RE: Annoying pop-ups

[Christopher Hicks <chicks () chicks net>]

On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Paul Robertson wrote:
> How many word processor users actually needed, say Word macros in
> documents?  Was it worth it to the rest of us who suffered through the
> macro virus hell years that a small percentage of users were accomodated
> in the default install of a ubiquitous product?

Macros aren't inherently evil and lots of people do need them.

We deal with folks in several companies that must use Word documents that
require macros.  For instance, we have a small local phone systems company
that has half a dozen users using a set of documents laden with macros
from Samsung so they can build quotes and orders.  We've asked Samsung to
provide the same functionality with less dangerous technology, but that
seems unlikely to happen before the heat-death of the universe.  It's
ugly, but there's not enough competition in the phone system market to
weed out this sort of BS, so our client is stuck with it regardless of how
much it irritates us from a security perspective.

Macro-laden documents don't bother me per se, but the level of
functionality provided by Office Basic is far too broad to be appropriate
for general consumption.  I'm sure some people write macros that pull in
DLL's and do worthwhile things with that (or access the registry or
open/close files), but none of those things should be enabled by default
for everybody.  They could have required that dangerous features only work
if enabled or in signed applets or something.  But M$ wasn't satisfied
leaving the barn door open, they had to blast accessways in every side of
the barn just to make sure.  It's so, so irritating.  Grumble.

We do see a steady growth in OpenOffice usage since the released 1.0 so
hopefully these problems won't be with us in ten years.  Hope, hope, hope.

-- 
</chris>

Any chance of those paper cups and string being upgraded to tin cans
and wire?  Or as a coworker has said . . . I've seen better throughput
from a pair of gorillas and flash cards.   -Jon Lewis <jlewis () fdt net>

_______________________________________________
firewall-wizards mailing list
firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com
http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards