Microsoft tries to polish a turd

So why does it do the simple stuff wrong?

If I insert a jpeg into a document, it may appear pages away from where I drop it, or it may disappear entirely. And if I try to grab it and move it, about a third of the time I can't pick it at all.

And Word seems to pick fonts randomly.

Why can't I draw a box around text and move it? This is, I think, the

Engineers sometimes start lines with numbers. Word takes over.

And heaven help you if you inherit a document that uses the "powerful" features, with styles set up by a Word expert. That's like walking into an entirely new and bizarre program you've never seen before.

Yup. We have the same challenge in designing electronic gadgets that have a lot of features, namely that we have to make it easy to understand and use the basic stuff ("How to make a sine wave") while still providing the advanced stuff ("Global Event group addressing")

Microsoft did it very badly.

John

Steve Jobs defines Microsoft products, and they struggle to implement his vision.

John

LaTeX does the same thing, more often than not. Apparently it has a very conservative heuristic for placing images, so it often places images on the next page, or worse, *all* of them end up at the end of the chapter just because one pushed them all out of sync with the text.

The one thing about LaTeX is, it's structured. Word isn't, at least in any way you can see (I forget, maybe you can view markup on a Word file?).

So whereas merely mystifying to the ordinary user, Word is literally impossible to understand, on a fundamental level, by the power user.

Incidentally, my word processing experience basically includes Notepad (no word processing per se), Wordpad (limited, but good for simple stuff, and fast), HTML (hand typed), some OpenOffice (haven't done anything as in-depth as in LaTeX, but it seems to work well) and, as you might've guessed, LaTeX.

Now, there are packages to do this in LaTeX. I even wrote a paper including line-numbered code, and it was even automatically highlighted (keywords, strings, etc.) just as in the IDE. Can't beat that!

I couldn't imagine...

Tim

Wrong. Spying is hardly a virus. Windows in installed voluntarily (assuming you're doing the installation), it does not spread via internet or what have you. You're obviously ignorant of what a virus does.

Where are these counters stored, how are they transmitted, and to where?

Tim

No, LaTeX puts images right where you insert them. What it /does/ push around are so-called floats. This can lead to annoying effects if you produce very picture-heavy documents, but upon closer inspection I sometimes find that indeed I've asked Latex to do the impossible. Like put floats "where I want them" AND keep them in sync with the text flow AND fill all pages.

OpenOffice's biggest problem is its determination to faithfully reproduce each and every shortcoming of M$ Office.

robert

Intel went through the same thing with the Pentium 4. Intel's solution to a crappy processor was spending lots of money on advertising to push their blunder. John Q. Public ate up the ads. As predicted way back when, it took Intel 5 years to fix their blunder. AMD was quite pleased to step in during those dark years.

You can control this in LaTeX:

\\begin{figure}[!h] will put the figure right there, come hell or high water. I usually use

\\begin{figure}[!hbt] which means "try really hard to put the figure here (h) but if it cannot possibly work, put it at the bottom of the page or the top of the next page."

For simple stuff like this, you can turn off the page formatting in LaTex:

\\begin{verbatim}

Anything in

here

will be formatted just as it's typed. \\end{verbatim}

Personally, I'd have been happy with WordPerfect 5.1+ for DOS forever, but publishers and journals generally don't accept WP any more.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Whatever.

Try the registry or how about ADS ! Or try your printer driver ! Maybe word docs ! Outlook Express 6. How about that nice little webcam you just bought ?

The point is just about everything that you install phones home ! Virtually every program you use makes itself known in some way. Data about you and your machine is recorded all over the place ! The internet has opened a big gateway into your life via Windows.

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit

V.I.S.T.A. = Virus >

They did, however, have *plenty* of time to implement DRM. The recording and movie industries, it seems, are more important customers that we are.

DRM is a kernel service in Vista that prevents users from accessing media or using high-end monitors without authorization from the "approriate" parties. Vista grants third-parties the right to irrevocably alter policies and disbale functionality on systems in accordances with their own EULAs without warning. Basically, it provides a kernel service that lets signed apps install rootkits and spyware, prohibit you from using competitors products, or monitor your use and charge you for EULA infractions

A few interesting quotes:

"The contentious stealth update that Microsoft delivered to customers this summer blocks 80 patches and fixes from installing after Windows XP is restored using its "repair" feature... The background updates were delivered and installed without prior notification, even when the PC's owner had told the operating system not to download or install updates without notification and permission."

"many of Vista's DRM technologies exist not because Microsoft wanted them there; rather, they were developed at the behest of movie studios, record labels and other high-powered intellectual property owners."

"NBC-Vista copy-protection snafu reminds us why DRM stinks Handfuls of Windows Vista Media Center users found themselves blocked from making recordings of their favorite TV shows this week when a broadcast flag triggered the software's built-in copy protection measures. The flag affected users trying to record prime-time NBC shows on Monday evening, using both over-the-air broadcasts and cable. Although the problem is being "looked into" by both NBC and Microsoft, the incident serves as another reminder that DRM gives content providers full control, even if by accident."

Schneier: Do not upgrade to Vista: Security guru Bruce Schneier has given a big thumbs-down to Windows Vista, arguing that the DRM (digital rights management) features built into the new operating system "will make your computer less reliable and less secure."

The celebrated cryptographer, who is credited with designing or co-designing several widely used encryption algorithms, is calling on consumers to send a message to Microsoft by avoiding Vista entirely.

"[The] only advice I can offer you is to not upgrade to Vista. It will be hard. Microsoft?s bundling deals with computer manufacturers mean that it will be increasingly hard not to get the new operating system with new computers. And Microsoft has some pretty deep pockets and can wait us all out if it wants to. Yes, some people will shift to Macintosh and some fewer number to Linux, but most of us are stuck on Windows. Still, if enough customers say no to Vista, the company might actually listen," Schneier wrote in an essay posted at his personal blog.

His argument is that Microsoft has succumbed to the entertainment industry and built copy-protection (DRM) schemes into the OS that will make computers less stable and force customers to spend to upgrade peripheral hardware and existing software.

MSN Music to shut down, leaving DRM customers in the lurch: Microsoft is ceasing support for its MSN Music service. After August 31, 2008, people who have bought music from the service will no longer be able to move that music to different computers, or even change the operating system on their current computers. With restricted music, every time you move it to a new system, you have to get new approval. Microsoft is shutting down the servers that currently grant that approval, which leaves everyone who bought music from them holding locks with no keys, and no recourse.

Also see:

V.I.S.T.A. = Virus Infection and Spyware Transmission Architecture

The are stored (encrypted) in the data structures associated with the Visa Kernel DRM subsystem. They are transmitted over the internet, when and if a third party with a trusted signature (a record company, recording studio, software vendor or government agency, usually) pulls the trigger and tells Vista to gather that data.

DRM is a kernel service in Vista that prevents users from accessing media or using high-end monitors without authorization from the "approriate" parties. Vista grants third-parties the right to irrevocably alter policies and disable functionality on systems in accordances with their own EULAs without warning. Basically, it provides a kernel service that lets signed apps install rootkits and spyware, prohibit you from using competitors products, or monitor your use and charge you for EULA infractions.

There's a few million entries (well, almost). Care to be a bit more specific?

I don't have a webcam.

Even L-View Pro 1.D2/32? :^)

Tim

Ah yes, the DRM fiasco.

I didn't mention in this thread, but I've mentioned elsewhere that I use XP, not Vista. So where are they stored, transmitted etc.?

Tim

Assuming that you yourself don't download and run spyware (I don't think you would, but someone reading this might not know of the danger, so it is worth mentioning)...

Unlike Vista, which by design allows "trusted" (trusted by Microsoft, not you) third-parties the right to access a kernel service that lets signed apps install rootkits and spyware, prohibit you from using competitors products, or monitor your use and charge you for licencing infractions, XP has a potential future vulnerability, not a gaping security hole pre-installed in every copy by design like Vista. Here is the sequence that would result in XP having the same problem:

First Microsoft has to decide to spy on you (unlikely; the enemies of Microsoft would put that on the front page of your local paper as soon as someone detected the packets) or decide to add Vista-style DRM to the XP Kernel (which I consider far more likely).

We know that at least once, Microsoft installed a stealth update to all copies of XP -- even those in which the PC's owner had told the operating system not to download or install updates without notification and permission.

Or Microsoft cound bundle DRM with SP3 and then do the usual Microsoft trick of making futire security updates require SP3.

If either of the above comes to pass, you will be in the same situation that Vista users are in now; the gun is pointed at you and loaded and you are trusting every third party that Microsoft trusts with the DRM keys to not pull the trigger.

In the meantime, XP is far, far safer than Vista.

Unless you are running XP Media Center Edition. That version has already had several "critical updates" that installed various DRM "features" like no longer being able to watch HBO, Netflix online or the Cartoon Network.

"I know that this is a bitter pill for Microsoft to have to swallow, but no matter what spin is being put on the PR, updating files on systems where users have specifically stated they want to have the final say on what's installed is a serious betrayal of trust, and this isn't the first time (we've already seen Microsoft push WGA through the Windows Update mechanism as a high priority update). The Windows Update mechanism cannot become a backdoor, access all areas pass to systems where users believe that they have indicated that they don't want updates, period. No excuses, no waffle, no PR spin. With this incident Microsoft has crossed the line and needs to make a clear public apology and then lay out exactly what stealth updates have been made prior to this one and what's being done to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Also, I believe we need much more transparency over the Windows Update mechanism and what access it gives to systems. If there are exceptions to 'Download updates but let me choose whether to install them' and 'Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them' then how do we know that there aren't overrides to the 'Never check for updates' option?"

Source:

Also see: Microsoft Stealth Updates Confirmed by Many

The irony is that as Hollywood moved to protect its HiDef fare with all kinds of crap, one of the biggest trends has been downscaling DVDs to play on PDAs, phones etc.

Many of those are demonstrating failures of non-Microsoft-provided code, actually (e.g., applications, device drivers, etc.).

Obviously one can see "Windows" failing far more often than any other OS when they have something like 90% of the desktop market.

For embedded applications, Linux is far more popular... and you don't have to Google much at all to find incidences of poorly implemented Linuxes dying in, e.g., network routers ("router reboots" has ~290k hits!).

It's probably a fairly safe statement that OSes failing -- regardless of which one you choose -- is in the single digit percentages; the rest of machine failures being due to bad drivers, applications, configuration, etc.

Although it is absurd that, in some distributions of Linux, having a bad Xorg.conf file will dump you back into text (console) mode rather than giving you a (Windows-like) generic VGA desktop.

---Joel

Well, perhaps by default... by how you change the behavior is well-documented and -- more importantly -- I think even beginning LaTeX users all get the lecture about, "Your job is to write, LaTeX's job is to typeset. At times this will be incredibly frustrating and you'll be fighting with LaTeX, but when that happens, take a moment and think about whether or not this is a fight you *should* be having -- in many cases, it won't be." In other others, people tend to appreciate from the start the whole idea of separating the "writing" vs. "typesetting" processes, whereas for all the good that WYSIWYG products such as Word have done, they intentionally blur that line to the beginner... because that's what beginners usually want.

I suppose that's not particularly bad or anything, just different. Word, OpenOffice, etc. all have the tools to separate out typesetting from content editing, although I doubt they're commonly used.

No, you're perhaps thinking of WordPerfect, which still lets you do that.

Agreed. Happily, few people actually use advanced Word features, so it's usually not a problem. :-)

---Joel

Phil,

Same suggestion to you that I mentioned on ABSE... you might try out Scientific Workplace some time, if you like LaTeX. I was actually first pointed to it by a chemistry professor at the University of Canturbury -- he's done journal papers with it without any hassle from the publishers, AFAIK.

---Joel

My first real word processing experience was with MS Word 1.5 for Macintosh, circa 1987--I taught myself to touch-type writing my thesis. When I came to IBM, I used SCRIPT/VS and Bookmaster, which is a LaTeX-like typesetting language for mainframes. Publishing was all done via hardcopy then, so it wasn't an issue. Then I used WordPerfect 5.1+ for DOS for about 15 years. I'd still be using it if publishers still accepted it, but most of them don't. It was real geek city--I used machine-compiled macros and a big makefile to package up my book MS, so that I could have a completely portable method and back up the tools as well as the text and pictures.

I had a look at SWP once...the problem I saw with it is that if you used it in GUI mode, it made messy LaTeX that required its own macro set, and it couldn't display LaTeX that wasn't written with SWP's macros.

My whole 800-page book takes only a minute or two to typeset, mostly in the DVI->PDF stage. A journal article takes a few seconds, so I usually just use a text editor (X2) to write LaTeX source and gsview (part of Ghostscript) for debugging. Works great. I'd love to have something as quick as WP5.1+ (which *flies* on modern hardware), but oh, well. WP had some issues with placing figures as well--sometimes they'd overlap each other, which was a real mess. The big benefits of WP were (a) I knew all the keyboard shortcuts cold; (b) it didn't need a mouse; and (c) it has a 'reveal codes' mode that lets you debug corrupted files. Good luck if your Word file gets hosed.

LaTeX is pretty good medicine, though not as good at hiding the works as WP--all those \\begin{} things and (especially) tables are pretty cryptic. When I get desperate, I do them in WP and run WP2LaTeX on the results--that's how I was able to switch from WP to LaTeX in the first place. Re-keying all those equations would have been really nasty.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs