And it's also true that none of the major computer manufacturers make those components in their products, either. Not Dell, not HP, not Gateway, not Apple, none of 'em.
But if Apple is going to going around espousing how they are a company that cares about ethics and corporate responsibility in their marketing and financial information, then shouldn't we hold them to that? Shouldn't they be better than HP, Dell, Gateway, et al? Shouldn't they be better than Nike? I mean, they charge a premium price for their products (including the iPod) at least partially on the basis that they are an ethical company, right?
They might be using a pre-existing library/module that supports XLS, but not ODF currently. XLS support has been around for a long time and is stable while ODF is relatively new. (And possibly unstable.)
First off, ODF is not really all that new. It's just repackaged, genericized version of the original XML StarOffice/OpenOffice format and that's been around at least as long as Office XP (2002).
Secondly, from what I can gather in looking at the functions list in Google Spreadsheets, it seems to be very close to the OpenOffice Calc functions list. In fact, much closer to the OpenOffice Calc functions list than the Excel functions list, including some functions that exist in OpenOffice Calc that do not exist in Excel 2003.
So, unless I'm completely off, I'd guess that Google, who recently partnered with Sun to modify OpenOffice.org to work as a Web app, is actually using the OOo Calc code as its base.
In other words, adding ODF support should have been drop-dead easy.
I can only guess that the exclusion was a deliberate technical or political decision on Google's part, but not necessarily as a favor for Microsoft (it's not like Google and Microsoft are all buddy buddy, you know...;).
And I can tell you all, from personal experience, that they are a complete godsend. The short story is I had serious learning problems at school, I had serious hobby problems at home, I had serious problems all up. I was interested in EVERYTHING and my mind wouldn't let me settle down and truly enjoy & work at any one thing in a productive way. Doctor wanted to put me on ritalin at age 9, my parents jacked up at that and called him crazy, then spent the next 7 years trying all kinds of alternative bullshit to help me.
Then I scored a constant supply of ritalin, and the world was a different place. I could actually DO things. I made more improvements to my schoolwork in the year after starting it than I had in a decade before. It changed my life. My parents still don't like it, they think ritalin = amphetamines = crack cocaine = me dead by age 30, but I don't live with them any more and that's their problem.
For those of you thinking about trying this stuff without the supervision of a doctor after reading this: don't. While they can be a godsend for those with ADHD, those who don't have the problem can have some serious trouble.
In non-ADHD subjects, Ritalin and Adderall are similar to methamphetamine in function. In normal individuals, they cause rapid increase in dopamine, just like amphetamines do. Really. If you don't believe me, this article on Ritalin from the National Institute of Health. The upshot of all of this is that in non-ADHD patients, addiction rates are very high due the increased dopamine levels.
Disclosure: my wife is a substance abuse counselor and deals with people addicted to this stuff all the time.
IANAL but I've been told by one that it is often to your benefit in certain situations to plead the 5th, refuse to testify, or if they won't allow for that claim ignorance that you have fogotten even though you will end up with some type of punishment or contempt in court.
Yep! Mod parent up! While IANAL, I do know you do have a Constitutional right to not incriminate yourself. They can't make you do anything.
The technique described above is used everyday in court.
This is exactly what happened to the journalist who outed Valerie Plame. She sat in jail for 90 days rather than comply with the judge's order to reveal her sources.
See, in most states, contempt of court is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum term of (usually) 90 days in jail. So if you're doing something that'll get you more than that (and almost anything bigger than a misdemeanor will get you more than that) and you get asked for the keys...plead the 5th. If you fail to give the keys to the judge, in most states the most the judge can lock you up for is 90 days! Oh, and due to double jeopardy rules, you can't get locked up for it twice, so the judge can't just keep you in a loop of:
while $answer = 'pleading the 5th' do
ask_for_key;
if $answer = 'pleading the 5th' then
go_to_jail;
else...
endif done
'Official Use Only' is about the level of security that corporations apply to data that is usually referred to as 'confidential' -- data that's not necessarily 'secret' but is still distributed to only those that need it.
Even one company I've worked for would say that if this data were to leave a company facility electronically, including via laptop, that data must be encrypted.
Note also that if you intend to do any FPGA programming with the USRP, according to this faqyou will need to spend and additional $300 to get 2 of each of the BasicRX and BasicTX boards for debugging purposes.
IT may overnominalize, but (unlike law and accounting), we tend not to completely redefine perfectly good words for our own uses. Learning what a TCP/IP stack does takes some effort, but once you know the phrase, you know the phrase.
We don't? So when I take my files and put them into a 'folder', I'm taking them and putting them into an actual (physical) file folder? Ooh, 'files'. There's another one.
And my 'mouse' refers to an actual rodent? Ewww. Next you're going to try to tell me that this 'page' I'm reading will actually peel off the monitor!
Once you start changing any complex spreadsheet you risk and almost guarantee corrupting other parts of the spreadsheet ostensibly okay. The spreadsheet is so inextricably integrated to itself, you pull one string, and some widget a million miles away suddenly misbehaves, though, you're unlikely to notice until later, if at all.
Well, as you alluded to earlier in your post, whether a spreadsheet has errors in it depends on how it was made.
This also goes for maintaining integrity of the spreadsheet. Both OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Excel offer the ability to protect cells from modification. If you design your spreadsheet application in a certain way, you can prevent corruption to the spreadsheet through modification. It's tricky and it often requires a lot of macros and workarounds to make it happen, but it can happen. Also both Excel and OOo offer the ability to track changes made by users, so there is some level of built in accountability -- but not much.
One of the main points of TFA, I think, is that spreadsheets are good for quick-and-dirty scratchpad applications, but really fail to complex applications that require maintainability, documentability, and good authentication and security surrounding changes.
If you need that, you need a database application. This is what I've been telling people for YEARS -- don't use Excel for what you really need a database app for, and, conversely, don't write a database app for what you could easily just as easily do in Excel.
I don't think Apple wants to go toe-to-toe with Dell and HP. They don't have to. They have their niche, they're very successful in their niche, and I think they're likely to just stick with it. All of their maneuvering within the past few months seems to bear this out, too. Even the Intel Macs and even with BootCamp. Note that they don't support loading Windows 2003 Server, or Windows 2000 Professional or what have you. Just XP.
Nah. I think Apple doesn't care that much about the enterprise market. If they do, they're not trying very hard to show it.
Because the Windows control panel, unlike, say the Preferences menu in GNOME, is a mishmash of user preferences and systems administration functions. IMHO, they should just remove all of the the system admin functions out of control panel, and have a new Start Menu shortcut that opens the 'Manage...' window you get when right-clicking on computer.
We have this discussion all the time, but once more can't hurt: on single-user Linux systems or Unix workstations, losing $HOME is far more serious than losing system files.
That depends on what you keep in $HOME.
Personally, I keep my data on separate partition mounted on, say,/data or something like that.
Most of what's in my home directory is just stuff I've downloaded and my Gnome/KDE settings, etc. If I lose those, the system will just recreate them. Big deal. So I have to go in and click on a few dialogs to get them back to where they were.
I'll probably get modded down for saying this (who cares? I got karma to burn), but I attribute it to the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.
Basically I think this field extends to customers and potential customers of Apple. Steve Jobs has been successful in convincing people he's never even met that Apple products are superior to everything else, that the hefty price tag all Apple products carry is worth it, that Mac OS X is an open-source operating system, and that Apple can do wrong.
Of course some us seem to be immune to the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field. I'm attempting to study what the difference is between people who are immune and those who are susceptible to its effects.
So far the only thing I can figure is that those in the latter category actually believe that they took the word 'gullible' out of the dictionary.
Now, armed resistance is ridiculous when the government has billions of dollars of military equipment. And other technological countermeasures will likely prove ineffective in a short period of time.
The American revolutionaries at the time of the War for Independence were severely outgunned, outmanned, outequipped and out-trained compared to their contemporary British counterparts.
Imagine the trading price of MS if it did ship a list of known bugs alongside their products... I would think consumers would wait for a stable product before buying.
Nonsense. Every major open source project has a complete list of bugs for all versions of their product for all to see, usually right on their Web site, which you can read prior to downloading. For instance, if you click on the Release Notes for Firefox, linked to from the front page, you'll see not only a list of known issues in the current production release, but there's a link to their Bugzilla database so that you can read bugs that have recently been filed against it.
If people would really not buy a software product if they knew about all of it's bugs, then why would they download and install any open source applications? Because they don't have pay for them? Just because you don't pay for a piece of software, that doesn't mean it costs the user $0 to install and use.
I guess my days of purchasing off Ebay may be just about over.
Why? Who says you need an eBay or Yahoo toolbar to buy (or sell) stuff on eBay? Unless eBay or Yahoo absolutely require the installation of such software (not likely, since requiring such software usually prevents some class of users from being able to use the service) there's nothing that says you have to accept their spyware.
Don't hate the spammers/scammers, hate their victims. Really if you transfer a small fortune to someone for helping them send you millions I can do nothing but laugh. Fools and their money should be seperated as soon as possible.
Ohhh....so THAT's why all the money went missing from my bank account...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, all of that is true, of course.
And it's also true that none of the major computer manufacturers make those components in their products, either. Not Dell, not HP, not Gateway, not Apple, none of 'em.
But if Apple is going to going around espousing how they are a company that cares about ethics and corporate responsibility in their marketing and financial information, then shouldn't we hold them to that? Shouldn't they be better than HP, Dell, Gateway, et al? Shouldn't they be better than Nike? I mean, they charge a premium price for their products (including the iPod) at least partially on the basis that they are an ethical company, right?
They might be using a pre-existing library/module that supports XLS, but not ODF currently. XLS support has been around for a long time and is stable while ODF is relatively new. (And possibly unstable.)
;).
First off, ODF is not really all that new. It's just repackaged, genericized version of the original XML StarOffice/OpenOffice format and that's been around at least as long as Office XP (2002).
Secondly, from what I can gather in looking at the functions list in Google Spreadsheets, it seems to be very close to the OpenOffice Calc functions list. In fact, much closer to the OpenOffice Calc functions list than the Excel functions list, including some functions that exist in OpenOffice Calc that do not exist in Excel 2003.
So, unless I'm completely off, I'd guess that Google, who recently partnered with Sun to modify OpenOffice.org to work as a Web app, is actually using the OOo Calc code as its base.
In other words, adding ODF support should have been drop-dead easy.
I can only guess that the exclusion was a deliberate technical or political decision on Google's part, but not necessarily as a favor for Microsoft (it's not like Google and Microsoft are all buddy buddy, you know...
I guess only Google knows for sure...
For those of you thinking about trying this stuff without the supervision of a doctor after reading this: don't. While they can be a godsend for those with ADHD, those who don't have the problem can have some serious trouble.
In non-ADHD subjects, Ritalin and Adderall are similar to methamphetamine in function. In normal individuals, they cause rapid increase in dopamine, just like amphetamines do. Really. If you don't believe me, this article on Ritalin from the National Institute of Health. The upshot of all of this is that in non-ADHD patients, addiction rates are very high due the increased dopamine levels.
Disclosure: my wife is a substance abuse counselor and deals with people addicted to this stuff all the time.
IANAL but I've been told by one that it is often to your benefit in certain situations to plead the 5th, refuse to testify, or if they won't allow for that claim ignorance that you have fogotten even though you will end up with some type of punishment or contempt in court.
...
Yep! Mod parent up! While IANAL, I do know you do have a Constitutional right to not incriminate yourself. They can't make you do anything.
The technique described above is used everyday in court.
This is exactly what happened to the journalist who outed Valerie Plame. She sat in jail for 90 days rather than comply with the judge's order to reveal her sources.
See, in most states, contempt of court is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum term of (usually) 90 days in jail. So if you're doing something that'll get you more than that (and almost anything bigger than a misdemeanor will get you more than that) and you get asked for the keys...plead the 5th. If you fail to give the keys to the judge, in most states the most the judge can lock you up for is 90 days! Oh, and due to double jeopardy rules, you can't get locked up for it twice, so the judge can't just keep you in a loop of:
while $answer = 'pleading the 5th' do
ask_for_key;
if $answer = 'pleading the 5th' then
go_to_jail;
else
endif
done
When was the last time that you saw a terrorist on a social network like MySpace, posting hints about their desire to terrorize others?
;-)
Why, just today, in fact. See?
That said, it's still easier to resolve issues by googling than by looking through TFM.
Which is true even for closed source software products. And especially true for Windows Server, which essentially includes no documentation.
I don't know about you, but when I have issues with Linux or Windows Server, Google is my friend.
What documentation issue?
There are boatloads of documentation available. Ever hear of The Linux Documentation Project? Plus, most distributions offer lots of very good documentation. Why there was a Slashdot story just two days ago about the excellent Ubuntu documentation. There are no fewer than 600 books available about Red Hat distros available for sale on Amazon. Not to mention that Red Hat Enterprise Linux itself includes lots of lots of documentation and most of it is available on the Web gratis. Plus the hundreds of open source apps that include very good documentation with their package. Have you actually read the documentation and free books available on the Samba website? It's darned good!
Any perceived documentation issue is Laura DiDiot's head.
'Official Use Only' is about the level of security that corporations apply to data that is usually referred to as 'confidential' -- data that's not necessarily 'secret' but is still distributed to only those that need it.
Even one company I've worked for would say that if this data were to leave a company facility electronically, including via laptop, that data must be encrypted.
What? You mean you don't have one of these yet? What cave have you been living in, man?
women having equal rights, being paid the same as men.
Uh, try again. Most women make ~75% of what a man makes. See or just google for 'gender pay gap'.
Err, what? Even in myth, the only people who were burned alive in the US were 17th century witches, and that's not actually true either.
I think the parent poster is referring to the Ku Klux Klan, which, while most of its victims were hanged or shot, some were actually burned alive.
People still get burnt alive / killed for being the wrong color. See Zimbabwe
Fsck Zimbabwe! See downtown Detroit!
Note also that if you intend to do any FPGA programming with the USRP, according to this faqyou will need to spend and additional $300 to get 2 of each of the BasicRX and BasicTX boards for debugging purposes.
We don't? So when I take my files and put them into a 'folder', I'm taking them and putting them into an actual (physical) file folder? Ooh, 'files'. There's another one.
And my 'mouse' refers to an actual rodent? Ewww. Next you're going to try to tell me that this 'page' I'm reading will actually peel off the monitor!
Once you start changing any complex spreadsheet you risk and almost guarantee corrupting other parts of the spreadsheet ostensibly okay. The spreadsheet is so inextricably integrated to itself, you pull one string, and some widget a million miles away suddenly misbehaves, though, you're unlikely to notice until later, if at all.
Well, as you alluded to earlier in your post, whether a spreadsheet has errors in it depends on how it was made.
This also goes for maintaining integrity of the spreadsheet. Both OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Excel offer the ability to protect cells from modification. If you design your spreadsheet application in a certain way, you can prevent corruption to the spreadsheet through modification. It's tricky and it often requires a lot of macros and workarounds to make it happen, but it can happen. Also both Excel and OOo offer the ability to track changes made by users, so there is some level of built in accountability -- but not much.
One of the main points of TFA, I think, is that spreadsheets are good for quick-and-dirty scratchpad applications, but really fail to complex applications that require maintainability, documentability, and good authentication and security surrounding changes.
If you need that, you need a database application. This is what I've been telling people for YEARS -- don't use Excel for what you really need a database app for, and, conversely, don't write a database app for what you could easily just as easily do in Excel.
But anyway, Apple is clearly interested in getting back into the enterprise market,
I'm not so sure. I mean, if they are, nobody told marketing. Have you seen the ? It's all consumer-oriented. Look at the rest of their website. You see marketing geared towards the education market, and towards graphics, audio and video professionals. In other words, they're still marketing towards the same core constituency that they've always pandered to: home users looking for an easy-to-use computer, creative professionals, and schools. Sure, they've added 'geek' to the list in the last 5 years, but what you don't see is marketing towards businesses, etnerprise or SOHO (other than creative professionals).
I don't think Apple wants to go toe-to-toe with Dell and HP. They don't have to. They have their niche, they're very successful in their niche, and I think they're likely to just stick with it. All of their maneuvering within the past few months seems to bear this out, too. Even the Intel Macs and even with BootCamp. Note that they don't support loading Windows 2003 Server, or Windows 2000 Professional or what have you. Just XP.
Nah. I think Apple doesn't care that much about the enterprise market. If they do, they're not trying very hard to show it.
The "light" model has dedicated arrow keys, is about the same size, and costs only $69.
I have that keyboard and I absolutely love it.
Because the Windows control panel, unlike, say the Preferences menu in GNOME, is a mishmash of user preferences and systems administration functions. IMHO, they should just remove all of the the system admin functions out of control panel, and have a new Start Menu shortcut that opens the 'Manage...' window you get when right-clicking on computer.
We have this discussion all the time, but once more can't hurt: on single-user Linux systems or Unix workstations, losing $HOME is far more serious than losing system files.
/data or something like that.
That depends on what you keep in $HOME.
Personally, I keep my data on separate partition mounted on, say,
Most of what's in my home directory is just stuff I've downloaded and my Gnome/KDE settings, etc. If I lose those, the system will just recreate them. Big deal. So I have to go in and click on a few dialogs to get them back to where they were.
I'll probably get modded down for saying this (who cares? I got karma to burn), but I attribute it to the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field.
Basically I think this field extends to customers and potential customers of Apple. Steve Jobs has been successful in convincing people he's never even met that Apple products are superior to everything else, that the hefty price tag all Apple products carry is worth it, that Mac OS X is an open-source operating system, and that Apple can do wrong.
Of course some us seem to be immune to the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field. I'm attempting to study what the difference is between people who are immune and those who are susceptible to its effects.
So far the only thing I can figure is that those in the latter category actually believe that they took the word 'gullible' out of the dictionary.
From your spelling I'm guessing it was the Americans. Well, at least someone got my joke. ;)
Now, armed resistance is ridiculous when the government has billions of dollars of military equipment. And other technological countermeasures will likely prove ineffective in a short period of time.
The American revolutionaries at the time of the War for Independence were severely outgunned, outmanned, outequipped and out-trained compared to their contemporary British counterparts.
Guess which side one?
Imagine the trading price of MS if it did ship a list of known bugs alongside their products... I would think consumers would wait for a stable product before buying.
Nonsense. Every major open source project has a complete list of bugs for all versions of their product for all to see, usually right on their Web site, which you can read prior to downloading. For instance, if you click on the Release Notes for Firefox, linked to from the front page, you'll see not only a list of known issues in the current production release, but there's a link to their Bugzilla database so that you can read bugs that have recently been filed against it.
If people would really not buy a software product if they knew about all of it's bugs, then why would they download and install any open source applications? Because they don't have pay for them? Just because you don't pay for a piece of software, that doesn't mean it costs the user $0 to install and use.
I guess my days of purchasing off Ebay may be just about over.
Why? Who says you need an eBay or Yahoo toolbar to buy (or sell) stuff on eBay? Unless eBay or Yahoo absolutely require the installation of such software (not likely, since requiring such software usually prevents some class of users from being able to use the service) there's nothing that says you have to accept their spyware.
Don't hate the spammers/scammers, hate their victims. Really if you transfer a small fortune to someone for helping them send you millions I can do nothing but laugh. Fools and their money should be seperated as soon as possible. Ohhh....so THAT's why all the money went missing from my bank account...