Re: The Good and The Bad....

Like the Sarah Connor Chronicles? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0851851/

"To then say that the OO project has a nerve on the issue of OOXML just makes people wince and walk away."

I think I said that the guys on the forum had this view, I'm not sure that the whole project feels that way. And, don't get me wrong, that forum is THE place to go with other problems.

The guys at forum.openoffice.org are NOT devs (and continually have to remind people who want new thngs of this). They are incredibly useful if you are a LibreOffice/OpenOffice user with a problem UNLESS that problem involves Office Open XML (OOXML - Microsoft's *x file formats). Then you hit the nerve/blind spot of the forum. The party-line can be summarized as follows:

OOXML was developed by Microsoft to tick the boxes that large organisation want ticked when investing in Software that generates documents that they might actually want to read again 3 versions down the line.

ODF (Open Document Format - Open/LibreOffice and various other packages (mainly Linux)) ticks the same boxes.

OOXML is a badly documented "standard" that not even Microsoft use for their documents, so why should we struggle to support it.

The answer to that question is, of course, that in the real world, people save their stuff in the package's default format and send it to you regardless of whether or not you can read/write it back. You have to cope, because educating other people in other workplaces is completely impossible (see below). Personally, I save their docx documents as doc before I send it back. No-one's complained (noticed?)

(Aside: the organisation I work for changed briefly to openoffice.org for new PCs when they hit Microsoft Licensing problems. So the folk at the coal face had to adapt to OOo (never updated). Management "need" advanced tools like Excel so they updated to the latest versions of Microsoft office and gaily spray unreadable documents at their minions. Luckily they are generally not worth reading.)

Re: May well be time to jump to Firefox

It's a beta. it's not finished (i hope)

But...

I was going to say that...

Re: Anybody working on superguns?

In Bob Shaw's "Tomorrow Lies in Ambush", the hero has a company using a huge gun (in Iceland IIRC) to put stuff in orbit.

Bob Shaw, sadly neglected and missed writer.

Re: Apparently, we are special

I'm a microbiologist who handles lab IT support. I've de-virused many home PCs, but nobody's ever asked me to process their throat (or other bit) swab...

Re: carry space

Thumbs down! Really.

What, just because I have a wheelchair, I don't get to criticise an electric car! Or do I not deserve one? Or is it just the whining you're objecting to?

I could understand not bothering to click anything, I'm aware that needing to carry a wheelchair is a specialised job, but thumbs down!!

Re: Waiting for a review

Yeah, peer review. 'Cause that always works...

Re: Paper wins

@Mahatma Coat

"...Not one has ever failed..."

As I discovered to my cost (when I catalogued my book collection), those priceless Lionel Fanthorpe-penned novels published in the '50s were NOT printed on acid-free paper...

Re: Got both - dont care which is supposed to be best.

@Ian Emery "PPS, Over 40 and not humming shiny happy people - still humming Dumb Ways to Die :-0"

Venus in Furs...

Re: Well if you're going to be picky

It's so the streams don't cross. That would be bad...

Re: So why isn't the Mayan civilisation still around?

The Mayans DID notice that the end of the World was nigh...and scarpered (didn't even thank us for the fish...)

Re: USPTO

No, I think @thomas k is correct here. The important piece of his statement is "if the work is not made available to purchase..."

If the original owners of the copyrighted work or their accredited agent are no longer interested in profiting from their work, then I see nothing wrong with it being made freely available so that others can still enjoy it. (NOT resell it for profit, that's not in the spirit of the thing.)

I'm thinking of out-of-print books and music here, but fill your own passion in.

+1

"I was using Opera 5.something. I downloaded Firefox and tried it at work for a week before switching back again. It's nice and all, but Firefox has always been a bit of a bloater."

Firefox was slow as hell too, going back to Opera was a pleasure.

Re: Was it here?

It could have been. Where I work all USB ports are locked down and don't let you plug a stick into them unless it's an authorized encrypted one (like the supplied ones that crashed the PCs when they tried to run their setup program). When reps and visiting lecturers turn up with a USB stick, we just laugh... (then we dig out our non-networked laptop with the CD burner and burn a CD).

<aside>One visiting lecturer turned up with a USB stick, which when we finally (illegally) accessed the contents contained a .key file. Sigh. </aside>

Re: Help ma Boab!

Whit's wrang wi a Glasgae accent? Can yir mammy sew, ye bampot ye?

Re: Gravity removes pin

Or you could tie a hugely long string to a tree, balloon hits altitude, pin pulled. Job done.

Re: .nb

"...North Britain was a perfectly legit ENGLISH Victorian term for Scotland..."

There, fixed it for you...

http://www.guffsturdpolish.com/

That is all

No wait...

http:/dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-polishing-a-turd.html

I'm sure...

@itzman. I'm sure that I've seen the sun shining on tower blocks. There's nothing intrinsically wrong about using multilevel growing areas except maybe the logistics involved in irrigation...

Well.

...luckily I have no need to cross the border...

yup...

You're naive...

hmmm

What? Like one of these http://steampunkworkshop.com/victorian-all-one-pc ?

Weeelll

You'd want a kill matic 9000 wielder to be sober wouldn't you...