BankWest (was: Re: [plug] Standards)

Bernd Felsche bernie at innovative.iinet.net.au
Tue Mar 23 21:21:25 WST 2004


On Tuesday 23 March 2004 21:03, Craig Ringer wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-03-23 at 20:02, James Devenish wrote:
> > In message <200403231955.02464 at death.2.spammers>
> >
> > on Tue, Mar 23, 2004 at 07:55:02PM +0800, Bernd Felsche wrote:
> > > requested that I email program source code in DOC format
> >
> > I adore (loath) that nomenclature -- "DOC" isn't even the name of a
> > format! Nor are "TIF" and "JPG"!

> Here, I'm lucky if I get the 'format' on the end. "Craig, I've got a DOC
> from <customer>... they say it is their ad with their logos in it, but
> when I open it up it looks weird," or often "Craig, I've got this DOC
> logo - can you save it so Production can open it?".

> *arrrggghhhh*.

Take a deep breath. Smile. Walk away. Else it'll end in bloodshed.

> The number of people who, when asked for an image file, drag an image
> into MS Word and email the resulting MS Word document never ceases to
> astound me.

Because that's the sequence of things that they've learnt in the
past. Monkey see; monkey do.

People in general are unable to see the distinction between the
data and the programs used to handle it. Never mind explaining
formats and protocols.

That's why they keep using OE to read email. That's why they keep
using Word.

Even people with "IT training" frequently behave the same way.
Monkey see; monkey do.

Encouraging people to be stupid and to strive towards mediocrity is
what got M$ where it is nowadays. It's far harder to extract
megabucks from a few smart people, than a few bucks from several
million fools.

> > > Which I'll probably do exactly as requested; turn it into a JPEG,
> > > then paste it into a document with OpenOffice, then save as Wierd
> > > format. :-)
>
> I suspect the result will be "your Linux-format DOC file crashed my
> computer..."

That's just too easy to do. No challenge at all; given that M$-hit
loads the file as a memory image and then dives naively into the
content.

-- 
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