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Norwegian Standards Body Members Resign Over OOXML
tsa writes "Ars Technica reports that 13 of the 23 members from the technical committee of the Norwegian standards body, the organization that manages technical standards for the country, have resigned because of the way the OOXML standardization was handled. We've previously discussed Norway's protest and ISO's rejection of other appeals. From the article: 'The standardization process for Microsoft's office format has been plagued with controversy. Critics have challenged the validity of its ISO approval and allege that procedural irregularities and outright misconduct marred the voting process in national standards bodies around the world. Norway has faced particularly close scrutiny because the country reversed its vote against approval despite strong opposition to the format by a majority of the members who participated in the technical committee.'"
Boycott Novell puts the Norwegian story into proper perspective. They have been covering another scandal, which is the OOXML team trying to take over ODF upkeep. The M$ goal has always been the destruction of standards and standards organizations like ISO. They may have won the battle against ISO but they are losing the war against ODF and other real standards. If ISO won't clean itself up, it will be replaced.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I thought it was the 'Take this chair and throw it' department? What gives?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
and you loved every minute of it, you fucking catchers
- CmdrTaco
My first thought was "It's good that these people are taking a stand against injustice.", but my second thought was "These principled people just resigned. Norway's board is entirely corrupt now." Bummer.
It's a nice statemnt, but you know that now that these people have left, they will be replaced with people more willing to just rubber stamp whatever comes down the line. Sure their voices were being ignored by their bosses, but at least they had a chance to be heard by the rest of the world.
Microsoft seems to want to to take over ODF too.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080825162905645
Apparently they are not happy there is a working specification in the wild. It being a standard must hurt even more.
Sure thing, twitter, tell us how M$ is dying. $60 billion dollars down the drain in three years, universal project rejection, and company debt are signs of strength and unbreakable monopoly! As it was in the early 90s is as it is and alway will be? OK, they are dying.
No calls now, I'm
It's a good time to start a new standards body with a new goal.
Table-ized A.I.
I can't believe no laws were broken in this process. Why can't the EU courts take this up?
Would you want your name on something you completely disagree with? Leaving with a loud public stink is the right thing to do when technical matters have been nerfed aside by asshats like M$. The next thing to do is form a proper standards body and protect it from shenanigans. You can't always keep others from doing evil things but you can always refuse to cooperate. ISO's leadership will not be able to ignore this for long.
This list can go on and on because M$ is a huge company wasting lots of money. What's hard to find are unqualified successes - products that people actaually like and want. The failure of their new OS and Office should be crippling blows they can't hide with novel licensing schemes like "Assurance" programs for big dumb companies and "free downloads" at Universities that cost students hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees.
Everyone love their touch tables, right? ha ha.
No calls now, I'm
don't forget GNUChop, who just jumped in.
any bets as to whether or not he'll break the record of 6 socks replying to each other on the same thread? anyone?
I mean, Norway? What that is useful comes from Norway? Besides being cold as ice, with a population described the same, what is Norway? I mean, Sweden, OK, it's got a ski team of buxom blondes, but Norway? What is Norway but an ice desert?
I mean, Norway? What that is useful comes from Norway? Besides being cold as ice, with a population described the same, what is Norway? I mean, Sweden, OK, it's got a ski team of buxom blondes, but Norway? What is Norway but an ice desert?
Oil, money and hi-tech? Maybe you should think before you write?
FTFA:
Actually, you can only read part of the resolutions passed by this stacked committee. As usual, there are deep secrets that the public can't access. That's just one part of what's wrong with those people and why ODF must never fall into their secretive clutches. If it does, I have little doubt that ODF will end up brain dead, on life support, turning blue for lack of oxygen, and then suddenly, sadly, we'll find it dead as a doornail.
This was the same state Unix was in around the early 1990s. We're not dead yet! In fact, we've taken over the large computer market since then.
ISO has lost its street cred so expect an Open Source replacement. Open Standards benefit everyone, so I expect someone to fill in the gap.
Steve Ballmer will rescue M$. With his genius understanding of all manner of technical issues like antipersirant and subtle manners, M$ will surely prosper. Who else could get away with chair throwing rants with such memorable quotes as, "I'm going to fucking kill Google," and still think of themselves as cooler than Steve Jobs? It's amazing. To think he has said he would have ended up wasting all of that talent at an insurance company if it were not for Bill Gates. Where would John McCain's cabinet be without this gift to the nation? How else will M$ survive the next few years?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Norweegians hibernate half the year so cut them some slack
Opera, IBM, Linpro, NUUG, OpenOffice, FreeCode.
No hidden agendas there.
He's posting at -1. Your reply, with the karma bonus even, makes sure all his stuff is visible on the default page. Who needs shill accounts with self modded idiots like you around?
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
I can't believe no laws were broken in this process. Why can't the EU courts take this up?
Easy - a "standards body" is not an entity with any legal weight. All it is is a group of people who get together and make recommendations that others may choose to follow. It's purely a political process but not at all a legal one. The only value that a standards body has is that other entities (EG: companies) trust it to determine what technologies to implement and in what fashion.
For example, there there is no legal requirement that any software vendor implement TCP or IP. But TCP and IP are detailed by the ISOC. If you are a software company, you will implement your TCP stack in accordance with ISOC standards or your implementation will be considered sub-standard.
But if you screw up your implementation, there's little ISOC can do, and nothing legally. They can say you are bad, they can make recommendations against your software. But that's it.
The only weight that a standards body has is that others trust the insight and recommendations made by the standards body. When a standards body can be legitimately accused of shenanigans, that's pretty much it's end.
Goodbye ISO, it's been nice knowing ye...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
...if (and only if) those principled individuals set up a rival standards organization, have as part of their charter that they refute corruption and automatically negate standards tainted by corruption, re-certify where legal all known-to-be-"safe" standards under their own name, and then lobby research shops and companies hurt by the ISO scandal to work with them. Fork the certification market, but because of rebranding existing standards, no other standards body would ever need to be involved.
Another alternative - standards bodies rely on the income from charging absurd fees for standards, relying more on secrecy than anything. If you pay enough for a standard, you won't just give it away, in theory. If some suitably rich investor with lots of contacts and enough cunning bought up copies of those standards and then just dumped them onto public sites, it could cripple standards organizations for a long time. If it was clearly linked to the ISO debacle, ISO might not be too keen to be seen to complain - most countries deem bribery (even outside of government) a more serious offense than a petty trade secret violation and the press are more into scandals (which ISO is undoubtedly riddled with) than knuckle-rapping.
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)
The above string of -1 rated posts demonstrates that you are well organized and able to scrub Slashdot of any content you please. If what you say is true, that twitter has all of these sockpuppets, then you have lots of modpoints and time on your hands to track and censor him. If that's not true, you have censored the comments of about eight users. Either way, we see an organized but insane smear attack.
What's this story about? Stacked panels and other dirty tricks? How nice of you to reveal yourself.
Intellectual property was the desert property of the twenth century.
When principled people withdraw from an endeavor, they take with them the credibility they leant to it. The credibility of principled participants is all a standards body has to offer.
They are by their action hastening a day when a new, credible standards body can displace the corrupt corpse of ISO.
Good on 'em.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
First among them treason. Agents of a US corporation have subverted major agencies of sovereign nations. Those government employees of non-US nations have by their participation betrayed their nation, the public trust they held in their positions, and their duty. They've done it to preserve the profitability of a foreign enterprise, and by extension line their own pockets.
It's only a matter of time before this is figured out. Heads will roll - in some cases figuratively and in some cases literally.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Erris
Mactrope
gnutoo
inTheLoo
willeyhill
westbake
Odder
ibane
myCopyWrong
right handed
GNUChop
All these accounts belong to the same person And he's getting modded up? Where do I sign up
for this deal? Where I can game Slashdot so blatantly and be rewarded for my troubles?
Once you've crossed that threshold, whatever you had to say is completely irrelevant. I don't care
who you are. Rules exist in online communities for a good reason, and this... sorry, shitstorm of
"I agree with you" replies by a single person is just too much.
Is ISO something like a bond rating service? For sale at the right price.
Don't have the logic or modpoints to fight the truth? I guess that leaves you attacking the messenger. Just as bankrupt as M$ itself.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Oil. It and Britain work the North Sea, a place you don't want to be. It's said the next Euro-war will be between Britain and Norway, over the North Sea oil. We all know the outcome of that one (Saudi Arabia).
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/10/02/norway-standards-members-walk
I was shocked by how excellent the "rough Google translation" was. Unless they had a human clean up the translation a bit, that is amazingly good English prose for a machine translator to emit. (I can't speak for how accurate it is, but it seems plausible enough.)
English is a mess, with lots of irregular usages. How about Norwegian -- is it particularly easy or particularly hard to translate?
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Trolls? (come from Norway)
It's worth pointing out that only one of the resigning members was a member of the SN/K 185 committee before OOXML was brought in for review.
These are essentially members that joined principally to block OOXML as a standard, and have been very vocal in their opposition.
Given their "OOXML - Go to Hell" public demonstrations, their professionalism and objectivity should probably be taken with a pinch of salt.
It's said the next Euro-war will be between Britain and Norway, over the North Sea oil.
What?! Who the hell says that?
Firstly, prosperous modern democracies with large middle classes and a lot to lose do not go to war. There has never been a single case. It is just not going to happen.
Secondly, there could be no victory. If Norway attacked Britain, the rest of Europe would stand by and watch Norway reap its well-deserved stomping from the vastly superior British armed forces. If Britain attacked Norway, the rest of the EU would declare war on them. Either way would bring utter disaster for the aggresor.
If you'd said Russia v. Norway, that would be at least a little more within the bounds of extreme probability, though still highly unlikely. The world will have to get a lot crazier before Russia attacking mainstream Europe over relatively minor resources would be anything other than a suicide mission. Russia may be a little aggresive but they're not insane.
Whoever told that to you is an idiot.
Let my new 7-digit UID be a lesson to all - write down your passwords.
Actually Finland came out far worse than even Norway in that scandal. The language differences help keep things under wraps now that the government stopped publishing translations in Swedish.
Now if only norway stopped whaling, i would be able to put it in my small list of 'Wonderful countries of the world' next to sweden.
Read radical news here
and the parent's parent's parent are modded insightful ?
are there any morons among us, who are STILL saying that microsoft did nothing wrong in this ooxml scandal ?
Read radical news here
Let's see. As of this moment (7:30 AM), this article has 102 posts.
Going through the accounts listed in willyhill's journal, I
count 19 posts by 13 different accounts, most of them in
this thread.
That means that a single person posted 18.6% of all comments
so far on this article alone.
willyhill posted exactly four times on this article, all with the
same account (that I can tell).
Who's 'cluttering up' the place again?
Slashdot is broken when twitter can post some "M$ sux" drivel, have
someone point out he's shilling his own comments with so many accounts,
and then come back with 'dumb fuck' in the same thread - and still be
modded 'interesting'.
But hey, not all of us can have 14 accounts. It takes a special kind
of special to handle that.
I think you found the right solution there.
After rejecting all those national appeals on a whim, I'm surprised that the ISO leadership hasn't been given the boot yet. It's stunning that they can get away with such a dictatorial approach to setting international standards.
Eject them, using rotten tomatoes if needed.
didn't IBM also resign from ISO over OOXML? i think this form of passive protest is important as it draws attention to the corruption at hand. if nothing else, it's garnered media attention...
Where? MSNBC? MS Newseek? MS WashingtonPost?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
When the oil gets to $200, 300, 500 - and priced in euros by then - there will be skirmishes. I wouldn't call that a "war". Norway is full of stoned-out conscripts whose main goal is to get more stoned. I jest, they can't get any more stoned. Britain will squeeze and Norway will pop.
I've read a lot of his posts, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but my conclusion remains: He's mentally ill. As in "paranoid schizophrenic".
The EU courts have no jurisdiction in Norway because we are NOT members of the EU. And we don't want to become members thank you very much. We have our own courts and want to remain a sovereign country.
Twitter, seriously, you need help. You and Roy -- the black helicopters are coming to get me -- Schestowitz.
This isn't the voice of some conspiracy, it's a bunch of Slashdot users who think you're batshit insane. Which you are, please see a psychologist, you are probably mentally ill.
But I couldn't help laughing at the "Donate online" link being close to the "Bribe Payers Index Survey 2008" link on their policy & research page...
This is what they achieved.
With only corrupt people left behind, they can now help take out ODF entirely.
Norway is not a member state of the EU.
Some other European countries whose standardization bodies showed pretty biased behaviour in the OOXML issue (like Sweden, Austria,...) are, however.
protesters that have pissed off the Norwegian public to the point that it's now a symbolic action to keep it going.
acting with stubbornness, like a middle eastern nation who havent been able to grow out of religious dictatorship yet ...
norway got way lowered in my perception scale of civilized countries just now, with your post.
Read radical news here
1) Destroy standards body.
2) This makes your closed proprietary format the de facto standard.
3) Which locks out the competition and locks in users.
4) Profit!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Comment removed based on user account deletion
ya its prety hard to follow the real story with those around. maybe he should apply for pets.com.
While MS pulled some dirty tricks to get OOXML approved and many of us are rightfully questioning ISO's credibility, this article appears to be (at best) sensationalizing things according to one of the arstechnica comments:
My family, you jackass.
why is that ?
its because a multitude of stupid morons using the internet have taken to a stupid fad named 'godwinning' and started to debase and trivialize the biggest lesson mankind ever learned ?
Read radical news here
Considering synthetic fuel and oil supplies can be readily manufactured for $100-$150/barrel, that just isn't going to happen. Additionally, at $150/barrel, whole new oil reserves become financially viable to obtain. This alone will keep the price of crude down for many, many years to come.
And before that happens, you'll see people using crops like hemp (which is not pot and can have zero THC and has almost twice the yield of corn) for biofuels before people will pay $200/barrel for raw crude; let alone $300-500.
If you call that 'lack of proof' and 'hogwash' then you might as well change your name to "Microsoft shill #732"
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Well I quite enjoy government work, but maybe my situation's different since I'm working in the New Zealand government which doesn't sound as if it's very stereotypical as governments go around the world. I also know that the other people in my IT department know their stuff and are really good at what they do, which seems to contradict what I hear about other governments and also quite a few of the businesses we've dealt with who've tried to sell us stuff with all kinds of problems. (eg. Companies who don't understand or try to hide basic security issues about the software they're selling are common.)
This would be all about the design of the government and the people it attracts to work for it, as well as the environment they're put in, would it not? Introspectively I consider myself to be "honest" (at least as much as anyone considers themselves honest), and I enjoy working for the government in New Zealand. There are a few exceptions on occasion, but generally government departments here are independent from the politicians. If and when interference is discovered (and it does happen occasionally), it tends to be frowned upon from everywhere and most people who get caught don't last long. We definitely don't have politically-aligned appointments in the same way that the US Feds do.
I like working here because it's a good working environment, the people are good to work with, and the idea of doing something towards public service actually appeals to me more than just being in a business to make money (perhaps for someone else) often at the expense what I might think of as quality work.
Granted that the entire country is about the same size as a typical US State (~4.1 million people) so the structure's different and the government's probably more directly responsive to people who vote for it than in some other places. There's also some very strict legislation (notably the Official Information Act) which essentially states that anyone (or at least NZ citizens, I think) can request information about anything from a NZ Government Department and the department has to provide it unless there's a good reason not to. (Allowable reasons to withhold might include sensitivity of information, privacy of individuals who aren't very relevant, questions that aren't specific enough or would take an unreasonable amount of work to answer, not actually having the information in which case the request might be transferred to somewhere that does, etc.)
If there are disputes about how the department is interpreting the law in responding, an independent ombudsman can investigate with a lot of authority and basically force the department to release it, if they agree with the complaint. (Here's an Australian journalist raving about it.) The IT areas I work in have a lot to do with records management, and there's a huge amount of emphasis in getting everyone who works here to file their information properly so it can quickly found if and when it's ever requested. (We'd get in trouble if it were later discovered we missed something important after it was requested.)
Everyone who works in government departments here is doing so on the assumption that what they do today might be reported publicly the next day, but it's not really that bad if you're doing it as habit because people just get used to doing work with the expectation that in the future, they might have to back up what they've done. It's usually the managers who'll have to take responsibility, so they're immediately interested in making sure that what their employees do is as high quality as possible and will stand up to public
the household brand names you are so accustomed to from germany today were producing similar stuff pre-nazi era. with the advent of nazis, they have transitioned to producing machines of killing and profited from it highly and therefore both supported the nazis before they got power in anticipation of this, and supported them after they got power and started a world war.
they were just corporations like microsoft, normal companies, back in the day.
this is a transition. a company's actions transforms both its big wigs and employees and its characteristics. if we let microsoft to have its way like this, it will resort to this kind of action more and more, and totally transform the i.t. scene and itself in the process.
Read radical news here
From the Wikipedia entry (yeah, yeah, I know...)
That sound about right, Twitter? I think you could tick off at least five on that list before breakfast.
Assuming what you claim is the way it would be, the difference is it doesn't cost $100 to pull a barrel, not even close - it's pure profit after 10. It does cost that and so much more for alternatives, and there simply is not enough. There were millions upon millions of years to stockpile crude. You ain't gonna get that in a couple of years. Hemp? You must be a stoned-out norway hippie freak. Figures, but I suppose you freaks have to do something with all those seeds from your low-grade pot.
Nor is any particular flavor of BSD.
Mac OS X is a certified BSD based Unix.
Martin
Only Mac OS X is a certified Unix with BSD roots. The other BSDs aren't certified. But then - as symbolset has pointed out: OpenSolaris isn't certified either.
Martin
Everybody realizes that this comment and the GP to which it is a response were posted by the same person, right?
Regardless of what he's saying... how can he be moderated up?
Is there something I'm missing here?
ISO only exists to sell printed material anyway. They are the official source of printed standards. If we all decide to take our standards and go home, they will have nothing to sell. They do need to pay attention and keep us happy. They like their little monopoly, and if they want to keep it they do need to play fair in the long run. And by the way, deciding that the criteria for voting was showing up with money made it too easy for Microsoft Gold Partners to overrun the meeting.
aaand ?
Read radical news here
Here's twitter asking for mod points from his buddies on IRC to influence this thread.
Here's twitter admitting to operating the 'GNUChop' account.
You can't get any more blatant than that.
When the oil gets to $200, 300, 500 - and priced in euros by then - there will be skirmishes.
Maybe so, but not between Euro nations like Britain and Norway. They have far more to lose from sanctions and possibly military reciprocity than they could ever gain from a bit of oil, not matter how much it was worth. You're talking like oil is the key to all world riches - hardly. Nice to have but everywhere else seems to get along OK without it.
And as another reply mentioned, there are long-term ceilings on oil price above, say, $200 or so in today's dollars. It could spike amove there short to medium term, but at that level production of alternatives would be extremely profitable, no war needed. Hell, you can make gas from coal liquifecation. Guess which country has 250 billion tonnes of coal? Hint: you probably live in it.
And let's not forget that resourceless islands like Japan have had the shit scared out of them by the latest oil price bubble. They are *pouring* money into research to get themselves off the oil teat. And you know, I heard they might make a car or two down there...
Although your silly comments about the stoned nature of Norwegian troops makes me wonder if I'm just feeding some weird kind of troll.
Let my new 7-digit UID be a lesson to all - write down your passwords.
If Eurozone countries were willing to go to war over making $100 more on oil they could drill for rather than make themselves, they'd already be doing it, since they could make that right now. Obviously, they are not.
And please, yank, don't you dare criticise anyone else's pot. Marijuana in the USA is the worst in the world bar none. Plus, it's illegal!
Let my new 7-digit UID be a lesson to all - write down your passwords.
Of course we trade with the EU, but we are not members of the EU and they have no powers over us.
I should know having studied law and the EU at University. EFTA is a separate entity controlled by Norway, and we police our own compliance or non-compliance. The EU would have to complain to "our" own EFTA Court.