I'm a hardware junkie and I think Linux is a better HW tweaker OS for the following reasons:
1. Better control of the hardware. There is no "modprobe" in Windows IIRC and it's MUCH harder to tweak with low-level configurations. In Linux, you just edit a text file, restart the daemon, and off you go. 2. Never need to worry about activation if you switch stuff in and out frequently. 3. Running a homebuilt legally is $200-300 cheaper if you don't have to buy Windows. 4. Installing Windows XP onto a new modern computer is a real PITA as there are drivers for virtually nothing in the machine on the disk. Lose/scratch a driver CD and you're f'ed as dollars to donuts your NICs *aren't* supported. 5. You don't need a floppy drive to install onto serial ATA HDDs or set up a RAID. 6. You can see HDDs >137GB with any Linux install disk made in the last several years. Not so on most XP install disks unless you recently got one or slipstream. 7. Better monitoring of the HW right out of the box, especially of stuff that ACPI touches. 8. Better performance for the most part. 9. No need for driver CDs at all. 10. Better ability to do unusual things such as install over the LAN with no HDD, run just off of a USB stick or CD/DVD, and detect bad HW.
OS X is a poor choice for HW junkies as non-Apple internal device support stinks. Try putting in a model of standard PCIe x16 video card that does not ship with any model of Macintosh into one with a PCIe x16 slot in it. It won't work with OS X but Linux or Windows (assuming x86 Mac) on the very same box will use it just fine. Many other PCI and PCIe devices that will run on Linux and Windows won't work on a Mac, such as many disk controllers, TV tuners, sound cards, and NICs. OS X should be considered Apple's firmware for black box hardware. It can run things that Apple intends one to run (such as external widgets) just fine, but replacing much in the black box with un-blessed parts won't work.
Ideally, software patents would be struck down as being a Ted Stevens level of stupidity. If they ever are, then we'd have our normal cast and crew of excellent players such as MPlayer, Kaffeine + Amarok, VLC to be able to handle all formats with ease. Unfortunately that's not the case right now, so the program- or at least parts of it- would have to be proprietary code. Then it's certainly possible to do- MS can give away Windows Media Player, Apple can give away iTunes (shudder) and Quicktime (bigger shudder), Nullsoft can give away Winamp, MusicMatch gives away their jukebox, and so forth. I personally don't have enough issues with using a proprietary application IFF it's the only way to do something (hence I run ATi's fglrx binary blob to get my x1900 to do dual-head and perform worth a darn. It does, so I don't complain much.) I will draw the line at using completely proprietary hardware and DRMed software though- been burned enough there to be wiser.
However, since there's that pickle of sticking true to OSS and probably limiting widespread acceptance or allowing a some proprietary stuff into Linux to give it a popular boost (and thus opening the floodgates that'll surely and eventually make most of Linux not freely distributable) we'll likely not see super widespread acceptance of the OS unless software patents die. I will be one of the first to cheer about it, although sadly I highly doubt it will happen here in the U.S. Probably more to the opposite, in fact.
Those are certainly a ton of eye candy and they already run on Linux (but are not yet all out of beta, but that will soon come.) In fact, this old laptop I'm typing on is happily running AIGLX and Beryl and it has led more than one person to think that I hacked OS X x86 onto my laptop.
I'd think that the best thing to do to get Linux widely adopted would be:
1. Hammer the corporate and organizational angle very hard. People do a lot of work at home and if they use Linux at work or school, chances are that they'd use it at home too. 2. Get a few major game and app publishers to publish for Linux. For example, having a good, it's-all-legal-everywhere media player that can handle all types of media would be a definite advantage to Linux, so would having all of the web browser plugins that anybody would need. 3. Then get it preinstalled on first-tier OEM PCs for less than a comparable model with Windows.
Those three things would ensure that Linux would absolutely take off in market share if it ever will. Number 3 is really the key here as most of the issues with Linux stem from the fact that people must install and configure it themselves. If you have to install Windows from scratch, it's harder than Linux, but very few non-techies do that. So by putting Linux on the PC, everything works and you get an instantly perfectly-set-up unit. The games and apps are somewhat less of an issue.
Yes, they have. I remember trying the old fglrx drivers in my notebook and they did not work well, if at all. It was an RV250 (Mobility Radeon M9000) so the 3D DRI drivers not only worked in it, but they worked pretty well. These latest drivers were rather painless to get installed, or about as painless as anything in Gentoo is.
Actually, ATi's latest drivers are pretty good, to tell the truth. It was honestly no harder for me to install my new ATi x1900 under Gentoo with a dual-head setup than it was my old NVIDIA 6200TC. I was very surprised, considering the horror stories I'd heard.
Hey, call me dumb or whatnot but I actually bought an ATi Radeon x1900 to put in my Linux box to do a dual-head setup. I have to use the fglrx drivers to get the dual head to work, naturally. But you know what? They actually DO work (and work well) and it wasn't any more difficult to get them to work than NVIDIA's drivers. About the only kvetch with them is that XVideo is a little funky, so I watch my movies with xine outputting to OpenGL and not XVideo. Not a big deal at all, and the card is some kind of fast...
IThe problem stems from the fact that the ISOLINUX used to boot the live CDs and installers does not load USB modules- USB detection and support is done by coldplug later in the boot sequence. Windows loads the drivers into its "live kernel" right when it starts up- that's why it takes minutes to get to do anything after you stick in a Windows CD to install but the Linux boot prompt shows up immediately. If you want to get this fixed, perhaps the guys that do ISOLINUX need to be contacted to load some USB HID drivers on boot instead of relying on the host computer using PS/2 or a USB -> PS/2 emulation at boot in the BIOS.
I define "primetime" as: 1. The OS is relatively free of memory leaks, FS corruption, and other bugs that won't let you keep it on for 10 days or so without it acting all crazy on you. 2. There is some semblance of user security in the OS. 3. Being able to be run on a network without very many problems. 4. Most users can figure out how to use the OS if it is preinstalled on the computer. 5. There are enough applications for the platform so that it can be used to do most of the tasks that people have the computer do (this does NOT mean that the apps have to be compatible with other apps or that a certain vendor's app runs on it- only that the functionality is there.) 6. There are enough drivers out there for the platform that one can have enough peripherals to do most of the tasks that a computer does- print, scan, play back audio, etc.
Windows 95 and 98(SE) failed on #1, #2, and had a little trouble with #3 in some cases. The FAT16/32 file system and the single-user DOS backend made it not "primetime" ready.
Windows wasn't truly ready for the primetime until Windows 2000. Any of the DOS-based Windows variants were not that stable and had little to no permissions or limitations on users whatsoever. Windows 95 was a big step up from 3.11, but 95 wasn't really production-ready, and although 98SE was better than 95, it still suffered from its DOS roots. You could make a case for NT4 being ready for the primetime, but NT4 wasn't as "Joe-sixpack-friendly" as the 9x series and 2000 in later SPs was, mostly due to drivers. XP Professional x86_64 isn't primetime-ready either as (to make a bad analogy) it's plagued with a dearth of drivers and applications. The same goes for Server 2003 as it's got a lot of multimedia-type stuff stripped out of it that a Joe Sixpack might want.
Ouch. My laptop can boot up to a full KDE 3.5.4 install with gkrellm2 running and only use 85MB RAM. I have used "lightweight" WMs before and found that they're really not that much lighter nor snappier- either that or KDE and GNOME have just gotten faster and lighter on the RAM than they used to be a long time ago. The thing that the lightweight WMs are is simpler and use less HDD space, which can be plusses in its own right.
I hated my first car- it was a pile 'o junk. My school was one of those who were given Macs for cheap, but most of my friends and I had DOS/Windows at home. When we went to college and got our own computers, some were Windows machines, some were Macs, and some were Linux units. My point is that people do not necessarily stick with one thing because it is familiar.
I would say that the average price of my textbooks would be roughly $110-160 for a new book and $65-110 for a used book. Some of these books are paperback books, like the $105 econ book I bought freshman year or the $250 set of physics books (series of 5) I had to get sophomore year. The thing is that a lot of universities will also "brand" their books so that they are unsalable on the open market to other schools. My differential equations book was like that, and it was also a cut-down version of another text. Result? We could not sell them back, but in their defense it was a $45 book instead of $130.
One thing that my university is moving towards is making plastic-spiral-bound course texts that they print themselves. I have had classes that have used them and while they are unresellable, they are $25-35 and have as much information as a full textbook. The unresellable part comes from the fact that some pages are to be used for assignments and turned in and that the professor's name and the semester are on the cover. It's still kind of a racket but it's a much less expensive one and a step in the right direction.
The professor in question is likely within his legal right to do what he is doing provided that the university does not claim ownership or partial ownership on information developed by the staff and as such wants a cut of the sales. Some universities also will not let the professor directly sell things to students, citing conflict of interest (mine is that way.) The professor is being a little shady by selling the lectures as there is that conflict of interest with selling things to your students, but the students also are not forced to buy the recording and that does not go against the spirit of the no-selling rule if it does the letter. That rule was designed to prohibit professors from making students buy their textbook and pay whatever they wanted to charge or basically fail the class. However, we shall see if he allows students to come in and videotape the lectures and give them away. If his intentions are really in the right place and that fee is truly for equipment and a little bit of time for editing, then he would. If he does not, then he is trying to make a buck off it and I think that would be a conflict of interest as the student gets no compensation for recording and distributing the lectures. And they did pay for the lecture and nowhere does it say that you cannot record them- otherwise notebooks would be illegal.
"But DRM and TCPA are like the valves on the tubes that make up the Internet! Would YOU want a truck carrying an Internet barreling along the tubes to wind up coming up out of your toilet when you're sitting on it? Of course not. That's why we should pass network neutrality laws and also mandate TCPA and DRM."
Of course it's illegal. It is like putting a fake license plate on your truck when you drive it through the tubes that make up the Internet.
Re:I am actually happy that elections are rigged..
on
Diebold Flops in Alaska
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Clinton signed the DMCA bill and made it a law. I would have to assume that Gore, being Clinton's second-in-command, could have said something to prevent its passing. But he didn't, so I can only infer that he would have signed more DRM and anti-fair-use bills into law. And I highly doubt that Gore would have ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11. (Would we have been attacked in the first place: definitely. All of the attacks were planned WELL in advance of Bush taking office less than a year before.) Other than that, it's pretty much a wild guess.
Kerry? Well, who knows with him as he's more indecisive than a woman with two dresses trying to figure which one makes her butt smaller. I imagine that except for raising taxes (BTW, his wife paid a measly 12% of her seven figures of income in taxes in 2004 and that is BELOW the lowest tax bracket!) his administration would have been a complete and utter mess, especially if Congress would have been the same as it is now. Nothing but bickering and John Murtha-esque I'll-shut-down-the-government-unless-I-get-my-way tactics.
Basically put, none of the candidates were all that hot; it's getting towards picking the least foul one rather than one you like the most as all of them stink to varying degrees.
Yes, that is a very good point. Migrating from Windows to Linux is a big change- so why not accomplish the Office -> something else transition at the same time and only ruffle the users' feathers once?
I'd also bet on that too. Adobe did just that with Acrobat Reader 7- the Linux version is simply a port of the OS X version, not made-from-scratch for Linux.
I think that you are pretty much spot-on with your assessment. Because MS offers both Office and the OS it runs on AND both are the extremely dominant product in their category, MS has little incentive to offer Office for a competing OS at this time. However, I think that we might eventually see Microsoft offer Office for Linux, but it would have to make sense for them to do so. Thus the following things must be true for them to do that:
1. A court in a country breaks Microsoft's monopoly on both OS and office suite and mandates that the Office arm make a Linux version. This would be much more likely if it were a large court like the E.U. or U.S. instead of a single smaller European or Asian country. If a small-market country mandated this, MS would likely just pull out of that country. 2. Corporations upgrading to Linux from W2K/XP instead of to Vista leave MS's corporate market share at 2/3 or less- and that 2/3 is mostly bought-and-paid-for older versions from small buyers, not large yearly-support-subscription customers. 3. The general-public desktop Linux share exceeds 50%. 4. Several U.S. states or countries mandate that their governmental offices and schools use Linux as an OS but does not mandate that only OSS programs be used. MS would not want to miss out on a possible large sale that a competitor like OpenOffice would otherwise get by default.
I don't doubt that MS would like to sink OpenOffice on Windows, but trying to stall OpenOffice development by releasing Office for Linux would be akin to killing a bug that landed on top of your shoe by shooting down at it with a shotgun.
OpenOffice has an absolutely excellent equation editing function- far, far better than Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0 that is used in Office. You can use a palette a la MSEE 3 or better yet, just type the numbers and use brackets for grouping, underscores for subscripting, and %GREEKCHARACTERS. It's very easy to do and one of the big features that OO has over MS Office in my mind.
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I'm a hardware junkie and I think Linux is a better HW tweaker OS for the following reasons:
1. Better control of the hardware. There is no "modprobe" in Windows IIRC and it's MUCH harder to tweak with low-level configurations. In Linux, you just edit a text file, restart the daemon, and off you go.
2. Never need to worry about activation if you switch stuff in and out frequently.
3. Running a homebuilt legally is $200-300 cheaper if you don't have to buy Windows.
4. Installing Windows XP onto a new modern computer is a real PITA as there are drivers for virtually nothing in the machine on the disk. Lose/scratch a driver CD and you're f'ed as dollars to donuts your NICs *aren't* supported.
5. You don't need a floppy drive to install onto serial ATA HDDs or set up a RAID.
6. You can see HDDs >137GB with any Linux install disk made in the last several years. Not so on most XP install disks unless you recently got one or slipstream.
7. Better monitoring of the HW right out of the box, especially of stuff that ACPI touches.
8. Better performance for the most part.
9. No need for driver CDs at all.
10. Better ability to do unusual things such as install over the LAN with no HDD, run just off of a USB stick or CD/DVD, and detect bad HW.
OS X is a poor choice for HW junkies as non-Apple internal device support stinks. Try putting in a model of standard PCIe x16 video card that does not ship with any model of Macintosh into one with a PCIe x16 slot in it. It won't work with OS X but Linux or Windows (assuming x86 Mac) on the very same box will use it just fine. Many other PCI and PCIe devices that will run on Linux and Windows won't work on a Mac, such as many disk controllers, TV tuners, sound cards, and NICs. OS X should be considered Apple's firmware for black box hardware. It can run things that Apple intends one to run (such as external widgets) just fine, but replacing much in the black box with un-blessed parts won't work.
Ideally, software patents would be struck down as being a Ted Stevens level of stupidity. If they ever are, then we'd have our normal cast and crew of excellent players such as MPlayer, Kaffeine + Amarok, VLC to be able to handle all formats with ease. Unfortunately that's not the case right now, so the program- or at least parts of it- would have to be proprietary code. Then it's certainly possible to do- MS can give away Windows Media Player, Apple can give away iTunes (shudder) and Quicktime (bigger shudder), Nullsoft can give away Winamp, MusicMatch gives away their jukebox, and so forth. I personally don't have enough issues with using a proprietary application IFF it's the only way to do something (hence I run ATi's fglrx binary blob to get my x1900 to do dual-head and perform worth a darn. It does, so I don't complain much.) I will draw the line at using completely proprietary hardware and DRMed software though- been burned enough there to be wiser.
However, since there's that pickle of sticking true to OSS and probably limiting widespread acceptance or allowing a some proprietary stuff into Linux to give it a popular boost (and thus opening the floodgates that'll surely and eventually make most of Linux not freely distributable) we'll likely not see super widespread acceptance of the OS unless software patents die. I will be one of the first to cheer about it, although sadly I highly doubt it will happen here in the U.S. Probably more to the opposite, in fact.
Those are certainly a ton of eye candy and they already run on Linux (but are not yet all out of beta, but that will soon come.) In fact, this old laptop I'm typing on is happily running AIGLX and Beryl and it has led more than one person to think that I hacked OS X x86 onto my laptop.
I'd think that the best thing to do to get Linux widely adopted would be:
1. Hammer the corporate and organizational angle very hard. People do a lot of work at home and if they use Linux at work or school, chances are that they'd use it at home too.
2. Get a few major game and app publishers to publish for Linux. For example, having a good, it's-all-legal-everywhere media player that can handle all types of media would be a definite advantage to Linux, so would having all of the web browser plugins that anybody would need.
3. Then get it preinstalled on first-tier OEM PCs for less than a comparable model with Windows.
Those three things would ensure that Linux would absolutely take off in market share if it ever will. Number 3 is really the key here as most of the issues with Linux stem from the fact that people must install and configure it themselves. If you have to install Windows from scratch, it's harder than Linux, but very few non-techies do that. So by putting Linux on the PC, everything works and you get an instantly perfectly-set-up unit. The games and apps are somewhat less of an issue.
Yes, they have. I remember trying the old fglrx drivers in my notebook and they did not work well, if at all. It was an RV250 (Mobility Radeon M9000) so the 3D DRI drivers not only worked in it, but they worked pretty well. These latest drivers were rather painless to get installed, or about as painless as anything in Gentoo is.
Actually, ATi's latest drivers are pretty good, to tell the truth. It was honestly no harder for me to install my new ATi x1900 under Gentoo with a dual-head setup than it was my old NVIDIA 6200TC. I was very surprised, considering the horror stories I'd heard.
Hey, call me dumb or whatnot but I actually bought an ATi Radeon x1900 to put in my Linux box to do a dual-head setup. I have to use the fglrx drivers to get the dual head to work, naturally. But you know what? They actually DO work (and work well) and it wasn't any more difficult to get them to work than NVIDIA's drivers. About the only kvetch with them is that XVideo is a little funky, so I watch my movies with xine outputting to OpenGL and not XVideo. Not a big deal at all, and the card is some kind of fast...
It's political season. Whatever one person says another has to say the opposite just because.
IThe problem stems from the fact that the ISOLINUX used to boot the live CDs and installers does not load USB modules- USB detection and support is done by coldplug later in the boot sequence. Windows loads the drivers into its "live kernel" right when it starts up- that's why it takes minutes to get to do anything after you stick in a Windows CD to install but the Linux boot prompt shows up immediately. If you want to get this fixed, perhaps the guys that do ISOLINUX need to be contacted to load some USB HID drivers on boot instead of relying on the host computer using PS/2 or a USB -> PS/2 emulation at boot in the BIOS.
I define "primetime" as:
1. The OS is relatively free of memory leaks, FS corruption, and other bugs that won't let you keep it on for 10 days or so without it acting all crazy on you.
2. There is some semblance of user security in the OS.
3. Being able to be run on a network without very many problems.
4. Most users can figure out how to use the OS if it is preinstalled on the computer.
5. There are enough applications for the platform so that it can be used to do most of the tasks that people have the computer do (this does NOT mean that the apps have to be compatible with other apps or that a certain vendor's app runs on it- only that the functionality is there.)
6. There are enough drivers out there for the platform that one can have enough peripherals to do most of the tasks that a computer does- print, scan, play back audio, etc.
Windows 95 and 98(SE) failed on #1, #2, and had a little trouble with #3 in some cases. The FAT16/32 file system and the single-user DOS backend made it not "primetime" ready.
Windows wasn't truly ready for the primetime until Windows 2000. Any of the DOS-based Windows variants were not that stable and had little to no permissions or limitations on users whatsoever. Windows 95 was a big step up from 3.11, but 95 wasn't really production-ready, and although 98SE was better than 95, it still suffered from its DOS roots. You could make a case for NT4 being ready for the primetime, but NT4 wasn't as "Joe-sixpack-friendly" as the 9x series and 2000 in later SPs was, mostly due to drivers. XP Professional x86_64 isn't primetime-ready either as (to make a bad analogy) it's plagued with a dearth of drivers and applications. The same goes for Server 2003 as it's got a lot of multimedia-type stuff stripped out of it that a Joe Sixpack might want.
Ouch. My laptop can boot up to a full KDE 3.5.4 install with gkrellm2 running and only use 85MB RAM. I have used "lightweight" WMs before and found that they're really not that much lighter nor snappier- either that or KDE and GNOME have just gotten faster and lighter on the RAM than they used to be a long time ago. The thing that the lightweight WMs are is simpler and use less HDD space, which can be plusses in its own right.
GNU Ghostscript.
I hated my first car- it was a pile 'o junk. My school was one of those who were given Macs for cheap, but most of my friends and I had DOS/Windows at home. When we went to college and got our own computers, some were Windows machines, some were Macs, and some were Linux units. My point is that people do not necessarily stick with one thing because it is familiar.
A C64.
I would say that the average price of my textbooks would be roughly $110-160 for a new book and $65-110 for a used book. Some of these books are paperback books, like the $105 econ book I bought freshman year or the $250 set of physics books (series of 5) I had to get sophomore year. The thing is that a lot of universities will also "brand" their books so that they are unsalable on the open market to other schools. My differential equations book was like that, and it was also a cut-down version of another text. Result? We could not sell them back, but in their defense it was a $45 book instead of $130.
One thing that my university is moving towards is making plastic-spiral-bound course texts that they print themselves. I have had classes that have used them and while they are unresellable, they are $25-35 and have as much information as a full textbook. The unresellable part comes from the fact that some pages are to be used for assignments and turned in and that the professor's name and the semester are on the cover. It's still kind of a racket but it's a much less expensive one and a step in the right direction.
The professor in question is likely within his legal right to do what he is doing provided that the university does not claim ownership or partial ownership on information developed by the staff and as such wants a cut of the sales. Some universities also will not let the professor directly sell things to students, citing conflict of interest (mine is that way.) The professor is being a little shady by selling the lectures as there is that conflict of interest with selling things to your students, but the students also are not forced to buy the recording and that does not go against the spirit of the no-selling rule if it does the letter. That rule was designed to prohibit professors from making students buy their textbook and pay whatever they wanted to charge or basically fail the class. However, we shall see if he allows students to come in and videotape the lectures and give them away. If his intentions are really in the right place and that fee is truly for equipment and a little bit of time for editing, then he would. If he does not, then he is trying to make a buck off it and I think that would be a conflict of interest as the student gets no compensation for recording and distributing the lectures. And they did pay for the lecture and nowhere does it say that you cannot record them- otherwise notebooks would be illegal.
"But DRM and TCPA are like the valves on the tubes that make up the Internet! Would YOU want a truck carrying an Internet barreling along the tubes to wind up coming up out of your toilet when you're sitting on it? Of course not. That's why we should pass network neutrality laws and also mandate TCPA and DRM."
-Sen. Ted Stevens
Of course it's illegal. It is like putting a fake license plate on your truck when you drive it through the tubes that make up the Internet.
Clinton signed the DMCA bill and made it a law. I would have to assume that Gore, being Clinton's second-in-command, could have said something to prevent its passing. But he didn't, so I can only infer that he would have signed more DRM and anti-fair-use bills into law. And I highly doubt that Gore would have ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan after 9/11. (Would we have been attacked in the first place: definitely. All of the attacks were planned WELL in advance of Bush taking office less than a year before.) Other than that, it's pretty much a wild guess.
Kerry? Well, who knows with him as he's more indecisive than a woman with two dresses trying to figure which one makes her butt smaller. I imagine that except for raising taxes (BTW, his wife paid a measly 12% of her seven figures of income in taxes in 2004 and that is BELOW the lowest tax bracket!) his administration would have been a complete and utter mess, especially if Congress would have been the same as it is now. Nothing but bickering and John Murtha-esque I'll-shut-down-the-government-unless-I-get-my-way tactics.
Basically put, none of the candidates were all that hot; it's getting towards picking the least foul one rather than one you like the most as all of them stink to varying degrees.
Yes, Ludacris speed- straight from the crack house to the big house in 2 seconds flat...
And with the exception of GM (well, and the Dodge Hemi and soon-to-be-phased-out 360) all gasoline American V8s are overhead cam:
Ford: 4.6L 16-valve SOHC V8 (235 hp)- F-150, Explorer V8, Expedition, Mecury Mountaineer V8
4.6L 24-valve SOHC V8 (300 hp)- Mustang GT, Lincoln Aviator
5.4L 24-valve SOHC V8 (300 hp)- F-150, F-250, Expedition
5.4L 32-valve DOHC V8 (300 hp)- Navigator
4.6L 32-valve DOHC V8 supercharged (400 hp)- Mustang Cobra
5.4L 32-valve DOHC V8 supercharged (500-550 hp)- Mustang GT500, Ford GT
Dodge: 4.7L 16-valve SOHC V8 (~240-260 hp)- Ram 1500, Jeep Grand Cherokee V8, Jeep Commander, Dakota V8
And even GM makes a twincam V8 in its 4.6L Northstar line. They just make a lot of pushrod V8s too.
Because the Democratic candidates were even worse. Duh.
Yes, that is a very good point. Migrating from Windows to Linux is a big change- so why not accomplish the Office -> something else transition at the same time and only ruffle the users' feathers once?
I'd also bet on that too. Adobe did just that with Acrobat Reader 7- the Linux version is simply a port of the OS X version, not made-from-scratch for Linux.
I think that you are pretty much spot-on with your assessment. Because MS offers both Office and the OS it runs on AND both are the extremely dominant product in their category, MS has little incentive to offer Office for a competing OS at this time. However, I think that we might eventually see Microsoft offer Office for Linux, but it would have to make sense for them to do so. Thus the following things must be true for them to do that:
1. A court in a country breaks Microsoft's monopoly on both OS and office suite and mandates that the Office arm make a Linux version. This would be much more likely if it were a large court like the E.U. or U.S. instead of a single smaller European or Asian country. If a small-market country mandated this, MS would likely just pull out of that country.
2. Corporations upgrading to Linux from W2K/XP instead of to Vista leave MS's corporate market share at 2/3 or less- and that 2/3 is mostly bought-and-paid-for older versions from small buyers, not large yearly-support-subscription customers.
3. The general-public desktop Linux share exceeds 50%.
4. Several U.S. states or countries mandate that their governmental offices and schools use Linux as an OS but does not mandate that only OSS programs be used. MS would not want to miss out on a possible large sale that a competitor like OpenOffice would otherwise get by default.
I don't doubt that MS would like to sink OpenOffice on Windows, but trying to stall OpenOffice development by releasing Office for Linux would be akin to killing a bug that landed on top of your shoe by shooting down at it with a shotgun.
OpenOffice has an absolutely excellent equation editing function- far, far better than Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0 that is used in Office. You can use a palette a la MSEE 3 or better yet, just type the numbers and use brackets for grouping, underscores for subscripting, and %GREEKCHARACTERS. It's very easy to do and one of the big features that OO has over MS Office in my mind.