also, when you go to a web page and browse for Firefox extensions, you're doing it in Firefox. You click on the link to an extension, it automatically installs, and takes effect immediately. The Thunderbird, you still browse for extensions in your web browser, you have to download them, and then install them into Thunderbird through Thunderbird.
The whole process feels very different.
My immediate thought when I read the headline was, "And this is the answer to all those people who asked, 'Why should I care if Dell sells computers with Ubuntu?"
I remember when that story broke, and loads of people were saying, "I use Linux, but I'm not going to buy a Dell," or "Well I don't use Ubuntu, I use [insert distro here], so this doesn't help me!"
The can use the non-phone features on cell phones, sure. The camera, text messages, clock, etc. But can they use it as a phone?
Think about it!!
How can deaf users make use of cell phones in general?
Not every device can be accessible to everyone with every disability.
I don't see the point in having a split anyway-- the current kernel is fine. They should work on streamlining Windows, making it run faster, making it smaller, etc. Don't start over from scratch, just work on rounding out the rough edges. There are LOADS of things in Windows (both desktop and server) that simply don't work very well-- there's plenty of work that MS can do to make the current OS work better that don't include starting over.
Yeah, I think even the split between server vs. desktop is questionable (assuming you're putting a GUI into the server version), but that should really be the only split an OS developer considers IMO.
It's not hard. If the work was created by someone other than you, you probably don't own it. If the work was created by someone other than you and you did own it, you'd probably know for sure, because there'd have to be some contract or sale.
I don't understand what the question is. You know what a copyright is, right?
Its not yours to distribute if it's copyrighted and you don't have the copyright or have a license to distribute. Plagiarism is a different issue.
I'm just talking about the issue of enforcement. It's very rare that copyrights are enforced against infringers who only possess unlicensed copies. They'll usually only go after you if you're distributing unlicensed copies.
Yes, Microsoft has chosen not to improve performance as part of their "upgrades". I'm just saying that they could have. The fact that it's newer doesn't necessarily dictate that it must be slower.