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Comment LibreOffice Writer is excellent (Score 1) 170

by cboslin (#46865549) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Professional Journaling/Notes Software?

I too have tried this with text files and other methods (ie. SQL databases) only to come up way short. I know you cellphone users don't like that as anything more complex than text is going to present allot of problems for an itty bitty display surface.

With LibreOffice Writer, I can save pretty much anything, except perhaps binary blobs, instead I can 'refer' to that blob's subdirectory path within LibreOffice. By referencing other documents, even images stored elsewhere, you can keep the file size of your journal from growing larger than your journal editor can handle. Wile 'hackedit' (h.exe) would let you edit a file larger than memory, like other text editors, to not have links to content and the ability to include graphics is too limiting. For windows OS I found WordPad to be adequate as it could handle pretty large files, however ultimately too limiting.

Forget about MS Office Word, if the data format is not changed on you, there will be some quirk introduced in a later version to make it more difficult to include other content.

LibreOffice Writer works very well for saving URLs in a format that you can click on to get back to the original source. If you need the material for future reference, you should store a copy of the web content in a local directory. Down the road if your source gets deleted, you can put the saved copy on your own website and call it a 'cached copy'. At least you have the source. Not much you can not download with FireFox + the DownloadHelper Plugin.

Nothing worse than trying to back up information with sources only to have those sources disappear...biggest problem on Google's Youtube IMO. (If someone does not like what you are saying, they will say you are infringing on a copyright, Google automatically pulls the content and you are required to prove that its not infriging before you can load it back...by the time you load it back, the gain of immediacy for your content is lost, thus the value of Youtube for that is diminished.)

Some Positives . . .

  • ~ Can copy/paste working URLs / links and click on them to see and/or use, just can not do this with text editors.
  • ~ Ability to save images and graphics.
  • ~ Ability to save portions of spreadsheets, though I would recommend storing in a separate .ods file and have LibreOffice Calc execute and load the spreadsheet.
  • ~ Flexibility, while you can save lots of stuff in a .odt file, often it might be smarter to save in a separate file and reference from your journal OpenOffice Writer document. Yes we can copy/paste it, but should we...?
  • ~ Avoid complications of SQL for average users. If you need database information, store in a separate directory, document the /directory/file location within your "'journal' LibreOffice Writer file" and if it will not load automatically (when you click on it), leave instructions so information can be referenced.
  • ~ Anything that can NOT be stored in LibreOffice Writer, can be stored separately in a directory with a reference to the file saved in Writer. Videos, binary blobs, database files, etc...
  • ~ Libreoffice will let me 'export' as a PDF file that can be read on a tablet or handheld. As long as the device has a micro-usb and/or usb slot, I can store allot of information on a 64GB or bigger micro SD card and access it via USB. This is how I reference and read my content on my Android tablet...works great.
  • ~ No Adobe professional (expensive) writer tools are required to create a .PDF file.
  • ~ No Adobe is needed to read .PDF files. With Linux/Android, use Evince Document Viewer.
  • ~ Since application runs on the device locally, no bandwidth or bandwidth cap concerns. Don't kid yourself, with the loss of net neutraily, you do not want to depend on anything that eats bandwidth...no matter what the providers promise they won't do. They have been bad actors for too many years to trust them not to muck it up down the road.
  • ~ No proprietary format BS concerns. LibreOffice Writer stores data in an open data format, so there is no fear of a propietary format being changed down the road with a new version of the software as has happened with many tools over the years. (Why Microsoft Office is a non starter, have lived this at least twice over the last 30 years with MS Office, not going there again, ever. Live and learn.)
  • ~ No monthly reoccurring fees!

Some negatives...

  • ~ Will not work on a handheld or cell phone.
  • ~ Probably will not work with a tablet except for reading. Only use tablets to read .PDF files, not to load, edit and save.
  • ~ You will need memory. While 4GB of RAM should do it, my new laptop has 16GB of triple channel memory and those large .odt files do open faster. If you have less memory (in my case 512MB would be too small) than the file size, while OpenOffice Writer will open the file, it will be significantly slower to do anything.... My largest .odt files are 916.6kB and 395.5kB. Most editors would choke on files that size full of URLs, images, chunks of data copy/pasted in...not LibreOffice with enough memory.
  • ~ You will need a search function for multiple files. While LibreOffice Writer's 'in-document-search' is excellent, if you want to search all the .odt files on your hard disk, you need something more. So you would need a programming language that can open .odt files without overheard problems. PHP, while hated by many, would work fine for this. Running from CGI prevents the need for running PHP from a server...something to think about, however the average user might have problems setting that up.
  • ~ You will need many cross references. Example: Udev see Linux ~ Udev ; for example. Remember the way you think of a topic today, will change down the road...even with multiple cross references sometimes you approach a topic from a totally different perspective, therefore you must be able to search the document. LibreOffice has a search function built in that works very well. Here is my example for Agile. In the document I might have
    Agile ~ Stories; or
    Agile ~ Acceptance Testing (UAT vs Q-UAT) as entries in the document.

    Agile; Software Tools see Project Management ~ Agile/Scrum ( /data/ProjectMgmt/Agile; Related Documents; Definitions; Measuring; Motivation; Stories; Acceptance Testing (UAT vs Q-UAT); Agile Modeling (AM); Surveys; Disciplined Agile; not indexed );
    see Agile Modeling (AM);
    see Dimensional Modeling;
    see Anchor Modeling;
    see Modeling;

  • ~ Need laptop, netbook or desktop. Forget about a cell phone, screen size is too small to do anything meaningful IMO. While LibreOffice is available for my tablet, would need a USB keyboard to really make use of it, thankfully my Android tablet has a micro USB port, therefore a possibility.

Backup copies of files...:
No matter what tool you use, keep lots of back up copies. I do not back up every day, instead I backup when I feel I have contributed enough work to the file that losing it would be painful to me. Remember LibreOffice Writer will automatically save the file while you are working on it, so this happens without you needing to think about it. What I am referring here are more copies of the file in case your original gets corrupted. When I feel like it I will save it based on the day of the week, today is the 28, if my file is called Journal.odt, I might save an additional copy as Journal-bak28.odt today. Over time you might end up with a file for every day of the week, but since you are not saving them every day, one might be this month another might be last month or even a few months ago. It is easy to to see the date of the file in the file list to see which one is the most current. Hint: Its not always the largest file if you have pared something out of it and put it in another file, having refrenced this other file in your original.

Backup strategy, gets data off computer and stored safely, can also be retrieved as needed:
You should have a backup strategy that you adhere to. A conversation about backing up, is way beyond the scope of this here, just regularly make backups and keep a copy offsite (in another geographical location) in case there is a disaster, rain damage, fire, etc... Now-a-days hard drives are so cheap that there is no excuse for not simply compressing your files and copying them to a hard disk. This method does not impact bandwidth caps and delays caused by backing massive amounts of data over an internet connection. Its an effective DIY solution that does not involve another monthly fee. Hate those monthly fees.

Don't use Cloud apps: need a local app and avoid reoccurring monthly fees:

Since I know others might mention some cloud application, I provide one of my biggest objections, automatic reoccurring fees; however not having an application that will open your data locally is a non starter for me. So Cloud only no, Cloud to enhance, perhaps, but even than I would want to make use of HTML5's ability to store and retrieve data without being actively connected to the Internet...Cloud apps will never allow that.

Use Ripple, Dwolla, pre-paid cards instead...

Hint to ecommerce sellers and especially SAAD providers (Software As A Dis-Service cloud providers) give me an option that does not include 1) a revolving charge (bank account, debit/credit card) and 2) my phone number/cell phone or I will NOT use your service. Hint: a pre-paid debit card, Rechargeable Gift Cards, Dwolla, WePay, Ripple.

Hey merchants, Dwolla lets a customer purchase items costing up to $10,000 and only charges you (and the customer) $0.25 cents . Yes ONLY a quarter per purchase!

Admittedly Dwolla is tied to a bank account, but Dwolla lets me, the customer, cancel a payment at any time for any reason, regardless of how bad the customer no service is via the company I no longer want to do business with. Dwolla will also remove a commercial entity that abuses Dwolla and/or cheats a customer, just as they will remove a customer that tries to cheat a business. Seems extremely fair to me. Another Dwolla plus, money transfers are instantaneous, no two, three or four day wait for money to get into the account and/or to the merchant. Since they make their float on the back end between bank transfers with the Federal Reserve System, they do not have to gouge their customers.

I believe WePay requires a bank account as well, however pre-paid debit cards, rechargeable gift cards and Ripple do NOT require a bank account. Thus you can not screw me with a re-occurring charge...provide me service or I will cancel your behind. (Remember PayPal and Burning Man...thus the mention of WePay instead.)

Comment Time as in elapsed time vs other references. (Score 1) 305

by cboslin (#46865539) Attached to: 'The Door Problem' of Game Design

I would like a game that does not penalize a player for having a life away from the computer.

Imagine a game where someone who logs in a few times per week, can still enjoy as much as someone who has no life and plays for 8 hours (or more) straight and you get the idea.

Also prefer games where you have a mission and are flying/driving a tank, plane and/or spaceship more than the personal shooter games. The Activision Battlezone and Wing Commander games for the PC come to mind, they were excellent! Would love to get those running on my Linux boxes, even if I had to slow down (or ignore) clock cycles to get it to run right. Loved those.

The First person shooters make me yawn.

Comment Re:This can't be Hulu's decision. (Score 1) 259

by cboslin (#46863119) Attached to: Hulu Blocks VPN Users

They will lose many customers over this especially since they didn't even warm their paying customers. We are US military living overseas. Not having access to my prime time shows isn't the end of the world but it was nice to have some things from home. I hate Japan and those shows helped me escape once in a while. Netflix still works with VPN but only has out dates reruns.

I do see a class-action suit in their future due to the way they handled their customers. I am paying for a service I can't use and their tech support wouldn't own up to the change so I didn't cancel right away. I am just glad I found out now so I can cancel. I see a huge downsizing of Hulu employees on the horizon as well unless vpn companies work fast to get some new ip addresses out there!

Another valid post, a valid reaction, for some reason was modded down.

The article referenced mentions that you can purchase your own private IP address and run the VPN tunnel from it, since no one else can register that IP address with Hulu, it will work with a VPN tunnel from your home.

Granted we should not have to do this, way to blow it entertainment industry through Hulu, a huge fail!

Someone mod this one back up, as a valid response to this type of stupid FUD is to cancel the service and take your money elsewhere.

As others have mentioned, a good use of 'the cloud' to constantly change an IP address to obsfucate and anonymize, which of course the advertising industry does not want.

Comment Re:Use your own VPS instead (Score 1) 259

by cboslin (#46862909) Attached to: Hulu Blocks VPN Users

1. Rent a cheap VPS 2. Tunnel connection through it (e.g. via a SOCKS proxy) or set up your own VPN 3. Keep the IP to yourself so you don't get flagged That's how I get to watch BBC's premiers at the same time people in London do, and if I care about something in the US, I just switch to another VPS.

Why was this modded down, unless some shill does not want others to know how to do it, perhaps?

Seems that if you 'mask' the VPN IP Address, as 'your IP address', while it would no longer be anonymous, your VPN should not get flagged as being either a service or from a foreign country.

Comment Re:And people will just bend over too. (Score 1) 259

by cboslin (#46862783) Attached to: Hulu Blocks VPN Users

Man, what country do you live in? Here in the US, you have two choices: The local cable internet monopoly, or nothing. Unless you seriously consider wireless phone data an option.

Not if you move to one of these less than 30 symmetrical Fiber To The Home (FTTH) communities, check out the map!

So when moving, know you have options and move to an area that will give you FTTH internet freedom.

Prosperity and jobs are already flowing to these cities.

Comment Re:Choose an area (Score 1) 259

by cboslin (#46862729) Attached to: Hulu Blocks VPN Users

I agree that anyone with a house paid off and a job in their area is not going to move. However, that same person, with a house paid off, but no job, better move or have investments paying a livable wage or the property taxes will eventually cost their heirs the home.

Those looking for a job, should seriously consider making the jump to a Symmetrical FTTH community sooner rather than later.

Of course you can always get DSL, dd-WRT on a supported firewall/router, has shown me that unthrottled DSL is faster than over 80% of throttled cable service. Remember, 100% of cable internet service is throttled, its only a matter of how much, not if. In a few areas where symmetrical FTTH competition exists and the oligopoly has not been able to pass legislation (see red states especially) at the state level to prevent competition, they actually throttle less than normal, thus only there is Cable internet faster than DSL.

If you are shopping for internet access and can not get symmetrical FTTH, than go DSL for Internet. If you want cable for TV and movies, so be it, but never package anything else with it. No phone, no Internet with Cable TV & movies unless you want to be gouged forever. As that will cost you much, much more over time, then getting them separately. Better just to go straight to DSL for internet, if you can not get FTTH.

Comment 30 Symmetrical FTTH communities Re:Choose an area (Score 1) 259

by cboslin (#46862457) Attached to: Hulu Blocks VPN Users

You may not want to move from a home you own, but I'm surprised that people don't consider these types of things when they are moving. During my last move, I determined I wanted better internet than Comcast provides and specifically limited my search for a place to live to somewhere where that was the case. Now I'm enjoying 100mbit symmetric internet for under $40/mo and really enjoying the fact that none of my money goes to those greedy bastards.

As a bonus, when I travel overseas, I can use my own home connection as my VPN service. I can completely sidestep the regional blocking done by the streaming providers.

Intelligent and smart, why on earth were you rated down? Amazing what you can get for less than $50 per month if you move to a FTTH community.

Perhaps some Cable shills with moderation powers....

Everyone can do this if you are looking to move. Look for Fiber To The Home (FTTH) like the less than 30 communities on this map.

The secret to look for is that the Fiber connection offers the same bandwidth upstream as downstream. So there advertised bandwidths are the same, ie. 10Mb/10Mb, 15Mb/15Mb, 20Mb/20Mb, 30Mb/30Mb, 50Mb/50Mb, 100Mb/100Mb, 1000Mb/1000Mb (1TB/1TB), unlike services that call themselves fiber but are not symmetrical and advertise 50Mb/5Mb - - - wrong, 50Mb downstream and 5 Mb upstream tells you they limit, restrict, censor, throttle their bandwidth. Move somewhere else.

With true FTTH, there is no business incentive to throttle, limit, restrict, etc... for bandwidth reasons.

Added bonus, having FTTH adds $5,000 to the price of the home, costs between $1,500 ~ $3,000 to run the fiber link from the switching service to your home and once run, that FIBER link is sold with the home, its property of the home-owner, not any other company, period.

Anything less than this is a wrong, a mistake and prepetuates the failed scarcity myth / increased monthly prices to perpetuity, which is the only reason to restrict bandwidth. To make you think its scarce, when its not, to get customers to pay more.

In the right circles, the Cable company CFOs will admit this scarcity myth fact to investors as a reason investing in cable companies makes more sense. We have a great business model, we can increase our customers rates anytime we want for as much as we want, thus we are always going to be profitable, invest in us

If you are moving, only purchase homes in a community in the map, avoid the others.

Another added plus, the communities with FTTH, are growing small business and jobs with livable wages faster than all other communities in the USA! Small businesses are thriving and actively looking to relocate to these areas for the bandwidth that only true FTTH can provide. Big data demands symmetrical FTTH.

A very smart post, you should be modded up!

Comment *NEED* to retire sooner and create jobRe:Bank them (Score 1) 333

by cboslin (#46861845) Attached to: Blood of World's Oldest Woman Hints At Limits of Life

In terms of power dynamics in politics, we are likely to see geritocracy in the US as our population ages. We *need* to increase the retirement age and reduce the amount of spending on pensions. How is this going to happen when the majority of the population is old and is willing to express their displeasure in the voting booth?

We *need* to do things smarter, differently, better and not be insane!

Totally agree with your first paragraph, as we have seen since 1980, those with money, will always act in their own self interest to the detriment of the rest of society. Yes they control the money, thanks to Citizens United vs FEC they control politics via their aggressive political contributions and yes they most certainly can control who does and who does not get money. What you would expect when 10% have 90% of the wealth in this country.

And lets not get started with the pollution created by those 10%, google Coal Ash in Detriot, Duke Industires in NC and the Nuclear Power industry...hint if you have to re-cask every 50 - 100 years, no way in heck is it ever going to be cheaper.

As weather control scientist have always warned us, 'there will be winners and their will be losers', this thought actually applies to all industries. And those industries have no incentive to police themselves, therefore lack of funding for government agencies that do police them, can only hurt the majority of any population. Oh could I go one, but enough, as many refuse to admit how all these factors are inter-related. Quantitative Methods baby, its all inter-related, you are cheated when they convince you that somehow these many things are not related.

I have to take issue with your last paragraph, quoted above, not with the first statement, we see that today in politics...so the first sentence I agree with you.

Rather I take issue with the next sentence. Current retirement age is already too high, specifically to reduce the likelihood that one collects on their retirement. Think outside the box, if the 10% can prevent you from collecting on your promised/guarranteed retirement long enough, they will find a way to rob you of it...or better yet, let you die off so that they can get at it later once you are gone. Of course if you control your retirement yourself, that is smart and prevents this.

Now don't get me wrong, the idea of retiring on a 'fixed' income is insane. All one has to do is look around and see that it is not working, never has, never will work. To assume that your outcome will be different is insane. Thus you need an income stream, no matter what.

Instead of increasing retirement age, how about teaching kids how to invest correctly, 'sanely' and 'carefully'...just google Jim Cramer and you can learn.

Teach your kids how to be self sufficient, which means capable of generating their own power (electricity and fuel) and maintaining food (aqua-ponics) self sufficiency, so that what meager wealth they are able to save via investments will not be eroded by the 10% via their control over everything, especially food.

A swamp weed, like a cotton-tail type of plant can be grown and processed by an individual at lower than $1.27 per gallon, just need a diseal engine! I know a guy doing it, so yes it can be done!

Solor and wind generated electricity to power an electric vehicle, does not need power from the grid. Just don't attempt to patent anything or sell anything as others have been prevented, just do it. How many of the over 3000 'secretized' energy patents might make one self sufficient? If 10% of them work...

The idea of pushing the retirement age, yet higher, is insane. This is what politicians have been doing since before the 1980s, and its not working. In fact 'austerity' will not work either, except for the 10%, you can not save yourself to profitability. You have to 'grow' to succeed. Grow from a fundamentally sound value base and you have the best of all worlds.

Its sad that in American history, it took regressive taxes to force companies to create decent paying jobs that grew the middle class, pre-President-Reagan.

If lowering taxed created jobs with livable wages, we would have the lowest unemployment rate in the history of the world. I am glad that profits from stocks are taxed at less than 15% were wages are taxed at 36%. Personally I don't think that income derived from my wages that have already been taxed should be taxed again and again and again anyway, but that ship has sailed.

I suggest you think outside the box, enabling people to control their retirement/investments so that they can retire in 10 - 15 years, means that a 20 year old in college can retire at a young enough age, 35, to actually reach self-actualization through other endeavors. Perhaps one or more of those endeavors will create a small business, the only true job creators.

I first experienced age discrimination, though you would not be able to prove it, at 45, thus a retirement age of 35, avoids that mess as well. Pushing the retirement age higher, when so many over 50 have trouble finding jobs today is just more of the same insanity.

To summarize, I believe allowing people to make their money in the shortest period of time possible, allowing them to retire, enabling them to pursue their passion(s), whatever they are. Will spur growth and make society stronger. Guess my wine glass is half full, not half empty.

Those that focus on the same factors that have decimated the middle class and reduced salaries are insane, as they want to do the same thing and expect a different result. It has not and will not, the first step is realizing that you have a problem.

Retire earlier, not later, than see who comes up with what! We have lived your example for over 50 years, retire later, don't you think its time to admit that it does not work, it will not work and try something a bit sanier?

Of course it would help if the young and old were valued more also...that is yet another conversation.

I might sound liberal to some, that would be their mistake, more a rational capitalist. Both Conservatives and Liberals go to extremes, neither of which have worked, therefore will never work. The rest of us, approx 75% of the population need to take back control of the government, discontinue these insane not working policies and make things better...oh wait, that would not be what the 10% want either...the idea that we would be self sufficient, out of their control so that we would have the time and economic viability to stick up our heads, prevent them from getting cut off, and actively engaging politics to make everything better for the rest of us...duh moment.

In case you are unaware, 9% of population are truly conservative and 19% are truly liberal, the rest of us, the great majority, fall in the 75% - 80% that are kept like mushrooms, as the 10% want us to be. Google it and laugh like I did...after you are done laughing, think outside the box and start quietly working behind the scenes to stop the insanity that is the Tea Party, Libertarians, Democrats and Republicans...they don't want to Unite us, they just want to keep us mistakenly thinking we are separate from each other so that we do not see what they really are doing to us behind our backs. WAKE UP, for the sake of yourself and your own family. For your descendants.

Comment Re:Themes... (Score 1) 452

by cboslin (#46764253) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Start With Linux In the Workplace?

.. Until a complex Excel macro doesn't work. ... You need to stop thinking like a geek converting dear old Dad to LibreOffice for home use home and start thinking about the skill sets and productivity of fifty to five hundred clerical workers with different skill sets and responsibilities.

In a corporate setting, all business critical macros would be identified and converted before that part of that business unit was migrated to Linux. Of course if the CEO says do it, it will get done and you know this. No point in pulling out the geek and home use only analogy.

You next sentance made me laugh, thank you for that.

... Until an incoming document from an outside source cannot be read. ...

Really pissed me off (and the VP of IT, thank goodness) when this happened to me with Microsoft Office. Was it Win 2000, XP or Vista, whichever it pissed everyone off. The final solution, the documents were coverted to PDF files and everyone was forced to move to the new version in spite of the incoming documents both from outside sources and internal sources.

We did stop accepting .doc formatted Word documents. Its a shame Microsoft chose to make their data formats incompatible with the Open Data Formats standards group.

Their (Microsoft) poor choice was/is not a reason to stay with Microsoft, but rather a reason to dump their office product.

Sadly many more businesses decided to go along rather than switch office products to LibreOffice. In one experience, they decided to start converting massive amounts of documents (the converters MS provided were not 100% effective...just another reason not to like them), talk about a loss in productivity and a waste of time.

Based on my over 20 years of corporate experience, the old analogies of...

No one ever got fired for recommending IBM ~ yes I am that old

No one ever got fired for recommending Microsoft

... simply no longer apply for Windows 8. As a CEO I would seriously consider looking for new management up to and including VPs that blindly recommend Windows 8 without considering Linux today.

I personally believe that Windows 8 presents a clear business risk that is best to be avoided. I know the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for Windows 8 is higher than Linux. I leave it up to others to learn the truth for themselves.

Comment Re:Themes... (Score 1) 452

by cboslin (#46764201) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Start With Linux In the Workplace?

The workers will still want to use MS Word, and Excel, and Exchange for email.

Others below have indicated their positive experiences migrating windows users to Linux. Windows users do NOT have problems with any of the many GUIs in Linux.

Based on my corporate experience, you would have CEO, VP of IT, DIR of IT buy in on the switch over to Linux from Windows, thus it would make sense that they would dictate a move away from MS Office to Libreoffice.

As for Macros with Word and/or Excel, a working group would be started to identify those macros critical to the needs of the business and someone would be hired to convert only those to to LibreOffice Writer and LIbreOffice Calc. Probably get a volunteer from that group to do the conversion. And all other macros, not considered business critical, would be considered 'not to be used' moving forward.

With executive management buy in, its a no brainer, without it, a move to Linux probably would not happen. Of course then that executive needs to be held accountable for the Windows 8 heck to come.

As for scaling, there are sites that have scaled to above 10K Linux users, so anyone who says it can't be done, is clueless, ignore them.

Best of all, remember that each new version of Windows takes more and more from the Linux kernel, so in reality, Windows has already said that if you can't beat them, join them, they are just not advertising that fact.

Comment Re:Themes... (Score 1) 452

by cboslin (#46764051) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Start With Linux In the Workplace?

Portability of learned skills means you don't have to re-train your workers.

Most often repeated FUD ever in the yes/no to Windows debate. Every version of Windows I have used from 1.0a as an app on top of MSDOS has required some re-learning of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) by anyone using it.

May as well take the same time to re-learn a Linux GUI instead. I would suggest Linux Mint, Debian or Fedora for desktop users.

Every new version of a desktop operating system will take a user some time to learn. There is no need to make Linux look like Windows or Windows look like Linux. There is no time savings or addtional time cost going from one to the other.

If a grandma can learn the GUI for Linux Mint, employees of your business can learn it as well.

And don't get me started about incompatibale data formats between MS Office products, just switch the office to LibreOffice and never have those issues again either. How many times has MS screwed us with incompatible data formats from one version of MS Word (in office) to the next? I remember two, time is kind, as I know it has happened to me more than twice, probably with one of the other office apps (Excel, Powerpoint, etc...). This makes MS a worse option as you never know when they are going to get you again and you can't say they won't, simply because they have...more than once.

The most important decision is the hardware, IMO, ONLY purchase hardware designed to run Linux from Linux Vendors ONLY. This means no big box stores, they simply do not do Linux well if at all. This avoids the proprietary chipsets that vendors have put in to favor Windows, esp with UEFI and Windows 8. Windows 7 will probably be the last MS OS I purchase because of the UEFI BS.

Personally I prefer ZaReason as they will install whatever distro I want on the hardware and everything just works out of the box. You could go System76 or any other Linux vendor, sure there are a few out there. ZaReason is just my preference.

Full disclosure, I do not work for ZaReason and have purchased their hardware...very happy with it, every time.

Comment Glow in the Dark Matchbox city (Score 1) 187

by cboslin (#46762707) Attached to: First Glow-In-the-Dark Road Debuts In Netherlands

Yes, finally, my childhood come to life. Many an hour was spent making car sounds vroom, vroom, errrick (curve), vroom with my cousin with our Glow in the Dark Matchbox cities.

The idea of including weather info into the roadway (or perhaps a heads up display...) sounds interesting.

Just think it would be better in a heads up display than on the road.

Thanks for a great childhood memory.

To ebayers, sorry, my mom gave them away years ago, so you will have to shop elsewhere.

Comment Re:Really, Isn't this about UX? (Score 1) 199

by cboslin (#46526017) Attached to: A Call For Rollbacks To Previous Versions of Software

Like your thinking. More than once I wanted to run the new app with my past user environment and was thwarted, whether the OS was Windows, Linux or Mac OSX. It is frustrating not to be able to. Developers uncouple please.

I have needed to run old versions of software after a new version came out. As long as I can control where to install the application, I usually have no problem. However if the install process locks me into a specific area, than I know, down the road, I will not have this capability.

With Windows 7, PaintShop Pro (v10 I believe) attempted to force me to install in a specific area, however I figured a way around it, put it in a /prog area on a USB device. After that I was able to run PSP from any Windows box I wanted to without problems. I plan to do similar things with my tablets, use the micro SD card for both applications and data. No way should I be forced to connect to the internet to do something.

Because of the above scenario, as much as I loved PSP, I moved away from it simply because they attempted to force me to install in a specific pro-windows way/place. I was able to run an old version of PSP from that computer, in addtion to the new version. I figure I bought it, I should be able to install and run as I want. With the writing on the wall to PSP's stated direction, I left behind one of my favorite tools. GIMP is not as friendly, but extremely powerful.

Never felt like ponying up the extra few hundred dollars for Photoshop, as there was nothing I need to do, that I could not do with PaintShop Pro and/or GIMP. Though I admit when I have used Photoshop it is a great program. I just want to be legal and buy my software I use in web development. Leaving those extra hundreds for investment for retirement.

Still see this as a big issue for my opensource tablet. It is frustrating. I no longer feel sorry fof those that lock themselves into proprietary hardware for an embedded device, whether it be a handheld or tablet. Opensource tools and products are the answer.

Thankfully I read slashdot at the -1 score level, so people wrongly moderating do not censor me. I can sensor myself thank you very much. Those that do not, would have missed this next comment.

After reading (#46516745) above and some of the comments related to that post, the only thing I can think to do is make sure I can restore my tablet from scratch, document how to do it as I won't remember in a few months, and that would at least give me the capabilty to reinstall my android tablet from scratch should I get caught in this type of upgrade fiasco.

If your handheld / tablet uses proprietary pieces and parts, you will be denied the abilty to wipe it clean and reinstall from scratch (via the micro SD card slot) if necessary. In that case the fault is yours as open source, non-proprietary solutions are available, but some comapnies want to force you into only pay them for everything and anything model. Best to avoid their hardware/software unless you enjoy paying away your hard earned money.

Someone with mod points please rate that post back up from 0 as its information is based on experience and is factually true. It provides valid info, though some evidently disagree with it and it got rated down, pathetic.

If the software modifies the format of your data, better have a backup copy or forget it. Something many Intuit CPA users found out to their frustration a few years ago. The idea of hand entering a client's data because the company in its infinite wisdom decided to update the data format without warning anyone is what comes to mind here.

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