Some Swiss wants to ban M$ PowerPoint software!

[TheWelly888]

Some Swiss wants to form a political party to pass a law banning Micro$oft PowerPoint because it distracts both the audience and speaker!

I have sat through many PowerPoint presentation and I concur with their sentiment! How many have you seen where the slides went backwards or jumped ahead prematurely?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/28/powerpoint-party-switzerland-ban

[Computeruser]

Back when DOS computers and Apple II computers were modern, people said computers would harm our ability to learn to spell. Luddites have always told us technology is the problem and they always will ... C

[bullet308]

PowerPoint is not the enemy. Bad PowerPoint is.  And Lord knows, there are a lot of badly conceived, executed and delivered PowerPoint presentations out there. Its not the software's fault, though. Its just that an untalented/unskilled presenter cannot have his/her deficiencies compensated for by PP slides.

[Zero999]

If people aren't allowed to use MS PowerPoint can they use OpenOffice.org Impress or Apple Keynote?

[TheWelly888]

^^^
And yeah how will the law be framed to ban any such software, by name or by application - define application in that case?

So if the ban is by name then what will M$ call PowerPoint in Switzerland? HelveticaHell?

I agree that bad presentation is not necessarily down to PowerPoint but the style used in the frames are so cliched these days, oh when will someone use a different colour gradation than blue?!

[Time]

Thats just plain stupid.

[Computeruser]

>>> Thats just plain stupid  <--- And so my comment earlier about Luddites.   .... C

[david77]

It's summer so the papers need something to report and the weirdos come out of their hidey holes... 

What's the alternative? OHP and hand drawn transparencies? That reminds me of school in the 80's & 90's *shudder*

[Zero999]

Well stranger things have happened. We're talking about Swiserland here, the country which banned minarets.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8385069.stm

[Kiriakos-GR]

Well stranger things have happened. We're talking about Switzerland here, the country which banned minarets.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8385069.stm

They do very well, you can not expect that the country that you are a guest in it, to look like Persia.
 

[Kozmyk]

I have a friend who was a festival organiser. He lived in a double decker bus. On his way to an event in Switzerland the border guards refused him entry into the country saying that his vehicle was 150mm above the maximum allowed height. He went back to the first French village he could find and borrowed a chainsaw. Cut the top off his bus and covered it with a tarpaulin. He went back to the border and the head guard was NOT happy, but his bus was now below the legal height. The guard then tried to make him pay import duty, Swiss road tax and any other charge he could think of. A clerk from the border office sneaked out and told my mate that showman's vehicles were exempt from these taxes under Swiss law. He claimed showman's exemption and the head guard turned purple with anger BUT he had to let him in.

[FenderBender]

I have a friend who was a festival organiser. He lived in a double decker bus. On his way to an event in Switzerland the border guards refused him entry into the country saying that his vehicle was 150mm above the maximum allowed height. He went back to the first French village he could find and borrowed a chainsaw. Cut the top off his bus and covered it with a tarpaulin. He went back to the border and the head guard was NOT happy, but his bus was now below the legal height. The guard then tried to make him pay import duty, Swiss road tax and any other charge he could think of. A clerk from the border office sneaked out and told my mate that showman's vehicles were exempt from these taxes under Swiss law. He claimed showman's exemption and the head guard turned purple with anger BUT he had to let him in.

Haha! Sucks for the bus, but that's pretty funny!

[MrPlacid]

^^^
And yeah how will the law be framed to ban any such software, by name or by application - define application in that case?

Yeah, they are gonna have to ban website too. Isn't it the same thing as a flashcard website, before the deck is shuffled or in teaching mode? How bad will they look if they ban a site use for studying?



Since, I got my video capture on. I got something cool to show you guys. Flashcard as resistance chart.

[the_raptor]

It is actually smart. Seriously, PowerPoint presentations (and other pointless meetings) cost economies tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity.

There should be an Internet "law" that says: "The number of slides in a presentation is inversely proportional to the amount of content in the presentation".

Computers haven't made people stupider, but they have allowed bullshit artists to create inane time wasting presentations with ease.

[Computeruser]

>>> Computers haven't made people stupider, but they have allowed bullshit artists to create inane time wasting presentations with ease.

That may be true, but laws on inanimate software and computers will solve nothing.

Worse, laws banning stupidity, although tried in some form or another, also do not work.

It is the kind of thing business manager need to exert some leadership about or else we have to live with it.

.... C

[Zero999]

Well stranger things have happened. We're talking about Switzerland here, the country which banned minarets.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8385069.stm

They do very well, you can not expect that the country that you are a guest in it, to look like Persia.

What do you mean?

I can't speak for Switzerland but here in the UK there are plenty of Muslims who were born here, work here and pay taxes so aren't not guests.

[MrPlacid]

Well stranger things have happened. We're talking about Switzerland here, the country which banned minarets.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8385069.stm

They do very well, you can not expect that the country that you are a guest in it, to look like Persia.

What do you mean?

I can't speak for Switzerland but here in the UK there are plenty of Muslims who were born here, work here and pay taxes so aren't not guests.

I think he meant the country that was nice enough to accept you. There was news not long ago from germany that multiculturalism failed since people are trying to convert the host country into the country they left. When we came to the US, we love their buildings and drop our ideas of building straw huts to live in

[Zero999]

There was news not long ago from germany that multiculturalism failed since people are trying to convert the host country into the country they left.

They're will always be people like that and I agree, they should bugger off back but the majority of people who've settled in the UK from other countries, Many non-white people are British, have lived here all their lives and families have been here for a few generations. There are also white-British people who've converted to a non-native religion: Islam, Buddhism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity etc.