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OOXML Vote and the CPI Corruption Index
Tapani Tarvainen writes "It turns out there's an interesting correlation between Transparency International's 'corruption perceptions index' and voting behavior in ISO's OOXML decision. Countries with a lower score (more corruption) on the 2006 CPI were more likely to vote in favor of OOXML, and those with a higher score were less likely. According to the analysis, 'This statistics supports with a P value of 0.07328 the hypothesis that the corrupted countries were more likely to vote for approval (one-tailed Fisher's Exact test). In other words, simplified a bit: the likelihood that there was no positive correlation between the corruption level and probability of an approval vote, that is, this is just a random effect, is about 7%.' Of course, correlation doesn't prove causality."
The biggest enemy of ODF is OpenOffice.org which is a complete and utter piece of crap. Regardless of what standard makes it through, nobody is going to want to sit down and use that horrible thing for more than a couple minutes before crying for MS Office. Not only is MS Office vastly superior to every other Office suite but it also sets high standards for accessibility by those who are handicapped, something the government should really consider. MS makes good products but you guys are so blind by bizarre nerd rage and FUD that they could cure cancer and you'd still hate them.