There was this other service hyped either here or Engadget (or both?) that was supposed to be some Skype-killer, but it wasn't as free as they said it was (I don't think it was money, but you had to do *something* to get the free calling).
Maybe you're thinking of Gizmo? It advertises itself as free, but it's only free between Gizmo users. So, you can call a landline for free if another Gizmo user has that number listed as his landline in his profile, or something to that effect. And they also say that if you use to too much, they'll start charging you for it, but they never say what "too much" use would be.
I tried it out a while back, when it was being hyped. It was fine, but wasn't terribly useful for me (personally) for the same reason other VOIP stuff isn't that helpful for me: I have a cell phone, and I'm pretty much never in a situation when I have internet access but no cell-phone reception. If I wanted useful wireless internet access, I'd have to go through a cell phone company anyway.
Mr. Albert said the concept, known as "click to call," was an important example of combining eBay's expertise in online sales with Skype's capacity to allow people to make inexpensive calls.
Wow. It takes a real goddamn genius to come up with an idea like that. They're lucky they have eBay's expertise to draw on, because I just can't imagine a mere mortal coming up with an idea like that.
Now we need to come up with a term for what will eventually prove to be its opposite. Corporate sabotage that seeks to inspire negative propoganda for another company.
Wouldn't this, too, be astroturfing? Astroturfing, I thought, was any fake grassroots campaign, negative or positive.
Yes, the original poster's line of reasoning is a bit overly-simplistic. While it's true that mankind is natural and unable to act contrary to nature, it's also true that we exert an extreme influence on our environment that would not be possible if not for a particular intellectual gift, which allows us greater diversity of choice than is available to any other living thing on our planet.
On both sides of this argument, it seems to me that the distinction is, at worst, a failure to understand the concepts being spoken about, and at best, academic. You're correct to point out that if everything is "natural", then the word "nature" has no meaning. However, it's also true that we are not an alien force on this planet, nor do we really have the ability to act outside of what our own natures allow. Clearly each is using the word "nature" to mean something other than what each thinks the other means.
If ALL selection were natural selection, there wouldn't be any point in coining the term 'natural selection' instead you would use the word 'selection'.
Well, the "natural" part of "natural selection" is supposed to mean that it isn't purposefully chosen. It's meant to run parallel but contrast with the breeding of animals for specific purposes.
I'm not sure whether it makes sense to repopulate dolphins in the wild or to re-breed them for zoos, but saving the DNA makes sense to me anyway. My viewpoint is a little more like, "Why not?" It's information that's the product of a lot of "nature's engineering", so to speak, so it'd be nice to make some attempt to hold on to whatever we can, just in case we can figure out something to do with it later.
Well, yes, I suppose if I were in the free-software-selling business, I'd feel the same way. Anyway, at least their business is legal, whereas selling pirated copies of Microsoft Office isn't.
Yeah, I have Cablevision in Brooklyn. The TV portion of the service is pretty bad. The Internet portion is fast enough, but they make you pay extra for them to allow ports 25 (either direction) and 80 (incoming), and you can't get a static IP under any circumstances. It's retarded.
If you look in the FAQ on the NeoOffice site, they specifically say that they considered doing the port as an official part of the OpenOffice team, but decided they would rather work on their own. They seem to claim two reasons:
Yes, I know about that, and I've heard it explained at other times by one of the people running NeoOffice. The point is, OpenOffice wasn't interested in an OSX port, and they weren't particularly helpful to those who were interested, and so those guys went to work on their own.
And what I said was that the OpenOffice team should offer help/support to the NeoOffice guys. These are not contradictory ideas.
In fact, the OpenOffice team has expressed interest in doing an native OSX Aqua port. I just don't know if there's been any progress, and it's hard to say whether it would be as good as NeoOffice. I'd like to see them try, though.
As far as looks, on Windows they do mimic Microsoft a lot, but like I said, it just feels a little off to me. In my mind, it's like GAIM-- a terrific program that certainly works, but just doesn't feel like a professional, Windows-native program. On OSX, OpenOffice should ideally be a Aqua application, with no X11, and it should follow Apple guidelines. NeoOffice is on the right track here. On Linux... I didn't complain about Linux. I use Gnome and I think it fits in with Gnome fairly well.
Efficiency is debatable. It probably would make more sense to do it the ODF way, for the sake of transferring it to other platforms which don't have the mechanisms to treat it as a single file. That's really the only time the whole folder thing would be an issue, but it's not a huge problem when you consider that Pages doesn't exist on any other platforms anyway. Still, Apple does provide support to export Pages documents into other formats, including PDF, Doc, and HTML, for the sake of transferring to other platforms. (Yes, I'd like to see ODF added to that list, and I've e-mailed Apple to suggest it, for what that's worth).
However, what I don't know is which format is better. Does one or the other provide better support for certain features and formatting? Honestly, I have no clue. I guess I could do some testing to figure out which produces smaller files, but that's the only way I can think of that I'd be qualified to judge, and honestly that's far from my chief concern.
Either way, if Apple feels that they need their own format to support the features of their own application, I don't think it's unreasonable. If they really are comparable formats with comparable features, there shouldn't be much trouble converting between them. If the formats support very different things, the all the more reason why it makes sense that Apple would want their own format. But again, either way, at least they're using normal XML without any funny business.
The people who want to "cash out" and turn a quick buck are not acting in their own self interest. The problem is that they're not selfish enough. The "self-restraint" you talk about? That's the simple ability to think long-term, which is what we are actually missing today. It is most definitely not some form of government regulation, which is what people usually mean when they talk about history having proven that Capitalism needs to be restrained in order to "work".
I can't tell, do you think we disagree? If you notice, every time I talk about "self-interest" in the sense of stupid greed, I talk about it as a "notion of 'self-interest'" or at least put "self interest" in quotes. Later, when I seriously mean "self-interest", I stop putting it in quotes. The reason I do this is that blind, stupid greed is not a motivator to act in your actual best interests. Or rather, a better way of saying it is that blind, stupid greed in unlikely to bring about your best interests unless it's guided and tempered by wisdom.
If I'm not making sense to you here, I'll put it another way, self-interest is not the same as greed. Greed is self-interest run amok, when people don't know what they really need or want, and don't know what would benefit themselves, and so they set out hoarding things other than what would be in their best interest.
I even remember there being a passage in The Wealth of Nations where Adam Smith acknowledges obliquely that there's a potential problem with capitalism-- that the capitalists might be foolish. Of course, the remedy for this problem doesn't necessarily lie in increased government regulation, because people in the government may be foolish too. Yes, capitalism might work perfectly if all people were wise, but that's no great feat. Communism might work perfectly, too, if all men were completely wise. The strength of capitalism is that it works better than communism with people who are greedy, foolish bastards. And, don't you know, people are often greedy, foolish bastards!
But do we disagree? I'm in favor of economic freedom, but self-restraint. I really argue with people who claim to support "capitalism" when they talk as though capitalism is a moral system which dictates that short-term greed is the highest good. I support capitalism as an economic system which dictates that my money is my own, and I can be miserly or generous with it as I see fit with minimal governmental interference. Leave it to another field to discover your moral self-interests, and recognize that even your economic self-interests extend beyond the short-term, and I think we agree.
I understand why you'd say that, but have you ever looked into Pages' and Keynote's formats? The "file" is actually a folder, which contains whatever pictures or anything that's in the file, along with a compressed XML file. Even if you don't like them, they shouldn't be to hard to decode, so I don't think it's quite as bad as Microsoft formats. Honestly, I don't think we necessarily need everyone to use the same file formats, so long as the formats are open and we're able to convert between them.
That being said, I definitely think Apple should include a converter to save their documents in ODF, with the option to use that as a default. Also, if they're doing to stick with their own format, I believe that they should offer any necessary help to help the people working on OpenOffice to write a converter to open/save Pages and Keynote documents. Not that I think the format would be impossibly hard to figure out without help from Apple, but I would hope they'd make documentation available.
Good question. To be fair, I can understand if Apple doesn't want to do it, given that NeoOffice competes with both Apple's iWork suite and Microsoft Office for OSX. Apple want to sell iWork, and they're afraid of losing MS Office, so giving a whole lot of support for NeoOffice might be a bit dicey. You might argue that Apple should ditch iWork and start over with OpenOffice as a base, but Apple would likely feel that they'd need to make too many changes for that project to be worthwhile, create a permanent fork of OOo, and finally rebuild Pages and Keynote on someone else's terms. It doesn't sound probable.
However, as an Apple customer, I would be in favor of any support Apple would be willing to provide to the guys at NeoOffice.
It's not like anybody else is going to benefit from neooffice.
I think it's worth noting that you could make the same argument about the Windows port of OOo. No one will benefit except Windows users, so why doesn't Microsoft do it? Of course, the truth is that we all benefit from having cross-platform support for the applications we use. It means we can move between platforms with a minimal learning curve, and rely on common formats and features.
If not apple how about the mac users themselves.
Well, yeah, what do you think NeoOffice is, if not Mac users doing it themselves?
Sorry... For clarification, I am under the impression that OOo uses separate executables these days, but I'm also under the impression that it's still a bit of a monolithic work. My real question (above) was as to whether things could be faster if the whole thing was broken up a bit more. Honestly, I only ever use the word processor and spreadsheet, and only one at a time at that. So is there any way in which things even could theoretically be separated further to make each component more efficient by itself, or has that been done to its greatest possible extent already?
You make it sound like that's a small list that doesn't encompass much. I don't know, though... I don't really have huge problems with stability. MSOffice compatibility is pretty good, and seems to be getting better all the time. Plus, I somewhat blame Microsoft for the problem, so no point in telling the developers about it-- they know.
By your complaint about OSX-native binaries, I assume you mean a version which doesn't require X11? If that's the case, you should at least check out NeoOffice, which is an attempt to bring a native port of OOo to OSX (including Aqua-fying the interface). It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good considering their lack of resources. Last I heard, it was a two-man operation. Still, it would be nice if the OOo people would either support the NeoOffice guys, help out, or make some effort toward bringing their own port to OSX.
So I guess we're really left with making it faster and lighter. I can't say I disagree, but it does seem like that might be a difficult task. Someone involved in the project might be able to tell me, would it make the whole thing run faster and use less RAM if you broke the thing out into separate applications? Personally, I can deal with the increase hard drive space, as well as the increased overhead of running multiple concurrent executables, if it means that any given executable can be launched more quickly and with less overhead. But maybe that's just me.
Either way, yes, I'd like to see OOo faster. Also, if I could add to your list, I'd really like to see the whole thing be prettier. I know, it seems like a minor thing, but it's easier to sell people on an application if it's pretty, and I do occasionally try to convert people to using OOo. I guess it'd be more accurate to say, it'd be nice if the Windows and OSX versions of OOo were to blend in better with their perspective operating systems. Running on X11 in OSX is a bit silly, and the icons and toolbars tend to look a little "off" in Windows. They just don't quite fit in with native applications. In Windows, it's a very minor complaint, but a complaint none the less.
Otherwise, I wouldn't want to end the post without being thankful and happy at OpenOffice's continued development. It's a fantastic application, keeping me free from needing Microsoft for most of my day-to-day tasks. And you really can't beat the price! So, if any OOo developers managed to read through all this, and didn't feel like beating the crap out of me for my nit-picking, thank you very much!
Not exactly a troll. But sarcastic, yes. "Free" would mean completely without cost, and therefore something is not "completely without cost" if you're paying shipping/handling costs. Second, shipping CDs is fine and dandy, but in this day and age, it's not so clearly "better" than a convenient high-speed download.
What I want to know is, when will the ice in the antarctic melt? Real estate is just too expensive, we could use another continent, especially once we flood the ones we've already got. d^_^b
The company still exists and is doing quite well, specifically because they're considered the high-quality company in their field. You shouldn't misunderstand so much-- they are making tons of money, but they're also "missing out" on "tons of money". In other words, they're making a tidy profit, but they could be considered to be missing opportunities for a lot more money. The reasoning isn't altruistic. The owners like their company, and want to keep running it. They want to continue to grow and be a sustainable business, and they want the company to remain the sort of company that they'd want to own and run.
I don't want to get into a petty argument with you, but certainly the world would be better off if companies were run by people like this. No, making money is not a sin, but it doesn't follow then that making money cannot be done sinfully. It is possible to make a move that will temporarily make a profit, but over the long term cause irreparable damage to you, your company, your industry, and even society in general. Short-sighted greed can cause a company to run itself out of business. Indeed, wanting to build and sustain your company over the long-term is not a sin either.
In short, you (and others) seem to think I was attacking capitalism, which isn't the case. Capitalism assumes that greed and pride are an inevitable part human nature, and so it's a system that tries to turn those motivations toward the benefit of society by rewarding those who provide a good or service that others need. I think that this is all correct. However, this does not mean that, from a societal standpoint, greed ought to be viewed as an end in itself. Greed isn't necessarily admirable, nor is it infallible. The proper end is the benefit of the society, and where personal greed does terrible harm to society, we, as a society, ought not applaud it.
I can't tell... are you trying to be funny? Completely without cost (except for the costs) and better than near-instantaneous downloads, they'll probably get a CD to you within a couple months!
It's not a matter of nobility and self-sacrifice, but rather an issue of wanting to build something instead of tearing it apart. Your notion of "self-interest", i.e. desire for money, does not necessarily need to be the primary motivator in order to be a capitalist society. Capitalism is an economic system in which the government does not attempt to control industry. The intent is to turn natural greed, which occurs anyway, into a beneficial impulse. However, there's nothing contrary to capitalism when someone tries to do a good job, gather a good reputation, or take pride in their work. Capitalism does not dictate that people should all be greedy and sell out. Capitalism only dictates that people be given economic freedom to pursue their own motivations, whatever they should be.
And contrary to your thinking, there has been a lot of economic theory and evidence that capitalism works best when there is some restraint in the system. When everyone is purely "self-interested" (i.e. greedy sell-outs), industries tend to self-destruct. Businesses are more successful when they value their employees and customers, as well as their investors. People do a better job when they feel like it means something to do a better job. All the way down to your janitorial staff, your employees will work better if they feel like they're being useful, helpful, and appreciated. Treating your employees and customers decently can be the result of self-interest, too. It just requires that the self-interested capitalist isn't a moron who misunderstand capitalism.
You know, I've worked for a small start-up kind of business that was "missing out" on "tons of money". Basically, the owners could have sold it to a much larger company, which then would have run the company into the ground. Or, they could have adopted the same practices that their competitors were using, and made a lot more money over the short term.
However, what kept the company working the way it did, what kept their customers happy, had always been the practices that cost them a bit more or didn't make as much money in the short term. What made it a good company was that it was a small company, without a lot of red tape or bureaucracy. The practices that made the owners, employees, and customers like the company were exactly the practices that a large company or a company driven by short-term profits would not do. In short, they could have sold out at any time, and become not better than their competition for the sake of short-term gains, but chose not to because they wanted to do a good job.
That might possibly be the majority of the traffic (I wouldn't know). However, I've gotten a few very good jobs through Craigslist, and I've spoken with HR people who say they've had better luck with Craigslist than places like Monster.com. I've also found apartments on Craigslist, and I've had friends who've bought furniture and bicycles and all sort of stuff (some of it "free" by just going to pick it up).
I'm sure that, like the internet in general, you can find many disturbing things on Craigslist, but also just like the rest of the internet, you can find many useful things, too.
Slashdot Mirror
I had some great ideas too, including "Click-to-select-link" and "Click-to-make-clicky-sound" technology.
There was this other service hyped either here or Engadget (or both?) that was supposed to be some Skype-killer, but it wasn't as free as they said it was (I don't think it was money, but you had to do *something* to get the free calling).
Maybe you're thinking of Gizmo? It advertises itself as free, but it's only free between Gizmo users. So, you can call a landline for free if another Gizmo user has that number listed as his landline in his profile, or something to that effect. And they also say that if you use to too much, they'll start charging you for it, but they never say what "too much" use would be.
I tried it out a while back, when it was being hyped. It was fine, but wasn't terribly useful for me (personally) for the same reason other VOIP stuff isn't that helpful for me: I have a cell phone, and I'm pretty much never in a situation when I have internet access but no cell-phone reception. If I wanted useful wireless internet access, I'd have to go through a cell phone company anyway.
Wow. It takes a real goddamn genius to come up with an idea like that. They're lucky they have eBay's expertise to draw on, because I just can't imagine a mere mortal coming up with an idea like that.
Wouldn't this, too, be astroturfing? Astroturfing, I thought, was any fake grassroots campaign, negative or positive.
Yes, the original poster's line of reasoning is a bit overly-simplistic. While it's true that mankind is natural and unable to act contrary to nature, it's also true that we exert an extreme influence on our environment that would not be possible if not for a particular intellectual gift, which allows us greater diversity of choice than is available to any other living thing on our planet.
On both sides of this argument, it seems to me that the distinction is, at worst, a failure to understand the concepts being spoken about, and at best, academic. You're correct to point out that if everything is "natural", then the word "nature" has no meaning. However, it's also true that we are not an alien force on this planet, nor do we really have the ability to act outside of what our own natures allow. Clearly each is using the word "nature" to mean something other than what each thinks the other means.
If ALL selection were natural selection, there wouldn't be any point in coining the term 'natural selection' instead you would use the word 'selection'.
Well, the "natural" part of "natural selection" is supposed to mean that it isn't purposefully chosen. It's meant to run parallel but contrast with the breeding of animals for specific purposes.
I'm not sure whether it makes sense to repopulate dolphins in the wild or to re-breed them for zoos, but saving the DNA makes sense to me anyway. My viewpoint is a little more like, "Why not?" It's information that's the product of a lot of "nature's engineering", so to speak, so it'd be nice to make some attempt to hold on to whatever we can, just in case we can figure out something to do with it later.
Well, yes, I suppose if I were in the free-software-selling business, I'd feel the same way. Anyway, at least their business is legal, whereas selling pirated copies of Microsoft Office isn't.
Yeah, I have Cablevision in Brooklyn. The TV portion of the service is pretty bad. The Internet portion is fast enough, but they make you pay extra for them to allow ports 25 (either direction) and 80 (incoming), and you can't get a static IP under any circumstances. It's retarded.
If you look in the FAQ on the NeoOffice site, they specifically say that they considered doing the port as an official part of the OpenOffice team, but decided they would rather work on their own. They seem to claim two reasons:
Yes, I know about that, and I've heard it explained at other times by one of the people running NeoOffice. The point is, OpenOffice wasn't interested in an OSX port, and they weren't particularly helpful to those who were interested, and so those guys went to work on their own.
And what I said was that the OpenOffice team should offer help/support to the NeoOffice guys. These are not contradictory ideas.
In fact, the OpenOffice team has expressed interest in doing an native OSX Aqua port. I just don't know if there's been any progress, and it's hard to say whether it would be as good as NeoOffice. I'd like to see them try, though.
As far as looks, on Windows they do mimic Microsoft a lot, but like I said, it just feels a little off to me. In my mind, it's like GAIM-- a terrific program that certainly works, but just doesn't feel like a professional, Windows-native program. On OSX, OpenOffice should ideally be a Aqua application, with no X11, and it should follow Apple guidelines. NeoOffice is on the right track here. On Linux... I didn't complain about Linux. I use Gnome and I think it fits in with Gnome fairly well.
Efficiency is debatable. It probably would make more sense to do it the ODF way, for the sake of transferring it to other platforms which don't have the mechanisms to treat it as a single file. That's really the only time the whole folder thing would be an issue, but it's not a huge problem when you consider that Pages doesn't exist on any other platforms anyway. Still, Apple does provide support to export Pages documents into other formats, including PDF, Doc, and HTML, for the sake of transferring to other platforms. (Yes, I'd like to see ODF added to that list, and I've e-mailed Apple to suggest it, for what that's worth).
However, what I don't know is which format is better. Does one or the other provide better support for certain features and formatting? Honestly, I have no clue. I guess I could do some testing to figure out which produces smaller files, but that's the only way I can think of that I'd be qualified to judge, and honestly that's far from my chief concern.
Either way, if Apple feels that they need their own format to support the features of their own application, I don't think it's unreasonable. If they really are comparable formats with comparable features, there shouldn't be much trouble converting between them. If the formats support very different things, the all the more reason why it makes sense that Apple would want their own format. But again, either way, at least they're using normal XML without any funny business.
I can't tell, do you think we disagree? If you notice, every time I talk about "self-interest" in the sense of stupid greed, I talk about it as a "notion of 'self-interest'" or at least put "self interest" in quotes. Later, when I seriously mean "self-interest", I stop putting it in quotes. The reason I do this is that blind, stupid greed is not a motivator to act in your actual best interests. Or rather, a better way of saying it is that blind, stupid greed in unlikely to bring about your best interests unless it's guided and tempered by wisdom.
If I'm not making sense to you here, I'll put it another way, self-interest is not the same as greed. Greed is self-interest run amok, when people don't know what they really need or want, and don't know what would benefit themselves, and so they set out hoarding things other than what would be in their best interest.
I even remember there being a passage in The Wealth of Nations where Adam Smith acknowledges obliquely that there's a potential problem with capitalism-- that the capitalists might be foolish. Of course, the remedy for this problem doesn't necessarily lie in increased government regulation, because people in the government may be foolish too. Yes, capitalism might work perfectly if all people were wise, but that's no great feat. Communism might work perfectly, too, if all men were completely wise. The strength of capitalism is that it works better than communism with people who are greedy, foolish bastards. And, don't you know, people are often greedy, foolish bastards!
But do we disagree? I'm in favor of economic freedom, but self-restraint. I really argue with people who claim to support "capitalism" when they talk as though capitalism is a moral system which dictates that short-term greed is the highest good. I support capitalism as an economic system which dictates that my money is my own, and I can be miserly or generous with it as I see fit with minimal governmental interference. Leave it to another field to discover your moral self-interests, and recognize that even your economic self-interests extend beyond the short-term, and I think we agree.
I understand why you'd say that, but have you ever looked into Pages' and Keynote's formats? The "file" is actually a folder, which contains whatever pictures or anything that's in the file, along with a compressed XML file. Even if you don't like them, they shouldn't be to hard to decode, so I don't think it's quite as bad as Microsoft formats. Honestly, I don't think we necessarily need everyone to use the same file formats, so long as the formats are open and we're able to convert between them.
That being said, I definitely think Apple should include a converter to save their documents in ODF, with the option to use that as a default. Also, if they're doing to stick with their own format, I believe that they should offer any necessary help to help the people working on OpenOffice to write a converter to open/save Pages and Keynote documents. Not that I think the format would be impossibly hard to figure out without help from Apple, but I would hope they'd make documentation available.
My response, point by point:
Good question. To be fair, I can understand if Apple doesn't want to do it, given that NeoOffice competes with both Apple's iWork suite and Microsoft Office for OSX. Apple want to sell iWork, and they're afraid of losing MS Office, so giving a whole lot of support for NeoOffice might be a bit dicey. You might argue that Apple should ditch iWork and start over with OpenOffice as a base, but Apple would likely feel that they'd need to make too many changes for that project to be worthwhile, create a permanent fork of OOo, and finally rebuild Pages and Keynote on someone else's terms. It doesn't sound probable.
However, as an Apple customer, I would be in favor of any support Apple would be willing to provide to the guys at NeoOffice.
I think it's worth noting that you could make the same argument about the Windows port of OOo. No one will benefit except Windows users, so why doesn't Microsoft do it? Of course, the truth is that we all benefit from having cross-platform support for the applications we use. It means we can move between platforms with a minimal learning curve, and rely on common formats and features.
Well, yeah, what do you think NeoOffice is, if not Mac users doing it themselves?
Yes, the installer asks whether you want to enable automatic updates, and it's easy to enable/disable after install, too.
Sorry... For clarification, I am under the impression that OOo uses separate executables these days, but I'm also under the impression that it's still a bit of a monolithic work. My real question (above) was as to whether things could be faster if the whole thing was broken up a bit more. Honestly, I only ever use the word processor and spreadsheet, and only one at a time at that. So is there any way in which things even could theoretically be separated further to make each component more efficient by itself, or has that been done to its greatest possible extent already?
You make it sound like that's a small list that doesn't encompass much. I don't know, though... I don't really have huge problems with stability. MSOffice compatibility is pretty good, and seems to be getting better all the time. Plus, I somewhat blame Microsoft for the problem, so no point in telling the developers about it-- they know.
By your complaint about OSX-native binaries, I assume you mean a version which doesn't require X11? If that's the case, you should at least check out NeoOffice, which is an attempt to bring a native port of OOo to OSX (including Aqua-fying the interface). It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good considering their lack of resources. Last I heard, it was a two-man operation. Still, it would be nice if the OOo people would either support the NeoOffice guys, help out, or make some effort toward bringing their own port to OSX.
So I guess we're really left with making it faster and lighter. I can't say I disagree, but it does seem like that might be a difficult task. Someone involved in the project might be able to tell me, would it make the whole thing run faster and use less RAM if you broke the thing out into separate applications? Personally, I can deal with the increase hard drive space, as well as the increased overhead of running multiple concurrent executables, if it means that any given executable can be launched more quickly and with less overhead. But maybe that's just me.
Either way, yes, I'd like to see OOo faster. Also, if I could add to your list, I'd really like to see the whole thing be prettier. I know, it seems like a minor thing, but it's easier to sell people on an application if it's pretty, and I do occasionally try to convert people to using OOo. I guess it'd be more accurate to say, it'd be nice if the Windows and OSX versions of OOo were to blend in better with their perspective operating systems. Running on X11 in OSX is a bit silly, and the icons and toolbars tend to look a little "off" in Windows. They just don't quite fit in with native applications. In Windows, it's a very minor complaint, but a complaint none the less.
Otherwise, I wouldn't want to end the post without being thankful and happy at OpenOffice's continued development. It's a fantastic application, keeping me free from needing Microsoft for most of my day-to-day tasks. And you really can't beat the price! So, if any OOo developers managed to read through all this, and didn't feel like beating the crap out of me for my nit-picking, thank you very much!
Not exactly a troll. But sarcastic, yes. "Free" would mean completely without cost, and therefore something is not "completely without cost" if you're paying shipping/handling costs. Second, shipping CDs is fine and dandy, but in this day and age, it's not so clearly "better" than a convenient high-speed download.
Bad news for Santa, good news for Lex Luthor?
The company still exists and is doing quite well, specifically because they're considered the high-quality company in their field. You shouldn't misunderstand so much-- they are making tons of money, but they're also "missing out" on "tons of money". In other words, they're making a tidy profit, but they could be considered to be missing opportunities for a lot more money. The reasoning isn't altruistic. The owners like their company, and want to keep running it. They want to continue to grow and be a sustainable business, and they want the company to remain the sort of company that they'd want to own and run.
I don't want to get into a petty argument with you, but certainly the world would be better off if companies were run by people like this. No, making money is not a sin, but it doesn't follow then that making money cannot be done sinfully. It is possible to make a move that will temporarily make a profit, but over the long term cause irreparable damage to you, your company, your industry, and even society in general. Short-sighted greed can cause a company to run itself out of business. Indeed, wanting to build and sustain your company over the long-term is not a sin either.
In short, you (and others) seem to think I was attacking capitalism, which isn't the case. Capitalism assumes that greed and pride are an inevitable part human nature, and so it's a system that tries to turn those motivations toward the benefit of society by rewarding those who provide a good or service that others need. I think that this is all correct. However, this does not mean that, from a societal standpoint, greed ought to be viewed as an end in itself. Greed isn't necessarily admirable, nor is it infallible. The proper end is the benefit of the society, and where personal greed does terrible harm to society, we, as a society, ought not applaud it.
I can't tell... are you trying to be funny? Completely without cost (except for the costs) and better than near-instantaneous downloads, they'll probably get a CD to you within a couple months!
It's not a matter of nobility and self-sacrifice, but rather an issue of wanting to build something instead of tearing it apart. Your notion of "self-interest", i.e. desire for money, does not necessarily need to be the primary motivator in order to be a capitalist society. Capitalism is an economic system in which the government does not attempt to control industry. The intent is to turn natural greed, which occurs anyway, into a beneficial impulse. However, there's nothing contrary to capitalism when someone tries to do a good job, gather a good reputation, or take pride in their work. Capitalism does not dictate that people should all be greedy and sell out. Capitalism only dictates that people be given economic freedom to pursue their own motivations, whatever they should be.
And contrary to your thinking, there has been a lot of economic theory and evidence that capitalism works best when there is some restraint in the system. When everyone is purely "self-interested" (i.e. greedy sell-outs), industries tend to self-destruct. Businesses are more successful when they value their employees and customers, as well as their investors. People do a better job when they feel like it means something to do a better job. All the way down to your janitorial staff, your employees will work better if they feel like they're being useful, helpful, and appreciated. Treating your employees and customers decently can be the result of self-interest, too. It just requires that the self-interested capitalist isn't a moron who misunderstand capitalism.
You know, I've worked for a small start-up kind of business that was "missing out" on "tons of money". Basically, the owners could have sold it to a much larger company, which then would have run the company into the ground. Or, they could have adopted the same practices that their competitors were using, and made a lot more money over the short term.
However, what kept the company working the way it did, what kept their customers happy, had always been the practices that cost them a bit more or didn't make as much money in the short term. What made it a good company was that it was a small company, without a lot of red tape or bureaucracy. The practices that made the owners, employees, and customers like the company were exactly the practices that a large company or a company driven by short-term profits would not do. In short, they could have sold out at any time, and become not better than their competition for the sake of short-term gains, but chose not to because they wanted to do a good job.
I wish more companies worked like that.
That might possibly be the majority of the traffic (I wouldn't know). However, I've gotten a few very good jobs through Craigslist, and I've spoken with HR people who say they've had better luck with Craigslist than places like Monster.com. I've also found apartments on Craigslist, and I've had friends who've bought furniture and bicycles and all sort of stuff (some of it "free" by just going to pick it up).
I'm sure that, like the internet in general, you can find many disturbing things on Craigslist, but also just like the rest of the internet, you can find many useful things, too.
That's very possible, which is why I said I wasn't pushing any theories about the music industry.