J
Janice
(e-mail address removed)
says...
I use freeware, shareware and commercial software, but I won't use
adware.
says...
I use freeware, shareware and commercial software, but I won't use
adware.
J
John Fitzsimons
I haven't used it but a quick visit to your site at ;
www.kobayashi.com
suggests that Prolix doesn't offer columnar selection of text or the
ability to put text in columns. Perhaps you could consider either/
both options in a future release ?
Regards, John.
--
****************************************************
,-._|\ (A.C.F FAQ) http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/faq.html
/ Oz \ John Fitzsimons - Melbourne, Australia.
\_,--.x/ http://www.vicnet.net.au/~johnf/welcome.htm
v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/
E
Eric Schreiber
John said:
You're correct, it doesn't do columnar selection, and believe me, I
wish it did. I very much want to revisit Prolix and make loads of
improvements to it, but first I have a contract program to finish,
after which I have two commercial projects lined up. I've got a feeling
I won't even be able to think seriously about updating Prolix before
July.
A
Antoine
Roger Johansson said:
Roger, I agree almost fully with what you have written but I am not
that convinced by the opensource aspect especially for the following
reasons :
1/ Big opensource projects as Mozilla, which technically leads to
outstanding products, are mainly developped by volunteers, except
the 2-3 developping managers (Ben Goodger,...). Those developers are
quite well-paid whereas all volunteers aren't : that isn't well
known and is morally debatable.
2/ Opensource generally indirectly implies free of charge software
(except some side-services such as support, documentation). In case
an opensource program was not free, one can imagine that a free
alternative compiled version could be generated and distributed. In
itself this isn't a problem. What about people who make a living in
software development : what about their future if (almost) every
software is opensource (and free) ?
3/ In my work, I more and more see companies specializing in
opensource software 'adaptation'. Their job is quite simple : they
ask their clients their needs, use one or several opensource
programs which they adapt to meet their clients' needs. Of course,
this work is not free at all (which is ok). But : almost never such
companies distribute the result of their specific development as the
opensource (most of the time GPL) licence asks to. Another example I
could give is a hosting company which has recently adapted apache to
its own needs and of course without distributing the resulting
sources.
4/ Another point of view : computer related financial aspects
concern both hardware and software. Nowadays, there is a relative
balance between those 2 parts. What about an opensource 'reign' ?
All the money at stake would be in the hand of hardware
manufacturers : not a good idea at all of freedom of the mankind, imho.
As for me, I use freeware products whenever it meets my needs and do
not hesitate to buy a payware application if it isn' the case.
C
_ceed_
Why not adware? That's like saying you will read books but not newspapers
since they have ads....
O
Onno Tasler
Antoine scribebat:
Some of these points are very good, I think for a good answer you should
also read the "philosophy" section of gnu.org or even mail the FSF. I will
try to answer some of the questions.
Well, you have people who are well paid and are supported by volunteers in
many areas. And, to be exact, the many people who help their neighbours
with their Windows problems are doing mainly the same thing.
Well, they will always be needed. There will never be a project around that
exactly fits your specific needs, you will have to hire someone to change
the program according to your needs. So, even if "free software" would be
the only kind of software available, programmers could still earn money,
simply due to the fact that most people cannot program. Just the
distribution systems will change.
That this works can already be seen today: Despite the fact that most
content can be downloaded for free, Linux distributors like SUSE still sell
many, many versions of their distribution.
In that case, they are mere professional software pirates which could and
should be sued. (There was a recent judgement in German where a company who
had broken the GPL was sued and lost the trial -- the court stated
breaching the GPL would be identical to breaching any propriety softwares
license)
Well, but these hardware manufacturer need software to sell their hardware.
For example, OS/2 died because there were not enough programs for it, even
so it was technically superior to all other operating systems for Intel
processors at that time. The same is true for hardware, of there were no
good software for Intel, people would buy more Apple, SPARC or whatsoever.
Intel's processor type is the widest spread due to a great variety of
software available.
Not to mention that I doubt that free software will ever reign: At the
moment, free software is well because the software market is quite
monopolised in many areas and free software enables competitors to break
the market open. And even though it will not be possible to completely
banish it again, since developing and distributing free software costs
money, it will not be possible for it to reign by itself -- where should
the money for its rule come from?
Some of these points are very good, I think for a good answer you should
also read the "philosophy" section of gnu.org or even mail the FSF. I will
try to answer some of the questions.
Well, you have people who are well paid and are supported by volunteers in
many areas. And, to be exact, the many people who help their neighbours
with their Windows problems are doing mainly the same thing.
Well, they will always be needed. There will never be a project around that
exactly fits your specific needs, you will have to hire someone to change
the program according to your needs. So, even if "free software" would be
the only kind of software available, programmers could still earn money,
simply due to the fact that most people cannot program. Just the
distribution systems will change.
That this works can already be seen today: Despite the fact that most
content can be downloaded for free, Linux distributors like SUSE still sell
many, many versions of their distribution.
In that case, they are mere professional software pirates which could and
should be sued. (There was a recent judgement in German where a company who
had broken the GPL was sued and lost the trial -- the court stated
breaching the GPL would be identical to breaching any propriety softwares
license)
Well, but these hardware manufacturer need software to sell their hardware.
For example, OS/2 died because there were not enough programs for it, even
so it was technically superior to all other operating systems for Intel
processors at that time. The same is true for hardware, of there were no
good software for Intel, people would buy more Apple, SPARC or whatsoever.
Intel's processor type is the widest spread due to a great variety of
software available.
Not to mention that I doubt that free software will ever reign: At the
moment, free software is well because the software market is quite
monopolised in many areas and free software enables competitors to break
the market open. And even though it will not be possible to completely
banish it again, since developing and distributing free software costs
money, it will not be possible for it to reign by itself -- where should
the money for its rule come from?
R
Roger Johansson
Antoine said:
We all live in a system called capitalism. It is some kind of legalized
gangsterism where the most ruthless are the richest and most powerful.
Every one of us have to find a way to survive in this system.
If we want to better our own lives above the average standard of living
we often have to use other people in one way or another.
Honest and nice people usually have no ambitions to get rich, they just
want to get along without hurting anybody else.
When you choose what activity you are to live off in your life, try to
avoid activity which are not good for mankind.
If you make shoes and sell them you are at least not limiting other
people's access to information, you are not limiting people's
possibilities to learn and participate in the democratic process.
Make the money you need from something else, and help information and
communication tools be free, because they are the key to a better world,
ruled by all of us, instead of being ruled by a few very rich and
ruthless people who rule the world today.
Hitler said: "When we have taken eastern Europe and half of Asia we will
kill every body there who can think. All doctors, teachers, journalists,
authors, etc.. The people in these countries are to get only as much
education as they need to understand traffic signs, and they should learn
to count to 25. That is all they need to know to be our slaves."
B
Bob Adkins
Although I adore the Opensource principle and spirit, I am not impressed
with the products. Development seems to be slow, and bugs seem to hang on
forever. Projects seem to get bloated and incoherent. Releases are often
disappointing, and full of bugs.
Most of the above problems go with the territory and are understandable.
Opensource is not an easy thing, especially on larger projects.
-- Bob
S
Semolina Pilchard
I don't think you can lump all open source software together in this
way, any more than you can with commercial software. Your statement
above is such a wide generalisation as to be valueless.
If you compare, for instance, OpenOffice and MS Office, which is the
more bloated and incoherent? Which has more bugs? Which bugs take
longest to address?
OpenOffice, I would contend, is at least moving in the right
direction, i.e. it's improving. MS Office, from my own experience,
peaked about 1993 and has become ever more of a sprawling disaster
with each subsequent release. Many of the bugs in that set of
programs must have reached pensionable age by now. As an example,
Access's "form intermittently resizing" bug appeared in version 2 and
remains a "feature".
Agreed. So what's MS's excuse? In my experience, there's excellent
software, usable software and damn poor software. Any business model
can be used to produce any of them.
I rejected MS Office in favour of OpenOffice quite a while ago; not
because of a principled adherence to the open source model, but
because OO didn't break so often or so catastrophically.
B
Bob Adkins
That's a cynical way to look at things. I'm no gangster, and I resent being
called one.
Capitalism works for those who believe in it and give it an honest try. You
really should try it some day.
"Use" people? That's a weird way of referring to "working together".
Weird. You are implying that rich people hurt people, and ambition is a bad
thing. I have found that the very nicest people have ambition. People
without ambition are the criminals, malcontents, and the mentally ill.
I hope you are speaking of "pathological ambition", meaning a person is
obsessed with being a big wheel. They will hurt people and commit crimes to
advance. Ambition is common, normal, and necessary. Pathological ambition is
evil, and not very common at all.
We agree on this!
Correct. Nike makes shoes, and employ thousands, which is a very good thing.
In my country (USA), there are no rulers. There are representatives that we
vote into office to go represent us in our government. If they do a good job
representing us, we keep them. If not, we vote them out.
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all shared that evil philosophy.
There are still some slaves in my country who choose not to work within the
Capitalist system. They waste all their energy whining and complaining
because they have no money, big cars, or big homes. If they would use all
that energy to educate themselves and work, they could have anything they
want and would no longer be slaves.
Apologies for the off-topic. I will not respond further (front channel) to
this thread.
Happy New Year!
-- Bob
B
Bob Adkins
Why not adware? That's like saying you will read books but not newspapers
since they have ads....
OK, let's say "Annoying adware".
I find that most ads in Adware are too annoying, although I have seen a few
ads that weren't so bad.
-- Bob
B
Bob Adkins
Go to the Opensource forums for OOo, and the various flavors of Mozilla and
Linux. Bugs, bugs, bugs infinity. It's like a never-ending soap opera. Some
stubborn bugs survive release after release with no real fix. This seldom
happens in Shareware, regular Freeware, and commercial software.
I remember Roxio having a big comedy of bugs and "fixes" a few years back,
but nothing else comes to mind in commercial software.
MS Office is light years ahead of OOo in features, speed, and usability. You
can install it slim and trim if you wish. You do not need to install every
bell, whistle, filter, template, and wizard.
My MS Office folder structure is 115 MB. My OOo folders are 137 MB. So now
which one is bloated?
Don't misunderstand me, I'm a huge OOo fan. I think it's getting there. It's
among the best Opensource projects in my worthless opinion.
By the way, that was a very mean-spirited and unnecessary remark. I have
never insulted you... not that I recall. If my opinions are valueless, why
do you bother to read and respond to them?
Happy New Year! (no, really!)
-- Bob
S
Semolina Pilchard
Depends how you read it, Bob. That was not a generalisation about
your opinions; it was a comment specific to THAT opinion. If you
re-read what I said I think you'll see that. I'm not trying to
condemn you for your opinions; I just don't happen to agree with this
one. I still think such a sweeping generalisation as that is fatally
flawed. Open Source = inefficient, MS near-monopoly = efficient?
Nah, that's too dogmatic and political for me. I'll judge it on the
software.
Happy New Year! (no, really!)
And a very Happy New Year to you, when it comes.
O
Onno Tasler
Bob Adkins scribebat:
Well, you find this in ANY software of that size. That has nothing to do
with open source or whatsoever. MS needed almost till the end of lifetime
of Windows 98 (this summer) to fix all of its bugs.
Because these project are usually much smaller.
Well, I know of the same think for quite a lot of commercial software
packages, for years people complain about a certain problem with Textmaker
Office, just right now there is a discussion about a returning bug in
Papyrus Office in their forum. Not to mention that the original writer
already gave an example for a returning bug in MS Access. Oh yes, Adobe
InDesign, there was a bug from version 1.0 which got not fixed till the
latest version either.
Oh, it is so? I did not find MS Office easier to use as OOo. On my PC, Word
XP started and behaved rather slower than quicker as OOoWriter. And about
the features, well, both lack some things I would like.
The same is true for OpenOffice.org as well.
Which version of MS Office do you use? I remember that MSO '97 needed about
that much space, MS Works XP demanded already more if I recall correctly.
Well, you find this in ANY software of that size. That has nothing to do
with open source or whatsoever. MS needed almost till the end of lifetime
of Windows 98 (this summer) to fix all of its bugs.
Because these project are usually much smaller.
Well, I know of the same think for quite a lot of commercial software
packages, for years people complain about a certain problem with Textmaker
Office, just right now there is a discussion about a returning bug in
Papyrus Office in their forum. Not to mention that the original writer
already gave an example for a returning bug in MS Access. Oh yes, Adobe
InDesign, there was a bug from version 1.0 which got not fixed till the
latest version either.
Oh, it is so? I did not find MS Office easier to use as OOo. On my PC, Word
XP started and behaved rather slower than quicker as OOoWriter. And about
the features, well, both lack some things I would like.
The same is true for OpenOffice.org as well.
Which version of MS Office do you use? I remember that MSO '97 needed about
that much space, MS Works XP demanded already more if I recall correctly.
O
Offbreed
Roger said:
As opposed to the Soviet Union/Russia? How about Cambodia under Pol Pot?
Or Cuba?
Those countries are not "capitalist".
Real Utopias, huh?
M
Mike Andrade
Were you describing Microsoft?
R
Roger Johansson
When poor people are forced to take jobs they are not entering a
voluntary cooperation of free will. The rich guy who employs them has all
the power in his hands.
The capitalists have taken control of all production and distribution,
and use that power to force people to do what the rich want them to do.
And now they have also taken control of information, information tools,
software, etc, and that is not a good situation. They are making internet
into a commercial net.
If the ambition is to gain more money, more power, and a higher standard
of living than other people, you are robbing somebody else of his
democratic power and his standard of living.
If more adult americans made shoes there would be no need to force
children in the third world to make shoes for you.
Ha ha ha, that was sarcasm, I guess
In undeveloped countries there is no real democracy, just a spectacle
every four years allowing the people to choose between two guys from very
rich families which represent the big corporations.
In the Philippines they get to choose from somebody from the Marcos
family and the Batista family. In USA they get to choose between somebody
from the Kennedy clan, or the Bush family, etc..
I heard a young american actress say, before the election this year:
"We live in the single only country in the world where the citizens are
allowed to have a say every four years, and we should use that right."
She was of course trying to get people to vote, but she is probably not
aware of how silly that sentence sounds to people in the rest of the
world, especially not in modern democracies where the citizens are
participating in the democratic process every day, through workplace
democracy, negotiations between workers unions, political representants,
the transparent democracy which allows the citizens to watch everything
which happens every minute inside the offices. Any swede can go into any
state or county office and demand to see the mail which arrived today,
what the response was, and ask why, and he can write articles about it,
creating opinion and influence what the offices are doing, etc..
Undeveloped democracies like USA or the Philippines are more like
dictatorships where the people have a formal right to elect the dictator
for the next 4 years. But they have no real choice, because all the media
channels are in the hands of the corporations, and only very rich people
who are backed by the big corporations have any real chance to win the
election.
M
Mike Andrade
You're correct, except that it's not really a dictatorship in the USA
- it's an oligarchy, which in many ways can be much worse. The whole
idea of "representative democracy" in the USA would be laughable if it
weren't so sad.
D
Duddits
Why not adware? That's like saying you will read books but not newspapers
since they have ads....
Newspaper ads don't spy on you.
Dud