kcredden
August 3rd, 2006, 01:48 PM
I've been thinking of this article, and reminded of another I wrote sometime back. To look at it now, it appears more to me to be a blog entry, not something really designed for this BBS. Even if it's dealing with computers and such. It's my opinion, so to speak.
So I've copied this to my blog (see below), and if I can, I'll move the other entry I spoke off as well to there. From now on, I'll not use the BBS as my blogging forum. No apologies, I wasn't thinking at the time :)
Now I'll let you back to your regularly scheduled insanity, already in progress.
--
Now many of you know that I'm an avid (some say rabid [chomp! :rolleyes:]) non-user of Windows programs (only use Windows, because for now I have too). This is triple for MS Office. I use Open Office only (www.openoffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org)) and for one major reason...
I was reading this (http://software.newsforge.com/software/06/08/02/1625228.shtml?tid=93&tid=138) on NewsForge (http://www.newsforge.com/) today, and it was 100% on the nose. In fact, this is why I recommend no one use MS Office. I bolded key pieces of the article.
"In keeping with the dominant theme of this year's OSCON, Suárez-Potts emphasized the importance of open data, and highlighted the importance of the Open Document Format (ODF) for OpenOffice.org and other applications. Tony Coates may have put it best on his blog (http://kontrawize.blogs.com/kontrawize/2006/07/set_my_data_fre.html), saying, "Your data will outlive your applications." The OpenOffice.org and ODF folks have planned for this well by developing a well-documented open standard that can be used by many applications. Suárez-Potts says that with proprietary standards, "You have the kiss of death." If the company behind a proprietary format goes out of business, or simply stops supporting that format, "that's it, all the data that you had? Gone."
This happens all the time with MS Office. True, you CAN load up say a Word95 document into the newer version of MS Office, but is that a guarentee? Also will the formatting be the same as well? Big companies constently mess around with things they own, many times without telling their customers. Look at say cell-phone documentations, that say they can and will change things without telling you. Also a major problem I've had. I deal with companies a lot that sends .DOC, and .XLS files (MS Word, and Excel) and many times it's impossible to read them, even with OO. Their solution? Pay $500 for MS office to read their docs. Uh...no. I don't have that sort of scratch.
However, if you have a file that uses an open, and standard format, if say company A, decides to mess around a bit, and you can't load your document, well Company B probably can. Your not locked into one particular company.
I agree with the statement "Your data will outlive your applications." I have stuff on Apple II disks, I'd love to get off, but even if I could, I couldn't even possibly read the files. This is research data I did while in high school that I cannot get back anymore.
I have printouts, but jezz...there's about 5,000+ records, and I don't want to type back in. It was a nightmare to even straighten up the one time.
I'm now in a major push to get all our data records into the ODF (the file formats that Open Office uses), and on DVD data disks so that in the future they'll be accessable. Once HD/Blue Ray disks become standard, I'll have to move the records onto the 1 standard so that I can read the files in years to come as well. After DVDs, holographic storage should be available.
Although moving the data to new disks is a problem, it's nothing compaired to not being able to read the data in the future.
Just something to think about, folks.
So I've copied this to my blog (see below), and if I can, I'll move the other entry I spoke off as well to there. From now on, I'll not use the BBS as my blogging forum. No apologies, I wasn't thinking at the time :)
Now I'll let you back to your regularly scheduled insanity, already in progress.
--
Now many of you know that I'm an avid (some say rabid [chomp! :rolleyes:]) non-user of Windows programs (only use Windows, because for now I have too). This is triple for MS Office. I use Open Office only (www.openoffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org)) and for one major reason...
I was reading this (http://software.newsforge.com/software/06/08/02/1625228.shtml?tid=93&tid=138) on NewsForge (http://www.newsforge.com/) today, and it was 100% on the nose. In fact, this is why I recommend no one use MS Office. I bolded key pieces of the article.
"In keeping with the dominant theme of this year's OSCON, Suárez-Potts emphasized the importance of open data, and highlighted the importance of the Open Document Format (ODF) for OpenOffice.org and other applications. Tony Coates may have put it best on his blog (http://kontrawize.blogs.com/kontrawize/2006/07/set_my_data_fre.html), saying, "Your data will outlive your applications." The OpenOffice.org and ODF folks have planned for this well by developing a well-documented open standard that can be used by many applications. Suárez-Potts says that with proprietary standards, "You have the kiss of death." If the company behind a proprietary format goes out of business, or simply stops supporting that format, "that's it, all the data that you had? Gone."
This happens all the time with MS Office. True, you CAN load up say a Word95 document into the newer version of MS Office, but is that a guarentee? Also will the formatting be the same as well? Big companies constently mess around with things they own, many times without telling their customers. Look at say cell-phone documentations, that say they can and will change things without telling you. Also a major problem I've had. I deal with companies a lot that sends .DOC, and .XLS files (MS Word, and Excel) and many times it's impossible to read them, even with OO. Their solution? Pay $500 for MS office to read their docs. Uh...no. I don't have that sort of scratch.
However, if you have a file that uses an open, and standard format, if say company A, decides to mess around a bit, and you can't load your document, well Company B probably can. Your not locked into one particular company.
I agree with the statement "Your data will outlive your applications." I have stuff on Apple II disks, I'd love to get off, but even if I could, I couldn't even possibly read the files. This is research data I did while in high school that I cannot get back anymore.
I have printouts, but jezz...there's about 5,000+ records, and I don't want to type back in. It was a nightmare to even straighten up the one time.
I'm now in a major push to get all our data records into the ODF (the file formats that Open Office uses), and on DVD data disks so that in the future they'll be accessable. Once HD/Blue Ray disks become standard, I'll have to move the records onto the 1 standard so that I can read the files in years to come as well. After DVDs, holographic storage should be available.
Although moving the data to new disks is a problem, it's nothing compaired to not being able to read the data in the future.
Just something to think about, folks.