Be that as it may (and I think it's a good point), fact is that it allows non-experts to do very fancy stuff that I wouldn't even know how to do with other means. Maybe the non-proprietary alternatives should simply try to be better, this approach seems to be more promising than simply being annoyed about PDFs impressive feature set.
See the link to "performance improvements" in the summary? FWIW, startup is considerably faster for me in Ubuntu 8.04 beta (on a regular business laptop from last year).
Great idea (I like the style vs content separation in particular) and hurrah for free software, but it needs to work with binary MS files, at least for the time being (company has no real migration plans for O2007). I'm unfortunately not in a position to change that. I probably should have mentioned this, but I guess I thought it would be obvious from the context.
One thing I'd be concerned about is that making users switch from Word's style of showing the changes inline would be a tough battle. It is pretty damn nice if you're used to it. Dunno how you envision the inline display of the changes. But anyway, if there are enough advantages in a new solution, the users might accept change.
Regarding merging changes back with another user's local repo: there is little notion of a repo in standalone Word, that only comes in with Sharepoint (which we don't use because it's useless for us), so naturally Word can't do that. You can easily merge one user's version with another user's version, obviously on a file basis.
Sorry for taking so long to answer, Easter and all that.
Only the relatively well off among the Chinese are educated enough to be literate in English. You know: heads of state-owned companies, those in high levels of government, espionage, and maybe some repatriotized persons
I give you that "only the relatively well-off" speak English, but there are many more than just the few groups of people on your list. I work for a multinational company with offices in several Chinese cities, and of course most employees from secretaries upwards speak and read English.
Version control, as is done with code, should be done on a content management server in an office environment.
Show me convincingly how to do that in a 15,000 user company, where 10,000 use laptops because they are constantly at clients' sites (which can also mean a trailer without internet access at a Polish mine), traveling, etc., are in general not very tech-savvy, and extremely hard to train/educate in application usage and processes (due to constant time pressure and a "know all" attitude), and I want to talk with you about a job.
The real problem is with the people that use it like a robot and don't really know how to use the program at all.
And the people who know it so well that it's all reflexes. I know, I worked as a PowerPoint presentation designer for a few years, and everything I did then had begone to work automatic. How I would approach a complex slide (objects to use, grouping), how I would grab objects, menus, shortcuts, everything. PowerPoint 2007 wants to make me tear my hair out.
Upon re-reading, I think you are right. And the parent post was actually funny; I missed that because I was posting from work, which tends to kill my sense of humor. Apologies to parent.
The real issue, as has been pointed out a millions times, are sloppily-coded extensions. I keep my FF window open for weeks at a time and never had a FF memory problem in Ubuntu, through all FF and Ubuntu versions. I don't use extensions.
To be honest, I also hesitated a bit before clicking for the same reason, when I searched for it after reading your post. But then, I assume they did some user testing for the string change.
Yeah, shabby spots in public places. OH THE HORROR!
You know, when I was at school I once worked for the municipal utility's public gardening service during summer. Whenever we had some downtime, regardless of whether it was to have a smoke or because we were waiting for the tractor to come back (so that we had something to throw the cut grass onto) we had to hide behind some bushes, because some jerk of other from the surrounding apartments would always immediately call the company to complain. Jackasses like this will have a field day with this new service.
Take the organize bookmarks dialog. It's magically disappeared. Perhaps I'm supposed to read the changelog and find you access it for clicking random widget #167 -- but why? It's been under the bookmark tab for years, in practically all browsers.
Maybe I misunderstand, but AFAICT it's still there, just that it's called "Show all Bookmarks". Not all that hard.
Well, I can only go after what he wrote. Your point is well taken regarding judges, but the fact remains that it's easy not to use GPL code if you can't or don't want to abide by the license. Nothing but the GPL entitles you to the code in the first place.
You are right of course, but GP said "the entire work of someone", and GP is not correct.
Also, what you write is true only when one uses the GPL code on purpose, and this is well documented in the license, no surprises. It's easy to avoid too, simply by not using code that the author only makes available under this condition. In case you meant that inadvertent use of GPL'ed code can lead to these consequences: this is pure FUD, it has never happened in practice and not judge will likely ever rule that way.
Generally, GPL violations are resolved amicably, and never by a judge order to open unproportional amounts of code. Look, e.g., at the case history here.
Urgh, I misread "SL" for "IE". Seems that "SL" has even entered my acronym vocabulary it.
But if you replace SL with IE in my post it serves as the analogy to a possible (likely?) future SL situation that I intended it to be:
"That's certainly not absurd. Count Windows license[s] running in virtual machines and there surely are still people who do this [pay for Windows to run IE] to access certain sites, or at least did so until not more than a year ago."
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If you work very hard in Germany and earn say $150k a year, you pay 50% tax.
This is simply a lie. You pay 35%, which you can easily check at several online tax calculators, such as http://www.zinsen-berechnen.de/einkommensteuerrechner.php. And that's only if you are stupid enough to tax everything.
Just a few things, but those are covered by Lithium, apparently.
Be that as it may (and I think it's a good point), fact is that it allows non-experts to do very fancy stuff that I wouldn't even know how to do with other means. Maybe the non-proprietary alternatives should simply try to be better, this approach seems to be more promising than simply being annoyed about PDFs impressive feature set.
See the link to "performance improvements" in the summary? FWIW, startup is considerably faster for me in Ubuntu 8.04 beta (on a regular business laptop from last year).
Just FYI, Acrobat can do a million things more than just creating dumb display-only files.
Great idea (I like the style vs content separation in particular) and hurrah for free software, but it needs to work with binary MS files, at least for the time being (company has no real migration plans for O2007). I'm unfortunately not in a position to change that. I probably should have mentioned this, but I guess I thought it would be obvious from the context.
One thing I'd be concerned about is that making users switch from Word's style of showing the changes inline would be a tough battle. It is pretty damn nice if you're used to it. Dunno how you envision the inline display of the changes. But anyway, if there are enough advantages in a new solution, the users might accept change.
Regarding merging changes back with another user's local repo: there is little notion of a repo in standalone Word, that only comes in with Sharepoint (which we don't use because it's useless for us), so naturally Word can't do that. You can easily merge one user's version with another user's version, obviously on a file basis.
Sorry for taking so long to answer, Easter and all that.
Only the relatively well off among the Chinese are educated enough to be literate in English. You know: heads of state-owned companies, those in high levels of government, espionage, and maybe some repatriotized persons
I give you that "only the relatively well-off" speak English, but there are many more than just the few groups of people on your list. I work for a multinational company with offices in several Chinese cities, and of course most employees from secretaries upwards speak and read English.
That seems fair to me, since they /did/ come up with the idea themselves
Yeah, it would be fantastic if we had a different control method for every car brand, too.
It isn't an apples to apples comparison anyway, the fact remains that OO.org is still a Java application
Um, no it isn't. Too lazy to google for you, tough.
Version control, as is done with code, should be done on a content management server in an office environment.
Show me convincingly how to do that in a 15,000 user company, where 10,000 use laptops because they are constantly at clients' sites (which can also mean a trailer without internet access at a Polish mine), traveling, etc., are in general not very tech-savvy, and extremely hard to train/educate in application usage and processes (due to constant time pressure and a "know all" attitude), and I want to talk with you about a job.
PowerPoint 2007 wants to make me tear my hair out.
Yeah, that must be it.
The real problem is with the people that use it like a robot and don't really know how to use the program at all.
And the people who know it so well that it's all reflexes. I know, I worked as a PowerPoint presentation designer for a few years, and everything I did then had begone to work automatic. How I would approach a complex slide (objects to use, grouping), how I would grab objects, menus, shortcuts, everything. PowerPoint 2007 wants to make me tear my hair out.
It's not Godwin'ing the thread to refer you to the creative nerds working for this fine organization.
Upon re-reading, I think you are right. And the parent post was actually funny; I missed that because I was posting from work, which tends to kill my sense of humor. Apologies to parent.
The real issue, as has been pointed out a millions times, are sloppily-coded extensions. I keep my FF window open for weeks at a time and never had a FF memory problem in Ubuntu, through all FF and Ubuntu versions. I don't use extensions.
Along that vein; be advised that notepad has a VERY small footprint.
you seem to be inferring that feature-wise, IE7 is better then FF3. Care to elaborate?
At my university that language was barred from use in assignments, because it was considered to be without merit.
Well, different goals in uni and reality.
To be honest, I also hesitated a bit before clicking for the same reason, when I searched for it after reading your post. But then, I assume they did some user testing for the string change.
Yeah, shabby spots in public places. OH THE HORROR!
You know, when I was at school I once worked for the municipal utility's public gardening service during summer. Whenever we had some downtime, regardless of whether it was to have a smoke or because we were waiting for the tractor to come back (so that we had something to throw the cut grass onto) we had to hide behind some bushes, because some jerk of other from the surrounding apartments would always immediately call the company to complain. Jackasses like this will have a field day with this new service.
Take the organize bookmarks dialog. It's magically disappeared. Perhaps I'm supposed to read the changelog and find you access it for clicking random widget #167 -- but why? It's been under the bookmark tab for years, in practically all browsers.
Maybe I misunderstand, but AFAICT it's still there, just that it's called "Show all Bookmarks". Not all that hard.
Gosh, the quality of posts on /. really is in a steady decline.
Yeah, finally anal people can bitch about the length of the grass with the help of Google. Jeeez, get a life.
Well, I can only go after what he wrote. Your point is well taken regarding judges, but the fact remains that it's easy not to use GPL code if you can't or don't want to abide by the license. Nothing but the GPL entitles you to the code in the first place.
You are right of course, but GP said "the entire work of someone", and GP is not correct.
Also, what you write is true only when one uses the GPL code on purpose, and this is well documented in the license, no surprises. It's easy to avoid too, simply by not using code that the author only makes available under this condition. In case you meant that inadvertent use of GPL'ed code can lead to these consequences: this is pure FUD, it has never happened in practice and not judge will likely ever rule that way.
Generally, GPL violations are resolved amicably, and never by a judge order to open unproportional amounts of code. Look, e.g., at the case history here.
Urgh, I misread "SL" for "IE". Seems that "SL" has even entered my acronym vocabulary it.
:)
But if you replace SL with IE in my post it serves as the analogy to a possible (likely?) future SL situation that I intended it to be:
"That's certainly not absurd. Count Windows license[s] running in virtual machines and there surely are still people who do this [pay for Windows to run IE] to access certain sites, or at least did so until not more than a year ago."
Sorry for the mess