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Office 2003 Bug Locks Owners Out
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Microsoft Office 2003 bug is locking people out of their own files, specifically those protected with Microsoft's Rights Management Service. Microsoft has a TechNet bulletin on the issue with a fix. It looks like they screwed up and let a certificate expire. There's no information on when the replacement certificate will expire, though, or what will happen when it does."
The cases where the user would be "hosed" are few to none.
This bug only applies to documents protected with Rights Management Services, which is part of Active Directory and the Windows Server operating system.
Therefore, the only way you would have an issue is if you were on a network that used RMS but had no internet connection, in which case you'd have your IT guy download a fix from some other internet-connected machine and deploy it to the systems with the bug.
This will not affect people who are simply running their own copies of Office 2003 without RMS or Active Directory or any other fancy add-ons.
It's still vendor lock in if there's no competing product that reads their open formats.
Umm... There are a huge number of programs that read/write ODF (OpenOffice's default format). Wikpedia has a fairly extensive list of software that handles the various ODF files.
This has nothing to do with open formats.
If you encrypt and digitally sign (aka DRM) your OO.org files, and loose the ability to decrypt them, you are in the same boat.
This is a story about DRM, not formats. A story about the forgotten idea of key escrow idea and of DRM cert servers, not file formats.
THL phish sticks
Eventually the bigwigs get tired of the fact that they cannot understand how to use save-as-older-format, and they dislike having their underlings telling them to do things, and they cannot bear to find all the files they saved and re-save them before they downgrade back to the old version... So the entire company naturally has to pay to upgrade everyone.
Or, the admins download and roll out the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack and leave the CEO with his new shiny-shiny.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
That's what happens when you hand the keys to your kingdom over to someone whose best interests don't align with your own.
Saying you should avoid that is all very well but it's practically impossible in any business.
Want to take out a loan? The moment the bank thinks you may be in trouble they can and will send you a rude letter saying "Repay the whole lot. Now."
Want someone to do your accounts? Paying an outside company will be a sight cheaper than paying a wage to someone who you only need for a few weeks of the year, but the accounts they prepare will be full of disclaimers to the effect of "We have prepared these using information supplied by our client...." and it's you the tax man will come after if he smells a rat. Too bad if the office junior did your accounts and the senior person who signed them off was in a hurry to get home that day - they'll never admit it in a million years.
Want an email, calendaring and contacts platform? Free clue: The F/OSS exchange alternatives are generally just as complicated as Exchange itself, with the added bonus that finding someone who knows them can be a hell of a lot harder.
I blame this kind of error messages on programmers who use exceptions. Instead of doing error checking within the routine that has the problem and crafting an error message in there, you just throw an exception, hoping for the caller to take care of it. If the caller doesn't then the exception keeps floating up until nobody has a clue to what the condition was, hence "unexpected error". I hate exceptions.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
And then the admins get to deal with documents that can't be handled by the converter. I had one last month, had to install 2007 to open it. I forgot to check Open Office first though. 2007 isn't as bad as the problems '97 caused, but it still causes some.
Uhhhh...I hate to ruin a perfectly good rant and all, but you DO know they could just choose to get the compatibility pack if they wanted to, right? It is absolutely free, and works on any version of MS Office from Office 2K-2K3. Now if they are still using Office 97 I think they got bigger things to worry about than getting a newer version.
Now I can't tell you how well it does/doesn't work on Office XP or 2K3, since I don't have those, but so far I haven't had any problems with my Office 2K opening 2K7 files with the compatibility pack. Supposedly you can now save to the new format with the compatibility pack, but since I just save as the Office 2K .doc file, which I've found opens just fine in 2K3 and 2K7, I can't comment on that.
So while you may hate Office 2K7 for the bloat or the ribbon (man I hate that thing!) it really isn't hard to open the new formats in the old Office with the compatibility tool, at least that has been my experience.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Now if they are still using Office 97 I think they got bigger things to worry about than getting a newer version.
What things are those? Office 97 met my needs just fine, the only reason I stopped using it is that it didn't support multiple monitors correctly, you'd put the app on the second monitor and pop up a menu, and the menu would pop up on the primary display! Goooooo Microsoft, yeah! Now THAT is quality. Now I'm back to one monitor, but I'm also on Ubuntu so I'm using OO.o.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My parents are on OO.o, my girlfriend is on OO.o, and my NetBook is on OO.o. The universal response in this admittedly small sample has been: "hey, that looks a lot more like the Office I'm used to!".
That's a Windows PC, an iMac, and a Linux netbook by the way.
LyX is your friend. It's a wonderful WYSIWYM(ean) editor for LaTeX.