Thinking of buying Microsoft Office? And you've seen what Office 97 does to your hard disk, and your friends' Word and Excel macros? Well, be afraid: Microsoft has withdrawn Office 95 from the shops.

It has left a loop-hole: if you already have a copy of Office 95, you can buy a "licence" to make extra copies. The MOLP, Microsoft open licence pack, allows this. But where are you going to get an existing copy, if you aren't a major corporate?

There are excellent reasons to call for the preservation of Office 95. It creates files that are one third the size of the identical file saved under Office 97. It avoids the endless Microsoft "standards escalator" whereby every year, they force everybody to "upgrade" and pay them a fee, simply so that they can "take advantage of the new features." And it is stable.

By contrast, Office 97 is loved only by developers. They like to be able to create Excel applications in Visual Basic. The fact that they won't run on our Office 95 systems doesn't bother them at all. And what about people who have old copies of Corel Office, or Lotus SmartSuite, which they've carefully patched to read and write Office 95 files?

Right now, corporate "Select" buyers can still get old Office 95 media. But that, say sources, is about to stop. Then the control freaks will have us.

Come on, Microsoft; give us a break! You don't have to run every detail of our lives for us; let the users have a choice. Bring back Office 95!

Kewney's World is launching a petition to deliver to Microsoft. Click to add your name to the campaign.

Strong encryption
It's time Britain's politicians came out of the closet on encryption. Right now, you can't get a straight answer to a sensible question: "do you accept the citizen's right to privacy? Or do you insist that the Government has the right to access my private correspondence?"

In public, our new Government says it is in favour of openness. Behind the scenes, however, it is supporting repression.

It's important. There is almost nobody in the world, except for the French Government and Al Gore, the US Vice President, who still expects to be able to control encryption. And yet the UK is still, secretly, supporting Gore's proposals to have Governments own all passwords, so that they can unlock private mail.

The reason it's important is that worldwide Web commerce needs this to go ahead. If the UK Government opposed Gore, it would leave him alone, with only the French as an ally; he'd crumble.

Today, American firms are not permitted to encrypt their data for non-American sources, with a "key" of more than 56 bits. Anything more is "exporting munitions." That's pathetic; any major computer user could reckon on cracking a 56-bit key within days, using general purpose supercomputers.

How can BT, for example, swap confidential share-exchange documents over the Internet with MCI, if the data has to be protected by the legally-mandated maximum 56-bit key? If a rival firm were to find this data interesting, it would be easy to steal.

The argument Gore advances is known to be shot to pieces. He wants the ability to read email between Mafia dons, or Russian spies. He's mad: organised crime, or Government agents, simply aren't going to be daunted by US Government requests for a copy of their key in "escrow" before sending information to Bolivia! But respectable businesses will hold back, even though they know that non-American firms already have access to superior encryption than the RSA 128bit key which is industry standard.

And it's holding up development of the Internet. This issue is at the very crossroads where technology and commerce meets civil liberties. It is hugely disapointing that a supposedly wired and vigorous young government cannot take a principled stand on this issue.

Spot on:
Mr Steve Ballmer, Microsoft executive vice-president, told US analysts that Wall Street's valuation of the company was "laughable". It was ridiculous to value Microsoft above such industrial giants as Ford and General Motors, given the short life cycle of its products and the volatility of high-tech markets.
-- FT, Monday

Perhaps not spot on:
Bank of America, to legendary technomad Steve Roberts: "We're considering your application for a merchant credit-card account, and we want to make sure you are not accepting transactions over the 'Internet' we've been hearing about. You need to fax us your web page."
Roberts: "We don't have a fax."
They hand him a self-addressed stamped envelope, so he could print it out and mail it instead.

Kewney's World
Bad news for Direct3D, AGP

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