On 14 Dec 2009, at 16:25, Dale wrote:
...
I'm somewhat clueless about this software issue but wonder about
this way of seeing things. Since it appears there is a signature,
as in what is at the bottom of a letter or a bank check, wouldn't
they want to make it so that is not able to be extracted at all? If
I had a digital signature, I wouldn't want to put it somewhere that
it could be used by someone that I wouldn't want it to be used by.
My customer, an agency which rents out apartments on behalf of
landlords, has a server on which they store all their files. These
letters are generated by their property management software, and are
written to their landlords, tenants &c. Obviously they have to keep a
big archive of copies of all the letters they've written in the past.
The letters are stored in .doc format, but when they're originated I
think they're actually just printed out and posted. Storing the
signature in the .doc is, I think, just a convenience to save the boss
(or other members of staff) having to physically scribble a signature
at the bottom of each letter.
I'm guessing the office might manage c 100 properties, and I imagine
that they may generate some thousands of letters per year. So a 1meg
image in a letter might well start to consume gigs of disk space.
"Gigs of disk space" is only a little bit of a problem because when
this server was manufactured, 4 years ago, decent RAID meant
horrendously expensive SCSI disks (it is still under support contract
for another year) and because I haven't got around to migrating them
away from an offsite-backup provider who is somewhat overpriced.
Hope this clarifies,
Stroller.
PS: a couple of great suggestions have been made this afternoon. I'm
going to watch some of the fruits my labours - my labours involving
get_iplayer earlier today - and will try these suggestions later. Many
thanks!
