Microsoft makes Massachusetts say "uncle"

  • Thread starter Thread starter YKhan
  • Start date Start date
YKhan> Microsoft has been successfully able to turn around the
YKhan> Massachusetts policy about document formats.

YKhan> EETimes.com - Massachusetts flips, sides with Microsoft
YKhan> http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=174402121

Wow - M$ does have the money to buy the politicans out. I was amazed
that Mass. went that far. It will be interesting to watch M$ work this
issue around the world. I think in the USA M$ has little to worry about
from government at all levels.

Later
 
Alan said:
Wow - M$ does have the money to buy the politicans out. I was amazed
that Mass. went that far. It will be interesting to watch M$ work this
issue around the world. I think in the USA M$ has little to worry about
from government at all levels.
Click to expand...

The USA is bought and paid for by the large corporations. There really
wasn't anything to worry about there. It's not likely to work in places
like China or Europe.

Yousuf Khan
 
The USA is bought and paid for by the large corporations. There really
wasn't anything to worry about there. It's not likely to work in places
like China or Europe.
Click to expand...

....where large corporations are owned by the governments. ;-)
 
Yousuf said:
The USA is bought and paid for by the large corporations. There really
wasn't anything to worry about there. It's not likely to work in places
like China or Europe.

Yousuf Khan
Click to expand...
It may also be that the actual users of software in Mass Government
didn't want their lives totally upset by having to convert everything to
a new document storage format and a new set of programs. What is in it
for the the various departments, especially in the short term?
 
Yeah, but wasn't this for future document formats, not existing
formats? So Massachusetts has just locked themselves into a Microsoft
future.

Yousuf Khan
 
YKhan said:
Yeah, but wasn't this for future document formats, not existing
formats? So Massachusetts has just locked themselves into a Microsoft
future.

Yousuf Khan
Click to expand...
The fact that a huge percentage of the people in Mass. including the
government was already using MS locked them into. It's really hard to
get from here to there. The Word virus where new versions produce files
unusable by older versions thus causing people to upgrade just to be
able to see files they receive is bad enough. What would happen when
the government said they no longer accept word documents? The lawyers
and voters would have been irate.
 
Del Cecchi said:
The fact that a huge percentage of the people in Mass. including the
government was already using MS locked them into. It's really hard to
get from here to there. The Word virus where new versions produce
files unusable by older versions thus causing people to upgrade just
to be able to see files they receive is bad enough. What would happen
when the government said they no longer accept word documents? The
lawyers and voters would have been irate.
Click to expand...

I don't see that requiring ODF is any worse for the consumers than
what you've called the "windows virus" (I think I'll use that!) But
as long as Microsoft's format is proprietary, using it locks other
vendors out, while requiring an open standard does not (in spite of
MS's rhetoric) lock MS out. And they can certainly make a version of
Word that supports ODF available as an update.

MS has been claiming they're going to make their new XML schema
open, but there is room for a lot of skepticism regarding their good
faith in this. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051129101457378
If they really carry through, one of the motivations for ODF goes
away -- but then, so does MS's real objection to ODF.
 
The fact that a huge percentage of the people in Mass. including the
government was already using MS locked them into. It's really hard to
get from here to there. The Word virus where new versions produce files
unusable by older versions thus causing people to upgrade just to be
able to see files they receive is bad enough. What would happen when
the government said they no longer accept word documents? The lawyers
and voters would have been irate.
Click to expand...

Well apart from a few mouth-breathers we seem to have managed to supress
the Winmail.dat scourge... .docs have to go too; there's just no two ways
about it.:-) Why in the hell would anybody want to standardize on a format
which changes so often anyway and which requires bending over with
pocket-book open every few months? We'll see how things play when M$ gets
the next Office version out, apparently with native .pdf -- I think output
only, as opposed to read/edit -- as well as XML.

This whole .doc thing is madness to start with: most people who send them
don't even have the smarts to know they can be write-locked so there're a
whole bunch of insecure, modifiable .docs floating around, subject to gawd
knows what abuses... on top of the real virus err, "vulnerability".:-)
 
YKhan said:
Yeah, but wasn't this for future document formats, not existing
formats? So Massachusetts has just locked themselves into a Microsoft
future.
Click to expand...

They have done no such thing. They'll get and use some form of open
document standard, possibly Micro$oft's. Certainly it is conceivable
that Micro$oft will figure-out some way to screw them...
 
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