Proof that software as service/cloud based, will never work for long term ...

[BravoV]

Imagine one day, the TV came with a watered down smartphone exactly like that, or cheap models TV need your smartphone in order to operate the TV, and the old dumb remote is no longer provided. 

[BravoV]

Yet another proof, as cloud based stuff can cause you harm physically, e.g.:A bulglar intruding your property, loose your home/apt stuffs as they get stolen, or possibly your life too. 

Oh, its getting better as definitely your personal information will get exposed like email addresses, profile photos, location history, and the precise location of your house and possibly your fingerprint data. 

-> Tapplock : Easy-to-pick “smart” locks gush personal data, FTC finds

[madires]

That one is really secure. You just need to unscrew the back panel.

[peter-h]

Not read all the posts but I would not touch cloud based tools for anything remotely important.

It is like the old days of dongles. I lost the use of $20k's worth of Xilinx tools (yes, old days as I say ) because one of the two dongles broke. They refused to help (I was told to buy the latest version) but I found a patch for the code and carried on.

For a non corporate user there is generally no need for latest tools.

For "office" you can do everything with MS Office 2007 which is a very popular version and cheap on amazon etc.

There are various EDA packages which all "work" adequately, and if you are stuck with a floating license server you can implement a backup strategy using an ethernet card whose MAC# can be reprogrammed, or possibly running the license server in a VM. I had a long discussion on this topic with Cadence; the salesman acked that one can duplicate / backup the license server that way.

For Adobe stuff, just get hold of CS6. It does 99% of "everything".

Forcing the cloud model also drives the bootleg market, because cracked versions of all this stuff are very available, and disgruntled users who paid for the original software tend to not be too worried about using cracked versions. Often it helps to block a particular executable from internet access and this is possible on android too if rooted.

[olkipukki]

Imagine one day, the TV came with a watered down smartphone exactly like that, or cheap models TV need your smartphone in order to operate the TV, and the old dumb remote is no longer provided. 

Well, more or less these are coming today.

As example, a kitchen scale is required iphone/ipad, except you pay a premium to rid off LCD display and buttons

[bd139]

What the fuck! 

MBA excrement that is and nothing else. Totally pointless.

[olkipukki]

Not read all the posts but I would not touch cloud based tools for anything remotely important.

I added doungles to a "dangerous" list too.

For "office" you can do everything with MS Office 2007 which is a very popular version and cheap on amazon etc.

Why you will need this?
LibreOffice a plain and simple, and works for 3+ major platforms.

There are various EDA packages which all "work" adequately, and if you are stuck with a floating license server you can implement a backup strategy using an ethernet card whose MAC# can be reprogrammed, or possibly running the license server in a VM. I had a long discussion on this topic with Cadence; the salesman acked that one can duplicate / backup the license server that way.

In general, used to be okay, but need to be careful regarding how and where to move VMs, might be unexpected surprises.
These days, bastards know how to detect VM and can block a software 

For Adobe stuff, just get hold of CS6. It does 99% of "everything".

Or... just spend $50 (1/2 in most cases) and buy Serif Affinity-like tools   

[JPortici]

Why you will need this?
LibreOffice a plain and simple, and works for 3+ major platforms.

to be fair, power point '97 is still more powerful, faster and less crash prone than impress and excel has a few dedicated functions that you can't find on calc or replicate that easily

[Karel]

Why you will need this?
LibreOffice a plain and simple, and works for 3+ major platforms.

to be fair, power point '97 is still more powerful, faster and less crash prone than impress and excel has a few dedicated functions that you can't find on calc or replicate that easily

The things is, Libreoffice is fine for 99% of the people.

[JPortici]

It is, and i do use it except for those two things i mentioned.
He asked, i answered.

[peter-h]

The "office lookalikes" are ok if everybody uses them but in reality 99% of business people use the M$ ones and you need total compatibility.

[CatalinaWOW]

Yep.  I have found that I can do almost everything in Libre that I can do in Office.  Those that I can't are obscure things that very few people use.  Libre even reads older MS documents better than MS does.  And recent versions of Libre load quickly.  But the one thing that fails consistently is producing a MS version of a complex document that renders perfectly in MS.  And rendering complex documents generated in MS.  And since most businesses use MS this is a fatal flaw.

[bd139]

Interesting thread direction.

MS office is "one of those things". I've used it extensively, from writing 500+ page technical documents over the space of 25 years, to an API level down to writing huge VSTO plugins to do runtime templating etc. I know office better than most people do and I know how to use it properly and I know where it sucks.

The workflow is fundamentally broken if you're sharing stuff. It really is a complete shit show. Even between office versions there are issues. The only place it works in this capacity is across total version consistency across everyone and then there are so many edge cases, gotchas, problems that costs increase massively. I've seen financial advisors crying into their tea after spending a week writing portfolio reports for people in it only to come back and find the document is toast. So they came up with Office 365 which sort of enforces version consistency by taking it away and gives real time collaboration tools. This introduces another thousand concerns that most users don't want to deal with at the same time and breaks working practices. So what happens is you end up with 9 different versions of office and people emailing shitty documents around still or editing them on a file share back like it's 1999 again.

Alas my patience for this shit is very very very low. So I use Libreoffice myself. Sheets, writer, draw. Impress is cancerous as is powerpoint. Low information density. You can't pay me to write powerpoints . My workflow moved to actually receiving pieces of poo in docx format, cut and paste them into notepad2 to remove all meta-formatting and then assembling them carefully into writer. Once complete this is turned into a PDF and mailed back for review. The document itself NEVER leaves the owner's machine (other than for DR) and is never touched by another human. Edits and reviews are done by email by sending text content only however they wish to spew it at me.

The outcome is reliable, fast, well controlled and importantly does not specify which technology to use. I could switch to LaTeX tomorrow if I could be arsed with it and the outcome would be the same. And after all it's the document that's important isn't it, not the tools. Turns out the focus on the tools not the working model is what is costly and complex and requires maintenance.

[olkipukki]

The "office lookalikes" are ok if everybody uses them but in reality 99% of business people use the M$ ones and you need total compatibility.

I'm using LibreOffice  on Windows/Mac after give up MS Office subscription since no other way, and share exported files to external business world.
No issues so far. I do not push limits (such as some weird formatting or bizarre functionality).

If you want fully compatibility, I cannot think who is using unsupported MS Office 2007 these days for a business purpose, there is a very high probability that your email with word/excel 2007 format attachment will go to null or mark as spam/dangherous file.

[Karel]

When a document, made with ms office, doesn't look right in Libreoffice, it's the fault of Libreoffice.

When a document, made with Libreoffice, doesn't look right in ms office, it's the fault of Libreoffice.

When a document, made with ms office version x, doesn't look right in ms office version z, it's ... normal!

[PlainName]

As example, a kitchen scale is required iphone/ipad, except you pay a premium to rid off LCD display and buttons

I like that! Wouldn't get one and it's a lot of faffing about, but it's the GUI equivalent of ingredient measuring where the traditional paper recipe and manual weighing is the CLI version. If you don't normally cook or mix cocktails it's a great way to make sure the measures are at least correct.

Separately, one beef I have with our scales are that you can't read the LCD if you have a big bowl on them. Or if the light is obscured by whatever you're measuring. A scale I use for post work has a removable display attached by a springy lead, but normal kitchen ones don't. Really annoying. This thing would sort that out.

I think we need to be careful what we are dissing here. After all, LCDs on a scale FFS!!1! Why not just a known weight and balance, eh? You are already on the slippery slope, you're just pointing and laughing at people further down.

The problem here is not the phone per se, it is the cloud aspect. Router goes down? No weighing. If it were Bluetooth or even local WiFi then it would appear in a different topic on this form and not this one. Get them to remove the mandatory cloud aspect and I would consider getting one of these if it were cheap enough.

[peter-h]

"there is a very high probability that your email with word/excel 2007 format attachment will go to null or mark as spam/dangherous file."

Can you cite an actual example of a spam filtering implementation which checks the MS Office version?

I've never heard of anybody doing that.

[bd139]

We have a forefront policy that removes ALL MS office documents from emails.

[olkipukki]

I think we need to be careful what we are dissing here. After all, LCDs on a scale FFS!!1!

Well, you are happy to buy a car without keys and using iphone app to turn it on, that's fine. There is a market already.

I don't mind this kitchen scale and experience they bring with a recipe app. Great gift who keen into a cooking and cannot handle "traditional" way.
Actually, I saw it in a live on some exhibition and build not too bad as far as I remember. Cost below $100, not sure about an app subscription and used battery there.

But I do not need 2nd scale in my kitchen. Without LCD is absolutly useless in a daily life.

[olkipukki]

Can you cite an actual example of a spam filtering implementation which checks the MS Office version?

No, I can't.

[peter-h]

I've been closely involved with this stuff and it would be unbelievably dumb (and technically difficult) to scan attachments for the version of the application.

Spam filtering employs all kinds of dubious processes which is why so many emails go missing - especially with gmail destinations. Throwing in attachment versions would finish things off nicely.

[olkipukki]

I've been closely involved with this stuff and it would be unbelievably dumb (and technically difficult) to scan attachments for the version of the application.

Spam filtering employs all kinds of dubious processes which is why so many emails go missing - especially with gmail destinations. Throwing in attachment versions would finish things off nicely.

Maybe I too harsh to dump 2007 office documents, thinking that this version of MS Office still works with binary formats, but nothing new to check what is an attachement is and content signature...

[olkipukki]

We have a forefront policy that removes ALL MS office documents from emails.

One of most toughest policy that I saw, they do above and put a link into an email to say "attachment has been removed, please contact us if you really want to see", you press on a link, fill a form to justify a business reason, it goes through 4 eyes approval process, and eventually somebody in an isolated environment will open it and save in less "hazardous" format. Of course, a department that put a request to proceed, will pay full cost.

[CatalinaWOW]

When a document, made with ms office, doesn't look right in Libreoffice, it's the fault of Libreoffice.

When a document, made with Libreoffice, doesn't look right in ms office, it's the fault of Libreoffice.

When a document, made with ms office version x, doesn't look right in ms office version z, it's ... normal!

Taint fair.  But it is true when you aren't dominant in a market.  You also omitted the fact that Libre also has version self compatibility issues.

[olkipukki]

Libre is far to be perfect, sometimes it's sucks

What are alternatives to MS Office Cloud Empire?

Corel Wordperfect Suite?   
Apples Calc + Pages + Keynote?