That Darn Microsoft!

Is anyone else having issues printing from Excel in Leopard? Something wacky about margins...

Don't use Excel all that much have you tried NeoOffice? It pretty much rocks, but then, I'm not an Office User Geek. OUG for short ...

I wanted to be first but can't be now, but early enough to kick off this new incarnation in a similar manner as another one:

AAPL vs MSFT -- it's been a good decade.

... and we're gaining on them fast!

[disclaimer: this poster owns measly amounts of shares in both]

Actually, I've just started using Numbers. Seems nice enough.

I'm a pretty casual Excel user. Nothing fancy.

It's just that the last Excel doc I tried to open with Microsoft Excel bitched about having incorrectly sized margins for the printer, and then when I dismissed the error, every cell became the size of a page.

I tried to fix the margins, but error checking on that dialog prevented me from getting to the Margins tab.

I double-clicked one of the margins to get to the Margins tab, zeroed out everything and was able to print at that point.

This is an interesting line from Microsoft's page titled "Notable Changes in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate":

Adds support for creating a single DVD media that boots on PCs with either BIOS or EFI.

Why do I bother trying to be legitimate with my software? It just makes things inconvenient.

I want to install Office 2004 on my MacBook Pro but I have an upgrade copy and I can't, for the life of me, find my copy of Office v.X which it requires in order to verify that I'm eligible for the upgrade.

Can you download a non-upgrade installer and then use your legit serial number or is it locked to the upgrade installer?

The serial number is what makes it an upgrade, I believe.

Oops!

I'm finally doing a sweep through old iView files... pity that, it was a G-R-E-A-T photo management tool. Faster than anything Apple can manage to produce, even if not as powerful in some respects. Pluses and minuses, no?

Anyway, wanted to see how that transition was going and dang if MSFT can't grow an original idea.
http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/

Now I know that subs do all the work for sites like this probably but daaamn you'd think they could have some editorial control. Check out the loader wheel (for the flash element) and the overall look of the site.

----
I can't stop just there! Expression Media... they are eating their own (Silverlight) dog food. I'm not installing the plug-in, no way Jose.

Speaking of some ugly:




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/01/2008 01:12PM by rino.

On the Silverlight topic http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/redesigned-microsoft-website-to-use-silverlight/

I've been spammed the last couple of weeks with dancing pop-ups on the Microsoft site, begging me to install Silverwhatever, but as it says in the article, why would I? Helping Microsoft introduce yet another completely redundant proprietary web technology? We'll see what happens, but Microsoft starts to reek like Apple circa 1996...

great link -- thx

p.s. I installed silverlight once and forgot about it after upgrading my entire OS.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/03/2008 08:11AM by rino.

Silverlight is the marketing name for XAML and a few other technologies. It will start to matter for a couple of reasons. Firstly XAML is used to create interfaces and silverlight means that apps can be run on multiple platforms (to a limited extent) including in web browsers. I have already worked on projects creating interfaces in XAML and there is no doubt that developers using it will want to take advantage of the being able to run apps on other platforms. The other reason is that silverlight is built into vista so as the vista install base increase it will become more ubiquitous, which means it will become a more and more viable option.

wasn't what's now silverlight originally expression (not the drawing application, but the MS "this is how developers will build UIs" thing)?

ddt

it still is: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/overview.aspx?key=blend



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/03/2008 09:40PM by Simon.

Well it certainly appears to be more flexible than Flex. I don't know how "open" it is ... but it appears you just write the code with anything, in other words no IDE required.

IF it does away with the god-awful implementations of previously Access based shoved into MSSQL web crap I've had to deal with I'll be happy. Especially if it means a vendor could say expose their core data layer to a customer to build upon.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2008 05:21AM by rino.

Quote
rino
a vendor could say expose their core data layer to a customer to build upon.

HARDY HAR HAR HAR! You know the odds of that are something close to that as hell freezing over. The mindset of virtually every vendor in the MSFT camp is that customers have to COME THROUGH US to do anything ANYTHING ANYTHING at all. Gee do you think that might be something they learned from the MSFT and the "embrace, extend, extenguish" model?

Yeah, as I wrote that ... there was a chuckle.

I've seen many packages that were literally two guys and Access moved to MSSQL and some IE only web-ification. Utterly useless crap.

I sit in on these vendor "webinars" or phone calls and begin each conversation with, does it work in Firefox? Most don't even print a F*ing doctype much less adhere to anything post 1997 in web practices.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2008 05:10AM by rino.

GO BILL GO!!


http://gizmodo.com/341472/this-video-makes-bill-gates-look-cooler-than-steve-jobs

not sure where complete one is..

http://jalopnik.com/341374/bill-gates-drives-a-ford-focus-2+door

What a journey.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2008 02:41AM by El Jeffe.