:haha: OH pleeeaasse unidentified guest, try....try not to be absurd. could you be a little more transparent in your intellectual dis ingenuousness ? and you know what I mean. if Matt had come down on your side, nary a word would have been uttered (anonymously) and he would not have been

your comment about fox news was very revealing....try not to worry unidentified guest, 78% of the press openly admits to being liberal....so you have three quarters of the all important fourth estate on your side.
by the way... you misspelled amateurish (i rather think that's sloppy and amateurish)

Good lord. Kindly source it or admit it's bullshit. And are you including Fox? Geez. You don't seem to understand the dynamics of journalism at all. Publishers set editorial policy, editors enforce it, reporters want a paycheck and mostly go along to get along no matter how they vote, and the day 78% of publishers in any media are "liberals" (whatever that means these days) hell's gonna need to issue ice skates.

That said, an informal blog-style news center like this has no obligation at all to pretend to objectivity. That's just ridiculous.

TJ...are you actually serious!? do you realize what you said? ...lets have a gander

Im not sure what rock you have been under, but the media has been rather open about the fact that they are liberal for quite a long time.

not often you good lord and bull**** in the same sentence, very creative

RATS! ya got me! see i was hoping that in my calculating methodology, you would not notice that from the tens of thousands of journalists, newsrooms,editors, publishers, etc etc across America, i could get away with excluding the Fox newsroom from the study, and it it would skew the numbers in my favor.....that's some solid thinking right there.

ummm yeah...kind of the basis of my assertion, if you you have a liberal publisher and editor, it would be okay for a liberal journalist to hand in a ?????....come on you can get it! ......liberal story!! yay very good. take a Tawana Brawley out of petty cash.

Uhh, this is my favorite of your uttering's. If you do not know what the crux of my argument even is......how can you disagree with me?? we might be on the same side!

I do agree with this however,

As Matthew so eloquently put it.....Bingo

here are your sources, and there are plenty more where these come from. of course the best source would be to just open your eyes and pay attention.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/28/opinion/main620207.shtml
http://www.mediaresearch.org/SpecialReports/2004/report063004_p1.asp
http://www.mediaresearch.org/biasbasics/biasbasics.asp

To those that said Office 2007 requires you to save in DOC/DOCX format, is untrue (which has already been stated, but let me continue). If you so desire, you, as a user, can set the default "SAVE AS" type in the application's settings screen.

It is slightly different in each Office application, and I believe one of them may not have the option available, but here's how to do it in Microsoft Word 2007:

1. Click on the new "Orb" (File) menu button.
2. At the bottom right of the menu's "window" is a button labelled "Word Options" - click it.
3. Click on the "Save" selection on the left.
4. The very first option is "Save files in this format".

We use this at work so that staff members save (by default, they can override it) in *.DOC (Word 97-2003 format). RTF, ODT, TXT, and XML file versions (as well as WPS) are also available. The main difference this article is stating is the option will be much more visible (i.e.: in your face), and will include more formats. However, when an option exists in a GUI method (i.e.: not the registry or some convoluted shell hack like some OSX apps), it is simply either UX designer or user negligence to blame.

Maybe we can consider whats behind all this ballot screen stuff...

Certain parts of the EU, especially the French authorities have moved to Open Office as their office suite. This is not a recent development, see...

http://news.cnet.com/French-taxman-opts-for-OpenOffice/2110-7344_3-5942180.html
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Major_OpenOffice.org_Deployments

You'll see that North America deployments are significantly lower.

Now, everyone in Europe knows that the political power is the French-German axis. Its not too much of a stretch to see why the French/EU would want to force the ODF to have equal billing in any office suite, whether it be open or proprietary.

The thing is, Open Office is being starved of investment, with some reporting the central development team is down to just 6 (I don't want to get into the merits or otherwise of community based support), which is quite a risk when running government departments.

So, my opinion, M$-Office should support fully the odf format, and Open Office should support fully the M$-Office formats (docx, xlsx etc). This gives consumer choice.

But if either organisation choose not to support the other's format, thats their decision.

Finally, IMHO, the EU should have no right to force an entrepreneurial organisation to compromise its product (so long as its legal). Same applies to ballot screen for browser preference,

I have NEVER understood this issue, I use IE and go straight to www.getfirefox.com and get my browser, so if MS was to release a Windows without an browser, than how can you get the one you want? It's like including Continental tires on a new Ford, would you rather buy your new car without tires? Seems like a trivial issue.

And I am sure millions of people do the same, and your Ford analogy is good. But, this is not a trivial issue. Millions and millions of Euros of fines to M$ should be enough to convince anybody this is not trivial.

Personally?

Yes, ship a browser with the OS. Obviously MS is going to ship their own. A web browser has become a "basic need" when it comes to computing these days. The only thing that opens MS up to complaint is (a) they have an OS of their own, and (b) they have the most market share.

I think the "ballot" is rather silly, frankly (and moreso in Office -there's a dropdown menu, folks!) Instead, if "mindshare" or "awareness" is the big complaint, have MS, Mozilla, Apple, Opera and Google all agree to include a link on their browsers with an informational page and links to download alternates. Unobtrusive, but available.

I don't think it's needed, really, given you can't pick up a computer magazine without running across SOME mention of an alternate (Chrome seems to be it these days, with Firefox popping its head up with regularity.) But if they want to be sure "everyone's seen," do it that way.

Browser Total Market Share
View Trend Microsoft Internet Explorer 67.68%
View Trend Firefox 22.47%
View Trend Safari 4.07%
View Trend Chrome 2.59%
View Trend Opera 1.97%
View Trend Netscape 0.67%
View Trend Opera Mini 0.29%
View Trend Mozilla 0.07%
View Trend Konqueror 0.05%
View Trend ACCESS NetFront 0.04%
View Trend Playstation 0.03%
View Trend Danger Web Browser 0.02%
View Trend Obigo 0.01%
View Trend Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer 0.01%
View Trend Blazer 0.00%
View Trend WebTV 0.00%
View Trend Lotus Notes 0.00%
View Trend BlackBerry 0.00%
View Trend iCab 0.00%
View Trend ANT Galio 0.00%
View Trend MaxThon 0.00%

source: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0

If you didn't have rules like the EU have, we would all be forced to use hotmail and buy all our books from MSN-shop. We have the same rules, but don't use them on Microsoft. We should. Microsoft forced Netscape out of the browser market with unfair competition.

Don't you understand that a monopoly can be abused? Or are you faking it?

Sure monopolies can (and are) abused. And I guess you are suggesting that the EU is forcing the ballot screen to obviate the perceived M$ abuse. Well, why not go a stage further and have the EU demand the following ballot screens...

WMP or VLC or Miro
Wordpad or ABIword
Outlook Express (or whatever it is now) or Thunderbird
etc

Tell you what, lets make M$ bundle Ubuntu and put that on a ballot screen as well. The IE argument is just as valid, but the scale exposes just how proposterous the ballot screen is.

However, none of this will stop institutionalised monopoly abuse.

In respect of your comment about the EU rules having saved me from having to use MSN and Hotmail, please don't assume that all consumers are dumb, lack knowledge and won't exercise choice when buying!

Finally, if as you say, the EU type rules are not implemented in the US on M$, then (by logical extension of your argument), explain how Apple manages to exist?