Re: What Microsoft wants for your future

From: BillK (bill@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Tue Mar 11 2003 - 12:31:34 MST

  • Next message: Michael M. Butler: "Re: DOWN & OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM"

    Tue Mar 11, 2003 10:45 am Mike Lorrey wrote:
    > It is so disappointing when a report purporting to be dispassionate
    > can't even hide its own disinformation very well. Files produced by
    > any new version of any software, when the file formats are not
    > industry standards (as WP, Lotus, and older versions of MS Office are
    > proprietary, while GIF, JPG, RTF, TXT, etc are standardized) are not
    > readable by older versions of that software or of any competitive
    > application introduced prior to the new version.

    My apologies for the confusion, Mike. My snapshot extract did not convey
    the full meaning of what he is saying. You need to read the full story
    about the proposed Rights Management Services (RMS) to get it.
    In the old days, when MS brought out a new document format, all the
    other software packages swiftly updated their packages to read the new
    format and MS issued programs like the free MS Word Viewer to enable
    customers to read the new format documents.
    This will happen no more.
    RMS (which works with Windows Server 2003) issues a license certificate
    containing access permissions when a document is created. So, in the
    case of a Word document created in Office 2003, the person creating it
    would use the "permission" button to set or restrict access. The process
    accesses RMS, which encrypts the file and includes a license for
    permissions.
    In order to read an RMS protected document, the user has to access the
    RMS server and get their license authenticated by the server.

    > Ah, so the authors are disparaging Microsoft for doing something which
    > Apple already did with it's OSX upgrade?

    He does get a bit anti-MS in places, but his main intent is to open
    peoples' eyes to the future plans of MS. I find it difficult to see how
    you can read this report and follow up some of the over a hundred links
    he provides and not get a bit anti-MS yourself!

    Even if you do decide to go down the MS route at least you will have a
    better idea of the considerable costs involved.

    BillK

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