[Word] Special Characters before Numbers of numbered lists

[Ron Solecki]

Hey Liz

You know, that has the sound of truth to it.  Someone asked "Well what new
functions do we have to justify paying $200-$500 for Office 2007" and the
response was " ... ? ... ? ... ? ... " "uh, nothing".  So some bright came
up with your idea, "lets wrap it in a pretty new RIBBON, and maybe they
won't notice 'the emperor has no clothes' ".  That was well and good until
someone else in upper management said, "oh, lets make sure that RIBBON is on
nice and TIGHT!  Better use sooper <sic> glue so they can't take it off (use
the old menu). While we are at it don't let them customize it too. Learning
how to weave a ribbon (write xml) is just too hard for those dummies."

And there you go, now we know the underlying justifications for the ribbon
gooey.

Hey, that was fun excersise in creative writing.  Too bad there may be more
truth in it than we would like to believe.

Recently I read somewhere that MS was spending $7.7 Billion on Office 2010
(google it, here is one link that reports that amount
http://slashweb.org/microsoft/microsoft-office-2010-sign-up-now.html) .
Heck for that kind of money I would have been willing to contract to
re-write the whole thing from scratch!

PS: If you think, without the humorous embellishments, that sort of sloppy
decision making couldn't possibly take place in big business, guess again. I
worked for a company that had a multi-year, multi-million dollar project
that was based on similar stupid decisions.  Actually, the project started
with 2 clearly stated main objectives.  Then due to politics and bad
(uninformed) decision making by people who shouldn't have been allowed to
make that type of decision, the act of signing the contract completed voided
both of those reasons for doing it.  The project senselessly went ahead, the
initial estimated amount was rapidly spent then many times overspent.  The
final delivery date was 3 times longer (2 years late) than contracted for.
And the delivered end result was an expensive, cpu inefficient, unnecesarily
complicated boon-doggle that continues to cost way too much to run and
maintain.

On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 12:26 PM, Liz <ackerliz at shaw.ca> wrote:

>  Ron...you have that right!!. I wonder if the Ribbon was dreamed up by
> someone at M$ who has a warped, tongue in cheek sense of humour...take off
> the ribbon and its like being regifted, its the same old, same old. And you
> get to pay how much for that.....???
>
> I think the document is a good, simple to use resource, not a lot of extra
> stuff to have to plow through.
>
> Liz
>
>
>
>
> Thanks Liz, that's a good doc to have handy to pass around.
>
> While answering Seena's question, I had an "aha!" moment.  I realized that
> the Office 2007 ribbon gooey is just pasted on top of the same old office,
> EXACTLY the same way that Windoze started.  Back in the 80's Windoze started
> as an addon,  technically called a "shell", to DOS.  DOS was still obviously
> there during startup.  MS has gone to great lengths to hide it, but DOS is
> still here, in the form of the command window, even in Windoze 7.     I
> figured out that the same applies to Office 2007.   MS took the old Office,
> pasted on the new shell, called it the "Ribbon", but underneath it is still
> exactly the same old office.  Just look at what is called up by the ribbon.
> 99% of the time they are the same old pre 2007 dialog boxes, with no changes
> to the new "look & feel".
>
> Looking at it that way makes their refusal to include a way to access the
> old menu system, call it "reverse compatibility", even more annoying.  DOS
> was around for less than 10 years before windows overpowered it, but it is
> still supported 20 years later.  The "menu system" has been around (in
> various incarnations) since the beginning of Word, just shy of 30 years.
> But along comes the 2007 ribbon and MS gets all hoity-toity and refuses to
> provide continued access to the old menu.  Grrr.
>
>
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