i refer to the forwarded message below, still unresolved. if anyone at sun can help, i'd be grateful.
my second difficulty last weekend was this: i have a document. not a big one, about 10 pages or so. just a few words and pictures. it was originally created with microsoft word 2003 under windows xp. now i am editing it with Ubuntu / OpenOffice. i want to upload it it somewhere where there is a 5Mb limit per file. so i check its size. in .odt format it is 3.2Mb. saved as .doc format it becomes 6.3Mb. trouble is, the people (if any) who want to read it will want to see a .doc document. its rather a big difference. i think "virus!". so i want to check. to do this, i need to use TrendMicro's free online scanner. This needs jre. now see the forwarded message below. in .odt format version, i try Copy all the text and pictures and Paste them in a new clean .odt file to see if that makes any difference. it doesnt. and another weird thing: some of the pictures were really big files, 2Mb and so on. The GIMP was no help, but gThumb Image Viewer was able to make reduced size versions of around 100Kb each. And yet, with the big piks taken out and the littler ones put in, the overall document size didnt change! Mystery. i attach the document so anyone who cares can dissect it. i wont spend US $49.00 for permission to ask this question, microsoft. so if you choose to ignore it, i dont care. PS Brunei isnt on the list of countries microsoft knows about when it asks me to verify my location :) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dr David Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: May 14, 2007 7:28 AM Subject: weak end To: Pg Nor Jaidi Pg Tuah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Dr Derek W. Holtby" < [EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Gunnar Farneback <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> how was your weekend? did you go to the beach, walk in the countryside, visit old friends, things like that? i ask because mine was less than perfect and yet we are all driving the same car. at least, i think you drive yours, whereas mine drives me. and its starting to drive me crazy. just as i was starting to think i had left such madness behind. my old girlfriend was easy on the eye, she would do pretty much anything i asked, but she had one vulnerability. she was so pretty and so popular that mean-minded geeks would play tricks on her and make her fall down, in the process ruining my garden. often i would have to tear out all the infected plants and start again in a completely flat and empty green field. so in the end i dumped her - and announced it to the world (to my world, that is). the new one came with such promise: no secret agendas, not just after my paltry savings, not as pretty but still capable of boiling an egg without burning the water. and, far from being an object of envy, came as part of a wholesome community within which people actually helped each other instead of squabbling and playing dirty tricks. most of them, anyway. but last weekend gave me pause for thought. this new one can be so stubborn, it's unbelievable. mules are much less stubborn. she will not budge from her spot and will not embrace the sun. i didnt see the sun all last weekend! and it's still hiding its light under some bushel in cyberspace. according to cgoban (from kgsgo) it's all to do with broken links, but i suffer from the non-blissful ignorance of not knowing where she wants these links to be or how its supposed to fit together. according to sun, you can bung its stuff just about anywhere, and yet, and yet, each folder like /usr/etc originally (ie in 1970) had a special meaning. the sun seems not to know, for its instructions, when carefully followed 3 times, still produce a "no-op". An old AI joke, a "no-op" is an operator or partial plan that does precisely nothing; example: "John opened the fridge door. He closed it." example: "David followed the instructions to install jre1.6.01. He launched firefox. firefox said "plugin needed - press here". sun said "install jre"". repeat all weekend. Sun's instructions for installing jre1.6.01 are a no-op. So i cant install cgoban, so i cant play Go, so what's the point of having a computer if you cant play Go with it, let alone videoconference? talking of videoconferencing, the ekiga guru's advice/snort to another hapless newbie (not me) was something like "ha! you have to install the latest SVCs". and then he walked out, nose in the air. Honestly, what are these guys trying to prove? That they are superior beings? Is their software merely a statue to their self-aggrandisement?! I have no idea what an SVC is, but when i look it up, it seems to be some sort of source code! when HAL said "I'm sorry, Dave i can't do that" he meant "this mission is too important to let you in". Is HAL alive and well in the hearts of geeks? Is all their purportedly open stuff just for them? Is this a new kind of tribalism at work? (sorry, i meant old kind with a new face). Add/Remove Applications doesn't talk to Synaptic Package Manager or vice-versa. And jre and java web start aren't in the core, nor the universe, nor even the multiverse. What's going on? It all makes a certain administration look awfully well-organised in comparison :) He.......lp! Glug, glug, clutch at straw......... Sincerely, David Brown "A person with Ubuntu has a happy feeling knowing there are lots of people with ubuntu out there to help them protect and process their data" - David Brown "A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole." - Desmond Tutu
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