Having used Excel for over a dozen years, I'm still saddened by how few folks use it for more than a poor man's database. Even basic mathematical tasks - making a budget, figuring out the total cost of a purchase - escape most people.
There are two simple reasons for that: (1) Excel isn't very good at mathematical and statistical tasks, and (2) Excel's user interface for such tasks sucks.
The scary thing is that the student had just graduated that past spring with a degree in finance.
She probably knew how to compute percentages, but she didn't know how to do it in Excel. The fault there is with Excel, not her.
As much as it is in fashion to bash Microsoft, I must say they did a very good job with Excel.
Yes, they did an excellent job ripping off spreadsheet programs developed by their competitors in the 1980's.
No matter how well you think you know the program, you most likely have more to learn. So many times I've had people ask me how to do something in Excel/VBA and I tell them, "Don't use VBA - that feature is already built into Excel". So, before you DIY try reading up on some of the features of Excel.
So, you are saying that the program requires a lot of study, that its functionality is so unobvious that people think of reimplementing something in VBA before using built-in Excel functionality, and that people can't even tell from the user interface what features it has. You know what, you are absolutely right: your experience agrees with mine. But that's not a description of a well-designed program or user interface.
Excel is a prototypical example of the kind of stagnation that results from a monopoly. In the 1980's and 1990's, there were a number of attempts to develop better spreadsheet-like software, but Microsoft Office killed them through Microsoft's market dominance. It's truly depressing that in the 21st century, we are still stuck with that sort of garbage.
Imaging-based skin diagnostics is an obvious and useful thing to do, but a lot of research and clinical studies still need to be done in order to develop, test, and validate it. If this company's patents stand, it will ensure that none of that is going to happen, because they themselves are not equipped to handle it or finance it even under the rosiest of forecasts, and nobody else has any reason to work on it if they can't use it afterwards.
He isn't saying that copper is scarce right now. He is saying that it will be scarce when the developing world starts progressing enough to require large quantities of it.
Exalead has been founded by the guys who developped Altavista's "Live Topics" feature and have a strong background in search technologies.
Hmmm--his publications don't show a strong background in search technologies. It's also not a strong recommendation that they have a CEO with a technical background (in programming languages, not search) but no startup business experience, and don't have any technical personnel.
I find it quite strange that the French president would just kind of pick this company and declare it to be "the European search engine". Was there any public review? Any business vetting? Why did these people end up getting picked?
The FSF never was about "free as in beer" software, nor was it about "free as in you-can-do-whatever-you-like-with-it" software. I'm sorry you misunderstood this point, but the FSF has been completely clear about it.
The FSF is trying to guarantee a specific set of freedoms, and they are using whatever methods the legal system gives them in order to make those guarantees.
Of course, your kind of confusion extends into other areas. For example, there are many people who think that a free society is a society in which everybody can do whatever they like, but that's false. A free society is a society in which people can do whatever they like, up to the point where it starts interfering with other people's freedoms.
The law, like any field, needs precise language to communicate.
Unfortunately, that's a goal that the legal profession has realized only imperfectly; right now, legal language is not so much "precise", but a bag of tricks to guard against the most common and damaging misinterpretations. It still beats colloquial language, though.
But, then, the same can be said for computer scientists...
It's too bad that you have to understand any kind of legaleese to be a programmer, but that's life.
I think programmers aren't the ones to complain about obscure notation and languages, given that we have invented many more of them than lawyers ever have in the history of the world.
IANAL, but, to use your analogy, the license doesn't say "please guarantee that your birthday isn't in August", it says "your birthday must not be in August", which translates into "if your birthday is in August, you do not get a license to distribute this software".
I use external USB2 drives for backup and archiving. You can easily get them up to 400G these days. SATA drives and bus-powered USB2 drives are other options.
I think network attached storage just isn't worth the hassle.
That's a bunch of big German companies and buckets of government money. Who are supposed to be the technical people behind this thing? What's their track record?
A big part of the reason behind Google's success is the business track record of the people running it and the top-notch talent they have picked up from other research labs. Of course, making the first few hundred employees millionaires probably also provided ample motivation. I don't see anything like that happening in Europe.
There is nothing unusual with putting a copyright on a page like that; it just means that the page is copyrighted in its entirety, not the facts on it.
By analogy, when I write a scientific paper, I put a copyright on it. That means that the paper is copyrighted, not the scientific results contained in that paper.
Making the code run on other hardware without source code is useless; software needs to change and evolve. How are people going to implement new protocols, formats, and services in the kernel without source code access?
Furthermore, the number of people ever able to use Newton OS legally that way is at most the number of Newtons originally sold, since any additional copies are illegal. And that's optimistic--most of those original licenses are probably lost.
Newton is dead unless Apple revives it; nobody but the owner of the source code can do that. Welcome to the world of closed source.
The only ways Newton OS will live again is if someone actually develops the OS. Otherwise, it's just a dead piece of code. Developing it requires that either (1) Apple open sources it, or (2) Apple makes another product out of it, or (3) Apple sells it. I don't see any of those happening.
I like the IBM Trackpoint SpaceSaver. In addition to being a nice compact keyboard, the Trackpoint is great for people who don't like to reach for the mouse all the time.
Something clearly displayed when looking at Novell which almost immediatly started "OpenSuSE" after the release of OpenSolaris. Coincedence? I wonder...
The reason for OpenSuSE was Fedora Core, and the reason for Fedora Core was competition Debian and other free Linux distributions.
No voice has overall control, no-one can force through self-serving capabilities
You're dreaming; the entire JCP is there to "force through self-serving capabilities". Worse, because Sun's mandatory compatibility requirements, if you don't implement all their shit, you can't implement any of it. And the result is that there are no third party Java implementations--only Sun's implementations and its derivative.
and everyone gets to use the specifications royalty free.
"Royalty free" in that you don't have to pay money for it; you do have to give away your firstborn son, in effect, if you want to access Sun's Java specifications.
Microsoft fully understands the PR value of ECMA and is cynically using it to rubber stamp it's Office 12 XML format to undermine the openness of OpenDocument. That action has done us the good service of showing us just how intellectually bankrupt ECMA actually is.
ECMA requires disclosure of intellectual property claims, licensing requirements, and publication of the standard. Indeed, that doesn't make a standard an "open standard", but Sun has been afraid even to agree to those limited terms. The sad fact is that Sun refuses to comply even with the very limited degree of openness ECMA requires: Sun doesn't want to disclose their intellectual property claims on Java, or their licensing requirements, and they don't want the Java standard to be published without their restrictive license.
So, I'd be happy if Sun at least lived up to the limited level of Java standardization, but in reality, Sun Java is more proprietary than ECMA C# and Microsoft Office XML formats.
There are already numerous companies that are looking for malware (including spyware) on the web, developing signatures, and making that information available over the web. They even provide handy little desktop applications that will scan and evaluate software not just by site-of-origin but by actual content. An example of this is "Spybot" (www.safer-networking.org).
It seems like what this company is trying to add into the mix is automated testing, but it's doubtful that identifying spyware is the limiting factor right now in eliminating it. It also seems doubtful that automated testing is, ultimately, going to be effective or reliable.
The reason many people subscribe to.Mac (myself included) is because Apple makes it easier to do Web and Internet stuff with.Mac than with anything else. That's not because they have magically figured out how to do a better job with hosting on.Mac, it's just because that's the main thing they spend any time on.
As long as Apple ties their apps into.Mac, the fact is that.Mac is a hidden cost from a Macintosh purchase, and at $100/year, it's not such a great deal. The solution would be to fix the apps themselves. There is no reason, for example, why iPhoto shouldn't make it easier publish to arbitrary web pages out of the box.
Then explain why it's never been seen in the wild? Show me some systems compromised by this?? Gibson isn't the only one who goes poking around in obscure places.
Because most people who figure out this sort of thing neither take advantage of the vulnerabilities nor report them. Why? Because it's not worth the hassle for commercial systems, and you only run the risk of being accused of blackmailing the vendor. Let Microsoft do their own code reviews and testing--they have enough money.
I'm as ready to believe ill of M$ as the next person, and have seen enough of their shenannigans myself to be sure they do sometimes code with malice aforethought
I doubt anyone is seriously saying that this sort of thing is official Microsoft policy. More likely, it's something some contractor or low-level employee put in.
Conspiracy theorists might do better to examine... oh, say the Visual Basic runtimes, which are historically just as old as WMFs, but vastly more widely-used, and offer far more scope for malicious behaviour. After all, how much do you know about those VB compilers??
You're absolutely right: Windows is likely full of backdoors, and because it's closed source, most of them will remain undiscovered. That's why you shouldn't use Windows for anything that requires privacy, secrecy, or security.
Even if Vista shipped today, it would already be several years behind Linux and OS X in terms of featurs and technology. So, I imagine the years after Vista ships won't be any easier than the years before...
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Having used Excel for over a dozen years, I'm still saddened by how few folks use it for more than a poor man's database. Even basic mathematical tasks - making a budget, figuring out the total cost of a purchase - escape most people.
There are two simple reasons for that: (1) Excel isn't very good at mathematical and statistical tasks, and (2) Excel's user interface for such tasks sucks.
The scary thing is that the student had just graduated that past spring with a degree in finance.
She probably knew how to compute percentages, but she didn't know how to do it in Excel. The fault there is with Excel, not her.
As much as it is in fashion to bash Microsoft, I must say they did a very good job with Excel.
Yes, they did an excellent job ripping off spreadsheet programs developed by their competitors in the 1980's.
No matter how well you think you know the program, you most likely have more to learn. So many times I've had people ask me how to do something in Excel/VBA and I tell them, "Don't use VBA - that feature is already built into Excel". So, before you DIY try reading up on some of the features of Excel.
So, you are saying that the program requires a lot of study, that its functionality is so unobvious that people think of reimplementing something in VBA before using built-in Excel functionality, and that people can't even tell from the user interface what features it has. You know what, you are absolutely right: your experience agrees with mine. But that's not a description of a well-designed program or user interface.
Excel is a prototypical example of the kind of stagnation that results from a monopoly. In the 1980's and 1990's, there were a number of attempts to develop better spreadsheet-like software, but Microsoft Office killed them through Microsoft's market dominance. It's truly depressing that in the 21st century, we are still stuck with that sort of garbage.
Imaging-based skin diagnostics is an obvious and useful thing to do, but a lot of research and clinical studies still need to be done in order to develop, test, and validate it. If this company's patents stand, it will ensure that none of that is going to happen, because they themselves are not equipped to handle it or finance it even under the rosiest of forecasts, and nobody else has any reason to work on it if they can't use it afterwards.
He isn't saying that copper is scarce right now. He is saying that it will be scarce when the developing world starts progressing enough to require large quantities of it.
Exalead has been founded by the guys who developped Altavista's "Live Topics" feature and have a strong background in search technologies.
Hmmm--his publications don't show a strong background in search technologies. It's also not a strong recommendation that they have a CEO with a technical background (in programming languages, not search) but no startup business experience, and don't have any technical personnel.
I find it quite strange that the French president would just kind of pick this company and declare it to be "the European search engine". Was there any public review? Any business vetting? Why did these people end up getting picked?
The FSF never was about "free as in beer" software, nor was it about "free as in you-can-do-whatever-you-like-with-it" software. I'm sorry you misunderstood this point, but the FSF has been completely clear about it.
The FSF is trying to guarantee a specific set of freedoms, and they are using whatever methods the legal system gives them in order to make those guarantees.
Of course, your kind of confusion extends into other areas. For example, there are many people who think that a free society is a society in which everybody can do whatever they like, but that's false. A free society is a society in which people can do whatever they like, up to the point where it starts interfering with other people's freedoms.
The law, like any field, needs precise language to communicate.
Unfortunately, that's a goal that the legal profession has realized only imperfectly; right now, legal language is not so much "precise", but a bag of tricks to guard against the most common and damaging misinterpretations. It still beats colloquial language, though.
But, then, the same can be said for computer scientists...
It's too bad that you have to understand any kind of legaleese to be a programmer, but that's life.
I think programmers aren't the ones to complain about obscure notation and languages, given that we have invented many more of them than lawyers ever have in the history of the world.
IANAL, but, to use your analogy, the license doesn't say "please guarantee that your birthday isn't in August", it says "your birthday must not be in August", which translates into "if your birthday is in August, you do not get a license to distribute this software".
I think the whole point is that saying "I told you so" is not helpful in any way (except to boost the speaker's sense of superiority).
I think that is the whole point. I mean, what else is left when the majority of the human population is bent on self destruction?
And a fatalistic attitude often ignores solutions that could be found.
A fatalistic attitude, by definition, ignores solutions that could be found because it believes that no solutions can be found.
I think there is a good chance that the guy is right. I also think it doesn't matter to me either way--I'll be dead before the sh*t hits the fan.
I use external USB2 drives for backup and archiving. You can easily get them up to 400G these days. SATA drives and bus-powered USB2 drives are other options.
I think network attached storage just isn't worth the hassle.
That's a bunch of big German companies and buckets of government money. Who are supposed to be the technical people behind this thing? What's their track record?
A big part of the reason behind Google's success is the business track record of the people running it and the top-notch talent they have picked up from other research labs. Of course, making the first few hundred employees millionaires probably also provided ample motivation. I don't see anything like that happening in Europe.
Yes, and Java will "live on" just like that.
There is nothing unusual with putting a copyright on a page like that; it just means that the page is copyrighted in its entirety, not the facts on it.
By analogy, when I write a scientific paper, I put a copyright on it. That means that the paper is copyrighted, not the scientific results contained in that paper.
Making the code run on other hardware without source code is useless; software needs to change and evolve. How are people going to implement new protocols, formats, and services in the kernel without source code access?
Furthermore, the number of people ever able to use Newton OS legally that way is at most the number of Newtons originally sold, since any additional copies are illegal. And that's optimistic--most of those original licenses are probably lost.
Newton is dead unless Apple revives it; nobody but the owner of the source code can do that. Welcome to the world of closed source.
Firefox and Thunderbird are important for OS X.
I'm wondering, though, does anybody know what the progress is on Xen for OS X/Intel? What about a port of Debian or Ubuntu to the MacBook hardware?
The only ways Newton OS will live again is if someone actually develops the OS. Otherwise, it's just a dead piece of code. Developing it requires that either (1) Apple open sources it, or (2) Apple makes another product out of it, or (3) Apple sells it. I don't see any of those happening.
I like the IBM Trackpoint SpaceSaver. In addition to being a nice compact keyboard, the Trackpoint is great for people who don't like to reach for the mouse all the time.
When they're talking about a ".NET killer", they're actually talking about a suicide pact.
Something clearly displayed when looking at Novell which almost immediatly started "OpenSuSE" after the release of OpenSolaris. Coincedence? I wonder...
The reason for OpenSuSE was Fedora Core, and the reason for Fedora Core was competition Debian and other free Linux distributions.
No voice has overall control, no-one can force through self-serving capabilities
You're dreaming; the entire JCP is there to "force through self-serving capabilities". Worse, because Sun's mandatory compatibility requirements, if you don't implement all their shit, you can't implement any of it. And the result is that there are no third party Java implementations--only Sun's implementations and its derivative.
and everyone gets to use the specifications royalty free.
"Royalty free" in that you don't have to pay money for it; you do have to give away your firstborn son, in effect, if you want to access Sun's Java specifications.
Microsoft fully understands the PR value of ECMA and is cynically using it to rubber stamp it's Office 12 XML format to undermine the openness of OpenDocument. That action has done us the good service of showing us just how intellectually bankrupt ECMA actually is.
ECMA requires disclosure of intellectual property claims, licensing requirements, and publication of the standard. Indeed, that doesn't make a standard an "open standard", but Sun has been afraid even to agree to those limited terms. The sad fact is that Sun refuses to comply even with the very limited degree of openness ECMA requires: Sun doesn't want to disclose their intellectual property claims on Java, or their licensing requirements, and they don't want the Java standard to be published without their restrictive license.
So, I'd be happy if Sun at least lived up to the limited level of Java standardization, but in reality, Sun Java is more proprietary than ECMA C# and Microsoft Office XML formats.
There are already numerous companies that are looking for malware (including spyware) on the web, developing signatures, and making that information available over the web. They even provide handy little desktop applications that will scan and evaluate software not just by site-of-origin but by actual content. An example of this is "Spybot" (www.safer-networking.org).
It seems like what this company is trying to add into the mix is automated testing, but it's doubtful that identifying spyware is the limiting factor right now in eliminating it. It also seems doubtful that automated testing is, ultimately, going to be effective or reliable.
The reason many people subscribe to .Mac (myself included) is because Apple makes it easier to do Web and Internet stuff with .Mac than with anything else. That's not because they have magically figured out how to do a better job with hosting on .Mac, it's just because that's the main thing they spend any time on.
.Mac, the fact is that .Mac is a hidden cost from a Macintosh purchase, and at $100/year, it's not such a great deal. The solution would be to fix the apps themselves. There is no reason, for example, why iPhoto shouldn't make it easier publish to arbitrary web pages out of the box.
As long as Apple ties their apps into
Then explain why it's never been seen in the wild? Show me some systems compromised by this?? Gibson isn't the only one who goes poking around in obscure places.
Because most people who figure out this sort of thing neither take advantage of the vulnerabilities nor report them. Why? Because it's not worth the hassle for commercial systems, and you only run the risk of being accused of blackmailing the vendor. Let Microsoft do their own code reviews and testing--they have enough money.
I'm as ready to believe ill of M$ as the next person, and have seen enough of their shenannigans myself to be sure they do sometimes code with malice aforethought
I doubt anyone is seriously saying that this sort of thing is official Microsoft policy. More likely, it's something some contractor or low-level employee put in.
Conspiracy theorists might do better to examine... oh, say the Visual Basic runtimes, which are historically just as old as WMFs, but vastly more widely-used, and offer far more scope for malicious behaviour. After all, how much do you know about those VB compilers??
You're absolutely right: Windows is likely full of backdoors, and because it's closed source, most of them will remain undiscovered. That's why you shouldn't use Windows for anything that requires privacy, secrecy, or security.
Even if Vista shipped today, it would already be several years behind Linux and OS X in terms of featurs and technology. So, I imagine the years after Vista ships won't be any easier than the years before...