Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 29th Mar 2008 23:02 UTC
Version 2.4 of the OpenOffice productivity suite was released on Thursday, boasting enhancements to all its core components. Possibly the most significant alteration in the new version of the free suite is in the description of file types. The 'OpenDocument' description has been replaced by 'ODF', which stands for 'OpenDocument Format' and is becoming a well-known acronym thanks to rivalry with Microsoft's controversial OOXML format.
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Member since:2005-07-24
Member since:2005-07-31
The employer should be more than willing to pay for a MS Office license if that's what their employee wants to use. It's not an unreasonable request. And who the employer pays to support their users shouldn't be a holier than thou snob when they do have to support someone using software they do not prefer.
What a lode of old cobblers! You have either never been in the PC user support business or you are a Microsoft employee or apologist. How stupid is that to suggest that users in a business be able to select their own software! Why not hardware as well? Who cares if nobody can communicate with anyone else? Contribute by all means but have something sensible to say.
Peter
Member since:2005-07-06
i think its mostly "mental muscle" pains thats being complained about.
as in, being able to do something is a way builds up muscle memory, and when that memory and reality no longer match, some people will complain, quite vocally often, but will (hopefully) keep on doing what they are paid to do.
this is one reason why we have "tech inertia"...
Member since:2005-07-06
I use OpenOffice at home. Its is getting better, but its a long way from being at the point where I would prefer it over MS Office. For a business the money is well worth it and my when I purchase my next notebook I will be purchasing Office 2007.
I always find it hard to comprehend. Businesses spend obscene amounts of money on their employees salaries, medical, etc and then they get them some old computer with cheap peripherals. In the case of your company they give a fraction on software of the employee's total cost to company and in doing so give them an inferior product.
If you value you're time and want the best then MS Office is the only competitor right now and I have tried most if not all except the latest version of iWork but that does not run on Windows or Linux so I can't use it anyway.
Member since:2005-09-25
I agree that OpenOffice still has a way to go to be technically equivalent to MS Office (especially in terms of speed), and that you should use the software that is best for your business.
Having said that, you could still consider recommending OO to friends and colleagues with less exacting needs (e.g. for home use) - if Microsoft's monopoly is finally broken and we get a genuinely open file format in common use, it will be good for everyone (except Microsoft) - you will find that the price of MS Office itself will come down, and with a more level playing field new competitors will be more likely to write their own office suites, further increasing competition, quality and choice.
Member since:2005-07-07
I always find it hard to comprehend. Businesses spend obscene amounts of money on their employees salaries, medical, etc and then they get them some old computer with cheap peripherals. In the case of your company they give a fraction on software of the employee's total cost to company and in doing so give them an inferior product.
I fully agree with what you've said and the quoted part of your post sums up exactly why OO doesn't make a huge dent in the corporate space. Companies are there to make money. If a good computer + software make their employees more productive, why not just buy them the software they need? If you begrudge your employees $500 software (much less if you get a site license) that gets upgraded every 3 - 4 years, you need to start reevaluating your business.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2005-07-24
1. They are not paying me. Their employers are. And they appreciate not having to shell out for 60+ MS Office licenses + upgrades.
2. The other 60 some odd users have no problems or complaints about using OO.o and are able to do their jobs just fine. The one employee in question is also quite able to do her job with the current tools available. Drag 'n Drop column rearrangement, available in 2.4, is a nice convenience, but the lack in 2.3 is simply not a show stopper.
Nice try, but my professional conscience is quite clear.
Edited 2008-03-30 02:10 UTC