Should it, really? Did you say 'IBM'? Or was it, ehm, Lenovo?
You know, the concept behind EIO is not at all new. It was revolutionary 10 years ago, but now we have better implementations of what here has been done in JVM.
Kudos to EIO developers, though. The product is seemingly quite usable, given the confined space of Java layer, and a strange data format which has been given an unappropriate importance.
I'd never waste a second thought on a concept like this. It might be quite a deed for an academic comunity to push it. Given a closed company--or a closed country--it might even prove usable to some extent. However, it has got no chance of survival in the wild. And no such chance should be awarded to it. Ever.
1. No law can exist with a unanimous vote of the populace -- direct democracy in ultimate form.
You mean...
1. No law can exist without a unanimous vote of the population.
...and you are dead wrong in suggesting this phony rule. It has been tried already, e.g. in mediaeval Poland. The country, once a middle European power of considerable importance, went broke exactly on this rule. Called liberum veto at the time, the rule allowed anyone to block important legislation, on any level. In effect, the country has been carved up into pieces, which went under occupation by the neighbours.
Just imagine US beeing carved up by Mexico an Canada... all due to your 'rule'. If you are convinced to it, you'd better learn French, Spanish or both - quick! You never now where the new border will be drawn.
Back to reality: your second rule is not bad at all. At the first sight, the 'best before' rule might be adopted not only to foods, or legal procedures, but also to legal documents. However, there resulting endless discussion about which law to keep, an why, will create a state of permanent insecurity. As a result, no orderly court practice will be possible. You will have transitional laws with no enforcement. A wild, wild west, so to speak.
Now, I realize as I'm writing this that your ID lists you as Andrew Tanenbaum -- so I'm forced to conclude one of two things (...)
Obviously, this Schmock of a slashdotter has adopted a name which is not his own. If I were you I would have a look at his slashdot *number* first. It shows us someone who has joined/. only recently. Well, surely NOT the prof.
BTW, if Andy Tanenbaum The Great had wanted to comment on this SONY disaster, he would have published his opinion directly under his own name on his own hp.
If you are not going to roll back (who is?) then you culd probably get rid of all those redundant stuff.
Get into your %SystemRoot%. Delete all (and I mean it) stuff in hidden directories there, which have anything like kb... fix... in their names. Get advice or support @ your site, if you are uneasy at it, and do it under supervision, or get it done. Defragment. Clean the hives. That's all.
At the end of the day, you should have some 2 Gig more diskspace than in the morning. Take Ghost, Acronis or what-you-like for data rescue and use it on your spring clean system. Now you are truly done.
The same was true in the 50's and 60's about TV. Gosh... am I *that* old already?
What is symptomatic about the present discussion is the fact of talking about the home consumption of electronically transmitted/recorded entertainment. Just like in the old days when the then-pundits discussed fiercely if TV would eventually kill Theatre, Cinema, Newspapers and Social Life as a whole.
Well, it didn't. The very same is true about the digital home, which is already a reality. Some use it extensively, some not, some will start to use it a couple of years, some not. Nihil novi sub sole.
In my opinion, we actually need more efficient gear. A TV-set is an extremely easy to use piece of technology, a computer not quite so. Therefore, I think that it is not necessarily a computerized home what looms into the future, but rather a home with some appliances of embedded logic.
Quality logic is not a complicated one. At least it doesn't dare to be complicated to use. Easy use of quality gear is what makes life more pleasant.
The costly investment in the new gear will however probably take place first in home medical systems and energy-related appliances; entertainment and show-biz waiting for their turn.
Microsoft's Yates said the company agrees with the adoption of XML but does not agree that the solution to "public records management is to force a single, less functional document format on all state agencies."
How un-american.
A public company is going to tell the legislative (virtually: the people) what they should adopt? *shudder*
Micro-Soft may have grown powerful, and may have tried to exert pressure like this before.
This time the rumours about the superiority of Monopoly-Office have been greatly exagerated. Redmond may be in for a surprise how ubiquitous the use of OpenOffice.org v2.0 has already become.
They assesed their options and came to a certain conclusion. If the assesment was correct the conclusion will be correct.
which simply insn't true. Even the basic knowledge of formal logic would suffice to see that valid conclusions say nothing about the assessment in question. Only the reverse is true, provided the conclusions had been drawn according to laws of logical reasoning.
I read your wordy posting in the whole. The blog made into my localhost loop instantly afterwards.
Why this measure? You are wrong in just too many areas, which roughly sum up to sane computer use, no less.
Let's say I'm common user A, without root permissions, and I want to share a file with user B, also a regular user.
You _never_ share files, applications do. You share information. Don't even try to blame the operating system for poorly implemented information management in your mind/system/network. BTW, before you get to the operating system layer -- be it kernel or microkernel -- trere are a few steps to go and many an architectural layer to cross.
Go get learning CS, or hire someone who knows. Your shot at information management by use of file system permissions was intrinsically an unfruitful one. Indeed, I never had any _student_ try to approach the target in such a 'way', and creative they are, to say the least.
If you think you've read Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols' tongue-in-cheek article, read again. Think again. Try to separate all cheeky, cheesy and geeky speak out, leaving just the bare evidence. How about the result -- did you have to drop anything?
My guess would be that he grabbed the first pirated version he could find
My guess is that he bought a fresh copy it it were as cheap as the $25 he names.
Does it matter? He could have borrowed a box with Office XP already there -- as you know, the full installation of MS-Office is a PITA, and takes quite a time to boot.
I almost forgot - you are not done with the installation alone. First, you have to update your fresh, virgin MS-Office. Of course, you will install all the mandatory patches, then probably several optional ones, and possibly even a bunch of other... well, let's call it accompanying software.
Almost ubiquitously those packages lack proper explaination what they do. They leave you mostly clueless to the question if you really need them now or could need them in the future.
Compared to this nightmare, the installation of OpenOffice.org is a breeze. It draws circles around the dreary MS-Office install. Three minutes and you are done with the task, ready to jump into publishing, spreadsheeting, presenting yourself and all.
Getting back to the original topic (Who uses Office XP?) an answer is ready: those who have to work quickly, those who need to get their work done efficiently, w/o troubling themselves about the proper tooling, tuning or other task-detached machine issues.
I appreciate your worries about the quality od/. But, this is of no relevance to the topic in question.
My first computer was Apple Lisa. Who cares? This was my _last_ Apple computer as well, go figure. Since then I have no problem with discerning reality and advertizing. Apple has got quite a few grandiferous flops (did I mention Lisa before?), and noone with all his wits together can depict the company in a "shining bright light".
However, Apple boldly goes where noone else has gone before, and deserves all the credit due. Same for the well chosen software shipping with every Apple box, facilitating work but not limiting you. Keep the stripped 'Home Edition' of Windows against Tiger and you will see the point instantly.
That's a good question indeed. Of course, there are a zillion systems running Office XP - worldwide. But to call you a troll would be sort of cheap. Lemme answer it in some detail then.
Users seldom update their systems. It is even more the case with their software. Therefore, I would be all but impressed learning that the most popular office suite be the aforementioned one, or maybe even Office 2000. There are many instances of Word 97 and Office 8 as well.
OpenOffice positions itself against this base. (Remember the user: those running 2003 will not update. Indeed, they are not in for a change - yet, and might be sticking with their office flavour as long as the hardware goes, much longer than a redmond-based company would favour.) That are those users who run MS-Office 8..10 now, who are targeted by the new release of OOo, because they need to keep running their ageing boxes. Mostly, the want them to run smoothly, and Writer is a smoother ride than Word.
If those users are willing to try Writer now, they will probably ditch their present office suite altogether, and this before long. The question about Word11 will not even be asked. Moreover, because OOo runs under GNU/Linux there will be no need for, say, a secretary to learn new tricks when her employer decides to migrate operating system this way or another.
However, from the purely technical point of view, it would definitely be interesting to learn how OOo 2.0 compares to 2003. I see your point: compare newest release to newest release and all is well. Unfortunately, life does not go this way as far as both competitors are concerned. OOo is wise enough to not compete in the field where there is virtually no demand -- they do very well in those markets, where discriminate buyers double chceck their needs and their means before adopting the best solution.
Frequently, the result is in favour of the Open Office suite, just like the article suggests. Your criteria may be different, but the result will be in many cases the same. If you relay on some proprietary technlology to the point of self-abandonment then it is another cup of tea, but in most cases the bottom line of the article is valid beyond any doubt.
First, you define a playground ("the list") Then, you have a go at anyone entering it.
It simply isn't true that "Linux doesn't suffer from viruses/worms but does suffer from everything else." I am running SuSE Linux from its early 6.1-version and there is no such thing as suffering from crashes, memory leaks, GUI deficiencies, or "uneasy" management, be it system or applications.
Yor argument in favour of Tiger is great, but your reasonig towards Linux is downright stupid.
Try Slackware, try Debian (pure, or maybe Ubuntu) and you will _have_ to admit that there is never a problem like the ones you'd like to sell us.
There is no need to 'bridge' any desktop manager with any other one. Run one or the other, or run none - take an application of choice an run it in the environment it requres to run smoothly.
Possibly there is a need to develop KDE (or maybe Gnome, etc. as well) more rapidly in order to evade the threat the new Intel Mac with its superb desktop is posing on Linux.
But AFAIK there is no justification in whining about Linux as being 'crashy', 'uneasy' or (sic) equipped with a 'poor GUI'! Have a closer look at the system before you comment on it.
Re:The question every Opera user knows answer for
on
Opera 8 Released
·
· Score: 1
Well, it is nice that there is a plug-in (adblock) which integrates into Firefox just fine. I am using it too when surfing the Web with Firefox, which is the case 1..3% of the time.
IE scores probably less than 1%, and only due to the occasional manual checkup if my W2K-System is fully patched.
The rest is Opera. And Privoxy, which is way above adblock and certainly more powerful than any conceivable "adblock replacement" or such.
Take your Opera, set it up to get input from your locally installed Privoxy (Port 8118) and crank the Prixoy up at first in its standard configuration -- you will never ever give adblock a second thought.
However, after a while you might be tempted to fine tune your new HTTP proxy to your needs. Just do it!
Slashdot Mirror
Should it, really? Did you say 'IBM'? Or was it, ehm, Lenovo?
You know, the concept behind EIO is not at all new. It was revolutionary 10 years ago, but now we have better implementations of what here has been done in JVM.
Kudos to EIO developers, though. The product is seemingly quite usable, given the confined space of Java layer, and a strange data format which has been given an unappropriate importance.
I'd never waste a second thought on a concept like this. It might be quite a deed for an academic comunity to push it. Given a closed company--or a closed country--it might even prove usable to some extent. However, it has got no chance of survival in the wild. And no such chance should be awarded to it. Ever.
Yours,
Waran
You mean...
1. No law can exist without a unanimous vote of the population.
Just imagine US beeing carved up by Mexico an Canada... all due to your 'rule'. If you are convinced to it, you'd better learn French, Spanish or both - quick! You never now where the new border will be drawn.
Back to reality: your second rule is not bad at all. At the first sight, the 'best before' rule might be adopted not only to foods, or legal procedures, but also to legal documents. However, there resulting endless discussion about which law to keep, an why, will create a state of permanent insecurity. As a result, no orderly court practice will be possible. You will have transitional laws with no enforcement. A wild, wild west, so to speak.
Think it over.
Yours,
Waran.
BTW, if Andy Tanenbaum The Great had wanted to comment on this SONY disaster, he would have published his opinion directly under his own name on his own hp.
Greetz,
Waran
No Mercy. No Regret. Just Kill.
If you are not going to roll back (who is?) then you culd probably get rid of all those redundant stuff.
Get into your %SystemRoot%. Delete all (and I mean it) stuff in hidden directories there, which have anything like kb... fix... in their names. Get advice or support @ your site, if you are uneasy at it, and do it under supervision, or get it done. Defragment. Clean the hives. That's all.
At the end of the day, you should have some 2 Gig more diskspace than in the morning. Take Ghost, Acronis or what-you-like for data rescue and use it on your spring clean system. Now you are truly done.
Yours, Waran
The same was true in the 50's and 60's about TV. Gosh... am I *that* old already?
What is symptomatic about the present discussion is the fact of talking about the home consumption of electronically transmitted/recorded entertainment. Just like in the old days when the then-pundits discussed fiercely if TV would eventually kill Theatre, Cinema, Newspapers and Social Life as a whole.
Well, it didn't. The very same is true about the digital home, which is already a reality. Some use it extensively, some not, some will start to use it a couple of years, some not. Nihil novi sub sole.
In my opinion, we actually need more efficient gear. A TV-set is an extremely easy to use piece of technology, a computer not quite so. Therefore, I think that it is not necessarily a computerized home what looms into the future, but rather a home with some appliances of embedded logic.
Quality logic is not a complicated one. At least it doesn't dare to be complicated to use. Easy use of quality gear is what makes life more pleasant.
The costly investment in the new gear will however probably take place first in home medical systems and energy-related appliances; entertainment and show-biz waiting for their turn.
Yours,
Waran
How un-american.
A public company is going to tell the legislative (virtually: the people) what they should adopt? *shudder*
Micro-Soft may have grown powerful, and may have tried to exert pressure like this before.
This time the rumours about the superiority of Monopoly-Office have been greatly exagerated. Redmond may be in for a surprise how ubiquitous the use of OpenOffice.org v2.0 has already become.
Yours,
Waran
Err... you said
which simply insn't true. Even the basic knowledge of formal logic would suffice to see that valid conclusions say nothing about the assessment in question. Only the reverse is true, provided the conclusions had been drawn according to laws of logical reasoning.
Yours,
Waran
Speakin' of yourself, eh?
I read your wordy posting in the whole. The blog made into my localhost loop instantly afterwards.
Why this measure? You are wrong in just too many areas, which roughly sum up to sane computer use, no less.
You _never_ share files, applications do. You share information. Don't even try to blame the operating system for poorly implemented information management in your mind/system/network. BTW, before you get to the operating system layer -- be it kernel or microkernel -- trere are a few steps to go and many an architectural layer to cross.
Go get learning CS, or hire someone who knows. Your shot at information management by use of file system permissions was intrinsically an unfruitful one. Indeed, I never had any _student_ try to approach the target in such a 'way', and creative they are, to say the least.
If you think you've read Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols' tongue-in-cheek article, read again. Think again. Try to separate all cheeky, cheesy and geeky speak out, leaving just the bare evidence. How about the result -- did you have to drop anything?
Yours,
Waran
My guess would be that he grabbed the first pirated version he could find
/. But, this is of no relevance to the topic in question.
My guess is that he bought a fresh copy it it were as cheap as the $25 he names.
Does it matter? He could have borrowed a box with Office XP already there -- as you know, the full installation of MS-Office is a PITA, and takes quite a time to boot.
I almost forgot - you are not done with the installation alone. First, you have to update your fresh, virgin MS-Office. Of course, you will install all the mandatory patches, then probably several optional ones, and possibly even a bunch of other... well, let's call it accompanying software.
Almost ubiquitously those packages lack proper explaination what they do. They leave you mostly clueless to the question if you really need them now or could need them in the future.
Compared to this nightmare, the installation of OpenOffice.org is a breeze. It draws circles around the dreary MS-Office install. Three minutes and you are done with the task, ready to jump into publishing, spreadsheeting, presenting yourself and all.
Getting back to the original topic (Who uses Office XP?) an answer is ready: those who have to work quickly, those who need to get their work done efficiently, w/o troubling themselves about the proper tooling, tuning or other task-detached machine issues.
I appreciate your worries about the quality od
My first computer was Apple Lisa. Who cares? This was my _last_ Apple computer as well, go figure. Since then I have no problem with discerning reality and advertizing. Apple has got quite a few grandiferous flops (did I mention Lisa before?), and noone with all his wits together can depict the company in a "shining bright light".
However, Apple boldly goes where noone else has gone before, and deserves all the credit due. Same for the well chosen software shipping with every Apple box, facilitating work but not limiting you. Keep the stripped 'Home Edition' of Windows against Tiger and you will see the point instantly.
Greetz,
Waran
That's a good question indeed. Of course, there are a zillion systems running Office XP - worldwide. But to call you a troll would be sort of cheap. Lemme answer it in some detail then.
Users seldom update their systems. It is even more the case with their software. Therefore, I would be all but impressed learning that the most popular office suite be the aforementioned one, or maybe even Office 2000. There are many instances of Word 97 and Office 8 as well.
OpenOffice positions itself against this base. (Remember the user: those running 2003 will not update. Indeed, they are not in for a change - yet, and might be sticking with their office flavour as long as the hardware goes, much longer than a redmond-based company would favour.) That are those users who run MS-Office 8..10 now, who are targeted by the new release of OOo, because they need to keep running their ageing boxes. Mostly, the want them to run smoothly, and Writer is a smoother ride than Word.
If those users are willing to try Writer now, they will probably ditch their present office suite altogether, and this before long. The question about Word11 will not even be asked. Moreover, because OOo runs under GNU/Linux there will be no need for, say, a secretary to learn new tricks when her employer decides to migrate operating system this way or another.
However, from the purely technical point of view, it would definitely be interesting to learn how OOo 2.0 compares to 2003. I see your point: compare newest release to newest release and all is well. Unfortunately, life does not go this way as far as both competitors are concerned. OOo is wise enough to not compete in the field where there is virtually no demand -- they do very well in those markets, where discriminate buyers double chceck their needs and their means before adopting the best solution.
Frequently, the result is in favour of the Open Office suite, just like the article suggests. Your criteria may be different, but the result will be in many cases the same. If you relay on some proprietary technlology to the point of self-abandonment then it is another cup of tea, but in most cases the bottom line of the article is valid beyond any doubt.
...just resort to the following Google cached page: http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:1CvlEjwElaUJ:w ww.flexbeta.net/main/printarticle.php%3Fid%3D106+& hl=en
Nota bene: the above link will take you to a printable version of the article in its entirety, not just page 1 of multi-page-patience-play this link will take you to
www.flexbeta.net/main/printarticle.php?id=106
First, you define a playground ("the list")
Then, you have a go at anyone entering it.
It simply isn't true that "Linux doesn't suffer from viruses/worms but does suffer from everything else." I am running SuSE Linux from its early 6.1-version and there is no such thing as suffering from crashes, memory leaks, GUI deficiencies, or "uneasy" management, be it system or applications.
Yor argument in favour of Tiger is great, but your reasonig towards Linux is downright stupid.
Try Slackware, try Debian (pure, or maybe Ubuntu) and you will _have_ to admit that there is never a problem like the ones you'd like to sell us.
There is no need to 'bridge' any desktop manager with any other one. Run one or the other, or run none - take an application of choice an run it in the environment it requres to run smoothly.
Possibly there is a need to develop KDE (or maybe Gnome, etc. as well) more rapidly in order to evade the threat the new Intel Mac with its superb desktop is posing on Linux.
But AFAIK there is no justification in whining about Linux as being 'crashy', 'uneasy' or (sic) equipped with a 'poor GUI'! Have a closer look at the system before you comment on it.
Well, it is nice that there is a plug-in (adblock) which integrates into Firefox just fine. I am using it too when surfing the Web with Firefox, which is the case 1..3% of the time.
IE scores probably less than 1%, and only due to the occasional manual checkup if my W2K-System is fully patched.
The rest is Opera. And Privoxy, which is way above adblock and certainly more powerful than any conceivable "adblock replacement" or such.
Take your Opera, set it up to get input from your locally installed Privoxy (Port 8118) and crank the Prixoy up at first in its standard configuration -- you will never ever give adblock a second thought.
However, after a while you might be tempted to fine tune your new HTTP proxy to your needs. Just do it!
It was nice to meet you,
Waran