"This is fine", there's already an opened (for 2 years) bug ticket for it.

This will be an interesting case to follow. I am not sure how much legal liability Jon Prosser has if he simply reviewed a device handed to him. It seems to be the engineer is the one holding the bag in this case.

Yeah, I too bought this years ago.

LibreOffice calls out Microsoft for using "complex" file formats to lock in Office users by David Uzondu LibreOffice has been on the offensive lately, taking the time to call out Microsoft and its practices whenever it can. Now, it is at it again, accusing Microsoft of "intentionally" using "unnecessarily complex" file formats to achieve user lock-in with its Microsoft 365 (Office) documents. For those who don't know, XML is a markup language that programs like Microsoft 365 and LibreOffice use to structure and define documents. As LibreOffice puts it: The two office suites take very different paths here. LibreOffice uses the OpenDocument Format (ODF), an open standard meant to be controlled by no single company. This format gives us files like .odt for text and .ods for spreadsheets. Microsoft, on the other hand, created its own Office Open XML (OOXML) to support every feature in its own software, giving us the familiar .docx and .xlsx. What's interesting is that both formats are really just ZIP archives. The easiest way to verify this is to take a .docx file, rename it to .zip, and decompress it. This will show you the guts of a Microsoft 365 document. As LibreOffice notes, XML is supposed to function as "a bridge," but Microsoft is weaponizing its own schema by making it so "complex that it becomes a barrier rather than a bridge." LibreOffice compares it to a railway system where the tracks are public, but one company's control system is so convoluted that no one else can build a compatible train, making it almost impossible for others to compete. Passengers don't realise they are being held hostage by these technical hurdles. An example of such complexity includes a deeply nested structure with non-intuitive naming conventions, and so many optional elements that implementing the format becomes a nightmare for any developer not working at Microsoft. Even a simple sentence becomes a maze of nested tags that is almost impossible for an outsider to parse correctly, despite the on-screen result looking identical. LibreOffice sees this same lock-in logic at play elsewhere. It connects the complex file format directly to the push for Windows 11, arguing that Microsoft has no good technical reason to force the switch on users, and that the move seems designed only to keep customers tied down. Because of this, it is urging Windows/Office users to ditch the OS/Suite and switch to Linux/LibreOffice.

Yup, Windows has gotten significantly more stable because of this. MS published a stat back during the XP days claiming that about 90% of BSOD were caused by 3rd party drivers. Of course, back then, nearly all drivers ran in kernel space, so that is how something as innocent as pressing the Print button had the potential to trigger a system crash. Even during the XP days MS required validation to get your driver signed, but back then, it as simple as pressing "continue anyway" if you wanted to install an unsigned driver, and many 3rd party manufactures included pictures of the prompt in their instructions saying that it was safe to press continue. Starting with 64-bit versions of Windows, you had to set a custom boot option to install unsigned drivers at all, which people are far less likely to be willing to do just to get some random widget they bought working.