Any chance in hell they'll both get revoked... for being "obvious?"
let's hope. But if only one will be revoked, I hope it's Eolas. Microsoft may be terribly competitive, and using their advantages to hurt competition, but they're not poor (like Eolas) and aren't stupid (like Eolas).
They won't sue anyone over this patent.
If anything, this confirms again Microsoft, and any other big company, is more or less forced to patent bullshit so they have a chance to fight back in such frivolous suits.
How much phishing can be prevented if people stop clicking on hyperlinks, and use copy-and-paste instead?
Approximately 3.10832701%. If people cared to see what they copy, they'd also care to look at the address bar of what they clicked. But they don't.
Another question, since this seems to be the trend: How much phishing can be prevented if we forbid both links and copy/paste, and remove any ability to type a string and get a site. Instead the bank will give their clients little floppies with hardcoded shortcuts they need to use, which contains cryptographically encoded the location of the site.
Um, are you not aware it's Open Source! Yahoo, you, me and everyone can use it. Google could stop supporting it if they want and the community will continue to build it!
More to the point, since Google are using it themselves (see below) I doubt support will stop anytime soon. Open source + used & supported by a major 'net company seems like a winning formula.
You're apparently not aware of the level of battle happening right now for the rich client platform. If it would have no corporate support to push it into the enterprise and increase penetration, to have a higher level strategy, versus "nice to haves"-s incremental updates as seen in the open source community, it's as much dead as if it wasn't OSS at all.
Plus Gears appears to be quite primitive compared to Apollo right now.
One of the requirements for this group is that the individual has to have a PhD in a technical area (physics, engineering, etc.). These aren't just random writers off the street.
As TFA notes, the 9/11 commission said the attacks were a result, in part, of the government's "failure of imagination". SF writers, unlike some beltway bureaucrats and politicians, aren't lacking in that, at least.
Right... I'm afraid that hiring sci-fi writers to predict terrorist acts was quite the example of failure of imagination on their side. The irony.
USA isn't threatened by mad sci-fi writers threatening to write a sequel for Armagedon if their demands are not met, for what I know.
If this was serious at all, first, it'd be a team of professionals related to the area: military, technology (not sci-fi one), and I'd give them one task: go out there, and the first one who finds an actual weak spot (not sci-fi one) which also doesn't need a maze of unlikely events to happen to occur, gets a bonus. Use your imagination (not sci-fi one).
Second, and even more important: we wouldn't be reading about it. Because what exactly is the point of assembling a team of [whatever] for suggestions, is this will be in the wide open for the potential terrorists learn from. I mean, *who* are we giving suggestions here in the end?
I'm afraid there's only one area where sci-fi writers would excel helping the military: fear mongering. Imagine the heaps of scary scenarios those geniuses will spill over the US population.
Yes, you should live in fear, people. You never know when the terrorists will attack you with a weapon so scary and so lethal, so unexpected, as if it came out of the mind of a sci-fi writer.
The president election campaigns have obviously began, and the teams are getting ready.
Given a decent language like Java, why would anyone WANT to develop their apps in... Flash. Yuck.
-matthew
It's funny isn't it. First of all, tools. It's about rich media, and Java has only dveleopment tools. Where's the rich media/interactive capabilities? Second, Flash takes a lot less resources than Java and is a lot smaller than Java.
But honestly, if it was all about the great syntax and sophisticated language features, we'd be still using Java applets on the web. Instead, it's all about Flash.
Well here's what: P2P is just a hack. That's all it is. It's a scheme to avoid central authority, and avoid a central point of load...
While in some cases this is an attempt to avoid legal repercussions of hosting illegal content, on other cases, where content is legal, it's an attempt for the content providers to make their very big bandwidth problem, someone else's bandwidth problem.
Because this is all P2P is doing, moving the problem elsewhere, and actually multiplying it. Downloading a 100 MB file via bittorent will generate far more traffic and connection on the Internet as a whole, than a direct download from a proper server farm. No wonder ISP-s are stressed out from this whole P2P deal.
And then there's the security problems. I wonder: where did all those guys shouting with full throat "P2P-ize everything" do? I've read here on Slashdot, bold commenters proclaim boldly how lame it is that there are still things that aren't P2P yet. We need P2P search engines! P2P hosting! P2P banking! All of those are actual things I've read.
But back to the beginning, P2P means no central authority. Hence, it means no central trusted entity, no trust, no security.
Of course, whether this should all be built into web browsers, which were originally intended to store static pages, is an issue you could debate. Sometimes I think it might make more sense to make a browser-like framework for programs, but built from the ground up for applications instead of static pages. But then, I guess that more and more, that's what browsers are becoming.
You may want to check Adobe Apollo, a multi-platform runtime that allows you to create desktop apps based on: HTML/CSS/JS and Flash.
It has ability to store/read data locally and basically act as a normal desktop app, but it's inherently multiplatform, because it uses platform neutral technologies (even more so than Java and.NET managed to do so far).
Honestly I'm not sure how smart it would be to invest in Google Gears. You may want to deploy a Yahoo app.. and then what? Google's also known for their ton of search-unrelated projects which they abandon the next day.
For Adobe, Flash and Apollo is a deal maker/breaker: if they don't get it right, Microsoft and WPF/.NET/XPF/Expression will simply throw them out of business.
For Google, Gears is just something they did for fun in their 20%.
I just don't get this. The guy was an ACTOR. It isn't like he was really into space, at least I don't think so. So what would be the point of sending his ashes into space (momentarily forgetting about the "losing them" thing).
You know, animals have evolved reasoning adaptively. It's not before primates, that sound logic (with plenty of biases ad flaws still) has evolved into our brains, but we're still susceptible to the ancient ancestor of sound logic: emotions.
Emotions actually is a crude mechanism found in animals such as reptiles and below. Behavior influences by emotions isn't always logical, as in scientifically accurate, but has proven to do well for the survivability rate for those animals who possessed it.
You'll always find people calling emotions the thing that separates us from the animals, and that's hilarious, since again, this conclusion is based on emotion and flawed argument. Emotions are what brings us close to animals still.
So when we're so susceptible to emotions, we do stupid things. Like sending actors into space. Or thinking about how "he enjoyed the trip", as if a bowl with burned ashes could possibly enjoy or do anything at all, except.. well just sit there, and eventually get lost later on, and then found.
Sorry about getting quite OT... but my basic point was: look at every stupid thing people do on a daily basis, small, big and epic, and you'll find that influenced by emotions, flaws we still carry on from organisms quite much simpler than us.
What a great description. Isn't this the problem we have at hand: we don't want all this crap published, all of us.
But not to bend your words, one day, imagine, they discover the actual medicine for Curing All Cancer. Not news? Well, it's certainly not exposing someone's underwear, but it's quite news in my opinion.
Discoveries, science, good news: it's news just as well. If all news was just negative stories, we'd all be depressed like hell, think the world is going to end soon and there's no reason to live anymore.
What we need to get rid of is sensationalism, wrong information, and information void PR dressed up as news.
Apple has been patenting the hell out of the multitouch UI concept, and I can't imagine this is going to slip by Steve Jobs without a fight. Apple purchased FingerWorks and owns most of the concepts shown in that video.
The Surface has been in development since 2001, it uses multi-touch technology completely different from the one on the iphone. Not to mention there was multitouch interfaces before Apple and before Microsoft.
Plus I want to see Apple sue Microsoft about it. They don't stand a chance.
Adhering to standards and accessibility may give you the edge in the business while letting a hundred monkeys bang away in Frontpage '97 won't. It's probably more arrogant to say you don't need that edge.
There are two things here: actually there isn't a "business" behind every page. This is like saying we should all have proper automated phone answer systems on our phones, as this gives us edge in our business: but phones are used for more than business, and I certainly don't need all those fancy things on my home phone.
The web is large enough, there's place for all kinds of sites: amateur sites with poor code and interesting content, web dev blogs with ultra accurate code and amusingly somewhat boring content, huge site portals with terirble code but a strong CMS system to make up for it, huge site portals with great code, bad CMS system and hundreds of monkeys who do manual edits on the pages every day.
Standards, as defined by W3C are just a way to make multiple agents compatible (search engines, clients, servers). If they are compatible, you've achieved the goal of a standard. A standard isn't the goal itself, it's the means. And sometimes you need to be more flexible about the means.
Now, I'm authoring pages strictly comliant with the standards, it's more of a geek-ish inner requirement since I've a good knowledge on how internally the browsers handle all this (and by the time the browsers change drastically, the site would be redesigned few times already, or dead). I don't however care about inserting empty alt tags on images without meaning, or avoiding "target" since it was supposedly bad about something. I need to use a feature, it works, it's not going away: I use it. It's my means. I achieved my goal, on time, and with great results.
But he doesn't say what the right way is, or how it could be, or even if he thinks his company is on the right track. There is no information at all.
Why, what did you expect, a link to their full source code? The article's about the direction the engines are taking, the way those appear in userland. If you'd ask Google about specifics in their algorithm, they'll also be quite silent all of a sudden.
While this is not strictly PR piece for Hakia.com, it mentions the site (and some others) and I just to try it. I gotta be honest, it does produce more interesting results than Google in some cases (i.e. more accurate). While in others it produces worse results. But the company's young.
Overall, this is the direction we should be taking. The semantic web is indeed just that: a shiny dream.
Today, we're talking about anyone having the ability to create a web page, using pre-made online page/blog tools, or easy to use WYSIWYG desktop apps.
You can't ask of people who can't make the difference between typing a query in the search engine and typing an URL in the address bar, to add proper meta information on his blog. Not to mention the abuse potential.
I can already hear someone saying "If you don't know the XHTML/CSS specs by heart you shouldn't be making pages" but that's just arrogant. Technology should destroy barriers, not create them, the technology which implements this idea better, will succeed. Look at Google: it will parse even the most horrendous code and extract proper information for it. This is why they are number 1.
BTW, Google already extracts semantic information from both the site and query, but this quite primitive compared to the potential mentioned in the article. Google looks for term context, meaning context, synonyms, related words etc. I hope Hakia.com and businesses like them take this idea further, so there's finally some innovation happening in search (something that only enjoyed gradual and miniscule improvements for the last 9 years, since Google introduced pagerank).
"Second-gen iPhone Confirmed?" How can you use 'confirmed' with a question mark? It's either confirmed or it's a rumour. The word 'confirmed' is not intended to be ambiguous. In this case, it is definitely not confirmed.
You see... it works, because when in an article you end with "?", this means "we're talking bs and we're well aware of this".
So none of your, otherwise sound, logic applies, I'm afraid.
That's called an "illustration." Perhaps one of your teachers will cover that sometime next year...
That's an illustration that shares nothing with reality. Am I coming up with illustrations how Linux kernel crashes randomly and so on? No, it doesn't do that, so it'd be a very poor illustration of anything at all.
How about opting for an "example".
And... why do you feel the need to reiterate your point posting second time as an AC? do you think it makes you sound more right or something?
I totally see *nix programs crashing with "Warning: bug in kernel code has crashed your app, but the awesome thing is you can fix it!, just debug code in iosapic_parse_prt()"
So your hot blonde secretary actually sat down, and fixed it.
And now, it won't even boot. But hey, doesn't show that message anymore! Another job well done.
Not so far from what they do, i.e. register a process exception handler that says "App.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close"
Well, that reminds me of the BMW woman, who hit the brakes in the middle of a high speed freeway, causing chain catastrophe, because her computerized car suddenly shouter "stop the car immediately!".
Would it say "please pull the car aside, there is a problem with X", she'd still have the necessary information to carry out the action without additionally stressing and confusing her.
Mac OSX is simplifing their errors a lot more than that, to the level where you just see a little bomb icon, "there's a prob" and that about it.
And you know Microsoft has that urge to catch up with everything they see in the competition...
That's the trouble Open Source gets from being honest. Microsoft just hides the bugs and creates an illusion of problem free computer usage. Then they insist you keep windows update running all the time....
You know, I'm surprised at the Orwellian speak coming from both the likes of Microsoft and the anti-Microsoft crowd.
We don't have Microsoft just "fixing bugs", oh no. We have Microsoft "HIDING bugs and creating the ILLUSION of problem free computer usage".
How on Earth do you create the *illusion* of problem free computer usage? You let Word crash and popup a box "Calm down user, this was just a part of your problem free computer usage"?
Office works fine enough, the sad part in all of this, is they don't have good enough competitors, because they have stagnated for years and years.
Then Office 2007 which offered lots of innovation in the interface, features, wizard etc. But why? Is it because Open Source was picking up and MS Office were terrible at "hiding bugs"? No, it's because people just got stuck with Office 97: Microsoft's competing with their own software.
Slashdot Mirror
Any chance in hell they'll both get revoked... for being "obvious?"
let's hope. But if only one will be revoked, I hope it's Eolas. Microsoft may be terribly competitive, and using their advantages to hurt competition, but they're not poor (like Eolas) and aren't stupid (like Eolas).
They won't sue anyone over this patent.
If anything, this confirms again Microsoft, and any other big company, is more or less forced to patent bullshit so they have a chance to fight back in such frivolous suits.
Actually, FF3 uses less RAM than my FF2 install. So shove it.
Because it's prerelease, but they ensured everyone that by release time we'll have the same experience as with FF2.
How much phishing can be prevented if people stop clicking on hyperlinks, and use copy-and-paste instead?
Approximately 3.10832701%. If people cared to see what they copy, they'd also care to look at the address bar of what they clicked. But they don't.
Another question, since this seems to be the trend: How much phishing can be prevented if we forbid both links and copy/paste, and remove any ability to type a string and get a site. Instead the bank will give their clients little floppies with hardcoded shortcuts they need to use, which contains cryptographically encoded the location of the site.
Man, I gotta be a friggin' genius or somthn!
Um, are you not aware it's Open Source! Yahoo, you, me and everyone can use it. Google could stop supporting it if they want and the community will continue to build it!
More to the point, since Google are using it themselves (see below) I doubt support will stop anytime soon. Open source + used & supported by a major 'net company seems like a winning formula.
You're apparently not aware of the level of battle happening right now for the rich client platform. If it would have no corporate support to push it into the enterprise and increase penetration, to have a higher level strategy, versus "nice to haves"-s incremental updates as seen in the open source community, it's as much dead as if it wasn't OSS at all.
Plus Gears appears to be quite primitive compared to Apollo right now.
One of the requirements for this group is that the individual has to have a PhD in a technical area (physics, engineering, etc.). These aren't just random writers off the street.
As TFA notes, the 9/11 commission said the attacks were a result, in part, of the government's "failure of imagination". SF writers, unlike some beltway bureaucrats and politicians, aren't lacking in that, at least.
Right... I'm afraid that hiring sci-fi writers to predict terrorist acts was quite the example of failure of imagination on their side. The irony.
USA isn't threatened by mad sci-fi writers threatening to write a sequel for Armagedon if their demands are not met, for what I know.
If this was serious at all, first, it'd be a team of professionals related to the area: military, technology (not sci-fi one), and I'd give them one task: go out there, and the first one who finds an actual weak spot (not sci-fi one) which also doesn't need a maze of unlikely events to happen to occur, gets a bonus. Use your imagination (not sci-fi one).
Second, and even more important: we wouldn't be reading about it. Because what exactly is the point of assembling a team of [whatever] for suggestions, is this will be in the wide open for the potential terrorists learn from. I mean, *who* are we giving suggestions here in the end?
I'm afraid there's only one area where sci-fi writers would excel helping the military: fear mongering. Imagine the heaps of scary scenarios those geniuses will spill over the US population.
Yes, you should live in fear, people. You never know when the terrorists will attack you with a weapon so scary and so lethal, so unexpected, as if it came out of the mind of a sci-fi writer.
The president election campaigns have obviously began, and the teams are getting ready.
Given a decent language like Java, why would anyone WANT to develop their apps in... Flash. Yuck.
-matthew
It's funny isn't it. First of all, tools. It's about rich media, and Java has only dveleopment tools. Where's the rich media/interactive capabilities? Second, Flash takes a lot less resources than Java and is a lot smaller than Java.
But honestly, if it was all about the great syntax and sophisticated language features, we'd be still using Java applets on the web. Instead, it's all about Flash.
Well here's what: P2P is just a hack. That's all it is. It's a scheme to avoid central authority, and avoid a central point of load...
While in some cases this is an attempt to avoid legal repercussions of hosting illegal content, on other cases, where content is legal, it's an attempt for the content providers to make their very big bandwidth problem, someone else's bandwidth problem.
Because this is all P2P is doing, moving the problem elsewhere, and actually multiplying it. Downloading a 100 MB file via bittorent will generate far more traffic and connection on the Internet as a whole, than a direct download from a proper server farm. No wonder ISP-s are stressed out from this whole P2P deal.
And then there's the security problems. I wonder: where did all those guys shouting with full throat "P2P-ize everything" do? I've read here on Slashdot, bold commenters proclaim boldly how lame it is that there are still things that aren't P2P yet. We need P2P search engines! P2P hosting! P2P banking! All of those are actual things I've read.
But back to the beginning, P2P means no central authority. Hence, it means no central trusted entity, no trust, no security.
Of course, whether this should all be built into web browsers, which were originally intended to store static pages, is an issue you could debate. Sometimes I think it might make more sense to make a browser-like framework for programs, but built from the ground up for applications instead of static pages. But then, I guess that more and more, that's what browsers are becoming.
.NET managed to do so far).
You may want to check Adobe Apollo, a multi-platform runtime that allows you to create desktop apps based on: HTML/CSS/JS and Flash.
It has ability to store/read data locally and basically act as a normal desktop app, but it's inherently multiplatform, because it uses platform neutral technologies (even more so than Java and
Honestly I'm not sure how smart it would be to invest in Google Gears. You may want to deploy a Yahoo app.. and then what? Google's also known for their ton of search-unrelated projects which they abandon the next day.
For Adobe, Flash and Apollo is a deal maker/breaker: if they don't get it right, Microsoft and WPF/.NET/XPF/Expression will simply throw them out of business.
For Google, Gears is just something they did for fun in their 20%.
I just don't get this. The guy was an ACTOR. It isn't like he was really into space, at least I don't think so. So what would be the point of sending his ashes into space (momentarily forgetting about the "losing them" thing).
You know, animals have evolved reasoning adaptively. It's not before primates, that sound logic (with plenty of biases ad flaws still) has evolved into our brains, but we're still susceptible to the ancient ancestor of sound logic: emotions.
Emotions actually is a crude mechanism found in animals such as reptiles and below. Behavior influences by emotions isn't always logical, as in scientifically accurate, but has proven to do well for the survivability rate for those animals who possessed it.
You'll always find people calling emotions the thing that separates us from the animals, and that's hilarious, since again, this conclusion is based on emotion and flawed argument. Emotions are what brings us close to animals still.
So when we're so susceptible to emotions, we do stupid things. Like sending actors into space. Or thinking about how "he enjoyed the trip", as if a bowl with burned ashes could possibly enjoy or do anything at all, except.. well just sit there, and eventually get lost later on, and then found.
Sorry about getting quite OT... but my basic point was: look at every stupid thing people do on a daily basis, small, big and epic, and you'll find that influenced by emotions, flaws we still carry on from organisms quite much simpler than us.
News is what someone doesn't want published
What a great description. Isn't this the problem we have at hand: we don't want all this crap published, all of us.
But not to bend your words, one day, imagine, they discover the actual medicine for Curing All Cancer. Not news? Well, it's certainly not exposing someone's underwear, but it's quite news in my opinion.
Discoveries, science, good news: it's news just as well. If all news was just negative stories, we'd all be depressed like hell, think the world is going to end soon and there's no reason to live anymore.
What we need to get rid of is sensationalism, wrong information, and information void PR dressed up as news.
Apple has been patenting the hell out of the multitouch UI concept, and I can't imagine this is going to slip by Steve Jobs without a fight. Apple purchased FingerWorks and owns most of the concepts shown in that video.
The Surface has been in development since 2001, it uses multi-touch technology completely different from the one on the iphone. Not to mention there was multitouch interfaces before Apple and before Microsoft.
Plus I want to see Apple sue Microsoft about it. They don't stand a chance.
Innovation at Microsoft:
Tilt the screen at a different angle!
Sigh. Here's why I don't like Slashdot.
Adhering to standards and accessibility may give you the edge in the business while letting a hundred monkeys bang away in Frontpage '97 won't. It's probably more arrogant to say you don't need that edge.
There are two things here: actually there isn't a "business" behind every page. This is like saying we should all have proper automated phone answer systems on our phones, as this gives us edge in our business: but phones are used for more than business, and I certainly don't need all those fancy things on my home phone.
The web is large enough, there's place for all kinds of sites: amateur sites with poor code and interesting content, web dev blogs with ultra accurate code and amusingly somewhat boring content, huge site portals with terirble code but a strong CMS system to make up for it, huge site portals with great code, bad CMS system and hundreds of monkeys who do manual edits on the pages every day.
Standards, as defined by W3C are just a way to make multiple agents compatible (search engines, clients, servers). If they are compatible, you've achieved the goal of a standard. A standard isn't the goal itself, it's the means. And sometimes you need to be more flexible about the means.
Now, I'm authoring pages strictly comliant with the standards, it's more of a geek-ish inner requirement since I've a good knowledge on how internally the browsers handle all this (and by the time the browsers change drastically, the site would be redesigned few times already, or dead). I don't however care about inserting empty alt tags on images without meaning, or avoiding "target" since it was supposedly bad about something. I need to use a feature, it works, it's not going away: I use it. It's my means. I achieved my goal, on time, and with great results.
but once you (the search engine) have decided to list a site, you could use the metadata for semantic web-stuff
Yup.. this is how microformats work. Something which a lot of the top companies seem to be interested in (including Microsoft).
But he doesn't say what the right way is, or how it could be, or even if he thinks his company is on the right track. There is no information at all.
Why, what did you expect, a link to their full source code? The article's about the direction the engines are taking, the way those appear in userland. If you'd ask Google about specifics in their algorithm, they'll also be quite silent all of a sudden.
While this is not strictly PR piece for Hakia.com, it mentions the site (and some others) and I just to try it. I gotta be honest, it does produce more interesting results than Google in some cases (i.e. more accurate). While in others it produces worse results. But the company's young.
Overall, this is the direction we should be taking. The semantic web is indeed just that: a shiny dream.
Today, we're talking about anyone having the ability to create a web page, using pre-made online page/blog tools, or easy to use WYSIWYG desktop apps.
You can't ask of people who can't make the difference between typing a query in the search engine and typing an URL in the address bar, to add proper meta information on his blog. Not to mention the abuse potential.
I can already hear someone saying "If you don't know the XHTML/CSS specs by heart you shouldn't be making pages" but that's just arrogant. Technology should destroy barriers, not create them, the technology which implements this idea better, will succeed. Look at Google: it will parse even the most horrendous code and extract proper information for it. This is why they are number 1.
BTW, Google already extracts semantic information from both the site and query, but this quite primitive compared to the potential mentioned in the article. Google looks for term context, meaning context, synonyms, related words etc. I hope Hakia.com and businesses like them take this idea further, so there's finally some innovation happening in search (something that only enjoyed gradual and miniscule improvements for the last 9 years, since Google introduced pagerank).
"Second-gen iPhone Confirmed?"
How can you use 'confirmed' with a question mark? It's either confirmed or it's a rumour. The word 'confirmed' is not intended to be ambiguous. In this case, it is definitely not confirmed.
You see... it works, because when in an article you end with "?", this means "we're talking bs and we're well aware of this".
So none of your, otherwise sound, logic applies, I'm afraid.
That's called an "illustration." Perhaps one of your teachers will cover that sometime next year...
That's an illustration that shares nothing with reality. Am I coming up with illustrations how Linux kernel crashes randomly and so on? No, it doesn't do that, so it'd be a very poor illustration of anything at all.
How about opting for an "example".
And... why do you feel the need to reiterate your point posting second time as an AC? do you think it makes you sound more right or something?
I totally see *nix programs crashing with "Warning: bug in kernel code has crashed your app, but the awesome thing is you can fix it!, just debug code in iosapic_parse_prt()"
So your hot blonde secretary actually sat down, and fixed it.
And now, it won't even boot. But hey, doesn't show that message anymore! Another job well done.
Thanks, I was about to point that out. MS ads always feature shiny happy people having a meeting around a Windows PC.
Shame on them.. Their ads should instead feature sad, depressed people, on the verge of jumping from the open window, end their miserable life.
Simple. "It's not a bug, it's a feature. Every time you click save, Office is supposed to quit."
Except, it doesn't quit. Anything else you want pull out of your rear?
Not so far from what they do, i.e. register a process exception handler that says "App.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close"
Well, that reminds me of the BMW woman, who hit the brakes in the middle of a high speed freeway, causing chain catastrophe, because her computerized car suddenly shouter "stop the car immediately!".
Would it say "please pull the car aside, there is a problem with X", she'd still have the necessary information to carry out the action without additionally stressing and confusing her.
Mac OSX is simplifing their errors a lot more than that, to the level where you just see a little bomb icon, "there's a prob" and that about it.
And you know Microsoft has that urge to catch up with everything they see in the competition...
How much do they save, and is there a way to invest some of this money into further development of NeoOffice?
If they had the money to give away, they'd just save themselves a heap of trouble with migrating to Neo and keep using MS Office.
That's the trouble Open Source gets from being honest. Microsoft just hides the bugs and creates an illusion of problem free computer usage. Then they insist you keep windows update running all the time....
You know, I'm surprised at the Orwellian speak coming from both the likes of Microsoft and the anti-Microsoft crowd.
We don't have Microsoft just "fixing bugs", oh no. We have Microsoft "HIDING bugs and creating the ILLUSION of problem free computer usage".
How on Earth do you create the *illusion* of problem free computer usage? You let Word crash and popup a box "Calm down user, this was just a part of your problem free computer usage"?
Office works fine enough, the sad part in all of this, is they don't have good enough competitors, because they have stagnated for years and years.
Then Office 2007 which offered lots of innovation in the interface, features, wizard etc. But why? Is it because Open Source was picking up and MS Office were terrible at "hiding bugs"? No, it's because people just got stuck with Office 97: Microsoft's competing with their own software.
It's sad.
But seriously... Why didnt they choose Open Office [openoffice.org]? It is the OBVIOUS choice.
Yea, why didn't they? And since they run on Macs, maybe they could look around for OpenOffice port for Mac, and maybe it'll be called NeoOffice.