I wrote my master's thesis on OpenOffice and, in my opinion, it beats MS Office with an iron rod. The persistent recovery feature alone saved my ass twice. I am a religious "Ctrl-S" guy when I am writing, but sometimes you forget. If OO bonks and you have to kill it, it will come write back to the last checkpoint, usually a few keystrokes before it locked up. It's great.

Gimp is an under appreciated graphics program too. I still use Imagemagick perl scripts that I wrote to "fix" my digital photos, but Gimp is pretty damn feature filled.

True happiness is knowing you are a hypocrite. -- Ivor Cutler

P.S. Don't know if you are seeing them, but Dell is running some ads over on the right for some incredibly cheap computers.

I'm not supposed to click on the ads, but I went to their website and configured one for $464, including an LCD monitor, OS, and an extra gigabyte of RAM. They are currently offering free upgrades for a DVD burner and a larger hard drive. Add the above open source software, and you've got a powerful desktop PC for under $500.

Here's the one I configured:

Vostro 200: Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Proc E2200 2.20GHz,1MB L2Cache,800FSB ($20 upgrade)

Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista® Home Basic, Service Pack 1

Warranty & Service: 1 Year Basic Limited Warranty and 1 Year NBD On-Site Service

Monitor: Dell 19 inch Widescreen E198WFP Analog Flat Panel Monitor

Memory: 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz - 2DIMMs ($20 upgrade)

Optical Drives: Free upgrade from DVD to DVD+RW

Primary Hard Drive: Free upgrade from 80GB to 320GB hard drive

Video Card: Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator

Floppy Drive and Media Reader: No Floppy Drive

Modem and Wireless: No Modem Option

Sound: Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio

Office Productivity Software (Pre-installed): No Pre-installed Productivity Software

Security Software: No Pre-installed Anti-Virus/Security Software

Adobe Software: Adobe Acrobat Reader

Keyboard: Dell USB Keyboard

Mouse: Dell Scroll Mouse

Speakers: No speakers

Dell DataSafe Online Data Backup: No Online Data Back Up Installed

Standard Vostro Services Tools: No Dell Automated PC Tune Up Installed

Internet Access Service: No ISP requested

Network Interface: Integrated 10/100 Ethernet

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l...

I use AVS Video Tools ($40 for the suite). Their 'Video Remaker' works quite well as an mpeg2 and avi editor. When editing mpeg2's it allows the addition of chapter stops in preparation for burning DVD's. It also allows you to insert images as a background for the disc's title screen and chapter menu screens.

'Video Converter' will change most formats to most other formats with video and audio customization available. There is also a 'DVD to Go' application that will convert a DVD or any part of a DVD to several formats including m4v(for iPod).

I write my web site with an ancient copy of Adobe's obsolete Pagemill 3.0. I got it on a disc that came with a scanner that bit the dust years ago. I have Dreamweaver 8.0 but Pagemill is easier to learn and I'm comfortable with it. It doesn't do anything fancy so sometimes you have to tinker with the source code. I just discovered that it is available here as a free download. Its help file is a pretty good tutorial for the beginning html writer.

Visit us at

The Home

For basic cd burning, I use deepburner. It's very fast and very good, although cdburnerxp is pretty good, too. Deepburner is just more straight forward for basic stuff but w/o losing features (except I think it just burns cds).

I'll throw another vote in for foxit, too. I've been using it for a few years now, and I get *so* frustrated by having to use adobe on other computers (esp its damn update utility).

Also, you left off web browsers. Obviously Firefox rocks, but if you're big on all of the multimedia and sharing stuff (blogging, flickr, facebook stuff), Flock is a good 'un (based on firefox). Oh, and there's thunderbird for email, too.

And media players. I just rediscovered songbird (also based on firefox) and can't get enough of it, esp for music finding (basically use it for a music browser on the 'net) and ipod syncing.

Pretty much the rest of the free programs I use are on Linux.

I downloaded the pdf maker and Gimp.

Thanks.

Brian A.
I'd rather be cycling.

I'm slightly amused that Randy, whose such a proponent of strict copyrights, is advocating open source products. I'd think he'd be eager to pay that "ransom" to M$ for all of the hard work that went into their fine, fine products.
~m.

You can have both. If there are copyrights, they should be obeyed. If it is open source, then, well, you can do what the open source license allows.

Oh, I'm well aware of that. So when do you guys plan to move to copyleft for your products?

I'm really not trying to give you a hard time. I just think it's a little ironic. Isn't what's good for the goose good for the gander?
~m.

Huh, look at this. Sun makes all contributors to Open Office grant copyrights to their work. Imagine that.

http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/jca.pdf

Wow, look at this. A copyright notice! From the Open Office source code!

/*************************************************************************
*
* DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER.
*
* Copyright 2008 by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
*
* OpenOffice.org - a multi-platform office productivity suite
*
* $RCSfile: edfmt.cxx,v $
* $Revision: 1.11 $
*
* This file is part of OpenOffice.org.
*
* OpenOffice.org is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
* it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3
* only, as published by the Free Software Foundation.
*
* OpenOffice.org is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
* GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 for more details
* (a copy is included in the LICENSE file that accompanied this code).
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License
* version 3 along with OpenOffice.org. If not, see
*
* for a copy of the LGPLv3 License.
*
************************************************************************/

Touchy subject, I guess.

But you're mistaken in saying that I don't believe in copyrights. I just think that intellectual property, in general, is a subject that a lot of people stake out a position on that best suits them.

As I've said before, plagiarism is fundamental to all culture. If caveman Ogg said that an animal was a cow, and Ugg said he saw a cow, modern day Ogg would probably try to sue his ass off for using his word. And our collective culture would be poorer for it.

I know you're a strong advocate of our current copyright system. I just also know that if everyone felt the way you do, the tools you're promoting probably wouldn't exist. And that would be too bad, because they make life better.

BTW, I hope you and the AP come to terms.
~m.
;©)

I just also know that if everyone felt the way you do, the tools you're promoting probably wouldn't exist. And that would be too bad, because they make life better.

And if people felt the way you do, would recorded music or cinema or pulp fiction novels exist? Or even newspapers?

They make my life better, and I'm happy to pay for it.

At any rate, I guess I have misread everything you have written here and at the blab over the years re. copyrights and information wanting to be free...

We sharply disagree about it. But you very well have either misread or not fully read what I have said about it.

For example, the quote: information wants to be free? It's from Stewart Brand, who spoke at the first Hacker's conference. Here's the full context, which, BTW, I fully agree with (emphasis mine).

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other

I think you've got your opinion of our current model and I've got mine. But I am not as uninformed as you may think.

I realize this is something that really gets you uptight. And I apologize for poking sticks at you in your own home.
~m.

I think you've got your opinion of our current model and I've got mine. But I am not as uninformed as you may think.

Opinions are not necessarily information, but everyone's entitled to their own opinion.

So, I guess we are calling a truce now? No need to apologize for poking sticks. Interesting and informed discussions that challenge beliefs are usually good all around, regardless of which point of view you may or may not agree with.