Re: Real World News.."And so it goes"

[Mitch Stone <mstone@vc.net>]

In reply to Linux Idiot's message sent 4/15/98 6:08 AM:

>A lot of it is educational issues.  I'm responsible for a segment of the
>AT&T HR Intranet development.  When I suggested to one person that they
>should quite sending word document versions of their newsletter via
>email and publish it on the Intranet, she said that there would be
>people who could not access it.  Think about it.  We're talking about
>people who obviously have email and MS word.  I'm still fighting this
>one.

I fight this one constantly, also. I don't own Word, don't care to own 
Word, and certainly don't care to use Word. What's so strange about that? 
But I'm forever being shipped documents in Word format, or asked to send 
them. I always ask for RTF (ironically, a Microsoft format) or text 
documents, but more than half the time, people simply don't know how to 
Save as... in formats other than the default Word format. Honestly -- I 
need to patiently explain it to them. We gotta learn to chew gum and walk 
here, folks, even if Microsoft makes it difficult.

What I find genuinely disturbing is the trend towards making public 
government documents available in Word format. The time is coming where 
we'll need to own Microsoft products in order to compete for government 
contracts and the like. Who's minding that particular store? Nobody, so 
far as I can tell.

   Mitch Stone
   Editor, Boycott Microsoft
   http://www.vcnet.com/bms 
 +---
   Windows NT 5.0 is an evolutionary, not revolutionary, release 
   of the Windows NT operating system. While there are important 
   new features in this release, version 5.0 will build on a proven 
   system architecture and incorporate tens of thousands of bug 
   fixes from version 4.0. --- Microsoft press release