Slashdot Mirror
South Africa Adopts ODF as a Government Standard
ais523 writes "As reported by Tectonic, South Africa's new Mininimum Interoperability Standards (pdf) for Information Systems in government (MIOS) explain the new rules for which data formats will be used by the government; according to that document, all people working for the South African government must be able to read OpenDocument Format documents by March, and the government aims to use one of its three approved document formats (UTF-8 or ASCII plain text, CSV, or ODF) for all its published documents by the end of 2008. A definition of 'open standard' is also included that appears to rule out OOXML at present (requiring 'multiple implementations', among other things that may also rule it out)."
Bam! AIDS!
that the link is a PDF?
-1 not first post
do it to it!
The FAQ clearly and explicitly states the politics section was for news relevant to US government politics.
Obviously this has nothing to do with the US government at all. It's about South Africa, so it shouldn't have been posted to the politics section.
Imagine a giant penis flying towards your mouth, and there's nothing you can do about it. And you're like "Oh man, I'm gonna have to suck this thing", and you brace yourself to suck this giant penis. But then, at the last moment, it changes trajectory and hits you in the eye. You think to yourself "Well, at least I got that out of the way", but then the giant penis rears back and stabs your eye again, and again, and again. Eventually, this giant penis is penetrating your gray matter, and you begin to lose control of your motor skills. That's when the giant penis slaps you across the cheek, causing you to fall out of your chair. Unable to move and at your most vulnerable, the giant penis finally lodges itself in your anus, where it rests uncomfortably for 4, maybe 5 hours. That's what using Slashdot is like.
...sailing the sausage seas!
silly nerd, watermelon is for niggers!
total fag. you're a bitch. fruity mcgaygay
it's raining men!!!
Can't Open Office read/write OOXML files? And I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the Mac OS 10.5 text editor can at least read OOXML files. I'm not advocating use of OOXML, simply pointing out that even if somehow they currently think there is only one implementation, that solution to the "OOXML problem" won't last long.
I submit David Hasselhoff is the AntiChrist
And I have the proof
How can one explain the phenomenal global success of one of this country's least talented individuals? There are only three ways.
* Mr. Hasselhoff actually is talented, but this goes unnoticed in his own country.
* Mr. Hasselhoff has sold his soul to Satan in return for global success.
* David Hasselhoff is the AntiChrist.
I vote for the latter -- and perhaps, after seeing the facts involved, the rest of the world will agree.
The Facts First, the obvious. Add a little beard and a couple of horns -- David Hasselhoff looks like the Devil, doesn't he? And the letters in his name can be rearranged to spell fad of devil's hash.
What does this mean? Well, Baywatch is David's fad. David is the devil. The Hash is what makes Knight Rider popular in Amsterdam.
(I was actually hoping to make the letters in his name spell out he is of the devil, which would be possible if his middle name was "Ethesis," which it might be. I'm sure his publicist would hide such a middle name if it were true.)
Second -- and most importantly -- David Hasselhoff and his television series were foretold in the Bible. Biblical scholars worldwide may quibble over interpretations, but they all agree on this. For a few telling examples let's skip to the end of the Bible. If any book of the Bible will tell us who the AntiChrist is, it's the Revelation of Saint John, which basically describes the AntiChrist and the Armageddon He causes. I'll just give you the verse, and the current theological interpretation of that verse.
Who is the Beast?
Rev 13:1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns The Beast, of course, is David Hasselhoff. The Heads are His separate television incarnations. Young and the Restless, Revenge of the Cheerleaders, Knight Rider, Terror at London Bridge, Ring of the Musketeers, Baywatch and Baywatch Nights. The ten horns represent His musical releases: Crazy For You, David, David Hasselhoff, Do You Love Me?, Du, Everybody Sunshine, I Believe, Looking For Freedom, Night Lover and Night Rockers. Not only does Mitch The Lifeguard literally "rise out of the sea" on Baywatch, but David's musical career has mostly occurred in Europe, a metaphoric rise to fame from across the sea. Rev 13:3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. Of course, this is a reference to his third head: Knight of the Phoenix, the first episode of Knight Rider. In this episode, "Michael Long, a policeman, is shot and left for dead. The shot is deflected by a plate in his head, but ruins his face. He is saved and his face reconstructed. He is reluctant, but agrees to use K.I.T.T. to help the Foundation for Law and Government fight criminals who are 'beyond the reach of the law'. " Knight Rider has been shown in 82 countries. Rev 13:5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. The following blasphemies are actual quotes from David Hasselhoff -- I read these while he was 42 years old.
"I'm good-looking, and I make a lot of money."
"There are many dying children out there whose last wish is to meet me."
"I'm six foot four, an all-American guy, and handsome and talented as well!"
"Before long, I'll have my own channel -- I'll be like Barney."
"(Baywatch) is responsible for a lot of world peace." which the Hoff said at the Bollywood Oscars. Don't believe me? Read the original article!
And here's a blasphemy that came from David's recent (Feb 2004) visit to the Berlin Wall museum. I couldn't have made something this great up by myself. He was upset that the museum didn't spend more time devoted to his personal role in the fall of Communism. You can read more about it here, if you don't believ
heads on! apply directly to the forehead!
In a remarkable development, all the seven islands of the Seven Sister's Atoll, seceded from their common government and declared themselves independent sovereign nations. UN approved their nationhood in an emergency session. All of them, (population 7, 21, 3, 23, 7, 5, and 0.5 respectively) have immediately applied for the P membership of ISO. The population count of less than 1 raised a few eyebrows. It turned out to be the National Geographic photographer who camps there every summer. It is widely speculated in slashdot that all of the will soon vote to approve OOXML.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Put identity in the browser.
...and they beat us to open standards!!!
Have I missed it or does Google still not support saving/exporting documents in ODF?
-USR1
This guy better watch out for Steve "The Chair" Ballmer.
This is all nice, but we're running out of chairs now!
For whatever you want to fault it, doesn't OOXML have at least a couple of rough non-MS implementations (Novell, Corel, Thinkfree)?
What version of Openoffice are they using? I'm using version 2.3 and it knows that "minininum" is not a word...
www.purevolume.com/martyd
The thing to consider is that SA requires That could be a problem when trying to get the various old-versions-of-Word things to work, since the "intellectual rights" to "FuckShitUpLikeWord97" and "BreakCrapLikeWord95" are a) inextricably tied into the spec and b) absolutely not going to be forthcoming from MS for anyone who wants to actually produce a complete, fully-compliant implementation. Anyone think they even have those things defined in writing? I don't!
I'd say this one is game, set, and match to ODF. OOXML just cannot fulfill the access requirements if anyone tries to actually implement it in its entirety, and since it sounds like SA is on a total OSS kick one can probably safely assume that they will be demanding multiple implementations that comply down to every last comma, semi-colon and full-stop.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Apparently "Mininimum Interoperability Standards" does not include spell-check capabilities.
LRN 2 SWM
Sorry for posting AC. This is huge. South Africa is a populous country.
However, does anyone have links to their analyses? One criticism in Massachusetts was that the Massachusetts CIO Office did not sufficiently evaluate all of the factors relevant to a transition to ODF. The Massachusetts comptroller issued a scathing audit listing the many items which their CIO should have looked at first, and failed to.
I have read the linked South African document and it is filled with the same types of conclusory statements as were issued in Massachusetts. This is all well and good and all, but where is the background information, all of the cost-benefit analysis and the like?
It would be VERY helpful for other jurisdictions which are contemplating a move to ODF (such as Minnesota and New York) to know that there exists somewhere the type of comprehensive analysis which the Massachusetts comptroller decided MUST be completed before making any format transition, and, after the full analysis, the decision still came out on the side of, "Yes, we SHOULD do this after all."
So, anyone, please? Any South African Slashdotters out there who can point to more detailed justification documentation?
Please, please, pretty please. You would be surprised who reads Slashdot and how just a little bit of assistance could move mountains in the real world.
A footnote specifically says that they are researching the possibility of adding Microsoft's XPS to the document standards.
The document also does not forbid the use of Microsoft products for the authoring of these documents, only the file format. If Microsoft were to create an upgrade/plugin save as ODF, then they could still use Office. Even without, they can save files as HTML, TXT, or CSV.
-David
It has already been a number of years since a government advisory panel in South Africa produced a survey and guidelines for open-source adoption. It was previously covered on Slashdot.
Unfortunately the original link has gone stale; here is one that works. The first version of the NACI document makes for interesting reading for the lay person.
Good to see ever-increasing open thinking there!
Salani kahle.
Maybe the government wants to protect their software-industry just as the US does with Microsoft?
While UTF8 raw text and ODF are both sensible formats, CSV seems like a poor choice for data owing to its horrible escaping conventions and subtly inconsistent implementations. Surely a better format would be a pipe separated DSV, which is a much cleaner format.
...Miss Teen South Carolina seem like a bit of a chump now doesn't it, eh?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
The funny comment's irony is not because of some 'allergy'.
The irony is because South Africa didn't say PDF is a standard, yet they use it.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
I see more and more documents being passed as .odt files (well I am an IBM business partner so not totally typical) it is much more reasonable to expect the recipient to use one of many free ODF compliant products or they might have Notes 8 with the productivity editors than it is for someone to send a .docx file and expect the recipient to pay to upgrade to read and work with the file.
Actually, viewing ODF in Firefox is quite fast. No need for any suite to load. Besides, the are other suites beyond OpenOffice. Koffice and Workplace are two readily available examples.
Except of course that South Africa has a population of more than 45 million people. That's OK, I forgive your ignorance, after all you have that severe map shortage going on in the USA.
India's Business Standard reports that the Indian Government is mulling the switch to ODF. Can't wait...