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Invisible wrote:
> (Although, in fairness, in Word 2003 is seems somewhat more useful than
> in Word 97.)
In fairness, W2003 is the first *major* step up from W97, imo.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Remember the good old days, when we
used to complain about cryptography
being export-restricted?
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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospam com> wrote:
> They're all tied to
I have for long wondered why companies are so eager to tie their vital
documents to a closed proprietary format owned by one company who has sole
control on when and how the format is supported.
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> They're all tied to
>
> I have for long wondered why companies are so eager to tie their vital
> documents to a closed proprietary format owned by one company who has sole
> control on when and how the format is supported.
I can think of several reasons.
* Few if any really viable alternatives exist. (That's starting to
change, slowly.)
* You are completely dependent on the company that makes the factory
floor equipment you use to not suddenly decide to stop supporting it -
why not your software?
* Nobody really realises there's a potential problem. (After all, "big"
companies never go under, do they?)
* Nobody has thought about it.
* Everybody else does it. (Cool reason, eh?)
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On Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:14:24 -0500, Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> They're all tied to
>
> I have for long wondered why companies are so eager to tie their vital
> documents to a closed proprietary format owned by one company who has
> sole control on when and how the format is supported.
Well, for this particular instance, it's because the tool available was
the best tool out there at the time.
And many argue that it still is. We've had elements of our organization
who wanted to move to LaTeX or other tools (got one guy who's trying to
replicate the Frame formats in OpenOffice, of all things), but in the
end, they just didn't meet the needs of the organization.
Frame can export SGML as well, but a lot of its own structure and
elements get lost along the way, or so I'm told. I'm no expert in
creating the formats, but I use them (and was a heavy user); having
written books using Word 2.0 templates and using Frame, I'd *never* use a
word processor for that kind of work if I could possibly avoid it.
Jim
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On Tue, 06 Nov 2007 21:59:34 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> * Few if any really viable alternatives exist. (That's starting to
> change, slowly.)
This is the most common reason, actually - though it stems from others
(such as "everyone else uses it", which leads to few choices in the
market).
There was a really good article in a recent issue of Linux Format (out of
the UK) where they talked about using Scribus instead of using whatever
tool it is they use for the magazine (something Mac-based, IIRC). The
article itself was written entirely using Scribus, and there were a few
things that had to be adapted because Scribus didn't support the
necessary functionality, but in the end, it was a fairly viable option if
they could live without a few things (which of course they couldn't).
I can remember a time when I was told that the big Linux vendors (RedHat,
SuSE, maybe Canonical) used Windows-based systems for some of their
business functions. Seems kinda odd until you remember that they do
actually have a business to run, and sometimes that means picking
software that you would rather not pick. I'm sure, for example, that
Oracle will be using Windows systems internally, and it must drive
Ellison nuts that he has to pay anything to Microsoft...
Jim
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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> I can remember a time when I was told that the big Linux vendors (RedHat,
> SuSE, maybe Canonical) used Windows-based systems for some of their
> business functions. Seems kinda odd until you remember that they do
> actually have a business to run, and sometimes that means picking
> software that you would rather not pick. I'm sure, for example, that
> Oracle will be using Windows systems internally, and it must drive
> Ellison nuts that he has to pay anything to Microsoft...
Reminds me of a reverse case: Microsoft's hotmail still runs on FreeBSD,
which is a PitA for Microsoft PR-wise. They have been trying to move the
entire hotmail system to Windows for over 4 years. Still runs on FreeBSD,
though.
Kind of "if it works, don't fix it... except if it's running on a
"competitor's" system and you have been badmouthing your competitors
for two decades".
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Reminds me of a reverse case: Microsoft's hotmail still runs on FreeBSD,
Do you have a cite for this? I heard about 10 years ago it ran on
Solaris, and about 6 years ago they'd moved it to Windows. So I'm
curious if you have access to actual current information?
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Remember the good old days, when we
used to complain about cryptography
being export-restricted?
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On Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:43:46 -0500, Warp wrote:
> Reminds me of a reverse case: Microsoft's hotmail still runs on
> FreeBSD,
> which is a PitA for Microsoft PR-wise. They have been trying to move the
> entire hotmail system to Windows for over 4 years. Still runs on
> FreeBSD, though.
Yep, and it's been fun to watch that as well. :-)
Jim
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Do you have a cite for this?
Google?
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Do you have a cite for this?
>
> Google?
>
Googling on the obvious "hotmail freebsd" pair brings up articles from
2001 saying MS still uses FreeBSD, and articles from 2000 where MS
outlines how they will upgrade it. Considering they never took the
system down during the upgrade, it was all C++, and they had limited
staff *and* the stuff that was hard to scale out (naming services,
database) was already running on NT, taking 4 years to move entirely
from FreeBSD to Win2K doesn't seem that odd to me.
I was wondering if you had any information about the 2001 upgrade that
was more recent than, say, 2001? Since it *is* six years later, it's
kind of silly to continue to say "Hotmail still runs BSD" without any
additional information?
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Remember the good old days, when we
used to complain about cryptography
being export-restricted?
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