[Nottingham] Microsoft badness and the Linux +

[Hazel Windle]

Hello,

I agree with what Michael Leuty said about Microsoft, they'll probably 
try to become a friendly company again but no one will trust or believe 
them. They'll probably be here for some time though, probably as a 
smaller company. IBM used to be a huge company but now they're just 
medium sized. The other week I tried to install the beta version of MS 
Office (just out of curiousity). I couldn't install it on my sister's 
Win XP machine as it wasn't new enough (didn't have the service packs). 
I tried to install it on my grandmas laptop but I couldn't get the 
stupid code to unlock it. I think it's bloody idiotic to put activation 
on beta software. Bloody idiots at Microsoft.

Speaking of certification does any one know anything about the Linux+? 
Is it a useful qualification? I know it's about system administration 
and stuff. I do have one other question about Open Office too. As the 
file formats are xml or something, I tried looking at my odt files in a 
text editor but it was all binary with bits of xml here there and 
everywhere. I know once when one of my spreadsheet files got corrupted I 
managed to unpack the file and find the document in xml and I was able 
to rescue my file. Can you still do that?

Hazel Windle