So how does this article say "different strokes for different folks"? It's clearly states that OSX is the winner for most people looking to switch away from Microsoft.
Meaning, if s/mac/linux/ then you would be happy and suspend you post like this? I like both of them, but Linux I prefer on server, while Mac I prefer on desktop. Because Linux on desktop is same poor as Mac on server. And, frankly, I have to agree with the author almost everywhere. Nice review.
The msft shills here want everybody to think this is about OpenOffice vs MS-Office. It isn't. ODF runs of several WPs, including MS-Office.
Yeah, we all heard that for years. And from technical point of view I agree with you. A bit. But you know what? Format without software is just an empty place. Nobody need.psd if there no Photoshop, right? But why InDesign format is so popular among art designers while almost nobody knows about Corel Ventura? Format matters, for sure. But first users should love the product itself.
Users are not care about format, but about the thingy they run. If OpenOffice.org would be really better than MS Office, I am really sure that people would use that free thing instead to buy costly crap. Thus no future for MS format. However, MS Word and MS Excel are one of the best office suites, hands down. And guess what it leads to...
Me: Mac and Linux user for years. And I use OpenOffice.org. And I had built corporate documentation system, so I know how people are working and the way they do and why they use MS Office and what do they actually care about. But still watching people how they do prefer MS Office over OpenOffice.org. And still watching how CTOs are ditching OpenOffice.org out of their datacenters and companies.
Personally I think it issue not with format, but software itself. See, why people are tend to use Google instead of MSN or ASK.com or Yahoo? Simply because it is more efficient. Once you write your own search engine which is better than Google, then you will be either more popular than Google or just hired/bought by Google.:-)
Same thing with ODF: there are simply no good software for that thing. Only OpenOffice.org which is still not as efficient and featured as MS Office. If MS Office would support ODF and run on Linux apart from Windows and Mac, then it would be the best Office suite ever made.
MS Office is better by features it provide. It still has a hell of versions compatibility and proprietary format we have to deal with. It prevents people from automating the output and transforming the content from one to another form. That's right. However, all these things is not what users are usually concerned. We usually point to documents incompatibility and vendor lock. However, people already know these issues, but still are willing to be locked and pay for updates. The question to OpenOffice.org community is: why?
They are Carbon. They are Cocoa. They are universal binaries. They are PPC code with Altivec. Does such a project exist yet? If not, why not?
I am not sure, but in my opinion the reason is:
Cocoa is proprietary.
Carbon is proprietary too and it is old thus must die ASAP.
You can do exactly the opposite in MacOSX: running Linux apps on OSX instead of running OSX apps on Linux. Well, actually not exactly, but ported/recompiled to Darwin/X11. Ant it is cheaper: recently cross-platform code considered Good Thing.
MacOSX has frameworks for applications and differs much from Linux/Unix/BSD.
I am not sure about local disk privacy, but I had real experience with information leak. We had a "hidden" URL in public server, which never been populated. To get this URL you need to type it manually. This was done for the prooject presentation to some companies and really this URL was used only by few people without entering it elsewhere. But suddenly it appeared in Google engine. But one guy used Google Desktop from Windows OS. I am not sure, but I suppose two things: Google has magical crawler, which can read your mind and never populated, temporary URLs. Or, Google Desktop sends some YOUR information to its search engine, which is more realistic reason. I don't want to blame Google for an intentional spyware. It is more likely just a feature, which is simply not welcome.
In fact, as a user, I had installed it on my Mac and didn't find it useful -- cumbersome and bulky in use, makes your machine works heavy and yet Spotlight still does better and much lighter. Just my opinion.
As a result, I think all of those search engines should be open sourced. Otherwise it may be potential "spyware", even from a company, which not-yet-beast. For an alternative, I am happy enough with Beagle and/or Recoll on *nix and Spotlight (not opensource, but at least do not sends your info) on Macs. Windows?.. Dunno. Don't use.
He-he...:-) Yeah, you're right. Well, I meant different: objects in Python are way better than in Perl. Then exceptions comes in mind too... Well, and the source of Perl is same readable: zipped or plain-text...:-) Maybe vapourware Perl-6 will be better than current Perl, but yet I didn't see it in real action (Pugs only).
Perl, Perl, Perl, Perl -- that is the only answer to everything! Bugzilla, DVD decoders, SSL, apache2.pm and a Tomcat -- all written in Perl! Even Windows 98 is written in Perl (Vista is just rewrite to C++ from Perl)...
Oh, nobody is against adaptation of the life. It is very often if you take a horse of one kind and bring it elsewhere to other climate, then kind changes very strongly. Yet horse it persists. It does not turns to be a barking frog neither a flying monkey. However the therm of "evolution" means "The gradual development of something from a simple to a more complex form". An "organic evolution" means "the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth.".
The idea of organic evolution was proposed by some ancient Greek thinkers but was long rejected in Europe as contrary to the literal interpretation of the Bible. Lamarck proposed a theory that organisms became transformed by their efforts to respond to the demands of their environment, but he was unable to explain a mechanism for this. Lyell demonstrated that geological deposits were the cumulative product of slow processes over vast ages. This helped Darwin toward a theory of gradual evolution over a long period by the natural selection of those varieties of an organism slightly better adapted to the environment and hence more likely to produce descendants. Combined with the later discoveries of the cellular and molecular basis of genetics, Darwin's theory of evolution has, with some modification, become the dominant unifying concept of modern biology.
Yet this theory is not proven. And probably never be.
Evolutionists wants to prove origin of the life? Great, but they should first prove how stuff appeared before The Great Explosion. Oh wait, they say for Universe has its age... So what was before?..
If we can only "speculate" on the origin of life, why do so many people state that evolution is a "fact"? Repeat a rumour often enough and people will swallow it.
You may mod me as down, but I am really frustrated this news. While there is a Novell with great solutions, support they can provide and completed advanced desktop which lacks nothing what is needed for average Windows user (mp3, codecs and so on), they choose Ubuntu, where apt-get is the only good thing... Does not sounds serious to me.:-( Of course we say: "Go install $foo yourself", but this is ain't a point, because average users never treat PC as a potential LEGO constructor, but simply a device, which they can turn on and start to work or have fun with NO worry to post-install things. Hope Dell's Ubuntu will be different Ubuntu, but I am not sure... Also I am not sure how do they handle unstable repos, where is the only place to get actually nice software. Do they think that average user will vim apt sources and follow numbers of HOWTO's?.. Yes, *I* can do that easily, maybe everybody on/. are familiar, but yet not average Windows user.:-(
I am running both of them, switching for time to time, since I have to build the software. But then just shutdown Parallels and back to work on my iMac... I do prefer Linux/Unix over Windows, though I have to say that still the winner is... OSX due to *how things fits together* in that simple way. Hope that one day Gnome/KDE people will pay attention on that.
I'd like to see how "simple" you will work with a structures, kind of "hash of hashes of arrays of arrays of hashes" and then compare two or more structures for differences. I also want to see the code and perfomance how it works.:-)
In Python I do simply: if a == b: (it's that simple, huh?) and it *is* comparable as it is, but what to do in Perl?..
If I need very complex structures, I just simply build a class, define __cmp__ method and it is. For example:
>>> class A: ... x = None ... def __cmp__(self, i): ... return self.x == i ... >>> a = A() >>> b = A() >>> a == b True >>> a.x = 1 >>> b.x = 2 >>> a == b False
Any examples to make this in Perl as simple as it is?
* * *
BTW, how to catch exceptions in Perl? How to catch custom exceptions? I don't need "to die" in my script, but just skip an error, spitting on STDERR the result of an exception.
Any help from Perl guru?
P.S. To make Perl source code smaller: use gzip. Readability will not suffer...
>In perl, you can change the nature of the language itself. *Everything* can be changed.
This means, that existing condition can not satisfy. But we all waiting for that changes: Parrot with Perl 6. While it is in "hard progress", we use Python.
> It's called descent with modification: sub groups within groups. Your conception: of one thing turning into another, is generally a mistaken way to think of it, which is perhaps why you find the idea so confusing.
You had repeated this to me twice, but yet no clear conception I heard from you. We all "know" that life on Earth started from an Explosion, which produced random movenet of atoms, which randomly created molecules, then bacteria, then Infuzoria, then monkey, and finally Slashdot.:-) Isn't this an Evolution concept? Or now evolutionists believe into something else? If so, then what is it?..
> Evolution is not simply random assemblage. It's a ratchet algorithm, not a whirlwind in anything
Absolutely agree. Evolution is a theory (yet not proven though) about an algorithm, based on a thought that "primitive produces complex". IOW, more stupid produce more smart. Well, maybe for you it sounds convincing, but for me -- yet ridiculous. Though you still didn't explained me where is a start point of Evolution: where is the beginning and who or what gave it a kick to evolute? IOW, who made that "ratchet algoritm"? If you at least know how to write "Hello World!" program in any program language, you must understand, that any algoritm is previously designed stuff, which supposed to do something in a future. Therefore even your Evolution you believe -- might be a product of somebody, who well designed stuff around, where each element may evolute.
> Actually, I have a screensaver on my computer
It proves nothing, since code is supposed do make a shapes. Point is at another place: make a random loop which will produce a computer program. Though if you are Perl programmer, then maybe it will work for you.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Finding decent Perl programmer is really hard thing, if ever possible... :-)
Even russian guy is completely Ok, the car won't run due to detecting the alcohol percentage in his cloth since long usage. :-)
But frankly it is FUGLY. (oops, sorry)
The real price is $66.6 ...
Yeah, Dolphin looks nice. A good copy of Mac's Finder... :-)
Meaning, if s/mac/linux/ then you would be happy and suspend you post like this? I like both of them, but Linux I prefer on server, while Mac I prefer on desktop. Because Linux on desktop is same poor as Mac on server. And, frankly, I have to agree with the author almost everywhere. Nice review.
Yeah, we all heard that for years. And from technical point of view I agree with you. A bit. But you know what? Format without software is just an empty place. Nobody need .psd if there no Photoshop, right? But why InDesign format is so popular among art designers while almost nobody knows about Corel Ventura? Format matters, for sure. But first users should love the product itself.
Users are not care about format, but about the thingy they run. If OpenOffice.org would be really better than MS Office, I am really sure that people would use that free thing instead to buy costly crap. Thus no future for MS format. However, MS Word and MS Excel are one of the best office suites, hands down. And guess what it leads to...
Me: Mac and Linux user for years. And I use OpenOffice.org. And I had built corporate documentation system, so I know how people are working and the way they do and why they use MS Office and what do they actually care about. But still watching people how they do prefer MS Office over OpenOffice.org. And still watching how CTOs are ditching OpenOffice.org out of their datacenters and companies.
Personally I think it issue not with format, but software itself. See, why people are tend to use Google instead of MSN or ASK.com or Yahoo? Simply because it is more efficient. Once you write your own search engine which is better than Google, then you will be either more popular than Google or just hired/bought by Google. :-)
Same thing with ODF: there are simply no good software for that thing. Only OpenOffice.org which is still not as efficient and featured as MS Office. If MS Office would support ODF and run on Linux apart from Windows and Mac, then it would be the best Office suite ever made.
MS Office is better by features it provide. It still has a hell of versions compatibility and proprietary format we have to deal with. It prevents people from automating the output and transforming the content from one to another form. That's right. However, all these things is not what users are usually concerned. We usually point to documents incompatibility and vendor lock. However, people already know these issues, but still are willing to be locked and pay for updates. The question to OpenOffice.org community is: why?
I am not sure, but in my opinion the reason is:
Maybe some more reasons exists...
Heh, looking towards Windows users I see even more... :-)
Phew... I can compress to zero! Well, no decompressor were written yet though......
I am not sure about local disk privacy, but I had real experience with information leak. We had a "hidden" URL in public server, which never been populated. To get this URL you need to type it manually. This was done for the prooject presentation to some companies and really this URL was used only by few people without entering it elsewhere. But suddenly it appeared in Google engine. But one guy used Google Desktop from Windows OS. I am not sure, but I suppose two things: Google has magical crawler, which can read your mind and never populated, temporary URLs. Or, Google Desktop sends some YOUR information to its search engine, which is more realistic reason. I don't want to blame Google for an intentional spyware. It is more likely just a feature, which is simply not welcome.
In fact, as a user, I had installed it on my Mac and didn't find it useful -- cumbersome and bulky in use, makes your machine works heavy and yet Spotlight still does better and much lighter. Just my opinion.
As a result, I think all of those search engines should be open sourced. Otherwise it may be potential "spyware", even from a company, which not-yet-beast. For an alternative, I am happy enough with Beagle and/or Recoll on *nix and Spotlight (not opensource, but at least do not sends your info) on Macs. Windows?.. Dunno. Don't use.
Though I am not sure about Spotlight too... :-)
He-he... :-) Yeah, you're right. Well, I meant different: objects in Python are way better than in Perl. Then exceptions comes in mind too... Well, and the source of Perl is same readable: zipped or plain-text... :-) Maybe vapourware Perl-6 will be better than current Perl, but yet I didn't see it in real action (Pugs only).
Perl, Perl, Perl, Perl -- that is the only answer to everything! Bugzilla, DVD decoders, SSL, apache2.pm and a Tomcat -- all written in Perl! Even Windows 98 is written in Perl (Vista is just rewrite to C++ from Perl)...
*running away* :-)
Oh, nobody is against adaptation of the life. It is very often if you take a horse of one kind and bring it elsewhere to other climate, then kind changes very strongly. Yet horse it persists. It does not turns to be a barking frog neither a flying monkey. However the therm of "evolution" means "The gradual development of something from a simple to a more complex form". An "organic evolution" means "the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth.".
The idea of organic evolution was proposed by some ancient Greek thinkers but was long rejected in Europe as contrary to the literal interpretation of the Bible. Lamarck proposed a theory that organisms became transformed by their efforts to respond to the demands of their environment, but he was unable to explain a mechanism for this. Lyell demonstrated that geological deposits were the cumulative product of slow processes over vast ages. This helped Darwin toward a theory of gradual evolution over a long period by the natural selection of those varieties of an organism slightly better adapted to the environment and hence more likely to produce descendants. Combined with the later discoveries of the cellular and molecular basis of genetics, Darwin's theory of evolution has, with some modification, become the dominant unifying concept of modern biology.
Yet this theory is not proven. And probably never be.
Evolutionists wants to prove origin of the life? Great, but they should first prove how stuff appeared before The Great Explosion. Oh wait, they say for Universe has its age... So what was before?..
If we can only "speculate" on the origin of life, why do so many people state that evolution is a "fact"? Repeat a rumour often enough and people will swallow it.
Any evidence where particles and gas came from to make "The Great Explosion"? :-)
You may mod me as down, but I am really frustrated this news. While there is a Novell with great solutions, support they can provide and completed advanced desktop which lacks nothing what is needed for average Windows user (mp3, codecs and so on), they choose Ubuntu, where apt-get is the only good thing... Does not sounds serious to me. :-( Of course we say: "Go install $foo yourself", but this is ain't a point, because average users never treat PC as a potential LEGO constructor, but simply a device, which they can turn on and start to work or have fun with NO worry to post-install things. Hope Dell's Ubuntu will be different Ubuntu, but I am not sure... Also I am not sure how do they handle unstable repos, where is the only place to get actually nice software. Do they think that average user will vim apt sources and follow numbers of HOWTO's?.. Yes, *I* can do that easily, maybe everybody on /. are familiar, but yet not average Windows user. :-(
Smells like base64-encoded binary sh!t appears in ODF, when this format will be officially supported by MS.
I am running both of them, switching for time to time, since I have to build the software. But then just shutdown Parallels and back to work on my iMac... I do prefer Linux/Unix over Windows, though I have to say that still the winner is... OSX due to *how things fits together* in that simple way. Hope that one day Gnome/KDE people will pay attention on that.
> Perl's "TMTWWTDI" actually DOES keep it simple.
:-)
Oh well...
I'd like to see how "simple" you will work with a structures, kind
of "hash of hashes of arrays of arrays of hashes" and then compare
two or more structures for differences. I also want to see the code
and perfomance how it works.
In Python I do simply: if a == b: (it's that simple, huh?) and it *is*
comparable as it is, but what to do in Perl?..
If I need very complex structures, I just simply build a class,
define __cmp__ method and it is. For example:
>>> class A:
... x = None
... def __cmp__(self, i):
... return self.x == i
...
>>> a = A()
>>> b = A()
>>> a == b
True
>>> a.x = 1
>>> b.x = 2
>>> a == b
False
Any examples to make this in Perl as simple as it is?
* * *
BTW, how to catch exceptions in Perl? How to catch custom exceptions?
I don't need "to die" in my script, but just skip an error, spitting on STDERR
the result of an exception.
Any help from Perl guru?
P.S. To make Perl source code smaller: use gzip. Readability will not suffer...
>In perl, you can change the nature of the language itself. *Everything* can be changed.
This means, that existing condition can not satisfy. But we all waiting for that changes: Parrot with Perl 6. While it is in "hard progress", we use Python.
> It's called descent with modification: sub groups within groups. Your conception: of one thing turning into another, is generally a mistaken way to think of it, which is perhaps why you find the idea so confusing.
You had repeated this to me twice, but yet no clear conception I heard from you. We all "know" that life on Earth started from an Explosion, which produced random movenet of atoms, which randomly created molecules, then bacteria, then Infuzoria, then monkey, and finally Slashdot. :-) Isn't this an Evolution concept? Or now evolutionists believe into something else? If so, then what is it?..
> Evolution is not simply random assemblage. It's a ratchet algorithm, not a whirlwind in anything
Absolutely agree. Evolution is a theory (yet not proven though) about an algorithm, based on a thought that "primitive produces complex". IOW, more stupid produce more smart. Well, maybe for you it sounds convincing, but for me -- yet ridiculous. Though you still didn't explained me where is a start point of Evolution: where is the beginning and who or what gave it a kick to evolute? IOW, who made that "ratchet algoritm"? If you at least know how to write "Hello World!" program in any program language, you must understand, that any algoritm is previously designed stuff, which supposed to do something in a future. Therefore even your Evolution you believe -- might be a product of somebody, who well designed stuff around, where each element may evolute.
> Actually, I have a screensaver on my computer
It proves nothing, since code is supposed do make a shapes. Point is at another place: make a random loop which will produce a computer program. Though if you are Perl programmer, then maybe it will work for you. :-)