* Export to PDF and XPS (Beginning in SP2). Also, using beerfree programs like CutePDF and the like, you can simulate OO.org's PDF exporting abilities in any Windows program.
* Import a plethora of formats that OO.org can't open. Go ahead - import a Microsoft Works file. I dare you.
* Export to ODF if you install the Sun ODF Plugin. There was an article here fairly recently about MS' native ODF plugin being extremely incompatible with OO.org's implementation of the standard, so I'd avoid that.
* Also allows you to easily install and manage extensions. In fact, Office made it so easy, it became a rather serious security breach. Office 2007 now requires you to assign a level of trust to your macros and plugins before you install them.
* Runs natively on... erm... Windows.
* Doesn't cost a penny if you don't mind violating numerous copyright and trademark laws.
On the other hand, once you look past Word and Excel and start looking at the rest of the office suite, you quickly find that Draw is a really poor substitute for Visio or Publisher, Base could diplomatically be thought of as a severely watered down version of Access, and what does OO.org use for e-mail? Oh right - it doesn't, which means there's no clean way to apply OO.org macros to e-mail documents.
Look, OO.org is a nice product. I use it for most things without complaint. For a lot of people, it matches up well enough. That said, don't fool yourself - OO.org isn't a drop in or feature-matched replacement for Office 2000, much less any version after that, unless you're just using the Home & Student version.
Beats the pants off of Microsoft Works, though. If there's one thing we can be thankful for, it's the OO.org may have single-handedly nuked that abomination from orbit.
At the risk of cross-pollinating Slashdot with Fark memes... THIS!!!
Though Base is a heck of a lot more usable now than it was in OO.org 2, it still has a long way to go to match Access 2000, much less anything more recent. No ODBC connections to multiple outside databases (at least that I could find), the form builder is still explicitly designed to create the worst-looking forms imaginable, importing into Base databases, especially with larger data sets, is ssssllllloooooowwwww (we're talking 15-30 minutes to import a 60,000 row Excel sheet, something which Access pulls off in well under 5), no multiuser support unless you're willing to host your own SQL server... yeah. It's better than it used to be, mind you - at least it's now obvious that you can actually code macro events against state changes on your forms. That wasn't true in 2.
Calc is better than it used to be - seriously, Sun went out of their way to clean up the worst of the problems in the upgrade to 3, which I'm very appreciative for. That said, it's still a little flaky on larger data sets that Excel seems to handle a little better. No personal anecdotes of pain on Calc 3, though, which is far more than could be said for Calc 2, so no real complaints.
Hey now, it only took me about ten minutes of Googling. First, you double-click on the file. Then, when it tells you that you can't open it because you made the mistake of installing SP2, you then go to this thread, which then tells you about this new semi-secret hotfix package that Microsoft churned out. Then, you choose which part of the package you want to download, give Microsoft your e-mail address, fill in the CAPTCHA, then wait to receive an e-mail. Once you receive the e-mail, you click on the link, download the executable, double-click on it, type in the password listed in the e-mail, tell it where you want to extract to, and then you're almost done.
Almost.
Now, you'll have another executable. Double-click on that (make sure to close Office first, otherwise you'll probably need to reboot), wait half a minute for the package to install, then attempt to open the file again. If you did it right and all goes according to plan, you'll now be able to open that pesky Publisher document that you were foolish enough to create with either Office 2003 or Office 2007 SP1. If you didn't, go back to the beginning and try again.
Unless you plan on using Access or (last I checked) good chunks of Office 2007. Their list, of course, is here - Access 2000 is in Bronze, with no future versions after that listed.
Considering how most of the "technically inclined" on this site were saying that the first-gen iPhone would fail since it wasn't "enterprise ready" (i.e. no Exchange support, no remote wipe, etc.), I'd say you're on to something.
If there's one thing 3DO, among countless other examples, should have proved by now, it's that it's not just about the quantity of developers. It's about the quality of the applications they're producing. This is why WinMo is completely and totally hosed at the moment and why the iPhone will be riding high for a while longer.
As an aside, when is Apple going to put a MacStore on OS X? If Canonical can do it, it can't be that hard... heck, Canonical, how about throwing a pay-for section into the Add/Remove programs app, hmm? I'm not talking about being able to download shareware or anything like that - I'm talking about integrated credit card transaction support. Heck, maybe include that as a donation option for the free stuff. As much as I love using free software, there are some packages that I think could benefit from a little paid assistance.
Well, a little research revealed FreeOrion, but it looks like it's not terribly far along and, if their FAQ is any indication, had to take some shortcuts to make a workable AI.
Yes, especially regarding Privateer, StarCon (1 or 2 - I'm fine with remaking either of 'em, or just restarting the whole franchise) and Master of Orion.
For what it's worth, Privateer and StarCon 2 are still alive in open sauce form: Privateer Gemini Gold - Works on Windows, Linux, and Mac, though, at least in my experience, Compiz ("enhanced desktop effects") breaks full screen on Ubuntu. Your mileage may vary, and turning off desktop effects isn't hard. It's very much an "update the graphics" port, though. Ur-Quan Masters - It's StarCon 2, but they don't own the name. They did own the original code, though, and have since updated it for more modern platforms. Like any good open-source project, it runs on damn near anything.
I'm not sure if there's a MoO remake out there. Honestly, I felt the franchise just kept going backwards with each release, which was really sad. MoO 2 was, in many respects, just a dumbed down version of MoO 1, and MoO 3... I honestly don't know what that was about. Then again, I could say the same thing for StarCon 3... I mean, muppets?!
Elite, Wing Commander: Privateer... heck, pretty much any game in the "fly around in space and perform missions if you want" genre would be fine by me.
Right - real FOSSers should release their source using the CC-GPL.
Am I the only that's starting to think that FOSS licenses are starting to resemble a form of ePeen? "Ha - my license is far more permissive than your license!"
If it slows down cellular replication temporarily, it might increase radiation resistance by giving the body a chance to repair the damage before it multiplies into a serious cancer or something. Alternatively, the protein might absorb the radiation and break down relatively harmlessly, instead of letting the body's cells get the full brunt of the radiation. *shrug*
It's a classic open source strategy. He's letting the nerds have free sex, then charging for support. I mean, eventually the nerd will want to know where the clitoris is, right?
Why are the posts pointing out competitors products either drowning or non-existant? There are no raving hordes of Apple fanboys around here.
Most of them went to Ars.
In all seriousness, much of it has to do with looking for conflict. If you're a Yahoo fanboy, so what? Where's the conflict? Where's the rivalry? That's like trying to decide between the merits of the Kansas City Royals and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Bing, on the other hand, is from Microsoft. Love them or hate them, they're like the Yankees - they will inspire passion, one way or another. Sun doesn't inspire much passion, so saying you love or hate Java isn't going to garner a serious emotional response. Saying you like (or hate).NET, on the other hand, taps into the Microsoft Emotional Reservoir. This also holds true for Notes vs. Exchange, OpenOffice vs. MS Office, PS3 vs. Xbox 360 (though Sony had a solid attempt at earning some solid emotional ire with the "All I want for Christmas is a PSP" campaign) and on and on and on. At each point, expressing disgust for a MS product is a sign of allegiance against the emotional avatar represented by Microsoft, and expressing that you aren't automatically disgusted by that avatar is a sign of counter-counterculture ("All you non-conformists are all alike!").
In short, it really stopped being about Microsoft a long time ago. Now it's just about what we all think the symbol of Microsoft stands for and how we all feel about it.
Amusingly enough, that's perfectly the argument a real Microsoft shill would use to gain credibility in the community so that he/she could push MS products "objectively".
It's at this point that I'll do everything within my power to avoid mentioning that Red Hat, Canonical and Novell could also hire pro-Linux shills. FreeBSD, on the other hand, is corporation-free - that's why you can trust it! Free software for all!
My main beef is all the astroturfing the Obama presidential compaign participated in: Why hasn't anyone said anything about that?
It's because political astroturfing is considered free speech, while commercial speech is far more heavily restricted. Plus, it's far more difficult to enforce - people will actually volunteer to spread a campaign's message (or pretend they're spreading an opposing campaign's message if they think that doing so will get the opposing campaign in trouble). They usually won't volunteer to spread a corporation's message.
Libertarians aren't Constitutionalists. If they were, they'd be fine with income taxes due to the successful passage of the 16th Amendment and would find slavery perfectly acceptable if the 13th-15th Amendments didn't exist. Consequently, it is possible to be a Libertarian and be against a Constitutionally-mandated monopoly.
That said, if you're a Libertarian and you're getting agitated over the USPS, you're missing the forest for the trees. If anything, the USPS is one of the less dysfunctional government agencies out there. Besides, at least people can choose whether they want to do business with the USPS or not (well, the 97% of the time our tax money isn't inadvertently wandering their way) - that's a quality most government agencies don't share.
Actually, the federal government does, in fact, pay taxes to local governments where they have property through the Payment In Lieu of Taxes program. Nevada and other western states, for example, receives property taxes in exchange for the copious amount of BLM land the feds own.
Slashdot Mirror
In fairness, Office 2007 will...
* Export to PDF and XPS (Beginning in SP2). Also, using beerfree programs like CutePDF and the like, you can simulate OO.org's PDF exporting abilities in any Windows program.
* Import a plethora of formats that OO.org can't open. Go ahead - import a Microsoft Works file. I dare you.
* Export to ODF if you install the Sun ODF Plugin. There was an article here fairly recently about MS' native ODF plugin being extremely incompatible with OO.org's implementation of the standard, so I'd avoid that.
* Also allows you to easily install and manage extensions. In fact, Office made it so easy, it became a rather serious security breach. Office 2007 now requires you to assign a level of trust to your macros and plugins before you install them.
* Runs natively on... erm... Windows.
* Doesn't cost a penny if you don't mind violating numerous copyright and trademark laws.
On the other hand, once you look past Word and Excel and start looking at the rest of the office suite, you quickly find that Draw is a really poor substitute for Visio or Publisher, Base could diplomatically be thought of as a severely watered down version of Access, and what does OO.org use for e-mail? Oh right - it doesn't, which means there's no clean way to apply OO.org macros to e-mail documents.
Look, OO.org is a nice product. I use it for most things without complaint. For a lot of people, it matches up well enough. That said, don't fool yourself - OO.org isn't a drop in or feature-matched replacement for Office 2000, much less any version after that, unless you're just using the Home & Student version.
Beats the pants off of Microsoft Works, though. If there's one thing we can be thankful for, it's the OO.org may have single-handedly nuked that abomination from orbit.
At the risk of cross-pollinating Slashdot with Fark memes... THIS!!!
Though Base is a heck of a lot more usable now than it was in OO.org 2, it still has a long way to go to match Access 2000, much less anything more recent. No ODBC connections to multiple outside databases (at least that I could find), the form builder is still explicitly designed to create the worst-looking forms imaginable, importing into Base databases, especially with larger data sets, is ssssllllloooooowwwww (we're talking 15-30 minutes to import a 60,000 row Excel sheet, something which Access pulls off in well under 5), no multiuser support unless you're willing to host your own SQL server... yeah. It's better than it used to be, mind you - at least it's now obvious that you can actually code macro events against state changes on your forms. That wasn't true in 2.
Calc is better than it used to be - seriously, Sun went out of their way to clean up the worst of the problems in the upgrade to 3, which I'm very appreciative for. That said, it's still a little flaky on larger data sets that Excel seems to handle a little better. No personal anecdotes of pain on Calc 3, though, which is far more than could be said for Calc 2, so no real complaints.
Hey now, it only took me about ten minutes of Googling. First, you double-click on the file. Then, when it tells you that you can't open it because you made the mistake of installing SP2, you then go to this thread, which then tells you about this new semi-secret hotfix package that Microsoft churned out. Then, you choose which part of the package you want to download, give Microsoft your e-mail address, fill in the CAPTCHA, then wait to receive an e-mail. Once you receive the e-mail, you click on the link, download the executable, double-click on it, type in the password listed in the e-mail, tell it where you want to extract to, and then you're almost done.
;-)
Almost.
Now, you'll have another executable. Double-click on that (make sure to close Office first, otherwise you'll probably need to reboot), wait half a minute for the package to install, then attempt to open the file again. If you did it right and all goes according to plan, you'll now be able to open that pesky Publisher document that you were foolish enough to create with either Office 2003 or Office 2007 SP1. If you didn't, go back to the beginning and try again.
See? Easy!
What if we're the placebo?
Unless you plan on using Access or (last I checked) good chunks of Office 2007. Their list, of course, is here - Access 2000 is in Bronze, with no future versions after that listed.
Considering how most of the "technically inclined" on this site were saying that the first-gen iPhone would fail since it wasn't "enterprise ready" (i.e. no Exchange support, no remote wipe, etc.), I'd say you're on to something.
If there's one thing 3DO, among countless other examples, should have proved by now, it's that it's not just about the quantity of developers. It's about the quality of the applications they're producing. This is why WinMo is completely and totally hosed at the moment and why the iPhone will be riding high for a while longer.
As an aside, when is Apple going to put a MacStore on OS X? If Canonical can do it, it can't be that hard... heck, Canonical, how about throwing a pay-for section into the Add/Remove programs app, hmm? I'm not talking about being able to download shareware or anything like that - I'm talking about integrated credit card transaction support. Heck, maybe include that as a donation option for the free stuff. As much as I love using free software, there are some packages that I think could benefit from a little paid assistance.
I wanted to jailbreak my penis, but my wife says doing so would violate the terms of service.
Well, a little research revealed FreeOrion, but it looks like it's not terribly far along and, if their FAQ is any indication, had to take some shortcuts to make a workable AI.
Yes, especially regarding Privateer, StarCon (1 or 2 - I'm fine with remaking either of 'em, or just restarting the whole franchise) and Master of Orion.
For what it's worth, Privateer and StarCon 2 are still alive in open sauce form:
Privateer Gemini Gold - Works on Windows, Linux, and Mac, though, at least in my experience, Compiz ("enhanced desktop effects") breaks full screen on Ubuntu. Your mileage may vary, and turning off desktop effects isn't hard. It's very much an "update the graphics" port, though.
Ur-Quan Masters - It's StarCon 2, but they don't own the name. They did own the original code, though, and have since updated it for more modern platforms. Like any good open-source project, it runs on damn near anything.
I'm not sure if there's a MoO remake out there. Honestly, I felt the franchise just kept going backwards with each release, which was really sad. MoO 2 was, in many respects, just a dumbed down version of MoO 1, and MoO 3... I honestly don't know what that was about. Then again, I could say the same thing for StarCon 3... I mean, muppets?!
Elite, Wing Commander: Privateer... heck, pretty much any game in the "fly around in space and perform missions if you want" genre would be fine by me.
Agreed - maybe throw in Aces of the Pacific and Aces over Europe (if I remember my game titles correctly).
So do I!
Nah - it makes him Pontius Pilate. Or Satan. Satan's in the New Testament, right? Also, does this make Linus a modern-day Paul, or is he PenguinJesus?
Right - real FOSSers should release their source using the CC-GPL.
Am I the only that's starting to think that FOSS licenses are starting to resemble a form of ePeen? "Ha - my license is far more permissive than your license!"
If it slows down cellular replication temporarily, it might increase radiation resistance by giving the body a chance to repair the damage before it multiplies into a serious cancer or something. Alternatively, the protein might absorb the radiation and break down relatively harmlessly, instead of letting the body's cells get the full brunt of the radiation. *shrug*
It's a classic open source strategy. He's letting the nerds have free sex, then charging for support. I mean, eventually the nerd will want to know where the clitoris is, right?
Drive thirsty, my friend.
I use a ruler.
Mountain View?! Eww... I'll take the crab juice!
Our credit score cannot repel debt of that magnitude!
Most of them went to Ars.
.NET, on the other hand, taps into the Microsoft Emotional Reservoir. This also holds true for Notes vs. Exchange, OpenOffice vs. MS Office, PS3 vs. Xbox 360 (though Sony had a solid attempt at earning some solid emotional ire with the "All I want for Christmas is a PSP" campaign) and on and on and on. At each point, expressing disgust for a MS product is a sign of allegiance against the emotional avatar represented by Microsoft, and expressing that you aren't automatically disgusted by that avatar is a sign of counter-counterculture ("All you non-conformists are all alike!").
In all seriousness, much of it has to do with looking for conflict. If you're a Yahoo fanboy, so what? Where's the conflict? Where's the rivalry? That's like trying to decide between the merits of the Kansas City Royals and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Bing, on the other hand, is from Microsoft. Love them or hate them, they're like the Yankees - they will inspire passion, one way or another. Sun doesn't inspire much passion, so saying you love or hate Java isn't going to garner a serious emotional response. Saying you like (or hate)
In short, it really stopped being about Microsoft a long time ago. Now it's just about what we all think the symbol of Microsoft stands for and how we all feel about it.
Amusingly enough, that's perfectly the argument a real Microsoft shill would use to gain credibility in the community so that he/she could push MS products "objectively".
It's at this point that I'll do everything within my power to avoid mentioning that Red Hat, Canonical and Novell could also hire pro-Linux shills. FreeBSD, on the other hand, is corporation-free - that's why you can trust it! Free software for all!
It's because political astroturfing is considered free speech, while commercial speech is far more heavily restricted. Plus, it's far more difficult to enforce - people will actually volunteer to spread a campaign's message (or pretend they're spreading an opposing campaign's message if they think that doing so will get the opposing campaign in trouble). They usually won't volunteer to spread a corporation's message.
Libertarians aren't Constitutionalists. If they were, they'd be fine with income taxes due to the successful passage of the 16th Amendment and would find slavery perfectly acceptable if the 13th-15th Amendments didn't exist. Consequently, it is possible to be a Libertarian and be against a Constitutionally-mandated monopoly.
That said, if you're a Libertarian and you're getting agitated over the USPS, you're missing the forest for the trees. If anything, the USPS is one of the less dysfunctional government agencies out there. Besides, at least people can choose whether they want to do business with the USPS or not (well, the 97% of the time our tax money isn't inadvertently wandering their way) - that's a quality most government agencies don't share.
Actually, the federal government does, in fact, pay taxes to local governments where they have property through the Payment In Lieu of Taxes program. Nevada and other western states, for example, receives property taxes in exchange for the copious amount of BLM land the feds own.