We will spend $100,000 to upgrade from Office 2003 to 2007 just because one decent sized customer has switched and we can't open their documents. That would be a bit of a waste of $100,000...
While I'm not exactly happy in the way the OO is a copy of MS Office, OO does two things. Level the barrier of switching over, and writing stuff in a format that is open. Neither of those really address the grandparent's point. "Level[ing] the barrier of switching over" is all very well, but it doesn't provide an active reason to switch for a business which is currently using MS Office. Ditto with your second point: if a business decides it wants to use an open format, there are many to choose from which their current installation of MS Office will write to perfectly happily, including several ODF plugins for Office. Again, there is no active reason to switch, apart from price, which, considering the cost of a lot of enterprise level software in use, most medium to large business would probably consider negligible (esp. with volume license agreements).
The GP is right: if you want to beat MS Office, you have to make something that is tangibly better than it. Not just free, not just 'easy to switch to': better.
If I want to do something out of the ordinary (say, mail merge) the only quick way is to try and remember the Office 2003 keystrokes because it's impossible to quickly find anything on those stupid toolbars. Ummm... Seriously? Of the seven toolbars in Word 2007, one is labelled "Mailings". Sure enough, mail merge is the third icon on that toolbar. If you seriously think that having mail merge under "Mailings" is more intuitive than having under "Tools" (aka "miscellaneous"), then, well... You're entitled to your opinion...
If you're looking for high quality typesetting, you're never going to find it in WYSIWYG word processors. Example: a good typesetting system, such as TeX, will take into account the whole document when it lays out the text, when deciding for example where to put line breaks, analysing what effect each break has on the rest of the text. Word processors, by necessity, use "a first-fit approach, where the breakpoints for each line are determined one after the other, and no breakpoint is changed after it has been chosen"; since otherwise it would either have to constantly reanalyse, adjust, and refit your text as you type, which most word processor users would find utterly unacceptable (the cursor jumping all over the place, etc.; not to mention the constant CPU usage); or it would have to do the text fitting just before printing/outputting, which would by definition make it no longer a WYSIWYG word processor.
If you're looking for the best typesetting, I suggest TeX; if you're looking for a more generalised desktop publishing solution, get a DTP program. No use complaining that Word doesn't make a good typesetting solution or DTP app, since it's not designed to be either. It's a word processor.
well yea if you are gonna run that ATI shit on Vista, its gonna bluescreen:P try nVidia next time... Would that be the same nVidia who's initial Vista drivers for their 8800 series still ride atop the charts (from all accounts) as the leading cause of Vista BSODs?
DRM exists entirely for the protection of the RIAA, not Microsoft. This will only increase the popularity of the Zune. An mp3 player that can share files over wifi with no restrictions, sign me up. I can't see Microsoft being too proactive about locking down the DRM again. Oh, certainly -- until a pair of RIAA exectives sidle up to Steve Ballmer in a few weeks time, asking how he'd feel about all tracks under the Universal and Sony labels being immediately and unilaterally withdrawn from the Zune marketplace. Upon which, sadly, MS will inevitably jump back into line ahead of the tip of the RIAA's whip, and back to full antipiracy proactive mode before you can say "DevelopersDevelopersDevelopers!"...
No. The cracking of the Zune was done because people wanted to get fair use out of their own music players / don't like arbitary DRM. It will have been done by people who own Zunes; if you have a Zune, you won't be focussing your attention on iPods just because they have a much larger market share -- you want fair use out of the player you own.
Things like viruses / malware, on the other hand, are (sadly) these days done for almost entirely commercial reasons: zombifying machines to act as spam relays servers, or in the case of spyware, gathering info on a users browsing habits and using it to serve up adverts to them directly. In those situations, you clearly want to target the group with the larget market share because you'll get more money on your time investment.
What's to prevent sometime in the near future, M$ disabling your OS? If you think that's a valid argument, you have a serious logic deficiency. What's to prevent Canonical from disabling all copies of Ubuntu through a software update? Or Apple disabling all copies of OS X? The same thing that prevents Microsoft from doing what you're suggesting: lack of even the slightest hint of a motive. Duh.
Look at registry entry: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Exp lorer\UserAssist. Look this one up in Google sometime. Winblows collects information about every executable you run, and time stamps this. This information is sometimes sent encrypted to M$ during the WGA phone home sessions. Why does M$ need this? I just have looked that up on Google; clearly, you haven't. The key lists programs run from start menu entries (not "any executable you run") in order to order them by most frequently & recently used, so that it can display the top 6-10 in the "most frequently used" pane on the Start menu. But, I hear you cry, it's encrypted -- using the incredibly secure and almost unbreakable method of, ummm... ROT13. Right up there with Rijndael, ROT13 is. (Oh, and do you have a source for claiming that it's sent to MS during WGA transmissions? No, didn't think so.).
How about the patent that guarantees that ads will be displayed, viewed and accounted for inside the OS? "A patent that guarantees..."? You appear to have no idea what a patent is. Google "software patents" and how they're generally used in the industry today some time.
None of the new features in Vista are to the benefit of their customers, instead its to allow an ever increasing ability to control, dictate and bow down to the big Hollywood interests. None of the features you know about, certainly; but, if you'll forgive my frankness, just because you're ignorant of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_vista#New_or_ improved_features for a start.
Ironic that leaving it off prevents this one particular security problem though. What do you mean? The only thing leaving off would do is reduce by one the number of prompts you'd have to go through to just the Firefox one. What problem is prevented?
(For me, the Firefox warning about external applications pops up after the cmd window does. Not much use...! But it does that whether I have UAC on or off; the only difference the two being whether IE pops-up a warning. No reason for Firefox to behave any different).
So I can trust that the first vista system I find that someone has tossed I can take the hard-drive extract all sorts of information on them, even though they did wipe the drive. If someone just does a quick format, then it is easily possible to recover their data, whatever OS they were using. If they do a full format, then it is harder, but data recovery techniques will still be able to recover their data, whatever OS they're using. If they do a proper, secure wipe of the drive, no-one will be able to recover the data, whatever OS they were using. That is all the same for all OS's -- except if you're using some kind of drive encryption, such as... say, Vista's Bitlocker, to pick one at random; which will fare much, much better than otherwise (more resistant to data recovery). Again, this all has little or nothing to do with TFA.
why make such complex systems for users that then need such data duplication? I can understand perhaps servers and such that need recovery ability. All hard drives fail eventually. Everyone occasionally has powercuts. The best of us forget to back-up sometimes. And home users are probably considerably more likely to accidentally delete a file and need things like this than system administrators working in a controlled environment, which will have regular backups anyway. (And things like Instant Search indexing are hardly server tools).
I think the issue here is choice. YOU should be the one to decide if your OS phones home, if it stores every keystroke you ever made, if it keeps copies of all the files you ever had, etc. I think the issue here is an ability to read the summary. None of the features mentioned "phone home". None of them store your keystrokes. And all can be turned off (with the exception of NTFS transactioning for obvious reasons).
The first example that comes to mind is mapping a network drive. Why the heck they moved it off the My Computer (what do they call it now, "Bill's Computer"?) window I'll never know. That's when I knew you were lying. They've trimmed the toolbar in Computer to only six options, and mapping a network drive is one of them; there's no possible way you could have missed it. If you've never used Vista, fine, we don't care; but pretending you have when you haven't is just insulting Slashdotters' intelligence.
Seriously, this seems to contridict recent reports that linux is less secure then Vista. Ummm, no.
Obviously Linux isn't less secure than Vista, but that has nothing to do with this. Data retention for the purposes of versioning ("shadow copy"), searching ("Instant Search") and file system integrity ("TxF") have, to a first approximation, little or nothing to do with security from external attacks.
How about that "restore previous versions" feature of Vista. You can bet that isn't going to cause some embarrassing moments. From the summary: "...This is primarily attributable to Shadow Copy...".
(BTW, previous versions can be deleted from Disk Clean-up, the "More Options" tab)
"This is primarily attributable to Shadow Copy, TxF and Instant Search."
Now, when that OS has deliberate code to track and monitor a users 'usage', it really is no more a tool to run a computer, but rather a tool to watch a user. The main job of that code is absolute control of the computer taken away from the user.... MS have been trying to do this for years, and now it looks like they have succeeded ~ and the sheep follow and buy the crap. Did you read a different story to me? Exactly which one out of shadow copy, a transactional file system, and faster search (or, indeed, any other part of the OS) is designed to "track and monitor as user" or "[take] control of the computer away from the user"?
I guess it is useful, make privacy threatening features to force people to use the closed encryption mechanisms that make you unable to dual boot, ain't that awesome? If you're going to troll, do it about something you know about. Despite the name, Bitlocker is logical volume encryption; nothing forces you to encrypt the whole drive. Nothing prevents you from having a dual-boot system.* Yes, I know there's a Register story that says otherwise; if you believe the Register, I have a bridge to sell you.
*Caveat: if you're using a TPM module to do the encryption, you need to use the Windows boot loader rather than GRUB as the first boot loader. This is perfectly possible; full guide to doing it here
No, it doesn't. On the other hand, a disguised truecrypt volume inside a bitlocker encrypted drive is two encryption layers already; if the truecrypt volume has another hidden volume inside it, that's three layers of encryption you've got -- enough for even the most paranoid Dan Brown fan.
Re:Laughing? A less happy feeling
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UAC doesn't prevent anything, it just warns you about everything and anything, so yes, at one point it might actually warn you about something useful, but that's just a coincidence. Don't be stupid. UAC is a privilege elevation system, not a warning system; it allows you to elevate to perform administrative tasks (or user tasks in protected mode) when necessary, just like sudo in Linux, or authenticate in Mac OS X.
Apologies: on a second look, you're right. I had thought that the "associate a file type or protocol with a program" option in Default Programs would give the same functionality as the equivalent tab in Folder Options in XP, but on a closer look, it doesn't.
If it helps, a google suggests the File Type Doctor in this suite can do what you want, but it's a 45-day trial.
Apologies again for my rather brusque post above.
Re:Laughing? A less happy feeling
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According to my 1979 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the use of a word to mean something other than its superficial intent is, indeed, one meaning of irony. Your linked rant is entirely based on the assumption that that is the only meaning; it is not: the OED gives three. The first is your meaning. The second is: "A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was (or might naturally be) expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things". So statements like "There is no irony in trying to prevent something and thereby accelerating or worsening it" from the linked article are simply incorrect; such situations fall quite naturally into this meaning. The idea in the article that this meaning is a recent mistake is also wrong; citations for this usage go back to 1649 (although I will give you that your usage was probably the first: citations for that usage go back to 1502).
Re:Laughing? A less happy feeling
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If the dialog is that common I wonder how many people are going to automatically accept running this because they are constantly annoyed by the pop-up? "If the dialogue is that common" -- huh? Where exactly did I imply it was very common? After all, how often is a legitimate website going to want to access other programs on your computer? The only times I've ever seen it are when installing plugins from websites (e.g. quicktime, flash), and this exploit. (And if there *is* a legitimate site that needs to access other files/programs on your computer for some reason, the warning box has an option to not show the warning for that site again).
That said, most of my browsing is done in Opera -- I only use IE for sites that don't work well in Opera (mostly sites that use the WMP plugin) -- so I could be wrong.
Can someone help me? I want to take the sin of a right angle in Excel. Can someone tell me where the pi key on the keyboard is, so I can type in pi/2 radians? How the heck did you get modded insightful? You type it in Excel exactly the same way that you typed it in your question -- a P followed by an I. Duh.
So =SIN(PI()/2) returns 1, exactly as you'd expect it to. (=SIN(PI()) returns 1.22515E-16, but that's floating point calculations for you).
If you really want to work in degrees, the RADIANS function converts from degrees to radians, so =SIN(RADIANS(90)) would return 1.
As I said, type in =SIN(30 degrees)! On my version of Excel, at least, that doesn't work. The help file tells me to use the RADIANS function (which converts from degrees to radians) inside the Sin function, so the correct formula if you like using degrees would be, for 30 degrees, =SIN(RADIANS(30))
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The GP is right: if you want to beat MS Office, you have to make something that is tangibly better than it. Not just free, not just 'easy to switch to': better.
If you're looking for high quality typesetting, you're never going to find it in WYSIWYG word processors. Example: a good typesetting system, such as TeX, will take into account the whole document when it lays out the text, when deciding for example where to put line breaks, analysing what effect each break has on the rest of the text. Word processors, by necessity, use "a first-fit approach, where the breakpoints for each line are determined one after the other, and no breakpoint is changed after it has been chosen"; since otherwise it would either have to constantly reanalyse, adjust, and refit your text as you type, which most word processor users would find utterly unacceptable (the cursor jumping all over the place, etc.; not to mention the constant CPU usage); or it would have to do the text fitting just before printing/outputting, which would by definition make it no longer a WYSIWYG word processor.
If you're looking for the best typesetting, I suggest TeX; if you're looking for a more generalised desktop publishing solution, get a DTP program. No use complaining that Word doesn't make a good typesetting solution or DTP app, since it's not designed to be either. It's a word processor.
(see subject)
No. The cracking of the Zune was done because people wanted to get fair use out of their own music players / don't like arbitary DRM. It will have been done by people who own Zunes; if you have a Zune, you won't be focussing your attention on iPods just because they have a much larger market share -- you want fair use out of the player you own.
Things like viruses / malware, on the other hand, are (sadly) these days done for almost entirely commercial reasons: zombifying machines to act as spam relays servers, or in the case of spyware, gathering info on a users browsing habits and using it to serve up adverts to them directly. In those situations, you clearly want to target the group with the larget market share because you'll get more money on your time investment.
(For me, the Firefox warning about external applications pops up after the cmd window does. Not much use...! But it does that whether I have UAC on or off; the only difference the two being whether IE pops-up a warning. No reason for Firefox to behave any different).
Obviously Linux isn't less secure than Vista, but that has nothing to do with this. Data retention for the purposes of versioning ("shadow copy"), searching ("Instant Search") and file system integrity ("TxF") have, to a first approximation, little or nothing to do with security from external attacks.
(BTW, previous versions can be deleted from Disk Clean-up, the "More Options" tab)
*Caveat: if you're using a TPM module to do the encryption, you need to use the Windows boot loader rather than GRUB as the first boot loader. This is perfectly possible; full guide to doing it here
No, it doesn't. On the other hand, a disguised truecrypt volume inside a bitlocker encrypted drive is two encryption layers already; if the truecrypt volume has another hidden volume inside it, that's three layers of encryption you've got -- enough for even the most paranoid Dan Brown fan.
Apologies: on a second look, you're right. I had thought that the "associate a file type or protocol with a program" option in Default Programs would give the same functionality as the equivalent tab in Folder Options in XP, but on a closer look, it doesn't.
If it helps, a google suggests the File Type Doctor in this suite can do what you want, but it's a 45-day trial.
Apologies again for my rather brusque post above.
According to my 1979 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the use of a word to mean something other than its superficial intent is, indeed, one meaning of irony. Your linked rant is entirely based on the assumption that that is the only meaning; it is not: the OED gives three. The first is your meaning. The second is: "A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was (or might naturally be) expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things". So statements like "There is no irony in trying to prevent something and thereby accelerating or worsening it" from the linked article are simply incorrect; such situations fall quite naturally into this meaning. The idea in the article that this meaning is a recent mistake is also wrong; citations for this usage go back to 1649 (although I will give you that your usage was probably the first: citations for that usage go back to 1502).
That said, most of my browsing is done in Opera -- I only use IE for sites that don't work well in Opera (mostly sites that use the WMP plugin) -- so I could be wrong.
So =SIN(PI()/2) returns 1, exactly as you'd expect it to. (=SIN(PI()) returns 1.22515E-16, but that's floating point calculations for you).
If you really want to work in degrees, the RADIANS function converts from degrees to radians, so =SIN(RADIANS(90)) would return 1.