scott wrote:
>> OTOH, M$'s products aren't exactly "cheap", by any stretch of the 
>> imagination.
> 
> I don't think paying 2x-3x the price of a game for your OS and Office 
> suite is expensive, and I guess most other people don't either.

I've yet to meet anybody who thinks MS's prices are reasonable. (OTOH, 
everybody wants things to be cheaper, so I guess that's not saying a lot.)

>> I think what most people really object to is paying vast sums of money 
>> for a product that isn't actually all that good. Let's face if, when 
>> you run KLogic and it crashes for the 18th time, you think to yourself 
>> "oh well, it least it didn't cost me anything". If you paid £400 for a 
>> piece of software and it behaved the same way, you'd be pretty upset.
> 
> Agreed, but my Windows or Office doesn't crash 18 times, and I didn't 
> pay 400 pounds for it :-)

Windows itself usually doesn't crash much if at all, provided you're 
careful with it. But Office? I've seen it crash more than 18 times per 
day. :-P

Also...

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/123456

M$ Office 2007, full package, £350.

Pretty close, considering I guessed the number off the top of my head. I 
see Vista is currently selling for £180 or so.

If you think that's "cheap", then good for you. To me, that seems 
seriously steep. Hell, the super-dupa-ultra-mega edition of Nero only 
costs £40 or so, and everybody complains about how over-priced that is.

> However we did pay 10 thousand pounds for some CAD software, and that 
> crashes occasionally (which is infinitly more often than the OS!).

OK, that's pretty lame. I'd ask why you don't go use a better package 
instead, but I suspect the answer is going to be some combination of

- There aren't any better products to choose from.
- Our clients use this product and we need to be compatible.
- We've bought it now so we can't get our money back anyway.

If I paid that amount of money for something that didn't work right, I'd 
be *pissed*! o_O

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> 
> Windows itself usually doesn't crash much if at all, provided you're 
> careful with it. But Office? I've seen it crash more than 18 times per 
> day. :-P
> 

heh. I think Word has a hidden option named "Automatically corrupt 
documents as they are saved to make them irrecoverable"

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

>> Windows itself usually doesn't crash much if at all, provided you're 
>> careful with it. But Office? I've seen it crash more than 18 times per 
>> day. :-P
> 
> heh. I think Word has a hidden option named "Automatically corrupt 
> documents as they are saved to make them irrecoverable"

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
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Invisible wrote:
>>> Windows itself usually doesn't crash much if at all, provided you're 
>>> careful with it. But Office? I've seen it crash more than 18 times 
>>> per day. :-P
>>
>> heh. I think Word has a hidden option named "Automatically corrupt 
>> documents as they are saved to make them irrecoverable"
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 

I remember that one :)

heh seriously, it seems like any time I work on a non-trivial document 
more than the average letter Word begins corrupting the document. I 
wrote a huge document for an API I created, only to have word chew it to 
pieces as it saved. :/

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

> heh seriously, it seems like any time I work on a non-trivial document 
> more than the average letter Word begins corrupting the document. I wrote 
> a huge document for an API I created, only to have word chew it to pieces 
> as it saved. :/

Funny, we work continuously on 100+ page spec documents for all our products 
in Word, and I don't recall ever having see any corrupted ones.  It's not 
like they are simple, they are full of diagrams, tables, photos, embedded 
CAD drawings, cross-references etc.

What version of Word is that you're using?

Did you try the "Open and repair" option and then resave it?

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> heh seriously, it seems like any time I work on a non-trivial document 
>> more than the average letter Word begins corrupting the document. I 
>> wrote a huge document for an API I created, only to have word chew it 
>> to pieces as it saved. :/
> 
> Funny, we work continuously on 100+ page spec documents for all our 
> products in Word, and I don't recall ever having see any corrupted 
> ones.  It's not like they are simple, they are full of diagrams, tables, 
> photos, embedded CAD drawings, cross-references etc.
> 
> What version of Word is that you're using?
> 
> Did you try the "Open and repair" option and then resave it?
> 
> 

2003 I think.. yep. Open and Repair killed all the formatting and 
jumbled half the content. :) I was able to piece it together and 
reformat ... eventually .. but it seriously hosed the document.

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

> 2003 I think.. yep. Open and Repair killed all the formatting and 
> jumbled half the content. :) I was able to piece it together and 
> reformat ... eventually .. but it seriously hosed the document.

And after that did it get corrupted again?

Post a reply to this message

Mike Raiford wrote:

> heh seriously, it seems like any time I work on a non-trivial document 
> more than the average letter Word begins corrupting the document. I 
> wrote a huge document for an API I created, only to have word chew it to 
> pieces as it saved. :/

I used to write all my assignments with Word at college, and at uni. 
However, one time Word *ate* my assignment, 20 minutes before the handin 
date. (No, *obviously* I didn't have a backup. You don't expect a 200K 
file on a network drive to suddenly go down like that just because you 
make a few spelling alterations.)

 From that day forth, all my assignments were written in HTML. (Or later 
LaTeX.)

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:

> Funny, we work continuously on 100+ page spec documents for all our 
> products in Word, and I don't recall ever having see any corrupted 
> ones.  It's not like they are simple, they are full of diagrams, tables, 
> photos, embedded CAD drawings, cross-references etc.

This defies belief.

It has been my experience that as soon as you ask Word to do anything 
remotely nontrivial, it slows to a crawl, produces gigantic files, and 
eventually starts to function eratically (e.g., sections of text being 
duplicated, random formatting changes, deleted text "moving" to other 
parts of the document, etc.)

Quite how you could produce really *large* documents with it I have no 
idea...

Post a reply to this message

> I've yet to meet anybody who thinks MS's prices are reasonable. (OTOH, 
> everybody wants things to be cheaper, so I guess that's not saying a lot.)

Yeh, a significant proportion of the population use price as the only 
criteria when buying anything.  They will go into a shop and buy the 
cheapest vacuum cleaner, the cheapest washing machine, then go and buy the 
cheapest car insurance, the cheapest food at the supermarket, etc.  Trying 
to make a quality service or product for these people is just a waste of 
time, they won't spend the money...

> M$ Office 2007, full package, £350.

...but some people do (usually if they are a company) and so companies need 
to take advantage of this.  Notice how the "home" version of Office 2007 is 
60 pounds but the full version is 350 like you said.  What's the difference? 
The 6x price increase certainly doesn't seem to be justified, but I suspect 
that way it makes the most money for MS overall.

> Pretty close, considering I guessed the number off the top of my head. I 
> see Vista is currently selling for £180 or so.

Again, people who actually pay for this themselves have a much cheaper 
option, whereas people who don't care so much about money get stung for a 
way more expensive option.  It happens everywhere, not just in software.

> If you think that's "cheap", then good for you.

It seems completely in-line with other software available, which I assume 
has kind of settled down to the market price.

> OK, that's pretty lame. I'd ask why you don't go use a better package 
> instead, but I suspect the answer is going to be some combination of
>
> - There aren't any better products to choose from.

More specifically, the good things about the package we have far outweighs 
the fact that it crashes sometimes.  And the other packages probably crash 
sometimes too :-)

> - Our clients use this product and we need to be compatible.

Yes.

> - We've bought it now so we can't get our money back anyway.

True, but we still have to pay around 3K a year for maintenance.

> If I paid that amount of money for something that didn't work right, I'd 
> be *pissed*! o_O

I don't think they expect individuals to buy their software...

Post a reply to this message

> This defies belief.
>
> It has been my experience that as soon as you ask Word to do anything 
> remotely nontrivial, it slows to a crawl, produces gigantic files, and 
> eventually starts to function eratically (e.g., sections of text being 
> duplicated, random formatting changes, deleted text "moving" to other 
> parts of the document, etc.)
>
> Quite how you could produce really *large* documents with it I have no 
> idea...

Heh, I would post one here but I suspect that's not allowed :-)

Seriously, we never seem to have any problems editting these files. Maybe 
because everyone is using the same version of Word and the template files 
are not corrupted to start with :-)

Post a reply to this message

>> M$ Office 2007, full package, £350.
> 
> ...but some people do (usually if they are a company) and so companies 
> need to take advantage of this.  Notice how the "home" version of Office 
> 2007 is 60 pounds but the full version is 350 like you said.  What's the 
> difference? The 6x price increase certainly doesn't seem to be 
> justified, but I suspect that way it makes the most money for MS overall.

That's because the "home" version has most of the stuff missing. I 
actually fell into this trap myself; I was asked to obtain a copy of 
Office, so I bought the home version. When we got it, we discovered that 
it doesn't contain the required components. So then we had to go spend 
*more* money...

>> If you think that's "cheap", then good for you.
> 
> It seems completely in-line with other software available, which I 
> assume has kind of settled down to the market price.

Are you crazy?? Most of the software I see around me costs £20 - £40. 
£350 is seriously expensive!

Hell, even Apple sell their stuff for less than that, and Apple are 
legendary for being expensive.

I wouldn't mind paying vast amounts of money for something if I got a 
quality product for it. (E.g., I own several software synthesizers which 
cost almost as much as M$ Office, or even more.) What makes me angry is 
paying vast sums of money for a crap product.

>> If I paid that amount of money for something that didn't work right, 
>> I'd be *pissed*! o_O
> 
> I don't think they expect individuals to buy their software...

Well, true, but you'd think in a commercial environment, wasted time due 
to preventable software issues would be an even bigger deal...

Post a reply to this message

>> Quite how you could produce really *large* documents with it I have no 
>> idea...
> 
> Heh, I would post one here but I suspect that's not allowed :-)

Oh, I'm sure you've done it. It just seems so utterly contrary to my 
experience that it seems impossible. A bit like zero-gravity...

> Seriously, we never seem to have any problems editting these files. 
> Maybe because everyone is using the same version of Word and the 
> template files are not corrupted to start with :-)

At college and uni I wasn't using any templates. :-P Nor on my mum's PC, 
for that matter.

And maybe there are corrupted templates, but that begs the question: how 
did they *get* corrupted to start with? Maybe because of yet another 
Word crash? Hmm? :-P

Post a reply to this message

> Are you crazy?? Most of the software I see around me costs £20 - £40. £350 
> is seriously expensive!

60 pounds for a pretty complex word processor, spreadsheet and presentation 
package seems completely reasonable to me.

290 extra pounds for an email client, desktop publisher and database seems a 
bit extreme, but this is aimed at companies, not individuals, so of course 
they make the price higher.

The alternative is to charge 100 pounds for the home edition, and 200 for 
the professional edition, but I suspect they would make vastly less money 
that way.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> M$'s problems are because they produce poor quality products.

That's their reputation, but the OS doesn't have significantly more bugs per 
line than Linux does, according to SANS.

I'd love to see something objective to back up your assertion that MS 
products are poor quality, other than "everybody knows that."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> unecessarily complicated, 

That kind of depends on whether you need the complicated bits, don't you 
think? The opposite of "unnecessarily complicated" is "lacking features."

> poorly documented, 

MS has some of the best documentation out there, and they teach classes in 
using their stuff. Just because you never learned it doesn't mean it isn't 
out there.

> resource-inefficient, 

Somewhat, but what are you comparing it to?  How resource-efficient *you* 
could make it if you didn't have any commercial constraints?

> insecure, 

Somewhat. Much of that is due to people not installing patches or people not 
using the system as designed.

> Let's suppose that a particular Word document is corrupted. Why should 
> that make Word crash? Shouldn't it just pop up a message saying "I can't 
> read this file, it seems to be corrupted"? Isn't that what "graceful 
> failure" is all about? But no, Word just crashes outright.

Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. If it's corrupted in a way that's 
hard to check, it crashes, because if it didn't, you'd be using up even 
*more* resources to be doing the checking. See?

> I opened the same file in OpenOffice, and it just opened up as if there 
> was nothing wrong with it. I saved it again, and it has worked in Word 
> ever since.

It probably deleted whatever it was that was confusing Office.

> Why is it that Word, a premium product designed and produced by the 
> richest software company on earth, cannot do something that OpenOffice 
> can? 

Why is it that OpenOffice can't do something that Word can?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> desired. (E.g., I managed to find a KB article explaining how to use the 
> Recovery Console. Except that, actually, it just duplicates, word for 
> word, the terse command help built into the Recovery Console...)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

First link on "use recovery console" at msdn.microsoft.com.

You *are* searching MSDN, right?

What did you expect it to tell you? It's a command line interpreter. Looking 
for how to use it is going to give you the list of command lines it interprets.

I suspect what you're really saying is "I had a specific problem I didn't 
know how to solve, and I couldn't find a specific piece of documentation 
telling me how to solve that except for the ones that required me to learn 
more general priciples"?

> trying to do anything moderately nontrivial, the documentation tends to 
> not help at all... 

I disagree. Plus, if you're trying to do something *really* sophisticated, 
like run a company's infrastructure, you go to a class to learn how to do 
it, just like with every other major piece of software or hardware.

It sounds like you have specific problems you want solved, like "my backup 
tape doesn't rewind before it tries to verify the backup", and you're 
looking for documentation to solve that exact problem. Such documentation 
*never* exists, for any product.

Gee, ya know, the owner's manual of my car doesn't tell me how to drive *or* 
how to fix it! What do ya know?

> I don't know, but you'd think they could at least install an exception 
> handler around the load routine so that if it fails, it doesn't crash 
> all of Word, just the document load engine. Or *something*...

When you say "crash", what do you mean?  It just exits with a GPF or 
something?  Guess what: that's the exception handler. :-)

> OTOH, OO is developed by a bunch of bored boffins in their spare time, 

No it's not. It was developed by Sun so they could sell office software that 
doesn't need to run on Intel hardware.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> which tells me that you can use bootcfg without the /scan to avoid 
> spending hours scanning all your drives.

Hours scanning your drives? bootcfg /scan is the equivalent of building 
boot.ini, or the GRUB menu. It's not chkdsk.

> Maybe the load routine works fine, it just loads some corrupted data so 
> when another part of the program comes to use it that bit crashes?

Welcome to unsafe languages. :-)

> I think you overestimate how many people MS has working on such things.  

And how much money they have. They just laid off a few thousand people, too.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> The command descriptions given here are a word-for-word reproduction of 
> the interactive command help. It does not explain anywhere, for example, 
> that bootcfg is merely a programatic way of editing BOOT.INI.

Given the description of the name and options, what did you *think* it was for?

 > (Also, it
> seems that /scan, /add and /rebuild *all* scan your disks for hours - 
> I've tried it.)

Really? I can't imagine why it would take hours to scan for Windows 
installations.  Mine never took more than maybe three or four seconds. Maybe 
if your disks are screwed up enough you need to scan them, it takes longer.

> *This* article explains it properly:
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291980

But, you know, MS documentation never covers the stuff you need.

> Thinking about it, the load routine probably does just dump a bunch of 
> pointers directly into Word, which probably then trips the rendering 
> engine over or something. (I've seen Word go into in infinite loop 
> instead of crashing also. That, at least, you'd think would be 
> detectable quite easily.)

Doing so would require time and resources, both programming and end-user. 
*You* had this problem, so *you* think the bloat in this instance is OK. But 
you complain the program takes too many resources, because it's doing things 
*you* don't personally need.

> Uh... they're the largest software corporation on the face of the Earth? 

And they do a bunch more than just working on Office.

> Well, if M$ doesn't consider "making our products work properly" to be a 
> "profitable" thing to do, then there's your answer. :-}

Nobody considers "making our products work properly" a profitable thing, if 
you count "solving every last bug that someone somewhere might encounter" to 
be "working properly."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Fixing every tiny bug might be infeasible, but you'd think they could at 
> least fix the huge ones.

Like what? That you had *one* document that was corrupt and couldn't be opened?

> Anyway, somebody asked why people hate M$. And I gave an answer: because 
> M$ does not consider performance or reliability to be "important" enough 
> to make any attempt to improve them.

Your hyperbole is amusing. "I hit a bug in Word. Therefore, neither 
performance nor reliability is worth spending *any* time working on."

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> I've yet to meet anybody who thinks MS's prices are reasonable. (OTOH, 

> everybody wants things to be cheaper, so I guess that's not saying a lo
t.)

No. You know *lots* of people who think it's reasonable. You've also met 

lots of people who would rather pay less.

Everyone at your office who actually bought Microsoft products thinks the
 
price was reasonable.

> Windows itself usually doesn't crash much if at all, provided you're 
> careful with it. But Office? I've seen it crash more than 18 times per 

> day. :-P

Aren't you running the one that's like ten years old?  Office 97 or somet
hing?

> Also...
> 
> http://www.ebuyer.com/product/123456
> 
> M$ Office 2007, full package, £350.

If you buy it one-off, it's pretty expensive. But given that you're buyin
g 
something like 8 programs, it's not all that bad. And it does a lot more 

than Nero does. If you really need a business contact manager, then a 
half-day's pay for software that handles all your business presentation 
needs isn't that bad.

> If you think that's "cheap", then good for you.

It is for a professional.

> To me, that seems seriously steep. 

You're not a professional.

> Hell, the super-dupa-ultra-mega edition of Nero only 
> costs £40 or so, and everybody complains about how over-priced tha
t is.

Except, you know, the people who are professionals at producing CDs, perh
aps.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

>> M$ Office 2007, full package, £350.
> 
> If you buy it one-off, it's pretty expensive. But given that you're 
> buying something like 8 programs, it's not all that bad. And it does a 
> lot more than Nero does. If you really need a business contact manager, 
> then a half-day's pay for software that handles all your business 
> presentation needs isn't that bad.
>

Compared to Photo$hop it's darned cheap..


-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:55:16 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> I'm guessing the first time she visits a site that demands ActiveX...?
>> 
>> Outside of Microsoft-owned sites, there are sites that still use
>> ActiveX?  Really?
>> 
>> I don't run into them *ever* unless I'm downloading something from the
>> MSDN site.
> 
> The server administration console for Trend Micro requires ActiveX, for
> example. (Not that this matters to a home user. I'm pretty sure I've
> seen various Internet equipment or ISP websites that also demand ActiveX
> though.)

Well, like you said, that's not a public website, nor is it one I'm 
likely to need to use myself.

> I'm drawing a blank on real "websites" that require ActiveX, but I think
> there are a few outside M$.

Probably not many, though - for anyone who wants to be cross-platform 
compatible (including being usable by Mac users), they'd have to avoid it.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:53:28 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> I'm guessing also that a lot of those pointless Flash games and
>>> similar only work well in IE.
>> 
>> Um, not if they're Flash games....Flash runs in Firefox....
> 
> And how much do you want to bet that the entire site markup is only
> tested with IE?

Anyone who designs a website and doesn't run it through a W3C checker is 
asking for trouble.  Given that Firefox has increased marketshare in the 
past year, not working with FF is going to increasingly become more of an 
issue for those sites.

That said, I've also not had a problem with *any* of the pointless Flash 
games not running on Linux.

But all the professional web developers I use test with multiple browsers 
and operating systems.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

>> I've yet to meet anybody who thinks MS's prices are reasonable. (OTOH, 
>> everybody wants things to be cheaper, so I guess that's not saying a 
>> lot.)
> 
> No. You know *lots* of people who think it's reasonable. You've also met 
> lots of people who would rather pay less.
> 
> Everyone at your office who actually bought Microsoft products thinks 
> the price was reasonable.

Everyone at my office who bought Microsoft products bought them with 
their PC. :-P

Most people are shocked and dissapointed when I tell them how much the 
software costs by itself.

>> Windows itself usually doesn't crash much if at all, provided you're 
>> careful with it. But Office? I've seen it crash more than 18 times per 
>> day. :-P
> 
> Aren't you running the one that's like ten years old?  Office 97 or 
> something?

We were using Office 97. (And, unsurprisingly, when I was at uni 10 
years ago, we were using a 10-year-old Office, yes.) Now we're using 
Office 2003 at work. It still glitches, but the people who use it have 
gradually figured out tricks to get round it.

>> M$ Office 2007, full package, £350.
> 
> If you buy it one-off, it's pretty expensive. But given that you're 
> buying something like 8 programs, it's not all that bad. And it does a 
> lot more than Nero does. If you really need a business contact manager, 
> then a half-day's pay for software that handles all your business 
> presentation needs isn't that bad.
> 
>> If you think that's "cheap", then good for you.
> 
> It is for a professional.
> 
>> To me, that seems seriously steep. 
> 
> You're not a professional.

The trouble with this argument is, the so-called "home" version doesn't 
have half the stuff in it that home users want. I got caught out with 
this. Some guy wanted to edit a PowerPoint presentation for a local 
gathering, so I bought him a copy of Office Home, and... guess what? 
This "office" is actually just Word and Excell. That's a hell of a lot 
of money just for a buggy wordprocessor and a reasonable spreadsheet.

(I had expected that the home version would just leave out the high-end 
stuff like InfoPath that home users won't need. THAT would have made 
sense. But no, apparently not...)

>> Hell, the super-dupa-ultra-mega edition of Nero only costs £40 or so, 
>> and everybody complains about how over-priced that is.
> 
> Except, you know, the people who are professionals at producing CDs, 
> perhaps.

I'm pretty sure professionals wouldn't buy a consumer-oriented product 
such as Nero. (The premium edition takes over your entire PC in an 
almost viral fashion...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

>> Fixing every tiny bug might be infeasible, but you'd think they could 
>> at least fix the huge ones.
> 
> Like what? That you had *one* document that was corrupt and couldn't be 
> opened?

Hahaha. Oh yeah, one document. Because, in the time I've been using 
Word, it has only ever screwed up one document. Ha. If only...

> Your hyperbole is amusing. "I hit a bug in Word. Therefore, neither 
> performance nor reliability is worth spending *any* time working on."

Have you noticed that every version of Windows/Word/Access/whatever has 
been slower than the one before?

I've yet to see anybody complain about Excel crashing (I assume it must 
do occasionally), but Word is legendary for its instability. You act 
like I'm making this up or something...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Some guy wanted to edit a PowerPoint presentation for a local 
> gathering, so I bought him a copy of Office Home, and... guess what? 

You didn't read the documentation? I'm pretty sure it's *easy* to figure out 
what comes with each version of Office before you buy it, so I think I know 
where the "microsoft doesn't document stuff" meme comes from. :-)

> I'm pretty sure professionals wouldn't buy a consumer-oriented product 
> such as Nero. 

Right. It's *too* cheap. :-)


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

>>>> I'm guessing also that a lot of those pointless Flash games and
>>>> similar only work well in IE.
>>> Um, not if they're Flash games....Flash runs in Firefox....
>> And how much do you want to bet that the entire site markup is only
>> tested with IE?
> 
> Anyone who designs a website and doesn't run it through a W3C checker is 
> asking for trouble.

I agree. But we're also talking about the same kinds of sites that use 
ActiveX to silently install spyware on your PC while you're playing the 
new shiny game, so... ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Have you noticed that every version of Windows/Word/Access/whatever has 
> been slower than the one before?

No.

> I've yet to see anybody complain about Excel crashing (I assume it must 
> do occasionally), but Word is legendary for its instability. You act 
> like I'm making this up or something...

No. I'm acting like some people seem to have no problem with it, and others 
seem to have problems all the time. Me, I can't get Linux to work for crap, 
even where web sites say its supported. I tend to think I'm just at one end 
of a long tail.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

>> Some guy wanted to edit a PowerPoint presentation for a local 
>> gathering, so I bought him a copy of Office Home, and... guess what? 
> 
> You didn't read the documentation?

For my sins, no. I just assumed that "Office Home Edition" would have 
the parts of Office that are useful to a home user, without the parts 
that only an office worker would want. I was wrong.

> I know where the "microsoft doesn't document stuff" meme comes from. :-)

It's OK. I'm used to people telling me I'm stupid. I've had to put up 
with it for my entire life. I guess one more person won't hurt...

>> I'm pretty sure professionals wouldn't buy a consumer-oriented product 
>> such as Nero. 
> 
> Right. It's *too* cheap. :-)

Or rather, professionals don't want wizzy "let me do this trivial 
operation for you automatically because you're too stupid" features, 
they want stuff that actually makes their job easier and lets them 
control what the software does.

Go install Norton Antivirus. Watch as your PC slows down and it pops up 
windows every 5 minutes letting you "your PC is at risk" or "an attack 
attempt has been blocked". Now go install Symtantec Antivirus Corportate 
Edition. Trust me, you'll never even realise it's running. (There's not 
even a tray icon.) Different target audiences. (And price tags, as it 
happens...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> For my sins, no. I just assumed that "Office Home Edition" would have 
> the parts of Office that are useful to a home user, without the parts 
> that only an office worker would want. I was wrong.

I don't know of too many "home users" that make public presentations.

>> I know where the "microsoft doesn't document stuff" meme comes from. :-)
> 
> It's OK. I'm used to people telling me I'm stupid. I've had to put up 
> with it for my entire life. I guess one more person won't hurt...

I'm teasing you, dear. :-)

> they want stuff that actually makes their job easier and lets them 
> control what the software does.

Yep. And they're willing to learn how to use the tools, even sometimes 
paying money to do so.  (And they're probably not using a PC to make the 
disks in the first place.)

> even a tray icon.) Different target audiences. (And price tags, as it 

Exactly.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:20:59 +0100, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> The trouble with this argument is, the so-called "home" version doesn't  
> have half the stuff in it that home users want. I got caught out with  
> this. Some guy wanted to edit a PowerPoint presentation for a local  
> gathering, so I bought him a copy of Office Home, and... guess what?  
> This "office" is actually just Word and Excell. That's a hell of a lot  
> of money just for a buggy wordprocessor and a reasonable spreadsheet.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101674081033.aspx

The Home/Student suite includes PowerPoint. What makes you think otherwise?


-- 
FE

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:36:18 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>>>> I'm guessing also that a lot of those pointless Flash games and
>>>>> similar only work well in IE.
>>>> Um, not if they're Flash games....Flash runs in Firefox....
>>> And how much do you want to bet that the entire site markup is only
>>> tested with IE?
>> 
>> Anyone who designs a website and doesn't run it through a W3C checker
>> is asking for trouble.
> 
> I agree. But we're also talking about the same kinds of sites that use
> ActiveX to silently install spyware on your PC while you're playing the
> new shiny game, so... ;-)

Yeah, well, it doesn't bother me that those ActiveX controls simply won't 
install on my systems. ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:40:42 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> For my sins, no. I just assumed that "Office Home Edition" would have
> the parts of Office that are useful to a home user, without the parts
> that only an office worker would want. I was wrong.

How many home users really have a need to create presentations?

Jim

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message 
news:498335df$1@news.povray.org...
> Invisible wrote:
>> unecessarily complicated,
>
> That kind of depends on whether you need the complicated bits, don't you 
> think? The opposite of "unnecessarily complicated" is "lacking features."

Its code isn't a sparkling paragon of elegant efficiency.  Shoulda used 
Haskell!

*wink*

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net
>
>> poorly documented,
>
> MS has some of the best documentation out there, and they teach classes in 
> using their stuff. Just because you never learned it doesn't mean it isn't 
> out there.
>
>> resource-inefficient,
>
> Somewhat, but what are you comparing it to?  How resource-efficient *you* 
> could make it if you didn't have any commercial constraints?
>
>> insecure,
>
> Somewhat. Much of that is due to people not installing patches or people 
> not using the system as designed.
>
>> Let's suppose that a particular Word document is corrupted. Why should 
>> that make Word crash? Shouldn't it just pop up a message saying "I can't 
>> read this file, it seems to be corrupted"? Isn't that what "graceful 
>> failure" is all about? But no, Word just crashes outright.
>
> Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. If it's corrupted in a way that's 
> hard to check, it crashes, because if it didn't, you'd be using up even 
> *more* resources to be doing the checking. See?
>
>> I opened the same file in OpenOffice, and it just opened up as if there 
>> was nothing wrong with it. I saved it again, and it has worked in Word 
>> ever since.
>
> It probably deleted whatever it was that was confusing Office.
>
>> Why is it that Word, a premium product designed and produced by the 
>> richest software company on earth, cannot do something that OpenOffice 
>> can?
>
> Why is it that OpenOffice can't do something that Word can?
>
> -- 
>   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
>   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
>   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
>   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

>>> Anyone who designs a website and doesn't run it through a W3C checker
>>> is asking for trouble.
>> I agree. But we're also talking about the same kinds of sites that use
>> ActiveX to silently install spyware on your PC while you're playing the
>> new shiny game, so... ;-)
> 
> Yeah, well, it doesn't bother me that those ActiveX controls simply won't 
> install on my systems. ;-)

Nor me - but then, I don't visit that kind of website in the first 
place! ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> unecessarily complicated, 
> 
> That kind of depends on whether you need the complicated bits, don't you 
> think? The opposite of "unnecessarily complicated" is "lacking features."

You know, I *was* going to construct a long and detailed reply carefully 
explaining why you're wrong and I'm right. But you know what? I've just 
got home from another exhilerating dance class, and I don't actually 
*care* any more. I know I'm right, and if you don't... well, right now, 
I'm not fussed. I'm going to go have a nice relaxing shower! :-D

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> and I don't actually *care* any more. I know I'm right, 

Excellent!  Glad to hear it. It's a stupid thing to argue about anyway. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:34:25 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>>> Anyone who designs a website and doesn't run it through a W3C checker
>>>> is asking for trouble.
>>> I agree. But we're also talking about the same kinds of sites that use
>>> ActiveX to silently install spyware on your PC while you're playing
>>> the new shiny game, so... ;-)
>> 
>> Yeah, well, it doesn't bother me that those ActiveX controls simply
>> won't install on my systems. ;-)
> 
> Nor me - but then, I don't visit that kind of website in the first
> place! ;-)

And if your users do, then surely you'd want them to be protected from 
the malware....so don't let them run ActiveX and that's one less risk. ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> how M$ products in general tend to be unecessarily complicated, poorly 
>> documented, resource-inefficient, insecure, and so forth.
> 
> TBH I've found MS products to be really well documents, in fact I would 
> say better than any other software I've used.  Really, even if you have 
> a complicated thing you want to do in Excel, the documentation usually 
> has the answer.
> 
Seriously, in my experience, the programs, if it even ships with one, 
has a manual with nothing in it at all, and all the troubleshooting 
things are, "Are you a complete moron? Yes/No", variety. "Real" problems 
usually require going online and googling for fixes from forums, written 
by people that "use" the software, not the people that wrote it. The 
help files with the programs are... marginally better, but not by much, 
and their trouble shooting usually jumps from "Yes, I checked all that 
fracking stuff!", to, "Well, gosh, we don't have a clue what the problem 
is then!" If its something a decent user could figure out without it, or 
a simple command lookup, its great. If something goes wrong that isn't 
"simple" user error, or where you want even moderately non-default 
behavior, you are hosed. And.. There online documentation on the site is 
almost as bad, with pages referring to examples that don't explain 
anything different than the incoherent text did, examples that are 
missing, code that was removed 10 years earlier, because it was for 
something they no longer support, even though the same "problem" is one 
that you need to fix in the new stuff too. And.. in some cases you can't 
even find "current" documentation, even using the links in the software 
you are trying to find the documentations for, either due to it being 
moved, deleted, changes in some obscure way that makes their DB return 
the wrong thing, or just plain never being updated.

In other words, its as bad, in most cases, as other people's products, 
in that it doesn't account for the most common "unusual" problems, and 
"worse" than theirs, in that even when documented, you can't find the 
document explaining where to find the documents, never mind the document 
itself, some times. Which is, imho, worse than stating, "Sorry, we 
didn't bother writing one."

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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scott wrote:
>> Are you crazy?? Most of the software I see around me costs £20 - £40. 
>> £350 is seriously expensive!
> 
> 60 pounds for a pretty complex word processor, spreadsheet and 
> presentation package seems completely reasonable to me.
> 
> 290 extra pounds for an email client, desktop publisher and database 
> seems a bit extreme, but this is aimed at companies, not individuals, so 
> of course they make the price higher.
> 
> The alternative is to charge 100 pounds for the home edition, and 200 
> for the professional edition, but I suspect they would make vastly less 
> money that way.
> 
> 

Its not aimed at companies though. Companies "generally" don't go around 
installing single machines, but buy "bulk" licenses, which gives them 
"discounts" on installs. Sometimes they can even talk MS into handing 
them the stuff for free (though not the upgrades).

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> MS... doesn't. Their goal is just to make things look impressive, and do
>> enough to sell the product. Its not until it becomes obvious that they
>>
> 
> Part of this has been disgussed here before - MS lives by selling
> software (and hardware) and most of computer users don't have a clue of
> what's happening under the bonnet, so they have to do (also) visual
> changes (which aren't always improvements) to make people see a
> difference to older system. Hence one goal automatically is to make
> things look impressive.
> 
> -Aero


And, if they where doing something more than just sticking the "shell" 
of this:

http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?s=technology&c=news&l=on&pic=080324-aptera-car-02.jpg&cap=The+electric+hybrid+Aptera+(greek+for+%22wingless+flight%22)+is+a+3-wheeled+motorcycle+registered+with+DOT+and+the+California+DMV.+The+production+model+will+go+85+mph+and+get+300+mpg%2C+the+company+states.+Credit%3A+Aptera.com&title=

on this:

http://www.omnieye.com/mc/ad-pics/22140345.jpg

I might be a bit more impressed. ;) lol

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> I had no problem moving my home directory to a different partition.
> 
Home, yeah. But.. You don't want to do this "before" you install some 
things, or they break (and yeah, yeah, they don't follow spec, blah, 
blah.. But geeze...), and somehow I doubt that it moved "everything", 
not just the documents.

Main point is, must Linux allow you do do this when setting it up, you 
don't have to "manually" change it later on, when you have been using it 
for weeks, and realize you screwed up.

>> to defraggers that still, to this day, don't have the common sense to 
>> defrag the "unused" space, 
> 
> Sure they do. Have for ages.
> 
Just ran mine recently and watched. It may now crunch the unused space 
(badly though), but not the other.

>> or optimize program access (never mind all the third parties that 
>> figured that one out as far back as Win3.11), to.. an endless list.
> 
> They do that too, and have for ages.
> 
No they don't. Or not visibly, and/or obviously. If anything, load times 
on some things have gotten "worse" since the last defrag I did...

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Seen the lists, seen the rebuttals. Still not impressed. Especially 
>> when some of them are things like "Added a mess of new features to 
>> DirectX", 
> 
> There's a bunch of internal stuff, as well as things like Media Center, 
> .NET, etc.
> 
>> unless it is something in the class of user interfaces, and those tend 
>> to be used to "hide" things you don't want people mucking with,
> 
> Sounds like One True Scotsman syndrome to me.  Because Microsoft doesn't 
> innovate, anything Microsoft does is, by definition, not innovation.
> 
>> FOSS has an excuse for this, they don't have thousands of developers 
>> working 24/7 on *one* project, trying to make it bloody work right. 
> 
> Actually, it's worse. FOSS actually discourages getting projects 
> "finished" and easy to use and reliable, unless it's infrastructure for 
> the people working on other projects. Apache and gcc work great, because 
> on top of *that* people can write code that you can sell without giving 
> it away (like google does, in other words). But if you actually turned 
> out a professional-quality piece of software that needed what it did and 
> it had to work well, you couldn't make money off of maintenance. Hence 
> the dearth of games, accounting software, user electronics, and so on.
> 
Why in the hell would I ever want something that is "finished", in any 
such sense. I want something where the stuff already "in it" is 
reliable, but people are still looking at how to improve it. MS stuff... 
The damn thing gets patched so often fixing things you never "see" that 
a month after you install it the entire OS must have been replaced with 
new binaries... Which means, most of it wasn't working quite right to 
start with, and probably still isn't, even after being patched 500 
times. By comparison, FOSS projects I use, usually, only send out 
"stable" patches, or ones with "significant" changes, unless they, on 
rare occasion, do have a serious bug, in which case it comes out, 
updates without rebooting, (thought XP and Vista wasn't supposed to need 
that BS so much any more?), remembers what it was doing before you did 
restart the program, if you even did, and the patch comes out the moment 
they have it, not a week later.

Either your argument is that FOSS is "just as bad" as MS stuff, because 
neither is ever "finished", or your arguing that MS stuff is, because 
they spend 5 years to come out with a whole new OS, instead of 2 months 
to come up with a patch that adds some features. Either way, I don't 
think its a winning argument.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Seen the lists, seen the rebuttals. Still not impressed. Especially 
>> when some of them are things like "Added a mess of new features to 
>> DirectX",
> 
> Huh? How many programs have you written using DirectX9 and DirectX10?  
> Why do you think the improvements are a mess?
> 
Mess as in "a bunch of", not "disaster". Otherwise, I really don't care 
what "special" BS MS gets to use, but no one else does, because everyone 
added all the features to the cards/drivers, in a way that is unusable 
to anyone that doesn't want to spend $2,000+ upgrading everything from 
hardware and memory, to the OS, to run stuff it would be cheaper to buy 
an XBox 360 to play.. Yeah, I "prefer" the changeability you get from a 
PC platform, which is locked down on consoles, but not at the "cost" of 
doing it, especially when nearly every dang thing for PC now is using 
something like Steam, which defeats the whole fracking point of running 
without internet, if you need to, and I am stuck with an OS I don't need 
for "anything else" to do it.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> The damn thing gets patched so often fixing things you never "see" that 
> a month after you install it the entire OS must have been replaced with 
> new binaries...
Oh, and FSM forbid they "ever" patch anything that isn't the OS to 
something, unless the problem is so critical its crashing thousands of 
corporate networks, never mind "adding" anything useful to it, including 
fixing their documentation when its wrong.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> I had no problem moving my home directory to a different partition.
>>
> Home, yeah. But.. You don't want to do this "before" you install some 
> things, or they break (and yeah, yeah, they don't follow spec, blah, 
> blah.. But geeze...), and somehow I doubt that it moved "everything", 
> not just the documents.

Um, no.  Zero problems with it.  Indeed, it's done *exactly* the same way 
you do it in Linux.

Alternately, you can go and change your home directory setting in the 
registry after you copy all the files over, and you're good again.

Since you haven't any idea how I moved things, I'm not sure what basis you 
have for doubting it moved everything.

But OK, we get it, no amount of actual rational discussion will change your 
mind about how evil Microsoft is or how sucky their products are.

> Main point is, must Linux allow you do do this when setting it up, 

So does Windows.   Not by default, but certainly if you use the more 
advanced setting up options.

>>> to defraggers that still, to this day, don't have the common sense to 
>>> defrag the "unused" space, 
>>
>> Sure they do. Have for ages.
>>
> Just ran mine recently and watched. It may now crunch the unused space 
> (badly though), but not the other.

They don't optimize program access? It's been doing that since like Win 3.1 
or so. What's "the other" you're talking about?

> No they don't. Or not visibly, and/or obviously. If anything, load times 
> on some things have gotten "worse" since the last defrag I did...

You've actually measured this scientifically, then?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Why in the hell would I ever want something that is "finished", in any 
> such sense.

I dunno. My TV, Microwave, and automobile are all "finished".

> updates without rebooting, (thought XP and Vista wasn't supposed to need 
> that BS so much any more?), 

They don't.

> Either way, I don't think its a winning argument.

Because you did not read what I actually wrote. That whole bit had NOTHING 
TO DO WITH microsoft. :-)  But your hatred runs strong in you, so I'll just 
drop it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Oh, and FSM forbid they "ever" patch anything that isn't the OS to 
> something,

Huh?  You mean, like the way they don't patch Office, say?  Unless you ask 
them to?

> unless the problem is so critical its crashing thousands of 
> corporate networks, never mind "adding" anything useful to it,

Uh, sorry. They add lots of stuff over time to *my* machine. Maybe you're 
looking at the wrong update site.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> 
> That kind of depends on whether you need the complicated bits, don't you
> think? The opposite of "unnecessarily complicated" is "lacking features."

Somehow they've managed to pretty far miss both with Excel - it can bend
to incredible counting pretty easily, but it's still easy to use for
just basic-level report creating etc. Word seems to "suck" more on the
easy part - sometimes it seems to miss a button that says "disable
automatics, forget styles etc, just let me do this damn 1-page document
quickly out of way).

> MS has some of the best documentation out there, and they teach classes
> in using their stuff. Just because you never learned it doesn't mean it
> isn't out there.

Excel is one of the very few graphical programs that I've actually had
help from the help system - because it's help documentation is freaking
good.

> Somewhat. Much of that is due to people not installing patches or people
> not using the system as designed.

And another much is just the users, which break the security of any
system :).

> 
> Why is it that OpenOffice can't do something that Word can?
> 

I think mostly because the developers haven't seen those features
necessary (at least yet) and not enough users have asked for them.

-Aero

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