About the Author
My name is Kevin A. Thompson, I am an intellectual property attorney in Chicago, Illinois with the firm Davis McGrath LLC. I practice in the areas of domestic and international trademark, copyright, and internet issues. Internet law is my real love, especially how trademarks and copyrights intersect there. The focus of this blog is the digital world, its impact and legal framework. I write about recent issues, cases, and controversies. I also give my general thoughts about the Internet and its impact upon us and our society.
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Musings on backwards compatability for Windows
An interesting conversation with Joel Spolsky has been featured this week at IT Conversations. It’s from September 2004, but still relevant.
The idea that remained with me is the fact that in order for Microsoft to have backwards compatability for users whenever it came out with a new version of Windows, Microsoft had to include code that emulated the bugs in the original release. That way, software that was written to overcome those bugs could still work. Yikes! Now that’s a job I am glad I don’t have.
I also liked Joel’s comments about Microsoft’s lag in updating its file formats for Word and Excel, especially in light of the recent announcement that MS Office will, in the next version, implement an XML-based format. That long delay means that none of the new versions of Word or Excel introduced any features that made changes in the document that could be saved into the file. I wonder how much creativity and innovation had been stifled by this idea that the file format couldn’t change. At long last, the formats will change for the better in the next version.
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