[wplug] Word attachments (was: MISM mentor program)

Henry Umansky hmust2+ at pitt.edu
Mon Feb 10 15:31:05 EST 2003


I am so happy to see that faculty members at Pitt (and CMU, I think) are 
opening up to Linux and open software.  I work full-time for the CSSD 
department at Pitt and I am also a student, and it frustrates me to no end 
when a faculty member requires a M$ document without any alternatives. 
Piece by piece we are chipping away at the M$ wall, if we all do our part 
it will come crumbling down.  OK I'm done preaching, I swear.

-Henry

--On Monday, February 10, 2003 3:23 PM -0500 Scott Kiesling 
<kiesling+ at pitt.edu> wrote:r

> I agree, it doesn't have to be life. It may be as small as sending that
> email to someone, and it spreads. I had never really thought about it
> before today's discussion, but now I plan not to accept .doc documents.
> This means that I will be writing many, many people at the university
> (inlcuding deans), and telling them about open source options. Perhaps
> they will start to rethink the mega-licensing deal they seem to have
> with Microsoft.
>
> I also have had editors send me documents using the Word track changes
> option, which does not work in OpenOffice.org. I find this frustrating,
> but now I have an argument for telling them to send it in a different
> format.
>
> I will also be requiring students, who have the option in many cases of
> submitting things electronically, to use a publicly available format.
> This means future computer users at the rate of a few hundred a year
> will learn other ways to send their documents (and that other formats
> even exist). While this may not seem like a lot, they may also adopt
> this practice and send out similar emails and, well, you get the
> picture. Butterflies and hurricanes.
>
> One question: I believe it was on this list a while back that someone
> suggested that MSWord 6.0 was a more reliable standard than RTF, and it
> is essentially open now since most word processors have decoded it. do
> people agree?
>
> Scott
>
>
> On Mon, 2003-02-10 at 13:25, Alexandros Papadopoulos wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> On Monday 10 February 2003 12:59, Russ Schneider wrote:
>> <snip>
>> > I'll have to Google Palladium and see what this is, but remember
>> > where you live.  In the US, the people with the most money win.
>> > Microsoft (and others) can do any number of things to screw the rest
>> > of us. That's life. :)
>>
>> It's not a matter of the US. It's global. I'd like to stuff my head in
>> the sand and say that it doesn't affect me, as a foreigner, but the
>> truth is it does.
>>
>> And no, that's *not* life. With this kind of mentality the GNU project,
>> Linux, the endless stream of Open Source software it inspired and the
>> EFF would not even exist, and the world would soon be quite hard to
>> live in.
>>
>> (Unless one assimilates. That's always been the easiest choice.)
>>
>> - -A
>>
>> PS: *Do* read about Palladium. Everyone should know what lies ahead, to
>> be able to put things into perspective. Another keyword is TCPA.
>> - --
>> http://andrew.cmu.edu/~apapadop/pub_key.asc
>> 3DAD 8435 DB52 F17B 640F  D78C 8260 0CC1 0B75 8265
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)
>>
>> iD8DBQE+R+6xgmAMwQt1gmURAvQJAJwNWS06KzN+bw3NV/8ikJO1rUh40QCfaGUl
>> elTOoEdNgEFAFpOWjKKLDNI=
>> =tRU7
>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>
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> --
> Scott F. Kiesling
>
> Assistant Professor		
> Director of Graduate Studies
> Department of Linguistics		kiesling at pitt.edu
> University of Pittsburgh, 2816 CL	Phone: 412-624-5916
> Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA		Fax: 412-624-6130
>
> http://www.pitt.edu/~kiesling/skpage.html
>
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Henry Umansky
hmust2 [at] pitt [dot] edu
http://www.pitt.edu/~hmust2




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