Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer knows what it’s like to be in the hot seat. The company he leads has been under fire for a controversial new licensing programme that raised prices considerably for some customers. A high-profile initiative to deliver web services is on the rocks. And the threat from the open-source Linux operating system is stronger than ever. Read the interview at Silicon.com.
Ballmer on Linux, Licensing and .Net
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Does he even use Linux?
Does he know how many people actually form the communities of the various alternatives to Windows?
I doubt it.
It seems like more FUD.. especially when he outright states things like:
“The Linux client hardly runs any applications, except a bunch of shareware stuff that’s not very good.”
My word… I’m positive the /. crowd is going to have a field day.
And I’m not even a big FAN of Linux… And I see that he’s uttering outright BS.
sigh.
“Second thing, our product is a more complete product. We have a built-in application server that’s well integrated – there is no such comparable notion in the Linux server. We have a directory server built in – there is no such comparable thing in Linux. The Linux client hardly runs any applications, except a bunch of shareware stuff that’s not very good.”
Has Ballmer never taken a look at Linux–or is he going by everything the MS marketing would want customers to believe. I find he is way off in this statement. To me it looks more like another FUD marketing article for MS.
Btw…
Go HERE for the second part:
http://www.silicon.com/a55938
Totally offtopic, but really fun, and I’m curious: how many of you have seen the famous “dance monkeyboy” video?
Please, do add this information at the end of your posts in this thread. A simle “saw it” or “didn’t see it” will do.
Shareware isn’t the right term but other then that he’s partially right. Most of the stuff I use in linux, and most of the stuff other newbies run in linux, is the same quality as shareware. And most of that is copies of other stuff. Evolution is good, but its a poor man’s outlook. I like XMMS but its a winamp clone. Openoffice.org is an ms office wannabe. One of the few programs that isn’t a clone is mozilla, and while I like it I still think IE is the better browser (for now anyway).
As for communities, there are more windows programers then linux programers. As for slash, who cares? They’d rally behind hitler today if he used linux.
I can’t remember the last time, when I’ve read a similar interview with that much buzzwords.
Ballmer may not know the facts about GNU/Linux or other free Operating Systems (although I suppose he does), but he really knows how to market their products.
The problem is that there are enough people out there who believe his market-speech, even if it’s full of lies.
PS: saw it
winzip was shareware decades before microsoft actually added zip support to windows. Just because it’s shareware/freeware doesn’t mean it ain’t good.
How can he talk of microsoft sharing their code (shareware) and then point the finger at linux for being shareware which it is not.
I think that the following list of programs can hardly be called shareware. there are more just not off of the top of my head. By the way being a clone has nothing to do with. MS built a monopoly on “good enough” software. WORD was a clone of WordPefect, Excel is a clone of 123, Windows is a clone of MAC OS, Access is a clone of Paradox or Ashton Tates Dbase, SQL Server is a clone of Oracle. So please spare me the clone story. The first step to replacing a solution is to provide a drop in replacement.
– OpenOffice
– Mozilla
– KOffice
– Konqueror
– Abiword
– Gnumeric
– Mr. Project
– Evolution
– GNU Cash
– DIA
– XMMS
– KDevelop
– XINE
– Kdevelop
– Emacs
DIDN’T SEE IT
Is it just me, or is this guy a Public Relations nightmare.
Just looking at him I get annoyed. Then he opens his mouth and he sounds so condescending. Then he just outright lies. He sounds like he thinks that Microsoft should b some kind of Benevolent Dictator in the industry. The problem even with that MS is far from benevolent.
I would rather listen to Bill.
But a lot of people do have a real need to see source code from time to time for debugging and for security purposes. We’ve have initiated a shared source programme. We’re learning, if you will, from the Linux world. We’re not above getting smarter every day. If you are a large account, for example, you can get access to source code.
He’s right, programmers writing Windows applications or middleware need to see the source code on occasion to figure out what the OS is doing. But what if you work in a smaller company, and are not a “large account”? Then you’re out of luck. Also, I wonder if Microsoft grants source access to competitors like AOL and RealNetworks.
winzip was shareware decades before microsoft actually added zip support to windows. Just because it’s shareware/freeware doesn’t mean it ain’t good.
WinZip isn’t good… and it’s NagWare besides.
Anyway, PKZip was shareware long before WinZip, and I’m sure other people can find other examples. Personally, I use WinRar, mostly because it’s very straightforward about extracting files without going through it’s main interface and/or popping up nagging dialogues in it’s shareware version. Once Win98 Plus and Win2k started supporting zip files I stopped using it for the most part, except when I came up with compression types that Windows didn’t support.
Ballmer Quote:
.Net is XML (Extensible Markup Language) it’s all about connection. We take the XML connection and we extend it across both client and server – while other guys are only server-focused. It’s about connecting people to people, people to information, businesses to businesses, businesses to information, and so on.
He has either no idea what he is talking about, or he is trying to hype his product by using incomprehensible bullshit. Atleast it is neck-breakingly funny to read.
His point was that no innovation is coming out of the open source projects, which is true, the shareware thing was a mistake but beside the point. To get some stuff started;
Open Office – MS Office clone.
Mozilla – An implementation of widely accepted standards in a rather innovative manner. One point for open source, unfortunately developed by AOL so it does not spell that well for innovation from the open source paradigm in itself.
Abiword – MS Word clone
Gnumeric – MS Excel clone
Mr. Project – MS Project clone
Evolution – MS Outlook clone
GNU Cash – Quicken clone
DIA – Visio clone
XMMS – Winamp clone
KDevelop – I will give KDevelop some points, not obviously a clone of any particular IDE, also adds a lot of features not found in that many competitors.
GNU Emacs – clone of Multics Emacs (interestingly RMS is often credited with creating emacs, but for all practical purposes the emacs we know today was designed by Bernie Greenberg in Multics Emacs, the first lisp based emacs. After that James Gosling implemented gosmacs on which the first GNU Emacs was based at first. Also both EINE (Eine Is Not Emacs) and SINE (Sine Is Not Emacs) were supposedly lisp implementations also before the first lisp emacs RMS made. Largely the only thing the new emacsen used from the TECO Emacs that RMS did come up with is default key bindings).
So I would really agree with Ballmer on the innovation part.
Nice rebuttal, but of course you could do a similar line by line with Microsoft’s major products, pointing out which were buyouts or clones (and many people have). The point is that real innovation is hard and doesn’t come along very often. For the category of widely commercialized software in the ’90s, I would nominate web browsing, Internet-served bytecode computing, and streaming audio/video, and not much else.
I will have to agree too that there is not much innovation in the open source community of developers. Exactly because of the nature of the open source initiative and the way things are developed by completely different people at different points in the Earth, it is difficult to _really_ innovate. Most of the OSS apps are clones of their Windows/Mac counterparts. In the reality, all apps are clones of something else, someone would call this “Evolution”. However, there are innovative apps out there, or even more “complicated” apps that are NOT to be found in the OSS community. This point might show an actual *limitation* of what OSS devs can do with their way they are working. Example apps not found in the OSS world:
Watson clone, a good DTP app (Scribus sucks), 3D/rendering LightWave/Maya/3DStudio/Cinema4D etc etc clone (Blender was not created by OSS people), a good Autocad clone, good integration between apps on the OS (eg. Ms Sharepoint), good edutaiment apps like encyclopedias, Astronomy for al the family, “My little Barbie Cloth shop”, little jewel case $5 apps like “1000 Free Fonts and Labels software” or “Your own Personal Mixing studio” which are designed specifically with a GUI that can be used by anyone.
Most of the OSS world are working either on PHP/perl “applications”, server software, office, new window managers… There is more to a Windows user’s life than what the OSS developer community offers today. Especially when it comes to business software (DTP, CAD) and home software (jewel case software/shareware).
I was going to write an editorial about the jewel case software, but I don’t have the time. Even I was thinking “who buys that crap?” when I saw them at Fry’s shelves. But after a lecture of my husband I understood who buys “that crap”. Now I know, and I understand that their price ($5-$10) really makes the “Free open source Software” useless for 99% of the users. Remember, these users don’t give a flying monkey for the source code.
Did you read my post?
Excel is also a clone of Lotus 1-2-3 (Yes thats why I can still use the ‘/’ commands). Tell me any office app that was not originally a copy of something else.
If you read the original ‘Shareware’ post his points are multi-faceted. He starts by agreeing with Balmer, that most of linux software is shareware quality.
Who cares if it is a clone. Everything MS has ever done has initially been a poor copy of an original. With each version it gets, better and better (Okay some people will say bloatier and bloatier). So Gnumeric is a clone of Excel. Who cares, it’s a spreadsheet serving the purpose of being a good spreadsheet.
If people are going to switch to anything other than Windows, they are going to need drop in replacements. It is highly unlikely that Microsoft is going to start making Office for Linux, so it will be cloned.
By the way would Gnumeric not really be a clone of 1-2-3 and not Excel. It’s the only original spreadsheet.
Please provide a list of innovations coming out of Microsoft for the desktop. I can’t think of any.
“KDevelop – I will give KDevelop some points, not obviously a clone of any particular IDE, also adds a lot of features not found in that many competitors. ”
Uh ?! Isn’t KDevelop a clone of MS Visual Studio ? Haven’t used KD for long but what I see, they mostly copied Visual Studio design and way to do.
Someone can explain what I missed ? thanks !
“By the way would Gnumeric not really be a clone of 1-2-3 and not Excel. It’s the only original spreadsheet. ”
Just to be picky, this is wrong. The very first speadsheet, AFAIK was VisiCalc, way before 1-2-3.
Thanks. Actually I thought there may have been some predecessor. So the ‘Original’ idea for a spreadsheet was VisiCalc. I’ll put that in the memory bank.
To continue Eugenia’s point, Linux’s growth on the desktop will probably be constrained until it attracts some killer apps with professional quality (and strikingly different, not lookalike) UI, design, and packaging, as well as good code. These apps probably have to be proprietary to incent its publisher and employees to do all the steps necessary to make a commercial grade product, not just the ones that programmers find challenging and fun.
I think a bunch of fast-twitch games would go a long way, especially if they were exclusives not available on Windows or the consoles – they would lead, a market would be established, and the encyclopedias and jewelware would follow.
> Example apps not found in the OSS world:
> Watson clone, a good DTP app (Scribus sucks), 3D/rendering
> LightWave/Maya/3DStudio/Cinema4D etc etc clone (Blender was
> not created by OSS people), a good Autocad clone, good
> integration between apps on the OS (eg. Ms Sharepoint), good > edutaiment apps like encyclopedias, Astronomy for al the
> family, “My little Barbie Cloth shop”, little jewel case $5
> apps like “1000 Free Fonts and Labels software” or “Your own > Personal Mixing studio” which are designed specifically with
> a GUI that can be used by anyone.
Most technical Software that started as a Unix application are now available as Windows app too, sometimes as ‘Windows only’ software.
One point that really stops ‘everybody’ coding for ‘the alternative OS’ is, that the open community is mostly ‘C/C++ only’ (for native app, not scripting languages…).
The BIG part of Shareware coders in the windows world are coders of ‘BASIC’ programming languages.
And as long there is no alternative ‘BASIC’, ‘the alternative OS’ are stucked with the applications that are available right now.
Correct me if wrong. It has always seemed the purpose of shareware to provide a cheap alternative usually for major applications? So innovation really isn’t a major factor. Or its created to solve a problem or short comming in a project. Shareware usually doesn’t have the budget for R&D to innovated all the time. Although we have gotten a few apps in the past. Just seems that way to me at this point, that the innovation has dried up. Not to mention software is a LOT more complex to write now as far as what is expected to compete or surpass a commercial application.
Everyone seems to have their suggestions about how to make Linux more user-friendly and desktop ready. The fact is, if someone actually implemented them all, we would end with something very Windows (or MacOS) like.
What about we, geeks? I use Linux in my home destkop for two years now, and I’m pretty happy with the way it is. Many times the interface developer needs to choose between ease of use and efficiency, and I want a system that favors the latter. And I don’t like OSes that hide things.
That’s why I hope for OpenBeOS success, and for MacOS X becoming cheaper. Maybe they can fill the hole of “a good non-Windows desktop operating system” and leave Linux where I believe it is his place: servers and geek rooms.
Problem really is that we have yet to see open source applications rise above their initial goals of cloning the market leader, while Excel was so much of an Lotus 1-2-3 clone that it was hard to tell them apart they did extend Excel beyond 1-2-3’s functionality quite soon (soon being very relative here
. That is also the reason why I give points to KDevelop, while they did start out as a VS clone they have developed some different features (mostly making use of other utilities like automake and CVS, far better configuration layout) while I dont say that KDevelop is a good program (I am no fan of IDE’s at all actually) it does make a nice effort and does not blindly track every new version of VS.
All in all this might be a question of time, given time a lot of projects might get beyond just cloning but seeing the age of some of them I am not so sure.
So yes, I am saying that MS does indeed innovate, innovation is not necessarily about making up completely new things, it is about applying old things in good new ways as well. Unfortunately as of yet few open source projects do.
Another example is mozilla, XUL and all that is nothing new of course, but I still consider it innovative since it is a well done integration and implementation of an old idea in a bigger scope (sharing the rendering engine between the content and the presentation interface is neat).
Most of the innovations in modern business computing came from “Open Source”, much of it long before the term was cool. TCP/IP, DNS, FTP, SMTP, POP, HTTP, HTML all came from developers who believed in and worked on Free Software. I would say that all of those protocols/specs are very innovative and run most of the modern computing world. Of course, they were built from other existing technologies, but these implementations were good enough to be adopted and thus ‘innovate’.
As for Microsoft, we got outlook. Wow! email and a calendar. Who’d thunk?
> TCP/IP, DNS, FTP, SMTP, POP, HTTP, HTML all came from developers who believed in and worked on Free Software.
First of all, this is an overstatement. A lot of military and company engineers have worked for these protocols.
Second, these are protocols controlled by zillions of RFCs, not applications in the traditional term.
I do not understand how can you say that all these *protocols* “all came from developers who believed in and worked on Free Software”. How do you know?
I agree with pretty much everything you said.
I think that the majority of businesses could care less if it is a clone or not. They care about the value proposition. When the cost benefit analysis swings in the favor of an alternative that is where people go. Innovation is not even a consideration.
By the way I am assuming they have enough information to make a decision. Perception in King.
Basically as far as a core group of apps for most business users the value proposition will be there when their favorite apps have been cloned enough, and there are no other real impediments.
Right now VBA, and other custom Win Apps are an impediment, but not to everyone. Network Connectivity is a real problem. MS centric IT departments is a real impediment. I am sure there are other impediments. The quality of basic business apps is not a real impediment from my point of view.
What is needed is a trickle of converts which I believe would snowball as more and more developers jump in.
History teaches us that persistence pays off.
Apple’s Vision was the Home. PC/MS goal was the corp desktop. Who ever wins the corporation wins the desktop.
Truly a must see:
http://www.ntk.net/ballmer/mirrors.html
And a comic that relates to it
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/222.html
What? ok, the Microsoft Word is a copy of Wordperfect and Wordperfect is a copy of Word Star, and Word Star is a copy of Perfect Print from the BBC.
See how bloody stupid that justification is?
It is about bloody time Microsoft sucked in its bottom lip and said to itself, “hey, here is some competition, lets find out what the good points are and embrace them”, that is what a properly run business would do. Microsoft ISN’T! Where are the majority of the sales and growth? the US. Anywhere else in the world, they are either declining or have stayed static.
Why do ppl think XML is so good ??? It’s only a plain text file … sheesh. XML is slow and insecure.
Please, stop bullshitting about Mozilla. Mozilla was originally released, around 5 million lines of code written by Netscape before it was bought out by AOL.
It was so bad, that the “Mozilla group” decided to start again and rebuild it from the ground up. All AOL did was run around like a cheer leader, hyped a few times, however, the hard yards were actually done by the programmers, not the suites and spin doctors at AOL.
Thing is that most of these programmers were PAID by AOL to create Mozilla. Mozilla was not created by any OSS-movement people. Neither a lot of OSS developers had afterwards joined it. In fact, a few months ago there was an article saying that only very few OSS developers actually contributed to Mozilla heavily.
How is XML insecure. I can encrypt it anyway I choose.
It’s only a plain text file … sheesh.
Thats like saying it all just 1’s and 0’s
or
Hamlet is all just English.
Ok so I agree too that apps on Linux don’t innovate all the time because they usually fill a drop-in replacement stop.
BUT there have been applications that were unique to OSS and/or Linux and that made a few people switch, a least to try them out. I’m not either saying that they were “useful”, but definitely innovative :
– Enlightenment. There was a day I couldn’t count the number of people who saw the first betas of this window manager and that were willing to install Linux just to see it work (at the time I remember an Aliens theme that was really popular).
– pine. Ok it’s a text mode mail reader. But long before web based mail was available, this was a revolution in using email remotely.
– Mosaic. Was the web invented as a closed system ? I think not !
– More recently : Apache. Microsoft is scared of this group, as it is producing very good quality software and is innovating in some areas (SVG, Cocoon, etc.) It’s not desktop software but it’s definitely not “bad quality shareware” either…
OSS and Linux innovate plenty, but they usually don’t go the extra mile to transform it into fully packaged products. Also, the OSS community would gain from being a little more focused, but at the same time having a lot of people studying different ways of doing the same thing (my gosh I forgot Perl
) is one way to do real discoveries too !
Finally what disturbs me most in this interview is that Microsoft is leveraging existing monopolies to take over new markets and there seems to be no way of stopping them. The only hope we have is that people start realizing that they are paying over and over for software that doesn’t have that many new features…
I’m not sure Mosaic would qualify as open source under the OSI definition. After Netscape incorporated as Mosaic Communications, NCSA claimed Mosaic as their intellectual property and threatened to sue. As part of the settlement, the company name was changed to Netscape – they didn’t have to license the code because they wrote Navigator from scratch.
Universities have traditionally distributed their products as open source for both idealogical and legal reasons (many are taxpayer subsidized). The Mosaic/Netscape flap was a bit of an anomaly. I don’t think anybody disputes that universities have produced first-rate research but the dynamics are different from today’s volunteers-across-the-internet projects. The teams are local, tight-knit, and have common educational backgrounds.
A lot of scientists are using OSS for their research projects. This often results in hot, new stuff implemented first on an OSS platform.
When you know enough unix, you will very often feel hindered by the microsoft environment. When the windows user drag’n’drop something and rejoice that it was “so easy”, the unix user writes a small script that can do the same thing 10.000 times if she, or perhaps more often, he wishes. Using windows is more “hard work”, because you have to do sooo many things by hand. Don’t get me started on the WORD vs. LaTex issue…
As for the open source clones, the fact that they’re not innovative is not the problem. The problem is that they’re usually half-assed ‘drop in replacements’ of their commercial counterparts. Of course, this is not always the case (I think it’s fair to say Mozilla can hold its own against IE, even if it is slower than snot on a doorknob), but I’d say this is true the majority of the time.
The OSS community has some killer server stuff and kick-ass desktop enviroments, but when it comes to desktop apps, they just don’t cut the mustard.
For example, if you put Gnumeric and Excel side-by-side and did a feature-by-feature comparison, which one do you think would come out on top?
One person argued that the good commercial apps used to be half-assed alternatives to something else and while that may be true, this is not an arguement for OSS clones being half-assed now. Why? Because the apps that they’re knocking off are still in development .. so while the clones improve, the apps they’re cloning improve too, and the commercial apps are always two steps ahead.
Using desktop Linux with OSS software means that you have ‘freedom from Microsoft’, but it also means you may have to make some tradeoffs. It all comes down to what is most important to an individual.
are marketing words. Do I need to say more ? 🙂
Other than .Net, which is very recent and still unproved, can anybody give an example of innovation coming from MS? We’ve had enough FUD, lets see some ACTUAL EXAMPLES guys. Can someone provide a list of “innovation”, as opposed to “cloning”, by Microsoft?? IE? Messenger? MSN? Office? SQL? WIndows? VB?
The argument that OSS does not innovate is irrelevant and only good as FUD material. Why should lack of innovation bother users? What has that got to do with anything? I don’t care, and people don’t care, if their email program is a new innovation or whatever. They care that it works.
It used to be that Linux was too hard to install.
And then it had no support from companies.
And then it didn’t have a journaling filing system.
And bla bla bla blah
Now it doesn’t innovate!!! It would be interesting to see what the argument will be in two years time.
So, what’s the point in XML ?
MS say to do stuff like pull info out of a mainframe into XML to then dump it into SQL Server ?
I can’t see the point when you could just dump it straight into SQL.
About innovation, I think most of you forget an essential point:
OSS brought a big innovation which has a huge impact. This innovation is simply open source / libre software.
Sure, it cames from the day of early computing developement like RMS likes to explain, but it vanished till RMS and its FSF brought it back to reality. GNU/Linux and other Free systems/programs are a huge innovation over proprietary softwares, to the point it made Apple and Microsoft start to go in that way (Apple with Darwin, MS with its share source start of policy).
About clone, all those dicussions are non sense. There’s no answer to “who clone who” as everyone copied and each other.
Furthermore, a web browser purpose is to browse web pages, it will be hard then to create an innovating application for browsing the web. It’s obvious the different applications will be pretty similar in functionality. Same goes for Office suites and most of softwares.
As for Ballmer’s initial comment, don’t think he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He exactly knows what he’s saying. It’s just part of his tactic: FUD.
Ballmer isn’t dumb (unlike some would like), he choosed its words when reffering OSS as sharewares and poor quality applications because his goal is to discredit OSS, nothing else.
I get the impression that Microsoft invented XML from this article. I thought that XML came from the Linux/internet community and not microsoft? .Net’s biggest push right now is XML and at the same time he says we do not innovate. What a bunch of FUD
Sikosis, XML is a way to define and describe information. It doesn’t solve all the problems that has to do with storing and exchanging information, but it sure solves a lot of them.
Long term storage of information:
What if you want your documents to be readable and understandable in 10, 30, 50 or perhaps 100 years from now. What kind of format would you choose to store it in? Word? PDF? no, those formats would probably not be supported by then, and they would be hard to reverse engineer. Plain text then? Well, while plain text will be readable, it’s not that sure that it will be understandable.
What do we need to make it understandable? We’d need to describe the information somehow. That’s where XML comes in. XML allows you to add metadata to your document in a clean standardized way while maintaining it human readable. Even though there’s a possibility that the XML specs won’t be around, it’s still simple enough to figure out in no time.
Storing the documents in XML allows you generate practically any kind of file from that information. If you want the document presented in a PDF it would be easy to translate it, but doing it the other way would be very hard, and you would loose all the valueble meta-data along the way.
Exchanging information between applications and people:
As I earlier said, XML is easy to translate, and it’s easy to understand. By making applications “talk in XML” it’s much easier to exchange data between applications, you will only have to deal with an XML interface. And since it’s an easy to use and understand, and open standard, it becomes a piece of cake.
More “intelligent” information is easier to find:
By adding meta-data to your information, it will be easier to find what you are looking for, and it will be easier to manage and categorize. Imagine if all the pages on the web also included information about themselves, imagine how much easier it would be to find what you are looking for. Today places like Yahoo! has people that looks through the web and places sites into categories and such.
Seperating the appearence of the document from the information:
Defining appearence of information in the actual text is bad, both for long term storage and for exchanging data. Instead, this is done seperatly by using for example CSS. Let’s say that you have a warning in your document: <warning>hell has frozen over</warning>. By defining how that warning should look like directly in the document you would make it harder for other other applications to understand and display the information, and no one a hundred years from now would understand that by drawing a red box around this text indicates that it is a warning.
Well, there you go, a few good points about XML. Like I said, it doesn’t solve all the problems in the world, but a lot of them. I could go on and on forever about the benefits, but I’m tired and there’s good books about it out there anyway
But I hope I was somewhat clear and that it gave you a better understanding about what XML is all about.
Having a clean open standard like XML is a blessing IMO. And while it’s “just plain text” it’s a good way to structure and define information.
Actually I don’t really care about XML from a technological point of view, I care about what the benefits are. The benefit is really that it describes the data it is storing.
My post about XML was just because I was horrified and shocked that someone would say something like, “What’s so great about XML, its a text file” or something like that.
I think XML is good because it has multiple uses including:
– an evoloved form of EDI. No more proprietary methods of sharing data across different networks.
– It can be made to store just about any kind of data and have it translated accurately.
– write once then convert it into any doc type through XSLT. If you have ever had to keep the same document up to date in multiple formats XML is going to be great when all the newt generation XML apps are built.
I am sure there are other uses. But really the good characteristics of XML to me are openness abd extensibility (duh).
MS say to do stuff like pull info out of a mainframe into XML to then dump it into SQL Server ?
I can’t see the point when you could just dump it straight into SQL.
Yes but with XML all that is needed is the appropriate XSL and XSLT and you dump the information in the places it should go in the server and only the necessary subset of data and in the right format for the fields etc without having to recreate the wheel each time. It is not really a dump.
That is only really a limited use of XML anyway. Our company is using XML for content managent. You create the doc, it is stored and then depending on the client that wants to view the data the correct format is outputed, whether it be HTML, PDF, Text, HTML for a handheld, etc. Anything can be output.
That is my take on XML anyway. I am no expert though.
I must have been typing my take on XML about the same time as you.
Your post is better.
“[XML] can be made to store just about any kind of data and have it translated accurately.
Going OT here, but … is it possible to store binary data (such as jpg images and audio) in an XML file?
I’m actually working on an application that needs to have a file format that stores all kinds of information in a database-like format, and can be transported from computer-to-computer (ruling out something like MySQL on the back end). I am currently using Access .mdb files, which isn’t very workable because a) a 40k image increases the files size by about 2MB or more and b) it’s not cross-platform. Could XML be the answer to my problem?
MS only love XML, cos it’s a standard which they manipulate without getting abused by the industry.
Hell I looked at XML in 97 and thought what’s the point, I still think the same.
You did bring up some good points, but why not use HTML for storing documents ?
Does ms Word do more then Perfect print ever could? yes, so its not a clone. It may have “cloned” elements but its not a direct rip off. Do any open source office programs do more then their ms counterpart? No. When they only replecate the leader they are clones, when they start to do things before the leader they are innovators, see the difference?
Until the open source apps surpass ms office in terms of features they aren’t competition. It’ll be a while since they’re still catching up to ms.
btw thats funny, you say ms is a badly run business when unlike most other businesses it has a cash surplus and actual growth in many areas. I bet you think mcdonald’s is a badly run business since they can’t squeeze in any more locations.
Well, the answer is yes. Though, you will have to encode the binary first. But yes, it’s possible. A better solution IMO would be to link to external files.
KOffice actually uses a tarball which includes the images as seperate files along with the XML document. But either way works.
What you have to consider when you choose XML is that it’s usually a bit slower than a binary database. If that’s not a problem, then I’d say that you should go with XML.
I disagree with Eugenia that there is no innovation in the open source movement. I think technically you are right, but the statement lacks some perspective, that is in certain fields there is innovation but in certain fields there is really no innovation, but also that’s not a bad thing at all, and that’s very natural.
Here is what I mean, for GUI stuff the work on GNOME and KDE started just few years ago. They are maturing, so they don’t bring much innovation, they are simply trying to catch up, which is very normal.
But there are certain fields which open source did make innovation. For example compilers, gcc is an excellent compiler. Operating System issues, like virtual machine and so on.
Overall, yes there is not much innovation, but this is very natural, because open source really got started with internet, it is maturing and it is trying to catch up. My theory is that, for a very long time it will not be better than closed source, because those products needs long hours of dedication.
Ms may not create many products but they improve many of them dramatically.
Word is the best word processor for serious office work. Nothing else comes close, so I’d call that innovation.
Excel is the best spreadsheet right now.
Outlook is the best pim right now.
Ms’ optical mice are better then anything else (although the logitech ones are damn good and much cheaper).
IE is probably the best browser right now.
I feel the exact opposite of you about linux. Three years ago I tried it for the first time, because everyone said it was ready for a huge splash into the mainstream soon. Guess what its been three years and it still isn’t here. But of course linux pushers and junkies blame ms instead of actually addressing the issues of why its still the number three dog by a large margin. Hell I play with linux when I can but when I’m too busy working I stay in win2k.
people keep bringing up how opensource is cloning microsoft.
give me a fucking break.
what do the following have in common?
-microsoft invented the word processor
-microsoft invented the spread sheet
-microsoft invented the html viewer
-winamp invented mp3 playback
-Al Gore invented the internet
next thing you know, you guys will be telling me that microsoft invented the GUI…and that linux is cloning that too.
take your head out of your asses
The innovation just isn’t on the desktop. It is in other areas.
Beowolf, scripting languages Perl PHP, Apache etc most of the technology isn’t visible to joe user but that doesn’t mean it isn’t working for him.
As for jewel case software go to freshmeat for all those shareware type applications. Pity there are no clipart ones though.
I thought I made it very clear why not to use HTML. If you didn’t get it, try re-reading my post, if it’s still unclear to you I’ll try to explain it better.
And besides, HTML is a dying fileformat, XHTML will replace it and XHTML is an XML application. W3C doesn’t care about HTML anymore.
>As for jewel case software go to freshmeat for all those shareware type applications
I am sorry, but you reply like you have never seen jewel case applications. There are no such apps for linux with target the desktop user in a brain-dead UI that do very particular stuff.
Find for me the Video Maker Music Maker jam equivelant, all wrapped up in a sexy and easy to use gui that everyone can use. I have this CD just right next to me, I bought it for $5 at Frys a few weeks ago.
http://www.dirtcheapsoftware.com/magmusmakvid.html
Or this, also bought for $5:
http://www.techtv.com/freshgear/products/story/0,23008,2172647,00.h…
Or Ceasar2000, bought for $9.99, and a lot of GREAT classic games for $5 (and when I say “classics” I mean only 2-4 years old – pretty new).
I am sorry, but in this particular “home market”, Linux can’t compete _at all_. Saying otherwise, will be at least an overstatement.
Have you actually used any of the alternatives to those products?
How do you explain that it took me 30 minutes and several crashes to make a simple invoice in MS Office XP while it took me 10 minutes and no crashes to do it in Gobe Productive 2.0, when MS Office is supposed to be so much better?
How come Microsoft’s mice has CTS written all over them while Logitech’s mice lie comfortable in my hand, when Microsoft’s are so much better?
So my question is, to whom are they the best alternatives? Cause it’s obviously not the best for me.
Eugenia,
It’s true that such applications doesn’t exist for linux, and there one simple reason. Open-source developers does not need to create a need because they don’t do it for the money. It’s that simple.
Capitalism, commercialism or whatever you’d like to call it has created those products. No one has asked for them.
> No one has asked for them.
If no one had asked for them then these apps wouldn’t sell. If these apps wouldn’t sell, they wouldn’t exist in the first place. But they do exist.
The fact that Linux doesn’t have more Home(r) users is not just because Linux is not a viable desktop for this kind of users yet, but also because such apps don’t exist. It is the chicken and the egg problem.
> If no one had asked for them then these apps wouldn’t sell.
Are you really that naive Eugenia?
Have you ever heard about “creating a need”? It’s pretty easy to make people think that they really need things that they have no need for.
I don’t think that any of those people would go down to the store to look for those kinds of apps if they hadn’t seen the “fancy” tv commersial first.
Do you really think that any of them has ever had the though “hmm, if only I had an application that would let me make my own music without knowing anything about music”. I seriously doubt it.
However, the damage is done now. The need has allready been created.
>Have you ever heard about “creating a need”?
I know that my brother LOVES magix’s applications and I can tell you, the need was never “created” for him. He is a PC user for only 1 year now, his profession has nothing to do with computers, and from the first day he bought his PC he keeps asking me where to find easy to use applications to create and put together some music. For him, that was a real need, never “created” by anyone. When I show him Magix’s apps, he was in heaven.
well I create my invoice and do my accounts in Word / Excel 2000 … whereas Gobe 2 and latest OpenOffice don’t open these properly.
Like my Word Invoice document which is one page, ends up being 2 pages in OpenOffice ie. 1/4 on page one and 3/4 on page two.
I think a lot of people confusion attempts at compatability for a lack of innovation. For instance. Yes star office tries to be as compatible as possible with ms office. And why shouldn’t it? However, it also has its own formats as well. And if it were not for the market share of the ms formats I believe star offices formats would be a no brainer change. Many other applications fall into this description. What is it people want? A whole new way to communicate with their pc before its innovation? Pfft. Damned if you do. Damned if you dont. I for one am happy for all the so called clone work!
McDonalds profit declined 2.7% this year. THey are also facing a large number of law suits.
As for Word vs. OpenOffice Writer, what is missing? I hear this moaning, yet, people like YOU never actually list what is missing.
At first you started comparing Linux with Windows on the server. Then you say Linux on the client has little apps. I’m sorry, but the last I check the real threat of Windows now is in the servers. So what if it is intergrated? As long it runs, it is okay. For the backend, we have almost all apps Windows have (almost, unfortunately).
On the client is another tricky issue. Remember when MS-DOS and Windows in their early says depended on shareware-like apps (when compared with apps on Amigas, Commodores, Macs, etc.)?
Funny guy. 🙂
Eugenia-without magix I would not be using computers today. Same situation as your brother. I’ve been looking for a Linux or Be equivalent, but until then, I can’t really use either OS. Guys, it’s all about the apps.
Steve: Uh ?! Isn’t KDevelop a clone of MS Visual Studio ? Haven’t used KD for long but what I see, they mostly copied Visual Studio design and way to do.
Well, I wish it was a clone of VS. While KDevelop have their goodpoints, I really wish they clone VS. Well, at least Gideon brings something new to the table, without delibrately cloning VS. Heck, maybe they never used VS 🙂
Besides, on Balmer’s comment, take the shareware statement as a compliment. A lot of shareware actually brought innovation. 😀 Flattering, my friend, can sometimes be better than compliments.
jproctor: TCP/IP, DNS, FTP, SMTP, POP, HTTP, HTML all came from developers who believed in and worked on Free Software.
None of these developers believed in Free Software, only believes in open standards. And Open Source. Otherwise, I wonder why they choosed such liberal licenses from their stuff.
Besides, these stuff wouldn’t come into existance if weren’t for Al Gore and ARPAnet….
Matthew Gardiner: What? ok, the Microsoft Word is a copy of Wordperfect and Wordperfect is a copy of Word Star, and Word Star is a copy of Perfect Print from the BBC.
well, at least Word Star is better than Perfect Print, WordPerfect better than Word Star and Word better than WordPerfect…
But as soon OpenWrite and OpenClac or KWord and KSpread is better than MS Word and MS Excel, bye bye Office for me.
You and everyone else saying ms doesn’t innovate anything is missing the point. The point is that ms now does them better then everyone else, and until someone does them better them ms, instead of just copying ms, no one has a compelling reason to not use ms. It’s their embrace and extend strategy. Currently linux has an embrace and do not nearly as well strategy.
lol you can’t use word and you blame ms for that? Go to someone who uses word for a living (secretary, personal assistant, etc.) and give them whatever other program you want, guess which one they’ll choose? Word. It can do things nothing else can, period.
As for the mice, most people find the ms explorer mice very comfortable, you just refuse to admit when ms does something well.
“I don’t think that any of those people would go down to the store to look for those kinds of apps if they hadn’t seen the “fancy” tv commersial first.”
Are you that naive? No $5 software has a fucking commercial. Jeezus man pull your head out of your ass and use a little logic. If they advertised those apps they wouldn’t make any money, because they’d have to raise the price to cover the ads and then they’d be competing with more powerful apps. People buy those apps because they’re 1.) cheap, 2.) simple, 3.) let them do something they want to do.
Eugenia I don’t think those apps are available in my country. Also budget games cost me AUD $20 about $10 US so the difference is significant here.
Either that or the local stores only stock crap shareware. To get good sharware I would have to $50 to $80.
“McDonalds profit declined 2.7% this year. THey are also facing a large number of law suits.”
How many companies would still like to be in their situtation? Every other fast food chain for sure.
“As for Word vs. OpenOffice Writer, what is missing? I hear this moaning, yet, people like YOU never actually list what is missing.”
It would take too long to explain and everyone would get bored, because lets face it word processor abilities aren’t exciting. If you want an explanation go to anyone who uses word seriously for a living (clerks, secretaries, personal assistants, etc.) give them OpenOffice.org writer and a manual on how to use it. Within hours (or maybe minutes depending on how complicated their needs) they’ll find things that oo.org can’t do. Same with star, koffice, abiword, even word perfect. The alternatives are fine for most people though, its just the people who need ms for serious work that won’t be able to switch. But to be compatable with them businesses use ms office on every machine, which means so do their vendors and clients, their employees, etc. And once everyone has to use it at work they use it at home (most likely) since they know how to use it.
give them OpenOffice.org writer and a manual on how to use it. Within hours (or maybe minutes depending on how complicated their needs) they’ll find things that oo.org can’t do. Same with star, koffice, abiword, even word perfect.
And if they used Word Perfect all their life, and you give them MSWord, within hours/minutes they’ll find things that msword can’t do.
When you change your software, you have to change some habits. Give them a month, and they will do all the things they used to do, and do some things they never were able to do before.
Lunix has been maturing for decades now. Still waiting.
I wonder if all these “Word is better” people ever heard of LaTeX.
Well, as I already said, I’m not even a little worried if Linux is “ready for the desktop” or not. I use it, it is fun, fast, it does everything I need.
I know we need a non-Microsoft “user friendly” operating system, but I don’t think Linux (or Unix) will do. That role, in my humble opinion, is for 1) OpenBeOS or 2) cheap MacOS.
genaldar: Ms’ optical mice are better then anything else (although the logitech ones are damn good and much cheaper).
The price difference is negliable. I have two (or rather three, if you count my brother’s one) Logitech optical mouses, as a Microsoft one. Overall, I have to say I prefer Microsoft’s. Though the bundle software by Logitech is annoying – very.
genaldar: IE is probably the best browser right now.
I beg to differ actually. I have been using Opera for like, all my life, and the last couple of days when I was using my brother’s laptop, I had to use IE (not that I have to liberty to install the software I like, although I had a choice, between IE 5.5 and Netscape 4.75, guess which I took?).
Really, the lack of features keep byting me. While, no, the feature I miss most WASN’T mouse gestures, but little things. For example, when I could accroading some word I don’t understand (which happens multiple times day), I just highlight it and right click it and select Dictionary.
While, yes, if you use an altentaive browser for a few hours, you would find little differences. But if you use them extensively, those little features is all that matters.
BTW, a year ago, the crew of Call For Help and Screensaver on TechTV was the ultimate evangelist of IE, now they promote Mozilla so much it makes you wonder if TechTV is bought over by AOL.
Yes, I have tried them all, your point on Word, Excel, Outlook (something I would probably never use 🙂 is 100% better than cheap rip offs on the Linux side, but the other two points….. well, shows you are not to keen in finding an altenative.
moog: -microsoft invented the word processor
-microsoft invented the spread sheet
-microsoft invented the html viewer
-winamp invented mp3 playback
-Al Gore invented the internet
Probably the only thing you got right is the last point. Al Gore is directly/ indreictly responsible for ARPAnet.
moog: next thing you know, you guys will be telling me that microsoft invented the GUI…and that linux is cloning that too.
Microsoft may not have invented the GUI, but what a number of Linux distributions are doing is completely as close as possible to clone as much detail of Windows as possible. And they won’t consider their jobs done until the average Joe can’t tell the difference.
rain: How do you explain that it took me 30 minutes and several crashes to make a simple invoice in MS Office XP while it took me 10 minutes and no crashes to do it in Gobe Productive 2.0, when MS Office is supposed to be so much better?
It takes me less than a minute to do a invoice with office XP. I just make a macro, and everytime I need a invoice, I open up a template, use that macro, enter in essential information, and viola, and invoice. the last I check, i couldn’t do that on Productive (which is a nice concept, but way too little features). Plus, ever since Office 97, I have never seen Office crash once.
However, I seen Productive 2.0 Demo on BeOS R5 crashed two times. Plus, it took me a whole 15 minutes to make a invoice than Word.
genaldar: As for the mice, most people find the ms explorer mice very comfortable, you just refuse to admit when ms does something well.
As for comfortablity, when I’m web browsing, I find Logitech mouse much more comfortable. But if I’m playing a fast moving game, like CS, the Microsoft mouse is way better.
Depends on your taste, bro.
bob: And if they used Word Perfect all their life, and you give them MSWord, within hours/minutes they’ll find things that msword can’t do.
I don’t know…. I still can’t find one feature in Word Perfect Office 2002 I can’t find in Office XP (many dubbed Office XP and a catch-up in features with WP).
Leonardo: I wonder if all these “Word is better” people ever heard of LaTeX.
Two VERY different concepts. BTW, I might use LaTeX for long documents where style isn’t a neccesity, but consistency and profesionalism is. But then again, unless I find an editor which has a good spellchecker and a grammar checker, Word it would be for the final copy 😀
Grammar checker
A spell checker that knows “isn’t” is a word.
WordArt
SmartTags
Variables (IIRC, OOo has something like this, but never got it to work). This is really a Excel feature, but who cares.
Voice dictation
Easy collaboration (via SharePoint).
An HTML export that doesn’t ruin the whole style of the document and doesn’t give out HTMl code like “<font name=”Arial”><font size=”14″>…”
Oh, I can go on and on…..
LaTex?!! You gotta be freakin’ kidding me! Do you really think that this would appeal to anyone but the really hard-core CLI types? What’s next? Hand coding postscript or PCL?
Consider the following example from the LaTex web site (http://www.latex-project.org/):
LaTeX is not a word processor! Instead, LaTeX encourages authors not to worry too much about the appearance of their documents, but to concentrate on getting the right content. For example, consider this document:
Cartesian closed categories and the price of eggs
Jane Doe
September 1994
Hello world!
LaTeX is based on the idea that it is better to leave document design to document designers, and to let authors get on with writing documents. So in LaTeX, you would input this document as:
documentclass{article}
itle{Cartesian closed categories and the price of eggs}
author{Jane Doe}
date{September 1994}
egin{document}
maketitle
Hello world!
end{document}
I’d invite anyone to go to the LaTex web site and investigate it on their own. Maybe it’s a great tool for large complex documents for the truly geek crowd but I’ll choose something else…
Obviously, you’d never had to write a more than 10 pages document…..and to manage a bibliography, and to have to include a lot of figures……..
ask to whoever you want, if you had to write a more than 10 pages document, word is not for you… Ok, I’m writting my phd in latex but when I have to write a letter I’m using abiword or wordperfect (it’s a shame this great product is not maintened !)… So in french we have a proverb
“chacun son métier et les vaches seront bien gardées”
(Each keeps his job so the cow will be well watched).
Wysiwing wordprocessor are just not the point for large document, and of course a word processor is not a P.A.O programm like Xpress, Calamus or PageMaker…..
So of course latex for large text !
//btw thats funny, you say ms is a badly run business when unlike most other businesses it has a cash surplus and actual growth in many areas//
er .. not just a “cash surplus” … a “40 BILLION DOLLAR (US) cash surplus” … more money than the GNP of dozens of countries around the world.
So, yeah, i totally agree … that’s a pretty good business. Wish mine could match 1/400th of that.
Well, this is like judging XML by writing the code, and comparing it with MS Word.
Try some editor, for a change.
I have been trying to use Linux exclusively for the last few months. I have seen it evolve into a very polished product. However, like Eugenia mentioned there are some aspects of Linux software (multimedia applications) that are yet to be developed enough. To illustrate, I’ve been trying to find an MP3/Ogg burning program similar to Acoustica’s mp3 burner to do a simple crossfade between tracks in Linux, and have yet to find one. That alone will force a lot of us to do a dual boot, or eventually to stay using Windows until the apps that we need become available…
Really, the lack of features keep byting me. While, no, the feature I miss most WASN’T mouse gestures, but little things. For example, when I could accroading some word I don’t understand (which happens multiple times day), I just highlight it and right click it and select Dictionary.
I have IE setup to search for a phrase simply by typing ‘d (phrase)’ in the address bar, makes things like that fairly simple. That being said, for most sites (those that don’t have issues rendering in Mozilla) I use Phoenix.
moog: -microsoft invented the word processor
-microsoft invented the spread sheet
-microsoft invented the html viewer
-winamp invented mp3 playback
-Al Gore invented the internet
Probably the only thing you got right is the last point. Al Gore is directly/ indreictly responsible for ARPAnet.
Looks like sarcasm to me. Al Gore wasn’t even in office when funding was passed through for ARPANet work that eventually brought about the internet. He came in the next term and eventually took credit for what his predecessors had done. Who invented the spreadsheet, html viewer, and mp3 playback should be easy enough to find online if you don’t already know, and the word processor might take a little more work, depending on your definition of word processor (there were many computer-like devices, and may still be today, that were just word processors).
Microsoft may not have invented the GUI, but what a number of Linux distributions are doing is completely as close as possible to clone as much detail of Windows as possible. And they won’t consider their jobs done until the average Joe can’t tell the difference.
I remember one in particular within a few weeks of the first time I saw Linux which did a fairly good job mimicking the Win95 interface (because at the time Win95 was the most recent MS OS) while still allowing options for some of the ‘standard’ XWindow options.
bob: And if they used Word Perfect all their life, and you give them MSWord, within hours/minutes they’ll find things that msword can’t do.
I don’t know…. I still can’t find one feature in Word Perfect Office 2002 I can’t find in Office XP (many dubbed Office XP and a catch-up in features with WP).
I think they’ll simply find that they don’t know how to do them in Word, rather than that they can’t do them. I used WordPerfect for a long time before I ever saw Word. There was also a period where I had to go back to WordPerfect (in college when the only computers I had access to at some times were running Linux). In both cases it took time to become reaccustomed to where things were and how to do some things. Neither one seemed to be particularly better than the other for most things.
I have IE setup to search for a phrase simply by typing ‘d (phrase)’ in the address bar,
That should be ‘search dictionary.com for a phrase/word’. Similarly I have it setup to search google by typing ‘g (phrase)’
>>Have you ever heard about “creating a need”?
>I know that my brother LOVES magix’s applications and
>I can tell you, the need was never “created” for him.
>He is a PC user for only 1 year now, …
>For him, that was a real need, never “created” by
>anyone. When I show him Magix’s apps, he was in heaven.
Eugenia,
You are incorrect; all average Joe users have the need created for them by inventors. Would you have ever heard average Joe user say, “I need a new TV” 100 years ago? No. However, Mr. inventor saw a toy he could “create a need” for if he invented it. Who “needed” VCRs 50 years ago? Nobody. Did anyone really need DVD players 15 years ago? No.
You don’t see the need created in your brother because computers have become almost as common in every home as the TV and VCR. Since your brother has had plenty of time to see the possibilities given to him by computers through commercials, he already has some idea of his “needs” before he even purchases one.
When DVD players first came out, I didn’t feel the need for one. In fact, it wasn’t until 2 years ago that I finally broke down and purchased one, after seeing they were definitely here to stay. (Unlike other failed attempts to replace the VCR, like the laser disc player) Now if my DVD player broke down, I would “need” to replace it.
Microsoft was very smart and fortunate. Microsoft created a position for their OS that made vendors have a “need” to write little 5-dollar applications. Users have a “need” to purchase these applications because they claim to perform some desired function and they would rather spend 5 dollars to try something out then 500. The more user-friendly linux becomes, the more likely there will be a “need” for vendors to create 5 dollar applications.
I won’t even go into how all these toys are actually WANTS and not NEEDS, human’s actually NEED very little compared to what they REALLY REALLY REALLY WANT. :OP
“But there are certain fields which open source did make innovation. For example compilers, gcc is an excellent compiler. Operating System issues, like virtual machine and so on.”
GCC is far from being an innovation. It’s a good one, yes, but stick on the ANSI C/C++ (which is not bad in a way), so there’s no compiler more “conservative” than GCC. Heck, they don’t even support some wide-spread and highly useful extensions supported by pretty much all others (__property, __closure, etc.)
For Virtual Machine, it pretty much been in the heart of Windows since Win95. Not much innovation here too 🙂
The spellchecker in Word for Swedish sucks…
It doesn’t recognise “Pubkommitén” (the pub committe (sp?) as a word…
A guess the same is true in German also…
“Obviously, you’d never had to write a more than 10 pages document…..and to manage a bibliography, and to have to include a lot of figures…….. ”
Well, I saw hundreds of those documents, made by dozens of peoples in various companies through many years, and yes, they *ALL* used MS-Word and yes, without any problem of whatsoever. We are in 2002. Powerful visual word-processors *do* exist 🙂
Mais peut-être que c’est différent en Europe, je ne pourrais dire 🙂
this thread will soon go away so I’ll just make it short
Sikosis:
well I create my invoice and do my accounts in Word / Excel 2000 … whereas Gobe 2 and latest OpenOffice don’t open these properly.
This is in no way relevant to me. I never get such files sent to me. True it doesn’t work for you, but it works for me.
Genaldar:
lol you can’t use word and you blame ms for that?
Please, I have several years of experience with Office, but practially no experience with Productive (just some simple word processing).
I don’t remember every specific problem I had with Word in this case, but I remember several crashes and difficulty to place/resize the spreadsheet correctly in the document. I’d have to open MS Office to describe it further, but I don’t want to reboot to windows for that.
Go to someone who uses word for a living (secretary, personal assistant, etc.) and give them whatever other program you want, guess which one they’ll choose?
True, Word. But are you sure that it’s because it can do a lot of stuff that the others can’t or because they are used to Word and doesn’t want to take a chance on using something else for the job?
Anyway, you said that MS Office is _the_ best. And I tell you that it’s not the best for me, obviously. It may be one of the best, but just because it has a nice featurelist it is not the best for everyone.
As for the mice, most people find the ms explorer mice very comfortable, you just refuse to admit when ms does something well.
No, I have given MS credit for things, and I still do it every now and then. But I have used to many MS mice that has sucked badly(different models) but I’ve only used two Logitech mice models that has been badly designed.
But the thing is, peoples hands are shaped differently, there is no one-size-fits-all mouse.
However, I prefer trackballs myself, and MS doesn’t have one single trackball that I would use. Logitech has one.
Are you that naive? No $5 software has a fucking commercial. Jeezus man pull your head out of your ass and use a little logic.
LOL. Well, I have actually seen several Magix commersials on TV, some of them promoting the very product Eugenia is talking about. I don’t know if they do TV commersials in your part of the world, but in Sweden they do. So I guess fact proves you wrong there.
rajan r
It takes me less than a minute to do a invoice with office XP. I just make a macro, and everytime I need a invoice, I open up a template, use that macro, enter in essential information, and viola, and invoice.
Keep in mind that this was the first one I did. How long did it take you to create the template and macro? cause that’s more relevant.
True that you can’t use macros in Productive(at least I don’t think it’s possible in 3.0) but I can use templates, and I actually did an invoice template. It doesn’t take me long to do an invoice now that I have a template. Macros would be nice, but I can do without them.
As for crashes, it seems like we have different experiences there. Office XP crashed a lot more that the previous versions has done for me. However, I have not yet experienced a crash in Productive.
It might be that we are using the products differently and/or using different features.
I’m not saying that MS Office is a bad product. It is huge and bloated though, but it’s useful. However, I don’t personally need all those features, and I am much more productive in GoBe Productive. So it’s obvious what’s the best product for me.
My ex girlfriend uses LaTex all of the time for her schoolwork. I don’t know if she is required to do so or if it’s her preference. Anyway, she would not be considered a “geek”, but she still uses it. Why? I guess, when it comes to scientific documents, LaTex is a much better choice than for example Word.
I’ve never used it myself so I can’t tell.
PainKilleR: I have IE setup to search for a phrase simply by typing ‘d (phrase)’ in the address bar, makes things like that fairly simple. That being said, for most sites (those that don’t have issues rendering in Mozilla) I use Phoenix.
No, it uses MSN, which gives me an error (trust me, I don’t jugde a piece of software without at least searching the help files :-). It just gives out the 404 error. I tried this for two days, mind you. Never worked. Doubt it was the government that banned it (they have no laws to do so), or IE is spoiled (it doesn’t work on my XP machine I tried today).
well 🙂
As for Phoenix, I would use it if 0.3 is what they say it would be. Currently, it is just Mozilla on steriods with a nice theme.
PainKilleR: Looks like sarcasm to me.
It was. I thought I place a “:-)”. Dang.
PainKilleR: That should be ‘search dictionary.com for a phrase/word’. Similarly I have it setup to search google by typing ‘g (phrase)’
It wasn’t my machine, I couldn’t do that. I could have used the Guest account, but the Internet wasn’t accessible there.
malu: The spellchecker in Word for Swedish sucks…
Well, thank god I’m not a swede. But comparing with OOo?
rain: I don’t remember every specific problem I had with Word in this case, but I remember several crashes and difficulty to place/resize the spreadsheet correctly in the document.
Productive is easy to learn (probably it isn’t that overwhelming). However, if you have taken a few Office classes, you would learn a lot of new features you never thought existed.
(Either that, or read the manual is full. I think the classes is less painful).
rain: True, Word. But are you sure that it’s because it can do a lot of stuff that the others can’t or because they are used to Word and doesn’t want to take a chance on using something else for the job?
Not really. My fathers office, for example, wouldn’t be able to use StarOffice to replace Office (97, mind you. My father is the only one there having Office 2000). Well, before they could even consider it, they dashed it off. Why? No form of macro support.
rain: Anyway, you said that MS Office is _the_ best. And I tell you that it’s not the best for me, obviously. It may be one of the best, but just because it has a nice featurelist it is not the best for everyone.
But it is the best for a mighty lot of people. Gobe Productive may be nice, and if it has all the features I’m used too in Office, I might ditch Office for it. But just because you use little features doesn’t mean people actually using it to make a living uses a small number of features found in Productive.
rain: Keep in mind that this was the first one I did. How long did it take you to create the template and macro? cause that’s more relevant.
IIRC, 30 minutes. After that, the number of invoices after that was a breeze. Making custom receipts is similar too. But I disagree on what’s revelant. What’s revelant is how much time I spend overall doing that amount of invoices. If I were to take 10 minutes to make a invoice in Productive (a feat I could accomplish in Excel without macros and templates), and times it by, say 100, it would take about 16 hours altogether. On Office, the first time may be 30 minutes, but after that it is less than a minute, it would take a little over an hour and a half.
rain: True that you can’t use macros in Productive(at least I don’t think it’s possible in 3.0) but I can use templates, and I actually did an invoice template.
Templats help, but it is the macros that brought it down to a minute. If I had the documents and the macros, I would show it to you, Unfortunately, my brother folded that business.
As some lost soul on /. accused me of smoking the same thing as steve, Id like to take this oppurtunity to Deny any knowledge/abuse of any illegal substance and/or ever smoking anything resembling bills or stevens tobacco habits (or other unhealthy extra curricular activities)
and on another note.. heck im vegan anyway.
kind regards
Robert