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On Fri, 13 May 2011 18:15:54 +0100 tom wrote: > On 13/05/11 16:38, Grant Sewell wrote: > > On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 10:53 AM, > > tom<tompotts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> As far as I can tell there are all the tools you need for free to > >> do almost whatever you want in computing. There are two ways to > >> make money out of you: 1) provide a service. For me this would be > >> connectivity, a web server and associated storage. > >> 2) Or do what google, ms, apple et all are trying to do - keep you > >> ignorant and provide 1/2 service - one that doesnt encourage you > >> to actually learn about computers and what they can do and how to > >> use them so they can charge you for the privilege of using your > >> 21st century technology to emulate a victorian office. > > The problem, as I see it, is that not everyone wants to "learn about > > computers and what they can do" when all that they want is to have > > something that resembles a letter in some capacity. > I understand that - but the recipient would be probably be better off > with an electronic version - see next comment Agreed. At work we are currently fighting to be allowed to be paperless. We are an IT teaching dept. and yet we have an entire rooms worth of shelving covered in folders with lots of dead trees in them... all because somebody else *might* want to see it. > >> The only docs you should ever write are emails or possibly web > >> pages. Spreadsheets are like programming without the last 30 years > >> of software engineering experience added and should never be used > >> in enterprise. > > Really? So my Mother would have been better learning about > > programming and software engineering just so she could process her > > yearly accounts? > No - she could have used a free package to do that. Ahh... you are assuming that she didn't use any free packages to do her accounts. I never said that she wasn't using some Free Software spreadsheet or other. > And if companies > could get their computer systems to send me an xml or other open > standard formatted version of my receipts/invoices rather than a > 'pretty' PDFinF then it could just go straight into my account > package rather than me having to type it in! Proprietary standards > make life really hard - documents/paper are a proprietary standard - > it needs something else other than my computer. *Some* documents are in proprietary formats. Not all. Grant. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq