In gnome, it's possible to bind the keys to the previous/next/play/pause commands in gnome. Then, any media player that supports those bindings in gnome can be controlled with those keys no matter what application has focus. I have no idea how you would do this in Windows, though.

Ah, but you see...this is why you limit your presentation to 12 minutes (20 minutes in certain cases). Then you have an interactive question/answer session for 5-10 minutes (depending on the interest of the audience).

Oh, tor, of course. You could use tor to download it. That would still cause suspicion, though, because most people don't have tor installed. I know I don't. I have had it for brief periods, but only a couple of times before finding that I didn't actually need it and that it was wasting my time.

Another possible solution would be to download the executable every time you needed to use it, then shred and delete it afterwards. You'd have to use a discrete way of downloading it, though -- I'm not sure if there is a way of doing that if your internet connection is being tapped.

Is this unexpected for microsoft? Every single release of windows I've used has been the exact same features, but presented in a different way. Every single one has a learning curve, and no (or well-concealed) option for going back to the previous UI. The worst was probably either when they decided to make menus smaller by hiding the lesser used entries, or how they keep changing the freaking start menu.

So, no. None of the changes they've made are particularly *bad*; they just don't add any value. Personally, though, I think that the ribbon interface is misplaced, as it would better be used for an application related to photo or video editing, which have a lot of features that fall into groups in an easily defined way. An office application does not have enough features to warrant a ribbon-style interface, and its functions can not necessarily be sorted into groups easily.

YES! A ribbon interface would do wonders for the GIMP! ...however, it is completely the wrong interface for an office productivity suite. The interface is perfectly suited to an application that is meant to make things look nice, but is terrible for anything that is actually supposed to be professional. It just has too many vain features for a professional, and presents the most counterproductive of them up front.

I have to agree with you. The purpose of productivity software is to provide the use with features that are useful to them, and then get out of the way.

One of the worst things about the ribbon is probably that all the people who want to create eye-catching and time-wasting presentations will now be able to make them twice as much of each. The people who actually wanted to be productive with powerpoint will have to relearn where everything is.

The problem seems to be that Microsoft is treating powerpoint as a toy or a game. They are adding lots of fluff to it and making it look nice. If I had plenty of time on my hands and wanted to make something look pretty (*not* useful, but pretty), I would use powerpoint with the ribbon interface. However, that is not what I want to do, and it is not what I will ever conceivably want to do. I don't use multiple backgrounds -- I use one single background. I don't use slide transitions. I generally write my presentations entirely using the outline interface of Impress, except when I have to add pictures to help convey my point. Does powerpoint even have an outline view? That's probably the killer feature in Impress for me, at least.