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[Reelya]

It still sucks that it would be tied to one machine and include a shit-ton of bloatware for that one feature.

[Reelya]

This is really a pointless derail of a derail. My point was that nobody is required to be locked into MS Office these days. Whether or not a specific plug-in for MS Office is more convenient than the hundreds of cloud services which offer the exact same functionality is besides the point. You're spoiled for choice for services which will solve maths equations and graph them, it's not an MS-specific thing.

[Frumple]

... you're not required to be locked into MS Office unless you're a student or a business (or their employee), anyway, in which case if you don't have full functioning .docx/etc. integration (i.e., you have office, because insofar as I've noticed no-one has managed to entirely crack whatever MS does to kill compatibility these days), you're very likely to be just flat screwed. You, yourself, may be able to get away with not having access to the MS Office suite, but you're going to be working with a lot of people that do use it, and have to be able to make sure there's no compatibility issues, or your grade or (much, much worse) your business tanks. M'by and large a pretty high-functioning computer user, m'self, and getting through this latest round of college education was a goddamn mess without home access to Office -- most of the folks I went through school with were entirely willing to bite the cost of MS instead of dealing with that mess, even with the school providing free library access.

Which is how it works. It doesn't matter how spoiled for choice you are if the vast majority of people are still using a single thing you have to be able to work with. That's pretty much literally how MS is maintaining their hold on things -- businesses and their workers can't stop using MS software because too many other people are still using it, and trying to wean off means they introduce a whole host of compatibility and communication issues to their workflow and interbusiness communication. And in doing so, lose business, potentially to a crippling degree. Integrating people working with different software is a bloody nightmare in the business world.

Maybe (shit, hopefully -- I'd love to actually be able to go into a job involving any degree of digital paperwork and expect to not need easy access to office) the mobile/cloud upswing is going to chip into that to a meaningful degree. M'personally not holding my breath at the moment, and won't until whatever MS's latest format is stops being the default for business (and by dint of that, education and a great deal of casual personal use). Because right now, it is, and it's not really budging, even as mobile use increases and starts to integrate. We've still got a long bloody way to go before that actually makes inroads hard enough to be called substantial.

[wierd]

Oh, how the world would have been if MS had not killed Lotus.

[Rose]

So is ms running for president then?

[wierd]

No, but I would be sorely surprised if they have not contributed heavily to election funds.

[Reelya]

It would be a good election if it was Gates vs Trump.

[Frumple]

So is ms running for president then?

There is a vocal minority that's saying they want to see the US ran like a business...

I guess the national-level equivalent of market capture would be something like what we do with military protection? S'actually a fairly disturbing degree of similarity there, now that I think about it. Some of the argument against the US stepping back from shoving its dong into everything is that it would force other nations to bulk up their military in response, with the associated costs, which is somewhat analogous to a company having to sink funds into integrating different software in the process of trying to escape MS.

E: Though the question is if it's eligible to run. Corporations are considered people in a lot of ways (for various ungodly reasons), but I don't know if they've twisted our legal system into enough of a pretzel they can run for office, yet.

[mainiac]

Did anyone ever have slavish devotion to Microsoft and Windows like people do now to Apple?

Me!

That reminds me. Why do you think that Bill Gates, especially, was held up by the media as the go-to villain for rich people?

The Windows operating system has been on the balance very good for the world.  While microsoft did some anti-competative practices, were pretty benign as far as monopolies go.  It's useful in technology for there to be a standard system that works pretty well.

[RedKing]

It would be a good election if it was Gates vs Trump.

Bah...you Windocrats and Applicans are all alike. Vote Googletarian!

[alway]

So apparently Carson is really whackadoodle. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/05/ben-carson-egyptian-pyramids-were-grain-stores-not-pharoahs-tombs

Egypt’s pyramids were built by the biblical Joseph to store grain and were not, as archaeologists believe, tombs for pharaohs, Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson has said.

[mainiac]

Yeah but he just lost the key demographic of Stargate fans.

Here's hoping that Trump promises to unite the Tau'ri, ally with the Tok'ra and end the system lords reign of terror.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

>implying Donald Trump is not a system lord

[mainiac]

Nobody with access to a sarcophagus would have hair like that.

[Culise]

...they mention that, but not how he said that it was likely because of aliens? I mean, the "grain storage" theory of the pyramids was actually a theory for a while; it was debunked once archaeologists started actually going into the things of course, but it was a theory that is mentioned in literature.

Eh; he'll probably get more votes with the anti-science crowd for that.

Just the opposite; he's saying that pyramids were not built by aliens.  He's also saying that scientists believe it was built by aliens.  So, ummm, yeah.  Apparently archaeology is not exactly brain surgery.