Finally: MS really, really supports ODF

Monday, 11 September 2006  |  Jaroslaw Staniek

We've been waiting for this step. Read on to discover how clever it is.

Short version: MS now encourages you to make all your data ODF-compatible. Period.

Long version, after the /. article:

"If you have compression activated on any folder, 
 then the compressed data is at risk from corruption.
 New files that are close to a multiple of 4K in size 
 will have their last 4,000 bytes or so overwritten 
 with 0xDF."

Noticed that? 0xDF.

(thanks to Rob Kaper for finding this out)

Q: Now, what all the MS haters will do? And, more important:

 "When you have a monopoly
  What're your customers going to do?"

A:

 "The guy at the keyboard of a Windows Vista box, 
  using Microsoft Office at work, and Windows Media 
  Player at home is not the customer, he is _the product_.
  The customers are Dell, AOL, media licensing conglomerates, and so on.

(thanks to Tackhead for the reminder)

OK, now seriously - this is of course awesome news for any vendor of backup solutions, but I hope users will get a new working patch quickly and no important data is lost.