microsoft trashes open office - come on!

From Yahoo NEWS: A recent Microsoft video suggests the company considers OpenOffice.org a significant threat to its own Office suite.

Titled "A Few Perspectives on OpenOffice.org," the video features a series of horror stories from customers who tried the open-source productivity suite and suffered from excess costs as well as IT resources, performance and compatibility issues.

A series of customer quotes flashes across the screen in the slickly animated video, read aloud by a series of unseen narrators. "If an open-source freeware solution breaks, who's going to fix it?" according to a statement ascribed to a school district official in the U.S.

"When we returned to Microsoft Office after our experience with OpenOffice, you could practically hear a collective sigh of relief across the entire district," states another comment attributed to a U.S. school system official.

Comments are not enabled on the video's YouTube page.

Microsoft is facing competition from OpenOffice.org on multiple fronts, from the commercial version sold by project owner Oracle, as well as offshoots like the recently announced LibreOffice.

Oracle this week sought to dispel any doubts about its commitment to OpenOffice.org, saying it would participate in an ODF (Open Document Format) Plugfest event in Brussels and pledging continued development support on the OpenOffice.org codebase.

An Oracle spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Microsoft's ad.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris's e-mail address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com

Growing Your Greens

Maximizing the use of his front lawn, this guy John has redefined his suburban landscape by utilizing the entire area to grow vegetables. What will the neighbors think?

The Garden - now on dvd.

Just picked up this dvd the other day. Great film, makes you angry and inspired to get out there and do it. Fight the power and garden.

Crass-ical collection

The CRASS-ical collection - direct from the Southern Records crew: The Crassical Collection is finally here, and the first release is the newly remastered The Feeding of the Five Thousand. After several years of being out of print, this legendary album has been been restored from the original analogue studio tapes, repackaged and bolstered by rare and unreleased tracks, and stunning new artwork from Gee Vaucher, who has lovingly created what could only be considered a real artefact. Included in this package is a 64-page booklet featuring all lyrics along with extensive liner notes from band members Penny Rimbaud and Steve Ignorant, which shed light on the making of the record. Also included is CD-sized recreation of the iconic original fold-out poster sleeve.

“We were setting out as purists: hard, uncompromising and utterly bemused.”

The Feeding of the 5000 is the first album by Crass, released in 1978. The record came to be made when Pete Stennett, owner of Small Wonder Records, heard a demo that the band had recorded. Impressed by all of the material, he decided that rather than release a conventional single by the band, he would put all of their set onto an 18 track 12 inch EP.

“Easy listening? You ain't heard nothing yet.”