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The press promotes theft of cultural property

Read in the December 2007 issue of Windows XP The Official Magazine ™ this excerpt from the editorial of the Editor:

"Let us to the moral aspect of the problem [the fight against illegal downloading] download multimedia files without the permission of rights holders, it is not right ... Se "stuff yourself" for years on the backs of consumers by offering cultural overpriced, it is not pretty either! It is now time to consider new ways to share the intellectual wealth: the film industry could, for example, recognize people attending cinemas by offering free video DVD. The win-win is in the air time, is not it? "


On 1 December 2007

Mr. Editor,

I have just read with great interest your editorial in the December 2007 issue of Windows XP The Official Magazine ™.

I spend the first part, legal and technical, and I stop to "the moral aspect of the problem."

It seems to me you're not going far enough in your analysis. Yes cultural goods are overpriced. We must strike hard.

I suggest you lead by example.

Indeed, the cultural property that is your magazine, sold 9 euros is outrageously expensive.

Therefore, I propose to implement a "new way to share this rich culture": you're running version "pdf" of your magazine, on an official site on which any interested reader can download freely. Possibly, I can help by making a copy of the paper that I bought, and putting myself on a site online "peer to peer.

In addition, I suggest you reward people who buy your magazine still on newsstands, by offering a free DVD of the latest version of Windows XP, much more useful than the many "versions Test valid for 30 days "that typically found on the CD-ROMs available.

I think we could go further: you've probably noticed the exorbitant price of flat panel displays, high definition, however, essential to look comfortably films donated by the film industry. Therefore, I propose to close our eyes when we go we used freely in stocks FNAC or Darty, these traders are shameful "gorge" on our back for decades .

And soon as is Eve truce of "draconian excesses" if we can not not pay us caviar, take it on the shelves.

Ah! not. This is not a cultural product. And besides ... I hate caviar

PS. How is it that when it comes to "digital", the reasoning of everyday life can no longer apply? No wonder drift "morality" of youth, when the press persists in boast organized theft?

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Excel 2007: not only the interface changes, but arithmetic too!

An anomaly noted by 01 Informatique dated October 1, 2007

If a cell in Excel 2007 you enter the formula

= 850 * 77.1

the result should be 65535 (an admittedly a little magic for IT). For Excel 2007, the result is ... 100 000 !

But the fun does not stop there. If in the next cell, you enter

= A1 + 1

the result is logical if one may say, 100 001 .

By cons, if you enter = A1

- 1

the result is 65 534 .

After the questionable interface changes, and the need to lose the old habits, that Microsoft requires us to revise the rules of basic arithmetic!

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Beware of new mutants: the "digital natives"

Self Promotion: Data read in 01 1 June 2007

Gartner warns: Beware of new mutants, "Digital natives"

born since the late '80s, the notion of "new technology "means nothing to them who have known only the digital age. These young people are called "digital natives" will soon flood the labor market, and Gartner warns: "It's going décoiffer. It

Barcelona during his European Symposium Spring Gartner recently presented the synthesis of the work of his analysts, this year under the banner of eight "Emerging Trends" that should impacting all organizations in charge of information technology. These trends include pervasive social impact of new technologies which suggests, according to Gartner, the biggest upheaval of the next 5 years, with effects lasting and irreversible.

The finding from the sociological observation of our children, who have not experienced the world before digital, and say "I had a camera" when we say "I I bought a digital camera.

This development is not without consequences on our business, so the risk of misunderstanding with the new generations are important. Not only do they handle tools with ease, but their thinking , references and values are shaken.

We must now live with the multitude of tools for creating content that these teens have lower cost, and they use every day to communicate within their communities Interests: mobile phones with integrated camera, WiFi, software video editing, blogging, social networking on the web (MySpace), collaborative website (Second Life), etc..

And this is just the beginning. Because it will also count with the new means of informal interaction such as sharing "bookmarks" personal (del.icio.us, digg.com), indexing and evaluation of content (Flickr, Last.fm, Epinions ), predictions using the "wisdom of crowds" (consensuspoint.com), or tools of expression or conversation as blogs and wikis.

Speaking as a guest, Don Tapscott drives the point home. For the author of "Wikinomics - How collaboration changes everything" (not yet translated in French) the top performing organizations will be those that will maximize the capacity and the collective genius to spur innovation, growth and success.

This environment inevitably leads to what Gartner calls the past few years the "consumerization" of IT, this trend is that business computing under the control of consumers, as their new employees.

How, then, impose traditional security measures, such as filtering, these "digital natives" who live daily in various virtual communities, have an avatar Second Life, always use Gmail, weave their networks with MSN Messenger and Skype and unashamedly expose their private lives, including image on their blog? And how to manage a standardized computer equipment when employees have home machines excessive performance, some young "precursors" that have been as personal storage capacity measured in terabytes.

This situation is already experienced in teaching, especially in higher education, where the presence of these "digital natives" began to emerge about how to manage IT. The first challenge for companies is to transform their cultural environment and adapt to new modes of communication. To avoid this pattern, asking his young employee a major report to be filed the next day on his office, only to find that a USB stick containing the form of an MPEG file, a superb animated presentation: he had forgotten clarify that the report should be in print!

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More Mobile in U.S. schools?

Lu " Internet News NG " of May 10, 2007: Several U.S. schools

abandon the distribution of phones in the secondary (the "high schools ").

" Too expensive, too many breaks, too many non-educational purposes ... and ultimately, academic performance does not improve: many states and counties of the United States who had massively distributed laptops to their students are tempted to quit, says the New York Times.

several studies showing that indeed the possession of laptops does not affect student performance, except perhaps to those of the best students, who make the most profit. Teachers sometimes feel that the computer is an obstacle to their direct relationship with students. In addition, costs associated with such programs are much higher than expected: replacement and repair, user support, teacher training, network security against attacks and viruses, but also to limit access to games, porn sites instant messaging and other ...

Back in the good old blackboard, then? Not quite. Schools are considering other options, like increasing their fleet of shared computers, expanding hours of access to computer rooms or even the use of other terminals. Nor do fail to recognize that in this relative failure, lack of teaching evolution plays a significant role. "

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The mystery of the hard drive capacity. Or the proper use of standard office

In recent years, computer users are surprised by the difference between the stated capacity by hard drive manufacturers, and actual capacity announced by the operating system. Thus, a 80GB drive only shows he that 74.5 GB in Windows.

Whence the difference? Some explanations heard here and there talk about the effect of formatting, which would "lose" space on the disk. Why not? But loss of nearly 7% for formatting, that's a lot.

And if the truth was both simpler and more obscure? Simple as mathematics, and dark as a truth ignored by the media.

blame the IEC!

Everything is explained on the website of the IEC , venerable International Electrotechnical Commission (or International Electrotechnical Commission).

The IEC is the source of a standard, in force since December 1998, which adds to the Système International (SI) a new standard "binary prefixes".

recall here that the SI defines a set of seven basic units: the meter for length, for the second time, the ampere for electric current, kelvin for temperature, the mole quantities of matter and the candela for luminous intensity.

It also defines the SI multiples and their abbreviations, yotta (10 power 24) to yocto (10 power -24) including of course per kilo, mega, giga.

kilo, mega, giga

Precisely, these prefixes are well known to computer science have long been used (incorrectly) to mean multiples of 1024 (2 ^ 10) instead of 1000 (10 ^ 3). In the early days of computing, the difference was not great, but with higher capacity, it becomes more visible. 2.4% across the kilo it is 20% across the exam.

Since 1998, therefore, the IS clearly defines the kilobyte has 1000 bytes and not 1024. To please the computer, the IEC had the good taste to create new prefixes for binary multiples. We must therefore use the kilobinaire to designate 1024, which gives the kibibyte (KB) for 1024 bytes. Binary multiples are as follows (click on picture to enlarge):



So the explanation of bytes lost in "format": in fact, drive manufacturers offer their capacity in kilobytes, while the operating system himself, account kibibyte without saying. When Windows says the drive has 74.5 GB, it should be understood Gio 74.5, 74.5 * 2 ^ 30 (or 79.99 GB).

It is therefore urgent that everyone get into the habit of speaking the same language, or at least the same measures. Either we accept that a kilogram is 1000 bytes as in all other measures, or we must learn to handle binary multiples.

I confess to a weakness for the latter option. Just to poetry: what a pleasure to handle the strips of 256 mebioctets, tebibytes several disks, or network flow more gibibits! The Shadocks would have loved ...

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again: the contradictions of

I just noticed that the removal of custom bar borders on the ridiculous.

Always concerned about the effectiveness, I discovered on the site ... Microsoft, bars customized for the insertion of characters "International". The tool is quite official (see here ). It is found on Office Online with a search on "international character".

After installation, Word is equipped with a set of custom rods, allowing the use of specific characters, not only French but also in 28 other languages.

An absolutely essential tool to insert these characters in one click. At screen, we get it (here, the bar setting, the bar for the French and the bar for English):



The perfect tool. And pressing the Shift key is obtained accented capitals. Bravo Microsoft! Yes but ... Obviously it does not work with Office 2003 as custom bars no longer exist in Office 2007.

But Microsoft has the solution. It is found, always in Office Online with the same search. It lies beneath the title
" Keyboard shortcuts for international characters .
Seeing is believing:



fact is simple: live multiple keys!

particular note is the emphasis circumflex: we are asked to support both the [Ctrl] [Shift] and [^]! And besides, it does not work! In any case, not with my keyboard. Maybe with an English keyboard? Moreover, for the circumflex accent, the "standard" method is much simpler: [^] followed by the letter, lowercase or uppercase.

In conclusion, to use Microsoft tools, it is better not to speak a language "exotic" flourishes with diacritics unknown in English.

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About Microsoft "Ribbon" Office 2007: disappointment annoyance, surprise, anger and anxiety

That's it! Office 2007 is there. And you can use it without too much difficulty even without upgrade to Vista.

First observation: the famous "ribbon" of the new interface is probably very enjoyable for a novice who can navigate intuitively in better conditions than with previous versions.

For the user "warning" or "advanced", the situation is more mixed. Changing the interface to lose all the marks gained and enriched since the early versions of Word, Excel or Powerpoint. The result is a real loss of performance using both the command search the tape is different from the old hierarchy of menus.

Deception

So you tell yourself, informed user can use the "Quick Launch" as he used the custom bar in previous versions. Indeed, this bar allows you to store and organize the icons of frequently used commands.

But what a disappointment! After a quarantine order, the bar retains its linearity and additional icons are only accessible by an extension: they are not displayed at all times on the screen.

Chagrin

Disappointment turns into annoyance when it comes to find the personal tools developed with earlier versions.

With Office 2003, I developed an array of such tools, to facilitate my own task as custom bars where, according to my needs, I position my favorite commands. For example, in Excel, direct access to "Paste values" and "Paste format" that I use frequently and whose access is through a menu intermediary, as well as inserting cell line, etc..

I also created very basic macros are particularly useful for the many repetitive tasks. Thus, perform a standardized layout when creating a new worksheet becomes a macro personal, whose creation requires no knowledge of programming since it is sufficient to record a series of actions.

Another use of macros is to create specific buttons in the personal toolbar in Word, pour obtenir certains caractères spéciaux, tels que les majuscules accentuées. (Rappelons que pour la langue française les accents ne sont pas facultatifs sur les majuscules : l’absence des accents n’a été tolérée qu’en raison de la difficulté de les produire avec les machines à écrire mécaniques).

Lorsque j’ouvre un document Word, j’ai toujours à ma disposition cette barre personnelle

où j’accède en un seul clic au majuscules accentuées, aux caractères spéciaux les plus courants («e dans l’a», «e dans l’o», espace insécable, hyphen, etc.)..

Dazed

To find my usual tools, so I went around Word and Excel. I scoured every corner of the "ribbon", asked dozens of questions to the online help. And I found nothing.

I then continued my research on the Internet, questioned the conventional engines, scanned the forums, and there ... surprise: the custom toolbars are no longer part of Microsoft products. Not only have they been removed, but in addition, Microsoft justifies this development backward as if it were an asset to humanity.

The head seems to be one Jensen Harris, one of the bosses of the "Microsoft Office User Experience Team." This team is responsible for the overall design of the interface of Office programs. He published a comprehensive blog about these activities, which he admits his misdeeds ( http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/default.aspx ).

According to Jensen Harris, customizing the interface was very complex to manage. To create a new look, it was considered "a highly customizable framework where you can never predict where a function, and how it can be presented to the user. " But this is a concern of designers and programmers. And users that they think?

Microsoft has studied the behavior of its customers. It shows that the hundreds of millions of users, only 2% of sessions using personalization, and only 15% of them for more than 4 orders. The alibi was therefore found: not worth to flog so few people (see http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/06/27/648269.aspx )

Anger

If one considers the number of users of Office is about 400 million, customization is performed, according to Microsoft, with "only" 1.2 million people, whose activity is considered negligible.

This is all the more surprising in terms of volume of usage, they certainly represent a far more important because it is the most sophisticated users.

To summarize the reasoning of our friend Jensen: since most customers use Office in a timely and rudimentary simplify the design, and too bad for those who use it constantly.

This way of treating customers makes me angry.

And more so it shows the part of Microsoft incredible contempt for all of its market and its partners. Having spent years require software, a unified interface (the menus of Windows), and customers get used to this standard interface, teams Jensen unilaterally decide to abandon this interface in favor a ribbon tasteless.

And at a time when most vendors offer personalization features of the interface, that Microsoft decided to return to the single option. A change in total current cons of current trends.

Concern

This evolution of the office suite from Microsoft is also a worrying sign of a sort of "group think" imposed by Microsoft with its software. After

PowerPoint and "models" that are found in all the conferences, their layout uniform frozen and structuring of thought ...

After endless doodles black library "clipart" ... After the apostrophe

mismanaged by the same PowerPoint, and the space above the default all slides ...

That tape that you can not touch, for not disturbing the appearance of windows well organized by the development team in Redmond.

"But if," says Microsoft, you can customize the Ribbon. However, this is reserved for developers as explained three feature articles in the MSDN ( http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/06/27/648269.aspx ) that detail how to write additions (add-ins), COM, or extensions XML. Not really within reach of a user's desktop even warned.

A glimmer of hope

In this situation a developer had the clever idea to create an extension of the ribbon that finds a certain flexibility of customization. It is available as a demonstration site http://pschmid.net/index.php .

While the product RibbonCustomizer is paid (invoice Patrick Schmid 29.99 euros) but it can regain some flexibility, although some limitations remain, imposed by Microsoft. Thus, it is not possible to edit or delete the names of icons.

And here is my personal tab on the Ribbon of Word 2007:

It is always better than nothing.

can now hope that other solutions will emerge, perhaps more sophisticated and more flexible. As

to imagine a return to custom "made in Microsoft," my "friend" categorically excludes Jensen Harris in his blog.