[asveikau]

Is it me or are people too eager to "one track mind" everything into AI? If I had said thirty years ago that Microsoft would remote disable old copies of Office asking you to upgrade, literally no one would be surprised. This is standard MO for Microsoft, even in a world without AI.

[jasonfarnon]

"literally no one would be surprised" Microsoft 30 years ago was the gold standard for bending over backwards for backward compatibility. For the proposition that once you have purchased one of their products, you didn't have to maintain any further relationship with the company. This behavior is strictly the new 2010s Apple-like microsoft.

[helpfulclippy]

That’s not how it worked. They were indeed awesome at backwards compatibility, but the proposition was NOT some principled mindset about long term ownership. It was that upgrading wouldn’t break what you have, overcoming a major sales objection. I think the proposition is better understood as one about FORWARDS compatibility — Windows was (and is) a brittle, poorly architected mess, and so the idea that anything built on it would stay working as the platform evolved was clearly insane and developers would never be able to keep up, so Microsoft absorbed much of the cost. This was actually something they did quite well — a good analogy here might be the heroic response the USSR had to the Chernobyl catastrophe, in which they skillfully managed a disaster whose scope was possible only through a long tradition of poor decisions — and this deserves recognition.

But the reason I think it’s better to think of it as forwards compatibility is that Microsoft gleefully used file formats as a means of driving the upgrade treadmill. Yes, the upgrade to Office 97 would keep everything working to approximately the same level of reliability you had already resigned yourself to — but by default, the files it kicked out would be unreadable in Office 95. There was Save As and an optional free converter… which tired 90s office workers didn’t know about, or particularly want to think about. In the age of literal floppy disks, the friction this created was a significant motivator for businesses to say “fuck it, fine.” Microsoft’s true genius has always been in knowing that “fuck it, fine” is the only bar they ever had to clear, and that through the power of lock-in and sheer institutional inertia, they can drive that bar deep into the belly of the Earth.

Thus, Azure.

[sandworm101]

Yup. Evil is gonna evil.

I may be forced to use MS at work but at home I dont let their software past my router. A buddy of mine stayed for a few days while his place was being fixed. "Hey, why are my updates not happening?" "Oops, I forgot to tell you that all MS servers are inaccessible via the wifi."

[xnyan]

I’m trying to understand your threat model. Microsoft software is allowed to access the network and communicate with peers on the internet, with the exception of its source of security updates?

Struggling to see anything but more risk with no benefit with this security posture.

[sandworm101]

Much more simple. MS = evil so every domain name associated with it is blocked. I do not use MS software, have no need to update it, and certainly do not need to submit any telemetry info to them. So it is a non-issue until a guest wants to update their laptop using my wifi.

[xnyan]

I've done a bit of work with Microsoft and our enterprise firewall. I will bet you any amount you want that you have not blocked all of Microsoft's telemetry endpoints. They are still getting it. The only thing that's happening is introduction of more risk into your network by blocking people from patching known vulnerabilities

[lazide]

Lol, Microsoft has always had sunset periods. They just weren’t great at remote licensing. They would have totally disabled old versions if they could much earlier.

[stackghost]

>This behavior is strictly the new 2010s Apple-like microsoft.

Surely you jest.

US v Microsoft, the antitrust case, was decided in 1998. Microsoft has always been a shitty company run by shitty people doing shitty things.

They enjoyed a brief upwell in public relations during the period when they had first seemingly embraced open source with WSL, GitHub, and maybe dotnet core, but it was merely a blip.

Being overtly anti-consumer is baked into Microsoft's DNA. They'll always return to that baseline.

[DrewADesign]

Adobe was really the pioneer for that.

[asveikau]

> Microsoft 30 years ago was the gold standard for bending over backwards for backward compatibility

And for reselling you the same office suite every couple of years.

(Full disclosure, I worked there in the 2000s... So if anything I should be biased the other way.)

[mghackerlady]

Right, but if you bought office 2000 it was established that you would get to keep using office 2000 for as long as you wanted

[userbinator]

There are probably still a minority using Office 2000 out there, because it still does everything they need.

[efreak]

Office 97 not only has everything most people need (wordpad has all features most people need; most users have no need for Excel or other office tools) it also starts up faster and uses less resources. The only question is do you actually need any of the massive quantity of features in modern office, or is word processing today still fairly simple for you. And maybe if you don't like MDI and want your multiple windows instead (the thing I miss most about old office is having 15 documents open in a single window when writing essays in school, without cluttering up alt-tab or the taskbar. That and the toolbar button that initiates the active screensaver). If you want to use your cloud storage (you really don't need it most likely) you'll have to use a sync tool instead of having it directly. Turn off macros for security and make sure it can actually run (no idea when office stopped using 16 bit components), and I recommend firewalling it as well, but office doesn't really need to be up to date.

[Paianni]

There was an OOXML compatibility layer for Office 2000, though the latest version of that only runs on Win XP and later, but I suspect LibreOffice would be more compatible with OOXML made with current versions of Office.

[mghackerlady]

For a while I had installed in wine for frontpage

[ornornor]

I was one of those, way past its EOL. I could never switch to this braindead “ribbons” UI and refused to learn this idiotic new scheme so I stayed with office 2k. And then I switched to libreoffice.

[asveikau]

Correct, but my point was if they had taken measures to counteract that nobody would have been surprised.

[elzbardico]

No. It was not normal. I knew people who still had their original office 97 media installing it on windows 10, like a few years ago.

[Suppafly]

This, I've used old versions that I got as part of a site license for employees deal for years.

[nonethewiser]

>If I had said thirty years ago that Microsoft would remote disable old copies of Office asking you to upgrade, literally no one would be surprised. This is standard MO for Microsoft

Ok. Doesnt mean its not because of AI.

Does Anthropic use one or a few licenses to serve all office artifacts?

[Underphil]

This is a bizarrely revisionist take. Perhaps you weren't around at the time but that was not standard MO in the slightest. Obviously they were incredibly scummy in other ways, but that was not one of them.

//Edit : I see from another comment that you say you worked there in the 2000s. Inclined to believe you, but having worked in the industry since the mid-90s I'm absolutely confident the general sentiment about Microsoft was not yet hatred. That came later.

[esafak]

I suppose it depends on what kind of users you have in mind; enthusiasts, versus average users. Before they became outright user-hostile they were known for their anti-competitive behavior and buggy products. People were calling them "Micro$oft" by the 90s, at the latest. And United States of America v. Microsoft Corporation started in '98.

[macintux]

In the mid-90s, when I started my career, I was convinced (and very sad) that Microsoft had won the computing business and I was doomed to work on their software the rest of my life.

So, perhaps "general" sentiment wasn't there yet, but certainly plenty of us held no love for the company. The only software from Microsoft I've ever really appreciated was Microsoft Musical Instruments.

[cwnyth]

Counterpoint: Bill Gates' appearance in the Simpsons clearly depicts him as a nefarious bully. I think the Windows XP and the Gates Foundation actually resuscitated his image a bit. Windows was a bit hit or miss. Blue Screen of Death plagued Windows 98, Windows ME was a joke, even early XP wasn't great. (I personally wasn't a fan of XP when it came out, switching instead to Windows NT before moving over to Linux c. 2004.)

Bill Gates the ruthless business-nerd was definitely a stereotype 30 years ago, though to your point I don't remember anyone talking about them revoking licenses for purchased software.

[ornornor]

> 30 years ago, though to your point I don't remember anyone talking about them revoking licenses for purchased software.

People weren’t ready then. But enough “innovation” has happened since that most people will shrug and say “meh it’s an old version anyway”