Steve Ballmer has been in a senior position at MicroSoft for about thirty years now, unlike the typical bungee boss CEOs and board members of various other high-tech corporations such as HP (remember Carly?). During the time he's been working there MS total turnover has been about half a trillion bucks. I'd say US high-tech businesses could use some more chair-throwers like Ballmer and fewer wily super-geniuses like Fiorina.
Yes, Ballmer has been part of the senior management team since the early days of Microsoft. But he hasn't really had the reigns until the last 10 years - after Gates stepped aside as part of the resolution to the Antitrust problems, never to be CEO of anything again as a result. Ballmer still has to deal with Gates as Gates is on the Board of Directors (still Chairman of the Board IIRC).
Interestingly Microsoft is starting to realize, too late, that it has been a "Windows(TM)" company, and not a technology company. The fact that they tried to tie everything to Windows(TM), is the problem. Replace Windows(TM) (with say.. Android or iOS) and all of a sudden, your whole core is gone and all the supporting products are worthless. And that is what is happening. People are realizing that you don't need Windows(TM) to get stuff done. And in fact, you don't need Windows(TM) most of the time.
And since people are realizing this, they are exploring other options.The days of being able to sell Windows 95 for $150 and have people line up around the block have long since been over. The Windows ship has sailed.
There, fixed it for you. They're not "worth less"; they're entirely "worthless".
Honestly i don't even know who to compare Ballmer to as i can't think of a CEO that completely ignored everything they were being told, never before have I seen a company so large just whip out a gun and shoot themselves in the head like that. Everyone said Elop was a plant but look at who he learned from folks, Ballmer could be the subject of textbooks dedicated to showing how NOT to run a successful company. When he took over from Gates they were on top of the world, had a monopoly and money to burn, but under Ballmer it became a "lost decade" because he simply didn't know what to do with the company.
Ballmer and Elop are probably the only two worth comparing, and you're right - Elop probably learned a lot from Ballmer. Yet it's Elop that got the term "Elop Effect" named after him for what he did to Nokia, and who will certainly go down in the text books for it. Ballmer, though, probably won't be far behind with "Lost Decade", but it's not as catchy, nor has what he done been as dramatic to the company as Elop was with Nokia - and there are a lot of other things that could be linked to the demise of Microsoft as well - Ballmer has only been on (albeit large) factor in the equation.
Removing Ballmer won't be the whole solution for Microsoft. You need to remove numerous layers of management at the company - getting rid of everyone that has grown up there under Ballmer and Gates, everyone that has that same mentality of having "1 Microsoft Way" for the world of software. Then and only then does Microsoft stand a chance of reviving itself to any degree...
In the mean time they'll continue to ride out their profits from Windows and Office as the two diminish into oblivion over the next decade.
This is more of the AGW bullshit, look at recent historical record, Sandy wasn't unusual, the MSM response was as the AGW meme die, much to their discomfort!
MFG, omb
While I agree the AGW folks will say that the "recent historical record" was just a build up as predicted by AGW...again complete BS as we just don't have the requisite information to even confirm/deny it one way or another; but most likely it's now AGW, just a natural cycle.
Microsoft loses nothing because they are collecting for these patents. Likely they are trying to collect enough that even if they lose them in court, their court costs are covered by the patent fees. Meanwhile they have effectively sown a cloud of trouble over Android even though they (microsoft) don't even have anything competitive in this market.
Tl;dr -- it galls me, the chutzpah of these assholes!
That depends. Like with the agreements for all the rest, it doesn't mention how much is paid or to whom; and like the rest, only Microsoft put out a press release. For all we know, Microsoft could actually be paying money to HonHai, Foxconn's parent company, instead of the other way around.
First off, the poster above me mentioned OpenOffice. I'm using 3.3 which IIRC is the most recent OO version.
FYI - OO is now controlled by Apache and called Apache OpenOffice. AOO has released AOO 3.4. LO has released more updates since 3.3 as well. So no, you are not using the latest version of OO.
So what ends up happening: mostt busienss apps moved to HTML, core accounting (and other, Windows only niche) package run via centrally managed/backed up/stored VDI desktop, and deployed over the network to the accountants who need it to whatever device they happen to be working on via PCoIP.
This is the way we're going due to pressure from upper management to want to BYOD (MD is a mac fan, as are the majority of upper management).
Even without BYOD, it's the way things have been going for a while. It just makes BYOD easier.
Despite management's fondness for excel spreadsheets, those can just as easily be authored with Open Office.
I'm sorry, no, what you're saying is just stupid. As an Excel power user (well, a bit more than that) I have worked with both Calc and Excel, and Calc is way behind in all areas. Here's a small list of Calc 3.3 versus Excel 2007 issues:
I've had to work in both as well, and you're still getting it wrong.
- Slow to start;
Well, I'll give you that one. AOO and LibreOffice are making progress there though as they refactor the code and remove the JRE requirement.
- Steals focus when starting;
I don't see that any more with LibreOffice; though I see it quite often with Windows and other applications when I have to deal with Windows, which is increasingly rare.
- Eats more RAM (75 MB post-start, empty, versus 25 MB post-start, empty, for Excel);
OO could sometimes, but Excel/Word can eat far more memory a lot quicker.
- Is a lot slower when opening large spreadsheets. I have a 96 MB spreadsheet and Excel opens it in 32 seconds on my laptop. Calc took... forever, really. I mean it never managed to open it Got stuck at about 15% and remained there forever. Same file, same laptop.
Now convert that spreadsheet to ODS and look the difference in the file size. I've had quite a few Word and Excel files that were many megabytes (>10) in size, only to save them as ODTs and ODSs and have them be a couple megabyte at best (- VBA macros obviously don't work in Calc;
Calc implements Basic, not VBA; by default Calc won't load the VBA code, but it will help you convert it to Basic. It also offers you numerous other options, like Python. And use of VBA has nearly always meant lock-in to MS Office; that is, until OO added functionality to help convert away from it...
- Many complex formulas don't work in Calc. Furthermore, some formulas mess up, resulting in wrong data for some files. VERY dangerous for a business.
What I would be more concerned about is the errors in the functions that Excel has - which were well documented for the OOXML effort. There are many mathematical errors in Excel that simply shouldn't be there - and that's dangerous to the business. Calc has modes to support those sames errors, but they also enable you to have the write math in your spreadsheets.
So, I don't know about you - but I'd rather have the math right in a way that is verifiable by any mathematician, and not simply Microsoft programmers.
- Calc uses just one CPU core for... everything, really. Formula calculations, file opening, data manipulation, you name it. Excel uses all cores
This I'd have to ask for some proof on that that would still be the case.
- Charts look awful in Calc no matter how much time you spend on them.
They look just as bad in Excel if you don't know what you're doing.
- Macros: I just recorded a new macro in Calc, and after finishing recording, I saved it, then I wanted to run it. I got an error: "JRE is defective". It's ridiculous, JRE works perfectly on my machine.
And that's just scratching the surface. I shiver at the thought of having to do anything productive under Calc.
But which JRE? Do you have the right one? Again, LO has taken the time to remove the JRE requirements; I'm not sure how far along they are in that effort but it is an on-going effort.
And yes, I use Calc productively on a regular basis.
I'll give you a clue: I bet your accounting, customer relations management and payroll/HR software all run on Windows. Not to mention sales order processing and stock control.
That's where the inertia comes from. That and the fact that Word/Excel probably integrate with all of them quite well too.
Let see...
Accounting: Yes, most all accounting software runs only on Windows; some support Mac too, but that's mostly aimed at home users, not businesses. Still, there are quite a few that are web-based. That said, it'll probably be one of the last groups to make a bit switch, mostly b/c of the extensive testing that has to be done to ensure all the programming is done right when moving to new things.
CRM - well, some of the big ones (e.g. salesforce.com) are Windows-only, but there are just as big ones out there that are fully open source and run on numerous platforms. Problem is the cost to switch from one to another can be rather high, so businesses will generally try not to change them until forced to.
Payroll - this goes back directly to the Accounting software.
HR - this varies. There's a lot of proprietary stuff out there, but probably more custom stuff than anything else. This part of the business is also tending to get very heavily supported by outsourcing to HR support firms which tend to have their own stack and be web-based.
Sales Order Processing - this tends to be custom solutions based, and mostly comes down to POS systems, and other systems that generate data into a big database, then custom functionality to decide the pricing. The databases tend not to be on Windows; and the it varies greatly across industries for the rest of the stack - from highly proprietary custom stuff, to a group of vendors, to partially open source stuff.
Stock Control - you do realize the stock systems run almost universally on Linux, don't you? Of course the rest of the system is rather proprietary; but it's just a matter of using the published APIs to access it; so it doesn't really matter outside of that, and it's something that generally plugs back into the large Accounting Systems, so see Accounting again.
The Word/Excel thing is the bigger hold-up; and that can be won more easily, as numerous places have shown by converting from MS Office to OpenOffice.
Microsoft just seems totally disconnected from the market and their customer base
They may very well be disconnected from their market, but they are probably listening to their customers. Problem is, their customers are not whom they should be - they're primarily corporate IT, the OEMs, and a few others. Not the people that actually use their software. Meanwhile their market is the people that actually use their software...or may be it's just as badly defined (quite likely).
Microsoft Office is probably even more popular than Windows itself.
While I agree there...
Those who use LibreOffice or any other variants, for the most part, come back to Microsoft Office.
Especially when they have to work with complex documents.
You go off to the wrong conclusions thereafter.
The folks that use LibreOffice/OpenOffice either don't want to spend the money for MS Office, or want to be free of Microsoft.
And honestly, when I need to author a complex document I first do it in OpenOffice/LibreOffice; then I export to DOC, and check it in MS Word before distributing it to others. Why? B/c many only have Word, and OpenOffice/LO makes better DOC/DOCX files than MS Word does - and its far easier to keep the formatting consistent. The only reason I check it in MS Word is b/c the conversion screws up the cross-referencing so I have to rebuild the cross-references under MS Word before distributing it.
The only use for MS Office is when your existing documents rely on custom functionality that is dependent on MS Office. Even there, most of it can probably be migrated away other products if you chose to; but most don't want to reinvest in the process of doing so until they're forced to.
Microsoft has more or less relied on Office and upgrades of Windows for years for revenue, and have for the most part kept it as a Windows-only piece.
Those two products support the entire company. The remainder of the company has thus far either barely broken even or lost money. Windows and Office profits have been declining lately with the rise of smart phones, tablets, Android, iOS, and the advent of mobile computing in ways Microsoft cannot fathom.
My transformer came with Polaris and I also own Quickoffice. They're both pretty good for document compatibility, but the interfaces take a little getting used to. That's the main gripe I have. However, with the tablet is docked in the keyboard, it's much more intuitive--like running an office suite on a laptop.
Very much agree, though I wish they would support ODF.
If Google would move on the OpenOffice compatibility they could grab a bunch of Linux Desktop offices as well that use LibreOffice included in lots of distros. And LibreOffice is free for Macs and PCs so google could do a Google Docs plugin.
Very true. I'm still looking for one. Everything that has read/write functionality seems to be all MS Office format oriented. While its nice for getting the occasional docs from others, I primarily use ODF formats. AndrOffice will read 'em, but not write 'em. And LibreOffice isn't quite there yet. First to support ODF will gain a huge market share.
Bluetooth keyboards for the win! I have a Dell iGo Stowaway bluetooth keyboard and it turns my Android Razr Maxx HD phone into a mini-laptop in seconds.
Or a dock like with the ASUS Transformer. Love it.
The blame must lay with the originator, in this case Apple.
From the article: "The lawsuit was filed by Motorola in January last year..."
It's only one page, and does not take long to read.
The title of the action is "Apple v. Motorola", which means that Apple is the one who file the first lawsuit in the action; per protocol it's Plaintfiff v. Defendant. Motorola may have filed what is left, but only after Apple already filed.
And while TFA doesn't specially mention the official name of the suit, everyone tracked by Groklaw that I am aware of has Apple listed first.
I can't see how Motorola's using the lawsuit as a business strategy. They didn't file it, they don't want to be in court, and they have no choice about showing up or about what claims they have to defend against. I'm getting more and more annoyed at judges who get mad at defendants for having the temerity to stand up and defend themselves against the claims the plaintiff has made. If their defenses are meritless, then just rule so and be done with it. If they aren't meritless, then the blame for any complexity lies with the party making the claims, not the defense.
Agreed. A defendant can either choose to do nothing but repel the arguments, or use the existing lawsuit to bring charges of their own in hopes of at least reducing the damages if not removing them entirely and getting paid instead. The blame must lay with the originator, in this case Apple.
Can we stop pretending that Motorola is a separate company. It's Google. Motorola is now just a brand owned by Google. The company calling the shots is Google.
Google may own Motorola Mobility, but as part of that they agreed to having a hands-off management approach. So no, Google is not necessarily calling the shots at Motorola, and most of these lawsuits (as far MS, Apple, and Motorola are concerned) were brought before Google purchased Motorola - or as result of actions before Google purchased Motorola. Motorola had been trying to get them to pay up for nearly a decade or so.
on Windows, I'd always recommend more RAM, even today. I think most of the speed increase from a SSD is because the drive is formatted (ie all the old cruft and fragmentation and other built-up crap suddenly goes with the reformat).
Still, a SSD is a good thing, and easy to do, but as all the programs I run seem to suck up more and more RAM, I'd always try to upgrade that first. Boot times aside, once you get it all running it stays cached in RAM anyway so a SSDs performance for the OS isn't necessarily as great in the real world as hyped.
True. Very true.
We recently upgraded my wife's Vista Ultimate laptop from 2 GB to 4 GB RAM, namely to get around an issue with Windows Update Service eating up memory (>1GB) and causing major performance issues, especially at startup as it allocated all the virtual memory. The Extra 2 GB of RAM did the trick; at least, until Windows Update Service decides to go haywire again.
(It's an old bug in Windows Update Service, tracked it to XP even; but still exists in Win7; where it just corrupts its local database for some reason. Tried making it rebuild the database, and that cut it down by about 1/2, but it was still an issue. Most likely its just a matter of time before it becomes an issue again; at which point she gets a new laptop and Vista gets wiped off for Linux.)
From the first result: "A lot of Linux software will be expecting to find its resource files in standard locations specified at compile-time, such as/usr/share or/usr/lib, which will fail if the software is not installed in the usual location."
To which you can typically specify where to search for libraries on the command-line - by prepending LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the command, or adding it to a shell script. They don't typically hard-code the whole path, just the library name. Your new environment needs to ensure it can find libraries that are not installed in the host OS.
It's not typically done
The very fact that this is not typically done discourages package maintainers from testing this use case, leading to lack of this capability in the application files extracted from the package. Nor is there an easily discoverable tool to create a chroot in which to install a package in one's home directory.
It's not typically done because most people don't need to do it any more. It was a rather common thing prior to the general use of Linux and FLOSS with the *nix community; that's changed mostly because you can typically just build the source yourself and build it to install there, or not install it at all and just run it. (I know not a good answer for non-technies.)
But that doesn't mean the original solution won't continue to work; and deboostrap+schroot rocks. you just have to be careful as a 'root' user in the schroot environment can effectively have root permissions in the host OS as well - especially on anything that is shared between the two environments.
Really? The POSIX standard never included ACLs, so if a *nix system included them early on it was proprietary. I'm certain that VMS had ACLs before UNIX and Windows NT likely did.
UNIX flavors had a lot of proprietary "improvements" to them that were not in POSIX, so yes - that would be what I'd expect to have been the case.
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Steve Ballmer has been in a senior position at MicroSoft for about thirty years now, unlike the typical bungee boss CEOs and board members of various other high-tech corporations such as HP (remember Carly?). During the time he's been working there MS total turnover has been about half a trillion bucks. I'd say US high-tech businesses could use some more chair-throwers like Ballmer and fewer wily super-geniuses like Fiorina.
Yes, Ballmer has been part of the senior management team since the early days of Microsoft. But he hasn't really had the reigns until the last 10 years - after Gates stepped aside as part of the resolution to the Antitrust problems, never to be CEO of anything again as a result. Ballmer still has to deal with Gates as Gates is on the Board of Directors (still Chairman of the Board IIRC).
Interestingly Microsoft is starting to realize, too late, that it has been a "Windows(TM)" company, and not a technology company. The fact that they tried to tie everything to Windows(TM), is the problem. Replace Windows(TM) (with say .. Android or iOS) and all of a sudden, your whole core is gone and all the supporting products are worthless. And that is what is happening. People are realizing that you don't need Windows(TM) to get stuff done. And in fact, you don't need Windows(TM) most of the time.
And since people are realizing this, they are exploring other options.The days of being able to sell Windows 95 for $150 and have people line up around the block have long since been over. The Windows ship has sailed.
There, fixed it for you. They're not "worth less"; they're entirely "worthless".
Honestly i don't even know who to compare Ballmer to as i can't think of a CEO that completely ignored everything they were being told, never before have I seen a company so large just whip out a gun and shoot themselves in the head like that. Everyone said Elop was a plant but look at who he learned from folks, Ballmer could be the subject of textbooks dedicated to showing how NOT to run a successful company. When he took over from Gates they were on top of the world, had a monopoly and money to burn, but under Ballmer it became a "lost decade" because he simply didn't know what to do with the company.
Ballmer and Elop are probably the only two worth comparing, and you're right - Elop probably learned a lot from Ballmer. Yet it's Elop that got the term "Elop Effect" named after him for what he did to Nokia, and who will certainly go down in the text books for it. Ballmer, though, probably won't be far behind with "Lost Decade", but it's not as catchy, nor has what he done been as dramatic to the company as Elop was with Nokia - and there are a lot of other things that could be linked to the demise of Microsoft as well - Ballmer has only been on (albeit large) factor in the equation.
Removing Ballmer won't be the whole solution for Microsoft. You need to remove numerous layers of management at the company - getting rid of everyone that has grown up there under Ballmer and Gates, everyone that has that same mentality of having "1 Microsoft Way" for the world of software. Then and only then does Microsoft stand a chance of reviving itself to any degree...
In the mean time they'll continue to ride out their profits from Windows and Office as the two diminish into oblivion over the next decade.
This is more of the AGW bullshit, look at recent historical record, Sandy wasn't unusual, the MSM response was as the AGW meme die, much to their discomfort!
MFG, omb
While I agree the AGW folks will say that the "recent historical record" was just a build up as predicted by AGW...again complete BS as we just don't have the requisite information to even confirm/deny it one way or another; but most likely it's now AGW, just a natural cycle.
It does. You can't take GPL sources and integrate them into a closed source product.
While generally true, you can if it is for internal use only b/c then you are not distributing.
When I was young we did not call companies with actual products patent trolls.
If you try to extort money on things you had no hand in creation of, then you are a troll. Regardless of whether you sell other products.
Microsoft loses nothing because they are collecting for these patents. Likely they are trying to collect enough that even if they lose them in court, their court costs are covered by the patent fees. Meanwhile they have effectively sown a cloud of trouble over Android even though they (microsoft) don't even have anything competitive in this market.
Tl;dr -- it galls me, the chutzpah of these assholes!
That depends. Like with the agreements for all the rest, it doesn't mention how much is paid or to whom; and like the rest, only Microsoft put out a press release. For all we know, Microsoft could actually be paying money to HonHai, Foxconn's parent company, instead of the other way around.
First off, the poster above me mentioned OpenOffice. I'm using 3.3 which IIRC is the most recent OO version.
FYI - OO is now controlled by Apache and called Apache OpenOffice. AOO has released AOO 3.4. LO has released more updates since 3.3 as well. So no, you are not using the latest version of OO.
So what ends up happening: mostt busienss apps moved to HTML, core accounting (and other, Windows only niche) package run via centrally managed/backed up/stored VDI desktop, and deployed over the network to the accountants who need it to whatever device they happen to be working on via PCoIP.
This is the way we're going due to pressure from upper management to want to BYOD (MD is a mac fan, as are the majority of upper management).
Even without BYOD, it's the way things have been going for a while. It just makes BYOD easier.
FYI - you do realize you quoted an old version of OO, not the current version.
Also, while theoretically you shouldn' t have to care about the version of the JRE, reality is that you do. That's just the nature of the JRE.
Despite management's fondness for excel spreadsheets, those can just as easily be authored with Open Office.
I'm sorry, no, what you're saying is just stupid. As an Excel power user (well, a bit more than that) I have worked with both Calc and Excel, and Calc is way behind in all areas. Here's a small list of Calc 3.3 versus Excel 2007 issues:
I've had to work in both as well, and you're still getting it wrong.
- Slow to start;
Well, I'll give you that one. AOO and LibreOffice are making progress there though as they refactor the code and remove the JRE requirement.
- Steals focus when starting;
I don't see that any more with LibreOffice; though I see it quite often with Windows and other applications when I have to deal with Windows, which is increasingly rare.
- Eats more RAM (75 MB post-start, empty, versus 25 MB post-start, empty, for Excel);
OO could sometimes, but Excel/Word can eat far more memory a lot quicker.
- Is a lot slower when opening large spreadsheets. I have a 96 MB spreadsheet and Excel opens it in 32 seconds on my laptop. Calc took... forever, really. I mean it never managed to open it Got stuck at about 15% and remained there forever. Same file, same laptop.
Now convert that spreadsheet to ODS and look the difference in the file size. I've had quite a few Word and Excel files that were many megabytes (>10) in size, only to save them as ODTs and ODSs and have them be a couple megabyte at best (- VBA macros obviously don't work in Calc;
Calc implements Basic, not VBA; by default Calc won't load the VBA code, but it will help you convert it to Basic. It also offers you numerous other options, like Python. And use of VBA has nearly always meant lock-in to MS Office; that is, until OO added functionality to help convert away from it...
- Many complex formulas don't work in Calc. Furthermore, some formulas mess up, resulting in wrong data for some files. VERY dangerous for a business.
What I would be more concerned about is the errors in the functions that Excel has - which were well documented for the OOXML effort. There are many mathematical errors in Excel that simply shouldn't be there - and that's dangerous to the business. Calc has modes to support those sames errors, but they also enable you to have the write math in your spreadsheets.
So, I don't know about you - but I'd rather have the math right in a way that is verifiable by any mathematician, and not simply Microsoft programmers.
- Calc uses just one CPU core for... everything, really. Formula calculations, file opening, data manipulation, you name it. Excel uses all cores
This I'd have to ask for some proof on that that would still be the case.
- Charts look awful in Calc no matter how much time you spend on them.
They look just as bad in Excel if you don't know what you're doing.
- Macros: I just recorded a new macro in Calc, and after finishing recording, I saved it, then I wanted to run it. I got an error: "JRE is defective". It's ridiculous, JRE works perfectly on my machine.
And that's just scratching the surface. I shiver at the thought of having to do anything productive under Calc.
But which JRE? Do you have the right one? Again, LO has taken the time to remove the JRE requirements; I'm not sure how far along they are in that effort but it is an on-going effort.
And yes, I use Calc productively on a regular basis.
I'll give you a clue: I bet your accounting, customer relations management and payroll/HR software all run on Windows. Not to mention sales order processing and stock control.
That's where the inertia comes from. That and the fact that Word/Excel probably integrate with all of them quite well too.
Let see... Accounting: Yes, most all accounting software runs only on Windows; some support Mac too, but that's mostly aimed at home users, not businesses. Still, there are quite a few that are web-based. That said, it'll probably be one of the last groups to make a bit switch, mostly b/c of the extensive testing that has to be done to ensure all the programming is done right when moving to new things.
CRM - well, some of the big ones (e.g. salesforce.com) are Windows-only, but there are just as big ones out there that are fully open source and run on numerous platforms. Problem is the cost to switch from one to another can be rather high, so businesses will generally try not to change them until forced to.
Payroll - this goes back directly to the Accounting software.
HR - this varies. There's a lot of proprietary stuff out there, but probably more custom stuff than anything else. This part of the business is also tending to get very heavily supported by outsourcing to HR support firms which tend to have their own stack and be web-based.
Sales Order Processing - this tends to be custom solutions based, and mostly comes down to POS systems, and other systems that generate data into a big database, then custom functionality to decide the pricing. The databases tend not to be on Windows; and the it varies greatly across industries for the rest of the stack - from highly proprietary custom stuff, to a group of vendors, to partially open source stuff.
Stock Control - you do realize the stock systems run almost universally on Linux, don't you? Of course the rest of the system is rather proprietary; but it's just a matter of using the published APIs to access it; so it doesn't really matter outside of that, and it's something that generally plugs back into the large Accounting Systems, so see Accounting again.
The Word/Excel thing is the bigger hold-up; and that can be won more easily, as numerous places have shown by converting from MS Office to OpenOffice.
Why bother when it's all over Geocities and Angelfire too?
I'd check GeoCities but it's been gone for several years now, sunk beneath the tide of Yahoo!.
Microsoft just seems totally disconnected from the market and their customer base
They may very well be disconnected from their market, but they are probably listening to their customers. Problem is, their customers are not whom they should be - they're primarily corporate IT, the OEMs, and a few others. Not the people that actually use their software. Meanwhile their market is the people that actually use their software...or may be it's just as badly defined (quite likely).
Microsoft Office is probably even more popular than Windows itself.
While I agree there...
Those who use LibreOffice or any other variants, for the most part, come back to Microsoft Office. Especially when they have to work with complex documents.
You go off to the wrong conclusions thereafter.
The folks that use LibreOffice/OpenOffice either don't want to spend the money for MS Office, or want to be free of Microsoft.
And honestly, when I need to author a complex document I first do it in OpenOffice/LibreOffice; then I export to DOC, and check it in MS Word before distributing it to others. Why? B/c many only have Word, and OpenOffice/LO makes better DOC/DOCX files than MS Word does - and its far easier to keep the formatting consistent. The only reason I check it in MS Word is b/c the conversion screws up the cross-referencing so I have to rebuild the cross-references under MS Word before distributing it.
The only use for MS Office is when your existing documents rely on custom functionality that is dependent on MS Office. Even there, most of it can probably be migrated away other products if you chose to; but most don't want to reinvest in the process of doing so until they're forced to.
Microsoft has more or less relied on Office and upgrades of Windows for years for revenue, and have for the most part kept it as a Windows-only piece.
Those two products support the entire company. The remainder of the company has thus far either barely broken even or lost money. Windows and Office profits have been declining lately with the rise of smart phones, tablets, Android, iOS, and the advent of mobile computing in ways Microsoft cannot fathom.
My transformer came with Polaris and I also own Quickoffice. They're both pretty good for document compatibility, but the interfaces take a little getting used to. That's the main gripe I have. However, with the tablet is docked in the keyboard, it's much more intuitive--like running an office suite on a laptop.
Very much agree, though I wish they would support ODF.
If Google would move on the OpenOffice compatibility they could grab a bunch of Linux Desktop offices as well that use LibreOffice included in lots of distros. And LibreOffice is free for Macs and PCs so google could do a Google Docs plugin.
Very true. I'm still looking for one. Everything that has read/write functionality seems to be all MS Office format oriented. While its nice for getting the occasional docs from others, I primarily use ODF formats. AndrOffice will read 'em, but not write 'em. And LibreOffice isn't quite there yet. First to support ODF will gain a huge market share.
Bluetooth keyboards for the win! I have a Dell iGo Stowaway bluetooth keyboard and it turns my Android Razr Maxx HD phone into a mini-laptop in seconds.
Or a dock like with the ASUS Transformer. Love it.
The blame must lay with the originator, in this case Apple.
From the article: "The lawsuit was filed by Motorola in January last year..."
It's only one page, and does not take long to read.
The title of the action is "Apple v. Motorola", which means that Apple is the one who file the first lawsuit in the action; per protocol it's Plaintfiff v. Defendant. Motorola may have filed what is left, but only after Apple already filed.
And while TFA doesn't specially mention the official name of the suit, everyone tracked by Groklaw that I am aware of has Apple listed first.
I can't see how Motorola's using the lawsuit as a business strategy. They didn't file it, they don't want to be in court, and they have no choice about showing up or about what claims they have to defend against. I'm getting more and more annoyed at judges who get mad at defendants for having the temerity to stand up and defend themselves against the claims the plaintiff has made. If their defenses are meritless, then just rule so and be done with it. If they aren't meritless, then the blame for any complexity lies with the party making the claims, not the defense.
Agreed. A defendant can either choose to do nothing but repel the arguments, or use the existing lawsuit to bring charges of their own in hopes of at least reducing the damages if not removing them entirely and getting paid instead. The blame must lay with the originator, in this case Apple.
Can we stop pretending that Motorola is a separate company. It's Google. Motorola is now just a brand owned by Google. The company calling the shots is Google.
Google may own Motorola Mobility, but as part of that they agreed to having a hands-off management approach. So no, Google is not necessarily calling the shots at Motorola, and most of these lawsuits (as far MS, Apple, and Motorola are concerned) were brought before Google purchased Motorola - or as result of actions before Google purchased Motorola. Motorola had been trying to get them to pay up for nearly a decade or so.
on Windows, I'd always recommend more RAM, even today. I think most of the speed increase from a SSD is because the drive is formatted (ie all the old cruft and fragmentation and other built-up crap suddenly goes with the reformat).
Still, a SSD is a good thing, and easy to do, but as all the programs I run seem to suck up more and more RAM, I'd always try to upgrade that first. Boot times aside, once you get it all running it stays cached in RAM anyway so a SSDs performance for the OS isn't necessarily as great in the real world as hyped.
True. Very true.
We recently upgraded my wife's Vista Ultimate laptop from 2 GB to 4 GB RAM, namely to get around an issue with Windows Update Service eating up memory (>1GB) and causing major performance issues, especially at startup as it allocated all the virtual memory. The Extra 2 GB of RAM did the trick; at least, until Windows Update Service decides to go haywire again.
(It's an old bug in Windows Update Service, tracked it to XP even; but still exists in Win7; where it just corrupts its local database for some reason. Tried making it rebuild the database, and that cut it down by about 1/2, but it was still an issue. Most likely its just a matter of time before it becomes an issue again; at which point she gets a new laptop and Vista gets wiped off for Linux.)
As a simple google search will show you
From the first result: "A lot of Linux software will be expecting to find its resource files in standard locations specified at compile-time, such as /usr/share or /usr/lib, which will fail if the software is not installed in the usual location."
To which you can typically specify where to search for libraries on the command-line - by prepending LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the command, or adding it to a shell script. They don't typically hard-code the whole path, just the library name. Your new environment needs to ensure it can find libraries that are not installed in the host OS.
It's not typically done
The very fact that this is not typically done discourages package maintainers from testing this use case, leading to lack of this capability in the application files extracted from the package. Nor is there an easily discoverable tool to create a chroot in which to install a package in one's home directory.
It's not typically done because most people don't need to do it any more. It was a rather common thing prior to the general use of Linux and FLOSS with the *nix community; that's changed mostly because you can typically just build the source yourself and build it to install there, or not install it at all and just run it. (I know not a good answer for non-technies.)
But that doesn't mean the original solution won't continue to work; and deboostrap+schroot rocks. you just have to be careful as a 'root' user in the schroot environment can effectively have root permissions in the host OS as well - especially on anything that is shared between the two environments.
Really? The POSIX standard never included ACLs, so if a *nix system included them early on it was proprietary. I'm certain that VMS had ACLs before UNIX and Windows NT likely did.
UNIX flavors had a lot of proprietary "improvements" to them that were not in POSIX, so yes - that would be what I'd expect to have been the case.