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Theo Zourzouvillys wrote: > On Wednesday 12 July 2006 10:32, Tom Potts wrote: >> I don't live in little hole preaching - I have 32 years >> computing experience. If you want to cripple your organisation using office >> go ahead. I wouldn't use MS office or Open Office for that matter if I >> wanted my organisation to USE computers and not pointlessly imitate paper. It depends on what the organisation needs. Plenty of people get by without even a base level word processor and are happy with an on-screen calculator. Many businesses exist to imitate paper in a digital form, not all of those can manage with a web version. The fact that some companies, including some large companies, *are* sold a pup by paying huge sums for complete office suites of software that are never used beyond 5% of their functionality is ... human nature. M$ can't be blamed for taking their money - the problem is that these people don't know any different. If these people are to consider GNU/Linux a viable alternative, they need to see that the alternative comes from a source that has more going on than simply bashing the monopoly player out of spite or myth. >> Follow the herd into that wilderness if you must but when you finally >> realise that fourteen thousand fonts and formats does not make the data in >> that document any more computer friendly you too will realise you've been >> sold a pup. Now for some situations, that is true. There are plenty of office suite installations that are almost completely unused - but that wasn't the fault of M$, they just jumped on the WordPerfect/Lotus-1-2-3 bandwagon. There are GNU/Linux users who use AbiWord when Gedit would do, or gnumeric when gcalc would be fine. It's not a problem, really, it's not. The only issue here is whether they have a *choice*. Once they know the options, they have the freedom to make a bad choice. :-) > So - jsut to reiterate: Office is evil, as is Sun, AND Open Office. Anyone > who uses any office application is "Follow the herd into that wilderness", > dispite the fact that Excel, Powerpoint, and Visio regularly save me hours of > work. gnumeric, OOo and Dia are close and may be enough for some people (like me). >> looking at the bottom line. Schools teach microsoft word processing and how >> to produce bloated HTML documents from the same. Computing, however, is >> 'data with semantics' not 'data with formatting'. We have a whole >> generation of people under the illusion that 1+1=4 is fine so long as you >> use the corporate style manual and can segue it from blue to red in >> powerpoint. > > Yes of course. All us youngsters these days are just so stupid. :-) Tom, you do need to scale back your points, I know what you're getting at - there's no need to go so far beyond the main point. Schools may tend teach how to use X programme, not how to use the universal computer - absolutely. We have members on this list who are doing what they can to change that attitude. > >> I've watched computing hurtle forwards until the early nineties when, to >> my mind, M$ deliberately tried to stifle the internet but fortunately it >> was too resilient. Since then its moved like treacle. M$ didn't try to stifle the internet, they simply didn't think it mattered until it was too late to do more than bolt-on the awful dial-up networking that cursed Win95. This then led to an inability of the majority of PC users to actually do anything useful / dangerous on the internet. (Some would say that was the golden age!) :-) >> Mainly because >> Microsoft have abused their monopoly position and tried to shut out all >> competition. > > Reality check: Microsoft are a business. And report to their shareholders. They have abused their monopoly though, that's what the EU fine is about. Shareholders don't care about monopoly abuse until some regulator slaps the company with a fine. *Then* it matters. Whether this fine is big enough to even register on the M$ accounts is debatable. >> Microsoft may not be evil but if they're not they're either in denial or >> criminally ignorant. > > RIGHT. Finally! some progress. "microsoft may not be evil". And, IMHO, they have been ignorant of many things. They got the internet all-wrong in Win95 and today they've completely misunderstood how the GNU/Linux community works. Theo is right - all this M$ bashing isn't doing anyone any good. All the hyperbole, the exaggerations, it just makes us look like script kiddies. (I've done my bit in the past, don't think I'm all high and mighty on this one!) The community works because problems are shared, honestly and openly. It's all too easy to let loose a torrid rant about X Y or Z. It takes more effort to calmly work out how things can be improved. M$ are not clueless idiots, they are not masters of their craft. They make mistakes, they make some good decisions. If they really were the brain-dead mercenaries that some would proclaim, the monopoly would be much weaker. > The same goes for all of you who do it: DON'T BASH MICROSOFT. it makes linux > users look like spoilt children, and gives us a really bad name. > > ~ Theo > I know it's tempting, I know it seems like good fun, but it's time to remind everyone on the list that this list is *public* and regularly indexed by Google et.al. What is said here will still be read long after the issues have changed. Please stop bashing and ranting. Let's have some reasoned and rational discussion and actually start *solving* problems rather than just shouting about perceived injustices. I don't care who you want to bash, me, Theo, M$, Sun, RedHat, Debian, RMS, Intel, .... it's time to stop ranting and resume helping. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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