It has begun.
Laughable. YOu see, PDF documents and Flash movies are protected against manipulation. Still, there are programs that allow you to modify them as you wish. Same will happen to Office. It doesn’t take a month for someone to make a program that breaks the protection on Office files.
I wouldn’t say a month.
Maybe <i>two</i> months…
I’ll just say three and be done with it.
Yay, I cracked it! =^.^=
[BEEP CRASH “Uh … we have had some technical problem …”]
Oopsie … it broke!
That’s not what he meant by “cracked,” Cat-Mayl.
Ren: That is true if it weren’t for the fact that you need a Fritz chip installed in order to crack it and Fritz chips doesn’t allow you to crack it. So you can see how this goes…
<img src=“http://www.rpgclassics.com/staff/tenchimaru/td.gif”> Someone will crack the chip 
There is no such thing as a flawless product.
Dude, 1984 already happened in real life. It happened 19 years ago.
I just hope that the bill that would make it illegal to use anything that doesn’t have this crap built in doesn’t pass. That would suck so badly.
I don’t see why you’re comparing this to 1984. All it means is that if someone wants to make a read-only or secure Office file, they can. It’s not like MS is securing the documents themselves. O_o
Cid: That is true, but Digital Rights Management and Palladium/NGSCB is basicly 1984, nothing you say can convince me otherwise.
Microsoft will sneak it in so quietly you won’t even notice it until it’s too late. Am I paranoid? Maybe. But atleast with my Mac I’ll be free from whatever MS do… =)
Well, technically, 1984 was the government doing it, not a corporate entity. I mean, I guess the 1984 government could have come from a corporation, but I doubt that’s what Orwell was getting at. Plus, I don’t think Microsoft is going to take over any government in the near future.
the ministry of truth rewrote history, not make it read only.
hy·per·bo·le
n.
An extravagant exaggeration
I stopped reading after I saw “Microsoft” in the headline. Sorry.
What else is new, and I don’t see what this has to do with 1984.
The Patriot Act is 1984 revisted, not Microsoft offering a valid and perhaps needed product.
<quote>“It’s not something that you would set up as the default, so that every document I would create is rights management protected,” he said. “It’s important that you make a choice to apply rights management to a document for very specific reasons.”</quote>
Not like I use Word that much anyway. If someone at work gives me a document, I know I’ll be able to open it at my work machine, because that software is updated regularly. If I receive a Word document elsewhere, I kindly ask the person to re-send the document in a standard format.
You’re like 19 years late. We already had a 1984.
badump pshhhh!
Ohhhhhhhhhh I get it- anything that Microsoft does must be something to enslave humanity! Thanks for clearing that up, Wertigon!
EDIT: Hail Microsoft, our future rulers for sure now that they can read our .doc files!
Vic: Thanks for those constructive comments, please, keep them coming
Ok, Wert posts about tech stuff and usually about how windows is evil. There are some of us who partially agree with his views and in the interest of open and fair debate discuss how far our agreements go. Its obvious yiou dont want to contribute to this, so please, butt out.
The comparision to 1984 was an extreme but it is a possible use of this technology. As with all encryption/protection, you can only (in theory :P) access a file with the right access. It doesnn’t take a genious to realize that microsoft will certainly have master encryption keys avaliable to them. This is the more alarming thing, not the “Microsoft is evil” point.
Anyway, maybe i need to chill or something.
I used to think that the video cameras cities are installing to keep crime down are more inherent of 1984, but hey, now that Wert’s said it, I guess that having the ability to prevent big brother types from viewing your private information is really what 1984 is all about!