Summary: Users of Microsoft Office are barred from their own properly, their data; Office marketing shifts to fantasy mode

Microsoft’s Rights Management Service (RMS) is suffering from poor quality control, which has already caused serious bugs like incorrect maths. In this case, rather than calculations being corrupted, it is people's own files that they are being denied access to:

Office 2003 Rights Management Bug Locks up Files

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It’s a nightmare scenario: Imagine coming into the office and not being able to access any of your organization’s vital documents. That scenario became reality today for an untold number of Microsoft Office 2003 customers who use Microsoft’s Rights Management Service (RMS), a technology for controlling access to documents.

Other Microsoft sites have written about this.

Check back here and watch that Microsoft Office blog for any updates on the situation. In the meantime, here's hoping you don't have some critical information locked up in a protected Office 2003 file.

Microsoft has acknowledged the problem when it issues a fix and meanwhile it is running ahead to vapourware, just like with Vista 8 -- a version which was talked about well before the next product (Vista 7) was even shipped. In other words, Microsoft has the tendency to talk about the product that will come after the next product, which has not even been released yet (talking 2 versions ahead of the present).

Watch the Microsoft boosters talking about Office 15 [1, 2, 3]. Office 15??? Office 2010 (formerly 2009, but it was delayed, as usual) is not even out yet and they are already talking about what comes after the version that comes next. "Windows 8" was talked about in April, half a year before "Windows 7" was even released. How desperate are they? ⬆

"In the face of strong competition, Evangelism's focus may shift immediately to the next version of the same technology, however. Indeed, Phase 1 (Evangelism Starts) for version x+1 may start as soon as this Final Release of version X."

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]