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OOXML Will Pass Amid Massive Irregularities
Tokimasa notes a CNet blog predicting that OOXML will make the cut. Updegrove agrees, as does the OpenMalasia blog. Reports of irregularities continue to surface, such as this one from Norway — "The meeting: 27 people in the room, 4 of which were administrative staff from Standard Norge. The outcome: Of the 24 members attending, 19 disapproved, 5 approved. The result: The administrative staff decided that Norway wants to approve OOXML as an ISO standard." Groklaw adds reportage of odd processes in Germany and Croatia.
This is insane.
No day goes by without hearing from some croporate giant running roughshod over the laws, procedures or institutions of democratic countries.
The United States have let a handful of mega-croporations totally wreck it's economy with the blessing of the government that was elected while pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes.
It is time for the people to revolt, and put the croporations back to where they belong by firmly asserting the power of the government over croporations, if need by, by the croporate death penalty and the confiscation of the croporation's assets.
The government has thoroughly been subverted by croporate cronies; those should be charged with subversive sedition and thrown in jail and the key tossed in the Marianas trench.
The League of Nations came and went. The United Nations has allowed it's self to be discredited by militant, hegemonic nations. Now the ISO has been compromised by a flawed process and corrupt bureaucrats enabling a monopoly corporation. This international bureaucracy is no more legitimate than the decisions they make.
Freedom is free.
1. OpenDocument already exists. What good does a second format, based on identical principles, do for the world? 2. OOXML requires the use of patented algorithms, which makes open source developers nervous, especially when a company that despises open source and has an ongoing campaign to kill the open source movement happens to be the patent holder...and happens to be pushing the format. 3. OOXML is exceedingly difficult to implement, giving Microsoft an automatic advantage over everyone else and forcing us to play catch-up (though OOo3 will have native support, IIRC). 4. This is /., and the format is Microsoft supported. What did you expect?
Palm trees and 8
This is what happens when academics go head to head with corporations.
The corporations will win every time. As smart as academics are, they just aren't prepared for this kind of thing.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Because, unlike most other other ISO standards for documents, like fax G3 and G4 compression, and ODF (Open Document Format) OOXML literally cannot be implemented by anyone other than Microsoft. This is not because the entire rest of the world contains no competent programmers, but because the standard simply does not have enough information to do so. Microsoft wrote the proposed standard with what amount to calls into their libraries of legacy Word code, the actions of which are NOT documented, rather than "tag X requires an indent level of 30000 millipels from the indent level of the enclosing block", or whatever.
... to prevent a resurrection of Microsoft.
The entire purpose of OOXML is to subvert the increasing call for public documents to be stored in a format that can A) be read without buying Word/Office/..., on the theory that documents created in a citizen's government should be available to those citizens without paying a corporate "tax", and B) that by documenting the format of the documents, readers/editors can be created, as needed, at a future time when the original creation tool may no longer exist or have a computer on which to run, unlike, say, Word documents, where support for older formats is simply dropped by Microsoft.
Microsoft is an ongoing criminal organization, and as such, should be seized under the RICO act, and its parts sold off or its source code simply published for those parts without buyers, and the buyers should be forever blocked from forming a cartel, single company, sharing directors,
What's the quote? Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by ignorance?? It's pick your poison time. Do you rely on an organization run by complete idiots? Or one run by completely corrupt officials?? Either way, I'd say ISO has become a lot less important.
No sig for you!!
Are you joking?
ISO standards are supposed to be clearly and completely defined. These standards definitions are created so that multiple parties can participate in government and other public activities through information interchange.
OOXML fails in very serious ways to fit that description. Not only are various aspects of the 'standard' vague, but they reference descriptions of behaviors of a particular software application on a particular platform without defining what that means. Without any issues of politics and anything 'human,' by ISO's definition and rules of adoption or creation, OOXML is technically not eligible to be an ISO standard.
Beyond this is the use of the "fast track" approval process. This process is supposed to exist to enlist standard formats that are in wide and common use. Formats like PDF and PNG, if they are not already ISO standards, might be good candidates for such since they are already in very heavy use and are very clearly defined and implemented widely. The OOXML format, as defined, is not a "ubiquitous" format. It's not even implemented completely or correctly by the company that has defined it. And because it is not clearly defined, cannot be correctly implemented by other parties. All of this means it is ineligible for the fast track approval process.
Finally, after it initially failed the fast track process in spite of wild irregularities in the process, this second attempt has resulted in passage but does so with further irregularities. Each participating country in the process operates through its own set of rules. In various examples, these rules were either changed, convoluted, or simply ignored. In some instances, the results seem to indicate simple and direct fraud.
All of this represents corruption and possibly the destruction of the purpose of ISO approval.
If ISO were a pure religion, what Microsoft has caused to happen would be called blasphemy. If ISO were a court, what Microsoft has caused to happen would be called a travesty. And if ISO were a business, what Microsoft has caused to happen, it would be fraud.
Acceptance as an ISO standard means that a file format is eligible for use in various official and public purposes. The purpose of requiring an ISO standard for such formatting is to allow any and all parties interested in participating the opportunity to do so by following a clearly defined and published standard. In the case of OOXML, this would be impossible for any party other than Microsoft to do this effectively since the definition is incomplete and defined by the behavior of its applications which are subject to revision. In the event that a government process or activity requires the use of this "ISO" standard, it effectively excludes all other vendors but Microsoft from participating.
I'm not sure how much more clearly the problem with OOXML's adoption as an ISO standard can be defined. It's not a question of "hating" OOXML. It's a matter of subverting a definition and process that has been depended upon internationally to clearly and precisely define standards of process and information interchange.
I'm not sure about being respected after this. I guess some people will ask themselves "if this standard was approved in such a way, what about all the others?" (and, honestly, I'm asking this myself right now.)
The fact that this is the first time such thing happens is just because people in this standard are way more vocal and know how to use the current media (internet.)
Cover up? Msft is not even shy about their brazen corruption anymore.
Yes, there was corruption. Tons of it. It has all been very well documented. Read groklaw.net or noooxml.org.
What does msft care is the slashdot/groklaw crowd doesn't like it?
Read it and get back to us if you still have questions.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Others have already read the OOXML docs and pointed out countless places it's incomplete, contradictory and impossible to implement. Worse, it has been pointed out that DOCX is already something different from the above. I have better things to do with my time than read 6000 pages of misdirection. NO ONE but MS is going to have a working implementation, if there can ever be such a thing. OOXML is a farce that will only fool the weakest minded non technical decision makers. It surely did not fool the majority of ISO representatives and we shall see if it really becomes a standard in light of all the irregularities. The organization's reputation is on the line. For prior art in this matter, look up Rich Text Format, the Microsoft last "open" specification that no one ever used.
Rational policy for the new documents is to return the thing to it's sender and ask for ODF. Editors can be had as a free download and they work well, so there's no reason for anyone to demand others buy a $400 text editor. It's that simple, for you and me to work together I can buy a $400 program or you can download one for free. Which do you think it's going to be most of the time?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
Yeah, the problem is that you're only hearing one side of the story.
For example, the meeting in Norway was not to approve or disapprove of OOXML, it was to determine if there had been any irregularities in the Norway vote. As such, only the administrators votes counted towards whether to overturn their previous yes vote to no or abstain.
Since there was no vote to accept or reject OOXML, these stories that claim such are deceptive. I don't believe the authors are deliberately bending the truth, but I think they have bad information and are just repeating it.
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Hopefully, everyone else agrees that it's shit, but I don't think that'll happen. OOXML will pass, MS OFfice will use its own, non-standard version of OOXML, governments will claim they are in compliance with laws requiring open standards, and the rest of us will be in the same boat we've been in for fifteen years. It's all quite sick.
Put identity in the browser.
+1 Sad :(
You have forgotten all of the benefits the the ISO process.
Lets see. There is making a mockery of the standards making process. There is a cheapening of the term ISO standard. When I see that in the future, it won't have as much meaning to me. It does not mean something will work, or is used by the industry, or even that it is possible to implement. I know it is not multi-vendor. It will not prevent lock-in. Any data comitted to it may or may not be portable.
Also, as serves them right. The ISO has been crippled by this. All of those members that came on board to help Microsoft. Well, they are not showing up at any of the other meetings. So when a standards body meets. Has 40 members only 10 of them show up, and you get 4 YES, 4 NO, 2 abstain and 30 not present. Well shucks. Things just about grind to a halt.
vi +
You miss the point - this all started because various (usually) government bodies in the US and worldwide were starting to worry about how much data they held and distributed in a proprietary file format which was only reliably readable by products from a single vendor. They started passing rules that required public documents to be stored and exchanged in some sort of non-proprietary standard format. Such rules have to be passed by the politicos who aren't capable of assessing the technical merit of a file format - but will respect ISO certification. With ODF as an ISO standard, progress was gradually being made (albeit an uphill struggle the teeth of MS lobbying). This would have been a major breakthrough towards a healthily diverse and competitive market in office software (in which MS could easily become an equal player by simply adding ODF support to Office).
If OOXML gets a ISO certification then non-techie politicos will take this as carte blanche that MS file formats are "open" and can be safely used (and that they can stick with their MS software because there's an "upgrade path" to .docx). This is the "path of least resistance" anyway and such people will be easily convinced that all these rumblings about inconsistencies in the approval process were just sour grapes from penguin-hugging beatnicks.
You don't like Gates or Microsoft? Don't buy their shit.That's the problem with monopolies: they subvert the free market model because lots of people don't have the choice! - MS has such market dominance that everybody assumes that everybody else can read the same file formats. What do you do if someone sends you a MS word file that K/OpenOffice won't render properly? When you send your proposal for a new project to a funder as an ODF file and they say they can't open it, what do you do? Now, currently OpenOffice etc. do a tolerable job of opening .doc files - but that's entirely dependent on the OO programmers being able to keep up every time MS changes the format, and it will only take one patent lawsuit to put an end to that.
Took me four years to find and purchase the right wireless cards I wanted.Q: Why did that take so long? Well, one reason is that because of the Microsoft monopoly wireless chipset manufacturers can hit 95% of the market just by supplying their own low-level windows drivers - and card resellers can (and do) switch chipsets without warning. Someone tells you that the NetSysLink 9000 card is supported by Linux, you buy one and find that NetSysLink 9000 sold in the EU on a Tuesday use a completely different chipset. I've had DVD drives that I've had to plug into a Windows system to set the region code before they'd work in Linux.
Without the "wintel" monoculture, they'd need to publish interface specs, or establish some sort of standardised communications protocol so that various OS vendors could implement drivers.
By your own admission, sticking with Linux has been a labour of love - the vast majority of the desktop computing market simply doesn't have your technical knowledge, let alone persistence.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.