A roll-out that size always has big problems, and the only thing will be remembered by the media is that this linux roll-out had big problems. It would be much smarter to transition little by little. It is good press for Linspire, but thats about it.
Don't get me wrong, I think it would be great is they did move everything over, for no other reason it would be a great case study for the world. The only problem I see is the speed at which it would be done.
Lets not forget, Apple would not have made the comback if MS didn't give them $150 million to stay afloat and regroup. Steve Jobs AND Bill Gates really deserve the Tank You from the apple fans.
Nokia hasn't come up with a GOOD PDA phone for the business class. Business people are a huge and growing a market for both carriers and handset makers. The reason being is, unlike the average user, they drop $600 at the drop of a hat for the latest and greatest. They buy the toys to go with it too. And they get premium voice/data plans.
I like OSS don't get me wrong, but so far the push to put OSS platforms on phones has been pretty unimpressive. Even Nokia's brief attempt with the Linux device they came out with over the summer (or was it spring?) was pretty useless. If they don't start offering some products like rim, treo, or even windows mobile, they are going to miss a pretty big market... eventually loosing their number 1 spot in the world.
They already are declining, and I don't see this site helping their core business. It almost seems like a hail marry to get some good press, and make it look like they are pioneers. It looks to me like they are betting this part of their business on OSS developers, but the vast majority of the developers have real full time jobs, and do the work on their free time. A company this large shouldn't edge their bets on the hope people will pick up their software as their hobby.
Its a "cool" idea, but hoping the oss community helps their lackluster business platform is not the best strategy for their shareholders. I know allot of the zealots think this is an attack on OSS, it really is not, its an attack on Nokia. We all know the rate of most OSS is slow, and nokia is competing against some pretty big guns with a good head start, and lots of resources dumped into make their platforms better.
It would be nice to get some responses that aren't just flames or useless 1 liners. I would really rather a good debate.
"Apple says iTunes is "better than free" because it's "fair to the artists and record labels." That's simply not true. First of all, Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract. Many of them will never Artists Get Ripped Off. even see this paltry share because they have to pay for producers and recording costs, both of which can be enormous. Until the musician "recoups" these costs, when you buy an iTunes song, the label gives them nothing. (Sources: major label musician's cut Apple's cut For a thorough explanation of how recouping screws musicians, see Confessions of a Record Producer by Moses Avalon)" http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/
35% is a huge cut for a distributor. Best Buy doesn't take 35% cut off of each cd sale, not even close! You can fact check the numbers but, apple's percentage is widely known.
it wasn't trolling and you are wrong. He already takes a huge piece of each 99 cent download, and the Music labels wanted to make more money. The option would be for steve to take a smaller cut, or raise the price. He only talked about the higher price when spreading his FUD.
They also wanted to change the pricing structures... lower unpopular song prices, raise popular. For EXAMPLE, if I wanted to download rare b.b. king song I would be pretty happy to pay 50 cents... likewise if I want to buy the song at the top of the charts 1.50. Whatever the pricing structure may be.
All that said, I didn't pass judgment on that specifically, I just said, he is pissing them off by bad mouthing them publicly. You don't publicly bad mouth your supplier over a disagreement.
I know its off topic, but I really like the iDrive. You are referring to the BMW iDrive correct?
My 5 series is so friggen customizable. Its a pretty easy tool to navigate the menus to set it up. When driving I can careless jump around, combined with the voice commands, its pretty quick too.
Now the argument that you don't need all that stuff may be valid, but as long as you can do it, i think its a pretty nice system.
This is part of the genius of Steve Jobs. He is better then anyone for taking credit for someone else's ideas. Really worse then MS, just doesn't have as big of a company.
Anyways, interestingly enough, according to you, apple's biggest selling point isn't really apples'.
the iPod is just a cool trend. It won't last forever. Open Source, Creative, Sony, and others will all eventually catch up, and pass apple.
There is nothing incredibly brilliant about the iPod software, its the hardware that make it a top seller. Like most things, it will only be a matter of time before Steve Job's greed and closed circuit mentality has them loose market share. We saw it with the Apple hardware, their OS, and we will see it happen with the iPod.
We have already started to see it with the iTunes store, the iPod's "enabler" or "dealer" has made some pretty big missteps. Steve is pissing off the owners of the music he sells (talking bad about them in the press over and over is a big mistake), and they are ACTIVELY looking to others to replace him. He is giving them money now, but others can do that, all he has done is effectively made enemies of the companies he relies on to make the iPod a success.
There is no doubt, Open Source WILL be a player in unseating the iPod. Not the only player, but a contributor.
You really didn't make any good points... so I'll try to be brief.
-I said HARDWARE requirements, because that is what was discussed by the CIO... the machines not being powerful enough to run office. SOFTWARE, specifically Windows 98 came into play by you guys, and I sufficiently squashed that FUD in my other post.
Also, this plan is for two years from now. So OO 2.0 is what would be used. Either you are swimming in information that is over whelming you, or just disingenuous. I think it's a little bit of both.
-I didn't say PDF wasn't open, I said that MS's format was more opened. And it is. AND Adobe owns the patent, its theirs and you can't change it. You can use it, but can't change it on them. Read both of the licenses and you will learn something.
You are operating under the uninformed notion that MS Office 12 is a closed format, it is not. It can be used royalty free. It is also published and documented in great detail for anyone to see or use. Read my other posts to get links and educate yourself.
-First of all, at no point will the government provide downloads to software. Maybe links to another site that will give you software, and that is were the problem comes in.
As far as "who"? Your mother. What the hell do you want me to do? List people? I was speaking directly about the average end-user that I reference a number of times in my posts. Spend some time reading trends and you will learn that people are starting to get very scared about ID theft and spyware. The rate of downloads on sites like downloads.com has dropped drastically in comparison to what it use to be. People just don't download anything anymore.
-There argument for Word is this. It is a better program, and as the handicap people said, it offers accessibility tools that you don't get with any others. Recently Slashdot had a posted article that showed that OO 2.0 is slower and uses more memory then Office, specifically Excel. How about that for an argument?
My post wasn't meant to bash firefox. Seriously, I've never seen such hyper-sensitive people in my life. Not all, but most of the replies are just blind defenses of firefox.
Discussion about pros/cons of the browser will make it better. Saying IE sucks doesn't help FireFox improve, and it won't make FireFox beat IE 7 in the browser war. Stop being zealots and have an objective discussion. IE AND FireFox aren't perfect, get over it. How about try having a discussion on how to improve its functionality instead of just complaining about any flaw you find with IE.
It blows my mind that so many of you initially just attack IE, instead of talking about other things that FireFox could to be better. The glass is half full not half empty. You will never win market share just by saying the other guy sucks. I want FireFox to continue to innovate and add new features, not just "nice" things like auto-updates. At this point, security holes are a rampant in all browsers, and that feature is a given to have in any browser.
Real quick, I was speaking to the functionality with the browser, not the engine. I believe they are all fast enough for the average user, and that to win the mindshare of end-users you need to have the "features" that impress and make browsing easier. I agree with the format statements, but that isn't (history shows) relevant in winning a browser war. Plug-ins just aren't as good as native features (memory leaks, stability/crashing, integration issues, etc.).
In anycase, instead of just saying IE sucks, does anyone have any ideas to improve FireFox? The best one I saw was the timeline comment, that FF 1.5 won't be up against IE 7. I you are right.
IE 7 (beta) still has some pretty sweet features that this version of Firefox doesn't. One of the coolest is the feature that lets you quickly see an image of all open tabs. For the common end user, another is the phishing filter, which is pretty good.
I wish Firefox added more cutting edge stuff. MS will win the war if this is what is going to compete against IE 7.
Maybe in the final release we will see some better features added.
I looked at your company's website, and it looks like you are pretty entry level... in any case I doubt you are an employee (other then a random consult, probably for Ferdi up at the high school, hardly a state employee).
In response to your 1-7 bullets.
1.) - That simply is crap. Word Pad (and hundreds of other editors) can open pretty much all MS Word files (Macros aside, and they wouldn't be used in public documents). Formatting may be lost, but you the content is still there. MS Docs are large because they offer backwards compatibility for a few generations. Not to mention 2003 opens all the documents from 97-on. You are spreading disinformation here.
2.) - Romney appointed this position. "elected representatives" is wrong. 1 person, the governor, that is accurate. The very nature of my statement "appointed" implies an elected official put them there. However, the CIO is not accountable to the people, they are accountable to an elected official. Nobody knows who appointed this yahoo, look at yourself. You didn't even know. There is no accountability to the people.
3.) - No. What happened is the CIO made a bad decision, and due to checks and balances state officials stepped in. What if the CIO woke up this morning and decided to move the state back to DOS? Pretty stupid, huh? Well it would be important to allow the elected officials to step in and stop it. This is a similar case.
4.) - Clearly you haven't followed this case. For one, it isn't referring to any random state computer. Secondly, tens of thousands are not 125,000 (10,000 are not even being talked about for THIS upgrade anyways). Thirdly, the majority of the registry machines run their own software and don't need any office, a pdf viewer at most, courts aren't in this discussion (the rmv isn't either for that matter), and frankly your list is uniformed and just FUD. Your incorrect generalizations, your numbers, are all just pulled out of your ASS.
5.) - This is one of your more stupid points. NT 4 is over a decade old. The handful of machines using it would be upgraded soon anyways. Not only are there very FEW, but even FEWER that are actually used as a desktop where people need office solutions. Win98 is in the same boat, and most of those got upgraded to Win2k so incredibly fast it's not even funny. Win98 was very unstable, and certainly hasn't been left around for a decade. Anyone who is using 98 is going to be upgraded soon anyways, and frankly is so neglected they probably wouldn't get the open format software to begin with. But more specifically to the absurdity of your point.
6.) - I disagree, but let's take it as accurate just for fun. It still doesn't even out her fake numbers. Nice try though.
7.) - People are familiar with Acrobat. They use it all day at work, and it's all over the internet TODAY. PDF's are just as common (if not more so) as word files. It is a proprietary format owned by Adobe, just like MS owns the.doc format (actually MS's format is more open). Almost nobody in the general public has heard of your open format crap. After everyone's bout with spyware they are hesitant to download software. Maybe not 2 years ago, but today people are... certainly not some random program that they have never heard of before.
As far as elected officials getting their ear bent. MS gave Romney more money in the last Election then Obrien. The money trail stops at the CIO's boss' front
You are a pretty smart guy. Too bad you can't get basic things like gender down. "He" is a "She". HER name is Linda. You would have learned that if you read the first sentence of the article. Next time read the article you are posting about before actually posting.:)
"That is just FUD Microsoft Office 2003 XML schema license."
You are correct it was not coherent. In my haste I forgot to put a "." and typed the link incorrectly. It was a link to FAQ for the MS open xml format (not patent free, but free for anyone to use without royalties.) In other words you can use it, but can't change it on them. I think you will find it quite educational. It should have read like this.
Anyways, you must not be following the case closely. The argument originally made was over fear that the ms format wouldn't be readable in 10 years. Not any of the nonsense you tout. It was today we saw a change and the cost came into play, but sadly she was disingenuous.
Her numbers for Office at FULL PREMIUM PRICE (without the bulk/volume and government discounts) would give her 125,000 copies of MS Office... sorry to disappoint her, but there just aren't that many office employees under her jurisdiction. Her MS numbers included a brand new top of the line premium computer + undiscounted premium MS Office licenses, but not for an Open Format solution. As we just discussed she also added a few extra licenses that weren't needed... 125,000 vs. a few thousand. Hmmmmmmmmm.
That's sweet and all, but intellectually dishonest. Office 12 will run on any XP machine out today. Not to mention they would be upgrading the computers as part of the IT cycle anyways. She was spouting FUD. Your side will never make headway against MS until you stop lying about numbers and make a case based on merits, not on fake facts. Memory hog anyone? That wouldn't be Excel with that title would it? Nope it wouldn't. OO all the way baby!
"Who cares if it is a de-facto standard."
The answer to that would be the vast majority of citizens in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who use the MS software and are happy with it (I'm one of them). The typical person does not want to go search the web for some "free" software they had never heard of just to read a government document. Not to mentions people's hesitation to install it and have it clutter up their computer with another program.
The state CIO's job is to serve the people, not the OSS agenda. It's an appointed position and not elected... in other words not accountable to the people. That is probably why we see a unilateral decision like this. And today, regrettably for Linda, is why the elected officials in the state feel the need to squash this on behalf of the citizens of MASS.
Why is it so hard for you to except that maybe people like MS Office? Let take this for example, Word Perfect has been around for years and use to be number 1. Remember Lotus Notes? MS Office came along, didn't get bundled, was expensive, and is now number 1. PEOPLE CHOSE MS OFFICE. MS Offered a cheap word processor product called Works. People didn't like it. They like Office.
" its about setting a fair, open, and public standard for the file formats used so that *everyone* can decide what tools to use. Making MS secret format the 'standard' *forces* everyone to use Word, unless MS completely and fully opens the specification for it."
That is just FUD Microsoft Office 2003 XML schema license.
But to address your premise, I can't find that anywhere in the state constitution or in any laws. I think that is a nice notion you have, but isn't the job of the CIO of the state. The CIO isn't supposed to promote/FORCE some obscure standards that may or may not succeed on the citizens of MASS (before you argue it, the standard currently is less then 3% of the Office market). The CIO should be implementing the most compatible solution for the citizens. Guess what that is... MS Office. When you have 95% + of a market you are the standard.
Open Format gets allot of press in our circles, but for the rest of society, its non-existent. The appointed CIO that made this unilateral decision is going to get stopped by officials elected by the people of MASS.
If you were really from MASS you would know that the saved money would never go anyone but elected officials and their friends. Just Ask FAT MATT about the F-ING TOLLS!
She is either desperate or a rookie. The comment about the groups opposing her influenced by MS was a newbie remark. No savy official would say something like that about a company that spreads its money around across the board. Also MS donated more to Romney's campaign then Obrien's (referring to her boss and the former governors race a few years ago.) As far as the specific groups complaining, she didn't sufficiently address their handicap needs. MS influencing them? Did MS give them a physical disability?
Sorry to disappoint the OSS crowd, but it looks like the elected senators in the committee are going to squash this appointed official's unilateral decision.
This really could be a road block for Linux. Well, a temp. road block until it gets re-written. However it really brings into light a larger issue with OSS. Closed source software maybe subject to this, but by its very nature, its very difficult to prove. OSS, could easily expose a large organization that decides to integrate community code.
There is no real check and balances to prevent a small author from stealing code, and then publishing it under one of the OSS licenses. At that point a larger company (red hat maybe?) picks it up and integrates it into their distro. They sell a million, and then a million violators. The author fades a away, and red hat gets stuck with the bad press and a big bill.
What are the ways to avoid this when you use community code? Is it to only use the big developers code (kinda defeats the purpose)? Anyways, what do you guys think about this...
I know the/. crowd worships google, but the fact is they collect more personal identifiable information on people then anyone else. Its not anonymous. And that makes me uneasy, and frankly I view that type of collection evil.
The DVR service is a great idea, and lots of money to be made their. MS has been all over this stuff for years with their media center, iptv stuff, etc. I think Google could do a decent job with a DVR, but I don't trust them anymore then MS, the government, or any other evil/big organization. I don't want them keeping records of me, and certainly not scanning my email and serving up ads based on a message I got that morning.
Think of the possible problems. Let's say someone has cancer and got email discussing it from their wife. They haven't told their children yet, they are sitting watching tv with them at dinner, and there come the cancer drug ads. Nice way to find out that your dad has prostate cancer. I'm sure others can think of better examples (I can think of some funny vaigra and herpies ones), but you can clearly see where I am going with it.
I read your post and I think it is rated at 1 for good reason. You don't offer and evidence to support your point "There Is No China Market". You talk about injustices, but nothing that has to do with the size or existence of the Chinese market. Frankly your post is incredibly flawed at so many levels I really can't address them all in a post. I'll try to just highlight the absurdity of your statement.
You are incredibly short sited to think that 1 billion people don't represent an enormous potential for revenue. They are in fact an enormous MARKET that is growing at staggering rates. China is what the world refers to as a developing nation. They are not quite the level of the US or Britain, but they are far from Zimbabwe.
"A geographic region considered as a place for sales: grain for the foreign market; the West Coast market"
"The opportunity to buy or sell; extent of demand for merchandise: a big market for gourmet foods."
Now to one of your most ridiculous points; Red China requiring Chinese trained employees at China based offices doesn't mean Google, Yahoo, or MSN can't make money. It means that China is investing in their people and developing their nation. It's smart. For both China and Businesses that want to make money in China. The more money the Chinese people have, the more they spend/buy, and the larger the market becomes. Many people also believe this is what will lead to the downfall of the Red Party, but that is an entirely new topic.
Just because all of the Chinese don't drive BMW's that doesn't mean the Chinese don't buy things. They do. and they also buy lots of things on the internet. They have a higher percentage of broadband users then the US. Now follow this tricky train of thought... those people see click ads, and click on them! Guess what that is. Revenue! In the Chinese Market! It didn't matter that Chinese workers worked at the datacenters hosting Google or MSN's websites. Google and MSN still make a profit off of the clicks.
Now as far as the questionable things those companies do for china... I tend to agree they are morally wrong. However getting in at the ground floor offers amazing potential for MS, Google, and Yahoo. They have the opportunity to shape the impressions of a billion people. Create brand recognition for generations. There is lots of money to be made.
The Chinese government (to date) is not in the business of building search engines (really no software at all for that matter). That is why they allow US companies to provide those services. They do have some rules, but it's still a profitable business for the big three. The profit margins will grow astronomically as more and more people in china connect. In other words, as their existing MARKET grows, the companies will see larger profit margins.
I'd continue to point out the absurdity of your other points, but I think this should suffice. No offense but maybe you should take an economics class or something.
vista comes pretty close. about 2 seconds. Not from a cold boot, but using their new method.
If the hardware was fixed, then the boot could be quicker, and we all have seen how fast an xp embeded app can boot. Take a look at bmw's console... and that uses pretty slow hardware.
In anycase, I see the limitation as just the hardware speed.
That's odd IE found it real quick.
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Blizzcon Writeup
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Just kidding. Do you tihnk Diablo will come out on the next Gen game consoles? I hope so, playing through the web with the headsets would be pretty sweet.
Google should be careful. Even though they aren't responsible for this, it is going to appear that way. China is a HUGE market, and yahoo and msn have a strong start. Its not like it is here in the US, the playing field is far more level, and Google isn't the media darling it is in western media.
If Google isn't careful, China will block them all together. That would be a huge problem for them. This firefox plugin seems pretty cool on the surface, but at the end of the day, it will only hurt firefox and google in the Chinese market. Not because of the people, but because its a communist nation that will squash what it doesn't approve of. This is something that it won't approve of. Don't be surprised if firefox.com gets blocked from their network all together.
I think as hardware improves the two platform will combine.
At the end of the day, Windows CE, Smartphone, and now Mobile 5 are only created because the hardware limitation can't support the full blown windows OS.
Eventually the hardware speeds will catch up, and my guess is that the Mobile OS will be phased out for a version of their main OS (Vista or whatever the next one is called).
Slashdot Mirror
A roll-out that size always has big problems, and the only thing will be remembered by the media is that this linux roll-out had big problems. It would be much smarter to transition little by little. It is good press for Linspire, but thats about it.
Don't get me wrong, I think it would be great is they did move everything over, for no other reason it would be a great case study for the world. The only problem I see is the speed at which it would be done.
Lets not forget, Apple would not have made the comback if MS didn't give them $150 million to stay afloat and regroup. Steve Jobs AND Bill Gates really deserve the Tank You from the apple fans.
p ple/2100-1001_3-202143.html
http://news.com.com/MS+to+invest+150+million+in+A
or he created slashdot... you know one or the other.
Nokia hasn't come up with a GOOD PDA phone for the business class. Business people are a huge and growing a market for both carriers and handset makers. The reason being is, unlike the average user, they drop $600 at the drop of a hat for the latest and greatest. They buy the toys to go with it too. And they get premium voice/data plans.
I like OSS don't get me wrong, but so far the push to put OSS platforms on phones has been pretty unimpressive. Even Nokia's brief attempt with the Linux device they came out with over the summer (or was it spring?) was pretty useless. If they don't start offering some products like rim, treo, or even windows mobile, they are going to miss a pretty big market... eventually loosing their number 1 spot in the world.
They already are declining, and I don't see this site helping their core business. It almost seems like a hail marry to get some good press, and make it look like they are pioneers. It looks to me like they are betting this part of their business on OSS developers, but the vast majority of the developers have real full time jobs, and do the work on their free time. A company this large shouldn't edge their bets on the hope people will pick up their software as their hobby.
Its a "cool" idea, but hoping the oss community helps their lackluster business platform is not the best strategy for their shareholders. I know allot of the zealots think this is an attack on OSS, it really is not, its an attack on Nokia. We all know the rate of most OSS is slow, and nokia is competing against some pretty big guns with a good head start, and lots of resources dumped into make their platforms better.
It would be nice to get some responses that aren't just flames or useless 1 liners. I would really rather a good debate.
"Apple says iTunes is "better than free" because it's "fair to the artists and record labels." That's simply not true. First of all, Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract. Many of them will never Artists Get Ripped Off. even see this paltry share because they have to pay for producers and recording costs, both of which can be enormous. Until the musician "recoups" these costs, when you buy an iTunes song, the label gives them nothing. (Sources: major label musician's cut Apple's cut For a thorough explanation of how recouping screws musicians, see Confessions of a Record Producer by Moses Avalon)"
http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/
35% is a huge cut for a distributor. Best Buy doesn't take 35% cut off of each cd sale, not even close! You can fact check the numbers but, apple's percentage is widely known.
All joking aside, who uses them anymore? Is their business all legacy support?
Do any of you guys use them? I guess I ask because I'm surprised they are still in business.
I hanve't seen a novell system in many years, and never hear about copanies doing a big novell roll-out.
it wasn't trolling and you are wrong. He already takes a huge piece of each 99 cent download, and the Music labels wanted to make more money. The option would be for steve to take a smaller cut, or raise the price. He only talked about the higher price when spreading his FUD.
They also wanted to change the pricing structures... lower unpopular song prices, raise popular. For EXAMPLE, if I wanted to download rare b.b. king song I would be pretty happy to pay 50 cents... likewise if I want to buy the song at the top of the charts 1.50. Whatever the pricing structure may be.
All that said, I didn't pass judgment on that specifically, I just said, he is pissing them off by bad mouthing them publicly. You don't publicly bad mouth your supplier over a disagreement.
I know its off topic, but I really like the iDrive. You are referring to the BMW iDrive correct?
My 5 series is so friggen customizable. Its a pretty easy tool to navigate the menus to set it up. When driving I can careless jump around, combined with the voice commands, its pretty quick too.
Now the argument that you don't need all that stuff may be valid, but as long as you can do it, i think its a pretty nice system.
Apple doesn't own the scroll wheel technology, Synaptics does (http://www.synaptics.com/).
http://news.com.com/2010-1041_3-5375101.html
This is part of the genius of Steve Jobs. He is better then anyone for taking credit for someone else's ideas. Really worse then MS, just doesn't have as big of a company.
Anyways, interestingly enough, according to you, apple's biggest selling point isn't really apples'.
the iPod is just a cool trend. It won't last forever. Open Source, Creative, Sony, and others will all eventually catch up, and pass apple.
There is nothing incredibly brilliant about the iPod software, its the hardware that make it a top seller. Like most things, it will only be a matter of time before Steve Job's greed and closed circuit mentality has them loose market share. We saw it with the Apple hardware, their OS, and we will see it happen with the iPod.
We have already started to see it with the iTunes store, the iPod's "enabler" or "dealer" has made some pretty big missteps. Steve is pissing off the owners of the music he sells (talking bad about them in the press over and over is a big mistake), and they are ACTIVELY looking to others to replace him. He is giving them money now, but others can do that, all he has done is effectively made enemies of the companies he relies on to make the iPod a success.
There is no doubt, Open Source WILL be a player in unseating the iPod. Not the only player, but a contributor.
You really didn't make any good points... so I'll try to be brief.
-I said HARDWARE requirements, because that is what was discussed by the CIO... the machines not being powerful enough to run office. SOFTWARE, specifically Windows 98 came into play by you guys, and I sufficiently squashed that FUD in my other post.
Also, this plan is for two years from now. So OO 2.0 is what would be used. Either you are swimming in information that is over whelming you, or just disingenuous. I think it's a little bit of both.
-I didn't say PDF wasn't open, I said that MS's format was more opened. And it is. AND Adobe owns the patent, its theirs and you can't change it. You can use it, but can't change it on them. Read both of the licenses and you will learn something.
You are operating under the uninformed notion that MS Office 12 is a closed format, it is not. It can be used royalty free. It is also published and documented in great detail for anyone to see or use. Read my other posts to get links and educate yourself.
-First of all, at no point will the government provide downloads to software. Maybe links to another site that will give you software, and that is were the problem comes in.
As far as "who"? Your mother. What the hell do you want me to do? List people? I was speaking directly about the average end-user that I reference a number of times in my posts. Spend some time reading trends and you will learn that people are starting to get very scared about ID theft and spyware. The rate of downloads on sites like downloads.com has dropped drastically in comparison to what it use to be. People just don't download anything anymore.
-There argument for Word is this. It is a better program, and as the handicap people said, it offers accessibility tools that you don't get with any others. Recently Slashdot had a posted article that showed that OO 2.0 is slower and uses more memory then Office, specifically Excel. How about that for an argument?
You newbs/zealots make me tired.
My post wasn't meant to bash firefox. Seriously, I've never seen such hyper-sensitive people in my life. Not all, but most of the replies are just blind defenses of firefox.
Discussion about pros/cons of the browser will make it better. Saying IE sucks doesn't help FireFox improve, and it won't make FireFox beat IE 7 in the browser war. Stop being zealots and have an objective discussion. IE AND FireFox aren't perfect, get over it. How about try having a discussion on how to improve its functionality instead of just complaining about any flaw you find with IE.
It blows my mind that so many of you initially just attack IE, instead of talking about other things that FireFox could to be better. The glass is half full not half empty. You will never win market share just by saying the other guy sucks. I want FireFox to continue to innovate and add new features, not just "nice" things like auto-updates. At this point, security holes are a rampant in all browsers, and that feature is a given to have in any browser.
Real quick, I was speaking to the functionality with the browser, not the engine. I believe they are all fast enough for the average user, and that to win the mindshare of end-users you need to have the "features" that impress and make browsing easier. I agree with the format statements, but that isn't (history shows) relevant in winning a browser war. Plug-ins just aren't as good as native features (memory leaks, stability/crashing, integration issues, etc.).
In anycase, instead of just saying IE sucks, does anyone have any ideas to improve FireFox? The best one I saw was the timeline comment, that FF 1.5 won't be up against IE 7. I you are right.
IE 7 (beta) still has some pretty sweet features that this version of Firefox doesn't. One of the coolest is the feature that lets you quickly see an image of all open tabs. For the common end user, another is the phishing filter, which is pretty good.
I wish Firefox added more cutting edge stuff. MS will win the war if this is what is going to compete against IE 7.
Maybe in the final release we will see some better features added.
I looked at your company's website, and it looks like you are pretty entry level... in any case I doubt you are an employee (other then a random consult, probably for Ferdi up at the high school, hardly a state employee).
.doc format (actually MS's format is more open). Almost nobody in the general public has heard of your open format crap. After everyone's bout with spyware they are hesitant to download software. Maybe not 2 years ago, but today people are... certainly not some random program that they have never heard of before.
In response to your 1-7 bullets.
1.) - That simply is crap. Word Pad (and hundreds of other editors) can open pretty much all MS Word files (Macros aside, and they wouldn't be used in public documents). Formatting may be lost, but you the content is still there. MS Docs are large because they offer backwards compatibility for a few generations. Not to mention 2003 opens all the documents from 97-on. You are spreading disinformation here.
2.) - Romney appointed this position. "elected representatives" is wrong. 1 person, the governor, that is accurate. The very nature of my statement "appointed" implies an elected official put them there. However, the CIO is not accountable to the people, they are accountable to an elected official. Nobody knows who appointed this yahoo, look at yourself. You didn't even know. There is no accountability to the people.
3.) - No. What happened is the CIO made a bad decision, and due to checks and balances state officials stepped in. What if the CIO woke up this morning and decided to move the state back to DOS? Pretty stupid, huh? Well it would be important to allow the elected officials to step in and stop it. This is a similar case.
4.) - Clearly you haven't followed this case. For one, it isn't referring to any random state computer. Secondly, tens of thousands are not 125,000 (10,000 are not even being talked about for THIS upgrade anyways). Thirdly, the majority of the registry machines run their own software and don't need any office, a pdf viewer at most, courts aren't in this discussion (the rmv isn't either for that matter), and frankly your list is uniformed and just FUD. Your incorrect generalizations, your numbers, are all just pulled out of your ASS.
5.) - This is one of your more stupid points. NT 4 is over a decade old. The handful of machines using it would be upgraded soon anyways. Not only are there very FEW, but even FEWER that are actually used as a desktop where people need office solutions. Win98 is in the same boat, and most of those got upgraded to Win2k so incredibly fast it's not even funny. Win98 was very unstable, and certainly hasn't been left around for a decade. Anyone who is using 98 is going to be upgraded soon anyways, and frankly is so neglected they probably wouldn't get the open format software to begin with. But more specifically to the absurdity of your point.
Here are the hardware specs for OO and MS Office 2k3. The hardware requirements are virtually identical.
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/sys_reqs _20.html
http://www.microsoft.com/products/info/product.asp x?view=22&pcid=3c3bd1bb-5595-4512-bcca-f764770e1d7 1&type=req
6.) - I disagree, but let's take it as accurate just for fun. It still doesn't even out her fake numbers. Nice try though.
7.) - People are familiar with Acrobat. They use it all day at work, and it's all over the internet TODAY. PDF's are just as common (if not more so) as word files. It is a proprietary format owned by Adobe, just like MS owns the
As far as elected officials getting their ear bent. MS gave Romney more money in the last Election then Obrien. The money trail stops at the CIO's boss' front
You are a pretty smart guy. Too bad you can't get basic things like gender down. "He" is a "She". HER name is Linda. You would have learned that if you read the first sentence of the article. Next time read the article you are posting about before actually posting. :)
"That is just FUD Microsoft Office 2003 XML schema license."
You are correct it was not coherent. In my haste I forgot to put a "." and typed the link incorrectly. It was a link to FAQ for the MS open xml format (not patent free, but free for anyone to use without royalties.) In other words you can use it, but can't change it on them. I think you will find it quite educational. It should have read like this.
"That is just FUD. http://www.microsoft.com/Office/xml/faq.mspx"
Anyways, you must not be following the case closely. The argument originally made was over fear that the ms format wouldn't be readable in 10 years. Not any of the nonsense you tout. It was today we saw a change and the cost came into play, but sadly she was disingenuous.
Her numbers for Office at FULL PREMIUM PRICE (without the bulk/volume and government discounts) would give her 125,000 copies of MS Office... sorry to disappoint her, but there just aren't that many office employees under her jurisdiction. Her MS numbers included a brand new top of the line premium computer + undiscounted premium MS Office licenses, but not for an Open Format solution. As we just discussed she also added a few extra licenses that weren't needed... 125,000 vs. a few thousand. Hmmmmmmmmm.
That's sweet and all, but intellectually dishonest. Office 12 will run on any XP machine out today. Not to mention they would be upgrading the computers as part of the IT cycle anyways. She was spouting FUD. Your side will never make headway against MS until you stop lying about numbers and make a case based on merits, not on fake facts. Memory hog anyone? That wouldn't be Excel with that title would it? Nope it wouldn't. OO all the way baby!
"Who cares if it is a de-facto standard."
The answer to that would be the vast majority of citizens in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who use the MS software and are happy with it (I'm one of them). The typical person does not want to go search the web for some "free" software they had never heard of just to read a government document. Not to mentions people's hesitation to install it and have it clutter up their computer with another program.
The state CIO's job is to serve the people, not the OSS agenda. It's an appointed position and not elected... in other words not accountable to the people. That is probably why we see a unilateral decision like this. And today, regrettably for Linda, is why the elected officials in the state feel the need to squash this on behalf of the citizens of MASS.
Why is it so hard for you to except that maybe people like MS Office? Let take this for example, Word Perfect has been around for years and use to be number 1. Remember Lotus Notes? MS Office came along, didn't get bundled, was expensive, and is now number 1. PEOPLE CHOSE MS OFFICE. MS Offered a cheap word processor product called Works. People didn't like it. They like Office.
" its about setting a fair, open, and public standard for the file formats used so that *everyone* can decide what tools to use. Making MS secret format the 'standard' *forces* everyone to use Word, unless MS completely and fully opens the specification for it."
That is just FUD Microsoft Office 2003 XML schema license.
But to address your premise, I can't find that anywhere in the state constitution or in any laws. I think that is a nice notion you have, but isn't the job of the CIO of the state. The CIO isn't supposed to promote/FORCE some obscure standards that may or may not succeed on the citizens of MASS (before you argue it, the standard currently is less then 3% of the Office market). The CIO should be implementing the most compatible solution for the citizens. Guess what that is... MS Office. When you have 95% + of a market you are the standard.
Open Format gets allot of press in our circles, but for the rest of society, its non-existent. The appointed CIO that made this unilateral decision is going to get stopped by officials elected by the people of MASS.
If you were really from MASS you would know that the saved money would never go anyone but elected officials and their friends. Just Ask FAT MATT about the F-ING TOLLS!
She is either desperate or a rookie. The comment about the groups opposing her influenced by MS was a newbie remark. No savy official would say something like that about a company that spreads its money around across the board. Also MS donated more to Romney's campaign then Obrien's (referring to her boss and the former governors race a few years ago.) As far as the specific groups complaining, she didn't sufficiently address their handicap needs. MS influencing them? Did MS give them a physical disability?
9 08812
She still han't make a good case for the move. I've posted previously why it isn't a good case. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=166793&cid=13
Sorry to disappoint the OSS crowd, but it looks like the elected senators in the committee are going to squash this appointed official's unilateral decision.
This really could be a road block for Linux. Well, a temp. road block until it gets re-written. However it really brings into light a larger issue with OSS. Closed source software maybe subject to this, but by its very nature, its very difficult to prove. OSS, could easily expose a large organization that decides to integrate community code.
There is no real check and balances to prevent a small author from stealing code, and then publishing it under one of the OSS licenses. At that point a larger company (red hat maybe?) picks it up and integrates it into their distro. They sell a million, and then a million violators. The author fades a away, and red hat gets stuck with the bad press and a big bill.
What are the ways to avoid this when you use community code? Is it to only use the big developers code (kinda defeats the purpose)? Anyways, what do you guys think about this...
I know the /. crowd worships google, but the fact is they collect more personal identifiable information on people then anyone else. Its not anonymous. And that makes me uneasy, and frankly I view that type of collection evil.
The DVR service is a great idea, and lots of money to be made their. MS has been all over this stuff for years with their media center, iptv stuff, etc. I think Google could do a decent job with a DVR, but I don't trust them anymore then MS, the government, or any other evil/big organization. I don't want them keeping records of me, and certainly not scanning my email and serving up ads based on a message I got that morning.
Think of the possible problems. Let's say someone has cancer and got email discussing it from their wife. They haven't told their children yet, they are sitting watching tv with them at dinner, and there come the cancer drug ads. Nice way to find out that your dad has prostate cancer. I'm sure others can think of better examples (I can think of some funny vaigra and herpies ones), but you can clearly see where I am going with it.
I read your post and I think it is rated at 1 for good reason. You don't offer and evidence to support your point "There Is No China Market". You talk about injustices, but nothing that has to do with the size or existence of the Chinese market. Frankly your post is incredibly flawed at so many levels I really can't address them all in a post. I'll try to just highlight the absurdity of your statement.
You are incredibly short sited to think that 1 billion people don't represent an enormous potential for revenue. They are in fact an enormous MARKET that is growing at staggering rates. China is what the world refers to as a developing nation. They are not quite the level of the US or Britain, but they are far from Zimbabwe.
Here are two definitions for market (China fits them perfectly):
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=market
"A geographic region considered as a place for sales: grain for the foreign market; the West Coast market"
"The opportunity to buy or sell; extent of demand for merchandise: a big market for gourmet foods."
Now to one of your most ridiculous points; Red China requiring Chinese trained employees at China based offices doesn't mean Google, Yahoo, or MSN can't make money. It means that China is investing in their people and developing their nation. It's smart. For both China and Businesses that want to make money in China. The more money the Chinese people have, the more they spend/buy, and the larger the market becomes. Many people also believe this is what will lead to the downfall of the Red Party, but that is an entirely new topic.
Just because all of the Chinese don't drive BMW's that doesn't mean the Chinese don't buy things. They do. and they also buy lots of things on the internet. They have a higher percentage of broadband users then the US. Now follow this tricky train of thought... those people see click ads, and click on them! Guess what that is. Revenue! In the Chinese Market! It didn't matter that Chinese workers worked at the datacenters hosting Google or MSN's websites. Google and MSN still make a profit off of the clicks.
Now as far as the questionable things those companies do for china... I tend to agree they are morally wrong. However getting in at the ground floor offers amazing potential for MS, Google, and Yahoo. They have the opportunity to shape the impressions of a billion people. Create brand recognition for generations. There is lots of money to be made.
The Chinese government (to date) is not in the business of building search engines (really no software at all for that matter). That is why they allow US companies to provide those services. They do have some rules, but it's still a profitable business for the big three. The profit margins will grow astronomically as more and more people in china connect. In other words, as their existing MARKET grows, the companies will see larger profit margins.
I'd continue to point out the absurdity of your other points, but I think this should suffice. No offense but maybe you should take an economics class or something.
vista comes pretty close. about 2 seconds. Not from a cold boot, but using their new method.
If the hardware was fixed, then the boot could be quicker, and we all have seen how fast an xp embeded app can boot. Take a look at bmw's console... and that uses pretty slow hardware.
In anycase, I see the limitation as just the hardware speed.
Just kidding. Do you tihnk Diablo will come out on the next Gen game consoles? I hope so, playing through the web with the headsets would be pretty sweet.
Google should be careful. Even though they aren't responsible for this, it is going to appear that way. China is a HUGE market, and yahoo and msn have a strong start. Its not like it is here in the US, the playing field is far more level, and Google isn't the media darling it is in western media.
If Google isn't careful, China will block them all together. That would be a huge problem for them. This firefox plugin seems pretty cool on the surface, but at the end of the day, it will only hurt firefox and google in the Chinese market. Not because of the people, but because its a communist nation that will squash what it doesn't approve of. This is something that it won't approve of. Don't be surprised if firefox.com gets blocked from their network all together.
I think as hardware improves the two platform will combine.
At the end of the day, Windows CE, Smartphone, and now Mobile 5 are only created because the hardware limitation can't support the full blown windows OS.
Eventually the hardware speeds will catch up, and my guess is that the Mobile OS will be phased out for a version of their main OS (Vista or whatever the next one is called).