7 Best Alternatives To Microsoft Office Suite — 2019 Edition

On 12/10/2019 7:29 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 09/12/2019 17.45, Dan Purgert wrote:
Mayayana wrote:
"Dan Purgert" wrote


Meanwhile, WINE took 20 years to get to v. 1, with
updates every 10 days. It was a training camp for
college students, not a professional piece of software.
GIMP is similar. And that pretty much covers Linux
software for people who are not programmers or scientists.

I don't think their choice to not go to a v1.0 necessarily implies what
you're trying to say it does. Especially when it comes to writing a
compatibility layer for a closed-source system that has zero interest in
actually allowing it...

Correct.

On the other hand, there are many projects with version numbers below
"1", because their people like it so, yet the applications are really
finished and stable. There is no a single strategy related to version
numbers. They may start at zero and not change to one unless they do a
major change to the API. Others love to change numbers fast.



Yes, the usage of version numbers varies greatly from one company to
another. One of the weirdest is WordPerfect, which used normal Arabic
numerals up to version 12, then switched to a mixture of Arabic and
Roman numerals, starting with X3, up to its correct version X9. It
remains to be seen what the next version will be called. XX? X10?
Something else?

And Microsoft Windows of course, which used numbers up to 3.11, then
switched to years, starting with 95, then switched to names, starting
with Me, then switched back to numbers, starting with 7.

--
Ken

On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 16:08:00 +0000, David
wrote:

On 10/12/2019 09:18, Diesel wrote:
You tried to hire me to crack into other peoples private computer
networks for your benefit.

That's where you went wrong, Dustin.

I did try to explain that my sole ambition is, and always has been, to
make the Internet a better and safer place

And yet you continue sliming, spamming, phishing, stalking and
posting OT links to malware and datamining sites.
You have NEVER brought anyone to justice in your 20 years of
criminal activity.
Just say sorry, leave and never come back. The Internet will
become a better and safer place.

---------------
BD: I want people to "get to know me better. I have nothing to
hide".
I'm always here to help, this page was put up at BD's request,
rather, he said "Do it *NOW*!":

http://tekrider.net/pages/david-brooks-stalker.php

63 confirmed #FAKE_NYMS, most used in cybercrimes!
Google "David Brooks Devon"
[]'s



--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012

"Carlos E.R." wrote

| And Carlos replied to you with the classic Linux
| salespitch: "If we ain't got it, you don't need it."
|
| I don't remember saying that :-?
|

"Linux doesn't firewall by processes, and this is intentional. Wrong
expectations from user :-P"

| So one of my basic requirements for an OS is the
| ability to control what goes in and out. You may
| "hate" it. Maybe you're on an intranet where that's
| a problem. I'm on a non-networked, standalone
| computer. There's no excuse for anything going in
| or out that I didn't ask for.
|
| We do it differently.
|
| We have the source code, so anybody can go in and find out if something
| calls home, why and how. No need to use forensic tools to find out as
| with commercial closed source software.
|
| Thus the typical Linux firewall is designed to protect from outside, not
| from inside. No need.
|

Yes. I prefer a free operating system, like Windows,
where I can choose how to do things without having to
have the time and expertise to parse all the code of
all the software I use.

And I'm not interested in taking someone's word: "Don't
worry. It's just updating." If I don't ask it to update then
it shouldn't be updating. I shouldn't have to trust it. Not
to mention that dripfeed updates has turned into a disaster
of beta-is-good-enough software development.

"Carlos E.R." wrote

| On the other hand, an application with money can pay a team of
| documentation writers. What was the saying, don't look a gift horse on
| the teeth? :-p
|

Yes. But that's not a very good saying. You still have to feed
and stable a useless horse. And you might have to pay taxes
on it. And come to think of it, Win10 was, for most people,
a gift [trojan] horse.

On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 15:18:22 -0000 (UTC), Dan Purgert
wrote:

---slight snip


| That being said, I'm not entirely sure linux firewalls necessarily care
| about "per application" in the same way that Windows does. Then again,
| I always hated that approach.

And Carlos replied to you with the classic Linux
salespitch: "If we ain't got it, you don't need it."

It's a difference in the underlying paradigms of the two OSes, and not
so much ... that line of thinking across the board.

As I recall (and probably incorrectly at that), "Per application"
firewalls grew out of the days when just looking at the internet could
get you all kinds of "fun(tm)" applications that would compromise your
host without you even knowing about it.

Linux systems, on the other hand, have tended to operate under the old
UNIX tradition of one admin handling many users; and the firewall
options have tended to reflect that. Now, iptables is being replaced
(more or less) with new things, so that paradigm may be changing as
well.

That's great news. If I fire up Wireshark and open programs on
Linux, Wireshark flags the encrypted stuff (with root privileges) sent
back and forth. "Checking if an update is available" is not a valid
excuse, that's what repos are for.
It's even worse with Internet software like Firefox. My very
hardened version sends tons of data before I even start browsing Less
if I run BleachBit first.
It's about time someone came up with a decent GUI firewall for
Linux. Windows has had them for 20 years. (AtGuard, Kerio, Sygate,
Outpost etc). "Block any application" should be the default.

PS Debian probably has the biggest offering of free software.
I use Devuan = Debian minus systemd. It can use most of the stuff on
Debian repos.
[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012

Dan Purgert wrote:
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Hash: SHA256

Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 10/12/2019 12.25, Dan Purgert wrote:
I'm not 100% sure if the error is in your reader (for showing the
enveloping), or mine (for making it look like part of the message).
Though with the way my luck's gone over the past week ...
It is not an error, it is intentional.

What I meant by "error" was that it isn't displaying as an "obvious
envelope" to another participant in Usenet.

Here is what Thunderbird looks like, with and without Enigmail
to verify the signing. These are two very different versions
of Thunderbird, and the comparison is merely to compare
what is removed from the display, and what it is replaced with.

https://i.postimg.cc/HLTC4Cw9/Enigmail-In-TBird.gif

If the picture is too fuzzy to view, use "Download Original" button.

Paul

In article , Ken Springer
wrote:

There are a lot of writing skills we no longer teach, and it's to our
detriment. Over the years, I've read this has happened because the
early typewriters could not do things like things like this. That's
true. And early computers, when it came to these skills, are little
more than fancy typewriters.

early typewriters didn't even have a full character set.

There wasn't even a standard keyboard layont.

yes there was, known as qwerty.

however, the position of a couple of the ancillary characters sometimes
varied, as they do today, but that's minor.

this keyboard has a key for 1/2 and 1/4, which was not on all keyboards:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/46/ff...8712e0a3dee659
1.jpg

In article , Mayayana
wrote:

Yes. I prefer a free operating system, like Windows,
where I can choose how to do things without having to
have the time and expertise to parse all the code of
all the software I use.

windows isn't free.

you can also choose how to do things on other oses without having to
parse anything, and in some cases, more easily than on windows.

Corel went to roman numeral X and last number of the year for products
staeting in 2013. Example: Paint Shop Pro X9 was the latest version. new
version is Paint Shop Pro 2020.

Word perfect suite is still called X9.

On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 09:45:03 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:

I'm glad we agree, but the reason I was confused is that you first said
"But you can not write the euro symbol in here, it doesn't work" and
then said "Here meant 'usenet.'" Put those two sentences together and
you said "you can not write the euro symbol in usenet," and that is
*not* correct. You can, I can, we all can, as I demonstrated.

That last sentence had me saying, internally, "We all scream for ice
cream!"

On 12/10/2019 11:33 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 09:45:03 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:

I'm glad we agree, but the reason I was confused is that you first said
"But you can not write the euro symbol in here, it doesn't work" and
then said "Here meant 'usenet.'" Put those two sentences together and
you said "you can not write the euro symbol in usenet," and that is
*not* correct. You can, I can, we all can, as I demonstrated.

That last sentence had me saying, internally, "We all scream for ice
cream!"


It was meant as a subtle reference to that. I guess I wasn't that
subtle. g


--
Ken

Ken Blake wrote:

As far as I'm concerned, personal financial software is wonderful.
I use Quicken, not Money, and it saves me an enormous amount of
time and trouble. It's also a wonderful resource for searching for
past expenses--where did I buy something, who provided the
service, when was it, how much did it cost, etc.

Agreed. while keeping track of multiple brokerage accounts, credit card
accounts, etc.

I just go one step further and say Quicken and TurboTax are the only
reasons I own a computer. Some years back I'd reached a point where my
personal income taxes were costing me over $900/year to have them done
by a good accounting firm, the next year I spent less than $100 on
Quicken and TurboTax plus a few hundred on a used PC and did it myself.
The PC and software were more than paid by the savings and I've treated
myself to a newer, faster PC every couple of years, again, all paid by
the savings from using Quicken and TurboTax.

--
XS11E, Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project:
http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

Mayayana wrote:
"Carlos E.R." wrote

| On the contrary. You refusing to use unicode
| is what is causing the problem.

Problem? I've never seen you get worked up
like this. You're usually so cool-headed.

If I ever get appointed to an EU ambassadorship
then I'll certainly use UTF-8 as needed. I try to be
considerate and respectful with people I deal with.
But on my own machine? No.

It's not just a refusal to use UTF-8.
It's an avoidance of anything other than ASCII,
because none of that is necessary and only complicates
matters. There's no need to use long dashes or
curly quotes in English.

I understand that you don't have that luxury
because you need tildes. But that's no excuse that
I should have to convert my files to UTF-8. That's like
the woman who complains that men should have to
put down the toilet seat after use, when she herself
never even closes the toilet cover. I didn't believe in
the idea of "penis envy" until I saw women obsessed
with that issue. So maybe there's also "ASCII-envy"?

You refer to your 'machine' and your 'files', but what about your
*communication*?

English cummunication doesn't only use English words, but also some
words from other languages. I.e. do (US) 'English' newspapers,
magazines, etc., etc. only use 'English words' which can be represented
in (7-bit) ASCII? I don't think so!

And what about people's names, places, etc., etc. whose spelling
contains local language characters? Do you refuse to spell those names
correctly, just because you're "on my own machine"?

So it's not just about long dashes and curly quotes, but about words,
names, etc. which cannot be correctly spelled with only (7-bit) ASCII
characters.

Don't get me wrong. I mostly agree with you in that I use (7-bit)
ASCII wherever possible, but when a word, name, etc. cannot be correctly
written by just using (7-bit) ASCII, I'll use ISO-8859 or UTF.

[N.B. If things go right, this post will not have a 'charset='
declaration, which means it's indeed (7-bit) ASCII only.]

On 10/12/2019 18:05, Paul wrote:
Dan Purgert wrote:
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Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 10/12/2019 12.25, Dan Purgert wrote:
I'm not 100% sure if the error is in your reader (for showing the
enveloping), or mine (for making it look like part of the message).
Though with the way my luck's gone over the past week ...
It is not an error, it is intentional.

What I meant by "error" was that it isn't displaying as an "obvious
envelope" to another participant in Usenet.

Here is what Thunderbird looks like, with and without Enigmail
to verify the signing. These are two very different versions
of Thunderbird, and the comparison is merely to compare
what is removed from the display, and what it is replaced with.

https://i.postimg.cc/HLTC4Cw9/Enigmail-In-TBird.gif

If the picture is too fuzzy to view, use "Download Original" button.

Â*Â* Paul

Hmm.

Why are you using such an out-of-date version of Thunderbird?

It's only recently been updated again - I'm now on 68.3.0

"Dan Purgert" wrote

| I'm not sure what you mean with adware - Ubuntu gave up on that AMZN
| integration about as fast as they recanted on killing 32-bit after Valve
| told them off.
|

I've heard that. Yet the fact that they had the means to
do it, and thought of trying, is a very bad sign. It shouldn't
be possible for them to have that access.

| I often think of Window/Mac/Linux as a decent car,
| a sportscar with the hood welded shut, and a car kit.
| There's no sense moving from a decent sedan to a sedan
| with the hood welded shut. It would only make sense
| if the new sedan had better/more features.
|
| Of course; but then I didn't say to get a mac, did I?
|
The point of that analogy is that Linux isn't much
use to me as a car kit. But if they go to the other
extreme it's also not much use. For many Linux fans
there are only two categories of people: Those whho
compile their software and Grandma.

| When I tried SR Iron, which is supposed to be a
| clean version of Chromium, even that tried to call
| home. When the call failed it tried to call Google.
| Yet their whole selling point is no Google spyware!
|
| Dunno about that one. Many browsers nowadays have some form of a DNS
| check built in though, which may simply use their site to check that DNS
| is working.
|

DNS had to be working to call home. Then they tried
Google. I don't see any reason, when a man with a
mask and hood is climbing through my kitchen window,
to assume that he's probably just doing stretching
exercises. The browser has no business calling home,
especially when it's advertised as being Chrome with
the spyware removed.

| So one of my basic requirements for an OS is the
| ability to control what goes in and out. You may
| "hate" it. Maybe you're on an intranet where that's
| a problem. I'm on a non-networked, standalone
| computer. There's no excuse for anything going in
| or out that I didn't ask for.
|
| I control it a bit on the machine; but more typically handle that at the
| edge of my network (be it home or otherwise).
|
| How does your "standalone computer" get online? Internal modem directly
| to your ISP?

Router to cable connection. But all computers in
the house are set up with networking services
disabled and no file sharing, etc. Obviously I have
network capacity in the sense of getting online,
but it's standalone. I have no network neighborhood.
No LAN. No computer can see me and I can't see
any others. I have a handful of programs that are
allowed outbound via the ports they need. That's
it.