Mac OS X & Windows... "two" worlds ? Issue #1 of ~

Today's issue: Mac and Windows: The randomly missing SPACE

Hallo everybody,

this is the first issue, so before I start writing please allow a short foreword:

The consulting I am currently doing get's me into the wonderful situation to sit between all seats in terms of the IT environment. So I thought it is time to start occasionally Issues about interoperability between Apple Mac OS 7 - X and Microsoft Windows 2000 - Vista and Linux diverse distributions and UNIX diverse variations at all - but mainly I am very sure you will read stuff about Apples and Microsofts OS'es :-)

I promise - even though I consider myself more "in love" with Windows - to be as neutral as possible. If something is wrong on the one or other side, I am happy to correct it.

Note Users of both sides tend to be polemic and fundamental the moment you are talking about 'their' OS - since this is a moderated blog, everything I believe is a polemic, fundamental or whatever and does not help forward to overcome the issues etc. will not be published. So please think twice before you start posting.

Now the issue: The randomly missing SPACE

Prologue
We got an interesting lead - thanks again Jörg - and I started to write the offer on my Windows PC with Office 2007, after some hours I finally felt like I entered the road to victory - the last thing was to have someone doing the editorial and of course the proofreading. As you know, after several hours working on the same doc, four eyes see more than two. My counterpart for this was a Mac OS X user with Office 2008 for Mac. After some forth and back changes us decided that's the offer to go. Great so far...

Two days later we got the information that the management of the company we offered our services declined the offer and to work with us - simply because they felt like we just delivered a sleazy made offer to them.

What happened?
Thunderstrucked by lightning we wondered what they mean. And "of course" they didn't give us the slightest hint. Re-reading our offer, we figured out that we lost several spaces so their feelings definitely were not about the numbers we were offering to them.

After some investigation we found the issue: Mac OS X & obviously many programs running on it do have several interoperability problems with SPACES. Even though this is nothing real dramatic since other systems despite of their age did and do have similar issues, here the issue is quite annoying - especially since I didn't get the chance to discuss the offer and of course didn't get the contract as well.

It also looks like this issue is not only limited to one version of OS X, up until today, 2008-07-23, all versions / updates of OS X do report similar issues - even though I found only one posting in the macrumors forum that is in relation to Word 2008. I described the issue more detailed at my answer of this post. The thread can be found at http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=5886400.

Solution
Not a solution, a work-around: As of today we simply changed our processes in the hope sooner or lattle Apple or Microsoft get's the problem solved. Our process enhancement simply forces everybody to do proof-reading of the entire document before it leaves the company or is stored as final.

Important
Due to the fact that Mac users won't see the problem at all when printing the doc or reading it on their screen, they should save a PDF Version of the doc and proof-read here, this seems the only way to pin the issue down - or, give it to a 'Windows" colleague to open and save it on his machine and proof-read afterwards.

I am looking forward to get more stories or feedback on this one,

Sincerly,

Ingo-Stefan Schilling

A real cool blog

a friend of mine gave me this link - and first I was curious, now I can't stop laughing.

This guy is writing great and funny. I have no clue who he is, except that he was a co-worker of my friend, but it seems he's coming around and he's a sports guy.

Anyways, enjoy the blog - btw. it's German, sorry.

http://blacktarmac.blogspot.com/2007/11/tod-auf-dem-nil.html

More to come soon.

Happy Eastern

My dear readers,

well, a little bit late but the Easter Rabbit had some surprising presents for me I was enjoying so far :)

So happy Eastern to all of you, I hope you had the time to enjoy with your beloved and families.

Ingo

Life: Alba vs. Ulm

Well,

thanks you Frauke and Peter, old friends of mine, I was in the lucky position to be live in the Stadium when Alba kicked off Ulm in a basketball war.

Even though I was really sceptic since I am not the fan of watching sport at all - I have to admit it was somehow funny and a real nice experience.

I added some more pictures http://picasaweb.google.com/superdummy2001/AlbaVsUlm.

Thanks a lot Frauke and Peter,

Ingo

Recycling - and what others do to help

Hi,

in one of my fields, the IT, currently everybody is talking about green IT.

Manufacturers, Data Center, etc. are all talking about less energy consuming computers and equipment. Some of them even realized that it may be a good idea to use wood or other biological material for future PCs.

Well, nice ideas but folks, it's the same stupid thing to-do as with Bio-Gas for cars etc... Here for example, the raw material, canola etc., might be regenerative - but on what costs. Energy investments for fertilizer etc. have been so far not taken into account. The same btw. for all regenerative energies - I hope that sooner or later people really will start to walk the production process entirely and not picking out the rosins.

For the PC's etc., the answer must be - from my point of view - don't look only on the current energy consumption, have a look to the production process and related materials as well. Maybe you'll find methods here which are way better then regenerative materials to cover our computers :o)

And, you might have a look to http://www.recycling-atelier.de. - The page is currently only German, but the idea is obvious. A friend of mine and her partners started to recycle existing and wearied out furniture and make new, great looking furniture from it.

Transporting this idea to the IT industry, there might be better ways to come over the problems. I know, a Pentium 4 or previous processors aren't the best example - nor energy consuming / wasting gamer PC's like mine - but maybe there are people smarter than me having ideas on farming these machines and archiving tremendous performance (by putting an application layer of all systems or so?) and finally we do not need new machines but can recycle old once.... or whatever way to go here.

Well, I wonder if someone is reading my blog at all - but if so, maybe you have some ideas about what and how to recycle - let me know. I am anxious to get your thoughts.

Greetings,

Ingo

Do we need to prevent youth crime or not

Elections in some states in Germany - and, how else should it be, Roland Koch is at the front of populistic phrases.. as other German politicans do as well, the one or other way at least.

What's the exitment about?
In short: We had - once again - some 'teenies' with migration background who conducted brutal crime. Not to say that we do have the same type of crime also with 'teenies' with NO migration background every day as well.

I wonder why everybody is talking about deportation, Jail etc.. Why are only a few people talking about youth crime prevention? - Ok, they are talking but not walking their talk at all. I remember an article in the Berliner Tageszeitung about a police man who was brutally attacked by some teenagers a year or two ago. The very interesting thing these days was, the discussion was the same, politicans of all parties were blaming the others and of course demanding the one or other at this moment opportune thing.

What was the outcome?
As far as I am informed by some members in my living community working in the field of "Jugendfoerderung" (my bad english translation: youth encouragement) told me that by law 15% of the youth etat given in Germany should be used for youth encouragement. Since the above mentioned incident with the police man, only in Berlin, this went down to nearly 5% and this year, 2008, to below 1%...

Why's that?
I don't have the answer, but I think that prevention is not as easy measureable and supporting the gaining of a good image of politicans and others then waiting for the guaranteed and populistic event of conducted crimes. I know - even this here is quite populistic and I should do a better investigation before writing something like this in a public location - but I think as a discussion base, this is an interesting point to start from.

So the question is: Prevention or not?
I personally believe that prevention is the best method to go for - maybe we should provide politicans and other responsible people with a measurement method giving them the chance to gain image from such projects instead of provocating new events like the once currently in the discussion.

Disturbing...
... is to me that the press always reports bad things but does not support - nationwide, not locally - such projects by reporting about them on a long run and supporting them by this way and making them more interesting for the mass of the people in this country. This would be education we are lacking from and it would destroy the base for populists as well.

How was 2007 for you?

Hi,

looking back the first time in life, I have to say that 2007 was one of the worst years for me, personally and from a business perspective.

Personally I lost the only woman I loved more then my live. She is the only one I even started to change for - even though this was to slow.

Secondary, I betrayed all my ideals. Why's that? I recognized that my ideals do not work in todays world, looking back for the last 10 years, I figured out that nearly everyone I know ripped my ideals for his/her own sake - well, I am not resentful since I allowed it in the one or other manner. Anyways, this ends in 2007 - so something good happens at all.

Third, I decided to change my workplace in 2007 - and stumbled out of the frying pan into the fire..

Well, what else could happen - so far nothing more, but way enough.

Let's hope for 2008 - I am cautioned optimistic :-)

Have a great, healthful and successful 2008 - who ever and where ever you are. And let me know how your 2007 was..

Christmas time and years end race

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to those few reading my blog :)

Some stuff about Games, story telling etc.

Alternate Reality Games: I'm Not So Sure I Love Bees. - http://www.fileplanet.com/fileblog/archives/2007/02/entry_210.shtml

GameSpy's Top 25 Video Game Cinematic Moments - http://www.gamespy.com/articles/771/771937p1.html

GDC: Game Developers Rant II - http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2006/03/gdc_game_develo.html

David Freeman on the Art of Writing for Games - http://www.gamespy.com/articles/596/596254p1.html

Why writing isn't taken seriously - http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/game-writing-1.ars/2

Why Isn't the Game Industry Making Interactive Stories? - http://www.gamespy.com/articles/596/596223p1.html

Storytelling vs. Gameplay: Can't We Get Along?

Everyone wants more stories in games -- at least they say they do. But what does that really mean? And how do you create a meaningful story in an interactive medium? Fargo takes a look at the differences between Hollywood and games, the techniques developers can use to tell stories in games, and what we'll see in the future.



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a beginning...

well, how to start something you didn't thought you would ever do?

Well, maybe by simply doing it the way I always do it: just starting it by trying around an analyzing the results ;)