Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
This is an interesting time for democracy. Tonight the Zimbabwe people voted. As expected the reports are greatly in favour of the opposition, but many other sources seem to be saying Mugabe is set to claim victory anyway. Bloodshed will be inevitable, the British government has pressed for results to issued immediately amidst unsurprising stories of intimidation and vote rigging.
Then the have the US elections around the corner. After two stolen presidencies (one of them blatent, the other perhaps less so), uncertainty over electronic voting and unprecedented disenfranchisement (one third of the total population unable to vote because they are in prison) the USA is looking less and less like a democracy. Even though Bush cannot cling to power unless he declared martial law any irrgularities this time around could spark massive unrest.
Could this background explain Microsofts audacity. Their contempt and lack of shame is astonishing, and I wonder if that reflects a wider Zeitgeist, that democracy is dying. Part of me thinks - well it's just a stupid ISO spec for some software, but another part of me finds it all rather worrying because I see a pattern emerging all over the Western world. Are we turning our backs on democracy?
The Gates Foundation has made a number of suspicious purchases that look like more of the same M$ business under a different name. Mr. Gates interest in medicine is particularly disturbing, because the general formula of getting Governments and regulated industry to buy things by the kind of tactics we see at the ISO have already been bad for your health. Inefficiency in records keeping is one thing, profiteering off medicine via government intrusion, patents and so on and so forth is quite another. Big pharmacy companies have learned a lot from Mr. Gates. The only way to make it worse is to have Mr. Gates and friends at the Carlyle group really be in charge.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
applefags don't give a shit about office document formats, numbnuts
Ha ha, you don't have the modpoints you need to bitchslap twitter and promote the Redmond word. Fuck you, you little PR whore.
Slashdot votes no... more... sock... accounts... for... twitter
Make SELinux enforcing again!
don't you know? twitter is ruinning teh open sores by pointing out blatant trolls. he's a lolz killer. drool, I listen to all the AC smear jobs. worse than that, man, he stole my first post and hijacks what he can't steal. Sob.
Twitter is a frequent contributor who scores a submission every few weeks. Microsoft hates these because they undermine billions of dollars in advertising and PR work. Ditto telco companies, the Bush forces and so on and so forth. Here are a few recent examples:
There's nothing really special about these submissions. Anyone with more memory that lasts longer than yesterday's lunch could put this stuff together and many others do.
The reward for such activity is apparent and it extends to real life. Twitter has had his life and family threatened on multiple occasions. They have tried to out and smear him before his peers, but that failed miserably because his friends know better. They have also failed in their attempt to hijack Slashdot discussions by targeting individuals because anyone can just sign up a new account when targeted. Threats and intimidation are how the rich and powerful try to shut people up. In general, it backfires and makes the target more well liked and respected but the rich and powerful are used to getting their way, so they never learn.
The more horrible the threat, the more urgently you should oppose those threatening you. Evil only works when people cooperate with it. These things are self evident.
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
Its not just about karma for them, its for the United States. In a secret back-room deal to end the DoJ trial, Bill was told MS would be broken up and seriously devalued unless he got rid of a lot of his wealth as he was making MS, the computing industry and the United States look bad in the eyes of the world. He chose to do this with the Foundation. Notice how most of what they do is provide specific things for people, but rarely let those same people decide what they get. Full priced US drugs instead of letting poor countries obtain their own drugs (by not buying US patented drugs they could get ten times as many and save a lot more lives).
Yes, yes, just keep holding recounts (or revotes) until *your* candidate wins. That way there's none of this stressful uncertainty about how it will all turn out.
Fortunately, the Constitution is clear about the day on which the election is held.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.