Software developer and essayist Joel Spolsky went dumpster-diving into Microsoft Office's intractable file formats, the curse of freedom-loving Unixtards like me. Spolsky's findings? The formats were designed to make Office run fast on 20-megahertz CPUs with 1 MB of memory, yet to also remember all the options set on each file by years' worth of menu-addled Office applications. This is great news — it means someday I may get Word 2007 to stop unchecking my template options on me every. Single. God damned time.

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