Because people enter Excel formulas as easily as they touch type - without having to think about the syntax. Let me turn your "argument" around. Maybe OO should require a different keyboard. I hear the "dvorak" keyboard layout is "superior". Of course you realize that is insanity. Well, changing simple formula syntax for no real reason is also insanity and, frankly, unforgivable. I would never recommend OO to any business user just because of this problem, nevermind the pathetic graphing performance of OO Calc.
BTW, the original comment questioned why a company would spend $75 per seat for Office XP when they could use OO for free. The poster suggested it was stupid to "buy Microsoft's inferior products". I offered several concrete examples as to why OO is innappropriate (ie, inferior) for business users. So far the responses have been "Why are you graphing with Excel?" and "What's wrong with changing spreadsheet formula syntax?" These are both prime examples of why OSS will never penetrate corporate desktops.
but I'm more interested in freedom. Especially for personal use.
Freedom? Didn't you mean "free" as in beer? There are hardly any shackles associated with using MS Office. I bought Office 2000 six years ago and continue to use it today (it runs on Vista). How is this impinging on my "freedom", exactly? Now "free", on the other hand, I can understand. And for personal use OO may be OK, unless you also are a heavy MS Office user at work, in which case the differences would be maddening and not worth the money saved.
I can assure you that the kind of graphs you are describing are easily well done also with free spreadsheets like Gnumeric or OO.org.
Using OO, I invite you to create 2 columns of 2048 numbers, select them, and create a line graph. Nothing fancy or exotic. Then tell me graphing is "easily well done" using OO. If you have access to Excel, try it there also. I would be very interested to hear your comments. I can't comment on Gnumeric, but I can tell you that business users are not going to be willing to use Gnumeric to graph the data they already have in their spreadsheets.
why are you using a spreadsheet to do that kind of graphing in the first place (even Excel)?
I use Excel for this because it is really good at graphing data. And I am not alone in doing that; it is the tool virtually everyone in business uses to make graphs.
You seem to be claiming that your particular use of spreadsheets shows that OO.org is not suitable for all business use
Graphing data is hardly an odd use model for Excel. The majority of users do this every day. And as I demonstrated (try it yourself if you don't believe me), if your user is going to create graphs (even insanely simple graphs like a line graph from a column of points), then OO is not the right tool. It's as simple as that.
Just because your particular (limited) usage of spreadsheets does not include graphing does not mean Open Office is suitable for most business users.
Speaking of usability problems, I decided to benchmark some number crunching with OO to compare with Excel (2000). I entered the formula:
=IF(b2>b1,b2,b1)
which is as simple an Excel formula as you could write. OO complained "#NAME?". In Excel, of course, it just worked. I pulled up the OO help and learned that OO uses semi-colons rather than commas to delineate the IF function fields. Why??? If OO uses a different formula syntax that is a massive usability issue as far as I am concerned. I agree that Office 2007 may be difficult (or rather, different) to use, but if business users can't use the formula syntax to which they are accustomed then OO is a non-starter for spreadsheet users, even without considering its pathetic graphing performance.
As an aside, I just tried Excel 2007 and it did take me a few minutes (and the use of its online help) to figure out how to graph my data. The graph displayed instantly and was acceptably formatted. But it was a little annoying that the graphing function was (by default) buried under the "Insert" menu rather than being a toolbar/ribbon button.
I would agree that for a small percentage of users OO is probably a poor replacement.
Please see my comment at http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=225968&c id=18299300. I would submit that anyone who does even simple graphing in Excel is not a candidate for Open Office. Given that Office is predominantly a business application, and given that Excel is the primary component for business users, I think this means that Open Office is simply unsuited for business users.
No one could give me a clear reason why we chose to pay $75 per license for Office XP instead of going to OpenOffice for free.
Here's a clear reason. Open Office is a toy. I am actually not a power user of Excel, but every time I try Open Office Calc (spreadsheet) it is very disappointing. Just the other day I wanted to graph 2048 data pairs contained in a CSV file. I am using a dual core machine with 2GB of RAM, and nothing else is running. In Open Office's spreadsheet program it takes 15 seconds just to create a simple line graph (default parameters) and then for some bizarre reason it simply hangs, unresponsive for another 12 seconds before it accepts UI commands again - 27 seconds in total!. I tried this on two different machines, not believing what I was seeing. And for reference, the memory footprint of Open Office with the data loaded and the graph displayed is 74MB. In Excel, by comparison, on the same machine the graph is displayed in less than a second (a blink of an eye actually). That's a factor of about 50 faster! And the memory footprint is 4MB (a factor of 18 less than Open Office). I don't know about you, but I won't wait 30 seconds for a simple graph to be displayed - that would drive me nuts. One more thing. The default graph in Open Office is poorly formatted and requires some tweaking before being usable. In Excel the default is quite acceptable so I don't have to fiddle to get it to look decent.
Open Office may be an alternative someday, but at least as far as the spreadsheet goes (which is arguably the key application in office for business users), it seems still to be a long way off. And I have yet to try Office 2007 wherein Microsoft presumably raised the bar yet again (though maybe not, they do have an unfortunate tendency to sometimes take steps backwards).
there are ways to use the internet to be completely anonymous
Is this really true? I guess I assumed that even when you are using anonymizing techniques *somebody* can track you (if only the anonymizing service provider).
I'm one of the few people on/. who doesn't use a pseudonym,
It's funny that you say this. As I was writing my original comment I wondered if some AC would flame me (flames often originate from ACs, which really annoys me). In my mind I was considering myself non-anonymous until you point out that I am in fact using a pseudonym and hence maintain a certain level of anonymity. Of course I have used the same handle for several years and so I have built a history here that could be used by many to identify me. Anyhow, I guess there are degrees of anonymity.
When I write letters to my local newspaper I have to provide a name and address, and they verify I am who I say I am before they publish my letter (and my name is attached). Another example can be found in the television/radio media where commercials have to specify who paid for them. Free speech is one thing, but anonymous free speech is a whole other matter. I believe that if someone is criticized (or praised for that matter) in a public forum, the name of the person doing the criticizing/praising should also be public.
Wrong. Take a look at this web page (URL:http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political _donations/Bill_Gates.php) that shows roughly balanced contributions by Gates to *both* parties. Microsoft (and Gates) are way too smart to tie themselves to a single party. They balance their contributions to keep all their bases covered.
Why is it that you ACs perpetually miss the point. I was merely asserting that the US media is very free, even eager to criticize our government. I said nothing at all about whether this was warranted, or undesirable... only that it is very common. And the reason I said this was because I was rebutting a statement by an earlier poster who implied the US media never criticized the government. Ironically, though you were attempting to "put me in my place", your comment demonstrates that my original assertion is true because you attempted to defend the very behavior I was claiming existed. Thank you for backing me up.
Thanks for the pointer to the Michael Geist "rebuttal". Please see my comment at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=225394&cid=182 57448 for my analysis of Mr. Geist's trickery. He is an attorney after all, so I suppose we should forgive/expect his playing loose with words and numbers. But/.ers are supposed to be technically saavy and good at things like math and percentages, so we should easily see through his shoddy "defense".
Please refer to this post for an explanation of how 3% becomes almost 50% (BTW, I never said 50%, I said a large percentage, and I think the numbers bear this out). You may find it interesting to see how lawyers like Mr. Geist play with words and numbers in order to obscure the truth. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=225394&cid=182 57448
FWIW, from my perspective, it is in fact much harder to find media that is *supportive* of the government in the US
You managed to name the one media company that is occassionally (I may even grant you mostly) supportive of the current administration. But I can name you 9 off the top of my head that are almost exclusively critical... ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, NYTimes, LATimes, Boston Globe. Your turn.
As of August 2006, the MPAA documented 179 camcorded movies as the source for infringing DVDs since 2004. During that time, its members released approximately 1,400 movies, suggesting that approximately one in every 10 movies is camcorded and sold as infringing DVDs.
Now, let's look carefully at these two quotes and see exactly who is clueless. Geist says only 3% of Hollywood movies are camcorded in Canada. The BBC article says 10% of all Hollywood films are camcorded. I suppose we should forgive Mr. Geist for playing loosely with words since he is an attorney and that is what they do. But you are presumably a technical person who can see through this cleverness. Stay with me as I will now introduce some difficult math that may be over your head... (3/100) divided by (10/100) is.3, or 30%. So 30% of all *camcorded* movies originate in Canada (by Mr. Giest's own admission)... just as I said in my original post. Now you might take issue with the fact that *only* 10% of Hollywood movies are camcorded in the first place. But. that is not very surprising when you consider that only a small percent of those 1400+ movies Hollywood creates each year enjoy enough of a market to be worth camcording. In other words, there is very little demand for the other 90%. In fact, studios make almost all of their revenue and profits from those few hits each year -- as do the pirates. So it's no surprise that only about 10% of all movies are pirated, and apparently of those pirated movies, 30% are pirated in Canada per my original post.
For one thing, we actually have large media outlets critical of local governments - unlike Russia, for one thing, or apparently the US
Please, please don't form your opinion of the US from what you read here on Slashdot. The views here are heavily skewed. As a lifelong citizen of the US I can attest that there are many large media outlets that are critical (trust me, non-stop critical) of the government, and this is true no matter who is in charge. Heck, you may recall a few years ago a prominant US news anchor actually went on the air with forged documents which were very damaging to the sitting president, just a month before the election - and nothing happened to him. No mysterious disappearance. No IRS audits. Not so much as a traffic ticket. He walked scot free despite overtly trying to influence the election. If things were half as bad here as folks on Slashdot would have you believe this fellow would never have been heard from again.
FWIW, from my perspective, it is in fact much harder to find media that is *supportive* of the government in the US. It is inherently an adversarial relationship as we are a highly self-critical society. Need further proof? How about Slashdot itself, which has a very large US contingent who does nothing but criticize this country (and they have been on these boards for many years without reprisal).
So they think that preventing Canadians from paying to see the movies in a theater will encourage them not to download those movies instead?
I think you are a bit confused. The assertion is that Canadians are copying the movies (either by bringing camcorders into the theaters or by copying screener disks). If the movies are not made available in Canada until they have already been in US theaters for a few weeks, the expectation is this *might* reduce the availability of pirated copies in the first month of showings (when most of the money is made).
I think you might mean the MPAA, not the RIAA... but your point is well taken. Regarding whether Canada is a major source of pirated movies, did you not read the reference article I provided?
... I have to wonder if this story wouldn't be reversed and Canada wouldn't be pressuring the US for more strict copyright laws if the vast majority of the content which was being pirated in the US was created in Canada. I recall reading recently that a large percentage of the pirated movies originate in Canada. Here is one article that discusses this:
I also read that the movie studios are considering delaying the release of movies in Canada to reduce the incidences of movies hitting BitTorrent before they hit the theaters.
It seems to me (and I know I'll get flamed for this) that the US is only trying to protect its exports. This is not an example of bullying or trying to run the whole world.
Slashdot Mirror
BTW, the original comment questioned why a company would spend $75 per seat for Office XP when they could use OO for free. The poster suggested it was stupid to "buy Microsoft's inferior products". I offered several concrete examples as to why OO is innappropriate (ie, inferior) for business users. So far the responses have been "Why are you graphing with Excel?" and "What's wrong with changing spreadsheet formula syntax?" These are both prime examples of why OSS will never penetrate corporate desktops.
Graphing data is hardly an odd use model for Excel. The majority of users do this every day. And as I demonstrated (try it yourself if you don't believe me), if your user is going to create graphs (even insanely simple graphs like a line graph from a column of points), then OO is not the right tool. It's as simple as that.
Just because your particular (limited) usage of spreadsheets does not include graphing does not mean Open Office is suitable for most business users.
which is as simple an Excel formula as you could write. OO complained "#NAME?". In Excel, of course, it just worked. I pulled up the OO help and learned that OO uses semi-colons rather than commas to delineate the IF function fields. Why??? If OO uses a different formula syntax that is a massive usability issue as far as I am concerned. I agree that Office 2007 may be difficult (or rather, different) to use, but if business users can't use the formula syntax to which they are accustomed then OO is a non-starter for spreadsheet users, even without considering its pathetic graphing performance.
As an aside, I just tried Excel 2007 and it did take me a few minutes (and the use of its online help) to figure out how to graph my data. The graph displayed instantly and was acceptably formatted. But it was a little annoying that the graphing function was (by default) buried under the "Insert" menu rather than being a toolbar/ribbon button.
Open Office may be an alternative someday, but at least as far as the spreadsheet goes (which is arguably the key application in office for business users), it seems still to be a long way off. And I have yet to try Office 2007 wherein Microsoft presumably raised the bar yet again (though maybe not, they do have an unfortunate tendency to sometimes take steps backwards).
When I write letters to my local newspaper I have to provide a name and address, and they verify I am who I say I am before they publish my letter (and my name is attached). Another example can be found in the television/radio media where commercials have to specify who paid for them. Free speech is one thing, but anonymous free speech is a whole other matter. I believe that if someone is criticized (or praised for that matter) in a public forum, the name of the person doing the criticizing/praising should also be public.
Ugggh. Must preview. Must preview. I forgot the brackets on the above URL. Sorry.
a tions/Bill_Gates.php
http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_don
Wrong. Take a look at this web page (URL:http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political _donations/Bill_Gates.php) that shows roughly balanced contributions by Gates to *both* parties. Microsoft (and Gates) are way too smart to tie themselves to a single party. They balance their contributions to keep all their bases covered.
Now that's funny!
SUVs to transport those hard drives. That would be evil.
Why is it that you ACs perpetually miss the point. I was merely asserting that the US media is very free, even eager to criticize our government. I said nothing at all about whether this was warranted, or undesirable ... only that it is very common. And the reason I said this was because I was rebutting a statement by an earlier poster who implied the US media never criticized the government. Ironically, though you were attempting to "put me in my place", your comment demonstrates that my original assertion is true because you attempted to defend the very behavior I was claiming existed. Thank you for backing me up.
Thanks for the pointer to the Michael Geist "rebuttal". Please see my comment at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=225394&cid=182 57448 for my analysis of Mr. Geist's trickery. He is an attorney after all, so I suppose we should forgive/expect his playing loose with words and numbers. But /.ers are supposed to be technically saavy and good at things like math and percentages, so we should easily see through his shoddy "defense".
Please refer to this post for an explanation of how 3% becomes almost 50% (BTW, I never said 50%, I said a large percentage, and I think the numbers bear this out). You may find it interesting to see how lawyers like Mr. Geist play with words and numbers in order to obscure the truth. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=225394&cid=182 57448
You managed to name the one media company that is occassionally (I may even grant you mostly) supportive of the current administration. But I can name you 9 off the top of my head that are almost exclusively critical
I beg to differ. Here is a quote from Michael Geist's blog (http://www.michaelgeist.ca./):
Here is a quote from a BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6334913.stm on the topic:
Now, let's look carefully at these two quotes and see exactly who is clueless. Geist says only 3% of Hollywood movies are camcorded in Canada. The BBC article says 10% of all Hollywood films are camcorded. I suppose we should forgive Mr. Geist for playing loosely with words since he is an attorney and that is what they do. But you are presumably a technical person who can see through this cleverness. Stay with me as I will now introduce some difficult math that may be over your head
Thanks for playing.
FWIW, from my perspective, it is in fact much harder to find media that is *supportive* of the government in the US. It is inherently an adversarial relationship as we are a highly self-critical society. Need further proof? How about Slashdot itself, which has a very large US contingent who does nothing but criticize this country (and they have been on these boards for many years without reprisal).
I think you might mean the MPAA, not the RIAA ... but your point is well taken. Regarding whether Canada is a major source of pirated movies, did you not read the reference article I provided?
... I have to wonder if this story wouldn't be reversed and Canada wouldn't be pressuring the US for more strict copyright laws if the vast majority of the content which was being pirated in the US was created in Canada. I recall reading recently that a large percentage of the pirated movies originate in Canada. Here is one article that discusses this:
l ?id=b3001d7a-a969-4b92-89a9-6a7ce4f31c90
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.htm
I also read that the movie studios are considering delaying the release of movies in Canada to reduce the incidences of movies hitting BitTorrent before they hit the theaters.
It seems to me (and I know I'll get flamed for this) that the US is only trying to protect its exports. This is not an example of bullying or trying to run the whole world.
+5 Insightful!