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Office 2008 for the 'Executive'

When 100775 is an unlucky number.



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Joel Bruner continues his look into Office 2008 and uncovers further nasty things.

'Last night while groggily honing in on the Office 2008 installer package I missed another glaringly obvious defect', he writes. 'All the files are set executable.'

Given where this product comes from it's probably not all that surprising. But it's still not acceptable.

'Take a look again at the lsbom dump and you'll see this everywhere - 100775.'

So true. A total of 37443 files are so marked, including 2389 HTML files. And if you remember from yesterday: they're also marked as owned by '502' - a user that very well may not exist.

Gorgeous.

'Now tell me: does ./Microsoft Office 2008/Read Me.html need to be executable for you to look at it? No. Does this godawful GIF bullet ./Microsoft Office 2008/Office/Media/Clipart/Bullets.localized/Red Swirl? No. But it is.'

Saving the Best

But here's where the fun starts. For although Joel does find a way around this mess it's not exactly easy - not with 'TFF'. For to remove these potentially dangerous 'x' bits you need a file manager - something sorely lacking on OS X.

'And can you remove this execute bit in Finder? No. You have 3 choices: Read & Write, Read Only, and No Access. Flip through them all and the 'x' will still be there.'

The Irony

There's irony here - and it's thick: from the company that used to boast of eschewing the command line we're back there again. Their excuse for a 'file manager' simply cannot control the 'executive' bits - not anymore. Things are in a downward spiral only the likes of a Jeffrey J Barbozo would approve of.

Sidebars; Quick Look; Cover Flow; but no way - absolutely no way - to manage one's own files.

'The media I am using is part # X13-64625-03', he concludes. 'I hope MS can fix this and repress this for volume licence customers - my day job!'

Some say it's progress; I say it's cruel.
 - P Garrett

See Also
brunerd: Office 2008, 502, and You
brunerd: Office 2008 for the 'Executive'

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