At a Loss for Words
It's not often I find myself at a loss for words when I read something, but this is one of those times. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it isn't really necessary for me to add any words to the following news, other than to characterize them with a Latin phrase lawyers use: Res ipse loquitor, which translates as "the thing speaks for itself." I'll give one clue, though: I've added this blog post to the "ODF and OOXML" folder. That's "OOXML" as in "the world must have this standard so that our customers can open the billions of documents that have already been created in older versions of" a certain office productivity suite.
So without further ado, here's the news, along with what a few other people have had to say about it [Update: see also the comments that readers have added below interpreting the original Microsoft information]:Office 2003 update blocks older file formats
Special to CNET News.com
Office 2003 Service Pack 3, which was made available in September, blocks a lengthy list of word-processing file formats, including Word 6.0 and Word 97 for Windows, and Word 2004 for Macintosh. It also blocks older versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Lotus Notes, Corel Quattro spreadsheet, and Corel Draw graphics package.
On releasing the service pack, Microsoft said one of its main benefits was that it would make it easier to interoperate with Microsoft's latest operating system, Vista, and its latest productivity suite, Office 2007. The older file formats that are now blocked are in decreasing day-to-day use, but the blocking of them will make retrieval of archived material more difficult.... In the support document, Microsoft said SP3 blocked access to those formats because they were less secure than newer versions.
[read more of the CNETNews.com article here]
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[read more - and 541 comments (and counting) at SlashDot here]
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Office 2003 SP3 blocks old file formats
January 03, 2008 (Computerworld) -- Microsoft Corp. deliberately broke access to older files, including many generated by its own products, to step up security with the newest Office 2003 service pack, a company evangelist said yesterday...."The decision to block the formats is strictly to protect your machine from being compromised."...
Word 2003 with SP3, in fact, blocks a staggering 24 former formats, according to Microsoft, including the default word processing file format for Office 2004 for Mac, the currently available edition of Microsoft's application suite for Mac OS X....
IT administrators can download a group policies template from the Microsoft site to return formats from the dead, but individual users or smaller shops must instead edit the Windows registry, a daunting task that even Microsoft warns against. "Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly," the company said in the support document. "Modify the registry at your own risk."...
[Microsoft instead recommends that]rather than monkey with the registry, users convert documents in bulk to the OpenXML format -- Office 2007's default format -- using the tools in the Office Migration Planning Manager (OMPM) kit, which can be downloaded from Microsoft's site....
[read more of the ComputerWorld article here]
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...To add insult to injury, Microsoft's explanation for the changes doesn't wash — file formats are not insecure and cannot by themselves allow something like a buffer overflow exploit. The security vulnerability is in the program that opens the files and allows the exploits to execute. The issue then is not the older documents but that Microsoft has decided that, rather than address the insecure code in Office, it will simply disable support for the formats which could exploit those insecurities....
Naturally, there’s an alternative which is somewhat easier (and free): just grab a copy of OpenOffice which can handle the older file formats. Once you’ve got them open, now might be a good time to convert them to ODF documents lest Office 2017 decide to again disable support for older file formats.[Read more at Wired here]
I could, of course, post more. But what can I say...
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