Monthly Archives: May 2005

May 27 2005

2-Year OpenOffice High School Case Study

Michael writes ‘NewsForge (a Slashdot sister site) is carrying a 2-year OpenOffice case-study on a Detroit high school who switched from Windows NT and MS Office 97 to Linux and OpenOffice. The results? Better than expected. In 2003, the school, who saved over $100,000 in the process, converted 110 Windows NT machines to Linux with OpenOffice. After several surprising developments, including OpenOffice’s ability to open old Word documents that even the new Word versions were having troubles with, the school now uses it almost exclusively, has classes on it’s use, and encourages students to use it whenever possible.

YEAH! OK, I know what you’re saying: “But you’re a Mac user!?!?! How could you like the idea that something other than a Mac is succeeding?” Well, it’s kinda like my feelings about the Yankees… as long as ANYBODY BUT THE YANKEES wins the World Series, I’m a happy guy.

May 27 2005

Mad as hell, switching to Mac

[Macworld](http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/05/26/madashell/index.php?lsrc=mwrss:)

This is my first column written on a Mac – ever. Maybe I should

have done it a long time ago, but I never said I was smart,

just obstinate. I was a PC bigot. But now, I’ve had it. I’m mad

as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.

This sounds just like my Father-in-law [[:-)]]. He’s been a PC bigot for as long as I’ve known him, and I’ve been expounding on the beauty of the Mac platform that whole time. Recently, he actually recommended to his girlfriend that she buy a Mac. He’s been helping her get things up and running because he’s a computer export. In any case, he’s been completely blown away by the elegance and simplicity of the Mac: “Most of the time when I’m trying to do something, I try the simple, stupid way, and it just works! I can’t believe it!”.

The article continues:

After having spent [nearly 22] years focusing my security work on Ma, Pa and the Corporate Clueless, I also have come to the

conclusion that if I’m having such security problems, heaven

help the 98 percent of humanity who merely want a computer for

e-mail and multimedia…My company has given up on WinTel. We have

successfully moved to Mac in less than two days. Think about it:

a security-friendly alternative that works and doesn’t require

gobs of third-party utilities to safely perform the most mundane

tasks.

My Father-in-law feels the same way. Yesterday, I was trying to do something on my laptop mac, and it was misbehaving a bit (that’s right, Mac’s aren’t perfect, no matter how much I try to convince people they are [[:-)]] ) and I decided that I needed to reboot the system. I was disgusted… as a software engineer working on UNIX systems for the majority of my career, the very idea of a reboot pisses me off. So I say to him, “Well, I guess since I’ve had my laptop powered on for the last three weeks straight, one reboot isn’t too bad.” He responded: “I’d be happy going three hours before a reboot!”.

‘Nuff said.

May 26 2005

Time Picks Top 100 Films

[Slashdot](http://slashdot.org/:) “gollum123 writes ‘Time magazine on Monday published its list of 100 all-time favorite movies ranging from Charlie Chaplin’s ‘City Lights’ (1931) to Steven Spielberg’s ‘Schindler’s List’ (1993) and 2003 computer-animated hit ‘Finding Nemo.’ But critics Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss snubbed several classics such as 1939’s ‘Gone with the Wind’. Almost half of the films were made outside the United States. Here is the full list.'”