What do you think LibreOffice should do to make its brand more recognizable?

I've been using LibreOffice for a number of years, and love it (having written two, and typeset three, books with it), but the name is a hindrence. When I speak to my wife and use the term LibreOffice her eyes glaze over, whereas Open Office has a natural name people understand.

Free Office would have been better than LibreOffice, or any of a dozen other names I can think of (Community Office, OpenSource Office, New Office, World Office, even abbbreviating it to L-Office ...anything like that would lead to far better name recognition).

That said, LibreOffice is great, and I wouldn't necessarily spend too much energy trying to get agreement to change the name at this late date (well, maybe the abbreviated "L-Office"). You've all done fine work...now the word needs to get out.

I also find the stats suspicious...Gentoo folks like me are probably counted in the stat as downloads occur on an emerge, but how many copies of Fedora, Scientific, CentOS, RHEL, etc. have shipped with LibreOffice and aren't counted?

I'm such a cheap drunk that I voluntarily observe a limit of zero when I'm driving. I remember one night when I was tired and hungry and managed to get completely blasted on one can of american beer. :-)

For flying the limit is zero as well, with the requirement of eight hours from the last drink to takeoff.

The real solution is social: make it utterly unfashionable to drink and drive.

...laura

For my immediate family my computer-savvy Mom does first-level tech support. I'm second-level support.

Most of us use Macs, so the tech support requriements are minimal. :-)

...laura

I'll bet you feel stupid for filling all those party balloons last week.

The philosophies, politics, religion and entertainment of today has hardly changed since the dawn of recorded history.

Technology has changed, certainly; instead of watching Greek drama in a theater, we now watch Greek drama in a theater with CGI effects. But history has time and again proven that new toys do not qualitatively change mankind.

(p.s. - ironically, our imminent ascendance to godhood is another of those ideas that has been around forever...)

Yeah, I was hoping this would be some sort of mesh backup, where files are encrypted and spread redundantly throughout the network.

Still, it could be a useful collaboration tool, but not a replacement for Dropbox or Crashplan.

Customers have choice. If you make content available under reasonable terms, they may be your customer. If not, they won't. I decided a couple of years ago that the cable company's terms were unreasonable, so I cancelled my cable. With over the air HD, internet streaming and DVDs, I don't miss it.

While many tv shows people have mentioned are from U.S. cable tv networks, I've seen top-quality stuff from other sources. Recent faves include Borgen and Scott & Bailey, both from "regular" (albeit European) TV channels. Who would have thought Danish parliamentary democracy would make such gripping drama? And Janet and Rachel can arrest me any time they like. :-)

I've watched Borgen on DVD, and am currently streaming S&B on youtube. When ITV get around to releasing series 3 on DVD I'll buy it. Reasonable terms, remember.

...laura

While I think of it: a few years ago I was talking to people about some recent historical events, and the subject of 11 September 2001 came up. One person had an interesting response:

"Give me a break. I grew up in Northern Ireland."

...laura

The news coverage leaves a lot to be desired, IMNSHO.

Something terrible happened. People were hurt. People died. Not good.

The authorities are investigating. As they should.

They caught the pricks. They wasted one in the process. Good.

The hysterical saturation coverage of all of this, however, gives these sick fucks and their filthy ilk exactly what they want: free publicity, plus public fear.

I've tried to avoid the coverage. It's difficult at times...

...laura

Subluxation: the partial dislocation of a joint.

It's a very real (and measurable) thing.

Unfortunately, medical subluxation : chiropractic 'subluxation' :: computer virus : 'I think it's got a virus'

Nothing new; we've been anti-castor since 1960.

I view the point as moot: almost all food already is genetically modified, through selective breeding. Many things we eat bear little resemblance to their wild ancestors.

I'm more concerned about companies asserting intellectual property rights to food.

I'm also concerned about the "oppose everything" mentality. Some day something will come along that really is worth opposing and people will tune out because the tinfoil hat brigade have cried wolf too many times.

...laura

Except they try to maintain the rate of payouts by scaling the difficulty. The more people mine, the more difficult mining becomes.

In other words, it's an arms race. If you have better miners than your peers, you can grab a bigger slice of the pie. But once everyone has the same equipment, you're back where you started (and out a lot of money on gear).

On the other hand, anyone not able to afford specialized hardware will be pushed out of the mining game. The rumor mill is already pointing suggesting Litecoin as a possible Bitcoin replacement, as it has a crypto algorithm designed to resist hardware acceleration and thus keep small miners competitive with big iron. Then again, it's best not to underestimate human ingenuity when piles of money are involved.

In the universe, yes. On Earth, no. All the helium on Earth has been here from the beginning, and no process on Earth is creating more. Once it's released in to the atmosphere, it's gone.

I'm always envious of stuff like this. Where I live (southwestern British Columbia, Canada), it would be very difficult to retrieve a payload that came down 100 km away, in just about any direction. A steerable RC glider is an option I've thought about. Live video, GPS and telemetry would make me even more motivated to get the aircraft back.

...laura

It's silly to complain about such an early version. Don't worry—Java 10 should catch up with the Windows 95 GUI.