Exactly. "hi def" is a TV-hand-me-down cop-out for asian lcd makers to not produce decent displays for PCs. They can all take their bullshit "hi def" and shove it.

Yes, in my experience it is.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of OO, and I use it on the notebook on which I'm typing this (ubuntu with hairy-peanut-encrusted-shit new gui).

However, wherever my clients or professional people I support are concerned, I recommend MS Word. These folks don't have the time to fix formatting issues, and frankly they shouldn't have to. They have more important issues to attend to, like work.

I'd look and feel like a monkey defending OO's problems simply because, you know, it's free as in beer. I can forgive minor issues myself because it's not critical (most of the time), but when I need to (eg) edit a legal document sent to me from a law firm where they use ms word, or a complex layout, I don't have the time to waste just for giggles or on principle.

On another topic, I've been using linux on the desktop almost exclusively for at least 12 years now, but was recently forced to use windows7/outlook/exchange at a major client on a daily basis. What a breath of fresh air - windows7 is fantastic on so many levels and makes xp look and feel it's age, and of course for anyone who uses Outlook will know, in the professional world out there, it's the de facto standard.

Time is honey, as pooh bear would say.

If you're sharing documents among other OO users, then fine. If you're sharing documents with other MS Office users, then no.

Endless compatibility issues, imperfect rendering, fonts, layout problems, etc.

No thank you.

Sure it starts out set to Google by default, it kind of has to be set to something, but that's hardly "shutting out the competition".

You're missing the point, google sycophant. Chrome should offer a choice during installation. Not doing so ensures an uneven playing field.

Hmm, that's a surprise, I thought the ground was drenched in generations of bloodletting.

No, the country lost entrepreneurs, professionals, engineers, doctors, business people, leaders, innovators, employers, and will continue to lose them.

Yes, you are wrong.

Living in SA means being constantly vigilant to random crime like rape, murder and violence. SA has the highest violent crime rate in the world (second only to Mexico because of their current drug war). Defenceless old (white) people on smallholdings and farms are very often targets of unbelievably brutal and violent murder (we're talking about being tortured with boiling hot water, or stoves, or being bashed with bricks, hammers, spades, or burned with hot irons, etc). So are defenceless old African folk. Being defenceless means it's ok to rape, steal from, torture and beat. You'd be surprised how many children (black and white) get raped, then murdered, in SA. ...or gutted like a pig - while conscious - to harvest their organs for African witchcraft. Kids and toddlers, for fuck sakes.

Recently some nice men invaded a family home while the parents were at work. The nanny and baby whom she was looking after - were beaten and tortured. The baby so badly she ended up being blinded. A baby. Beaten on the head and face by grown men, so hard they blinded her. For money.

If you are white, you are seen as a soft target. If that means breaking into your home at night, gang raping your wife and daughter, then torturing and murdering you, then so be it. Being shot in the head while waiting for the traffic light to change (because they want your car), is just for kicks. If you, your family or community complains about this, then you are branded a racist.

When a respected African bank leader speaks out against government corruption and the degradation of the rule of law, instead of taking stock and debating the issue on a social and national level, the government and it's barking dogs attack the man personally. It's the African way.

There are more police men and women murdered in SA every year than any other country, per capita.

It just goes on and on. We tolerate it because not much can be done when you don't have a true functional democracy where the electorate cast their vote based on merit.

Sadly, nothing will ever change in this country. ...but, it's home. I may have my roots in europe (english/dutch/german descent), but this is my home.

incompetent government is not always a bad thing. ...implying it's sometimes a good thing?

The SA government is not only incompetent, but corrupt.

Whatever country google operates in, they need to observe the laws of that country.

Simple.

In other words, you're not only an anonymous coward, but also an ignorant fool.

Yes, like that dumb fuck engineer at NASA who used imperial instead of metric.

speak for yourself gayboy!

amen to that.

he's wielded far too much personal power (bestowed upon him by a dictator) and blocked/interfered with important research over the years.

fuck him.

Luckily I was upwind and a few floors above it when I saw it and there was nobody on site underneath and nothing downwind apart from a very large disused coalmine.

Scary shit. If they were slack then, they were probably slack at other times too, and that shit has been inhaled by unsuspecting downwind folk at home or work...

++

It costs them reputation.