Linux and OpenOffice save Microsoft Presentation

EvilGrinUK writes "A presentation about Shared Source (SSI) by the head of Microsoft Ukraine was almost ruined when the Windows machine (a Tablet PC) linked to the projector developed problems. The solution was to adopt OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 and ALT Linux Compact 2.3, which was already running on the presenter's laptop (an IBM Thinkpad). Here's a picture."

How funny.. Cache slower than original...

[OlivierB]

The original link is fster than the cache

http://paq.osdn.org.ua/~mike/img/MS-uses-OOo/hpim2 544.sized.jpg [osdn.org.ua]

Pardon?

[ogleslurp]

This story seems a little skinny on details. Does anyone have any more information?

Embarassing...

[bobbis.u]

That's almost on an par with the infamous Windows 98 crash [cnn.com]video!

BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I take it you couldn't find a real story to post?

A) That image could easily be recreated in any office with a projector

B) Microsoft ALWAYS watermarks their presentations, there is not one on the picture

C) There is no link to a credible news site with this info. I'm sure if this were to really happen, every news site would be ALL OVER IT...

Better Photograph

[CypherXero]

I cleaned the photograph up in Photoshop, and I made it MUCH better looking, so you can actually SEE what's going on in the image.

http://www.collegechixors.com/images/hpim2544.size d.jpg [collegechixors.com]

Re:haha

[Rei]

Microsoft's [solocomputerservices.com] public [solocomputerservices.com] failures [planetwayne.com] are [msboycott.com] always [theapplecollection.com] amusing [daughtersoftiresias.org].

Was his PowerPoint patched

[mrm677]

I devoted long hours to a PowerPoint presentation. In about hour 12 or 13, PowerPoint 2002 kept crashing whenever I tried to open the file. Unfortunately I did not have any previous revisions before the save which messed things up.

I thought I was hosed, but I tried opening it in OpenOffice and it worked fine. Then a friend suggested I run "Office Update". Once I did this, PowerPoint opened the file without problems.

Did this dude bother to update his PowerPoint?

old story, but still

[lheal]

... it's clearly an operating system problem on the tablet, not a hardware problem. Linux to the rescue!
------------------

From the README on the site:
Intro
[...]
1. This is old news: the event happened on October 9, 2004.
2. Microsoft rep in Ukraine had to use free software to get on with a presentation on a free software conference since his munition failed to cooperate with projector.
3. See below (also posted to the places I could track down).
[...]
As for the facts:

* it was not Master but ALT Linux Compact 2.3 (page|ISO|ML)
* it was Third Ukrainian Free Software Developers' and Users' Conference
* it was sponsored by IBM, Novell and EMT (yeah, I work for ...us; another funny thing is that Microsoft proposed to sponsor the conference too but we decided to politely decline the generous offer)
* it is the head of Microsoft Ukraine, Mr. Valery Lanovenko
* it is the Tablet PC which failed to feed the projector on the secondary head properly to blame
* and indeed it's OpenOffice.org on our Linux/ThinkPad running their PowerPoint presentation ;-)
* IMG_0395 has Mr. Lanovenko's personal comment -- he tries to make an impression that it was PDF (we as the conference staff recommended to keep those at hand) but all of us know OOo doesn't display PDFs ;-)
[...]
--
Michael Shigorin
mike at osdn dot org dot ua
EMT.Com.UA * OSDN.Org.UA * Linux.Kiev.UA * ALTLinux.ORG

Re:Is it true?

[Cyberax]

It's a true story. There was a message in Russian LUG about that from a conference participant: http://lists.lug.ru/pipermail/oo-discuss/2004-Octo ber/012275.html [lists.lug.ru]

PS: yes, I read Russian.

Re:oh my

[Herschel Cohen]

Sorry, I for one do NOT "KNOW" that Impress mangled a powerpoint file. My experience has been, on Linux, that the view has been fine.

Re:Not working correctly

[dunkelfalke]

this is definitely russian and not ukrainian. open office is also in russian.

It's F9 baby

[magi]

This isn't the first OpenOffice Impress slide show I see people running in non-full-screen windowed mode. So, remember, F9 starts the slide show in full screen.

In Acroread, it's Ctrl+L. I learned this only after a two-hour presentation in windowed mode.

Disappointinly, you apparently can't get full screen mode at all in xpdf nor gv. I've seen a lecturer do his entire course with windowed xpdf under Linux.

Link to the original article

[marq00z]

The original article was at PCLinuxOnline and contains a lot more information. http://www.pclinuxonline.com/article.php?sid=9792 [pclinuxonline.com]

kind of more full text (Get The Facts, heh)

[gvy]

Well there was the bottom part of the message holding the explanation itself:

Facts (below)

As for the facts:

• it was not Master but ALT Linux Compact 2.3 (page [altlinux.org]|ISO [altlinux.ru]|ML [altlinux.org])
• it was Third Ukrainian Free Software Developers' and Users' Conference [osdn.org.ua]
• it was sponsored by IBM, Novell and EMT [emt.com.ua] (yeah, I work for ...us; another funny thing is that Microsoft proposed to sponsor the conference too but we decided to politely decline the generous offer)
• it is the head of Microsoft Ukraine, Mr. Valery Lanovenko
• it is the Tablet PC which failed [antex.ru] to feed the projector on the secondary head properly to blame
• and indeed it's OpenOffice.org on our Linux/ThinkPad running their PowerPoint presentation ;-)
• IMG_0395 has Mr. Lanovenko's personal comment -- he tries to make an impression that it was PDF (we as the conference staff recommended to keep those at hand) but all of us know OOo doesn't display PDFs ;-)

You bet there was some debate afterwards but no tomatoes flying (which was quite the fear of Mr. Lanovenko's coworkers) :-) Shameless plugs

BTW, there's going to be 4th such conference this autumn (first weekend of October), you're welcome! (details at the conference site, see above)

Re:Ha-Ha!

[jacksonj04]

Actually, it would work fine for mySQL. Note that the quotes are ` and not '. This is an important differentiation, and helps mySQL when it gets confused by table names also being constants.

That piece of SQL selects the value of the column entitled 'karma' in the table 'users' for the row in which 'userid' is equal to '138474'.

Re:Ha-Ha!

[SeanTobin]

The SQL is perfectly valid. Backticks are used to denote field names in the SQL spec. If you are writing software to write a sql query and you don't know what the field names are (i.e. if they are user or integrator supplied at install or run time) then by placing them in backticks you indicate to the parser that they are indeed field names.

How would your sql parser handle:

SELECT * from sort where select like "%cow"

Some parsers will figure it out. Some won't. To each thier own.

Re:Is it true?

[DavidD_CA]

Many times, you can retrieve corrupted Excel documents by using a little Excel trick.

Open a brand new spreadsheet and link cell A1 to the A1 in your corrupted sheet (you'll have to type the formula in manually). Then drag that A1 to all corners of the spreadsheet, and more often than not you'll get your data back -- sans formatting.

Re:haha

[moonty]

Saw this one in Las Vegas -- Windows XP [moonty.org] virtual memory error [moonty.org].

Re:Microsoft's competitive advantages

[arivanov]

Hmm... Circa 1997 80%+ of country MSFT ops ran their webservers on Linux or Solaris. The moment Netcraft published this and they became a laughing stock it was all migrated to IIS within 2 weeks. Similarly, I do not really believe in such posturing. MSFT is a marketing driven organisation and if their marketing decides that a specific instance of running Linux is bad for the current marketing campaigns there will be a big crater in its place in less then 5 seconds.

Re:Not to be a partypooper but...

[cascadefx]

Only that, according to the writeup, he DIDN'T show it on SOMEONE ELSE'S laptop... he showed it on HIS OWN laptop using Linux... which was ALREADY loaded on HIS laptop.

"The solution was to adopt OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 and ALT Linux Compact 2.3, which was already running on the presenter's laptop"

Re:oh my

[RedBear]

Shame on Microsoft. And how rude that Office 2003 doesn't implement and utilize the wonderful and open OASIS file format that was ratified 3 days ago.

You have a sort of point, but in this case the standard has been in development and draft form for literally years. Microsoft has had plenty of chances to follow along with the development and provide 99% complete support for the format, even before it was ratified. Then all they'd have to do is put some tweaks in a patch for 100% support after the standard is finalized. The OpenOffice.org formats have been around and in active use for years now, but I don't see Microsoft supporting those either, and aren't they remarkably similar to the final ratified OpenDocument standards? Hmm, I think so. In other words, they've had their chance. It's not like the developing standards were kept secret until the day they were ratified, giving them only 3 days to work on it.

So yes, shame on Microsoft, as usual. Especially as we move into the future. If it's impossible for them to provide a simple drop-in translator for new file formats in their state-of-the-art office suite it doesn't speak highly of their software design, does it? Somehow I feel this is something well within their reach. I, like the GP poster, am also looking forward to castigating Microsoft at every opportunity until they fully support open document standards. It's a fool's errand, but someone has to do it.

Re:Reminds me of something that just happened to m

[Lord Faust]

Knoppix has saved me a few times. I can honestly say that it was the only thing I came out of my operating systems (read: Unix / Linux) course with, that has been of any use. Everything else was just pro-OSS / anti-MS diatribe.

I'm all for teaching people the value of MS alternatives, but adopting a holier-than-thou attitude in regards to yourself -vs- Windows users isn't how to ingratiate people to your cause.

Thankfully, Knoppix -- and other distros -- are good enough products that they've allowed me to ignore the Linux zealots and continue trying out the various OSS products I come across.

As far as the story goes; good showing on OO's part, but hardware issues can affect anyone. Don't get too cocky.