Guess what this document is:
In fact, it's the binary hash Microsoft Word made out of Chapter 24 in my next book. I'm not certain, but the proximate cause seems to be editing the file with both Office 97 on Windows and Office 2004 on the Mac. Fortunately I had a backup of this document from yesterday morning, and yesterday was more of a research and coding day than a writing day, so I didn't lose too much. Still if Microsoft can't even keep their file formats stable and reliable for one decade, why do they expect governments to use them for archival storage?
