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Norway's Yes-To-OOXML Is Formally Protested
An anonymous reader writes "Norway's yes-to-OOXML may tip the vote in favor of accepting it as an ISO-standard, but the committee chairman just faxed a formal protest to the ISO. 'I am writing to you in my capacity as Chairman (of 13 years standing) of the Norwegian mirror committee to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34. I wish to inform you of serious irregularities in connection with the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Office Open XML) and to lodge a formal protest. You will have been notified that Norway voted to approve OOXML in this ballot. This decision does not reflect the view of the vast majority of the Norwegian committee, 80% of which was against changing Norway's vote from No with comments to Yes.'"
Or truth or science. A lie is a lie no matter how many people you pay to repeat it. Corruption has no place in any technical organization that will be litened to and respected.
Groklaw predicts more challenges
and notes the results will now be announced on Wednesday, so and ISO standard for M$XML is not going to be one of the worst April Fools jokes of the next decade.No calls now, I'm
"This decision does not reflect the view of the vast majority of the Norwegian committee, 80% of which was against changing Norway's vote from No with comments to Yes."
This is why we need open source governance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_governance
It's a nice gesture, but it's a lost cause. The ISO has been undermined by Redmond and its agents, and now an unimplementable file format will give Microsoft the highground it needs to peddle its monopoly, to the detriment of anyone interested in a real open file standard.
I leave it to the EU (as the US DoJ clearly has no interest in this any more) to take Microsoft to task, and hopefully empty their coffers a little bit. That seems to be the only thing to be done with Microsoft until the time comes when they're anti-competitive behavior is finally met by government agencies of sufficient power to break the company up.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Is if ISO contracted Diebold, er, I mean, Premier Election systems, to tally the votes. This is the most ludicrous thing I've seen since 2000.
Perhaps I don't understand how voting bodies work, but how can anyone take these folks seriously with all the nonsense surrounding this vote?
It sounds like Europe is getting a taste of how the election process works in the U S of A.
What's the point of http://www.gatesfoundation.org/ if it is not to buy good karma for Bill and MS?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The International Standards Organization has rebranded itself as MS.ISO, and is making itself available for vote tabulation in the Russian Federation, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Broward County.
Im very surprised that OOXML survived that far...
That is AWESOME!
But shouldn't it really be called "open content governance"?
Open source is for source code. Open content is for--- content.
Wow, your sleazy backroom vote rigging gets exposed on Slashdot, and suddenly it's a major international incident.
--
make install -not war
Why is this corruption syndrome, typical of the USA cropping up in very successful [European] countries? Why?
RANDOLPH: The objection's overruled, counsel.
JO: Sir, the defense strenuously objects and requests a meeting in chambers so that his honor might have an opportunity to hear discussion before ruling on the objection.
RANDOLPH: The objection of the defense has been heard and overruled.
JO: Exception.
RANDOLPH: Noted.
Everybody complains, but nobody does anything about it!
you had me at #!
Wire transfers from Redmond.
you had me at #!
If you want to see how bad was this process handled, see one of its awfuls deliverables.
Open the document "Response_DE-0028_dates_v9.doc" in this zip
http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/open/0989_reference_docs.zip
This is one of the changes frenetically accepted in BRM, regarding treatments of dates in OOXML. See the salad of colors trying to explain the modifications. And this is a fix ( BRM ) of a fix ( one of ECMA 1027 proposed fixes ) of a NB comment of a draft text ( original ECMA submission ).
And this document contradicts this another BRM document: http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/open/0989.pdf because the first says that the .DOC file replaces ECMA responses 18 and 43 but the "Response_DE-0028_dates_v9.doc" document says that it replaces ECMA responses 18, 43, 76 and 690 !
ECMA and Microsoft have not provided a final text with all this changes applied. In the BRM they frenetically changed Scope, Conformance , Schemas , and lot of normative text. Microsoft is now rushing to get a final text in less than one month, to comply with ISO normative.
This is how ISO delivers IT international standards, mandating fundamental changes to drafts, leaving national bodies with the only alternative to cast a political vote leaving aside the technical content of the specification.
Congratulations to the countries that had *balls* and didn't agree with this way of deliver standards to people:
And congratulations Microsoft, your friendly little countries supposedly experts in XML document description languages ;-) ( now ISO P-members ), who joined ISO JTC1 just to cast an unconditional-yes-votes payed off:
Ok. Zimbabwe didn't vote tonight, they voted a few days ago. Exit polls showed the opposition won about 65% of the seats available, while the official vote totals have been 'delayed', causing many to suspect rigging.
The US elections are eight months away; this is not around the corner, it's 1/6th of an entire presidential election cycle. Neither election was 'stolen', the result was certified according to all domestic law. Whether the law is just or unjust is something which may validly be debated, but whether the election of Bush was legal or illegal isn't. To equate the election of Bush with 'stealing' is to suggest Bush acheived the Presidency through illegal means, which he did not, he did it through the Electoral College, according to appropriate law. Law and justice only very rarely corelate.
1/3 of the US population is not in prision. 1/100th. The 1/3 you speak of who cannot vote are under the age of 18. Irregularities will not spark massive unrest unless they're massive irregularities. There are always irregularities when fifty million people try to do something all together at once.
US electioneering has nothing to do with Microsoft. There may be some parallels in the abstract. Votes are tabulated and decisions certified according to established rules. It sounds like ISO may have some unjust rules. That the wealthy would take advantage of rules to secure their ability to be wealthy is not part of 'a wider Zeitgeist' of democracy's death. It's normal. Simply being 'wealthy' predicates an 'unjustness' in the world, since it is a trait only evident in comparison to poverty. Microsoft's ability to make poor people dance to their tune by plying them with goods, services, and cash is not any more or less unjust than the fact that some people are rich and some people are poor and most poor people would give up a lot of their dignity and grace to become rich.
I don't know what is wrong with you. You as an individual either approve or disapprove of having the ISO--a standards organization which you do or do not have to abide. If you want to be free from Microsoft's 'Tyranny of the Standards Bodies', don't accept these bodies as having any sort of dominion over you.
It's very easy to sit at home on your computer and lament the travesty of Zimbabwean elections, US prisons, election law, and standards bodies, and very hard for me to take your cowardice and malaise seriously. You're like a toddler scared of a tea pot, thinking about demons and the collapse of everything you've never fought or paid for. Boo hoo. Protect and change your own damn laws, or at least learn about ours before you spout drivel and bullshit.
One third of the US is NOT in prison. One percent is. Still a lot, but you are way off.
I have no idea what's going to happen, 'cause i have no clear picture of the structure of Standard Norge and what role / authority / voice the dissenting committee members have. Are the members supposed to be the final say? Or was it a much better organized con game - like, verbal assurances that "oh of course we'll listen to your majority opinion either way," but with no legal obligation to do so? And why does this suddenly remind me of the electoral college :P
Gonna be quite a brouhaha, and i don't think it's hyperbole to declare this a watershed event in the future and credibility of corporate-driven international standards.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
Excuse my ignorance, but if 80% of the committee didn't support the vote where was the chairman during the vote? Wouldn't it be his job to ensure the decision which is made is carried out correctly?.... I find it odd that he has to fire an email after the vote indicating that it was flawed... The way I see it, either they are either extremly corrupt, or extremely incompetent.
if any of these allegations are true: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsofts-great-besmirching
Is anyone going to use ISO specifications again if Microsoft purchases the OOXML vote?
What really gets my clusters in a bunch is that Microsoft could elect to work with Sun, IBM, Apple, Adobe, Whoever, to really come up with an Open Document specification if they wanted too. This specification isn't about Apple, Microsoft, Sun, and IBM. Its about government documentation funded by the public that needs to be available a thousand years from now. Way to be a good corporate citizen Microsoft!
People will still choose MS Office because they like it, not because it does or does not save documents in a government mandated open specification. Microsoft could simply add a new "Save As" filter following the Open Specification.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
If you can't win, simply get the rules of the game changed. Lawyers and politicians understand this. Nerds don't.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
From this point on, I to will describe OOXML as M$XML. No longer will the cry 'Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers' be heard. Instead you will hear 'M$XML, M$XML, M$XML, M$XML, M$XML' Note, I am not Twitter nor am I Erris or Dedazo or even God although I have often claimed to be God. Yours
In either case, here at Microsoft, we feel standards are important. And we have fun, too. Doug Mahugh, Microsoft
You can do whatever you want, just don't create five accounts that high-five and shill each other to do it.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Seems like everything is on a precipice right now.
The ISO vote on OOXML, and in fact the ISO credability as an organization hangs in the balance. There will be other challanges to YES votes coming in soon as predicted by Groklaw - will the right thing happen? will ISO step back from the brink and do the right thing?
This is not the battle over, not by a long chalk, but it is a very commendable move indeed on behalf of Mr. Pepper.
May this strands of rationality and clear thinking grow strong and firm into a solid foundation of dissent and persuasion.
So it's all down to Scandinavia again. Send in Eric the Swift, Olaf the Stout and Baleog the fierce. They should be able to sort this puzzle out.
;^)
I think Linus should go over there and kick some ass, too.
--
Toro
A little early but haw haw. Good one.
I'm just dreading the backlog of April fools articles we'll be getting well into July...
Is Microsoft completely unable to play fairly and with integrity in anything they do?
60% of those 80% were confused because the chads to be punched were misaligned so as to confuse the voters into thinking that voting for making it standard actually voted against... It happened in Florida once, gospel truth I tell ya!
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
Until such time as ISO can put in safeguards against such blatant abuse, have leadership which will follow their own directives, have a mechanism which will keep the process transparent, discipline P members that vote only when they want, restrict countries becoming a P member just by sending in a letter i.e Jamaica, Cyprus, Malta, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Azerbaijan, Cote-d'Ivore and others a week before a vote with no review in their county, ISO cannot deliver a true Open Standards. Its time for the community to rally behind http://www.oasis-open.org/ with the exception of W3C, OASIS is the only organization delivering true Open Standards today and the membership it not restrictive.
thank fuck. I just checked the submission date to ensure this was not some vile and tasteless April fools from MS.
ahhhh. perhaps that why they moved the date of announcement? they did not want to annouce the OOXML was an approved international standard on April 1st...?
Yet!
Yes, we will have our work cut out, but together we can do it! Like they say: more bars in more places.
You know, like how you justify having two ISO standards for typesetting digital documents, how OOXML references to "Do this like Word for Mac" can be considered sane, or how 80% no turns into "yes".
I don't come here to talk about twitter or any other slashdot user. I smearing someone's pen name is the best you can do, please shut the fuck up.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
You've called me twitter before, too.
Maybe some of the people you think are twitter are, but maybe you're seeing things that aren't there.
Maybe, in fact, there are people who really don't like being screwed by Microsoft.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
The only post to so much as mention OOXML in a sea "Twitter is teh troll" bullshit is labled troll. Gah, this thread is hosed. It's a good thing that there's not much to talk about until Wednesday.
No calls now, I'm
This is a sockpuppet of twitter. Look at the posting histories of inTheLoo, Mactrope (1256892), and twitter (104583). It is way too coincidental that they all happen to almost always post to the same stories. Mod these sockpuppets into karma hell.
While this may delay the inevitable by a few years, eventually this will grind its way through the court system. Microsoft's little game with the EC following their previous court case means Europe has an axe to grind, and here we are looking at good evidence that Microsoft has not only abused their monopoly, but that they have outright tried to destroy a worldwide standards organization in order to prevent competition. That OOXML is useless as a standard could very well be interpreted as a violation of the EU's earlier order to Microsoft to share their APIs and similar information, and teh fact that they have gone ot such lengths to achieve it is even more damning. That Microsoft is doing this despite the fact that it will cost them A LOT of goodwill from governments, courts, industry etc.. shows just how desperate they are about it, and gives a hint about just how screwed they are going to be if free software and open source products would become a viable alternative to Office.
In other words, improve Open Office, Koffice etc. to the point where they not only equal, but greatly exceed MS Office in functionality and quality, and Redmond will be in deep shit. Stacked standards committees or not.
but isn't Office by any standard definition, a standard? IE can do their own thing and every web master is forced to abide. If you are a business buying computers, you pretty much need Office, and it isn't a hard decision even if it is expensive. Using Open Office is the harder decision, even though it is free.
So isn't this OOXML hoopla just all fun and games for Microsoft? If Open Office and others are going to copy Office's formats anyway, then why not make it official. They're making our lives easier in a way, no?
It's because it was posted by Twitter.
The mainstream press is largely ignoring this, but DOES take input from "iReporters" and concerned individuals. It's easy for this to go unnoticed, if it goes unreported (as far as 90% of the planet is concerned). Well, why should the mainstream press care? It's not as if readers/viewers worry that much about their wordprocessor. True, but as I've pointed out in e-mails to news outlets, those ISO markers for health and safety aren't there for decoration. If ISO can be bribed once, it can be bribed again. You only get to lose innocence once. It doesn't even matter if you think that's a really unlikely connection, think of a better one if you like. The key is to get the media concerned that there really IS a big story here and they're missing out.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I guess I'm not sure if it was you or someone who apparently thinks a lot like you that called me twitter several times recently. I'm not particularly interested in going back to check the user name.
Are sock puppets that big a deal?
(I've been attacked by a sockpuppet or two before, I think it's no big deal. I suppose it can be a little ticklish, so to speak. But looking cool sways people for about two minutes, then they all go back to thinking what they want to think anyway.)
Peer pressure should be a null argument, and karma here is just a buffered form of peer pressure.
If twitter really is using five sock puppets at once, yeah, that's a bit overboard, taking a thread way too personal. That would be his problem, though, not mine.
Arguing with people should be reserved for people like Gates, Ballmer, Clinton, and others who have not only have demonstrated that they can't discuss ideas, but who also have somehow amassed a bit of power to do bad things. (Include Bush and Jobs and Hefner in the list if you personally think they are evil enough.)
But remember, arguing with people (instead of ideas) tends mostly to add to their power to do bad things. (Give them attention and they think you're rewarding them.)
Too much preaching, I know. I should probably get back to work.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
OK, So Microsoft has most likely gotten OOXML passed as an ISO standard. Unfortunate, but probably true.
Further, it appears that the real reason they did this is so that they can put that all-important checkmark in the box that says, "Interoperates with ISO standard file formats" when trying to sell MS Office into accounts.
OK, great.
Now PROVE IT!
Prove that MS Office is OOXML compliant. Last I heard, OOXML was like Office 2007, but not really there. Last I heard, OOXML was an incomplete spec with no full implementation.
If Microsoft is going to to for that "ISO standard file format" checkbox, for that matter if anyone is going for an ISO standard checkbox, isn't it necessary that there be compliance testing? And long as we're compliance testing, the certification of compliance should NEVER be given until the appropriate committee evaluates the product against the spec and decides that that the product unambiguously implements the spec.
No full, unambiguous compliance, no check in the little box.
No matter how long the evaluation takes.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
If you have ever purchased a Microsoft product, this is how they are using it - as leverage to further their position as a monopoly, stifling everyone else with dirty tactics. Is this how you want your money to be spent?
This is one reason they will never see any of my money. Nor should they see any of yours.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
What the fuck is up with the voting procedures in the EU?! People vote No, and the vote gets recorded as a Yes? There aren't even enough people to make that switch difficult to detect! How does that kind of crap even happen? Are all the vote counters in all those EU countries just plain corrupt or what?!
Jesus..
I tried to get details about Norway's committee structures from the news articles and various other linked texts, but a lot of it is in Norwegian, which I can't read. In the US, there can be two committees, one technical and the other with oversight. Everybody attends the technical committee, but not many stay the extra day to be part of the oversight committee. However, the technical committee only votes on a recommendation to give to the oversight committee. Then the oversight committee can (if it wants) choose to disregard the recommendation. Why members would not want to be part of the more powerful committee, I don't really know, but it really removes the right to complain when your recommendation is overturned or modified.
I'm not sure if that happened in Norway, but it seems possible. If that's true in this case, the yes vote will likely stand.
Someone pointed out the Rambus business. There are many others.
Gaming the system has been around for a long time, and it isn't going away, as long as there are people who get their sense of self-worth from what they think they can make others do.
Raw text, with minimal semantic markup, is the answer to all of this. (Not even XML, unless the XML buys you something meaningful over being parseable by the calibrated eyeball.)
Raw text.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
That's a historical anomaly.
ODF is better than MSOOXML for getting certain kinds of jobs done, but we are all far too hung-up on standards. Microsoft has always been about them pretending to meet and beat the standards before the standards could possibly have been made. (MSC++, anyone?)
Our sin is in buying into the standards business. We're like the drunks looking for the lost wallet under the streetlamp, when we dropped it over there where it's dark. Yeah, we can see under the streetlamp, but that's not where the job that needs to be done is.
Real standards are not produced by some standards body, any more than they are produced by megacorporations out for everyone's money. (And not the money so much as the buying power, really.)
Real standards are distilled out of best practices.
If we really want to fight MSLeviathan, we need to get to work and build stuff that solves people's problems with tech that really works.
Speaking of which, I really need to get back to work, now.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
When things seem to be going better than they should, look for the grease on palms. Statistically, there should always be some issues and some discussion and some questions being raised somewhere.
A good rating in "lack of corruption" is not really something to brag about, and is especially not a reason to get complacent.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
"Instead you will hear 'M$XML, M$XML, M$XML, M$XML, M$XML"
I kinda doubt that it's possible.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
ISO also has standards for quality control that tech sweat shops in China, India, etc have to follow and be qualified for to pass for help desks, customer support, software programming, engineering, etc. Yet do you notice a lack of quality control from tech sweat shops, despite the fact that the ISO certified them for quality control standards?
Did you happen to note that Microsoft offshores a lot of IT work to India, and that the tech sweat shops that Microsoft pays writes the MSOXML standards and if the ISO certifies the MSOXML standard that India stands to gain a lot of money from the work that Microsoft offshores there as well as hired H1B Visa workers to work in the USA (an wire money back home) if the ISO standard is improved?
ISO standards don't really mean anything any more than some rubber stamp that a politician can use to get everyone to use their standards instead of someone else's. First it was Sun/IBM trying to get ODT approved and get the MSOXML voted down, now it is Microsoft trying to get MSOXML approved. ISO votes must go to the highest bidder or something.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Hey! I'm 27 you insensit... oh.
I hate printers.
Seriously, ISO should drop all other work and start thinking about some vaguely coherent and transparent voting procedures.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
There once was a man come to Bergen
Who promised that everything's working
He came to the fjord
And bought off the board
Now we're all autospacelikeWord'ing.
There once was a man who said "Trust us!
Accept this, or surely you'll bust us."
With his special langcodes
Now he's ISO'd.
I wonder how much this will cost us?
Cool you go first. I promise I'll follow.
After it's over. ISO decides that many things could be done differently. So ISO makes some changes, and promisses this sort of thing will never happen again.
That way ISO get's it credability back, but still does not have to change the OOXML approval.
Eh? This is about getting out from under the Microsoft monopoly? Microsoft get 14 billion in revenue every quarter from Office. Competition matters a lot.
Um, no it's not. It's a rather fugly MS-bashing blog.
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
I suppose next we will hear about how Norway will be competing in Bejing ignoring the human rights violations that are being committed by China in Tibet.
Expect Norway to be sorely beaten by Kenya that country of Kenya will piss on Norway.
///OOXML = New World Order Code
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
All that will happen, in the long run, is that ISO will become untrusted, marginalized and obsolete.
It is the same old Microsoft game: embrace and extend!
It's useless. They can corrupt ISO to try to keep their Office monopoly, but meanwhile, their Windows monopoly is crumbling down, thanks to the Vista fluke. Wine is getting better every moment, and while ReactOS isn't exactly around the corner, in 5 years it'll be on par with WINE - with 2013's WINE (ReactOS and WINE share a lot of code).
And let's not forget that while Microsoft is powerful, there's a very powerful company called Google that acts as a counterweight.
There's nothing Microsoft can do to prevent falling in their doom. However, they're doing as much as they can to slow down their agony.
Yeah, they don't want any rivals.
My friend from South Africa informs me that Zimbabwe's elections were rigged in such an incompetant fashion that they couldn't even win after the rigging. The evil thug is that incompetant. If he loses the elections he'll have live with a harem of only 50 in his estate in Harare.
This Reuters article is, technically speaking, utter rubbish.
It's Office Open, stupid. (Albeit not open).
Only by Sun Microsystems ...?
Whattt? ODF is an accepted ISO standard for office documents. To convert it to utter rubbish, you need a converter (like OpenOffice.org), stupid.
First, you need a converter here, too. Second, Microsoft does not support ODF up to now, therefore I'm wondering when MS Office "made it possible to do so" ... Perhaps later? No, never, if OOXML gets accepted by ISO.
You're dreaming if you think Microsoft software will accurately read documents in Microsoft formats which are arbitrarily old.
Unfortunately, the governments will probably still waste their money trying...
I wouldn't be surprised if in the long term, the best way to accurately read old Microsoft formats would be to use the appropriate version of corresponding OSS (which had to try to be as compatible as possible to that format) running in a virtual machine.
I didnt RTFA so im not sure what is going on in Norway so im just guessing that it was somewhat similar issue as in Finland.
Majority of board was against OOXML Standard but in the end, board's decision was "yes". Why ? Board consists of big businesses, government and some other groups. 3 of the bigger companies in the board where IBM, Sun & Google and their votes where not counted because "they would vote as their head offices dictate" and thus the overall voting results from "absolutely no" where turned into "yes with clauses".
Yey!
yush
And so was the comment you responded to, so I think he's aware :)
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Okay, now ODF is and OOXML will probably be ISO standards. Having two official standards for the same kind of data is no standard at all! That and ISO (as discussed above) has lost its credibility, so having an official standard means nothing.
All over industry there are standards that have no official standard status, but are in practice used by everyone. Word and Excel files are used now by almost everyone (except us) for exchanging documents (that they want others to be able to edit).
Lets make ODF the de-facto standard. Whenever you have to send a document, send them an ODF document. If they complain about being unable to open it, send them a link to OpenOffice.org. If they don't want to use OOO then tell them to complain with MS, whose software doesn't support (one of) the official standards.
I think that making ODF widespread, a de-facto standard, is much more important than having a (meaningless, ambiguous, superfluous etc) official standard.
assignment != equality != identity
Just as a small insight into the Cyprus vote.
I made some discreet enquiries into our national position with some high-level government officials. It seems that, by "sheer coincidence" (my own sarcastic words), Microsoft and the Republic of Cyprus entered into a Memorandum of Understanding whereby Microsoft would invest in an "Innovation Centre" here in Cyprus. The government position was therefore that a No vote to OOXML would endanger this deal, and was therefore absolutely out of the question.
The date of the deal? January 22nd 2008.
http://www.cyprusedirectory.com/articleview.aspx?ID=92
It will be interesting to see whether this deal will now magically fall through in the coming months.
As in subject, kthx
haha, is that link an april fool? Are you sure it's not an Onion microsite?
I do see http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/... sprayed everywhere in these specifications. Does this enable the owner of that domain to monitor who reads what and when?
Or give a good excuse why that information is transferred to this domain?
On his web site, Patrick Dursau, the ODF Editor who notably supported the acceptance of OOXML as an ISO standard, lists "Representation in standards organizations" as one type of consulting work which he accepts.
I guess someone took him up on that then.
Interesting, in the discussion following, Steve Pepper compares the vice director of the norwegian national board to Robert Mugabe, the corrupt dictator of Zimbabwe....
http://www.digi.no/php/debatt.php?iid=543415&side=2 (in norwegian)
'nuff said!
No, he's actually right. A recent census has shown that the USA actually only has a population of 3%.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Check the external links in that WP article. The Metagovernment seems to be ramping up right now.