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Microsoft Prepares Office Lock-in
An anonymous reader writes "NEWS.COM has an article describing Office 2003's DRM features for documents. This will not only coerce those running older versions of Office to upgrade, which has been a problem for MS in the last few years, but it will also shut out competing software, such as OpenOffice. Now think about this for a second. Even if the developers of a competing office suite could figure out how to get their software to open an Office 2003 document, doing so would be a DMCA violation, since they'd be bypassing an anti-circumvention device. I certainly hope the OpenOffice team will kick development into high gear. If there was a time we need a viable competitor to Office, it's now."
An important feature is the VB scripting in Excel, at least for me, and being able to issue commands to other applications from within these scripts. This may very well be ignorance on my part - but is there anything else that would allow to do this as easily?
This is for QUICK and EASY scripts - so don't tell me to use something I can't record scripts directly in and easily debug (if I want powerfull I'll code it in C). Also, it would be nice if it ran on Windows and Mac without modifications to the scripts.
However I guess these features will be of little use to me once I can't have access to my Excel files/scripts unless I pay a hefty license fee to Microsoft every year.
Ken Lay likely knew all the crap that was going on in Enron to lead it to the end it was lead to. There is no possible way for someone in his position to possibly be blind to such a thing, unless he is completely incompetent and if that's the case, how did he get his position within Enron?
Would that mean that any and all executives that are caught in the Enron sort of thing either flat-out liars or incompetent? What would you rather be? In both cases, you shouldn't be employable in the position ANYWHERE else.
As for your statement about a handful of companies doing bad things and a "snooping, rule-breaking" secretary blowing the whistle...
I just have this to say...
As a citizen of the United States you have a moral and ethical responsibility to report immoral and unethical behavior if you come upon it through the course of your normal daily work duties. Notice, I didn't say you had an obligation of going places you don't belong, just that if you come across some damning evidence on accident, that you do the right thing with that damning evidence. Ignoring that data or "Showing Loyalty" to the company by eliminating the evidence makes you just as culpable as the original perpetrators in a decent person's eyes.
It would be like if you came across your uncle or aunt murdering someone out in the woods someplace. If you fail to report or help your aunt or uncle despose of the evidence you can be convicted as an accessory to the crime, which often has a penalty quite similar to the perpetrator. Now, would you call reporting your aunt or uncle murdering someone a morally and ethically just activity?
Tell me what makes Whistleblowing less noble to you. What makes reporting a crime or extremely morally corrupt behavior less noble and worthless to you?
Name me some legit uses of this technology, besides uses that are already covered under existing technologies. I believe that you will find very few legit reasons, however there are hundreds of illicit reasons to use this kind of technology.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
1000th post!
(heh... who knew?)
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