Why not try AbiWord? I am not a big time Office user, and the reviewer doesn't seem like one either. I prefer AbiWords interface to Open Office, and I don't miss the "professional" features of Word - hell, I don't even use tables 90% of the time.
Also, I couldn't get my mom to switch to OOo - however, she loves AbiWord!
Bottom line is, if you're just typing in a lot of stuff, basic documents, use AbiWord. If you need a complete suite, then OOo is good.
Re:Ahh.. jumping puzzles...
on
A Gamer's Manifesto
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Anybody play Thief? Harder difficulty actually makes the guards/Hammerites/bad guys more sensitive to where you are, more responsive to your noises...bloody great game!
Ars: You mention mistakes made by Microsoft. What do you feel are mistakes that Mozilla has made in the past?
There was a fundamental mistake made by Netscape management, twice, which cost us a release at the most inopportune time. I think we can attribute a great deal of our market share loss to this mistake that was pretty much based completely on lies from one executive, who has since left the company (and left very rich) and who was an impediment to everything that we did. He was an awful person, and it is completely on him that we missed a release. We had a "Netscape 5" that was within weeks of being ready to go, and this person said that we needed to ship something based on Gecko within 6 months instead. Every single engineer in the company told management "No, it will be two years at least before we ship something based on Gecko." Management agreed with the engineers in order to get 5.0 out.a
Three months later they came back and said "We've changed our mind, this other executive has convinced us, except now instead of six months, you need to do it in three months." Well, you can't put 50 pounds of [crap] in a ten pound bag, it took two years. And we didn't get out a 5.0, and that cost of us everything, it was the biggest mistake ever, and I put it all on the feet of this one individual, whom I will not name.
I bought the wireless version a couple of months ago. Changing batteries is a pain, but two sets of el-cheapo rechargeables go for about two weeks each, so it's less of a problem. I personally don't like the clutter of the keyboards in the review (which, as an aside, sucked) and am quite happy with the six extra ones here - media/volume/media/fav/email/www - and all work with xkeybinds as well.
However, my biggest complaint is something the review noted too, the lack of effective middle-button support. I use the internet a lot - design for it for b&b and FF and Opera both have really nice shortcuts which take advantage of the middle-button. I'm not sure why it's so hard to get it to work and yes, I have looked through the mouse preferences...no help there.
Other than that - it's just nice not to have cables going across the table. Other clutter now takes their place!
What is up with the Herald Tribune website? Increase the text size in Firefox, it looks like crap. Turn off style-sheets to be able to read more easily - BANG - three or four copies of the article.
Somebody needs to hire a web-designer who wasn't trained on Frontpage.
Also - a minor point, the $47 billion that MS apparently has, is not cash under the pillow. What it does have is a share value (not sure of terminology) of $47 billion.
Once shareholders see that shrinking - and believe me, they're watching, they're going to sell, sell, sell. The downward spiral. Now this does not give them 21.7 years (as some other bright spark commented) to comply with the regulation.
Until it stops breaking every interface rule in the book, uses something other than orange and green as it's default look, I'm not going to download a 12 mb file for fun.
While I understand that this is not targeted at the same demographic that downloads Firefox, couldn't they have included something to add some value for us?
If they had packaged in some FF extensions, at least a choice of themes...then maybe.
See the point which is getting lost here, among the euphoria of Firefox getting to 50 mil and Opera swimming across the stormy ocean and all, is one which was brought up a long time ago ~ 2001/2002, is this.
Microsofts strategy is not innovation. It never has been.
What it has been doing, is to incorporate things in so that for 70 - 80 % of the people, things work fairly ok.
A friend of mine has been using XP for some time, and when I tried to convert him over to 10.3, he was like - why should I? Luna (the XP theme) is good enough for me.
I think this is the critical statement. Good enough. As soon as IE has few enough security holes that Microsoft Anti-Spyware can catch everything that sneaks through, what need has Joe User for Firefox?
Seriously. Think about it. On my XP box, I use ZoneAlarm. There is now a one-way firewall with SP2. I use Ad-Aware and Spybot, along with HijackThis. There is a beta-version of MS anti-Spyware available.
I also use something called Anti-Vir. Mostly because NAV was such a piece of bloatware. Now with rumours that there will be a MS branded antivirus program, tell me, which Joe User is going to keep a multitude of programs, each of which need to be updated seperately, instead of some Microsoft Security Program, which keeps 80-90% of all the Bad Stuff(tm) off their computer?
In one way, this is probably a good thing. It frees up resources which were previously going to fix security holes to develop cool new features. However, I am, personally a little concerned about the dominance of one company over so many diverse parts of the user-experience.
This is the same guy featured on the DDOS story a while ago. What's interesting is that he is a philosophy graduate, rather than a CS student, and also that he built this map up in a day or two...
Why the hell can't you post a mirrordot link? Ben's site is regularly slashdotted - he has previously told us not to do this to him. Now stop being click happy and use this
The importance of this standard cannot be underestimated.
Most people are approaching this from the wrong PoV.
Once there is a standard in place, then implementation occurs. And it's definitely likely to appear - first in Open Office, then maybe spreading - I can see Linux using it as the default document standard.
Microsoft will eventually have to support it - if it reaches 10% of the market, then you are going to start getting complaints from customers. Even if it only implements a read-only function, that's good enough.
I face a major productivity sapper, when I send off a.sxw to someone who can't open it. I have to open, export to.doc, check that it displays ok, and then resend. If I can happily compose in whatever editor I want, and press send without having to bother about whether a client will be able to read or not - so much the better.
As an aside, the Indian government is slowly adopting Open Office - mainly because these can be easily translated into the local language. Useful, especially in rural areas and the smaller towns. The government itself released a Tamil version of Open Office, Firefox and a bunch of other stuff. Check out their efforts here.
An absolutely, positively, true replacement for Microsoft Office now finally does exist!
Luxuriousity Office Professional can be installed in single or multiuser configurations.
Luxuriousity Office Professional includes an Application Programming Interface (API) that enables you to control Luxuriousity Office Professional components by using various programming languages. A Development Kit is available for the new programming interface.
We are a licensed Community distributor. Luxuriousity Office Professional is fully licensed so you have full usage rights. In addition,
you also have access to the complete source code and the right to modify the program and re-compile a new version
your own specifications! Try asking Microsoft for that with their office program!
So yeah, apart from the language which looks like the boss's 13 year old daughter wrote it, I think it's following the GPL. It also mentions that it's been written by Sun.
I guess this is why Trillian updated the MSN plugin today. Seriously, I don't know why more people don't switch to either Trillian or Gaim.
Reasons? I would be interested in hearing why. I don't use Gaim much, but I use Trillian everyday.
There is no way I'm going to use MSN Messenger after that. So many more useful functions - default logging of chat...however I'm not sure about the security aspects, and how it compares with Redmonds offering.
"source of clean drinking water, democratic governments instead of tinpot dictators and warlords, education on how to grow crops instead of remaining nomadic herders, better housing, and public schools"
However, I volunteer almost fulltime in a third-world country, with a developmental organisation, premised upon the fact that computers ARE what people need.
I think if you're thinking of the computer as a object to play solitaire and surf pr0n, then it's definitely not on the top of the third-worlds' DEVELOPMENTAL needs. We can argue relative morality later, NOT on/.
However, suppose you gave them a computer which provided information on how to make the land more productive? How about if it gave a list of which fertilisers and pesticides would be best for certain varieties of crops? How about if it gave you prices for crops, seeds and fertilisers at various different markets?
This is what we are trying to do. This is what I believe can work. I may be proved wrong, but our experiments in about twenty-four villages or so are thriving happily.
As I have mentioned earlier, the point of these stories is often lost on slashdot. I'm not complaining, just saying so.
The truth is that in "third world" countries, bare bones PCs that run your choice of Windows or Linux simply don't cost a hell of a lot more than $100, and often less.
Saeed, where do you live? I live in India, I volunteer at Oxfam in their appropriate technology department, and we have been unable to get boxes - el cheepo, second-hand K6-2s for less than USD 200, with a decent monitor and with a customised, translated version of Linux (free). I would really be interested in the boxes you're talking about, so please do get back to me. Of course, I'm assuming that you're commenting in good faith, not as the nasty troll thing that I keep hearing about!
The solution that eventually occured was that IBM donated a number of G40e laptops (thank you guys!) so we were able to put low-power, fancy computers out in the field.
Now the crux of the issue to me, and this is something which I've brought up earlier, so bear with me, is the question, Now What?
I've got a 2.8 gig 802.11g machine with 512 MB of RAM sitting here, doing what?
The hard part is making it useful. Not many people out in the villages enjoy reading slashdot regularly, so we have to find useful things that they can use these beasts for.
Essentially, what we did was to create an information portal, data was downloaded every day over a CDMA 1x connection, and presented in a form which was accesible to people. Weather forecasts, crop and vegetable prices, information about government schemes, employment opportunities in the nearest town and so on. If you want to know more, then drop me a mail and I would be happy to give you full details. Better yet, if you are involved in something similiar, please do get in touch.
Now the technology part is cool. I designed it to work completely in our favourite browser - Firefox - *ducks*, I used CSS to make sure that when you print out the information it's in an easy to read form. Also, since Open Office, FF, the Linux distro itself a number of other applications have recently been translated into the local language (Tamil) it has been easy for the people themselves to use it, rather than needing either an external person, or to have to painfully learn a new language.
Just to quickly respond to the infrastructure part, India has been really good at providing communications infrastructure at a grassroots level. Every village is linked with a 2 mbps pipe, and wireless internet using CDMA is fairly easily available. This is a god-send for us, who want to put an IT project in, without having to build this stuff up from scratch. I speak from experience in Indonesia, where we had to transmit using VHF. Fuck, that hurt.
Now sub-$100 machines are good. But, like someone else was saying here, the people themselves are NOT going to be buying this. It's more likely to be governements, NGOs and the like who do bulk-purchases and then provide them in conjuntion with various other schemes. Remember that in many parts of the world the annual income is less than $350. This is equivalent to somebody paying about $13'000 for a computer in the US (if they earn about $40k, which I assume an IT manager will).
The technology is cool for us. How useful is it for them?
Slashdot Mirror
Well - Gates already said no to implants. I guess he doesn't want to go the Pamela route. R.
Also, I couldn't get my mom to switch to OOo - however, she loves AbiWord!
Bottom line is, if you're just typing in a lot of stuff, basic documents, use AbiWord. If you need a complete suite, then OOo is good.
R.
Remember this guy?
Clippy! http://photos15.flickr.com/18832781_3459cdb8be.jpg ?v=0
R.
Don't talk about loot glint. No really.
R.
http://www.nliteos.com/
Best of all, XP-64 Support.
Cheers,
R.
Here is the original post. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151015&cid=126 65634
http://www.storewars.org/flash Store Wars. Funny!
However, my biggest complaint is something the review noted too, the lack of effective middle-button support. I use the internet a lot - design for it for b&b and FF and Opera both have really nice shortcuts which take advantage of the middle-button. I'm not sure why it's so hard to get it to work and yes, I have looked through the mouse preferences...no help there.
Other than that - it's just nice not to have cables going across the table. Other clutter now takes their place!
R.
"MSN Virtual Earth to take over Google"
I was like - Bills built an MSN themed Earth to take over Google? Wow!
R.
Somebody needs to hire a web-designer who wasn't trained on Frontpage.
Also - a minor point, the $47 billion that MS apparently has, is not cash under the pillow. What it does have is a share value (not sure of terminology) of $47 billion.
Once shareholders see that shrinking - and believe me, they're watching, they're going to sell, sell, sell. The downward spiral. Now this does not give them 21.7 years (as some other bright spark commented) to comply with the regulation.
R.
Checked it out in T-Bird.
Go to FF. Hit Reload. Message gone.
Bloody fast.
R.
While I understand that this is not targeted at the same demographic that downloads Firefox, couldn't they have included something to add some value for us?
If they had packaged in some FF extensions, at least a choice of themes...then maybe.
View using the IE rendering engine? Thanks a lot.
R.
Microsofts strategy is not innovation. It never has been.
What it has been doing, is to incorporate things in so that for 70 - 80 % of the people, things work fairly ok.
A friend of mine has been using XP for some time, and when I tried to convert him over to 10.3, he was like - why should I? Luna (the XP theme) is good enough for me.
I think this is the critical statement. Good enough. As soon as IE has few enough security holes that Microsoft Anti-Spyware can catch everything that sneaks through, what need has Joe User for Firefox?
Seriously. Think about it. On my XP box, I use ZoneAlarm. There is now a one-way firewall with SP2. I use Ad-Aware and Spybot, along with HijackThis. There is a beta-version of MS anti-Spyware available.
I also use something called Anti-Vir. Mostly because NAV was such a piece of bloatware. Now with rumours that there will be a MS branded antivirus program, tell me, which Joe User is going to keep a multitude of programs, each of which need to be updated seperately, instead of some Microsoft Security Program, which keeps 80-90% of all the Bad Stuff(tm) off their computer?
In one way, this is probably a good thing. It frees up resources which were previously going to fix security holes to develop cool new features. However, I am, personally a little concerned about the dominance of one company over so many diverse parts of the user-experience.
Ah well. There is always my Mac.
Take care, R.
http://www.opte.org/
This is the same guy featured on the DDOS story a while ago. What's interesting is that he is a philosophy graduate, rather than a CS student, and also that he built this map up in a day or two...
R.
R.
Or is this another case of great editing?
R.
However, last time I heard, she was doing web-design, so she may not have the time to become the stereotype breaking - Hot but Game Guru Girl....
R.
UPDATE: Good thing I hit the preview button. It's a ZDNet site or something like that. http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/This is a link to Bens blog.
Bah.
R.
Most people are approaching this from the wrong PoV.
Once there is a standard in place, then implementation occurs. And it's definitely likely to appear - first in Open Office, then maybe spreading - I can see Linux using it as the default document standard.
Microsoft will eventually have to support it - if it reaches 10% of the market, then you are going to start getting complaints from customers. Even if it only implements a read-only function, that's good enough.
I face a major productivity sapper, when I send off a .sxw to someone who can't open it. I have to open, export to .doc, check that it displays ok, and then resend. If I can happily compose in whatever editor I want, and press send without having to bother about whether a client will be able to read or not - so much the better.
As an aside, the Indian government is slowly adopting Open Office - mainly because these can be easily translated into the local language. Useful, especially in rural areas and the smaller towns. The government itself released a Tamil version of Open Office, Firefox and a bunch of other stuff. Check out their efforts here.
Cheers, R.
But the one I'm really waiting for is 10.6.6.6 - Pussy.
Hehe - that'll get some converts.
R.
Cheers, R.
Reasons? I would be interested in hearing why. I don't use Gaim much, but I use Trillian everyday.
There is no way I'm going to use MSN Messenger after that. So many more useful functions - default logging of chat...however I'm not sure about the security aspects, and how it compares with Redmonds offering.
R.
We could see Natalie Portmans naked breasts magnified a hundred times!
R.
I think if you're thinking of the computer as a object to play solitaire and surf pr0n, then it's definitely not on the top of the third-worlds' DEVELOPMENTAL needs. We can argue relative morality later, NOT on /.
However, suppose you gave them a computer which provided information on how to make the land more productive? How about if it gave a list of which fertilisers and pesticides would be best for certain varieties of crops? How about if it gave you prices for crops, seeds and fertilisers at various different markets?
This is what we are trying to do. This is what I believe can work. I may be proved wrong, but our experiments in about twenty-four villages or so are thriving happily.
R.
The solution that eventually occured was that IBM donated a number of G40e laptops (thank you guys!) so we were able to put low-power, fancy computers out in the field.
Now the crux of the issue to me, and this is something which I've brought up earlier, so bear with me, is the question, Now What?
I've got a 2.8 gig 802.11g machine with 512 MB of RAM sitting here, doing what?
The hard part is making it useful. Not many people out in the villages enjoy reading slashdot regularly, so we have to find useful things that they can use these beasts for.
Essentially, what we did was to create an information portal, data was downloaded every day over a CDMA 1x connection, and presented in a form which was accesible to people. Weather forecasts, crop and vegetable prices, information about government schemes, employment opportunities in the nearest town and so on. If you want to know more, then drop me a mail and I would be happy to give you full details. Better yet, if you are involved in something similiar, please do get in touch.
Now the technology part is cool. I designed it to work completely in our favourite browser - Firefox - *ducks*, I used CSS to make sure that when you print out the information it's in an easy to read form. Also, since Open Office, FF, the Linux distro itself a number of other applications have recently been translated into the local language (Tamil) it has been easy for the people themselves to use it, rather than needing either an external person, or to have to painfully learn a new language.
Just to quickly respond to the infrastructure part, India has been really good at providing communications infrastructure at a grassroots level. Every village is linked with a 2 mbps pipe, and wireless internet using CDMA is fairly easily available. This is a god-send for us, who want to put an IT project in, without having to build this stuff up from scratch. I speak from experience in Indonesia, where we had to transmit using VHF. Fuck, that hurt.
Now sub-$100 machines are good. But, like someone else was saying here, the people themselves are NOT going to be buying this. It's more likely to be governements, NGOs and the like who do bulk-purchases and then provide them in conjuntion with various other schemes. Remember that in many parts of the world the annual income is less than $350. This is equivalent to somebody paying about $13'000 for a computer in the US (if they earn about $40k, which I assume an IT manager will).
The technology is cool for us. How useful is it for them?
R.