RMS: Putting an End to Word Attachments

sombragris writes "I've spotted in NewsForge a very interesting editorial by none other than RMS himself on the subject of getting rid of those annoying MS Word attachment that people send. The essay is worth thinking and doubtless worth implementing." I've found that KWord and Abiword both did a fine job of reading Word files - it's the being able to Save As Word where things get messy.

Comments

Not First Post!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not the first post so you may ignore it.

I like egg and cheese

[Anonymous Coward]

yet slashdot is still shit. conundrum 1st class!

What do you live for? You live to help others.

[Anonymous Coward]

With the holiday season upon us, our hearts and minds go out to those less fortunate than ourselves. Helping at this time of the year is a well-established tradition, a common reality embodied in the message of Christmas which lends itself to compassion no matter what one's faith. This year the desire to help is all the more keenly felt, compounded by the urgencies of our post-September 11 world.
People need help. You want to help. But it is not enough to just want to help, because that good intention is often closely followed by the question, "What can I do?"
You can help and you can make a difference. We offer services that teach how to offer practical help--help for life's trials, for those disasters we all face from time to time--big and small.
Whatever the crisis, catastrophe, problem--something CAN be done about it.
You can help and DO something about it.
In doing so, you will discover the true meaning of the season and its goodwill--that providing effective and valuable help benefits both the giver and receiver. And the best reward is that you take your helping skills into a brighter New Year.
For more information contact the Church of Scientology nearest to you.

L.Ron Hubbard

CmdrTaco, You are a Fag

[PageLengtheningPoste]

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Re:CmdrTaco, You are a Fag

[Anonymous Coward]

DENIED!


HAHA, loser! Thanks for playing, please try again.

CmdrtTaco is retarded!!!

[CmderTaco]

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b567ub467ub

[Anonymous Coward]

yukjbnuhy7bjnty

Re:Sad...

[Anonymous Coward]

AMEN, brutha! Say it loud, say it proud!
Slashdot is WORSE than a bottom feeder. They are the WORMS that bottom feeders feed off of.

Re:Spot on, Dicky!

[Anonymous Coward]

It was funny. Laugh.

Slashdot: News for Nerds? Or Propaganda ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot: News for Nerds? Or Propaganda for the Impressionable?
Day in and day out, Slashdot sings the praises of "open source" software. New readers of the site must be a little puzzled to find items like "GPL Violation discovered" and "Open Source Guru Speaks" listed on the main page alongside the "straight" science and technology news. Unfortunately, few people really know what Open Source stands for. Perhaps Richard Means Stallman, one of the founders of the movement, can elucidate.

"[The GNU goal was] to be able to use a computer without using any proprietary software," declaims RMS. [cnn.com] "Because that way, you can lead a better life." Of course, the only way to get rid of proprietary software is to destroy the software companies that produce it. One way this is accomplished is by putting software that would normally be public domain under a license RMS himself created, called the "General Public License," or "GPL." Simply put, this license allows code to be reused-- unless the final product is distributed without its source code, as a proprietary product must be.

Software is a commodity, and people will often take the cheapest product, even if they have to spend inordinate amounts of time struggling with poor documentation and clumsy user interfaces. "One of the best things I could do with my life is: find a gigantic pile of proprietary software that was a trade secret, and start handing out copies on a street corner so it wouldn't be a trade secret any more," enthuses RMS. [free-soft.org] "Perhaps that would be a much more efficient way for me to give people new free software than actually writing it myself."

It's time to stop the doubletalk and start thinking about the real meaning of intellectual property. By some measures, intellectual property is the main export of the developed countries of the world. Artists, actors, and musicians make a living off the intellectual property they produce. Programmers and engineers create designs to be sold. And journalists and writers depend on intellectual property. Ironically, the only jobs not deeply tied to intellectual property are the jobs many slashdot readers affect to despise, like service workers, menial laborers, and administrators. If slashdot readers can't stomach Scott McNealy, maybe they would prefer to work with Ronald McDonald. From the other side of the fast food counter.

Not everyone enjoys working at a menial job in the day, simply in order to slave away at poorly organized programming projects. Not everyone enjoys being told that he has the "freedom" to work, without pay, for a small clique of free software partisans. It is one thing to oppose microsoft's monopoly on the desktop, and the RIAA's slow strangulation of fair use rights. It is quite another to embrace a whole economic and political ideology that centers around the exploitation of childlike programming savants.

This message is not a troll, although many slashdot readers may take it as such. It is simply a warning to users to think carefully before they blindly follow the political lead of Rob Malda, Jon Katz, and the like. I encourage readers to repost the text of this message, and others like it, to the supposedly "free" message boards of slashdot and other sites.

Peace out, and God bless.

here's the trick.

[footility]

Gut check a project at X. Tell the client 2X.
Make sure you're done in .5X, so you can go play
on the client's bill.

Hint: you rarely ever get to play on the client's
bill, but it is quite a nice incentive to get
the project done on time, and sometimes even
early.

This is the surest way I've found to invest no
more than 2X in a project, and it inevitably
ends up close to 2x.

b

Re:Min angst

[Anonymous Coward]

.
.
.
Znajut, znajut vsjakije gadosti,
No ne znajut to, chto dolzhen znatj kazhdyj:

Chto jecli, jesli eto ja hozhu i gazhu,
Jesli, jesli eto ty xodishj i gadishj,
Jesli, jesli eto vse xodjat i gadjat,
To eto znachit toljko to, chto my -- gady!!

I *HAVE* a real computer

[Eric Green]

My reply to people who send me .doc attachments: "I'm sorry, but I do not own a copy of Microsoft Word or Office. Please export your document to text or HTML and re-send it."

I do own a copy of Windows (it came with one of my computers), and I do boot it occasionally to play games and such, but like most home users I do not own a copy of Office. (Many home users have a PIRATED copy of Office, but I don't believe in piracy as an effective solution to the problem of expensive proprietary software). I have no plans of buying Office anytime soon. But the person I am corresponding with need not know any of this. All he needs to know is that a) I don't own a copy of Office, and b) thus if he wants me to read his message, he better send it in plain text or HTML.

Why would you believe that my computer or operating system has anything to do with not running Word? I don't own Word because it is expensive and because free substitutes (such as StarOffice) fill what few word processing needs I have (I'm a programmer, not a secretary). But all of that is irrelevant.

Editors are not just users!

[Chris Burke]

"Why aren't we told when editors moderate our posts?"

You missed the most important word -- editors.

Yes, I know I can be notified when "people" moderate my posts. I want to know if that "person" was an "editor". The logic that "editors are users, and thus the notification that it was a user is correct" is factually true but ignores the important issue. In the /. universe, editors have powers that mere mortals do not. They can moderate without end, bitchslap, etc. They are users, but they are not just users, and knowing that an editor is moderating your posts is important, particularly for knowing if those editors are abusing their unlimited mod points.

All I want is some accountablity for editors on slashdot. It was only just recently that I changed my signature because I decided this was an issue, particularly after reading CmdrTaco's dismissive response to the bug report.