graeme_p - 8:29 pm on May 14, 2010 (gmt 0)

Besides, shouldn't new hires be sending their resumes in universal PDF format so anyone can read them?

Try asking people to send any format you like - you will usually end up with most of them sending you .doc (or now, possibly, .docx) anyway.

We all know the real and only reason they made the default not backwards compatible was so that people would tell their friends and colleagues that "You have to get the new version" when told that they can't open their Word docs.

The point of docx/OOXML was to convince governments that it is an open format (because some have been moving to ODF, especially for archiving), while making it complex enough to make it difficult for competitors to implement it. If you have not read about the controversy and MS's shenanigans at the ISO, a bit of Googling should find a lot of stuff on it.