Remember how well that worked for email. If you don't want to use your ISPs SMPT server because you didn't like their policies you could just run your own. Now, many of them do their absolute damnedest to force you to use theirs by blocking access to others... all in the fight against spam.
If the botnets/etc get wise to the fact that the ISPs are fucking with DNS, they'll just start dodging the ISPs DNS service, like the spambots dodged the ISPs smpt server.
The obvious ultimate outcome - the ISPs force you to use their DNS servers. Any dns traffic originating from your PC to an external server will be blocked.
True, but "Don't do anything on our network that is AGAINST THE LAW or you will be banned" is just the kinda of condition that is entirely enforceable.
The issue at hand though is what happens when INNOCENT people are banned, you know people who in fact did not do anything "AGAINST THE LAW", but who got banned anyway, because they were misidentified, or because someone claimed the work they downloaded was copyprotected, but in fact it wasn't. (This sort of abuse happens ALL THE TIME.)
No, sorry, I do not understand. There's nothing evil about porn and those filter won't work anyway.
No, no, no the filters are an integral part of the education process. Just think about how much they will learn about computers, operating systems, networking, etc as they learn to defeat the filters!
Its like putting mice in a maze, on the first run they get to the cheese, then we start putting obstacles in, and the mice become problem solvers as they learn to overcome them to reach their beloved cheese.;)
when you could spend less, get two desktops and a smartphone, and keep your files synchronised over the internet?
You must be using Linux!:)
I dunno about 'spending less' for most people. A few high profile commercial packages let you install on 2 computers, but a lot of them do not. Buying and upgrading a lot of your software twice will prove more expensive than you might think.
You also lose out on the ability to use the computer on the couch, on the patio, by the pool, on a plane, when doing a presentation, etc, etc, etc...
A laptop is a lot more versatile over all, and the single point of theft issue can be largely mitigated with a backup external hard drive, and/or internet backup.
Desktops aren't going to go away anytime soon - they aren't as limited by space or weight and this gives them advantages. No matter how good laptops get, a desktop case can literally hold three of them, and will therefore always be able to hold more data, have more CPU's, more expansion cards, dissipate more heat, etc etc etc... as long as there is a demand for more power, more cpus, more whatever, there will be a market for desktops.
if you are extending a right, it's not a right - it's a privilege.
By that logic, there are no 'rights'. Even the 'right to life' isn't extended to criminals convicted of particular crimes - does that make life itself a 'priviledge' not a rigt?
In the case of the the right to die, yes, I beleive it -should- be a right. The issue for minors is interesting -- I'm not sure I want to let 5 year olds decide to die outside of extreme circumstances... and putting the decision in a gaurdians hands seems like a bad idea too.
However, for adults, yes, it should be their right. However, it shouldn't be right they can just exercise at will - some sort of evaluation, mandatory waiting period, etc should be in place. Its a permanent and final decision - and it shouldn't be allowed to made while in a drunken depression when ones judgment is impaired.
With a 250 watt power supply, a gig of RAM and only 80 GB of hard drive it's probably going to leave a lot of students disappointed
Disappointed compared to the 'antique' Pentium II 300 with 32MB RAM and windows 98 they were using before?
For a lot of people especially students this is a huge upgrade.
A 250 watt power supply is more than adequate for a nominal cpu without a power sucking video card. Sure the CPU is behind the curve, but then, so is a P-II 350. The hard drive is more than adequate, and the RAM is where it needs to be... and adding more is inexpensive.
I'm not saying its a great computer, or that there aren't better deals around but this, all things considered, isn't bad.
The images are already there and we see the progression. It is a kind of scary concept in that it seems to mean that free will is an illusion.
Only if you assume that their is only one set of ordered images. If every possible image is in the 'book' and every page is 'adjacently linked' to every other page that differed 'only a little', then free will may determine which adjacent page you (individually or perhaps your entire universes shared consciousness) go to at each step.
As you said after you said "squat" you do get something out of BSD code.
No. I get SQUAT from releasing any BSD code. I get something from other peoples BSD code -- but then THEY get SQUAT. In other words a party releasing BSD code gets SQUAT.
just sticking it in the public domain would be pretty nearly as good for that sort of code. Not if you want to eat.
How do you figure. If I release something into the public domain I can still charge for copies of it. I can't prevent someone else from giving copies away for free... but then that's true of the BSD too. (And the GPL for that matter.)
I don't have a problem with patent protection, which shoudn't be needed!!!
I don't have a problem with patents either, but I agree with the FSF that releasing something under the GPL and then threatening to sue anyone who uses that code, which under the GPL they have express permission to use and modify is utterly ridiculous. And I agree that the GPL should be hostile to attempts to restrict the rights granted by that code via patents or any other technique.
You're paying for the improvements, what was added by the others, for which they own the copyrights.
In theory, maybe. If I give you a car for free, you repaint it, and change the tires and then offer to sell it for $15,000, you aren't charging for the improvements, you are selling the car for what its 'worth'. And that's fine.
Except, really, what is the point of me giving you cars for nothing if this is what you do with them? What's in it for me? I contribute to the GPL, because I know that any improvements made will be usable by me and anyone else.
What's in it for ME to release under a 'free' license that doesn't provide any benefit back to me?
I don't support the GPL because I'm a communist hippie who wants to make the world a better place. I support it because its a good value proposition to ME. I have access to piles of code for free. I can modify it to make it do what I need. And If I contribute code, I know that I will have access to further improvements other people make.
What do I get from a 'BSD' style license? Squat. Code that's already out there under BSD I can use, modify and sell, and potentially make a few bucks that way... and that's obviously a benefit to ME, and I can see why companies like that system. However, how many of those companies that TAKE from that code pool put anything into it? They don't HAVE to, and they don't necessarily get anything back if they do... and thus very few of them do.
The only mystery is where BSD code is coming from in the first place? Who are the 'altruistic hippies' who keep contributing to it without getting anything back? Lets see... University projects mostly. And for demo/sample code.
Universities? no surprise there, they should be used to being mined for anything valuable by corporations by now. And as for demo/sample code -- again the BSD license actually makes sense - the authors of that stuff explicitly just want people to be able to use the code, and don't want/need/expect anything back for it. Its teaching material, etc. Although, just sticking it in the public domain would be pretty nearly as good for that sort of code.
Copyrights are alright but not patents.
Which is partly why the GPLv3 is so hostile to patents. Patents can be used to effectively deny users the very rights the GPL purports to give. So its only common sense that the GPL contain provisions to ensure patents cannot be used in this way.
Just how are they going to punish a suicide for breaking the law? Extra nails in the coffin?
Of course, if the person committing suicide succeeds the laws against it are irrelevant.
However, like many crimes you can also be punished for 'attempting it'.
By making suicide illegal, police are allowed to intervene when someone attempts it. Courts are allowed to prescribe mental health evaluation, rehab, etc.
Personally I support a persons right to die... but I also agree that 'the right to die' shouldn't be extended to every distraught teen with a drug problem who just caught her boyfriend cheating on her. The decision to die is permanent, and you shouldn't be allowed to make that decision without proper consideration, or simply because you are suffering from treatable depression.
It is like being inside a teenaged male's -penis-, not a good place to be.
There fixed it for you.
Yes, I realize in the context the two words are synonymous. But this helps eliminate any confusion, and adds an extra dimension to the 'not a good place to be' .;)
Legally if you write code for yourself you own the copyright. Nobody can force you to pay a license fee to use that code unless you sell the rights to the code.
Technically, but in practice they can effectively accomplish it:
Suppose you release a project under, say, a BSD license and someone modifies it - fixes a couple bugs, adds couple features, etc.
Its true they can't force you to pay for your unaltered original code, but they can charge as much as they want for the 'improved' code... even if its 99.99% your original work, and if you want to use the improved code you'll have to pay.
And you might not even be able to take your original unaltered code and reinvent the fixes and features they added if they've patented them.
It might be a very beautiful garden, but your code will never get out.
Not quite. You can take code out of the garden and modify it for personal/internal use, and you don't have to share those changes. You only have to put your modifications back into the garden if you redistribute them, and putting them back in the garden is the only way you are allowed to redistribute those changes.
This ensures that changes that are redistributed are available to the original authors, and the community at large. That 'walled garden' is always open, and anyone can use it.
Other licenses allow you to take code improve it, and then redistribute it in proprietary walled gardens that may restrict who can use it. Why would I want to contribute code to be used in someone elses proprietary walled garden... where one day I might be required to pay a license covering the code I wrote and contributed.
Excellent points except the change mentioned in the comment to which you're replying is from StarOffice to Microsoft Office and they do want to change.
Not quite. They are still whining about the 'change' to StarOffice from what they are used to elsewhere (be it at home, a former job, or whatever...).
If you put these same people on a Mac with Microsoft Office, how many of them do you think would still complain?
But saddest of all, is if you put a lot of these people onto the Office Suite they are whining for most of the whining STILL won't stop. Even the latest versions of Office still continually mangle formatting and do annoying things with indentation, autocorrect, borders, object anchors, etc when you try an edit non-trivial documents.
When you've got staroffice, though, people blame it on staroffice and say "gee this wouldn't be an issue if I had Microsoft Office", but if you actually give them MS Office, these people still have the same sort of problems, except they just blame it on their 'computer', or the person who wrote the document if it wasn't them.
Your apparent perception that there's no significant difference in quality between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice/StarOffice is somewhere between wishful thinking and delusion.
There are significant differences, but I'm not sure 'quality' is the right benchmark. MS Office IS generally somewhat better at working with its own document formats most of the time, and it boasts a lot of advanced enterprise features that very very very few enterprises use, and almost no small business / department ever touches.
Thanks. All things considered, I have to give MS credit.
Its not perfect - Office XP is still very widely in use. And while I recognize that it would be technically unreasonable for a non-fully patched Office Suite to know about features that are released afterwards, its also a reality that PILES of Office 2003 installs aren't patched.
I think it would be better if an expired 2007 would still perform file-conversion duties. (Allow documents to be opened, viewed, printed, and Saved-As, but not edited.) That's really no more functionality than you get with the free viewers and compatibility pack so its not really giving away anything, but it would be visible and available to 100% of Office 2007 trial users -- whereas the feature you mention in (fully patched) 2003 is going to hit a much smaller target.
You can simply install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats
Well, shucks, isn't that handy!
So, Is this bundled with the trial edition of 2007? It is even mentioned by the trial edition of 2007? Does it show up as an option when you run the office update software? (or whatever its called these days?) When they try to open the new file formats with updated old versions does it only tell them they need to upgrade office or does it also let them know their are free viewers and a backwards-compatibility pack?
If so, I take it back.
But if joe-sixpack end-user isn't informed he has this option, and he's being told he has to upgrade, then its still an underhanded, and anti-consumer system.
There is no practical difference between a user who thinks he's trapped vs a user who is trapped.
It's really not hard to select 'Save in Office 97-2003 format' from a drop down menu on the save dialogue.
Unless of course your Office 2007 trial edition has expired and won't save documents anymore. (At that point your documents are somewhat 'trapped'. And that's what the article is warning against.)
Sure a savvy user who is planning to downgrade and knows this is the sort of thing to be wary of can choose save as Office 2003 from the get-go, but the average user will just run with the defaults, and when the trial expires they'll decide whether or not to buy it, or just install the version they own -- except at this point the new documents can't be accessed unless you find someone with 2007 to downgrade them for you... or you just give up and upgrade.
Its good advice... maybe not a good slashdot given that we all know this... but it is an issue. And its not just FUD, it's a legitimate issue, and one that can't happen with FOSS... Suppose you want to 'trial OO.org 3.0' If after a while you decide its not for you and roll back to 2.0 you can make use of the v3 'save as old version feature' at any time -- v3 isn't going to expire on you.
With a functioning judiciary you will have no shortage of attorneys willing to sue any abusive law enforcement officer or agency.
Would they be so willing to sue if the law enforcent agency took them out back and beat them, or locked them in cells on trumped up drug charges or harrassed their families? The idea that attorneys can prosecute law enforcment pretty much presupposes that law enforcement will protect them...in this case protect them from itself. If its corrupt enough this becomes a bad bet.
You falsely label this as a Republican or a Bush thing. Unseemly of Clinton and Bush? Yes. Withing their constitutional power? It seems so.
I didn't label it as a bush or republican phenomena at all. Bush & co are the current batch, so I used them, I'm well aware all governments have done this. Bush & co HAS been more successful, (or abusive depending on your point of view) than most though.
Irrelevant, US citizens are not being picked off of the street and sent there.
What part of 'all men are created equal' requires someone to be a 'US Citizen'? And is picking up innocent foreign citizens and sending them to our secret prisons somehow acceptable? What would you say of the British Government if Britain picked up American citizens and sent them to British secret prisons?
It also makes sense to keep secret where a concentration of such individuals are being kept. Various "rescues" have been attempted by their comrades when such locations were known.
Same logic could be applied to all prisons for anyone dangerous. Except that there can be no gaurantee of justice without public oversight. And how can the public oversee proceedings that they are excluded from even knowing about?
. This topic is also irrelevant since we have crossed the line from law enforcement to fighting a war.
And when they start arresting people in America for suspected terror sympathizing? It will be under the same pretense of fighting a war. The 'war on terror' the 'war on drugs'....
Lister: I get chills when I hear that phrase. From my point of view there are some pretty good practices, but no best practices... I'd like people to think about patterns - abstracting their work and recognizing the patterns they're in, good and bad, and making informed decisions to promote those patterns or replace them.
So, Lister... would thinking about patterns be a best practice?
Uh-oh! the chain of logic has been attached to itself, we're trapped in a circle from which there is no escape!!
Oh right. Except Alberto Gonzales is firing prosecutors for being democrats, and Bush is stacking the supreme court with sympathizers. Meanwhile good ol Scooter Libby lies to congress, gets caught doing that, and when convicted Bush steps up and commutes his sentence and pundits anticipate a pardon is likely when he steps down.
Meanwhile the FBI spews a report detailing thousands of illegal incidents it perpetrated and covered up. The CIA is running secret prisons...
So much for checks and balances...
How many innocent people do you think were affected by this? How much recourse have they had in this glorious system of checks and balances?
And that's just the US which actually, all things said, is doing pretty good!
So what keeps the US at this pinnacle of equality and justice? (Assuming the current level of corruption merits that phrase.) What keeps it from becoming a B-movie 3rd world model of corruption? Not much, sadly. We have some systems in place (those so called checks and balances), and a constitution -- but they're being eroded away by a government that thinks things like habeas corpus is a priviledge, and that the constitution is 'quaint'.
In truth law enformcement is held to a higher standard than normal civilians.
Yes, they have higher standards, regulations, internal affairs, and many other structures to attempt to regulate them -- WHY exactly do you think that is?
Because corruption within the police is a particularly difficult problem to keep in check, precisely because if they become corrupt they can cover it up much more effectively.
And at the end of the day the whole system is vulnerable, because WHO ultimately regulates the police and the other government law enforcement bodies? The government does. The very same entity we fear of abusing their power is the entity charged with ensuring it doesn't happen.
It doesn't matter how high you set the 'standards'. If they become corrupt and start breaking the rules, do you really think its going to matter that their are other rules to keep them in check? Once an entity is corrupt and breaking rules, it will break those other rules too.
The government needs warrants; fine, we have a system for getting those. Then they wanted secret warrants so people couldn't find out about warrants -- so it created a system of obtaining secret warrants, and then it dedcided it didn't even want to do THAT and started a massive warrantless wiretapping campaign in violation of their own laws and procedures. A corrupt system is CORRUPT. More rules and higher standards won't fix something that's corrupt
You simply can't charge a corrupt group of rooting out its own corruption. You might as well put the CFO of Enron in charge of auditing the company for illegal/deceptive accounting practices.
The lack of a vendor really freaks out a lot of PHBs, and heck, a LOT of older IT folks who still are scared by open source. Don't forget, OSS is less secure because everyone can see the source code, and it's less reliable because you don't have a multi-billion dollar vendor backing you when things go wrong. (not sure if I really need the sarcasm tag with that last sentence or if it's obvious enough)
Yeah, I know what you mean! I really need a multi-billion dollar vendor backing my users 7zip and filezilla.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember how well that worked for email. If you don't want to use your ISPs SMPT server because you didn't like their policies you could just run your own. Now, many of them do their absolute damnedest to force you to use theirs by blocking access to others... all in the fight against spam.
If the botnets/etc get wise to the fact that the ISPs are fucking with DNS, they'll just start dodging the ISPs DNS service, like the spambots dodged the ISPs smpt server.
The obvious ultimate outcome - the ISPs force you to use their DNS servers. Any dns traffic originating from your PC to an external server will be blocked.
True, but "Don't do anything on our network that is AGAINST THE LAW or you will be banned" is just the kinda of condition that is entirely enforceable.
The issue at hand though is what happens when INNOCENT people are banned, you know people who in fact did not do anything "AGAINST THE LAW", but who got banned anyway, because they were misidentified, or because someone claimed the work they downloaded was copyprotected, but in fact it wasn't. (This sort of abuse happens ALL THE TIME.)
The question is: What is their recourse?
No, sorry, I do not understand. There's nothing evil about porn and those filter won't work anyway.
;)
No, no, no the filters are an integral part of the education process. Just think about how much they will learn about computers, operating systems, networking, etc as they learn to defeat the filters!
Its like putting mice in a maze, on the first run they get to the cheese, then we start putting obstacles in, and the mice become problem solvers as they learn to overcome them to reach their beloved cheese.
when you could spend less, get two desktops and a smartphone, and keep your files synchronised over the internet?
:)
You must be using Linux!
I dunno about 'spending less' for most people. A few high profile commercial packages let you install on 2 computers, but a lot of them do not. Buying and upgrading a lot of your software twice will prove more expensive than you might think.
You also lose out on the ability to use the computer on the couch, on the patio, by the pool, on a plane, when doing a presentation, etc, etc, etc...
A laptop is a lot more versatile over all, and the single point of theft issue can be largely mitigated with a backup external hard drive, and/or internet backup.
Desktops aren't going to go away anytime soon - they aren't as limited by space or weight and this gives them advantages. No matter how good laptops get, a desktop case can literally hold three of them, and will therefore always be able to hold more data, have more CPU's, more expansion cards, dissipate more heat, etc etc etc... as long as there is a demand for more power, more cpus, more whatever, there will be a market for desktops.
if you are extending a right, it's not a right - it's a privilege.
By that logic, there are no 'rights'. Even the 'right to life' isn't extended to criminals convicted of particular crimes - does that make life itself a 'priviledge' not a rigt?
In the case of the the right to die, yes, I beleive it -should- be a right. The issue for minors is interesting -- I'm not sure I want to let 5 year olds decide to die outside of extreme circumstances... and putting the decision in a gaurdians hands seems like a bad idea too.
However, for adults, yes, it should be their right. However, it shouldn't be right they can just exercise at will - some sort of evaluation, mandatory waiting period, etc should be in place. Its a permanent and final decision - and it shouldn't be allowed to made while in a drunken depression when ones judgment is impaired.
Even if it wasn't, it would only breed out depression if the person didn't already have children.
Which is ironic, given that one of the (many) causes of depression is having children. (Post partum despression.)
That said I personally think (without any evidence) that its largely environmental.
With a 250 watt power supply, a gig of RAM and only 80 GB of hard drive it's probably going to leave a lot of students disappointed
Disappointed compared to the 'antique' Pentium II 300 with 32MB RAM and windows 98 they were using before?
For a lot of people especially students this is a huge upgrade.
A 250 watt power supply is more than adequate for a nominal cpu without a power sucking video card. Sure the CPU is behind the curve, but then, so is a P-II 350. The hard drive is more than adequate, and the RAM is where it needs to be... and adding more is inexpensive.
I'm not saying its a great computer, or that there aren't better deals around but this, all things considered, isn't bad.
The images are already there and we see the progression. It is a kind of scary concept in that it seems to mean that free will is an illusion.
Only if you assume that their is only one set of ordered images. If every possible image is in the 'book' and every page is 'adjacently linked' to every other page that differed 'only a little', then free will may determine which adjacent page you (individually or perhaps your entire universes shared consciousness) go to at each step.
As you said after you said "squat" you do get something out of BSD code.
No. I get SQUAT from releasing any BSD code.
I get something from other peoples BSD code -- but then THEY get SQUAT.
In other words a party releasing BSD code gets SQUAT.
just sticking it in the public domain would be pretty nearly as good for that sort of code.
Not if you want to eat.
How do you figure. If I release something into the public domain I can still charge for copies of it. I can't prevent someone else from giving copies away for free... but then that's true of the BSD too. (And the GPL for that matter.)
I don't have a problem with patent protection, which shoudn't be needed!!!
I don't have a problem with patents either, but I agree with the FSF that releasing something under the GPL and then threatening to sue anyone who uses that code, which under the GPL they have express permission to use and modify is utterly ridiculous. And I agree that the GPL should be hostile to attempts to restrict the rights granted by that code via patents or any other technique.
You're paying for the improvements, what was added by the others, for which they own the copyrights.
In theory, maybe. If I give you a car for free, you repaint it, and change the tires and then offer to sell it for $15,000, you aren't charging for the improvements, you are selling the car for what its 'worth'. And that's fine.
Except, really, what is the point of me giving you cars for nothing if this is what you do with them? What's in it for me? I contribute to the GPL, because I know that any improvements made will be usable by me and anyone else.
What's in it for ME to release under a 'free' license that doesn't provide any benefit back to me?
I don't support the GPL because I'm a communist hippie who wants to make the world a better place. I support it because its a good value proposition to ME. I have access to piles of code for free. I can modify it to make it do what I need. And If I contribute code, I know that I will have access to further improvements other people make.
What do I get from a 'BSD' style license? Squat. Code that's already out there under BSD I can use, modify and sell, and potentially make a few bucks that way... and that's obviously a benefit to ME, and I can see why companies like that system. However, how many of those companies that TAKE from that code pool put anything into it? They don't HAVE to, and they don't necessarily get anything back if they do... and thus very few of them do.
The only mystery is where BSD code is coming from in the first place? Who are the 'altruistic hippies' who keep contributing to it without getting anything back? Lets see... University projects mostly. And for demo/sample code.
Universities? no surprise there, they should be used to being mined for anything valuable by corporations by now. And as for demo/sample code -- again the BSD license actually makes sense - the authors of that stuff explicitly just want people to be able to use the code, and don't want/need/expect anything back for it. Its teaching material, etc. Although, just sticking it in the public domain would be pretty nearly as good for that sort of code.
Copyrights are alright but not patents.
Which is partly why the GPLv3 is so hostile to patents. Patents can be used to effectively deny users the very rights the GPL purports to give. So its only common sense that the GPL contain provisions to ensure patents cannot be used in this way.
Just how are they going to punish a suicide for breaking the law? Extra nails in the coffin?
Of course, if the person committing suicide succeeds the laws against it are irrelevant.
However, like many crimes you can also be punished for 'attempting it'.
By making suicide illegal, police are allowed to intervene when someone attempts it. Courts are allowed to prescribe mental health evaluation, rehab, etc.
Personally I support a persons right to die... but I also agree that 'the right to die' shouldn't be extended to every distraught teen with a drug problem who just caught her boyfriend cheating on her. The decision to die is permanent, and you shouldn't be allowed to make that decision without proper consideration, or simply because you are suffering from treatable depression.
It is like being inside a teenaged male's -penis-, not a good place to be.
;)
There fixed it for you.
Yes, I realize in the context the two words are synonymous. But this helps eliminate any confusion, and adds an extra dimension to the 'not a good place to be' .
Legally if you write code for yourself you own the copyright. Nobody can force you to pay a license fee to use that code unless you sell the rights to the code.
Technically, but in practice they can effectively accomplish it:
Suppose you release a project under, say, a BSD license and someone modifies it - fixes a couple bugs, adds couple features, etc.
Its true they can't force you to pay for your unaltered original code, but they can charge as much as they want for the 'improved' code... even if its 99.99% your original work, and if you want to use the improved code you'll have to pay.
And you might not even be able to take your original unaltered code and reinvent the fixes and features they added if they've patented them.
It might be a very beautiful garden, but your code will never get out.
Not quite. You can take code out of the garden and modify it for personal/internal use, and you don't have to share those changes. You only have to put your modifications back into the garden if you redistribute them, and putting them back in the garden is the only way you are allowed to redistribute those changes.
This ensures that changes that are redistributed are available to the original authors, and the community at large. That 'walled garden' is always open, and anyone can use it.
Other licenses allow you to take code improve it, and then redistribute it in proprietary walled gardens that may restrict who can use it. Why would I want to contribute code to be used in someone elses proprietary walled garden... where one day I might be required to pay a license covering the code I wrote and contributed.
Excellent points except the change mentioned in the comment to which you're replying is from StarOffice to Microsoft Office and they do want to change.
Not quite. They are still whining about the 'change' to StarOffice from what they are used to elsewhere (be it at home, a former job, or whatever...).
If you put these same people on a Mac with Microsoft Office, how many of them do you think would still complain?
But saddest of all, is if you put a lot of these people onto the Office Suite they are whining for most of the whining STILL won't stop. Even the latest versions of Office still continually mangle formatting and do annoying things with indentation, autocorrect, borders, object anchors, etc when you try an edit non-trivial documents.
When you've got staroffice, though, people blame it on staroffice and say "gee this wouldn't be an issue if I had Microsoft Office", but if you actually give them MS Office, these people still have the same sort of problems, except they just blame it on their 'computer', or the person who wrote the document if it wasn't them.
Your apparent perception that there's no significant difference in quality between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice/StarOffice is somewhere between wishful thinking and delusion.
There are significant differences, but I'm not sure 'quality' is the right benchmark. MS Office IS generally somewhat better at working with its own document formats most of the time, and it boasts a lot of advanced enterprise features that very very very few enterprises use, and almost no small business / department ever touches.
Lookup "Master Documents" in the help and online search. I beleive OO supports them too.
Thanks. All things considered, I have to give MS credit.
Its not perfect - Office XP is still very widely in use. And while I recognize that it would be technically unreasonable for a non-fully patched Office Suite to know about features that are released afterwards, its also a reality that PILES of Office 2003 installs aren't patched.
I think it would be better if an expired 2007 would still perform file-conversion duties. (Allow documents to be opened, viewed, printed, and Saved-As, but not edited.) That's really no more functionality than you get with the free viewers and compatibility pack so its not really giving away anything, but it would be visible and available to 100% of Office 2007 trial users -- whereas the feature you mention in (fully patched) 2003 is going to hit a much smaller target.
You can simply install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats
Well, shucks, isn't that handy!
So, Is this bundled with the trial edition of 2007? It is even mentioned by the trial edition of 2007? Does it show up as an option when you run the office update software? (or whatever its called these days?) When they try to open the new file formats with updated old versions does it only tell them they need to upgrade office or does it also let them know their are free viewers and a backwards-compatibility pack?
If so, I take it back.
But if joe-sixpack end-user isn't informed he has this option, and he's being told he has to upgrade, then its still an underhanded, and anti-consumer system.
There is no practical difference between a user who thinks he's trapped vs a user who is trapped.
It's really not hard to select 'Save in Office 97-2003 format' from a drop down menu on the save dialogue.
Unless of course your Office 2007 trial edition has expired and won't save documents anymore. (At that point your documents are somewhat 'trapped'. And that's what the article is warning against.)
Sure a savvy user who is planning to downgrade and knows this is the sort of thing to be wary of can choose save as Office 2003 from the get-go, but the average user will just run with the defaults, and when the trial expires they'll decide whether or not to buy it, or just install the version they own -- except at this point the new documents can't be accessed unless you find someone with 2007 to downgrade them for you... or you just give up and upgrade.
Its good advice... maybe not a good slashdot given that we all know this... but it is an issue. And its not just FUD, it's a legitimate issue, and one that can't happen with FOSS... Suppose you want to 'trial OO.org 3.0' If after a while you decide its not for you and roll back to 2.0 you can make use of the v3 'save as old version feature' at any time -- v3 isn't going to expire on you.
With a functioning judiciary you will have no shortage of attorneys willing to sue any abusive law enforcement officer or agency.
Would they be so willing to sue if the law enforcent agency took them out back and beat them, or locked them in cells on trumped up drug charges or harrassed their families? The idea that attorneys can prosecute law enforcment pretty much presupposes that law enforcement will protect them...in this case protect them from itself. If its corrupt enough this becomes a bad bet.
You falsely label this as a Republican or a Bush thing. Unseemly of Clinton and Bush? Yes. Withing their constitutional power? It seems so.
I didn't label it as a bush or republican phenomena at all. Bush & co are the current batch, so I used them, I'm well aware all governments have done this. Bush & co HAS been more successful, (or abusive depending on your point of view) than most though.
Irrelevant, US citizens are not being picked off of the street and sent there.
What part of 'all men are created equal' requires someone to be a 'US Citizen'? And is picking up innocent foreign citizens and sending them to our secret prisons somehow acceptable? What would you say of the British Government if Britain picked up American citizens and sent them to British secret prisons?
It also makes sense to keep secret where a concentration of such individuals are being kept. Various "rescues" have been attempted by their comrades when such locations were known.
Same logic could be applied to all prisons for anyone dangerous. Except that there can be no gaurantee of justice without public oversight. And how can the public oversee proceedings that they are excluded from even knowing about?
. This topic is also irrelevant since we have crossed the line from law enforcement to fighting a war.
And when they start arresting people in America for suspected terror sympathizing? It will be under the same pretense of fighting a war. The 'war on terror' the 'war on drugs'....
FTFA...
... I'd like people to think about patterns - abstracting their work and recognizing the patterns they're in, good and bad, and making informed decisions to promote those patterns or replace them.
Lister: I get chills when I hear that phrase. From my point of view there are some pretty good practices, but no best practices
So, Lister... would thinking about patterns be a best practice?
Uh-oh! the chain of logic has been attached to itself, we're trapped in a circle from which there is no escape!!
Oh right. Except Alberto Gonzales is firing prosecutors for being democrats, and Bush is stacking the supreme court with sympathizers. Meanwhile good ol Scooter Libby lies to congress, gets caught doing that, and when convicted Bush steps up and commutes his sentence and pundits anticipate a pardon is likely when he steps down.
Meanwhile the FBI spews a report detailing thousands of illegal incidents it perpetrated and covered up. The CIA is running secret prisons...
So much for checks and balances...
How many innocent people do you think were affected by this? How much recourse have they had in this glorious system of checks and balances?
And that's just the US which actually, all things said, is doing pretty good!
So what keeps the US at this pinnacle of equality and justice? (Assuming the current level of corruption merits that phrase.) What keeps it from becoming a B-movie 3rd world model of corruption? Not much, sadly. We have some systems in place (those so called checks and balances), and a constitution -- but they're being eroded away by a government that thinks things like habeas corpus is a priviledge, and that the constitution is 'quaint'.
Just give them some more time.
In truth law enformcement is held to a higher standard than normal civilians.
Yes, they have higher standards, regulations, internal affairs, and many other structures to attempt to regulate them -- WHY exactly do you think that is?
Because corruption within the police is a particularly difficult problem to keep in check, precisely because if they become corrupt they can cover it up much more effectively.
And at the end of the day the whole system is vulnerable, because WHO ultimately regulates the police and the other government law enforcement bodies? The government does. The very same entity we fear of abusing their power is the entity charged with ensuring it doesn't happen.
It doesn't matter how high you set the 'standards'. If they become corrupt and start breaking the rules, do you really think its going to matter that their are other rules to keep them in check? Once an entity is corrupt and breaking rules, it will break those other rules too.
The government needs warrants; fine, we have a system for getting those. Then they wanted secret warrants so people couldn't find out about warrants -- so it created a system of obtaining secret warrants, and then it dedcided it didn't even want to do THAT and started a massive warrantless wiretapping campaign in violation of their own laws and procedures. A corrupt system is CORRUPT. More rules and higher standards won't fix something that's corrupt
You simply can't charge a corrupt group of rooting out its own corruption. You might as well put the CFO of Enron in charge of auditing the company for illegal/deceptive accounting practices.
The lack of a vendor really freaks out a lot of PHBs, and heck, a LOT of older IT folks who still are scared by open source. Don't forget, OSS is less secure because everyone can see the source code, and it's less reliable because you don't have a multi-billion dollar vendor backing you when things go wrong. (not sure if I really need the sarcasm tag with that last sentence or if it's obvious enough)
Yeah, I know what you mean! I really need a multi-billion dollar vendor backing my users 7zip and filezilla.