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MS Anti-ODF Lobbyist Named As MA Tech Advisor
Andy Updegrove writes "For the last year and a half, Massachusetts has been a battleground between Microsoft, on the one hand, and IBM, Sun and open standards advocates on the other over the state's plans to implement ODF. That effort has sparked similar initiatives around the world that threaten to erode Microsoft's multi-billion dollar profits on Office software. Now, we have a new governor set to take office, and observers are waiting to see if he will continue to support ODF like his predecessor, or back off in favor of Microsoft Office. Last week, Governor-Elect Deval Patrick named a new transition advisory group to make recommendations on the state's IT structure, and one of the eight members he appointed was none other than the Microsoft lobbyist that has been leading the charge to not only defeat ODF in the Bay State, but to gut the power of the State's CIO and Information Technology Division as well. Not a good sign of independence from special interests for an administration that has yet to even take office."
Ballmer will be nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. If those foreigners thought Bolten was scary, they haven't seen the chair hit the fan yet.
Well at Slashdot it does. Unfortunately, it generally means special in the short bus sense.
well, we could start taking a guerilla approach, and produce strictly-standards-compliant content, regards of how it functions in MS products.
for example, use XHTML rather than HTML, and have your website use the application/xhtml+xml content type. when your customer complains that your website is broken, explain to them that the bug is with their browser.
yeah, it probably wont work, but it's certainly worth a shot. and it will bring more mainstream attention to the issue.
Right. And I hear that Richard Stallman is setting up his own K Street lobbying firm to enhance his corporate profits by promoting open standards.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
What constitutes a "reasonable arguement" whenm all you have to do to sway politicians to your side is the right combination of campaign contributions and technobabble?
If I presented your average mayor with some stereo manuals, flowcharts of how bees make honey, and some maps of galactic background radiation, while telling him in my best Ben Stein voice that it'd be best for his constituants if he rerouted engine plasma through the bussard ramscoops to generate a static warp shell which will refill the blinker light fluid and tighten the muffler belt, while pointing at a flowchart of how bees make honey, I could reduce him to enough of a gibbering mass of clueless politician protoplasm that he'll sign anything I put in front of him tied to a sufficiently large campaign check. And his VCR would still be blinking "12:00" afterward.
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The way this reads to me is that this is only an "Advisory" council. So they may not have the actual power to implement anything, and the MS lobbyist is only one voice. Hopefully reasonable decisions can still be reached.
"Seriously, do you really think you can find an unbiased IT aware technologist? Especially considering that this was posted on Slashdot? LOL. Either a technology savvy/aware person would be pro MS or pro-ODF, I'd be shocked to find one that wasn't aware of both of them. If you did, I'd suggest he's not up to the job in general. ;)"
You are not using the word "unbiased" correctly. To be unbiased means that your conclusions are based only upon the relevant facts of the situation. There are strong arguments for both sides, and reasonable people can disagree on the conclusions from those relevant facts.
However, a paid lobbyist (either for MS or the ODF side) comes to a conclusion based only on who is paying him, not the relevant facts. Thus, they are clearly not unbiased.
In general, lobbyists should make presentations at panels and talk to the panel members individually, attempting to influence their decision, that's the role of a lobbyist. A lobbyist should not BE a panel member. Let me simply put it this way -- you lobby people from the lobby (or the restaurant, or the office, whatever). If you're sitting at the decision-maker's table, you're no longer a lobbyist paid to influence decisions, you're a person who is paid to decide a particular way, and that's called "corruption" any way you slice it.