The strangest craving.
Sep. 10th, 2005 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI felt the strangest craving this morning to start using Microsoft Word again.
It felt exactly like the feeling one gets when looking back on a relationship where the sex was fabulous but was otherwise horribly abusive. MS Word is very pretty and while you use it you feel like you're getting a lot accomplished.
But when Word gets into a bad mood it gets really crazy. Often, when Word does get crazy, it trashes something of yours, sometimes a piece of work you really value and put hard effort into. Yet, when Word does this, it also somehow manages to make it feel as if the wreckage was all your fault.
Word's gotten worse over the years. These days, it's gotten more bossy and demanding. With it's new DRM thing, it works harder than ever to isolate you from anyone who might convince you that the flash and shine of Word isn't the best thing in the world. Word has a history of bad relationships, as each release has locked out a new generation of some other wordprocessor. Yet Word seems perfectly happy to run embedded viri for you, flirting with every trojan macro that comes along. And really, why hang out with Word? It's gotten fatter and more bloated over the years. Think about how much money you've poured into bling just so you can keep your relationship with Word. Are you doing anything more with Word today than you were in 1995? I mean, really.
I'm sticking with Emacs. Compared to Word, Emacs isn't flashy or hot. It's downright plain and very, very nerdy. On the other hand, Emacs has had twenty-five years to learn how to do safe computing right, and since it's all in plain ASCII I'll never be locked into using a DRM manager and I'll be able to share my work with others. Emacs very rarely crashes, and when it does it's actually apologetic and gives good suggestions for avoiding that accident in the future.
It felt exactly like the feeling one gets when looking back on a relationship where the sex was fabulous but was otherwise horribly abusive. MS Word is very pretty and while you use it you feel like you're getting a lot accomplished.
But when Word gets into a bad mood it gets really crazy. Often, when Word does get crazy, it trashes something of yours, sometimes a piece of work you really value and put hard effort into. Yet, when Word does this, it also somehow manages to make it feel as if the wreckage was all your fault.
Word's gotten worse over the years. These days, it's gotten more bossy and demanding. With it's new DRM thing, it works harder than ever to isolate you from anyone who might convince you that the flash and shine of Word isn't the best thing in the world. Word has a history of bad relationships, as each release has locked out a new generation of some other wordprocessor. Yet Word seems perfectly happy to run embedded viri for you, flirting with every trojan macro that comes along. And really, why hang out with Word? It's gotten fatter and more bloated over the years. Think about how much money you've poured into bling just so you can keep your relationship with Word. Are you doing anything more with Word today than you were in 1995? I mean, really.
I'm sticking with Emacs. Compared to Word, Emacs isn't flashy or hot. It's downright plain and very, very nerdy. On the other hand, Emacs has had twenty-five years to learn how to do safe computing right, and since it's all in plain ASCII I'll never be locked into using a DRM manager and I'll be able to share my work with others. Emacs very rarely crashes, and when it does it's actually apologetic and gives good suggestions for avoiding that accident in the future.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-10 04:15 pm (UTC)Considering that in 1995 I was writing in either emacs or bbedit lite, and then putting the text into Quark, yes, I can truthfully say that I am doing more now with Word than I was in 1995. But that's merely a technicality, seeing as then I was working in all-Mac shops, and now I'm working in a 99% Windows shop. But I should probably be good and get a copy of Quark, since I can get the student discount now.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-10 05:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-10 05:24 pm (UTC)Of course, my mind immediately snagged on WMDRM, or the WMD part of the acronym, and a small, isolated thought wandered through my head: "What if the WMDs Bush was looking for were nothing more than a collection of graphics Saddam wouldn't share, and that's what this latest overseas hostility was actually about?"
Of course, that would make a horrible sort of sense to me, but then I tend to reduce most troublesome adults down to the level of playground children.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-10 07:47 pm (UTC)Back in, oh, '94 and '95 or so, our university was still using Telnet and a program called Pine as the main .. er .. (god, I hate lacking the language) method of accessing our school's e-mail. I remember being terribly intimidated by the native word processing you could do there (something called VI maybe? I don't remember exactly.), so I end up sticking with Windows-related software. But again, I'm vaguely dissatisfied with Word, and sometimes Wordpad doesn't do everything I need it to.
What's a boy to do? I need a witness!
no subject
Date: 2005-09-10 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 05:09 pm (UTC)