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Thank you for writing.
The column "Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170724,00.html > that appeared on FOXnews.com Sept. 28 identified author James Prendergast as executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership, but failed to disclose that Microsoft is a founding member of that organization.

ATL is a coalition of technology companies, professionals and organizations that advocates for limited government regulation of technology and for competitive market solutions to technology policy. In addition to Microsoft, ATL's founding members include Staples, Inc., CompUSA, Citizens Against Government Waste, CompTIA, Small Business Survival Committee, Clarity Consulting, Cityscape Filmworks, Association for Competitive Technology and 60Plus Association.

Mr. Prendergast's affiliation with Microsoft should have been stated clearly in the article.

An Editor's Note is now displayed on our Web site:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170724,00.html
and the disclosure has been inserted at the end of the original article:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170916,00.html

We are compiling the best responses to publish a rebuttal.

FOXNews.com

I just received this email:

Thank you for writing.
The column "Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170724,00.html > that appeared on FOXnews.com Sept. 28 identified author James Prendergast as executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership, but failed to disclose that Microsoft is a founding member of that organization.

ATL is a coalition of technology companies, professionals and organizations that advocates for limited government regulation of technology and for competitive market solutions to technology policy. In addition to Microsoft, ATL's founding members include Staples, Inc., CompUSA, Citizens Against Government Waste, CompTIA, Small Business Survival Committee, Clarity Consulting, Cityscape Filmworks, Association for Competitive Technology and 60Plus Association.

Mr. Prendergast's affiliation with Microsoft should have been stated clearly in the article.

An Editor's Note is now displayed on our Web site:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170724,00.html
and the disclosure has been inserted at the end of the original article:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170916,00.html

FOXNews.com

I just received this email:

Thank you for writing.
The column "Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170724,00.html > that appeared on FOXnews.com Sept. 28 identified author James Prendergast as executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership, but failed to disclose that Microsoft is a founding member of that organization.

ATL is a coalition of technology companies, professionals and organizations that advocates for limited government regulation of technology and for competitive market solutions to technology policy. In addition to Microsoft, ATL's founding members include Staples, Inc., CompUSA, Citizens Against Government Waste, CompTIA, Small Business Survival Committee, Clarity Consulting, Cityscape Filmworks, Association for Competitive Technology and 60Plus Association.

Mr. Prendergast's affiliation with Microsoft should have been stated clearly in the article.

An Editor's Note is now displayed on our Web site:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170724,00.html
and the disclosure has been inserted at the end of the original article:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170916,00.html

FOXNews.com

Yesterday James Prendergast said Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument. A snippet...

The technology trades, blogs and industry are buzzing about a monumental policy shift in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Officials in the state have proposed a new policy that mandates that every state technology system use only applications designed around OpenDocument file formats (search).

Such a policy might seem like something that should concern only a small group of technology professionals, but in fact the implications are staggering and far-reaching. The policy promises to burden taxpayers with new costs and to disrupt how state agencies interact with citizens, businesses and organizations.

Worse, the policy represents an attack on market-based competition, which in turn will hurt innovation. The state has a disaster in the making.

I submitted a story yesterday commenting on James Prendergast's article: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170724,00.html but it got rejected.

This clown's organization lists Microsoft as a founding member and he makes so many false claims it's not even laughable.

Tell that to this guy.

What follows is a parody of the article Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument by James Prendergast .

The broader media usually take little interest in public policy debates about technology, but they're missing a big story in Massachusetts.

The technology trades, blogs and industry are buzzing about a monumental policy shift in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Officials in the state have proposed a new policy that mandates that every state technology system use only applications designed around Microsoft Office Open XML file formats.

Such a policy might seem like something that should concern only a small group of technology professionals, but in fact the implications are staggering and far-reaching. The policy promises to burden taxpayers with new costs and to disrupt how state agencies interact with citizens, businesses and organizations.

Worse, the policy represents an attack on market-based competition, which in turn will hurt innovation. The state has a disaster in the making.

Until now, Massachusetts' citizens and government agencies have been well served by a competitive, merit-based procurement process for technology services. Agencies can turn to the marketplace--often to small state-based systems integrators--and receive bids for the best solutions at the best price to meet specific needs. The proposed policy throws out this system, and instead makes the blind pre-determined selection of applications using the largely immature, rarely deployed Microsoft Office Open XML technology.

For many needs, such applications do not exist and will have to be built from the ground up. In other cases, the Office Open XML solution may cost more and provide less, but agencies and citizens will have to pay the price and make do.

Many technology writers, in fact, have cast a skeptical eye on Office Open XML and applications that support the format. George Ou, writing on ZDNet, recently compared the new Microsoft Office Open XML product to Microsoft Excel and found it lacking, writing, "[i]f someone from Microsoft can explain why it takes more than 100 times longer to create and load spreadsheet documents and why it uses up several more times memory that Microsoft Excel to work with the same data, I'd love to hear it."

He added that he hoped the government of Massachusetts knows what it's in for with its proposed new policy.

In another commentary, David Coursey, a columnist for eWeek, expressed concern about moving the state to Office Open XML formats.

"I am concerned that by requiring Office Open XML that Mr. Quinn [state CIO] may be aligning Massachusetts with what becomes a second-rate file format as Microsoft keeps expanding into XML and metadata and Office Open XML may have trouble keeping up."

It may be that an array of exceptional, low-cost Office Open XML applications will emerge in the coming years. Such innovation would be welcome by anyone, but these applications should have to compete on merit and cost. They should not be given an arbitrary leg up that shuts out other vendors and forces government agencies to settle on under-performing technologies.

But for now, the policy simply promises enormous and unnecessary migration costs to Massachusetts' taxpayers. The mandate forces the entire state government to acquire new technologies, train personnel, and contract for new services and support.

In many cases, new technologies will have to be purchased even when current systems are fully functional. In other words, taxpayers will be paying duplicative costs.

The burden, however, reaches well beyond simple taxpayer costs. Businesses, organizations and citizens who interact with the state will also be forced to support Massachusetts' mandated technologies. Law firms that file electronically, businesses that regularly share information with agencies via electronic files, even citizens who want to take advantage of online services will potenti

Why did you bother Googling for him? If you look at the end of the article, it expressly states that he works for ATL. Now, howling about googling them and finding what flavor bastard is implied might be worthwhile, but don't make it seem like they were hiding something that they came right out and said themselves.

WTF Fox?!? Fair and balanced news indeed!

It's over in Fox's "Views" Department (note exact URL before clicking), making it an editorial-- or more exactly an "opinion" piece. (Editorials are written by on-staff editors. Opinions are written by anyone who wants to vent... much like Slashdot, actually.) Traditionally, Editorials and Opinion columnists are allowed much more latitude from the ideal of the neutral journalistic voice. Of course, traditionally editorial and opinion pieces are labeled much more clearly than Fox News does with theirs, so better to distinguish them from the more factual and less subjective elements of the news.

While I despise Fox News for any number of reasons, this is a misportrayal. The piece is posted in their editorial department at http://www.foxnews.com/views — as of 10:45 EST it's the lead over there. While I would certainly agree that a more responsible news organization would label such pieces more clearly and prominently on the actual article page, rather than letting the attentive figure out that the "MORE VIEWS HEADLINES" implies that this piece is yet another "Views" piece, it's not a particular breach of journalistic propriety. That is to say, it's as well (or poorly) labeled as any of the other pieces of crud from their editorial department. Fox's editors should be flogged, but not for this any more than the rest of their execrable web site.

"Fox News... we report, you decide" (that Fox is full of... something, anyway).

Communism took itself down in China years ago.

No, whats hanging on for dear life there is fascism. The government is attempting to control everything you think or do, from what political party you support to what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home. Meanwhile, the state and our exalted leader is beyond reproach, and anyone who says otherwise is a traitor to our country.

If you want a real account of military-trained animals getting out and causing havoc, check this out. One of my old biology profs knew a guy who worked on this.

I dont feel like signing in, and I'm sorry that even you educated people dont have access to the vast information out there, but I served in the US Marine Corps and did a deployment in Iraq's Anbar Province where we uncovered several chemical weapons, and chemical weapons labs. The only limited press this received is at this link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120137,00.html

So continue to believe nothing was there, and the UN isn't as corrupt as your accusations of the US. Do remember that the UN stood to lose millions of dollars by terminating the sanctions they imposed on Iraq for years.

..and they missed the best fantasy show of them all.

Yeah. Just to the Freepers.

So we have an industry shill and a thinktanker on one side, and almost the entire climatology community on the other. (out of 928 peer-reviewed papers published, NOT ONE denied global warming was real and was occuring now due to human activities. 75% accepted that conclusion explicitly or implicitly, and the remaining 25% made no mention either way.) Yeah that's controversial, and so is the planet being round.

Just last week it was reported that arctic sea ice melting was accelerating, and therefore we have passed the tipping point.

There may have been controversy 30 years ago. The only controversy now is the manufactured one for political gain. Then again, I suspect fm6, also believes that the white house was changing scientific results simply to make it "fair and balanced".

This is a false dillema and I will argue against your "fact". There are plenty of Muslims who disagree with a fundamentalist interpretation of the "Korean" (I think you mean "Koran") just as there are plenty of Christians who disagree with a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. But it's easier for you just to paint all the Muslims with your wide brush of ignorance.

Look, here's your favorite news organization with a story about some Muslims who disagree with Bin Laden: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,150066,00.html . I understand that this article is about Muslims in Spain, but it does sort of poke a hole in your all or nothing bullshit.

Perhaps they could do with this in LA

You're a bit behind on the news.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165960,00.html

I don't know if the final report came out yet, so I'm not sure this is the official version. Google around and you will find more.

It is interesting that the NYT is now dispensing advice on how to fix flood control problems in New Orleans when they have a long record of recommending against improvements. They will argue all sides of an issue if it suits their political agenda, but they have no credibility.

It's interesting, because this sort of thing can also effect humans.

Here's a dose of rational thinking. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168247,00.html

What is the mechanism by which genes fade?

You can't fool me. Gene fading is an established theory supported by reputable sources. It should be taught alongside intelligent design, because people, especially blonde people, should be aware of the mechanism of gene fading and its dangers in our modern society.

I wouldn't even go as far as to say it's christianity in disguise.

It's something completely new, that borrows from christian texts also off the new age, being presented as christianty in the US.. an lots of people are falling for it.

As a european I was wondering *why* do such a thing, then I read http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166478,00.html

'Christian' leaders in the US weilding enough power to publicly order the murder of someone and not get arrested. That's what it's been all about from the start - power. Now they have it. Be scared. It's about as far from any traditional understanding of christianity than it could get, but the US has been so preconditioned that they just accept it.

You mean you approved your pet conservative cause that is not proven to reduce crime because you won't pay for the services that are?

all very cool, until someone loses a life.

Kind 1 are those who cal roll with the punches and
Kind 2, have a knack for making the worst out of any situation.

Examples
Kind 1
May 13, 2005, 16 current and former law enforcement officers and U.S. soldiers who had accepted more than $222,000 in bribes to help move drugs past checkpoints
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,156471,00.html
All apparently arrested without incident.

Fed-ex is now in league with the guy last month in Atlanta GA who killed 4 people by exploiting a security flaw in a deputy's pistol holster security containment system.

At most, he would have done 10 to 180 days on the pending Marijuana charge but he traded the multi day vacation for a death sentence.

Fed-Ex traded good pr for bad pr.

--
  What do you call 10,000 lawyers at ...

I agree wholeheartedly. What you're describing is called partial birth abortion, and it is supported by the 'pro-choice' crowd. A ban on this procedure was vetoed by then President Clinton.

I warn you that the diagrams and descriptions in the links are pretty gruesome.

"The CPCC are just like our RIAA, all a pack of crooks."

Just more of the reasons why p2p is a friend to the indie and just a few of the many reasons why the big record companies are going the way of the dinosaurs.

CD Price fixing class action [antitrust] lawsuit against the big music labels settled:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-cd-settle ment.htm
http://www.musiccdsettlement.com/english/default.h tm

The full suit can be downloaded here(quite interesting I may add)
http://www.oag.state.ny.us/press/2000/aug/aug08a_0 0_attach.pdf

And just in case you weren't sure how the music industry works (and why we are inundated with lackluster crap advertised on the knob.....errrr, i mean 'played' on the radio by big manufactured label artists)!!

We've all known for a long time that contemporary pop music stinks. We hear "hits" on the radio and wonder, "How can this be?" Now we know. And memos from both Sony's Columbia and Epic Records senior vice presidents of promotions circa 2002-2003 -- whose names are redacted in the reports but are well known in the industry -- spell out who to pay and what to pay them in order to get the company's records on the air.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163537,00.html

Recording industry titan Sony BMG Music Entertainment agreed Monday to pay $10 million and stop bribing radio stations to feature its artists in what a state official called a more sophisticated generation of the payola scandals of decades ago.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/25/AR2005072501025.html?sub=AR

NASA officials said an object that may have been a 1 1/2-inch piece of thermal tile appeared to break off from the Discovery's belly during liftoff. It came off from around a particularly vulnerable spot, near the doors to the compartment containing the nose landing gear.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163629,00.html

They've got the RSS option, so you can pull any data source in RSS that you'd like into the Portal.

Fox News (US & World) RSS Feed
Fox News RSS List

The Washington Times appears to offer their headlines via RSS only to subscribers.

Democracy Now

They've got the RSS option, so you can pull any data source in RSS that you'd like into the Portal.

Fox News (US & World) RSS Feed
Fox News RSS List

The Washington Times appears to offer their headlines via RSS only to subscribers.

Democracy Now

YuccaFuckingMountain Project and the two big spook companies behind it; working hand-in-hand, synergistically to create the most highly secured place on earth where they and their friends can hide nuclear waste or anything else they want to hide.

What about these:

• Earthquake could cause flooding of Yucca Mountain repository
• Yucca Valley earthquake surprised experts
• Desert Earthquake Hits Near Yucca Mountain, Proposed Nuclear Waste Site
• 4.4 earthquake hits near Yucca
• Earthquakes In The Vicinity Of Yucca Mountain
• Yucca Mountain Earthquake Today!

There's a number of other stories and articles about how earthquakes affect Yucca Mountain.

Of course, you forget to mention Jose Padilla pleads guilty. Because, after all, that would not allow you to prove your point.

We repeat: Greta Van Susteren now confirms: *BSD is dead.

Stay tuned to Fox News Channel for further updates and full funeral coverage.

This has been a Fox News Alert.

I think you botched the link in your sig. I believe it was supposed to be

Real news sucks. Ours is made up.

* There is still no proof that the weapons of mass destruction weren't moved. In fact, there is a whole lot of proof that says they were. Also, chemical agents (such as Sarin nerve gas and mustard gas) were found in Iraq. Read this.

* It looks like you just reworded "the U.S. went to Iraq for oil." B.S. If they went there for oil, why am I still paying outrageous prices for gas?

Personally, I think the latest issues far outweigh international agencies that try to curb world hunger, but instead just delay it for very isolated areas across the globe. In other words, they screwed up recently, and I don't trust with the internet.

And, Lord knows, this was a slashdot-specific story, and you certainly couldn't have gotten details anywhere else before you opened your mouth.

Moran.

-Rick

Gun crime is increasing (that's going up for the slower readers) in England since they banned them - morOn.

Gun crime in England and Wales is still rising according to Home Office figures released on Thursday.
Gun crime soars by 35%

The peacefulness England used to enjoy was not the result of strict gun laws. When it had no firearms restrictions England had little violent crime, while the present extraordinarily stringent gun controls have not stopped the increase in violence or even the increase in armed violence. By opting to deprive law-abiding citizens of the right to keep guns or to carry any article for defence, English government policy may actually be contributing to the lawlessness and violence afflicting its people.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,59866,00.html

if this was 'just' a terrorist attack, why warn? The Israeli Embassy received a a warning about the attacks before they happened from someone in the British military... the Finance Minister was going to be in a building above where a bomb actually went off. The only reason I could think of is that it wasnt committed by actual terrorists, and 'they' wanted to protect Israeli's. I mean, if you're a terrorist group set on blowing things up in public, I don't get warning anybody beforehand.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/200507 07/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_britain_explosions_1

I guess that's like the 19 terrorist hijackers on 9/11... 7 of them have been confirmed alive, probably most because of identify theft but still. This was before the terrorist watchlist was around, so why bother faking an identity if you're just going to die anyways? Unless 'they' wanted you to believe a bunch of Arabs pulled a fast one on NORAD and the US Military. BTW, out of all the people from 80 (!) different countries that died in the WTC building, guess how many were Israeli? Zero.

edit: now Fox (heh) is reporting that there was no warning http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161769,00.html

A majority of Americans say President Bush's next choice for an opening on the Supreme Court should be willing to uphold the landmark court decision protecting abortion rights, an Associated Press poll found.

Fox news actually hasn't carried the story yet. I guess they haven't heard what the party line is yet.

She always reminds me of a crocodile...

Someone please submit this story

It's killer Slashdot material but they rejected it after ten seconds of me submitting it. Maybe my blurb wasn't well written enough.

Yeah, I felt dirty agreeing with Bill O'Reilly in his Bush Interview over immigration - why does the government not care about illegal immigrants from Mexico - yet still worry about "terror" and things like air travel?

What happens when you allow the federal goverment to seize your income without representation? They seize even more.

Today, the Supreme Court once again invented new law, ignoring all previous precident, which allows the government to take your property in the name of goverment-imposed "economic development". This isn't even eminent domain. This is a private venture.

Let's take a look at the Judges who had opposed this ruling:
- Reagan appointee Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist
- Reagan appointee Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
- Reagan appointee Justice Antonin Scalia
- Bush 41 appointee Justice Clarence Thomas

And those who ruled for it:
- Ford appointee John Paul Stevens
- Reagan appointee Justice Anthony Kennedy
- Bush 41 appointee Justice David H. Souter
- Clinton appointee Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- Clinton appointee Justice Stephen G. Breyer

Take a guess at what party is the face of the new Socialist movement.

The Paranoid News Network would have other news too, like:

Child kidnapped.
New killer computer virus released.
Adult kidnapped.
Terrorist arrested.
New killer human virus invades hospitals.
Spyware on your desktop.
Terrorist escapes capture.
Spies get your SS#.

Oh wait, we already have that.

And then there's this completely fabricated gem from the election:
Trail Tails: What's that face?

Are you serious?

That's a HUMOR piece.

The original is still right here; why did you link to it on another site that deleted the reference graphic to "Trail Tales", and the archives of other little stories that made up the "Trail Tales" series ("Trail Tales" was a humorous/funny/"insider" take on some of the pre-election mania, and was NOT part of, or related to, official hard news coverage of the election)?

Further, the current article contains: "The item was based on a reporter's partial script that had been written in jest". Even if you argue that it could have been taken seriously, FOX News did exactly what people say it doesn't do, which is retract and correct itself; a correction that is still there today. Further, it wasn't even up for a whole day!

I don't even know what to say to this.

It's NOT news, or intended to be taken as news or factual content (e.g., Kerry saying he should do manicures). It's like many of the little fanicful parodies of the process that have been seen on the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times, LA Times Washinton Post, and in syndication the nation over, from liberals and conservatives alike.

As for your "Media Matters(TM)" crap (one of the main organizations constantly out to "prove" that FOX News is a right-wing propaganda mouthpiece), once again, are you serious? They picked like, what, a dozen of what they claim are errors out of how many thousands upon thousands of hours of 24/7 programming? Christ, I can remember watching CNN or CBS before the election and hearing their "hard news" anchors put "spin" on things themselves as well, in the other direction. I mean, when you have an organization who is embodied by the idea that many people are distraught by the fact FOX News even exists and whose sole goal is to promote the agenda that FOX News is hopelessly biased to the right and is on some secret campaign against innocent liberals and puppy dogs everywhere, what do you expect? You could just as easily tick off occasional inaccuracies, or things you disagree with (e.g., referring to the DeLay issue as "intensely partisan" - who's to say it's not? Is that not accurate?) from other news outlets as well. But unfortunately, conservative activists don't seem to have the amount of time on their hands to start websites specifically to discredit their ideological opponents as the liberal/progressive ones do. Go figure.

From TFA:

The world's first solar sail spacecraft (search) crashed back to Earth when its booster rocket failed less than two minutes after Tuesday's takeoff, Russian space officials said Wednesday.

In 1999, Russia launched a similar experiment with a sun-reflecting device from its Mir space station, but the deployment mechanism jammed and the device burned up in the atmosphere.

In 2001, Russia again attempted a similar experiment, but the device failed to separate from the booster and burned in the atmosphere.

2.) AC's. Really, that's what kills slashdot. If AC posting was removed, there would be a lot less crap. Making an ID is free, easy, and doesn't require you to give out any personal information. Why not tie stuff to an ID so its easier to get rid of the crap? Instead of IP bans, you can setup an IP 'greylist' that means if you create an account from the greylist, they can't post much or have to wait a couple days after registration to post

The problem with ACs is that people get away with posting outrageous trolls without their karma suffering one iota. Perhaps there should be a middle ground, a "Hide my ID with this post and delete all records of it after 24 hours automatically" option. This will mean they'll still suffer karma losses if modded down, but the privacy aspect would only be infringed by an extremely fast lawyer.

SLOW DOWN COWBOY! Slow down.

Apparently it's been four minutes since my last posting. Whoppie doo.

I've inserted this dot as a page widening feature: .

Six minutes now. I'm wondering if the system is designed so that once it hits 60 minutes it changes to hours. I could post a bug fix to Slashcode to help with that if it doesn't.

Ok, this isn't helping, here's a post to another great troll site: Don't click! Disgusting!

Ok, this one's totally gross: Don't look! Argh!

Ok, here's the bad news for anyone still reading this after so many hours of not being postable. Fort Knox? That's actually the Slashdot ID of Linus Torvalds. You thought he was a nice guy right? Ha. No he isn't. This is about the only way Torvalds can actually express his true feelings about the "Open Source" community, by posting under a nick. If he didn't, people would be abandoning Linux in droves. It's worse than that, of course. The_Mad_Poster? That's Al Gore that is. Yes, Al. You don't think the previous administration's biggest geek wouldn't read Slashdot do you? Well, he does.

There are some other surprises too. If I told you that Newt Gingrich posts here under a pseudonym, who would you think he is? Your answer may well be right, you have at least three answers you can give that would be correct.

Ok, let's hit that damned Submit button again.

Fourteen minutes? Fourteen? Wow.

Ok, let's play "Guess the nick". There's Bill Gates (doesn't post often, but he has a login registered under a pseudonym - and NO, he doesn't astroturf. Actually, chances are if you've been in a .NET related discussion, which doesn't happen often on /. for obvious reasons, and asked a genuine technical question, he probably answered you. He knows his stuff. Who is he? Clue, he once actually corrected Miguel, and signed his post "Hope this helps. Good luck!")

Another (in)famous one is John C. Dvorak. Here's something you didn't know: when there's a flame war about a Dvorak article, he's normally one of the most hostile, anti-Dvorak, flamers.

And if you want obnoxious, try Bill Joy. Not a difficult nick to work out, especially with the "penguin suit" comment in his .sig.

Can I post yet?

George Bush stoogie Bill O'Reilly will surely have a ball with this one. Especially since he has already branded it "the most dangerous organization in the country".