From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-03-31T00:55:59+09:00
Subject: Re: Just for fun...

On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 10:35:38PM +0900, Kristoffer Lund??n wrote:
> 
> The point is, by defaulting to zip, you may hold back the revolution a
> bit, but it also ensures that your mom, your boss, your customers, and
> just about everyone except Perrin ;-) can open it. This is convenient
> and pragmatic, but it's also important: there's a lot of busy people
> out there who will not even bother to reply wit a complaint if they
> can't open the files directly, they will just junk the message and
> move on. A *lot* of people out the aren't interested in installing
> anything, no matter how good it is. A lot of these people may pay your
> salary or sponsor your next project.

Well . . . to be fair, I *can* open it, but I usually need to type
something like one of the following first:

  apt-get install unzip

  cd /usr/ports/archivers/unzip; make install clean

Thanks for thinking of me, though.


> 
> I have about 40 students I work with, computer literate and in the
> ages 18-30, and I am writing this because this has shown to be a real
> problem, before I got them all to only send stuff in formats as
> standard as possible - this includes not sending MS files unless
> requested. Students have, in a very real sense, lost internship
> opportunities, and maybe even job offers (who knows?) because of this,
> and it has only a long time after shown that it was only because it
> was a RAR archive or funnily, an Open Document, or something like
> that.

It always pays to find out what the person on the other end wants, when
that person has something you need.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"There comes a time in the history of any project when it becomes necessary
to shoot the engineers and begin production." - MacUser, November 1990