The war has begun

[minthaka]

BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft Office takes to the web

[chigurh]

I'm going to build a trampoline room.

[techieMoe]

Honestly, if they offered a better downloadable version of OpenDocument (ODT) files I'd use it. Google Docs are fine as long as you don't try to pull them off the Google server and use them in anything else. I hate going between Google Docs and ODTs in OpenOffice. The formatting is crazy.

[Rubberman]

Honestly, if they offered a better downloadable version of OpenDocument (ODT) files I'd use it. Google Docs are fine as long as you don't try to pull them off the Google server and use them in anything else. I hate going between Google Docs and ODTs in OpenOffice. The formatting is crazy.

The nice thing about standards...

[Rubberman]

I'm going to build a trampoline room.

I'm going to build a trampling room! Then I'm going to put all those dancing bananas in it, put on my big clomping boots, and have some fun!

[hazel]

You'll never catch me doing cloud computing. I want to keep all my documents and programs on my local machine, out of reach of snoopers.

[Bemk]

I hear people say that the future will be in the cloud, but I think it's not.

In my opinion the future will be in a combination of cloud and local. Companies will still want their files stored within their own network, and customers will probably place their files on a cloud or a portable device. I place my files on portable devices.
I will also keep files local, but those are files I don't need to edit that often(I still have them backed up on a portable device, that's always in my pocket).

[Rubberman]

You'll never catch me doing cloud computing. I want to keep all my documents and programs on my local machine, out of reach of snoopers.

If you do any international travel these days, cloud-based data stores can be very useful for just that reason - to keep nosy customs droids out of your panties! The better services (or self-hosted ones) can not only keep the data strongly encrypted so only you can access it, but the tunnels are encrypted as well to keep eavesdroppers from snooping at runtime. The cloud is like most things. It has its uses that nothing else can duplicate, but like a lot of things, people are trying to make it do much more that it should be used for - kind of like the universal tool that can be used as a hammer, screwdriver, can opener, juicer, and personal masseuse. It works great as a hammer, and only so-so or not so well for the other cruft...

[charu86]

is it really a war?? it seems that MS is doing things the way open group does.. it will be interesting

[Bemk]

I think that what cloud computing really needs is a bit of competition. That way it will evolve into what the customer wants it to be, instead of what the developer wants. That's why Ubuntu is such a popular distro, while distro's like Gentoo or things like it, are much less supported.
In this world it is the customer that rules, and not the developer.