It costs about AUD$0.40 in eaches something less than 30 US cents), you can be pretty sure it'll run on whatever they've got at home, there are no macro viruses and no signing away of your firstborn in blood before you start, nor mortgaging of the house if you miscount users, machines or CPUs.
Try that with MS-Office.
The other question is: what training?
I have one customer who uses MS-Office extensively (he calls his operating system "Word"), and he didn't notice any difference in OpenOffice except that the templates weren't there. In fact, since the machine had an empty document open full-screen when he walked up to it, he didn't even realise it wasn't MS-Word on MS-Windows.
There are fundamental differences between the packages, but 90% of your users will never stumble over them.
As a bonus, the suite also deals with the MS-Office non-standards pretty well (lots of people are using it today simply because it was able to recover corrupted MS-Office documents for them), and writes files in several other standard formats (PDF, HTML without the crap, PNG, yadda yadda).
[X] Remote user whose link is repeatedly trashed by massive Office Assistant animation updates [_] MS-Word operator who's corrupted the one extant copy of a large and vital document
Actually, if you read the articles two links down, you'll find that they're moving from incompetent consultants to competent consultants. One or the other could be using either of Linux or MS-Windows. IRL, most of the incompetents are MCSE (Moron Consultant, Sues Everyone / Must Consult Search Engine / Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert) and so are a large but dwindling number of the competents.
Interestingly enough, one of the case studies says that the new consultant fixed the customer's reliability woes instantly by moving to a different Linux-based hosting service, then went on to up-sell them an expensive Microsoft solution, about which the PHB "feels better" because it's backed by a giant convicted monopolist - although I'm sure those weren't his exact words.
If that's the best Microsoft can do in their naked propaganda, they really must be clutching at straws.
They're righ, but. FOSS is about not having a company which can be bought, railroaded or driven off a cliff. FOSS is about being able to take it as-is or re-work it to suit. FOSS is about being able to play mix-n-match with your software components (e.g. I can still use them same email client, browser and office suite under NetBSD on my PowerPC as I did under XP on my x86).
Yes, I realise that these choices are based on freedom, but most (to pick an example out of a hat) FireFox users couldn't care less whether the $0 browser they're leeching was free-as-in-speech or not. They only care that they can choose an alternative browser without any red tape or "meter money".
They're not even aware that the one follows the other, let alone worried about it, and "Open Source" is one of those black-box words like "nucular physics" that get used for mentally tagging certain items without a shred of understanding (comma, pronounciation or spelling). However, this congonsentic elite represent a wedge that FOSS is driving into a closed market, which will make a bit more room in related markets for other FOSS, and ultimately other competitors, closed or not.
Hmm. I have a customer whose machine lasts about 43 minutes at a time under MS-Windows XP but runs flawlessly under Mandrake Linux 10.0 (he dual-boots, Mdk-Linux for real work and MS-Windows for MS-centric stuff). Does that count towards your theory? (-:
are there other limiting factors in the amount of power that is useable in such circumstances?
At a certain velocity dependent upon the shape, the hull changes from slicing through the water more towards trying to push against it, once you cross this knee, you need to add bucketloads of power for a very small improvement (basically, until you get your aquatic beastie to plane).
Modulo propellor cavitation, hull collapse and other stuff which becomes dominant at those power levels, it would be quite a joy to see an ocean liner scudding friskily from wavetop to wavetop.
Who cares if the commission's view is shared by the OSS crew.
I do. It is.
If Microsoft release accurate documentation, it will both handicap their efforts to lock people out and dilute their ability to turn everything they touch into an "IP" black hole.
That latter is kind of a Midas touch, short term spectacular but sooner or later everything's turned to pyrites and then Midas starves in a cold hard house full of statues.
This attitude toward full and accurate publication is true for some things already; but when Shorthorn gets its WinFS and a few more bells and whistles the absence of documentation would be crippling for any competitors hoping to get a toehold in markets currently 0wn3rz3d by Bill "your computer is My Computer" Gates - if, by that time, there still are any. The Linux revolution appears to be snowballing at an unprecedented rate right now.
...of those rebuttals, there's quite a few here. Sad, really, that such an old (seldom-updated) site can still so effectively rebut much of t.o's intricate web of self-deception.
The only reason our friend would have trouble addressing those arguments would be if he was undereducated in the sciences himself.
Where, unfortunately, "undereducated" means we think anything which breaches our a priori assumptions about the nature of the universe is dumb.
By that standard, most people, most scientists are "undereducated". For the longest time geology avoided anything that smelled of catastrophism, paleontology avoided anything that smelled of a flood, and astronomy avoided anything that smelled of structure.
For good scientific reasons? Not a bit of it. Because they were afraid of being labelled as one of the enemy, those insidious creationists, and ostracised like J Harlan Bretz was for 40 years.
A very highly qualified scientists have been brave enough to state outright that they are not impartial, like Richard Lewontin and his famous "cannot let a Divine Foot in the door" statement, but they are the exception.
The result in each of the above cases was that the science in question was held back by decades.
Meanwhile, one D Russell Humphreys had made some fairly specific predictions (in 1984) about the magnetic fields Voyager would find in the outer planets, which turned out to be both bang on the money and well wide of any other expectations when those fields were measured two years after publication. One of the more spectacular demonstrations that this "alien" and "impossible" perspective has predictive, scientific merit.
Anyone wondering why more such papers don't appear in the mainstream scientific press need only turn to the furor which exploded when the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washingtonpublished a carefully peer-reviewed paper from well-known Intelligent Design advocate, Stephen C. Meyer. The then-editor, Dr. Richard M. v. Sternberg (a double PhD with many published articles himself), goes to great lengths on his website to explain that every positive scientific and journalistic step of the process was followed for the paper and had been independently verified and approved by highly qualified scientists before publication.
It is quite clear that the paper is being criticised on political/philosophical grounds, not because of any scientific merit or demerit.
The Origins show is based on philosophy, not on science. This is well and good except that it is presented as being purely based on science.
I need hardly point out that such misrepresentation is in itself unscientific, a meta-flaw under which to group all of the unscientificteleological statements about features "appearing" (ex nihilo, apparently) and organisms having "figured out" and "striving" to achieve "goals" without any guiding hand. Nevertheless, it will go ahead, and millions of viewers will be taught that random numbers have hidden intelligence and/or miracle-working ability which repeatedly transcends mere statistics, and introduced once more to a capricious goddess who goes by the name of Nature - all the while suffering the constantly asserted doublethink mantra that there is no supernature.
Meanwhile, back at Reasons, Hugh has had the more obvious inconsistencies and contradictions among his theories publicly pointed out to him
you get Jeff's sense of humour, on top of a well-integrated and up-to-date GNOME suite. I can't imagine an interview with Mr Waugh that wasn't interesting in at least one sense of the word.
I kid you not, some companies really do shuffle stuff around the office using "all your content are belong to us" Messenger, not even internal email. Yes, it is dumb. Yes, the traffic bills are indeed horrendous (or were, they upgraded their DSL link to "unlimited", solely because of this, but their traffic excesses over a year would have more than paid for an internal email server and a file server, including hardware, either of which could have profitably run an internal P2P network for essentially zero effort). Yes, they do send sensitive info that way, including "client privilege" stuff. Yes, they have had it explained. No, they didn't believe me, I think because as far as they know it has never yet bitten them on the ass.
...missed or almost missed practically every single major turn of the computer industry, such as the Internet? Has anyone told you that Chicago (MS-Windows-95) almost shipped without a web browser because of that? Have you ever read "The Road Behind^WAhead"? Pile of money? Check. Vision...? Anyone...?
If anyone from Microsoft did such a thing, it would be Paul Allen - who IPOF is funding Bert Rutan - but I think he'd require more signs of life on Mars before he cut a cheque for it, since he seems to be an evangelist for materialism.
Slashdot Mirror
So hand them a CD.
It costs about AUD$0.40 in eaches something less than 30 US cents), you can be pretty sure it'll run on whatever they've got at home, there are no macro viruses and no signing away of your firstborn in blood before you start, nor mortgaging of the house if you miscount users, machines or CPUs.
Try that with MS-Office.
The other question is: what training?
I have one customer who uses MS-Office extensively (he calls his operating system "Word"), and he didn't notice any difference in OpenOffice except that the templates weren't there. In fact, since the machine had an empty document open full-screen when he walked up to it, he didn't even realise it wasn't MS-Word on MS-Windows.
There are fundamental differences between the packages, but 90% of your users will never stumble over them.
Have a warm, relaxing bath and see if he twitching stops.
OpenOffice, on the other hand, is a real standard being adhered to by an ever-increasing number of tools.
As a bonus, the suite also deals with the MS-Office non-standards pretty well (lots of people are using it today simply because it was able to recover corrupted MS-Office documents for them), and writes files in several other standard formats (PDF, HTML without the crap, PNG, yadda yadda).
DosBox: DOS sans CtrlAltDel, plus multiple instances and remote access.
...have trouble distinguishing between menu and modifier keys. That's why MS-Windows is case-blind.
Interestingly enough, one of the case studies says that the new consultant fixed the customer's reliability woes instantly by moving to a different Linux-based hosting service, then went on to up-sell them an expensive Microsoft solution, about which the PHB "feels better" because it's backed by a giant convicted monopolist - although I'm sure those weren't his exact words.
If that's the best Microsoft can do in their naked propaganda, they really must be clutching at straws.
Yes, I realise that these choices are based on freedom, but most (to pick an example out of a hat) FireFox users couldn't care less whether the $0 browser they're leeching was free-as-in-speech or not. They only care that they can choose an alternative browser without any red tape or "meter money".
They're not even aware that the one follows the other, let alone worried about it, and "Open Source" is one of those black-box words like "nucular physics" that get used for mentally tagging certain items without a shred of understanding (comma, pronounciation or spelling). However, this congonsentic elite represent a wedge that FOSS is driving into a closed market, which will make a bit more room in related markets for other FOSS, and ultimately other competitors, closed or not.
Hmm. I have a customer whose machine lasts about 43 minutes at a time under MS-Windows XP but runs flawlessly under Mandrake Linux 10.0 (he dual-boots, Mdk-Linux for real work and MS-Windows for MS-centric stuff). Does that count towards your theory? (-:
Modulo propellor cavitation, hull collapse and other stuff which becomes dominant at those power levels, it would be quite a joy to see an ocean liner scudding friskily from wavetop to wavetop.
WayBack has it.
I've also mirrored the source Just In Case (that's an ADSL link, you'd be better off downloading it directly from WayBack).
If Microsoft release accurate documentation, it will both handicap their efforts to lock people out and dilute their ability to turn everything they touch into an "IP" black hole.
That latter is kind of a Midas touch, short term spectacular but sooner or later everything's turned to pyrites and then Midas starves in a cold hard house full of statues.
This attitude toward full and accurate publication is true for some things already; but when Shorthorn gets its WinFS and a few more bells and whistles the absence of documentation would be crippling for any competitors hoping to get a toehold in markets currently 0wn3rz3d by Bill "your computer is My Computer" Gates - if, by that time, there still are any. The Linux revolution appears to be snowballing at an unprecedented rate right now.
...of those rebuttals, there's quite a few here. Sad, really, that such an old (seldom-updated) site can still so effectively rebut much of t.o's intricate web of self-deception.
Where, unfortunately, "undereducated" means we think anything which breaches our a priori assumptions about the nature of the universe is dumb.
By that standard, most people, most scientists are "undereducated". For the longest time geology avoided anything that smelled of catastrophism, paleontology avoided anything that smelled of a flood, and astronomy avoided anything that smelled of structure.
For good scientific reasons? Not a bit of it. Because they were afraid of being labelled as one of the enemy, those insidious creationists, and ostracised like J Harlan Bretz was for 40 years.
A very highly qualified scientists have been brave enough to state outright that they are not impartial, like Richard Lewontin and his famous "cannot let a Divine Foot in the door" statement, but they are the exception.
The result in each of the above cases was that the science in question was held back by decades.
Meanwhile, one D Russell Humphreys had made some fairly specific predictions (in 1984) about the magnetic fields Voyager would find in the outer planets, which turned out to be both bang on the money and well wide of any other expectations when those fields were measured two years after publication. One of the more spectacular demonstrations that this "alien" and "impossible" perspective has predictive, scientific merit.
Anyone wondering why more such papers don't appear in the mainstream scientific press need only turn to the furor which exploded when the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington published a carefully peer-reviewed paper from well-known Intelligent Design advocate, Stephen C. Meyer. The then-editor, Dr. Richard M. v. Sternberg (a double PhD with many published articles himself), goes to great lengths on his website to explain that every positive scientific and journalistic step of the process was followed for the paper and had been independently verified and approved by highly qualified scientists before publication.
It is quite clear that the paper is being criticised on political/philosophical grounds, not because of any scientific merit or demerit.
The Origins show is based on philosophy, not on science. This is well and good except that it is presented as being purely based on science.
I need hardly point out that such misrepresentation is in itself unscientific, a meta-flaw under which to group all of the unscientific teleological statements about features "appearing" (ex nihilo, apparently) and organisms having "figured out" and "striving" to achieve "goals" without any guiding hand. Nevertheless, it will go ahead, and millions of viewers will be taught that random numbers have hidden intelligence and/or miracle-working ability which repeatedly transcends mere statistics, and introduced once more to a capricious goddess who goes by the name of Nature - all the while suffering the constantly asserted doublethink mantra that there is no supernature.
Meanwhile, back at Reasons , Hugh has had the more obvious inconsistencies and contradictions among his theories publicly pointed out to him
...buy a home theatre, the amortised cost of which the delerious^Wmysterious SpecialAgentXXX evidently hasn't factored in.
Backmasking in names! That's eerie!
...that argument was dying?
Yes, deem <G/D/R> included.
..."show me how you got your right to complain". As in, show me your receipt, whether in Rupees, Francs or Man-Hours.
you get Jeff's sense of humour, on top of a well-integrated and up-to-date GNOME suite. I can't imagine an interview with Mr Waugh that wasn't interesting in at least one sense of the word.
What, no SlashDotter has posted this before? Try a different OS, which means different drivers. Radical, but it'd probably work.
I kid you not, some companies really do shuffle stuff around the office using "all your content are belong to us" Messenger, not even internal email. Yes, it is dumb. Yes, the traffic bills are indeed horrendous (or were, they upgraded their DSL link to "unlimited", solely because of this, but their traffic excesses over a year would have more than paid for an internal email server and a file server, including hardware, either of which could have profitably run an internal P2P network for essentially zero effort). Yes, they do send sensitive info that way, including "client privilege" stuff. Yes, they have had it explained. No, they didn't believe me, I think because as far as they know it has never yet bitten them on the ass.
...I'm sure the competitive spirit will result in an Oracle compatibility model for PostgreSQL as well.
...a kind of open source for space hardware?
...missed or almost missed practically every single major turn of the computer industry, such as the Internet? Has anyone told you that Chicago (MS-Windows-95) almost shipped without a web browser because of that? Have you ever read "The Road Behind^WAhead"? Pile of money? Check. Vision...? Anyone...?
If anyone from Microsoft did such a thing, it would be Paul Allen - who IPOF is funding Bert Rutan - but I think he'd require more signs of life on Mars before he cut a cheque for it, since he seems to be an evangelist for materialism.