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OpenOffice or Libre. Government should have made the switch years ago. Many state and local governments already have. State of Kansas where I live for example.
Unka_George
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Your points are well taken.
Developers are stuck with the "change for the sake of change" model, but users are not. For example, replace M$ Office with FOSS OpenOffice or Libre Office, replace Exploder with FireFox, etc. Even the operating system can be replaced with FOSS such as Ubuntu.
It is not at all clear to me why IT and Accounting are not leading the charge to replace M$ with FOSS if only to escape the never ending cosmetic upgrades and the resulting training costs and loss in productivity because of the user "learning curve," which in many cases exceeds the licensing/rental costs. The collateral costs of peripherals that will not work with the new O/S version are also significant.
Unka_George
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Member 10591816 wrote: Developers are stuck with the "change for the sake of change" model, but users are not. For example, replace M$ Office with FOSS OpenOffice or Libre Office, replace Exploder with FireFox, etc. Even the operating system can be replaced with FOSS such as Ubuntu.
It all depends on where you are as a developer. If you're in a "shop" that requires chasing the "bleeding edge" that may, indeed, be the case. If you're operating on your own, though, you might not have to be. The tools I'm using are considered "old" as far as the development community is concerned but my clients want stuff that will run on desktop on their LAN or as a web application. So far I haven't run into anything I need to build for them that requires anything more recent than what was available with VS2008 which I find to be very stable. I haven't had a client notice yet that their executable was built by a six-year-old version of VS!
This whole "change for the sake of change" model, as you call it, is largely marketing. All right, sometimes you have to upgrade things if you're trying to address the latest and greatest platforms but even in the case of Microsoft it's obvious that they're seeing that the desktop ain't going anywhere. Everything I'm writing with VS2008 still runs fine in the latest Win desktop. Really breaks my heart that I don't have to keep buying later versions of something I still ain't overusing yet!
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Chona1171 wrote: Office going to a subscription model , even though nothing really new has been added and Office 2007 still serves it purpose perfectly Bought it for $200 where I now have to spend that same amount every 15 months.
Heh ... you say you use O2007. I still use O2003! I never did care for the ribbon. O2003 works perfectly under Win 8.1 I might add!
I feel your pain although I wouldn't say I'm "worried" about MS. I simply am not following them nearly as closely as I was. I develop desktop / backend stuff and a little ASP.Net stuff for the web (which version 3.5 does very nicely thank you). Anything I develop for my clients is with VS2008/SQL Server 2008 R2/Active Reports 6 which all work fine . Not everybody is on the "upgrade train".
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You're just now getting worried about Microsoft? I haven't trusted them for probably two decades, after getting burned one too many times by their lack of quality and techo-narcissism (and at one time I actually liked M$). Aside from a couple OS packs and whatever came with a laptop I bought, I haven't paid for any of their products for over a decade. If it is something they have a free version of, I might use it, if there are no viable alternatives.. but in general most of my applications are from other sources (like open source). And if windows based games ran reliably on other platforms, I probably wouldn't even use their OS at all.
MS only cares about two things.. maintaining control and profit. They don't really care about technology, innovation, developers, or any user. They only seem to care about those things when it aligns with their agenda (i.e. control and profit). They will push larges amounts of money in PR trying to convince people how great their products are because many of them are so bad that they would never survive on their own merits. And the moment anything doesn't fit with their agenda, they will drop it and not give a damn about the countless users that they duped or forced into being dependent on the technology/product. Can anyone say Silverlight, XP, or VB6?
Hopefully this is just the death spiral that will put Microsoft in its place. After all, IBM was once an all-powerful company, until they fell hard and was forced to be far more humble.
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This is precisely why I am no longer investing in or currently developing software with Microsoft technologies. I still use PowerPoint 2003 a lot because I like the ease of use of the spline feature in graphics. Still, I'm a part-time/amateur developer with my own business/hobby so I can afford to be choosey! I appreciate that it may meet the needs of many, but it doesn't seem to meet mine. I seem to be going down the C++, PHP, JS route. I do find this a little sad, because I once placed my hopes in .NET, but it has disappointed me.
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I still have a lot of old vinyl to rip, mostly 80s, but a lot of earlier stuff as well.
Mostly I have been trying to preserve stuff that is likely irreplacable or at least not worth paying for a second time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TEIw2hYNgo[^]
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I should do that to.
But, when our son were born, knowing how kids behave, I hid the record player and records in an unused room in the house for safekeeping.
So when my wife was getting some other stuff out from that room she allowed our son to join.
Goodbye Ortofon MC20. 
Cost of replacing is way to high within the next fifteen years or so. (Also considering that it might break again)
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That was a good one. However, I shouldn't have looked at your profile. Now I have a serious earworm from Gimme Dat Ding 
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![Badger | [badger,badger,badger,badger...]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/badger.gif)
Now I have to go watch it again. 
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Mika Wendelius wrote: Digitizing old records
Since you're digitizing in "realtime" (in the sense that a 5-minute song takes 5 minutes to digitize), and buying a song on iTunes is 99 cents, I have assume you either:
a) can't find the equivalent on iTunes
b) prefer having the hisses and pops included in your files
c) don't put much value on your time
d) enjoy doing this and would do it no matter how cost-ineffective the process is
If it's (d), then good on you and who the f*** am I or anyone else to judge.
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ITunes don't sell flac format which is what you want if you are serious about your music mp3 is OK for for phones etc
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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pkfox wrote: ITunes don't sell flac format which is what you want if you are serious about your music
Agreed that .flac is superior to .mp3, but isn't creating .flac from vinyl like transferring your VHS tapes to Blu-ray, rather than getting a DVD source?
I would think you'd be better off getting the highest-quality MP3s you can find on iTunes (or whatever format it is they use).
(Of course I'm basing this on my own experience ripping vinyls from a very average turntable with a very average sound card...YMMV)
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I've only ripped CD's to flac which is a two stage process a wav file is created first then the flac encoder compresses the wav to create the flac, it depends on what you are going to play your music on as to how much effort you put in, I have a high end hi-fi which includes a networked digital player with analogue and digital outputs to play through my hi-fi, mp3 files sound awful when played on this setup but flac sound ( after some work ) as good as a very good CD player, the plus side of having them digitised are are multifold - playlists,browse and search etc... It took me a couple of years to get it perfect but it was well worth the effort and when I buy a CD I immediately rip it to the collection.
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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I have the same setup, except I use Apple Lossless (ALAC). You can set iTunes to rip to this by default, so it's as easy as popping in a CD and importing. ALAC sounds just as good as FLAC but works better with iTunes/iPod (and my tuner supports it).
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Ah ! I didn't know you could configure iTunes to do that as I always use EAC on windows or grip on Linux to rip ( not a fan.of Apple apart from their phones ) can you download in ALAC format ? As that would be really useful.
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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No I don't think you can buy ALAC versions from the iTunes store, but you can rip your CDs straight to ALAC.
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OK thanks - what digital player have you got ? I've got a Slimdevices Transporter which are sadly discontinued but still very good despite being taken over by Logitech
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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I have a Marantz M-CR610. It sounds great, and it supports AirPlay so I can play my iTunes library on it wirelessly from my computer, and it also supports internet radio, Pandora, etc. as well as playing from a media server. Plus, it has a nice CD player so I can pop in a CD and go old-school when I want to 
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Sounds good.
We can’t stop here, this is bat country - Hunter S Thompson RIP
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Actually I think it's a bit of them all (except (c)). 
There are a lot of tunes that cannot be found from any shops anymore. And on the other hand since it's realtime I also like to listen these at the same time when doing something else. Most of the songs bring back a lot of good memories.
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You guys are old, geek and nerd. I need to get out of here.
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Bob: There is no escape! Don't make me downvote you. D@nish, you do not yet realize your importance. You've only begun to discover our power! Join us, and we will complete your boredom! With our combined strength, we can finally put a stop to the common sense in the Lounge.
D@nish: [angrily] I'll never join you!
Bob: If only you knew the power of the Lounge. Lounge is your future.
D@nish: [shocked] No. No! That's not true! That's impossible!
Bob: Search your feelings; you know it to be true!
D@nish: NOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOO!!!
Bob: D@nish, Sean has foreseen this. It is your destiny! Join us,stay here. It is the only way...
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For some reason, I read it with Yoda and Homer voice for Bob and me in my head.
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