Posts by walterbyrd

SOPA is dead. Are you happy now?

The "tech world" does not have much of a voice

> "The tech world needs to find better ways to educate government than replicating the covert lobbying used against it or the megaphone protests we've seen with SOPA and PIPA."

The tech world would love to a voice against the abusive MAFIAA. Unfortunately the power-that-be will allow no such thing.

It is not a matter of "educating" congress. Congress only cares about who coughs up the campaign contributions. Congress does not care about what's right, or wrong.

Microsoft pushes Office 2007 with 'try-before-you-buy'

Watch out! It's a trap!

I remember when my brother-in-law decided to try office-2003. Good lord, what a complete mess. I didn't think I'd ever get it fixed.

Here's the catch: once you "try" a msft "upgrade" you can not easily go back. The office-2003 installed over his office-2000. His outlook-2000 email was reformated to the new-and-improved outlook-2003. And outlook-2003 is incompatible with *everything*. So when his trial period was over, he could no longer access his email - unless he wanted to buy office-2003.

Oh, did msft forget to mention that you can not fully remove the "trial" of office-2003? Silly msft. Once office-2003 has been installed, you can not overwrite it with an earlier version of office. You also can not remove office-2003 and re-install office-2000, unless you know how to hack the registry or something.

What I eventually did was:

1) signed up for my own trial version of office-2003

2) used my trial version to import the backed up email

3) saved the email in another format

4) backed up his data

5) wiped his HDD

6) restored everything

In fairness, I have not used the trial version of office-2007. But, after my experience with the trial version of office-2003, I would touch it with a ten foot pole.

Make sure your friends and realitives don't touch it either.

How did we all end up with Windows?

It's all about the apps the drivers

Microsoft became *the * standard a long time. How msft did that is a long story, and open to much debate. I think that, early on, it had to do with IBM's enormous credibility and influence. Later, there were a lot of stupid mistakes make by apple, and ibm, and others.

But now, HW & SW makers develop for the standard first. Users need an OS that works with their HW & SW.

It doesn't matter how "good" an OS may be. If that OS doesn't run your apps and/or work with your hardware, then that OS is useless to you.