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The Massachusetts Office Party
Quattro Vezina writes "The Inquirer reports that the state of Massachusetts has performed a modern-day Boston Tea Party, by dumping Microsoft Office in the proverbial ocean. According to the article, 'every state document must be in PDF or using Open Office formats' starting in 2007." Forbes has the story as well. More from the article: "The switch to open formats such as these was needed to ensure that the state could guarantee that citizens could open and read electronic documents in the future, according to Massachusetts - something that was not possible using closed formats. The proposal, which is open for comment until the end of next week before it takes effect, would represent a big boost for open source software such as Open Office, which is created by volunteer programmers and made available free of charge."
I applaud the move as I file documents in the commonwealth from time to time. A benefit of Open Office files is that they are generally smaller files that MS files. And, more importantly, being able to file .pdfs helps eliminate one of the great threats inherent in .doc files. That is the hidden parts of the document. The stuff that was once part of the document, but was removed in editing.
I have opened many a .doc file in a simple text or hex editor and found some very interesting revisions or other information. One file mysteriously had a persons application for benefits in it. This included SS#. It is hard to be certain that you've eliminated these dregs when using Word.
Hopefully this will lead to a more secure America.
Another benefit of the .pdf is What You Sent Is What They Get. WYSIWTG. You can never be sure that all your pretty formatting will survive when your .doc file is opened on the other side.
Currently, Microsoft office can't read or write either of these formats[1]. So which is Microsoft going to add?
Both? PDF is making steady inroads as an interchange format and from what I understand of Avalon it should make generating PDF on Vista pretty much as easy as on OS X. It would make sense to support it.
As for OpenOffice.org - they're using the OASIS format and Microsoft is a sponsor of that so you'd think they'd get around to it eventually. I think Microsoft is realising that locking up Office document formats isn't going to work for much longer (see their various efforts to create more "open" XML based formats for MS Office) and are trying to work out what to do instead.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
If Office opened and saved OO.o documents, there would be a flood of people migrating away from it.
Think about it, if you knew you could download OO.o for free and anyone with Office could open/edit/save the files you'd made in it, would you spend hundreds of dollars for Office? Hell, what could possibly motivate you to buy it at that point?
I would say that if MS opens the door to OO.o formats, they may as well just shoot themselves in the head and be done with it, because they're toast.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Loading the PDF viewer is SLOW. I am constantly reminded that I need to 'update' something. In fact, the viewer on two of my computers is stuck in an update loop- where it thinks I need to update something that has already been updated.
Once a large PDF is loaded, it is still SLOW to scroll pages. And when I hit a page with some pictures, I need to wait a few seconds for them to load.
If your pdf viewer is slow, I would guess that you are still using Acrobat reader version 5.x or 6.x. Acrobat reader 7.x is much faster, at least for me either on Solaris or Mac OS X.
Also, the pdf file format is an open one. If you don't like Adobe's pdf reader or creator, there are others available, both commercial or FOSS.
On my mac, I am totally dependent on pdfs to help me deal with the research literature wot I have got. I use Adobe Acrobat to do detailed annotations of documents, take notes and link to my bibliographic database. Sometimes this gets slow as molasses due to poor software engineering by either parties hand.
On the other hand, when I want to have a quick squizz at a pdf to see if there's anything relevant there, I use the super fast and efficient Preview application. If Preview had better annotatin facilities [hint hint], I wou'dn't use Acrobat at all.
Earlier today, I needed a powerpoint thingamy transferred from a windows machine to machine to a mac (without office). It would have been a lot less painful if W$$do$s had native PDF support.
Microsoft made their monopoly and their money by taking the personal computer, removing value from it, and then selling that removed value back to the consumer at high cost. I wish more people understood this.
"...we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." B.Spears 2003
Michigan could do with a move like this. We're running a deficit and our economy's not getting any better. The Republican-controlled legislature is pushing tax cut after tax cut, without much in the way of spending cuts. Something like this could save some real dollars.
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In the posts here I see a lot of back-and-forth with some holding fast to the notion staying with MS Office is the prudent thing to do for various reasons including:
(bullets borrowed from Donny Smith(567043))
From personal experience I think the most important factor is getting out of MS' talons and whimsical changes to their own formats. I've posted about this before.
I've actually been in business meetings which couldn't not get started on time because attendees had to sort out getting copies of the agenda or memos which they'd actually received beforehand but were in formats incompatible with their version of MS Office! This, ostensibly at one company using tools to help conduct business. Were this a one-time anecdote would be one thing, but I encountered this scenario many times. (There are grooves in my eye-sockets from so many eyerolls waiting for business to proceed.)
OpenOffice may not offer the perfect solution, but any move away from unpredictable and untouchable formats brings hope to eventually working with technology that improves our productivity. (I shudder to mention the car analogy, but it's so fun: can you imagine a car industry with such an approach (or maybe it's the highway infrastructure)? Every year or so you find out some cars can't be driven on the highways because of some change it their design, blah, blah, blah.)
Sure. I'll take that bet, IF I can bet on Microsoft being there to get this reversed. I'd even bet on Microsoft being successful, by giving the State a huge discount on their Office products, along with intense bribes (excuse me, lobbying) to the local politicians.
You know, the Standard Operating Procedure these days.
Followed by a huge Press Release saying that the State is dropping OSS in favor of Microsoft. Which in turn will alert even more states that they can get MS software for a huge discount just by issuing a Press Release.
Now, if the State was REALLY smart, they'd include a clause that any Word documents which couldn't be read via the current Word technology 5-10 years in the future would require Microsoft to pay a fine of, say, $100 per document. To cover the States' cost in converting it so that it could be read again.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
When I was laid off, I spent nearly a year working as a security guard. ProEngineer was giving away a 3D CAD program, ProDesktop, so I thought I'd use all that late night desk time to draw up my airplane.
...and all those Slashdotters claimed there wasn't a God.
Fast forward a few months, ProEngineer decides the giveaway didn't make them much money, so they kill the program. They were nice though, and gave all the current users a 5-year liscense key to use their current copy.
Fast forward a year. My laptop crashes, and I have to wipe and re-install. My ProDesktop key is gone. I now have several megs of very detailed and very useless drawings.
This is the reason that governments should be using open formats. Thank you, Massachusetts.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Well, I remember when I decided do get rid of the pile of 5 1/4 in. floppies I had accumulated (like 120 or more), I engaged in the daunting task of revising each one of them to see wtf did they had... I found a lot of documents I have done in several formats, from Qpro spreadsheet (dont remember the extension) to PW (Professional Write anyone remember that program? it saved me thousands of times when the !"£@ MS Word for 3.11 didn't want to work) and Banner, Printmaster between several other files.
.DOC 95 MS Office format or others... in 100 years... if instead we have an open format, you are SURE that someone will know about it.
/information/.
Of course, I could not open a lot of those files (some others where 1337 h4ck1ng and cr4ck1ng courses, anarchist cookbook etc etc... from my "computer hippie days")... of course, I am sure that will suddenly happen with the
And, if you use a human readable format like LATEX (which I am using lately to write scientific papers) then it will be easier at least to get the
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
You might want to factor in that Massachussetts residents pay more in national taxes per service rendered by the government. Sofor every dollar of taxes paid we get 0.75 dollar worth of services. This is pretty common to "Blue states" as we do not have the support of the current administration.
t ml)
Adding one third of national taxes to this score does infact make Massachussetts one of the worst tax places. But this is not due to their state policies, but due to Washington politics.
Here is a good page on all of MA taxes and how it compares nationally. Overall I agree that MA does a pretty good job.
(http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/35.h
Roads are and should be maintained by the government, along with basic city planning. The reason for this is that roads are created by the community and for the community and are not a profitable enterprise, unless you start charging more tolls to use these roads. When every road starts to have entry fees, then the argument can easily be made that a private company needs to take over.
Education for those who couldn't otherwise afford it need NOT be provided by the government. All that they should provide is the money so that the education does become affordable. In other words, the system of financial aid that allows students to go to a high quality private college needs to be brought down to lower grade levels. Vouchers are a good start. As for those who don't qualify for financial aid, they already DO pay for their public schools in the forms of taxes. Just because you don't give the money directly to the school district supervisors doesn't mean that this isn't exactly where that money goes. The difference would be that then you WOULD know where it goes, and you'd still be paying the same amount.
Public transportation need not be provided by the government. Most major cities go into contract with private transportation companies who run city bus routes. Why is the government involved at all? They're doing nothing but skimming off the bottom line of the company as a "fee" for being given the opportunity to run their business. The airline industry isn't run by the Federal government, and has functioned well for decades (and arguably better than under a government beurocracy). Taxis are operated by private companies, why aren't you complaining that they should be taken over by the government? There is a proven track record, both on a local, national, and global scale, of private companies successfully running transportation businesses.
Water supplies are a utility. Natural gas is usually provided by private companies, as is electricity. Why is water so special that only the big, powerful government is to be trusted?
Defense and the police are needed to protect the population, and every Libertarian would tell you that this should be the ONLY service that a government should be providing. Therefore, mentioning this point is in no way an argument against Libertarianism.
I'm not a Libertarian, and I'm not an anarchist, and I don't agree with many of their principles, but common sense dictates that there's no reason why the government closes off entire lucrative markets when private companies, concerned with efficiency and customer satisfaction rather than the status quo, would deal with things more efficiently. Especially when the government is already IN COMPETITION with private industries, as is the case with public transportation, the postal system, education, and a whole host of other industries.
Governments DO supply communities with many beneficial things, including every item on your list. However, there is absolutely NO reason for why they should be doing this when there already are alternatives.
UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
Here's an example, not MS-based, but a true story and one that illustrates (I think) the GP's point.
One closed format is the QuickBooks one. Last year, as I went to start preparing my taxes, I opened up my business' QuickBooks file so I could generate reports for my accountant. Now, so there's no misunderstanding, I *puchased* this software about two years previous and was using it on my Mac G4 computer all that time. When I upgraded my OS several months prior, I backed up everything to another drive, performed the OS upgrade, and copied everything back. So when I went to open QuickBooks it acted like it had just been installed and asked for my serial number. No problem, I found it and entered it.
Then QuickBooks goes to match that against some nebulous database elsewhere on the net, and returns an error message: this serial number cannot be authenticated. Oh really? It was just fine when I entered it the first time. I tried again and again, always to get the same response. So I called Intuit to get a working serial number .. know what they told me? They don't support my version of QuickBooks anymore. If I wanted a new serial number that worked, I would have to buy the new version. The upgrade would cost me $200+shipping.
That's extortion. Maybe unintentional extortion, but extortion. If I wanted access to MY data using MY software on MY computer, I was going to have to pay them AGAIN. This was not an arragement I agreed to when I bought the software. Having no choice, I did, but it taught me an important lesson about software "ownership" and the rights and expectations of those who do business with companies like Intuit, like Microsoft, and others who, in the name of "security" and "copy-protection" are stripping away basic rights of legitimate users to use their legally purchased software and hardware.
If I had had an alternative to accessing my QuickBooks software file, especially an open source one, you bet your ass I would have used it.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
When I first encountered a PDF file on the web I wondered why it was not a plain text file which anyone could read regardless of OS. It was three times larger than any other file format and I had to go hunting for a program to install and view the file. I've hated Adobe PDF format ever since.
Sure you may need a program to read pdf files but pdf files look the same in Acrobat Reader on all platforms and the fact is is to read any document on a computer you have to have softwear to open it in. What I don't like is that all too often Acrobat Reader crashs or freezes on my computer.
FalconShould there be a Law?