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odf is the Danish government standard for documents, when a company wants to communicate with government entities using a Word Processor format (that's not the same as a document like pdf) then they can comply with the law of the land.

the most recent source I could find http://www.computerworld.dk/art/115407/it-ministerens-dokumentformat-er-en-sikkerhedsbombe said both odf and ooxml had been rejected due to immaturity (pdf being the proposed replacement???). Also, I always cringe a little when I see stories like this, since the outcome is almost always the same. In about a year the story is gonna be how OOO didn't live up to the requirements and couldn't fullfil the complex use-cases of the institution, which basically means that it didn't integrate well with some proprietary piece of (MS) infrastructure. or the users didn't like it because it was to different from the office suite they have at home. My only hope is that they've actually taken a look at some of these earlier failures and tried to extract some experience from them. maybe even setting aside some of their license savings to training and integration testing and development.

Tell it to the danish police. Their new main call-centre for the IOC and COP15 meetings http://www.computerworld.dk/art/53198?page=2 runs on Mac Mini etc.

Let's compare this with a danish politician (I'm from Denmark).

http://www.computerworld.dk/art/42432?a=newsletter&i=1393 says (my translation from danish)

"Enhedslistens"* candidate for the parliament, Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen, thinks tha file sharing should be legal, and digital rights management, DRM, illegal

"I think it's an illusion to believe that it's possible to stop copying. I amounts to sticking one's head in the sand. The politicians have to realize the necessity of forming a committee that will address the question of how artists can be compensated for their work."

*"Enhedslisten" is the leftmost party in danish politics, left of The Socialist People's Party. I'd guess they compare with the greens; the environment is also one of their big issues, they're all for taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

I remember them branding themselves as the Robin Hood party one time, but I don't recall them using that term again. If they get into parliament, they often hold around four seats out of 179, which is the smallest possible amount (less than 2% of the votes and you don't get in).

Be aware that this statement was during election season.

I hope this gives you nutrition for cognition :)

I'm just sick of the entitlement mentality that is wedded to a near Stockholm Syndrome among a lot of younger people.

The distribution cost has been cut down by a huge amount since this whole internets thing came about. I would love to see some way of funding musicians (which I think is needed to get music of a high enough quality to satisfy peoples' needs) that would allow us all to share the music freely and would allocate the funding to those who turn in into the greatest societal benefit.

Once a good enough piece of music is out there, people are willing to donate their own electricity and bandwidth to give it to other people. The "only" thing left is getting the first copy out there.

If, say, we're taxed more and the National Arts Council allocates funding*, we as a public, having already purchased the music, would be entitled to it. We could still make the right of public performance exclusive to the creator [tangent: but copy-bands is also a good thing... maybe a short, say one year, exclusivity period is the right deal].

* I hear that's where some of the money going into Elephants Dream and the other fruity blender projects came from (where $nation = Netherlands). And I don't think this'll work well on a large scale, being essentially a plan economy.

I haven't come up with a good model yet, but at least there's a politician in my parliament who thinks a bit like I do (danish article: http://www.computerworld.dk/art/42432?cid=4&q=forretningsmodel+ophavsret&sm=search&a=cid&i=4&o=2&pos=3).

Please let us get the facts straight here.

Denmark did not protest, appeal, or in any way change its official vote. The official Danish ISO vote is controlled by Dansk Standard, who voted "Yes" in the final OOXML specification vote (after initially voting "No with comments").

The reason Denmark keeps sneaking into the list of countries who "appealed" is probably because a local pro-Open Source lobby organization named "Foreningen for Open Source Leverandører i Danmark" (OSL) (their name in English is "The Danish Open Source Business Association") has submitted a protest and that is by many people mistakenly translated into an "official appeal".

Since the protest is not submitted by Dansk Standard (who holds the official ISO vote) but is in fact from a local lobby organization, the vote can not be considered "official" in any way. And it is important to note in this context, that the official Danish vote is still "Yes".

The protest is available in Danish on the OSL website and I also found a copy of the letter in English on Groklaw (its not on the OSL website for some reason). The original Groklaw artikle on the subject is here, in case you want to read the comments yourself.

The complaint criticises both the way Dansk Standard handled the OOXML approval process and a few formal errors in the ISO process.

The story was first announced by Computer World Denmark (Danish only, sorry). It was first mentioned on slashdot on June 1st where sadly it was also mistakenly described as an "official" protest.

- Jesper

TDC and Telia the main operators here in Denmark have stated they will not implement this unless they lose in court.

Unfortunately, you're wrong. According to this article, Telia wants "a note from IFPI before taking the law into their own hands", so they're not likely to take this far, if at all, in court

"Are these the battle lines draw against Apple/ATT" Nope, it is the decoy... the real enemy has however spottet the threat: a Microsoft executive (Klaus Holse Andersen, corporate vice president of Microsoft Danmark) in Denmark has commented the Android "There is nothing new in Android" (link to danish Computerworld).
I've roughly translated his statement from that article here: "Googles Android do not add anything new to the mobile platform. We can already do everything what Google tries to do with Android. I think Google will have a big problem getting operators and manufacturers to use their platform."
---so the enemy do know... and they can see the threat... and the danger for them in this situation is much worse than usually: people do not care what's inside their cell phone as long as it works.

No, no... it is the other way around... they don't have the time 'cause the need it for fixing all those security issues in an all Windows environment...
...they should propably look at the consequncies... f.ex. a Norwegian bank has just been down FOR ALLMOST A WHOLE WEEK... 11.000 PC's and 1.000+ servers got the Win32/Viking.gt (Normann AV) aka. W32/HLLP.Philis.ha (McAfee) worm and they just couldn't clean it. I can't find anything in english about this case, there are two stories about it in the danish Computerworld but they are of course in danish initial story from March 5 follow up on March 8.

No, no... it is the other way around... they don't have the time 'cause the need it for fixing all those security issues in an all Windows environment...
...they should propably look at the consequncies... f.ex. a Norwegian bank has just been down FOR ALLMOST A WHOLE WEEK... 11.000 PC's and 1.000+ servers got the Win32/Viking.gt (Normann AV) aka. W32/HLLP.Philis.ha (McAfee) worm and they just couldn't clean it. I can't find anything in english about this case, there are two stories about it in the danish Computerworld but they are of course in danish initial story from March 5 follow up on March 8.

And for those of us who understands Danish... I give you the direct link to the article:
http://www.computerworld.dk/art/33590

Poul-Henning Kamp got 200.000 DDK (Danish kroner) which is about 33.000 US$.

The settlement states that Poul-Henning Kamp must not talk about the history of problems which the D-Link routers caused. But He tells danish press that any future problemes causes by D-link equiptment will be posted around the net ;-). This information is from the danish version of computerworld online at http://www.computerworld.dk/

His homepage is http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/

For those in america: Denmark is not the capital of sweden ;-)

Heh!

In Danish news today: The dane charged in the case has apparently encrypted his harddrive :) (the article below states that the disk has either failed or is encrypted).

No data => no case....

Danish link:
http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&Art icleID=28967

Not quite right. The danish parliament Folketinget, does have a comittee on EU Europaudvalget which can mandate the goverment how to wote in the Council.

The situation in Denmark is this: We've a reelected right-wing goverment which supports softwarepatents. But it's a minority goverment. It's supporting party, the nationalistic Dansk Folkeparti, is against patents on software and so is the opposition.

So there is a majority in paliament against softwarepatents, and it has mandated the goverment to vote against those in the EU Council.

See e.g. http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&Art icleID=26766 (in danish).

How about "they have been opposing the VK government for a long time" ? I suppose I can take it in danish since we're the only ones in this discussion:

DF var modstandere i EU-parlamentet i '03. Tjek FFII's scorecard efter 1.-behandlingen i Europarl i september '03. Sammenlign Camre (DF) med Riis-Jørgensen (V).

DF var modstandere før EU-valget i sommers:
Kenneth Kristensen (DF) udtaler: "DF er imod softwarepatenter" her (Fra juni '04, tjek også Camre og Messerschmidt)

DF er modstandere i Folketinget:
Den danske regering har ikke længere opbakning i Folketinget til støtte for patenter på software.
Det er situationen, efter Socialdemokraterne på grund af valgkampen har trukket sin støtte tilbage. [...] Alternativet for regeringen ville være at støtte sig op ad Dansk Folkeparti, som man gør i en lang række andre sager, men her er ingen hjælp at hente.
- Vi er modstandere af patenter på software, og det er vi stadigvæk uanset, hvad Socialdemokraterne gør. her (24/5 '05)

Denne seneste afstemning i Europa-udvalget har været med til at forhindre at kommissionens såkaldte "kompromis-forslag" blev vedtaget i Ministerrådet. Dermed har EU-parlamentet fået tid til at kræve processen genstartet, et stort skridt fremad ift. at skulle ændre i det meget ensidige forslag med absolut flertal ved en 2.-behandling.

Du kan jo give en øl hjemme - der kommer jeg jo alligevel.

• http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/article.jhtml?art icleID=163603
• http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&Art icleID=23442
• http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&Art icleID=23449
• http://newz.dk/forum/item/29484/

• http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/article.jhtml?art icleID=163603
• http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&Art icleID=23442
• http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&Art icleID=23449
• http://newz.dk/forum/item/29484/

The Danish government too

The change tracking feature in Word is a nightmare. Which particular smart monkey thought it would be a good idea to turn it on by default?

Two danish companies are jointly patenting "snail mail from computer". At the click of a button the mail is printed, enveloped, stamped and sent by the mailhandling company.

I don't know much about it yet, but the article (danish, sorry) mentions a "printer driver" so it might presumably utilize the Windows printing API.

This press release from danish govt. agency Open public Information Online (OIO) has more info.

Read the patent license for yourself. (The license for the schemas themselves is basically BSD)

Also this (danish) Computerworld article quoted MS EMEA boss Patrick de Smedt calling Interoperability a "holy grail", an "advantage to the ordinary consumer" and Competition "a very important part of our strategy." The quotes have now been removed again (why??)

Perhaps our Danish Slashdotters could fill us in about the organizations who funded this study.

The Danish "newspaper" Computerworld had an article about it. But unfortunately it is not completely clear who is behind the study. It says "Arbejdsskadestyrelsen og ankeinstansen" (agency of industrial injury and the appeal tribunal) will be using the results to judge whether the damages can qualify as industrial injury. It also states that head of the study consultant Johan Hviid Andersen at Herning central hospital has pointed out that it is too early to completely rule out, that mice can cause damages. And he still advices people working at the screen at least 20-25 hours a week to take care of themselves and take many small breaks during the working day. The final report is expected to be finished by October.

You can read the original Danish article here. The group's lawyer, Morten Lindegaard, is quoted as saying "The money will be for the victims - the artists. They're not to be spent on administration." (my poor translation)

In Danish, sorry: Link

This exact same story was posted by Roblimo last week on Sat Nov 20. In that very discussion, I posted a comment detailing how this was Old News, and that Linux Today ran a related story the month before that!

For those who want all the links in one comment: The Linux Today article referenced an article in the Danish version of ComputerWorld, and the comments on LinuxToday pointed out this project's home page.

I knew something was funny when the story link for this article was black instead of green like it usually is. Can you moderate an article as redundant?

This exact same story was posted by Roblimo last week on Sat Nov 20. In that very discussion, I posted a comment detailing how this was Old News, and that Linux Today ran a related story the month before that!

For those who want all the links in one comment: The Linux Today article referenced an article in the Danish version of ComputerWorld, and the comments on LinuxToday pointed out this project's home page.

I knew something was funny when the story link for this article was black instead of green like it usually is. Can you moderate an article as redundant?

This is Old News, in computer terms.

LinuxToday ran a story on this back in mid-October. In it, they referenced an article in the Danish version of ComputerWorld. The feedback comments to LinuxToday are interesting, and several of them pointed out one project's home page.

This is Old News, in computer terms.

LinuxToday ran a story on this back in mid-October. In it, they referenced an article in the Danish version of ComputerWorld. The feedback comments to LinuxToday are interesting, and several of them pointed out one project's home page.