Rare Apple I computer sells for $216,000 in London

I remember the "Works" and "Orifice" incompatability. Strange both were M$.

formats were

stupid.

ble$$ed by MS.

How much odder that even Microsoft software fails to correctly interpret Word documents across versions.

--
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)

That's not odd at all. That's how Microsoft forces people to upgrade and breaks open source compatibility. Being able to get away with that kind of stunt is one way you can know they have a monopoly.

-- Patrick

I think Works originally wasn't. -- Joe

-- Joe Thompson - E-mail addresses in headers are valid. |

"...the FDA takes a dim view of exploding pharmaceuticals..." -- Derek Lowe

In real life, the Open Source alternatives generally read the MS formats reasonably well, and access the data inside them better than any divergent MS version. The issues are with formatting and making stuff look good.

I see large organisatons getting hard-earned lessons about the storage of old documents these days.

-- mrr

Morten Reistad wrote

Thats a lie with the lastest version from MS and the free readers in spades.

Nope, not with the lastest version from MS and the free readers in spades.

No you dont. They are always readable.

No. I don't think I've seen OOXML word before. Something tells me I don't want to know after the past 6 days in that other newsgroup.

/BAH

yep. I wasn't forced to point.

/BAH

bare-metal OS.

Microsoft

Man! You need to learn the difference between a monitor and an application.

It would be wonderful if MS did, too.

/BAH

That was probably intentional. If "works" could read and write orfice documents, how many would buy the more expensive option?

formats were

stupid.

ble$$ed by MS.

Once again, not odd. It's their way of forcing everyone to upgrade.

I've used openoffice for Word-like work for a long time. It used to be that when I was doing something moderately-official I'd reboot into Windows and use genuine Office; a couple of years ago I was at a meeting and noticed that no two Windows laptops around the table were rendering a document I'd generated (in Word) identically.

That was the last time I generated a document in Word. I do occasionally get horribly-miswritten documents (people doing things like setting a figure to have text render under it, and then using lots of newlines to reserve the space they really want) that won't render even vaguely reasonably in anything but Windows, but that's not even common.

Yeah. NMSU made an attempt to define Word as its "official" document format, but thankfully nobody paid any attention and most everything is archived in PDF.

--
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)

NMSU = New Mexico State University ?

--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money 
is good, or is it the reverse?

It's Microsoft's latest success at making darkness the new standard.

As governments started to wise up and require that documents be preserved in documented file formats, Microsoft decided that rather than embracing the already established international standard for office documents, they would subvert the ISO standards process by packing various committees with new representatives from various nations whom they had coerced or bought off and ram through a "fast-track" approval of their own newly- devised proprietary format as a standard.

Needless to say, the proposed standard was of Byzantine complexity, unnecessarily long (6000 pages), and yet not long enough, since it was full of "documentation" that amounted to things like like "Do this the way Excel 97 does" without further elaboration, all of which made it impossible for anyone else to implement.

Even the bought-and-paid-for committees couldn't quite bring themselves approve it as it stood over a sea of (inadequately heard) objections from third parties, so some revisions were required. Result: a "standard" that nobody supports, not even Microsoft, but with a "transitional" version that (what a coincidence!) matches Microsoft's current Office formats.

The whole episode has left the ISO itself in a very bad light indeed, with calls for revising the procedures that let this happen.

But don't take my word for it. Here you go:

--
Roland Hutchinson		

He calls himself "the Garden State's leading violist da gamba,"
... comparable to being ruler of an exceptionally small duchy.
--Newark (NJ) Star Ledger  ( http://tinyurl.com/RolandIsNJ )

Yes.

--
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours;
and this we should do freely and generously. (Benjamin Franklin)

slightly similar but different tale about ISO requiring that work on networking standards had to conform to OSI model. I was involved in taking HSP (high-speed networking) protocol to x3s3.3 (US iso chartered committee for networking standards). It was rejected because:

1) it went directly from transport/level four to LAN/MAC ... bypassing network/leve three ... violating OSI model 2) it supporting "internetworking" ... a non-existant layer in the OSI model (approx. between transport/networking) 3) it went directly to LAN/MAC interface ... a non-existant interface in the OSI model (sitting approx. in the middle of layer 3 networking).

one of the other differences between ISO and IETF that has been periodically highlighted is that IETF (aka internet standards) requires that interoperable (different) implementations be demonstrated before progressing in the standards process. ISO can pass standards for things that have never been implemented (and potentially are impossible to implement).

misc. past posts mentioning HSP, ISO, OSI, etc

note that fed. gov. in the late 80s was mandating that internet be eliminated and replaced with ISO (aka GOSIP).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

jmfbahciv wrote

bare-metal OS.

Cow! You couldnt bullshit your way out of a wet paper bag.

Pathetic.

{snip}

The first 3 layers of X.25 were not too bad, possibly because people had implemented them. Although I did find that selective rejection at level

2 did not work.

Andrew Swallow

Hi Rod,

Rod> Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote >> Rod Speed wrote >>> Andreas Eder wrote >>>>> Rod Speed wrote

Rod> All *nix. More mindless hair splitting.

What about QNX? Definitely not a *nix!

'Andreas

--
ceterum censeo redmondinem esse delendam.