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Microsoft Bought Sweden's ISO Vote on OOXML?
a_n_d_e_r_s writes "The vote on OOXML looked fairly secured. Most in the Working Group in Sweden was against the vote to approve OOXML. The day of the vote, though, more companies showed up at the door. Some 20 new companies — each one payed about $2500 to be allowed to vote — and vote they did ... for Microsoft. Most of the new companies were partners from Microsoft who suddenly out of the blue joined the Working Group, payed membership fees and voted yes for approval. From the OS2World story: 'The final result was 25 Yes, 6 No and 3 Abs and this would from the start be a done deal of saying No! Jonas Bosson who participated in today's meeting on behalf on FFII said that he left the meeting in protest and so did also IBM's Swedish local representative Johan Westman.'"
Never has the old phrase been so accurate.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Why can't Microsoft compete without buying the outcome of the game? Are their products that poor?
Too bad the truth gets lost when the money starts talking. *sigh*
We all know that M$ doesn't play fair in terms of open standards, and never will. Why are we surprised?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
...good old-fashioned democracy at work. Seriously, though, what kind of organization are they running, here? Any company, from anywhere, can suddenly be a member just by paying 2500-- a nominal fee, for many large companies. That seems like asking for trouble to me.
Truly, they are evil, and any person of conscience could not work there and retain their integrity.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
Kudos to Google for being one of those to "suddenly" join, but on the "No" side. Most of the other companies on the list of new arrivals are unfamiliar to me, excepting Google and HP, and we don't officially know how HP's vote went.
Shame on the others for having no sense of decency.
... in Germany, Deutsche Telekom and Google would have voted "no". However, both were not allowed to vote because they came in late. And another guy left the voting session early, but his "yes" was counted although before it was said that only votes count that were given in presence. (according to Heise (german))
Yes, they did.
The normal way things are supposed to work is that all parties to the vote debate prior to voting. This allows various opinions to be heard and concerns addressed.
In this case the whores were ex-parte to the debate then overran the vote nearly 2:1.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Step 1 - allow votes to be bought.
Step 2 - take money from companies who wish to buy votes.
Step 3 - Profit!
Step 3a - Complain about the unfairness of it all, all the way to the bank.
No? Then STFU and stop whining. I'll take a wild guess here and say that you're on the payroll by one of these 20?
Well, would you call the Mafia cheaters? It's like MS is selling "protection" for an annual fee and a vote!
Coza Microsoft...
Shame the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act does not work for Working Groups.t ices_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Prac
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I dont see this as "being bought", so much as the self interest of the companies who voted. If you're a Microsoft partner, it's in your best interest to vote for Microsoft. However I'm sure Microsoft rang their phones to "remind them" that they could go vote.
I would file this under corporate strategy. One could argue that it would have been irresponsible for Microsoft (or any business for that matter) to not attempt to sway a decision that directly impacts their business through lobbying tactics where it has the ability to do so. Plus, there was nothing to indicate that it involved nefarious or illegal methods to do so.
I'm sure many would do the same with their own companies to bolster support for something they created.
It's a tactic that's unfortunately too common, but easily defended against, with either of these options:
A) Don't let new members vote for any issues until they've been members for a certain period of time, or
B) Don't let new members vote on any issue that had already been opened for debate (or perhaps officially proposed) prior to their joining.
It's as simple as that.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
You're right we should stop whining & petition ISO to change the rules on voting to block this kind of ballot stuffing. I doubt very much that any of these companies have seen the document spec let alone read & understand it.
This is actually one of the fairer subversions of the process - in Portugol they denied IBM & SUN access claiming the room was too full, then allowed MS partners to enter & vote. In another place, the chairman - an employee of an MS partner announced the voting procedure as
Now that's how to really stack the deck - you completely remove the option to vote against the standard.
There's a huge difference between "legal" and "right." I'd really like you to make an argument that this was a right and correct tactic for Microsoft to use. What if, for the sake of argument, people could buy their way into a jury in criminal prosecution? I think we'd see right away what would happen. Every person with an agenda would routinely buy his chance to vote to "hang'm high!"
In this case, it's a chance to vote on an international standard -- one that many governments are obliged to allow, support or follow. This is, in effect, a chance to "buy" your way into government policy.
But there are certainly, in my opinion, two problems here:
1. That the ability to vote has such low entry requirements and that no amount of knowledge or understanding seems to have any bearing on whether or not someone is qualified to vote. (yes, I realize you could make the same argument for local elections, and I do.)
2. That Microsoft has no shame in deploying such an obvious, self-serving tactic of essentially buying their way into being elected as an international standard. It may be 'legal' but it's unethical and definitely not right.
I say yes. I say there should be a rule to keep people from showing up at the last minute and voting. Otherwise big companies can pay smaller ones just to show up and vote, never hearing or knowing what they are voting on. This is a classic case of this happening. Big MS buys smaller companies to show up on vote day and buys a winning ticket for their format. A rule should be put in place that you need to be a member for a certain amount of time, 3 months, a year, before you can cast a vote.
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They played by the rules of the ISO. The 'normal way things are supposed to work' are apparently not what they had in mind, if they allow anyone to join at any time and vote at short notice. I agree, its dumb, but they followed the rules to a tee.
I'm sorry to break this to you, but ISO approval of standards is supposed to be governed by TECHNICAL considerations. By this logic, a vote on whether OOXML is approved by fasttrack should be based on the TECHNICAL merits of the proposal, not on how popular Micorosft Corp. is.
Sadly, the fact that these people joined the discussion only *after* the debate on those technical merits was over only shows that this process has become nothing more than a high-school president election in a bad B-movie.
And you don't think creating opinion against this is part of changing the rules?
We have monopoly laws, not to outlaw monopolies, but to prevent ONE company from using overwhelming advantage in one market from simply buying out, in turn, all and any other markets they care to. We have laws preventing this. If they were actually enforced. Microsoft would be in a straitjacket but for the Bush Justice Department walking in on a fait accompli dismantling of their corporate advantage after Judge Jackson's spanking, and simply tossing the conviction out the window by ignoring it.
Now they are openly -- brazenly -- buying markets. And the DOJ doesn't give a damn. Well, they'd best hurry, the Repubs are about to lose power for a decade or more. Steal what you can, "retired" Mr. Gates.
Partial translation of FFII Sweden press release:l
http://ffii.se/pr/2007-08-27-se-ooxml-vote-en.htm
Legal or not... it is highly unethical.
Also standards are to make business smooth and whoever is placing a wedge in between companies by their offering that quite possibly doesn't address all issues will gain from that. This approach is VERY parasitic and has nothing to do with capitalism... it is the gain of money by not doing anything.
Only, instead of a state, we have a corporation, Microsoft.
They buy their power with their money. And a big part of their money comes from our wallets via taxes.
I mean, a really big part.
I mean a part much bigger than what you'd think.
I mean, much bigger than what I'd think, too.
I mean, *huge*.
Then, with this power, they take away what really is common goods. Or aren't "standards"?
Communism.
You got modded flamebait unfairly (so what's new on /.?!)
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
The rich dude (Hearst) walked away with town and all its gold by rigging local elections. Unbelievable.
irrelevant in a way because ODF looks to be fast becoming a de-facto standard regardless. out numbering OOXML something in the order of 250 to 1.
a ll-ooxml-documents.html 7 0813-1201
see:
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/05/so-where-are-
http://www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/archive/200
of course, the MS tactic is to get OOXML recognized and then default to it across the windows suite.
but as I remember they have tried this was a number of formats before - but once a file format is recognized as a de-facto standard (MP3, HTML, JPG) they are notoriously hard to shift.
irrelevant as it may be its still a damn depressing indication of the way business is done and sensible, rational decisions are perverted to line company pockets. this sort of thing annoys me.
This is a quote from the SIS.SE home page:
Translation in english: "It's not money that makes the world go around. Do you want to know what it is?"
Apparently the answer is: money
Badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers! - UHF
Now I realize that ISO is not a government but rather a governing body of a standard, and that all organizations need to make decisions like this.
However, the deck stacking of allowing some kind of democratic system where all companies get an equal voice regardless of their size, their revenue, or their contributions to the group (apart from the standardmembership dues) is also pretty subversive to a decision making process.
Look - if ISO is suppose to be resolved by all the companies in a coutry, and then all of them show up and vote for OOXML (as awful as it is based on my current assessment), then there isn't anything to complain about.
If only the decision were made by a single corporation that had a profit motive, they would be more inclined to make the best decision and dump OOXML.
I'm surprised it has not been covered on slashdot, but similar things have occured in Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Portugal, Australia, etc. Microsoft is determined to push its proprietary "open" format through by any means neccessary:
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http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070824
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070815
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070723
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
many government departments and even entire governments arround the world are threatening to require arhived documents to be in standard formats. MS is trying to do an end run arround theese requirements by getting standards bodies to approve a fake standard they have written. Unfortunately it seems that they are having quite some sucess in doing so thanks to thier use of various dirty tactics.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
First we need to know what we want. I wouldn't want a Communist system. It's just like a software project. Can we patch capitalism, or do we need to do extensive modifications, or is it time for an extended re-code with added or changed capabilities? If we know what we want, then we can find out who to ask, how to get VCs involved, and how to popularize it in the mass media.
technical writing / development
You do realize monopolies are restrained by law because they subvert the free market forces, right? For example, if you have a monopoly in one area you can use it to extract more money from a market while expending less investment and giving less to consumers, thus accumulating piles of money you can use to say, pay other companies to act on you behalf in meetings. Or pressure other companies to act on you behalf under threat of financially ruining them by cutting them out of markets that interact with the one(s) controlled by your monopoly.
This particular round of misdeeds is just one more symptom of the main problem, MS is an abusive monopoly with so much money they've been able to buy the politicians who run the courts and are supposed to enforce the law.
"Corporate Democracy In Action" protects defenseless corporate, government, and religious institutions from the ravages of the viral public infestation attempting to managing national interest, markets, and resources. Corporatism estates include the public contained within which can be bought, sold, spent ... as the owning corporatism estate finds most beneficial to sustainment.
... Citizens with such an overt and public display of power and control (ThemS&MostOthers) and leaving no doubt that any public demonstration without financial dictate is pitifully fake.
... corporate welfare, less for US, EU, UN ....
... Corporations.
It would be a sad state of affairs if the oligarchical owners of draconian institution, whom dress in godly-patriotic and humanitarian camouflage, could not continue to service the public for private pseudo-sexual (megalomania) satisfaction.
God bless them, one and all, for servicing US, EU, UN
Paraphrasing an old social philosopher; "Any war will kill my enemy (the citizens), but I need to make sure I win." They always dress in dress in godly-patriotic and humanitarian camouflage. More US, EU, UN
"Corporate Democracy In Action" is good for US, EU, UN
"We The People" are the property of the corporate-estate.
Within the New World Order Corporate Estates, exploitation
will get you much further in life then complaining. In a
war you must be on the "RightSide" to be in control.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
That Microsoft has no shame in deploying such an obvious, self-serving tactic of essentially buying their way into being elected as an international standard. It may be 'legal' but it's unethical and definitely not right.
Hang on for a second here. You're assuming that this "international standard" is worth the paper it's written on. It's clearly not if all it takes is $2500 to "vote".
If this "vote" was truly important to MS from a strategic standpoint, then it was MS's moral obligation to it's owners to buy it's way into this organization and sway the decision making.
Your assumptions that A. This is an important decision and B. This is a respected organization C. That MS should not actively promote their own products are all either wrong, or completely unsubstantiated, as far as I can tell.
If you don't like this particular move, you can also buy a vote. You can buy as many votes as you'd like to influence MS's decision making process. As I type this, each vote only costs $28.36. Good luck with your "voting"!
I don't respond to AC's.
I'd have them walk the plank, if you know what I mean.
I really hope somebody in Sweden will raise hell because of this. The votes of those companies clearly should be invalidated at least on the premise of insufficient participation in working group.
Stop whining? Certainly. STFU? I don't think so.
There's more to this issue than "mummy mummy microsoft did a bad thing and it's not faaaaaair!". The question we should be asking is "Is this the sort of behaviour we really want to encourge?"
Do we really want an industry where standards are sold to the highest bidder without any scrutiny as to fitness for their supposed purpose. If so, the ISO committees may as well pack their bags and go home now, because we are headed for a world where no one will pay any attention at all to their so called "standards".
I think that merits some discussion. Not because Microsoft did a Bad Thing so much, but because the standards process served a useful purpose. Microsoft may well be willing to burn this process to the ground in order to protect their file formats. I think the least we could do is shout "FIRE!"
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Perhaps it's time to write a "Capitalist Manifesto"
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
So the other companies that had a vested interest in OOXML not succeeding are allowed to vote, but not the companies that had a vested interest in OOXML succeeding? Double standard much? If these companies were just shell corporations for MS to stuff the ballot, then yes, it was wrong. IF they are legitimate companies who happen to have an interest in the best for MS since they are MS certified partners, they deserve the same vote as someone who isn't a certified partner.
If they don't have to show up to meetings or participate in discussions, then why would they if they already knew how they would vote? They were MS Gold certified partners.
Why would they read the document spec or need to understand it? These are corporations who have tied there existance to supporting MS products; the more pervasive MS products then the more potential their corporations have.
I don't know of a good way to balance out everybody's self-interests. MS partners could have just as easily went to meetings if that was required, and they could still stuff the ballot box. I think it is fair to take in account the interests of the IT industry, but I don't know if that should be the deciding factor.
Doing something legal does not equal doing something right. The fault is on the side of whoever set up the entry rules for the vote but such strategy on the part of Microsoft should be condemned.
Here are the parts of Capitalism that I don't understand:
- unsafe products
- unhealthy products
- unsustainable processes
- suppression of the truth about unsafe products
- exploitation of the poor and the uninformed
- outsourcing (abandonment of the community)
- tax evasion
- consumerism
- competition that puts profits before people
- profitable relationship with war
But then if you accept the premise that People Don't Matter, all the above makes perfect sense.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
The ODF supporters are trying to block OOXML from becoming a standard ONLY because they've lobbied governments into passing open standards laws that will REQUIRE those governments to use their format if OOXML fails. They don't give a damn if it's the best format or not; they want a monopoly enforced by law.
Try this article.
Any person involved in Sweden (and any other country where purportedly similar shady actions occurred) with this issue should help to make sure that as much evidence as possible is registered, as it may be necessary in the future.
Possible things:
The odd 20 companies, who represented them, presentations lists of previous meetings showing their absence, etc., etc.
Bert
There are places where using open standards is a requirement, and Microsoft is trying to get in by creating their own 'standard' and buying voters to approve it as an ISO standard. To avoid this cheating, open standards adopters could add a rule that says: a truly open standard is one that has at least two different implementations (from distinct vendors). This principle rules out 'standards' that are not really open.
I am not really here right now.
Legal or not, this strongly reminds me of Japan gaming the International Whaling Commission, by getting economic allies to sign up and vote in favour of relaxing whaling regulations.
Poor products or not it looks like they invested $50k to cement their format as a standard. Considering they stand to make billions from that, it was a wise investment.
Yeah, because a company with $40,000,000,000 in the bank could not have just hired people to make a standard people want to use.
It is the people who designed a system that could so easily be bought who should be ashamed, if that wasn't their intended outcome in the first place.
Careful what you wish for, apologist. They should just pass a rule against "standards" from convicted monopolists. How else can you eliminate this kind of monkey business without blocking legitimate input from small companies who care?
A company can't deny its nature.
So tell me what kind of company M$ is. You would be hard pressed to call them a software company because they are not really good at that. Perhaps you could call them a coercive standards company, sort of the opposite of what ISO stands for, because they are so good at buying and forcing their technically inferior crap.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I know that to be cool on /. you're not supposed to have even minimal competence in English, especially for native English speakers. But why not be even cooler and rebel against this retarded ethos! Be bold and brave! Dare to spell!
we will end no whine before its time
Hmm. If things continue this way, and we end up with the ISO effectively rubber-stamping OOXML on the strength of purchased votes, what effect will this have on the ISO's credibility in the long run? The ISO looks after a lot more standards than just data exchange formats; will we have to consider that every single one of those standards is potentially bought and paid for by its richest benecifiaries, despite technical flaws in the standard and opposition from peers?
I can't help thinking that the OOXML standardisation effort should be shelved until one of two things becomes true: either at least two or more independent implementations, developed by distinct organisations from the specification alone, can be shown to interoperate to a degree that justifies the moniker "standard"; or preferably, a complete reference implementation, with full source code available under a BSD (or equally permissive) licence, is submitted with the proposal. In fact, I can't understand why this isn't, er, standard practice. Were it so, the OOXML efforts could be trivially dismissed on technical grounds, and this whole dog and pony show could be avoided.
This story is (anonymously) tagged "conspiracytheory". I'd like to see the coincidence theorist explain how this happened without Microsoft's trademark coordinating manipulations.
--
make install -not war
if you look at the MS jobs web site, you'll see that they have more than ten thousand open positions - so clearly people *don't* want to work there.
That's good news.
My guess is that a fair bunch of MS employees do so *only* to keep a shirt on their backs and not for the love of the job or the company.
There's got to be a better way and every single person there should be looking for it. Evil people can not get things done without the co-operation of people who should know better. The surest way to stop evil is to refuse that that co-operation.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The vote shouldn't be based on a company's interest, but in the functionality and necessity of the standard.
is not that Microsoft bought all those votes - but that the ISO let them. And that we can't do anything about it. Or can we? I'd love to know how.
The submitter writes that most people in the Working Group were against the OOXML, then 20 new companies show up and vote yes for a final vote tally of 25-6-3 in favour. Even without those 20 votes, the tally would still be 5-6-3. I know this is slashdot, but in what way would leading by a single vote qualify as "most people" being against OOXML?
Have you evidence of this?
I think you'll find that the law changes are only to require "open" standards, which is *why* MS are pursuing ISO certification now. If this wasn't the case, then why would a company who own (I'm guessing here) 99% of the "office" application market and have done for a good number of years, suddenly decide they need certification?
Also, the only reason OOXML gets a slating 'round these parts, is because it is a very poor "standard", and it appears to omit enough detail to make it hard (if not impossible) for anyone to create an alternative implementation.
It's worth noting that MS is entirely free to create an implementation based around ODF if they want to, and given their immense resources, they could probably do a good job of it if they so chose; but sadly, they seem to base all of their decisions on perceived threats. For example, if OOXML failed to get ISO certification (or if they had not even tried to obtain it) and a number of governments mandated open standards, given MS's *huge* installed base, I expect the majority would be far more inclined to switch to an MS ODF implementation. But MS seem to believe that if their customers had a choice, they'd leave! Microsoft lacks confidence IMHO; that's why they behave like bullies.
...so long as MS is against the wall. Blindfolds or not, I don't care.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
- Camako Data AB (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- Connecta AB (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- Cornerstone Sweden AB (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- Cybernetics (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- Emric AB
- Exor AB (Microsoft Certified Partner)
- Fishbone Systems AB (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- Formpipe Software (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- FS System AB
- Google
- HP (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- IBizkit AB (Microsoft Certified Partner)
- IDE Nätverkskonsulterna (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- IT-Vision AB
- Illuminet
- Know IT (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- Modul1 (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- Nordic Station AB (Microsoft Certified Partner)
- ReadSoft AB (Microsoft Certified Partner)
- Sogeti (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- Solid Park AB (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- SourceTech AB
- Strand Interconnect AB (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
- TietoEnator (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
If you work for any of these companies, please contact management and ask them to explain themselves.One would hope IBM might press this issue! Also, it doesn't really do much for ISOs credibility.
The first steps to countering these kinds of shennanigans is bringing them to light. Change the rules? Maybe. But definitely make sure everyone understands what is going on first. Let's call a spade a spade.
Microsoft will likely call it as some kind of standards mandate; justification for their work. Denial of their critics. We can sit back and accept that. Or we can let everyone know how Microsoft's interests subverted the process and, perhaps, not everything Microsoft claims is as it seems.
Meanwhile, those who own this process can review how a single interest subverted it and decide if the system is serving their interests or not. I like to think the ISO process is about technical review and standardization for the general good of the industry those they serve. But maybe it's not.
This reminds me of a political joke I heard somewhere. I've adapted it to programming.
God was in a good mood and decided to give virtues to people. One day he decided to give all the programmers in the world three virtues:
They would be smart, well-intentioned, and work for Microsoft. But an angel told him: Hey, wait a minute, aren't they too many virtues?
"You're right", said God. "They'll have these virtues but a person can only have two of these virtues at the same time".
Since then, programmers in the world were divided in the three following groups:
Programmers who were smart and well-intentioned, couldn't work for Microsoft.
Programmers who were smart and worked for Microsoft, couldn't be well-intentioned.
Programmers who were well-intentioned and worked for Microsoft, couldn't be smart.
I wished I had mod points for you. That's the biggest problem with a monopoly, certifications, and standardization.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Not exactly.
Supporters of open standards wish for Microsoft to adhere to a true standard, one that is well-documented, easily implemented, and available for all. Currently, ODF does all that.
OOXML, on the other hand, is obtuse, hard to implement (even for Microsoft), leaves much unspecified, and is Microsoft-centric, rather than document-centric.
The problem is actually with Microsoft. They have rigged the system to favor their platform above all others, rather than risk losing their stranglehold on your documents. If Microsoft were to support ODF, and participate in the OASIS working group once again, their office suite would have to compete entirely on merit. A person or company could use the office suite of their choice, and exchange documents with no difficulty.
The place to make money is in the friction. The more friction there is-- that is, the more painful *not* using your product or service is-- the more money you can charge. Microsoft is great at increasing friction by manipulating the market.
Microsoft is ensuring they are able to keep up the friction.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Steal what you can, "retired" Mr. Gates.
You fail to see the point in here. Microsoft has become a living entity. It's not Gates, nor Ballmer. It's Microsoft itself, along with its shareholders and leaders. Its corporate structure has been adapted to become a monopoly, and to step on everything to fulfill its goals. Anyone disagreeing with it is rejected, and seen as a pathogen agent to keep the system running.
Microsoft has become a cancer for the free world, and it must die.
This is a perfect example of the majority rules vote failing to manifest an outcome that a majority really want. I am a big believer in the consensus process, where no decision can stand that any of the group block, therefore the discussion takes longer, but the outcome is acceptable to all. Also consensus minus one is a good variant, meaning that ONE blocker does not suffice.
;)
My two cents.
Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
You're describing corporatism, not capitalism.
Capitalism is based on supply and demand, where companies or individuals create the supply to fill the demands of the customer. It is as simple as that. (Okay, it's never as simple as that.)
As soon as you support powerful corporations manipulating the market in any way, you are not longer a capitalist. You are a corporatist.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
PAYED/PAID
If you paid attention in school, you know that the past tense of "pay" is "paid" except in the special sense that has to do with ropes: "He payed out the line to the smuggler in the rowboat." Now I'm the last person to be a spelling nazi but fucking Christ, people!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
An organization that has no ethics is worthless.
Rules are always more a mater of their spirit than their letter. The protest of other members is real and well founded. It's pretty obvious that M$ played the organizations rules to get a result that is against everything the organization stands for. If the organization does not investigate and punish this kind of blatant abuse, the organization will lose all community respect.
A reasonable US Government would investigate M$ for corrupt foreign practices.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It looks like Microsoft has decided to follow a scorched-earth policy on standards. Do anything to get the "standards" you want, even if you make a mockery of the standards process and soil the reputation of the standards organizations along the way.
The ODF supporters are trying to block OOXML from becoming a standard ONLY because they've lobbied governments into passing open standards laws that will REQUIRE those governments to use their format if OOXML fails. They don't give a damn if it's the best format or not; they want a monopoly enforced by law.
Nonsense. The ODF supporters want an open format, so that there is no more microsoft lock-in in the office applications market. Some of these are indeed supporting it for commercial reasons (sun and google), but most of the ODF supporters are in it for transparency in government.
The case against OOXML on technical grounds has been made. The format is not open. See this link if you want more info: http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/
I don't think these twenty Servants of the Beast played by the rules of the ISO.
We (can and should) expect from that organisation decisions based on technical merit, the OOXML has no such thing.
But even if the ISO cert would be granted I eventually expect court cases evolving out of the inherent contradiction of calling it an Open Standard and at the same time referring to closed sources.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I would like to know. Is there anything we can do? Write to the ISO? Anything? Or can we just sit and watch while this happens?
And, also, why did they refuse to extend ODF to incorporate those precious (formalized / parameterized) AutoSpaceLikeWord95 features, which would have been a PITA for their competition to implement? Now they are actually whining that ODF isn't "feature-complete" enough for them so they had to invent OOXML.
I think any comment that ODF would be deficient as the default file format for Microsoft Office is FUD until you can provide examples.
There are lots of detailed examples that OOXML is crap (see the commentary of those national bureaus that weren't silenced or corrupted), the ODF spec is approx 10% as many pages as OOXML, surely you can come up with *some* examples where it is deficient? Otherwise all you do is spreading Microsoft's FUD.
You mentioned spreadsheets: please enlighten us with your comments. Is it about par. 8.1.3 p. 189,
?Agreed, that's under-specified and would benefit from a future clarification, such as OpenFormula.
But it's not wrong, unlike the "dates start at either 1900 or 1904 i forget which but at least 1900 is a leap year from now on" crap from OOXML (part 4, par. 3.17.4.1, p. 2522, if you don't believe me -- I almost fell of my chair when I read that paragraph).
THAT is what those companies and national bureaux voted for, to make that an international standard. They should be ashamed.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Good points, but the lesson I learned is everything comes down to getting what you want, by any means. If you break the law to get what you want and the consequences are acceptable, then go ahead.
So.. new strategy? Have a group of 5 dedicated, free software people bomb Microsoft off the map. The five either die or go to jail, but hey, no more Microsoft!
Come get me, Homeland Security! You'll never catch me alive!
Catch me next week, when I'll be writing from Gitmo.
If a product is unsafe, don't buy it. True capitalism works because of competition. If you don't like one company's product because of either price or quality, buy someone else's. No one has a product that meets your needs? Start your own company to fill that niche.
See above
Not sure how to address this one (I'm only human)
Once again, see my first point, but to go even further, this is why we have consumer advocacy groups. Ralph Nader comes to mind. I also don't see how this is exclusive to capitalism. Let's say you live in communist Russia. The shoes you've waited in line for all day turn out to cause severe damage to peoples arches that could require surgery to fix. You complain to your government that has provided these shoes to you and they say, "At least you have shoes!" Then they throw you in the trunk of a car. You wake up in Siberia.
What can I say, people are jerks. No system is perfect. However, this is something you can combat by staying informed. As for the poor, sometimes there isn't a lot you can do, but in a capitalist society, at least you have the freedom to try to climb the economic ladder. The term Rags to Riches comes to mind.
Do you mean outsourcing or off-shoring. Cause there's a huge difference. Outsourcing just means you don't do something in house. Coca-cola outsources its bottling in some regions and they certainly don't manufacture aluminum cans. This doesn't necessarily mean that I'm outsourcing to India or China, though. In fact it could mean I'm outsourcing to someone across the street in the same community. If you're beef is about losing American jobs, then working for one of the sources should solve that problem. Are you an aluminum can manufacturing specialist? Then don't be mad that Coke doesn't make aluminum cans. Go work for someone who does. Outsourcing, in general, is a good thing. You end up with a better product for a lower cost. Off-shoring on the other hand is another matter. I'm not going to get into whether its good or bad because it depends on who you ask. But essentially, that is when Dell outsources its customer service line to somewhere not in the United States. Like India. I'm not sure if Canada counts, but its at least a separate economy. This raises issues about American jobs and often the quality might not be as good. Sometimes the reason they can do it faster and cheaper is because of poor labor laws and cutting corners. But you don't necessarily get poor service/product.
Um yeah...that's illegal. If you're caught, you go to jail. Just ask Al Capone. Not sure what capitalism has to do with it.
Once again, no system is perfect. If this is the worst you can come up with, then you shouldn't lose any sleep over it. In a free country, you can either be materialistic, or you can not be materialistic. No one is forcing you one way or the other, but you do have the freedom to chose you're own path in that respect. Me, I want to make money so I can afford nice things. I want to buy food that tastes better. I want a car that doesn't fall apart in the middle of my morning commute. I want to do entertaining things that cost money (movies, travel, concerts). I want my kids to be able to go to college. I dont' want to live in a cardboard box. Just because I don't need these things to sur
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Ubelievable, somebody finally got it right! The only problem here is people letting these committees rule their life - so you don't like their decision, fair enough, don't respect it. But the moment you respect it by default, you give them political power, and we know what they say about power.
Global warming is a cube.
for(;;)
{
printf("money buys influence\n");
}
I assume that HP voted YES because they voted YES in the recent US vote that took place on 08/24/2007, the results of which were YES 12, NO 3, ABSTAIN 1, which was enough to approve OOXML.
/. carried a story trumpeting the previous "NO" vote, but hasn't done a story on the more recent YES vote.
You can see how each party voted here:
US OOXML VOTE 08/24/2007
Notable YES votes include MS, HP, APPLE, INTEL, SONY.
Notable NO votes were IBM.
It's amusing that slashdot carried hugh headlines for the NO vote, but hasn't covered the YES vote at all (unless I just missed it).
BTW, the US YES vote is a reversal of the 08/10/2007 US vote that was YES 8, NO 7, ABSTAIN 1, which was not enough for approval (which led to premature celebration by IBM's allies):
US OOXML VOTE 08/10/2007
You can check the two links to see which parties flipped from NO to YES. The most notable is the DoD.
It's amusing that
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Do you even know what a monopoly is? By definition an open standard requirement removes the ability of a monopoly to undermine the market. MS could easily use ODF within their products, but they don't want a true open standard because they want to be able to abuse their monopoly more easily. All an open standard does is require each competitor to compete based upon the merits of their software, not on the fact that it is hard to switch to a competitor with an offering that is better for your needs. OOXML as evaluated by numerous parties does not meet those requirements. It refers to behaviors of closed and proprietary software within the so called spec making it impossible for anyone without the source to those programs to properly implement it. That is the opposite of "open." It provides only limited patent protection so that there is guarantee that much software can legally implement it and no guarantee that that software will be able to maintain backward compatibility with older versions of the spec (patent protection applies only to the most recent version).
I truly hope you're being paid to astroturf because the alternative is that their astroturfing is actually convincing people of such obviously absurd falsehoods.
Quoting the referred slashdot post by Hoppelainen:
So there is no problem here. These companies were already members of SIS, and they exercised their right to vote in that organization.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Maybe it's time for another DOJ action.
But, probably not for another year, as long as Bush is pres.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
"Or is this just something to put in marketing materials?"
BINGO
ODF advocates want ODF to be the sole ISO standard so they can use that status as ammo when lobbying governments to mandate exclusive use of ODF. They want to deny any competing format from achieving the same status, lest their talking point disappears.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Unfortunately, this sort of thing highlights a general problem with quality control and standards: quality control usually happens by selecting people with too much time or companies with too much money, or people or companies who hope to benefit from participating in the standards process.
For example, companies like to add complicated features their products already have to standards to make it harder for others to implement.
Individuals like to make a name for themselves by drafting big and complicated sounding prose.
Note that in addition to ISO, ANSI, and ECMA, the JCP also has a bad case of this.
Supporters of open standards wish for Microsoft to adhere to a true standard, one that is well-documented, easily implemented, and available for all. Currently, ODF does all that.
The fact that OOXML is a hundred times worse does not make ODF a good standard. Then again, the world would have been better off if the word processor had never been invented.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Typical spin. Accuse those you oppose of doing
what you are really up to.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
OR : They don't want a competing format becaming a standard, when implementation of said "other" standard seems both impossible, and also having to do with propietary formats not clearly "defined" in the standard and also covered with patents owned by the company, which happens to be a convicted monopolist, that it pushing for the "second" standard. Having parts of the "open standard" covered by patents, or not clearly defined, makes such an standard as open as any closed format ... :)
Nothing is stopping this other company from implementing ODF if it becomes an open standard. No patents to pay for its use.
What do you figure out of this? C'mon... seems easy...
It is stories like this that keep me as a vocal and vehement opponent to Microsoft. In my view, this business and its practices are examples for all that is wrong with software today.
If I find a bug in WoW that allows me to get a million gold everytime I click a specific key combo, you, Blizzard and every WoW player would call it cheating, even though the "rules" of the game include that bug at that point.
Cheating is not breaking the rules. Cheating is breaking the spirit of the rules, whether or not you literaly break them. In fact, most cheating happens by lawyer-weaseling your way through the loopholes in the rules. Most board game rules do not explicitly forbid you to look at the cards stacked face-down on the board, but everyone would agree that doing so is cheating.
And that's exactly what happened here.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I don't think that's true for most of them any more than you do (unless you're stupider than you look).
I doubt most ODF "advocates" would have any problem with another ISO open document format standard that made technical sense. MSOXML of course doesn't make technical sense: it is self contradictory, contradicts a number of pre-existing ISO standards (1900 as a leap year, anyone?), and is insufficiently specified to implement properly ( SpaceLikeWord95 tags?).
It's like complaining about a dog turd on the sidewalk and being accused of not liking dogs. No. Like "OO"XML, the complaint is because it's shit, not because of where it came from. (Except perhaps for a few folks.)
-- Alastair
2.5k times 20 companies makes 50k.
Thats pretty darn cheap for buying an entire countries vote on an international standard.
Scale that to the entire ISO and you can have anything you want bought through for a few million bucks.
Wow.
I would've thought that if anyone than the standard groups would know about building resilient systems.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
When I was a member of the ANSI C and C++ standards committees the rule was that you had to have attended two of the last three meetings to be able to vote. But that was ANSI, NOT the Swedish Standards Institute which will have its own rules that apparently (and unsurprisingly) are not the same as ANSI. Its position is then relayed to the ISO/IEC process and is then subject to the rules of procedure that apply there. Each national body is free to make up its own rules as long as it's happy to live by the outcome.
Now consider what happens next:
Microsoft issues a press release saying, grudgingly, they'll have full 100% read/write compatibility with ODF in Microsoft Office 2007 1/2 within 3 weeks, so that governments and private customers can keep on using Microsoft Office indefinitely.
What's your problem with ODF being the sole ISO standard, now? If all word-processor companies can boast "100% compatible with ODF" and speak the truth?
Or are you saying Microsoft is incapable of allocating the people/time/money to implement a 700 page standard (as opposed to their own 6000 page standard)? In fact there are already several plug-ins with which this can be done (one commisioned by Microsoft from may 2007 which apparently is unusable and one by Sun which apparently works).
The point is, and I think it's a very important point, if ODF is mandated nobody loses (not even Microsoft; I don't believe *everyone* will drop Microsoft Office and switch to different word processors immediately; do you?). But if OOXML is mandated, the whole world ex. Microsoft loses. Government-sanctioned vendor-lock-in to a 3x convicted monopoly-abuser, what an enticing concept!
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
You can't have it both ways. If it's fine to join and vote against it, it's fine to jump in and vote for it. For Google to have clean hands, here, it would have needed to jump in and demand rules changes or a stay on the vote.
Arent swedish the people which brought us the Pryratbryan (however the heck its typed) ? one of the most liberal and advanced countries in the world ? how come did they become microsoft's bitch ?
Read radical news here
Let IBM and Sun and Red Hat and whomever else do the same at the next countries' votes.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
I think that you will find that people are trying to block OOXML from becoming a standard because it fails on technical merits to be worthy of being a standard. Any standard that defines half it's structures as :
<compatibility_tag_name1> - to behave like [software][version][function]
is defective if [software][version][function] isn't defined someplace else.
OOXML isn't implimentable by anyone except Microsoft, because only MS knows how [software][version][function] is supposed to work. That fact alone should be causing it to fail ISO certification.
However, let us not forget that MS can't tell time either - rather than impliment the correct ISO implimentation of leap year determination, MS continues to enjoy the singular distinction of defining 1900 as a leap year - in defiance of both reality & other ECMA standards. Again, this fact is supposed to be causing the standard to fail.
Moving on, OOXML's inclusion of binary data blobs which contain parts of the document formating is in violation of the ECMA definition of XML standard. Again, it's supposed to fail.
ISO is supposed to be killing badly developed standards before they are born. OOXML is one of the worst I have seen having done 8 years of working with industrial standards, on it's merits it should be in the trash. According to the ECMA rules on creating standards, it should be in the trash. According to the ISO rules, it should be in the trash. The fact that it's not only not in the trash but being fast tracked is has got anyone who has ever handled submitting, implimenting, or reviewing a standard standing around going WTF?!
Reading about the games with voting rule changes, blocking entry to the voting meeting, stuffing the voting meetings at the last minute, etc is really just the icing on the cake. The fact that this "standard" is even up for consideration is evidence enough that MS has bought the system.
not a single transitionary entity still alive today out of millions of opportunities - COME ON!
There were no transitionary entities. Evolution only occurs in tiny steps and each step means there was an advantage for the organism at that time. There are no transitionary entities because there is no goal and no markers along the way. Actually there is not even a way. Human have evolved into the diverse population we are now over a long time and we are still changing. The changes from generation to generation are tiny, but a billion years is a long time so it's ok.
People seem to think that evolution leads to improvement. This is a strange notion. How do you define improvement? Evolution is just a way to describe how the set of organisms present changed over time.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
Sadly, the fact that these people joined the discussion only *after* the debate on those technical merits was over only shows that this process has become nothing more than a high-school president election in a bad B-movie. Indeed, and I will go one further: the fact that there is so much controversy over the proposal should immediately tank it, regardless of who 'wins'. Standards are based on CONSENSUS, not mob rule. Given the evident controversy, the proposal clearly is not ready for standardization, let alone by a 'fast-track' process. If at some point, the political controversy dies down, ECMA-376 matures, and the industry shows some sings of consensus, let the proposal be resubmitted. But if there is a *hint* of impropriety in the process, tank it. It is better to have fewer better standards than more mediocre ones. There is no rush (to anyone but MS) to put an ISO imprimatur on ECMA-376. ISO typically sees its mandate as standardizing best-practice, not invention. ECMA-376 does not exist in the marketplace and has no history behind it. The arguments are largely mooted by an insistence that the proposal be allowed to mature (and the politics to settle) before being standardized. Given that ISO has an existing standard in this domain, it is hard to see how anyone is (legitimately) hurt by delay.
What does good faith have to do with it? ISO just wants money for membership, they got their money, and the members followed the rules. Sounds good-faith to me ... if the ISO wants participation beforehand, great, they SHOULD!!! and it should be codified so this can't happen.
hmm. Do you know what a suppository is? Well, you may well know in fact, I guess...
"So, there are about 2500 * 20 = 50000 reasons they should be allowed to vote."
Spending $50000 has probably saved M$ a lot more money (and time) they would have spent working on the changes other organisations wanted. (The OOXML ISO standardization documentation is said to be around 6000 pages long!)
Although I can only hope it costs them in the long run, as they have now shown one more very good example of how corrupt and arragant they are to others. Each move like this turns more people against them and less people trust them in the future.
As for the "standard", well that I suspect is now nothing of the sort. It just goes back to being another microsoft standard. Sad as it could have been good (and useful).
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
Not really. It is capitalism at its best. It is the ultimate free market for you: you can buy and sell anything. Including votes, influence, laws, people, wars, whatever. Everything is for sale and goes to the highest bidder. The name of the game is making money, anything goes, it's up to the market to put value on anything and everything. There are no limits, if you can get away with it and it turns a profit, it's OK. If doing it results in a hefty fine from some pesky government institution but you make more than the fine (i.e. you make a profit), it's OK to do it. Ethics, moral, common good and all that are just ideologies, they have no cash value and thus are irrelevant.
If a bombmaking company can pursue the government to start a war and consequently buy huge amounts of bombs from the taxes they collect, it is not an -ism, but a business model. If a software company can force their way and create a standard that only they can satisfy and subsequently pursue the government to mandate that standard, well, it is a business model again, nothing more.
A communist state did not herd all the money to keep it, they redistributed it(*). You know, universal free healthcare and education, full employment, guaranteed pensions, cheap housing, subsidised culture and arts and all that. Problem was, they were very inefficient in making money. Microsoft is very efficient in making money and they do not redistribute it, they keep it for themselves and/or use it to make even more money. You can say a lot about Microsoft but they have nothing to do with communism. They are quintessential capitalism, lock, stock and barrel.
(*) The people who were more equal than the others got their loot of course, but that was just petty theft, not an institution.
The voting procedure in Bulgaria is even worse. There is Bulgarian Institute for Standardization (BIS) that have different Technical Comitees (TC) in different fields. The TC in IT have voted against the promoted DIS 29500 for number of technical reasons but also because the proposed DIS 29500 doubles the functionality of an always existing standard (ISO 26300) and conflicts with a number of established others (XML,ISO 8601, ISO 639, ISO/IEC 10118-3 etc.). But in spite of that, the Institute, pushed mainly by the State IT Agency and pro-M$ parties have approved the DIS 29500 with some notes.
that the price for the pdf download of the specs of odf (ISO/IEC 26300:2006) is 342 CHF (14 MB) and for ooxml (ISO/IEC DIS 29500) is 96 CHF (42 MB)?
I challenge you, right now, to Google your country's ISO organisation contact details, or the global ISO details, or both. Then send them an email/phone call/letter telling them how the ISO is about to lose a lot of credibility if they don't halt the fast-track process while they carry out a review of the tactics Microsoft have used to subvert their standards.
It will take you ten minutes, and WILL make a difference. Unlike the ten minutes you'll otherwise spend reading more outraged comments on Slashdot.
Do as I do, AND as I say - I just sent my email. Go for it!
Do as you would be done to.
http://www.noooxml.org/petition
This is Sweden's national standards body's vote we are talking about here, not the ISO. The national bodies vote on what they put in the ISO's voting process.
False. Well, there are two kinds of monopolies. The government enforced ones (in the US we have the postal service with a government mandated monopoly that is often flaunted by FedEx/UPS). And then there are natural monopolies and they work in with market forces.
Alan Greenspan does a better job explaning this than I can if you are interested in learning more.
Very well made comment.
God, what a load of crap. How can anyone mod that up?
Here are the parts of Capitalism that I don't understand:
- unsafe products
- unhealthy products
Yeah, communism and fascism fix this problem. Auschwitz was teeming with Occupational Safety & Health inspectors I'm sure.
- unsustainable processes
It's in a company's best interest to do something sustainable, they don't want to go out of business in 10 years or any length of time. On the other hand, state governments don't care about anything except retaining power again in 4 years' time.
- suppression of the truth about unsafe products
Go on, name an unsafe product that's been suppressed. I'm sure I can find dozens of web links revealing the truth.
- exploitation of the poor and the uninformed
Many organizations exist to inform the poor and uninformed. School being one of them. If people don't avail themself of the opportunities handed to them on a platter, whose fault is that?
- outsourcing (abandonment of the community)
QQ
- tax evasion
Any society has criminals. To pretend that a non-capitalist society won't have people who try to avoid contributing to the state coffers, is ludicrous.
- consumerism
Oh noes, people might actually cater to what other people want!
- competition that puts profits before people
So how are you going to 'force' microsoft to make a good OS instead of one that makes the most money? And where do business profits go anyway? answer: PEOPLE. The people who choose to invest in the company. The people who work at the company. The people who receive charitable donations from the Gates foundation. Etc.
- profitable relationship with war
Profit from war comes about because the prospect of war makes people afraid, so they approve of companies involved in war efforts. In other words, war helps companies to control people and channel resources away from the people. In a communist or fascist society, the state controls people anyway. War companies (which would be commandeered by the state) are fantastically profitable, having first pick of available resources. People come last. Have you read 1984?
How can those tags be "depreciated" in the first version of a NEW standard? "Non-issue" indeed.
> "other than when converting legacy documents"
Yeah, they're "depreciated" all right. Depreciated until they bite you in the ass. Why? Because "converted" legacy documents aren't and never will be. They become "new" legacy documents in a fancy OOXML wrapper you can't peel off. That really defeats the entire point of conversion.
> "because apps will HAVE to deal with them"
My but what a lot of things "depreciated" means? We HAVE to deal with "depreciated" things that should be converted into STANDARD markup that are defined for "completeness" even though the "standard" doesn't tell me WHAT THE HELL THEY MEAN? What kind of "completeness" is that!? What the hell kind of "depreciated" means that you HAVE to deal with it?
Did you even READ what you wrote? Yes, I know why they're in there. They're in there because of scary legacy code in Word that no one wants to screw with. The rest is BS used to justify, obfuscate and downplay the importance of that fact.
The "complete" spec may be 6,000+ pages, but what good is that if it leaves out important things and is full of total BS and worthless crap like that? Has anyone actually considered fixing the standard instead of cramming it down the ISO's throat?
Oh, right. It's not cost effective because it would affect the time to market. Silly me, dragging useless technical considerations into the discussion of a technical standard when the business reasons are all that really matter...
A simple fix:
Ban conflicts of interest. Microsoft and friends are pushing a standard, keep them out of it. It's nice to know america isn't the only country that's ethically bankrupt.
...I'm confused. Is money evil now or not?
/. moral shift.
Is a lassaize-faire approach, in which only the strong and worthy survive in or out this year?
Is it free-market devil-take-the-hindmost screw-everyone-but-me libertarian point of view the only answer or not?
I get SO lost with the
We should expect people to behave like scheming pricks when we're designing systems which confer influence; Like electoral systems, ISO standards etc. Because there are psychopaths, sociopaths and others with defective personalities out there who'll simply use them to their personal advantage.
To do otherwise is not just naive or unwise, it's downright stupid.
Deleted
Wait, is anyone actually planning on trying to implement this thing other than MS?
The entire point is so that MS can put the words "standard file format" and "XML" in the list of features, and help sell to governments and the like. This "standardization" has no other purpose, it's just a big distraction.
The following link is to groklaw.net and has info about the secret memo sent to Swedish partners of Microsoft. This is damning evidence.
0 70630660
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070829
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
its not the same. swedish spelling is different.
Read radical news here
Do you know what a "non sequitur" is? It is when you make a statement like "False" in response to my claim that monopolies undermine the free market, and then you follow that statement with more statements that in no way back up your argument.
Firstly you get the types of monopolies wrong. There are natural monopolies which result from natural phenomenon, such as geography and there are monopolies imposes by unnatural forces such as a law, a lock-in technology, or via bundling. Secondly, any monopoly can be abused to undermine a free market. Because of natural monopolies it is not illegal to obtain a monopoly in a market, merely to abuse it by undermining a second market using your first monopoly.
Lets look at an extreme example of a natural monopoly for the sake of clarity. Suppose a meteor falls to earth with strange properties we cannot duplicate and that meteor is owned by an individual whose property it landed on. Now suppose, by drinking water that has been mixed with a small amount of this meteor you could extend your life to double or triple its normal span. The man being the only source for this substance, has a natural monopoly which is perfectly legal and while it does not conform to normal free market behavior, does not undermine any market. The problem is when that monopoly is abused to affect other markets. Suppose, for example, The man refused to sell the magical water outright, but instead agreed to sell only an expensive lifestyle package including a mansion, 4 cars, 3 pets, a wardrobe of clothing, a small jet plane, and a yacht. Well since everyone who wants said water has to buy all of these things as well, the markets for these other things is undermined. Many sellers of luxury yachts might go out of business since everyone who can afford a yacht already has one from our monopolist. It does not matter if the yachts sold by our monopolist are somewhat inferior or even if they cost 10 times the price of a similar yacht. Because it is bundled it has broken the free market.
Any monopoly can be used to undermine other markets via tying including bundling, thus monopolies are restrained by the law from undermining other markets. Microsoft is the example of the day because they not only have several monopolies but are constantly abusing those monopolies to undermine more and more markets in blatant defiance of the law. Their entire business plan is built around breaking antitrust law for profit, then tying things up in court as long as possible, paying of politicians, and paying off the lawsuits from the small number of victims who have enough money to get their claims through the courts.
Thanks for the link, by the way, but I've already read Greenspan's commentary as well as more about monopolies than most people who are not economics majors. I understand them just fine, you simply failed to understand either what I was saying, or how it applied.
Oh, Please... Mr. Anonymous Coward. I'll bet dollars to donuts my user id is far lower than yours. My Karma is far higher than yours. And i've posted to a lot more topics than you have, I just haven't felt the need to comment in much of anything lately other than the hypocricy surrounding ODF and their anti-ooxml rhetoric that nobody seems to ever question.
For the record, I don't think OOXML is a great standard either, but I believe it has a necessary place in the archival of legacy documents, and the storage of documents generated by Office in a publicly documented and standardized format. That's something I don't believe can be done with ODF because ODF is under-specified... so much so that even OpenOffice has more than 100 application defined tags that it stores in ODF documents, presumably because ODF isn't capable of representing native OpenOffice formats.
For crying out loud. It's a fucking document standard. It's not about the survival of the human species as so many people seem to want to portray it.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
The fact that OOXML is a hundred times worse does not make ODF a good standard.
Good point.
It *does* mean this whole OOXML thing is another method of Microsoft cramming their products down the collective throats of the world, though.
Then again, the world would have been better off if the word processor had never been invented.
Even better point.
Add "presentation software" to that list of things that should never have been invented.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
If a product is unsafe, don't buy it. True capitalism works because of competition. If you don't like one company's product because of either price or quality, buy someone else's. No one has a product that meets your needs? Start your own company to fill that niche.
Generally you can't easilly test stuff yourself (much testing is destructive, requires special equipment or both) and testing products after they are on the open market would mean a delay between the dangerous product being on the market and people being warned it is dangerous. Even assuming the warnings were published immediately most people would not have the time to check a database of product warnings every time they went shopping. There is also the issue of products that are a danger to people other than thier owner (cars are a good example, if your car loses control you aren't the only one who can end up hurt or injured).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register