7 Best Alternatives To Microsoft Office Suite — 2019 Edition

On 12/10/19 9:02 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-12-10 9:01 p.m., Mayayana wrote:
"Ken Springer" wrote

| I used to know a girl whose first name was Risë. Born in the USA. :-)
|

I don't even know how to enter that. If Risë wrote to me
I'd do what I just did: Copy and paste her name. What do you
do? Use Charmap.exe? On XP that doesn't even include UTF-8.
I've wondered how people use curly quotes and long dashes.
I don't know of any easy way to do it.

But I also don't know anyone named Risë. My disregard
for foreign languages is only a theoretical slight in the minds
of the non-English speakers here. Fortunately, no one Chinese
or Japanese is filing a complaint with the PC police. Then
we'd all be in big trouble.



Does the Emoji map in windows 10 work in text only newsgroups?
That's the Windows key plus the dot key, I will try it.

🚑{}®℃℉â�‚$$à¸¿à¸¿â‚¤â‚¤à¯¹à¯¹â‚¬â‚¬Ê¤ÄŠÄ–Ä —ĚĚ↪↩⇈◉◒◶⨌⨶⪜⪙⪆🙂🙂🙂 .

Ok I typed in a random bunch, there are hundreds, Lets see what happens
when I send Them.

OK, how did you actually "type" these? The only way I can seem to find
to get them into a document is to use the mouse and click on the one I want.


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 12/10/19 9:09 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-12-10 10:05 p.m., Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-12-10 10:02 p.m., Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-12-10 9:01 p.m., Mayayana wrote:
"Ken Springer" wrote

| I used to know a girl whose first name was Risë.Â* Born in the USA.
:-)
|

Â*Â* I don't even know how to enter that. If Risë wrote to me
I'd do what I just did: Copy and paste her name. What do you
do? Use Charmap.exe? On XP that doesn't even include UTF-8.
I've wondered how people use curly quotes and long dashes.
I don't know of any easy way to do it.

Â*Â* But I also don't know anyone named Risë. My disregard
for foreign languages is only a theoretical slight in the minds
of the non-English speakers here. Fortunately, no one Chinese
or Japanese is filing a complaint with the PC police. Then
we'd all be in big trouble.



Does the Emoji map in windows 10 work in text only newsgroups?
That's the Windows key plus the dot key, I will try it.

🚑{}®℃℉â�‚$$à¸¿à¸¿â‚¤â‚¤à¯¹à¯¹â‚¬â‚¬Ê¤ÄŠÄ–Ä —ĚĚ↪↩⇈◉◒◶⨌⨶⪜⪙⪆🙂🙂🙂 .

Ok I typed in a random bunch, there are hundreds, Lets see what
happens when I send Them.

Rene



Well Glory Be, It does work OK :-)

Rene


Oh, Oh, I hope I haven't opened up Pandoras box!

LOL


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

David
Tue, 10 Dec 2019 16:08:00 GMT in alt.computer.workshop, 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.

Hah. If by wrong you meant, refused, multiple times, to do it for you,
then yea.. sure, I went wrong.

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

ROFL! You're a bull****ter, for sure.

Nothing was ever sought for my personal benefit.

And a bit whacky.

How is that exposing me, David?

I'm fairly sure that most people have no idea that you are a
criminal.

Ahh, more slander. You are well known for that, too, David.



--
If you feel like you've got to lead, at least get out of my way.

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-12-10 10:05 p.m., Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-12-10 10:02 p.m., Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-12-10 9:01 p.m., Mayayana wrote:
"Ken Springer" wrote

| I used to know a girl whose first name was Risë. Born in the
USA. :-)
|

I don't even know how to enter that. If Risë wrote to me
I'd do what I just did: Copy and paste her name. What do you
do? Use Charmap.exe? On XP that doesn't even include UTF-8.
I've wondered how people use curly quotes and long dashes.
I don't know of any easy way to do it.

But I also don't know anyone named Risë. My disregard
for foreign languages is only a theoretical slight in the minds
of the non-English speakers here. Fortunately, no one Chinese
or Japanese is filing a complaint with the PC police. Then
we'd all be in big trouble.



Does the Emoji map in windows 10 work in text only newsgroups?
That's the Windows key plus the dot key, I will try it.

🚑{}®℃℉â�‚$$à¸¿à¸¿â‚¤â‚¤à¯¹à¯¹â‚¬â‚¬Ê¤ÄŠÄ–Ä —ĚĚ↪↩⇈◉◒◶⨌⨶⪜⪙⪆🙂🙂🙂 .

Ok I typed in a random bunch, there are hundreds, Lets see what
happens when I send Them.

Rene



Well Glory Be, It does work OK :-)

Rene


Oh, Oh, I hope I haven't opened up Pandoras box!

Rene


That makes a great eye chart.

I can see me reading that off the
wall at the eye doctor now.

OK, now we should do some ASCII art using those.

Paul

On 10/12/2019 18.22, Mayayana wrote:
"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"

Which is not "If we ain't got it, you don't need it.". For starters, it
is taken out of context.


| 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.

LOL. Free, you say.


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.




--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 10/12/2019 16.18, Dan Purgert wrote:
Mayayana wrote:
"Dan Purgert" wrote

| I've never used Mandrake/Mandriva; but I know that SUSE is ... weird.
| They remind me of like IBM or HP -- "release 1.2.3.1 is to be released
| on January 13, 2020; our standard lifecycle will apply to this release.
| Long-term contract holders can obtain 1.2.3.1.LT on January 20."
|
| I think the whole gimmick with them is that you buy a SUSE support
| contract.
|

I'd never heard of that. I mainly picked those because
they supported KDE and because they seemed to have to
most package support for various software programs.

As this is a bit OT for the *win* groups, should we perhaps move to
email?

There is "alt.comp.freeware" and "alt.computer.workshop". Are they also
Windows groups? :-?


Well, I just read the SUSE page for a few minutes, and the language
reminded me of other "enterprise-y" stuff. I could be somewhat off the
mark there.

You have to read the openSUSE pageS instead.

Ubuntu has a massive library of packages as well (I'm not sure they're
necessarily "top" in that count, but they're at the upper end).
Although their terminology (and slight name-alterations based on the
desktop setup of choice) does kind of get annoying.


| Sounds like you really wanted Ubuntu (or these days, maybe Mint?).

People often say that. But why move from Windows
adware to Linux adware? I don't want something that
cuts off control. I'd only be interested if it were as
functional and controllable as Windows.

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.

In my experience, Linux tends to trump Windows when it comes to
"controllability" in general terms. One side or the other may be better
in a specific "controllable thing" though (but I think that goes for
anything, be it software, a new car, etc.)


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?

You can still find the "kit" distributions for Linux (and they're quite
fun) -- but realistically, the "for desktops / new users" type
distributions are more akin to hybrids these days. That is, they're a
bit of an oddity, when compared to "a standard car that everyone
has(tm)", but for most people the differences will rather quickly be
overcome and/or ignored.


| 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.

Yes.

And there is another point: what /I/ see of the firewall is not
iptables, but a frontend that handles iptables with an easy (or not) to
use configuration view. What the user can do depends on what frontend
chooses to do - and there are several frontends to choose.



Linux people don't seem to get the irony of a system
that stresses freedom yet provides none. The religious
peer pressure can be intense. Especially with the young
devotees.

I don't follow how the differences in paradigms mean that there is no
"freedom".


But the ability to block processes is very useful on
Windows. It provides a warning if malware gets onto
the system. Also, these days a large percentage of
software tries to call home without asking. [...]

Software making unauthorized calls home is never fun. I haven't
personally seen that happening with the stuff I have installed (not that
the statement means it doesn't happen, of course).

That being said, I think many people follow your train of thought on the
linux side.


I never had to suffer malware...




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.

Yes, I have seen that. openSUSE network scripts do that since ages. If
the check fails, you get a notice that network is failing. And it is
just that, a check that the network is running. A plain "ping", no data
exchanged.


Did I want to allow DCOM outbound? Huh? I'd
never heard of DCOM. Microsoft was trying to get
into my system via ActiveX because I'd clicked
their ad.

Probably more likely the sleazy ad company .


The first software program I saw try to go online was
Norton System Works. [...]

This was back when SW was system software. No
AV or anything like it. No excuse for going online.

Dunno what SystemWorks is, so I can't say there. I know many of their
installers phoned home to get the latest patches as part of the install
process (to avoid "great you installed 1.0.0, download 1.0.9 now!").

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?




....


--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 10/12/2019 22.31, Mayayana wrote:
"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.

LOL. I have not compiled my software since ages. No need to. No feeling
of being grandma either :-P


| 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.

Well, the sourcecode is there, so just go find out what it is doing :-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.
|
| 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.

(chuckle)


--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 10/12/2019 17.56, Ken Blake wrote:
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.Â* 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 toÂ* 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.


And now to a stable version 10, and we have to look further. Not a
trivial number to find out.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

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

Where's thje qwerty keyboard layout here?
https://clipground.com/images/antiqu...-clipart-7.jpg

Or he http://www.mrmartinweb.com/type.htm

Qwerty was introdiuced in 1873. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY
Typewriters of different designs go as far back as 1575.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter

A number of typewriters shown here,

http://www.typewritermuseum.org/coll...actyle1&cat=ks,

do not not have the QWERTY layout, even thought they were made after
1873. Obviously, there was no agreed upon layout.

Given that even now, with the optional keyboard layouts like DVORAK,
there is no "standard", just the most common.

you obviously don't understand what standard means.

qwerty is the standard in usa and has been for the past 125 years (your
link) with zero indication it's going to change.

keyboards outside the usa typically use the standard for whatever
country it is, but that does not affect the qwerty standard in the usa.
for example, france is azerty:
https://www.terena.org/activities/mu...bd-all.html#Fr
ench

there have been some variants for specific purposes, such as the ones
in the link below, but they are extremely rare and do not in any way
invalidate the qwerty standard.
https://simplyian.com/2010/02/10/top-10-most-unique-keyboards/

dvorak is yet another standard, which very rarely seen and a complete
scam. the tests that showed it's faster were created and run by dvorak
himself. can you say 'conflict of interest'?

not surprisingly, objective controlled tests found little difference
between qwerty and dvorak, and in some cases, qwerty was *faster*.
imagine that.

https://www.economist.com/finance-an...1/the-qwerty-m
yth
...A different layout, which had been patented by August Dvorak in
1936, was shown to be much faster. Yet the Dvorak layout has never
been widely adopted, even though (with electric typewriters and then
PCs) the anti-jamming rationale for QWERTY has been defunct for years.
....
A fine tale, but largely fiction. The paper by Messrs Liebowitz
and Margolis shows, in the first place, that the first evidence
supporting claims of Dvorak's superiority was extremely thin. The
main study was carried out by the United States Navy in 1944
(doubtless a time when every second counted in the typing pools).
The speed of 14 typists retrained on Dvorak was compared with the
speed of 18 given supplementary training on QWERTY. The Dvorak
typists did better‹but it is impossible to say from the official
report whether the experiment was properly controlled. There are a
variety of oddities and possible biases: all of them, it so happens,
seeming to favour Dvorak.

But then it turns out‹something else the report forgot to
mention‹that the experiments were conducted by one
Lieutenant-Commander August Dvorak, the navy's top
time-and-motion man, and owner of the Dvorak layout patent.

In 1956 a carefully designed study by the General Services
Administration found that QWERTY typists were about as fast as
Dvorak typists, or faster.

In article , Ken Springer
wrote:

I've wondered how people use curly quotes and long dashes.
I don't know of any easy way to do it.

It may depend on the software you use. Many word processors have an
option to insert the curly quotes. I don't know if it's still the same,
but in Word you intentionally type the wrong key combo, and the en or em
dash would be inserted if AutoCorrect was enabled. Usually, you can add
your own AutoCorrect entries.

curly quotes are often done automatically, so the user doesn't have to
worry about which one to use when.

On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 13:11:14 +0000, David
wrote:

No bull****. I believed that something untoward was happening on the
Annexcafe forums and I asked if you would check.

And nothing was.

20 years of STALKING, 30 INNOCENT TARGETS slandered,attacked
with web-based scanners, some blackmailed, threatened etc and NONE OF
THEM TAKEN TO COURT.
You should put that on your CV.
That's a 100% score. As a complete failure. But still 100%.

---------------
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

"Ken Springer" wrote

| | I used to know a girl whose first name was Risë. Born in the USA.
:-)
| |
|
| I don't even know how to enter that. If Risë wrote to me
| I'd do what I just did: Copy and paste her name.
|
| In this case, I looked up umlaut in Wikipedia. The article included a
| bunch of letters with umlauts. So, I did what you did. Copy and paste.
| LOL
|

I hope she's worth it.

"Rene Lamontagne" wrote

| Does the Emoji map in windows 10 work in text only newsgroups?
| That's the Windows key plus the dot key, I will try it.
|
| ??{}®???$$?????????CEeEE?????????????????.
|

That's a whole new can of worms. They might work
if people view in HTML and have the font. I see mostly
boxes, along with oddball things like {}$$ pound sign,
euro sign, B with a vertical line through it, and a few
letters with a mark over them.

Ever notice webpages where there are odd little
rectangles, with 2 squares on top of each other, and
inside each square is a tiny hex code? Those are emojis
or foreign language characters for which you don't have
a font.

Then there's the problem of deciphering them. Usually
I don't know what an emoji is supposed to mean, even
if I can see them. And why would I want to see them?

No, viewing it as HTML makes no difference. Which
makes sense. You didn't post as HTML. Interestingly,
I see the boxes in your post, but once I reply or copy
and paste it's converted to mostly question marks. I
tried to copy and paste it into a webpage with UTF-8
content encoding, then view in New Moon, but the
Clipboard seems to convert it to question marks.