Mark's personal blog

I recently sent an email to "Justitsministeriet" (Ministry of Justice or something) here in Denmark with a very simple question. What my question was is besides the point and so is the answer. It was the way they replied to me that left me kinda baffled. I received an email with the text: "Se venligst vedhæftede fil." (Please see the attached file). And what had the moron working there done..... attached a Microsoft Word document. Why on earth text cannot be included in a standard email is beyond me. Dear retarded person at Justiministeriet! I know that it is very common belief that email was designed to transfer Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets and Power Point Presentations but it is quite capable of including text. Actually the SMTP protocol that transfers email was designed to transfer text and nothing else. I don't want to go into the specifics of 7-bit ASCII and MIME encoding but just know that it wasn't a Microsoft invention to transfer their broken proprietary file formats. At least if you need to send attached files to people then don't use broken proprietary formats that requires a Microsoft Windows to view. Well if you do need to use something broken then at least use PDF which is more widely supported on different platforms. Sincerely A pissed of Linux user PS. I thought we here in Denmark were supporters of open standards. Why on earth don't you use open standards when communicating with the public.