From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7593106.stm:

"The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online," he said in a statement.

—Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Ah, good old Microsoft: never one to let reality get in their way; of all the browsers that those statements could apply, MSIE would be the least likely.

(Okay, so this is from a while ago, but my mother just sent me the link and I’m in a ranty mood, having been working with Java all weekend)

The National Archive is teaming up with Microsoft to preserve their data. According to Gordon Frazer, Managing Director UK and Vice President Microsoft International (obviously a trustworthy and impartial source of information):

"Microsoft took the step to implement XML-based file formats that unlock data in documents, allowing them to be archived, restructured, aggregated and re-used in new and dynamic ways. As a result, the latest releases of Office use open-standard file formats - Open XML."

The word I’m think of rhymes with "Jackson Pollocks".

Microsoft only "took the step to implement XML-based file formats" because the OpenDocument Group were already doing it, and Microsoft didn’t want a standard document format that they didn’t invent. It only "unlock[s] data in documents" relative to Microsoft’s old formats—it’s no better than many other open formats in that regard. Finally, Microsoft Office OpenXML isn’t an open standard—it’s not actually a standard even now, as far as I know, so it certainly wasn’t last July when the announcement was made. It’s barely even open, since the specification has various undocumented parts that are there for Microsoft to make use of, without actually telling anybody what the massive chunk of binary data is for. It’s also, as I’ve complained about previously, very Microsoft-centric, in that it basically standardises "features" like Excel’s treatment of 1900 as a leap year.

Adam Farquhar, Head of eArchitecture (is that a word? I didn’t expect the National Archive to be making up new words by adding "e" to the beginning) at the British Library and co-chair of the Office OpenXML standards committee (oh, what a coincidence) said:

"Microsoft has shown considerable initiative working with The National Archives…"

Again, bollocks. They’re not doing it out of the goodness of their heart—at the very least, it’s publicity, and a monopoly over a major source of data; it’s probably also extremely lucrative for them.

Rich has responded to my post about Office from yesterday. I should maybe point out that I was trying to avoid absolute statements—it was based on the theory that Word/Excel/Powerpoint were no better that Writer/Calc/Impress, which may or may not be the case—it depends on your requirements for them. I’ve used all of them, and found that the OpenOffice versions are perfectly adequate, but as Rich points out my requirements are fairly limited; other people may need something from their word processor that I don’t know about.

As regards Access, I didn’t even try to compare it with Base; the few times I’ve used Base, I haven’t managed to make it work. My point was that most people don’t actually need it (and that you can probably get it from the university if you do, especially as that way you can be certain of getting the right version).

With Outlook, also, I pleaded ignorance on the calendar side of things—if it’s a better calendar than anything else, then by all means use it, though I wish people wouldn’t use it for e-mail.

My comments on Publisher were solely based on what I’ve been told by people who know much more about design and DTP, including Rich; I’ve never needed to do anything along those lines that the GIMP or Inkscape hasn’t been able to handle. Of course, if you do need it, and have, for example, an intense hatred of the GIMP, then that’s one more thing in Microsoft’s favour.

My intention wasn’t to say that this is a bad deal (as Rich points out, I don’t use these kinds of application often enough for it to be worth paying any money for them), but to get people to think about whether or not it’s a good deal for their needs. Personally, I wouldn’t pay Microsoft (or any other company, for that matter, but especially Microsoft) for software if there was even a half-decent Free Software alternative, and I don’t think anybody else should if they can help it, but if this deal really is good enough to be worth paying any money at all for, then by all means do so.

Rich blogged about Microsoft’s latest deal for students, £12.95 for a one-year licence of Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate Edition [1], or £38.95 for a perpetual licence. He claims it’s an excellent deal; I’m not so sure.

Firstly, if something ordinarily costs £599.99, as MSO2k7U [2] does [3] and is reduced to £38.95, then that is a good deal if and only if it is worth £599.99 in the first place. Now, economically speaking (I did GCSE Economics and I did pay a little attention), if there are freely-available (in terms of cost, not Free Software) alternatives the monetary value of MSO is zero. Of course, there’s quite a lot in Ultimate Edition; however, if you’ll never use a part of it then that part can also be counted as having no value (since you’d be just as willing to pay the same price for the product as a whole minus that useless part).

Now, I’m going to assume that OpenOffice Writer and Calc are as good as, if not better than, MS Word and Excel. That means that Word and Excel can be written out of the equation: there’s a freely-available pogram that can do exactly the same things, so why pay for them. Likewise OpenOffice Impress cancels out MS Powerpoint. Outlook? Well, Thunderbird does well enough for email (better, I’d argue, since its authors have actually read the relevant RFCs, or at least heard of them). I don’t know about calendaring, really, so maybe that’s one in favour of MS, or maybe you prefer Mozilla Sunbird or Google Calendar (in Rich’s case, I believe he uses Apple Mail and iCal—again, freely-available on MacOS). Publisher? Excuse me while I laugh in your face. Access likewise—although, to be fair, it’s required for part of the course at UoP.

The others I can’t comment on so much, but I suspect they’d fall into the category of useless stuff. Groove: collaboration software. What exactly does it do to make collaboration easier that couldn’t be done just as well without it? OneNote: likewise, but s/collaboration/note-taking/g. Infopath, form-building software. I thought Access included form-building software? If we accept that Access is needed, why is Infopath also needed? And if Access isn’t needed, then you probably don’t need to build forms. And finally, Accounting Express. Perfectly useful, I suppose, to people who do accounting, but that excludes the vast majority of students (and anyway, there’s a free alternative—GnuCash works on Win32, though it’s still experimental).

So, for your money, what are you getting? Maybe a calendar, if you don’t have a better one. Access, if you actually need it (but which I’m fairly sure you can get for free from your university if you need it). Lots of stuff that you probably don’t need. It sounds like a great deal because the original price is so inflated, and because there’s so much stuff included that most people have no need of.

Bear in mind, also, that Microsoft aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. The more people who start using Office while it’s cheap, the more people who become dependent on it, and the more people they can force to fork out ridiculous prices for new versions (the perpetual licence is only for that version of Office, not any future versions).

I think I’m going to start automatically deleting every email that contains the string “-----Original Message-----”. If people can’t be bothered to quote emails sensibly, then I can’t be bothered to read them. Especially when their broken quoting habits lead to them quoting again, in the middle of the message, as well as at the bottom.

~/.procmailrc:

:0 B
* ^-----Original Message-----
/dev/null

When I reply to an email in mutt, it looks something like this:

On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 07:50:01AM -0000, Skippy wrote:

One line, containing the date and the author of the message I’m replying to. Nice and simple.

When Skippy, or anyone else using MS Outlook (or, presumably Outlook Express/Vista Mail), it looks like this:

-----Original Message-----
From: Benjamin A'Lee [mailto:bma@bmalee.eu]
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 11:48 PM
To: termilist@termisoc.org
Subject: Re: [TermiList] ati graphic cards

That’s one line that wouldn’t be necessary if Outlook didn’t encourage top-posting, two lines to give the information mutt managed to convey in one line, and two lines to give the information that should already be in the headers: a total of five lines where one will do. Plus, of course, the ?top-posting, which is an entry in itself.

This isn’t a complaint about you personally, Skippy (you just happened to be the person in the examples because you use Outlook). But it is a complaint about your choice of mailer. Outlook sucks, please use a proper mailer.

Skippy says that it’d cost him £850 for an upgrade to Windows Vista and Office 2007, and wonders if it’d be any cheaper to learn GNU/Linux.

Hell, for £850 I’d sit down with you and teach you everything I know.

Of course, if you want to save money, you can just buy an upgrade version of Vista, since they can be used to install the full version due to some idiocy on the part of Microsoft (they let you upgrade, or install a 30-day trial, and then you can upgrade the trial to the full version).

Dear Microsoft,

Your cocking stupid excuse for a mail client is filling my server logs with shit. Please fix it now.

No love, bma