Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Word Security Flaw
JWL-23 writes: "cnn.com is reporting that a Microsoft Word flaw may allow file theft. Furthermore, they plan on not fixing Word 97, leaving millions of users out in the cold. Yet another reason to try OpenOffice.org." It still takes more than running Word to expose the contents of your hard drive though.
It is a shame that software development companies do not have a legal obligation to fix significant flaws for a certain amount of time. Or if they do not wish to fix a flaw they could offer a free upgrade to customers who currently hold the flawed version.
The corporation I work for (which is huge, BTW) still uses Office 97 and Outlook 98 on Windows 2000 as our desktop configuration.
We are currently planning to upgrade to Windows XP in the next 6 months, but the plan is for us to continue to use Office 97 as there are no compelling business reasons for us to upgrade to later versions.
Office 97 does *everything* we need it for. Period.
Visio 2000 is the only 'recent' version of any Microsoft software that we currently use.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
You want MSNBC. This is Slashdot. When you pine for the sound of the open source drum, come back. We'll still be beating it. And the open source dead horse, too.
--
E_NOSIG
Earlier this year, Steve Ballmer said, "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches"
If Linux is a cancer, Word is a virus.
More specifically, Word is a virus that needs to be eradicated from corporate America's desktops.
-David Whittington
Microsoft has done this kind of thing before, they stop providing technical service to older versions of software. Try calling tech support for a question on windows 95. Odds are they will tell you (if you ever get to speak to a human that is) that you should have upgraded to XP by now.
I'm not going to say that this is what is happening, this is pure speculation, but the bug may have very well been planned. Think about it, microsoft wants all of us to upgrade, that is why they plug their new products so hard and stop offering service to older products. It is easily forseable that microsoft knew about the bug and kept it unannounced so that in the future (now) they could use it as leverage to force people/companies to upgrade to their newest version of Office.
Undoubtedly that is the reason why they are not releasing a fix now of course. However I'm speculating they knew about it all along... that is a VERY big bug to not notice... Odd doesn't it seem like all the bugs microsoft misses are big and involve major security breaches? Almost like they do it on purpose to get people to either pay them more money, peripheral 'features' (like DRM), and obscene EULA modifications.
This is why I love linux....
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
We had a task for a particular client, which boiled down to a fileserver with a big shared folder for images (photos).
OK, my fortune 500 company bought exactly that solution to that problem and it works as well as our buggy W2K and NT boxes let it. Some of the advantages include real file permisions and other security goodies you will never see on a crappy M$ box.
I'm sorry that you had a hard time setting the thing up, but I'm supprised that you let him try before demonstrating it to you. After all, YOU with your seniority should have known better. Or did you just want to let the newbie fail so that you could keep on keeping on without having to learn something new for a while longer? Hmmmm, set up! Did you keep installing M$ "security" patches that change everything on the M$ side? Great work!
It's nice of you to troll about Samba, free software, "zelots", and other things that are troubling you, but what has this got to do with the the topic of M$ exploits again? Nothing? No, both deal with the difficulties of making things M$ do what they should and not do what they should not do. You say:
I just hate my options being slowly limited as people in the 'industry' line up on one side of the imaginary fence of the other.
I say that the interoperability problems are all on the M$ side of the fence. You know, the folks who are using software patents to keep others from being able to write onto NTFS. The same people who continue to force inferior and mangled "standards" instead of using readily availble free file formats. I could go on, but it bores me to think of all the money it takes to work with M$ junk.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.