Ok, so, I admit that I am not the neatest of people. In fact, my desk at work generally looks like a filing cabinet exploded all over it. However, even this level of messiness does not preclude me from getting the holy rage when people refuse to follow standards for no good reason (or even worse, for selfish, self serving, reasons).
I am not picking on anything in particular here, at least not yet, I just mean in general. How hard is it to just adhere to the generally accepted best way of doing something? I'm all for marching to the beat of your own drum, but that's not what we're talking about here. Standards are there for a reason: because many people working together yet independently need a baseline to reference, a constant that they can expect to be true, no matter what. Take for instance, the Internet. Have you ever wondered why a page looks different depending on which browser you're using to view it? Thats because the people who made the browsers didn't follow standards (and one is worse than the rest). This makes the job of a web designer maddening. They have to check it in 3 or 4 of the most popular browsers, the entire time praying that everything works reasonably well in all of them. When something doesn't, then its back to the drawing board, spending hours researching why it's not working correctly in one particular browser. Then, once you figure out why, you have to fix it and hope that it still looks how you want it to.
These gripes extend to just about every facet of life... the workplace, television, word processing... just about anywhere you can imagine. Ever wonder why you can't type up something in Word 2007 and have it open correctly in Word 2003? I'm not even talking about a competing product from a different company, or even a different product suite from the same company. The same product, from the same company, just one version higher. If I have a document written in one, I have to install a separate, standalone product, to open it in the other.
The madness doesn't just apply to the upper side of society either. Even in the seedy underbelly of the internets, we find people who just can't seem to follow the standard. Folks who get copies of movies and distribute them freely on the internet are governed by a set of rules that all releases must adhere to. But even they, with their reputations on the line, can't seem to be able to follow the standards, often cutting corners with the hope that no one will notice. Hypothetically, this would make life very difficult for people attempting to obtain such a thing. Not that I condone it, but just saying: the sloppiness is everywhere.
There is however, a silver lining to this cloud of shame. There are some good examples of standards that are followed, and it makes life better for everyone. Music files for instance. If I have a file that is a standard MP3, then I can rest assured that it is going to play on any device capable of playing mp3's (refer to my previous post about software activation if you are confusing DRM laden music with plain ol' MP3's). CD's used to be a good example, but at risk of digressing back into my DRM rant, just take my word for it that even those are no longer safe. How sad is it, that you have to read the fine print on the back of a CD to ensure that it is going to play in your cd player.
Finally, for those pundits of mine who will claim that it's not hurting anyone, and they should be able to behave in any way they see fit, I offer the following: Imagine a ruler that claims to be a foot, but is in fact only 11 inches. Imagine an infant thermometer that is +/- 2 degrees. Imagine a car that gets forty rods to the hogs head while traveling at somewhere between 55 and 104 MPH, depending on which speedometer you read.
Come on people, just follow the standard. It's there for a reason! Not to mention it's easier and cheaper for you, because someone else has already done the hard work of engineering it. All you have to do is follow the directions. Even 4 year olds with E-Z bake ovens can do that.
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Er...not to be pedantic, but Word 2003/7 are marginally compatible, but it's entirely dependent on the 2007 user.
Also, I wouldn't say that the two versions aren't competing. They most certainly *are*. If there wasn't a competition, you WOULD be able to flop files between them, willy-nilly. It's just that it's a very one-sided competition, in which MS simply drops advertising, and direct support for the old version.
Anyway...I do like the 11" ruler analogy. Though, I'd liken it more to having a ruler that looks like every other ruler, but will only measure things in one room of your house. If you take it out of that room, it turns into a cinder block. Then, even inside of the room in which it works, if you measure anything other than the "long edge" of something, it again becomes a cinder block.
But yours is short and snappy. Mine's long and heavy...like a cinder block.
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