Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 8th Jan 2013 23:27 UTC
So, a rudimentary jailbreak for Windows RT made its way onto the web these past few days. Open source applications were ported right away, and it was confirmed that Windows RT is the full Windows - it's exactly the same as regular Windows, except that it runs on ARM. Microsoft responded to the jailbreak as well.
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Member since:2005-10-19
I'll have to strongly disagree. Corporate users live and breathe a subset of MS Office, which for the most part is completely replaceable by OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice. I'm not saying that is always the case, of course, but I have personally seen it done many times with zero training. It worked fine and it costed nothing. It is wrong to assume people specifically need MS Office for their office computing needs.
It's completely replaceable if you're just talking about writing documents or spreadsheets. But, of course, no companies do just that, so it isn't replaceable at all.
I have worked for loads of high profile companies and none, repeat none, would ever consider OOo in a million years. The main reasons are the massive IP investment they all have in MS Office.
For example the tight integration with TFS and Sharepoint that you don't get with OOo. And then there are the inevitable crap-tonne of Access and Excel VBA apps that run everything from timesheets to monitoring billion dollar LNG modules as I discovered in horror at Chevron.
It's not an option.
Member since:2005-11-10
It's completely replaceable if you're just talking about writing documents or spreadsheets. But, of course, no companies do just that, so it isn't replaceable at all.
I have worked for loads of high profile companies and none, repeat none, would ever consider OOo in a million years. The main reasons are the massive IP investment they all have in MS Office.
For example the tight integration with TFS and Sharepoint that you don't get with OOo. And then there are the inevitable crap-tonne of Access and Excel VBA apps that run everything from timesheets to monitoring billion dollar LNG modules as I discovered in horror at Chevron.
It's not an option.
I have worked for loads of high profile companies and none, repeat none, would ever consider OOo in a million years. The main reasons are the massive IP investment they all have in MS Office.
For example the tight integration with TFS and Sharepoint that you don't get with OOo. And then there are the inevitable crap-tonne of Access and Excel VBA apps that run everything from timesheets to monitoring billion dollar LNG modules as I discovered in horror at Chevron.
It's not an option.
It's always an option. An option that can be shot down, of course.
You are making a generalization. For every example of a company that cannot change, I can give you an example of a company that can and did change. I know the corporate world, I'm not saying that MS Office is always replaceable - it's not -, but there are many, many cases where it is. And sometimes it's not even necessary to migrate an entire company, just some departments.
OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice also have other problems in the corporate wold, like the lack of MSIs and Group Policy integration.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 22:06 UTC
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:45 UTC
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
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."More News »
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Member since:
2005-11-10
Well, I can think of several reasons:
1. Firstly, and most importantly; Microsoft Office. Corporate users live and breathe MS Office. And, while the full office suite isn't available yet on RT, it will be, and that's going to be a huge draw for lots of people.
And no, OOo isn't a real substitute. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it. "
I'll have to strongly disagree. Corporate users live and breathe a subset of MS Office, which for the most part is completely replaceable by OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice. I'm not saying that is always the case, of course, but I have personally seen it done many times with zero training. It worked fine and it costed nothing. It is wrong to assume people specifically need MS Office for their office computing needs.
Besides, corporate users need to use more corporate products besides MS Office and those do not work in Windows RT, so promoting it is a moot point.