History repeating... (was: New Commers - Rotary Clubs of West Siberia)

Wed Jan 17 03:54:17 PST 2001

At 10:26 17.1.2001 +0600, Elena A. Marchuk wrote:
>...
>I'm sorry for the attachment, I discovered that I forgot to attach it first
>and started to do this: I wanted to send 4 pictures and a small text. But
>when I started sending I discovered that it would be more then 4 MB !!!!
>
>so I stopped sending and wait for the pictures my husband is preparing for
>Almanah (newsletter) about Rotary Assembly which I'm going to take to the
>"Rotary in Russia" workshop which will be held in Houston this year on the
>9-11 of February, on which we are working hard now. First I have to get the
>visa in US Ambassy which is very severe to women but hope as I went to
>Rotary worshops several times it will work again, so I'm going to Moscow on
>the 21-st of January to try to fly to US on the 5-th of February (Actually
>to San-Fransisco first, though it looks crazy....) This flight will be just
>FROM my Future Search Conference which Marina and me are going to have with
>Clinic-Hospital - that would be our first "practical" FSC. Before we made
>two on Leadership on Siberia - the last is with Women-leaders of Siberia:
>Strategies of Collaboration - you probably know about our Report (2.5 MBs)
>
>So Now I will try to send one of the pictures:
>With the most unusual market place, but don't blame me for it, please, that
>was in a hunter house and hunting still exists in Russia and other places...
>
>Best wishes
>
>Looking forward to seeing you soon
>
>Elena
...

Elena and everyone else to whom it may concern,

may I just quote two of my previous messages:

Number one - sent to OSLIST 2001-Jan-09:

<start quote> ---------------------------------------------
...
Outside of the US many people pay to their internet provider the *time*
they are connected.
An attachment of more than 300kB divided by transfer rate multiplied by
charge multiplied by number of people affected - that sums up to quite a
substancial amuont.

My request: Please refrain from sending such large attachments to a world
wide mailing list!
If a file is necessary place it somewhere from where people interested can
download it deliberately, and publish just the according URL to the mailing
list.
Or send it by email attachment directly and only to people who requested it.
Thank you very much.
<end quote> ---------------------------------------------

Number two - sent to OSLIST 2000-Nov-12:

<start quote> ---------------------------------------------
Dear all,

may I draw your attention to a never ending story. The title is:

"Two good reasons #not# to send documents in a proprietary file format."

Most users arent' aware of the risks they take, nor how easy the remedy is.
Let me contribute to a little more awareness and knowledge.

1.
*.DOC files may contain viruses. So chances are that you unintentionally
(well, let's hope that :-) help them spread. What do you think the receiver
will feel about you sender when he finds out how he got the virus? It may
even become a lawyer's case easily.
I myself never open a DOC file from unknown origin. You may call it
paranoia, I call it cautious. And it does pay off. In more than fifteen
years work with PCs, most of the time being responsible for many at the
same time, I never encountered a successful virus or troian horse attack.
Attempts there were. On the other hand I have seen several other people's
PCs having virus infections which I cleaned then.

2.
Does everyone own and use the latest version of word from Billieboy? The
answer is no. Again there are good reasons not to keep on hopping onto each
the newest version with many new errors. And there are other products from
other vendors out there which can easily compete, let alone other platforms
such as apple, linux, you name them. Since several years I cannot read the
latest DOC format, and the same may hold true for many other people as
well. So if you want to make your document accessible for your colleagues
outside the micro$oft mono culture, you'd best send it in a platform and
product independent format.

Now, what is the solution? Very simple. If you are aware, it is only few
mouse clicks away. "File", "store as..." opens a dialogue window. In the
lower left part this window offers a drop down list for "document type" (or
the like; I don't know the exact wording of the newest english dialogues).
 From that you choose "Rich Text Format (RTF)", then "ok". That procedure
yields a file 'documentname.RTF' (the file 'documentname.DOC' still
exists). The RTF
# can transport all of your layout and text formatting, is
# platform independent so everyone can read it, and
# transport of virusses definitely is impossible.

What more do you want?

Well, this approach exhibits one little drawback. If your document contains
graphics (drawings, pictures) it may become a rather large RTF file. The
cure for that is to compress (ZIP, RAR, ...) it before sending. Use one of
the many shareware or even freeware compressors available or a file manager
with built-in conpressing capability (WinCommand, Norton Commander, ...)

Ok, these were my two cents for a better world.

hth.
...
<end quote> ---------------------------------------------

And let me include Artur F. Silva's comment on that here:

<start quote> ---------------------------------------------
...
>*.DOC files may contain viruses. .
>
>Now, what is the solution? (...)
> From that you choose "Rich Text Format (RTF)",
>then "ok". That procedure
>yields a file 'documentname.RTF'

That's true. I think we should use RTF format. I normally
don't open Doc files. I made an exception in this case.
And I have always a very recent version of an anti-virus,
but in some cases this is not enough...

>Well, this approach exhibits one little drawback. If your document contains
>graphics (drawings, pictures) it may become a rather large RTF file. The
>cure for that is to compress (ZIP, RAR, ...) it before sending. Use one of
>the many shareware or even freeware compressors available or a file manager
>with built-in conpressing capability (WinCommand, Norton Commander, ...)

Again, I would suggest we use all the same compress/uncompress
product. I think Zip is the most common (and the one I use...)

No for a completely different subject. Christoph also wrote:

>And there are other products from
>other vendors out there which can easily compete, let alone other platforms
>such as apple, linux, you name them. (...) So if you want to make your
>document accessible for your colleagues
>outside the micro$oft mono culture, you'd best send it in a platform and
>product independent format.

Do you all know that Linux is a competitor from Windows that has similar
products for office (StarOffice) and many others, and that is free for use
(or almost free if you choose a prepared version). It belongs to what is
called "Open Source" software.

Please note the coincidence of "Open". Open source is "source code"
that is "open" to the world, non-proprietary, and free. Linus (the originator)
had the some benevolent position of Harrison, and there are millions
of teachers and students developing free SW to work with Linux.

Like open space or the communities I referred, Open Source SW
is in the way for a more solidary and co-operative world.

Can you imagine how much a big company, or university, or state
department pays every year to Microsoft? The good news is that
THERE IS NO NEED! Think about it.

Artur
<end quote> ---------------------------------------------

Finally, Chris Corrigan proposed a FAQ for our list. May I add to that the
proposal to include the statement of some basic rules of behaviour, such as
"no unsolicited large attachments please" or "don't publish documents in
*.DOC format". Just as Open Space has its rules, email communication has.
Maybe a monthly reminder would do. I know this proceeding from other lists
and newsgroups I participate in. What do you think?

cu,
Christoph

*
*
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