Australia Mandates Microsoft's Office Open XML

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Australia Mandates Microsoft's Office Open XML

Posted by timothy on Tuesday January 18, 2011 @04:11PM from the not-to-be-confused-with dept.

littlekorea writes "The Australian Government has released a common operating environment desktop policy that — among security controls aimed at reducing the potential for leaks of Government data — mandates the ECMA-376 version of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) standard and productivity suites that can 'read and write' the .docx format, effectively locking the country's public servants into using Microsoft Office. The policy [PDF] also appears to limit desktop operating systems to large, off-the-shelf commercial offerings at the expense of smaller distributions."

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Down under is going down, down, down by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:14 · Score: 2, Funny

The land down under just went under.
1. Re:Down under is going down, down, down by c0lo · 2011-01-18 16:43 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  The land down under just went underer.
  ftfy
  
  --
  Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
2. Re:Down under is going down, down, down by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 17:40 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  I wonder if this is at ends with australian government themselves, given that they're following a standard which is not implemented?
3. Re:Down under is going down, down, down by porl · 2011-01-18 21:11 · Score: 2
  
  i live in a country run by morons.
4. Re:Down under is going down, down, down by Algorithmnast · 2011-01-19 01:42 · Score: 2
  
  i live in a country run by morons.
  So you live .... on Earth?
5. Re:Down under is going down, down, down by morgauxo · 2011-01-19 01:58 · Score: 1
  
  Don't we all?
6. Re:Down under is going down, down, down by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 02:49 · Score: 0
  
  you too?
7. Re:Down under is going down, down, down by man_of_mr_e · 2011-01-19 03:50 · Score: 1
  
  Note: It specifies ECMA-376, not ISO 29500. Office does in fact implement ECMA-376.
  
  --
  If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
8. Re:Down under is going down, down, down by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 05:41 · Score: 0
  
  Ever since they started trying to block porn at the shoreline...
I keep seeing... by msauve · 2011-01-18 16:17 · Score: 2

all these /. articles about gov't IT and Internet policy in OZ. It's hard to believe they're truly that clueless. (Not that us Yanks are much better off, it's just more centered around "security from terrorists," and ""intellectual property"". - same, only different)

--
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
1. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:26 · Score: 0
  
  Government by bureaucrats and politicians is always guaranteed to be awful. That's what happens when you put control of everything into the hands of a few and then stop paying attention.
  Amazingly, when radicals talk about opening governance to everyone, lots of people quickly decry the idea, complaining about how idiotic "the people" are. Are all the people really any less idiotic than a small group of people? Really?
2. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:28 · Score: 0
  
  Not clueless. These people are very smart, or at least they know how to obfuscate and obscure. But you have to wonder who is paying whom - follow the money!
  While I'm here, anyone know if non-proprietary solutions were evaluated at all and how come Freedom didn't trump proprietary? Or was the whole process just a cosy little chat under the bedsheets behind locked doors with the vendor of said proprietary standard?
3. Re:I keep seeing... by amiga3D · 2011-01-18 16:39 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  They're not clueless. They're very smart. It's just that their priorities aren't your priorities. Their priority is putting money in their pocket. Who do you figure hands out money? It's not the linux geeks I'll tell ya that much. :)
4. Re:I keep seeing... by AHuxley · 2011-01-18 16:56 · Score: 1
  
  Follow the cash flow. This keeps a lot of IT departments in cash and expanding. Running around fixing, converting, working with, upgrading, testing... MS keep the support teams very productive.
  Where where the other US products Australia could have selected from?
  Or Microsoft offered some very unique file tracking options.
  From simple unique identifiers too ??
  From schools to gov to states, to teaching hospitals, MS has been very busy in Australia.
  
  --
  Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
5. Re:I keep seeing... by exomondo · 2011-01-18 16:59 · Score: 1
  
  all these /. articles about gov't IT and Internet policy in OZ. It's hard to believe they're truly that clueless. (Not that us Yanks are much better off, it's just more centered around "security from terrorists," and ""intellectual property"". - same, only different)
  I think most (or all?) aside from this have actually been speculation, rumors or things that have failed pretty epically long before implementation.
6. Re:I keep seeing... by Sulphur · 2011-01-18 17:30 · Score: 1
  
  Government by bureaucrats and politicians is always guaranteed to be awful. That's what happens when you put control of everything into the hands of a few and then stop paying attention.
  Amazingly, when radicals talk about opening governance to everyone, lots of people quickly decry the idea, complaining about how idiotic "the people" are. Are all the people really any less idiotic than a small group of people? Really?
  Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
7. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 17:40 · Score: 1
  
  But MS Office doesn't even follow the standard, does it? Does that mean that the government has to shut down since it can't produce any documents?
8. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 17:41 · Score: 0
  
  It's sniffing too much asbestos, uranium, opals and pearls which have caused these relapses of common sense. However mighty the mermaids, the magical elephant princesses or the traditions of the great sleep are, they can't save the Australian public from the IT humiliations caused by their governments hungry, hungry habits.
9. Re:I keep seeing... by jmorris42 · 2011-01-18 17:51 · Score: 1
  
  SOme of those ideas have some merit. But in general that smells a lot like direct Democracy and Democracy is a terrible idea. The US Founders considered it to be worse than any of the other options, Kings included. No, the answer is to keep government small enough that a) the voters have a decent shot of keeping up with what it is doing without it being a full time job and b) it doesn't have much opportunity to be evil in the first place.
  Take this example. If the Australian government weren't so large that it's buying decisions pretty much dictate what everyone else uses because everyone does a large percentage of their business with the government it wouldn't matter as much what they picked. And it wouldn't be such a tempting target for backroom dirty dealing.
  
  --
  Democrat delenda est
10. Re:I keep seeing... by mjwx · 2011-01-18 18:18 · Score: 1
  
  all these /. articles about gov't IT and Internet policy in OZ. It's hard to believe they're truly that clueless.
  Do you think politicians anywhere aren't dumb?
  US govt aso hands out no-bid contracts and sets some rather stupid standards. Same thing with the UK govt, Japanese govt, German govt ad nausium.
  The thing about this standard is that I doubt it will be followed, the Australian Public Service is really a feudal nightmare on multiple levels. The king of IT will always be fighting the King of accounting. Then of course the king of Council A will fight with the King of Council B for funding, that the internal feuds have the fuel needed to continue. The same story continues up to the parliamentary level, with Abbott (opposition leader) and Gillard (Prime Minister) trading pointless jabs at each other in parliament question time.
  
  --
  Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
11. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 18:24 · Score: 0
  
  It sounds MS has it's workers ruling Australia. With taxes from all over the world the monopoly has enough money to buy any government.
  OOXML is MS-closed standard which it also bought to named as "open" standard. Funny open standard, which only MS can read/produce.
12. Re:I keep seeing... by WinstonWolfIT · 2011-01-18 18:56 · Score: 1
  
  Again, we're roughly half the size of California. Stop comparing us to the US, and start comparing us to other relatively small countries.
13. Re:I keep seeing... by Bigjeff5 · 2011-01-18 18:57 · Score: 1
  
  There aren't really any office products out there that are better than MS Office. If there were, people wouldn't use MS Office. OpenOffice.org isn't terrible, but it's still no where near as good as MS Office.
  That's why they settled on an MS "open" (what a crock) standard. It's better, and better usually wins.
  
  --
  Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
14. Re:I keep seeing... by Nursie · 2011-01-18 19:07 · Score: 1
  
  People are idiots.
  For all politicians get it wrong, and wrong, and wrong again, it's not total kneejerk-reaction nonsense.
  Give power to the people and you'll find pretty fast that a lot of people are quite happy to have immigrants and homosexuals hanged, to ban even more stuff than the government, to react with short-sighted, self-destructive strikes....
  I believe that *I* should be given more say in how things are run, but not that everyone else should. Until this situation is resolved (with me being handed "Emperor of the world" title), western 'democratic' government is the best form of inertia and control on the ravening hoards I can think of.
15. Re:I keep seeing... by scdeimos · 2011-01-18 19:12 · Score: 2
  
  Funny open standard, which only MS can read/produce.
  Plenty of apps and utils can read OOXML, including Open Office. The point is that aside from MS Office, the only thing that can currently write OOXML is LibreOffice.
16. Re:I keep seeing... by Requiem18th · 2011-01-18 19:14 · Score: 1
  
  Don't worry, I learned from this H.264 guy that this is totally ok, OOXML is free because we are free to pay for it, and it's open because every can see Microsoft implementing it!
  
  --
  But... the future refused to change.
17. Re:I keep seeing... by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-01-18 19:40 · Score: 1
  
  The US Founders considered it to be worse than any of the other options, Kings included.
  The US Founders were aristocrats - the very thought of mere rabble voting on major policy issues was not only off-putting to them, it was downright dangerous because they'd get kicked out of power real soon. Just to remind, US had property qualifications to vote when it was founded, which in some states amounted to over half of their entire population.
18. Re:I keep seeing... by profplump · 2011-01-18 19:47 · Score: 1
  
  "Better" is pretty subjective though. There are lots of better text editors, better page layout programs, better structured document systems, etc. MS Word takes a jack-of-all-trades approach that necessarily leads to poor mastery in any particular area. Some people are willing to make the tradeoff to only use a single program, but that's often not the "better" choice. Minivans are by far the most versatile vehicle for many people, but many people dismiss them unless they really need a car that can do it all.
  Where MS Office really shines is at being pre-installed and built into the "base" computer price. And even ignoring the hidden costs, the pre-installed bit by itself can be a problem -- when MS tried to sell Works to home users, for example, there were all sorts of problems with Works vs. Word compatibility.
19. Re:I keep seeing... by thegarbz · 2011-01-18 20:05 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  One of the key problems in our government is career politicians get positions that aren't relevant to their history, career, or expertise. Many of them have a degree in getting votes doing things like graduating with a degree in Economics and then going straight into politics. Does this sound like a suitable background for a person making critical decisions on the IT in any government? Well this is our current Communications Minister. At least the opposition's communication minister Malcom Turnbull actually did something to earn his position such as chaired an internet service provider. I'm willing to bet he has more clue than the current buffoon. I'm willling to bet everyone has more of a clue than the current buffoon.
  
  This happens with many ministers. Such as Penny Wong our former Minister for Climate change, who's only real experience with anything environmental was siding with loggers in the 90s logging debates. She also has a degree in Law and Arts which I'm sure is a lot of help for her current portfolio which includes a huge finance position.
20. Re:I keep seeing... by Neil+Boekend · 2011-01-18 20:28 · Score: 1
  
  Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.
  By the way: it would be unworkable to have a democracy like the ancient Greek. That was a good start, but we think now that all the people should be allowed to vote. If all the people would spend several hours a day in politics (as the ancient greeks did, at least those who were allowed to vote) society would collapse.
  opening governance is a bad plan for the common folk and a good plan for the corporations. They would simply pay more people to vote what they want to vote and have it pass always. Don't forget that the group who would actually be involved would be small, only those interested now would vote. See Switzerland In most cases about 25% turns up, even with a EUR 3 penalty for not voting. Combine that with even more subjects to vote on and a strong corporate system (at least lightly corrupt).
  
  --
  Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
21. Re:I keep seeing... by Bert64 · 2011-01-18 20:43 · Score: 1
  
  MSOffice is not the best suite out there and never has been...
  Wordperfect was always a superior word processor...
  OpenOffice is perfectly good especially when you consider the price.
  MS keep people locked in, if the lock-in wasn't there then very few people would use their products at all.
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
22. Re:I keep seeing... by cheekyjohnson · 2011-01-18 20:43 · Score: 1
  
  Also, many people seem to come to the conclusion that there are only two options: either the government is given all of the power, or the people are. That's just insane. There is plenty of room for middle ground that is better than what we have now.
  
  --
  Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
23. Re:I keep seeing... by cheekyjohnson · 2011-01-18 20:45 · Score: 2
  
  Give power to the people and you'll find pretty fast that a lot of people are quite happy to have immigrants and homosexuals hanged, to ban even more stuff than the government, to react with short-sighted, self-destructive strikes....
  There are more than two options, you know. There is a middle ground where the power of the government is reduced and the people have more (but not all) power (and still must work within the bounds of the law and the constitution). That sounds more ideal than the corrupt system we have now (even if only slightly so).
  
  --
  Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
24. Re:I keep seeing... by Mithur · 2011-01-18 20:52 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The "Ancient Greek Democracy" was very alike to our democracy: A plutocracy were the wealth make the decisions, very far away from the people of the country. Now, we have a lot more of circus, but the inner workings are exactly the same.
25. Re:I keep seeing... by jimicus · 2011-01-18 21:24 · Score: 4, Insightful
  Let me play devil's advocate for a minute here.
  I'm going to make a number of assumptions. All are what I would consider "reasonable", though obviously they're assumptions so make of them what you will.
  Government bodies the world over are realising that many of their documents (of which there are thousands) really need to be stored in a standardised format so it's easy to continue to open them in future. The big cheeses at the top are waking up to this not because they've been told (when was the last time you saw someone listen to you that closely?), but because the last time they needed to get their hands on the computerised original of a document that was created ten years ago, there was a problem and it was going to take a long time to fix.
  Most people (who aren't heavily involved with either the ISO or with IT) are wholly unaware of the corruption surrounding Microsoft getting their document approved as an ISO standard.
  While we bang on about how Office isn't always compatible with documents created in older versions, for most people that has seldom been a big problem. And even if it has, we're talking about a file format which isn't supported in older versions anyhow so they'd have to upgrade sooner rather than later.
  Nobody ever got fired for buying ${FLAVOUR_OF_THE_DECADE}.
  So at just about the time that it becomes apparent that some sort of standardised document format is necessary, enter Microsoft stage left, proudly announcing that they've spent a long time working on just that and if they upgrade now, they can have an office suite that uses a standard document format. All they need to do is dictate that every department purchases something that is compatible with OOXML. The issues surrounding OOXML aren't brought up because the big cheeses are unaware that they even exist and the Microsoft sales team certainly aren't going to volunteer such information - in fact, there's a good chance they're not aware of the issues either.
  Where's the salesman for OO.o? Where's the flashy suit, the company car and the briefcase full of numbers showing cost savings? These guys are from a very traditional background, and know little or nothing of the F/OSS world. From their perspective, software is developed by businesses - and what sort of a business can't even be bothered to put together a sales department? If you've ever tried explaining F/OSS to that cousin of yours who runs a business and has always bought Microsoft products - and before you've even got the first couple of sentences out you can see you're getting looks of open disbelief, by the time you've finished your cousin is seriously thinking you need to see a psychiatrist - those are the people who are making the decisions.
26. Re:I keep seeing... by PseudonymousBraveguy · 2011-01-18 22:15 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Not even MS Office is able to write OOXML as in ECMA-376:
  
  Office 2010 provides read support for ECMA-376, read/write support for ISO/IEC 29500 Transitional, and read support for ISO/IEC 29500 Strict.
  (emphasis mine) [source: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179190.aspx ]
27. Re:I keep seeing... by squizzar · 2011-01-18 22:24 · Score: 2
  
  Whilst I'm not the greatest fan of the way most governments in the world seem to work these days I have to ask: Have you met the rabble? I'm probably no better informed than they are but still, it's scary when you talk to a lot of people, who don't really have an interest in understanding anything beyond what they've heard from the media or other like-minded people.
  Consider direct democracy in this case: Most people will be thinking 'what's wrong with Microsoft, I use it all the time.' The few voices who are better informed (IMHO) and have considered the consequences of this will be completely drowned out. You'll be taking the keys to power from politicians and giving them to Rupert Murdoch.
  I'd say a principle of a representative democracy should be that the representatives seek to understand the issues on which they cast votes in our names, the fact that that is rarely the case is possibly down to the 'rabble' often voting for people who think along their lines. They have less interest in trying to reach the best conclusion on an issue, and more the most popular one. That said I can't imagine that the collective wisdom of the general public would be any better...
28. Re:I keep seeing... by Neil+Boekend · 2011-01-18 22:26 · Score: 1
  
  Damn, now I can't mod you up!
  
  --
  Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
29. Re:I keep seeing... by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-01-18 22:28 · Score: 1
  
  That said I can't imagine that the collective wisdom of the general public would be any better
  The question you have to ask yourself, then - would it be any worse? And if not, then why create a layer of corrupt politicians in between that does absolutely nothing useful?
30. Re:I keep seeing... by hairyfeet · 2011-01-18 22:47 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Not really. Last I checked the average IQ is around 104 which means for everyone that actually bothered to learn about an issue and to weigh its merits you'd have a HS football field full of knuckle draggers that would believe anything the TV told them to which would pretty much torpedo your "power to the people" idea pretty quick. I mean just look how many without health insurance rallied against any kind of reform at all because its "socialist" without even knowing what that word means, they just knew Beck told them it was bad.
  That is why I think the ONLY way a more direct democracy could work would be to bring back poll tests to weed out the most stupid. This would also be more fair to those that actually cared and participated because they cared by keeping their vote from being negated because "the TV told me to". I mean if you can't even answer the most basic of questions like "what are the three branches of government" or "what is the difference between a state law and a federal law" then why should you have the right to screw things up for everyone else?
  And I believe this would help with one of the biggest problems we are facing ATM, the crooked but smooth talking politician. Nowadays it is all about sound bytes designed to manipulate the masses. But if the stupid couldn't vote (and just hearing they had to take a test would cause probably a good 70% to not even attempt voting) then politicians would actually have to be able to talk about what they were for/against and back it up instead of just whipping some sound bytes off that appealed to whatever group they wanted to hit this week. This might also allow us to have a real multi-party system since the incredible power of the MSM would be shot to hell. And I'm not even talking about basing it on IQ or test taking which some smart people freeze up on, we are talking about just being asked some basic questions about the process.
  After all to use the all powerful /. car analogy: We don't let anyone operate a motor vehicle without proving they understand the basics so why in the hell should we let them vote which risks impacting a hell of a lot more lives than any car wreck?
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
31. Re:I keep seeing... by JohnVanVliet · 2011-01-18 23:05 · Score: 1
  
  "There aren't really any office products out there that are better than MS Office."
  there is VI
  Also OO has everything i need and then some .
  
  --
  "I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
32. Re:I keep seeing... by ThePhilips · 2011-01-18 23:44 · Score: 1
  
  That was a good start, but we think now that all the people should be allowed to vote.
  
  What at some point of time stroke me as idiotic: why somebody who e.g. pays no taxes should have a say in how my tax money are managed?
  
  --
  All hope abandon ye who enter here.
33. Re:I keep seeing... by AmiMoJo · 2011-01-19 00:19 · Score: 1
  
  Looking at it from the opposite side are there any apps apart from MS Office that fully support document permissions, stripping personally identifiable data, signing for authenticity and the like? My guess would that those things are what have made them standardise on the MS Office format. Using Adobe software for PDF reading/writing is a simular situation, companies love not letting you print stuff or add annotations. They also like being able to see who wrote what and when, then strip that info out for public release.
  Does LibreOffice do that stuff?
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
34. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 01:04 · Score: 0
  
  The political corruption will just move to focus on poisoning all public discussion on policy. There would still be people who need to turn policy into statute, and that's another prime focus for corruption that can't be eliminated by direct democracy. Then there's the rest of the judiciary and executive orders...
35. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 01:08 · Score: 0
  
  That works about as long as they're not pwn3d by someone over the choices their priorities led them to make. "Smart" is a relative concept. The goal's to ensure you can line your pockets indefinitely- that's smart if you're so inclined. Doing stupid things that'll put money in your pockets in the short term but cost you dearly down the line isn't "smart", though some could be led to believe that.
36. Re:I keep seeing... by domatic · 2011-01-19 01:09 · Score: 1
  
  MS Office and Adobe may do these things but they don't seem to do it well judging from all the scandals where blacked out text was still embedded in classified and legal documents.
37. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 01:10 · Score: 0
  
  Then don't opt out.
  Tell those bozo's that MS Word was evaluated against the new government standards as MANDATORY criteria, and failed / found deficient, and therefore ineligible for further consideration or purchase (actually rented).
  And that we will move to the COE mandated standard, ONCE we can find a product that meets said standard. A committee as been formed to report when and if a vendor has a product out.
  As for security, all those macros/active content, and tricked into executing text - in a word document - I hope someone releases the mother of all OOXML as in ECMA-376 viruses/malware that might make them think again.
38. Re:I keep seeing... by cheekyjohnson · 2011-01-19 01:28 · Score: 1
  
  Last I checked the average IQ is around 104 which means for everyone that actually bothered to learn about an issue and to weigh its merits you'd have a HS football field full of knuckle draggers that would believe anything the TV told them to which would pretty much torpedo your "power to the people" idea pretty quick.
  So in other words, we'd be exactly where we are now: politicians lying and controlling the people. The only difference, of course, is that the chances of corruption would be slightly less than they are now.
  Furthermore, I'd rather have an ignorant group of people have the chance to vote on some issues than have power-hungry, corrupt, corporate tools vote exclusively on them with little representation of the people.
  
  That is why I think the ONLY way a more direct democracy could work would be to bring back poll tests to weed out the most stupid.
  We aren't talking about a direct democracy.
  
  I mean if you can't even answer the most basic of questions like "what are the three branches of government" or "what is the difference between a state law and a federal law" then why should you have the right to screw things up for everyone else?
  "Screw things up"? Like the current politicians are doing now (especially for things related to new technology)? Ignorance doesn't magically vanish in a small group of people, nor are politicians geniuses, even if they know slightly more about politics than the average tool.
  I'm sorry, but I'll take my chances with the so-called stupid people rather than the people I know for a fact are doing wrong and are corrupt.
  
  --
  Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
39. Re:I keep seeing... by msauve · 2011-01-19 01:56 · Score: 1
  
  "why somebody who e.g. pays no taxes should have a say in how my tax money are managed"
  
  Or why I, who owns property/pays taxes in two different local jurisdictions, shouldn't be able to vote in both local elections. (can you in some states?) Didn't we fight a war over taxation without representation?
  
  To the earlier point, that's the problem with voter registration drives - it only encourages those who won't educate themselves about issues/candidates to vote, when the won't even get off the couch to register if not pushed. An uninformed electorate is worse than a small one.
  
  --
  "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
40. Re:I keep seeing... by iserlohn · 2011-01-19 02:13 · Score: 1
  
  Small government may be the correct approach before the widespread adoption as corporations being the main driver of the private sector.
  The power void left by a retreating public sector would most likely be taken up these corporations. They are not accountable to anyone but their shareholders (until they fail financially of course), and are much less transparent than government by almost all measures.
  Some people like to point out that you have choice in the private sector unlike the public sector. This is not strictly true. Free markets left to their own devices tend towards the more stable oligopoly and monopoly states. This is because of economies of scale and barriers of entry imposed by a market participant that has a disproportionate amount of market influence. I've covered this is previous posts but unless that is a major change in the environment of the market (regulatory, technological, etc), it is not economically feasible for new entrants to compete. By the time the market environment has changed, the harm has already been done.
  The idealogical war between the two opposing sides - corporatist against the socialist, have been fought in and between various nation-states over the past 90 years. It has been established that neither a pure corporatist (ie. fascist) nor a pure socialist (ie. communist) ideology came out ahead. In the end, fascist states were defeated, but then so was communism. The only states that survived are those that mixed in laissez-faire capitalism with a socialist welfare system. And that's not a bad thing. The system is about balance, and unaccountable power within the system leads to abuses whether it is in the public or private sector. The state needs to be big enough the provide the services to its citizenry that the public sector does best, and also big enough to provide regulatory oversight to keep corporations in check.
  
  --
  :. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
41. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 02:21 · Score: 0
  
  "Perfectly good when you consider the price" - another way of saying "good thing this is free, cause otherwise it sucks".
42. Re:I keep seeing... by I8TheWorm · 2011-01-19 02:43 · Score: 1
  
  I always feel compelled to correct the democracy mistake. We are not now, nor have we ever been, a democracy. We are a representative republic.
  No US citizen has ever voted on a bill, nor have we ever voted for a President. We vote for representatives to do that for us.
  
  --
  Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
43. Re:I keep seeing... by AmiMoJo · 2011-01-19 03:40 · Score: 1
  
  That is certainly true, although as much down to people not understanding how the software works as the software not providing easy tools to do it.
  I was thinking more about the permissions and removal of personal information and undo data. Office 2010 has a button you press which scans for that stuff and can remove it for you.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
44. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 03:42 · Score: 0
  
  You missed a word - and it was an important one.
  
  especially"
  - that means There were two parts to the sentence: "it's pretty good." "It's even better when you consider."
  MS Office on the other hand, is annoying to use, and expensive. That means "Too bad this isn't free, 'cause it sucks so much that's the only reason I'd use it."
45. Re:I keep seeing... by metamatic · 2011-01-19 04:17 · Score: 1
  
  Last I checked the average IQ is around 104
  Modern IQ tests are defined to have a median of 100.
  
  --
  GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
46. Re:I keep seeing... by the_hellspawn · 2011-01-19 04:25 · Score: 1
  
  I do correct those that confuse democracy with the republic and they get flippin mad as hell. They always pop off; "this is a democracy!" I always point out that we have representatives that vote for us and we don't vote ourselves. The Ancient Greeks had a democracy and all Greeks cast their votes (Majority rules). We kindly ask for a rep to vote our way and if they want, they will if not, they don't (Money rules). I find it absolutely funny how ignorant the US people can be. Even the gods of news screw that one up all the time too. Just kills me. I learned the difference between a republic and democracy back in 3rd grade. ...And to the REPUBLIC for which it stands...
  
  --
  "The laws of science be a harsh mistress." --Bender
47. Re:I keep seeing... by I8TheWorm · 2011-01-19 04:50 · Score: 1
  
  I will never understand why people flip out when you try to correct them and demand our form of government be called a democracy.
  Makes me want to call Amy Goodman every morning, say "you're an idiot" and hang up.
  
  --
  Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
48. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 06:28 · Score: 0
  
  Plenty of apps and utils can read OOXML, including Open Office. The point is that aside from MS Office, the only thing that can currently write OOXML is LibreOffice.
  That's by choice. Any software maker who wants to has access to the source code.
49. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 07:14 · Score: 0
  
  Their priority is putting money in their pocket. Who do you figure hands out money?
  While your premise (official priorities differ from geek priorities, maybe also from consumers priorities), conclusion is wrong. I do not think corruption is as rampant in Australia (or most western countries) that this would have much to do. This is not to say it is not a result of lobbying, business interests, but I think it is useless to wildly assume the absolute worst case. Doing this reduces power of actual useful arguments; it's part of corrupting nihilistic "all politicians just steal others blind everything sucks, going down the shit creek" worldview that helps no one.
50. Re:I keep seeing... by amiga3D · 2011-01-19 07:52 · Score: 1
  
  Unfortunately they keep catching politicians and bureaucrats getting their pockets lined. Not all that often but the funny thing is that when they do get caught they hardly ever get any real punishment. Common theory is that they have so much dirt on their brethren that they don't dare level the boom on the ones that get caught. Maybe I'm wrong....but maybe I'm right.
51. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 12:46 · Score: 0
  
  all these /. articles about gov't IT and Internet policy in OZ. It's hard to believe they're truly that clueless.)
  Yeah, they're crap at cricket now too.
  (for at least 2 months)
52. Re:I keep seeing... by Lunzo · 2011-01-19 16:34 · Score: 1
  
  TFA is about Australia which is not a republic. It's government is a representative democracy, however, so you get 1/2 marks for your rant.
53. Re:I keep seeing... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-20 01:09 · Score: 0
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_transformation_language
  Government is like a transforming language, it converts tax collected from individuals into senmace profit
It just doesn't end by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:17 · Score: 0

It's just one crazy law after another down under..
Getting more and more limiting by the day.
Almost like they're releasing their own patriot act in little chunks instead of one bill.
Probably got a pile of these lined up, just itching for an attack to push them all out at once.
1. Re:It just doesn't end by exomondo · 2011-01-18 17:27 · Score: 1
  
  It's just one crazy law after another down under..
  What crazy laws have there been? And this is just some govt policy, not a law.
2. Re:It just doesn't end by deniable · 2011-01-18 20:03 · Score: 0
  
  OOXML is a recommendation, not a mandate. It's a small part of a bigger set of policies that seemed to be aimed at things like Wikileaks.
3. Re:It just doesn't end by Bert64 · 2011-01-18 21:02 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  How is being locked in to a proprietary format supposed to stop things like wikileaks?
  Or do they think that wikileaks won't be able to buy or pirate msoffice in order to read the leaked documents?
  I have worked with companies and governments that try to implement various restrictions to stop employees taking data out of the organisation...
  I have found that:
  The restrictions are generally flawed (often the fault of ms for flawed implementation) and people can get round them easily.
  The restrictions only serve to hinder people's ability to work.
  Windows typically requires expensive additional software, eg software to prevent access to USB storage devices, and when this software crashes the underlying os allows the unwanted devices anyway.
  Even if the restrictions work, there are other ways, eg taking photographs of the screen, printing stuff out, stealing the internal hdd from the machine etc...
  You place restrictions on removable media, uploads to the web, attachments via email, people will just find another way... It's better to log rather than to restrict, because if there are no restrictions people will often pick the easiest route and you can at least catch them in the act, and everyone else can get on with their work unhindered.
  When implementing security policy, people only tend to think about the front door, they concentrate on features rather than implementation... They buy all kinds of junk claiming to support fancy sounding buzzwords not realising that there are often ways around all of this stuff...
  I saw a system where someone was using a web based application to keep data of different security classifications and belonging to different customers separated, now sure if you go through the web interface it won't let you access other people's data but if you get access to the underlying server you obviously have access to everything... And yet, people were claiming that an admin on the server wouldn't be able to access the data because they cant do so through the web interface!
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
4. Re:It just doesn't end by WWWWolf · 2011-01-18 23:45 · Score: 1
  
  How is being locked in to a proprietary format supposed to stop things like wikileaks? Or do they think that wikileaks won't be able to buy or pirate msoffice in order to read the leaked documents?
  Yeah, and why buy MS Office when data forensic tools can get much more information out of Office documents than Office itself? Not the first time this has bitten people in the butt.
5. Re:It just doesn't end by deniable · 2011-01-19 15:19 · Score: 1
  
  RTFA. The OOXML recommendation is only a minor part of a bigger set of policies. If you'd spent the time reading the article instead of typing, you'd know that.
6. Re:It just doesn't end by gregzeng · 2011-01-20 01:38 · Score: 1
  
  Why is AU so servile to first Britain, then USA? Many nations, corporations, individual etc use Linux derived systems to avoid penetration/ spying/ sabotage as already happens frequently every second. "Evil", unethical, criminal, .... activists very easy share the knowledge of cracking Microsoft systems. What is worse is that many (most) non-government agencies trust AU "experts". So the rest of AU will stay with being exploitable by the "baddies". CLEVER AU ... very well done (over). Retired (medical) IT Consultant, Australian Capital Territory
  
  --
  Australian Capital Territory
does office even support the standard? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

iirc, even MS office doesn't use the standard as published ???
1. Re:does office even support the standard? by lennier1 · 2011-01-18 16:49 · Score: 2
  
  Their implementation is not even reliable across different versions.
  But then again I'm not really surprised. IE also has problems with some MS-specific aspects of Microsoft's own Javascript dialect, even if you follow the specifications to the letter.
2. Re:does office even support the standard? by trampel · 2011-01-18 17:02 · Score: 1
  
  That was my thought as well - there were those stories that not even MS Office supported OOXML completely (that talk about no existing reference implementation).
  I guess Australia will go back to typewriters and ledgers ...
3. Re:does office even support the standard? by wvmarle · 2011-01-18 18:33 · Score: 2
  
  To be fair: how is the cross-application support for ODF? Does it really look the same in various word processors? Honest question, not trying to troll here.
  I'm using OpenOffice.org myself exclusively - no fancy layout or any advanced features though - and it works fine. Only sharing within the office, all identical software.
  But in this situation .doc(x) works fine too, especially when you do not share documents.
  To me it seems that it is still a big problem to standardise and reliably implement a format for storing formatted, editable text. We all know how reliable the html format is, and that's not even meant to be editable.
4. Re:does office even support the standard? by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-01-18 19:42 · Score: 2
  
  HTML is not meant to look precisely the same in all clients - by design.
5. Re:does office even support the standard? by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-01-18 19:43 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The catch here is that they mandated the Ecma version of the standard, not the ISO version. The Ecma version is pretty much what Office 2007+ supports. ISO used that as a base, but the committee did change quite a few things there, and the final version of ISO standard still has all those changes - and it's that which does not have any supporting implementation yet.
6. Re:does office even support the standard? by MightyMartian · 2011-01-18 19:51 · Score: 1
  
  If you want true WYSIWYG then you're not talking document format, but typesetting format. The issue with OOXML is that no one has in fact implemented the ECMA standard, what's more it does not appear that anyone other than Microsoft could because it as an absolutely horrible spec, and more to the point despite all of that Microsoft offers no product that adheres to the ECMA spec.
  ODF has some faults, but it is actually a reasonably implementable document format. Whether it's a superior document standard as far as the document elements and so forth is debatable, but the point is that it can create reasonably complex documents using a spec that could be reimplemented far easier than OOXML.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
7. Re:does office even support the standard? by deniable · 2011-01-18 20:08 · Score: 2
  
  The other catch is that they recommended, rather than mandated it. It's more like, most departments use it already, so we're already compliant, give somebody a gold star and a promotion.
8. Re:does office even support the standard? by makomk · 2011-01-18 22:14 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  They don't use the ISO standard as published, no - which is why Australia has specified the ECMA version. The ECMA version basically just documents what Office 2007 does, warts and all.
9. Re:does office even support the standard? by Kjella · 2011-01-18 22:16 · Score: 1
  
  You say it like it's a good thing. Fair enough that all text doesn't need to render pixel perfect equal but making things that would be basic columns, headers and footers in a document editor has been pure hell to implement in HTML, even worse in the early days wtih table abuse. What people want has been a square peg, HTML has been the round hole and web developers were handed the hammer and told to get to work.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
10. Re:does office even support the standard? by PseudonymousBraveguy · 2011-01-18 22:19 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Office 2010 supports only ECMA-376 read support. Read/Write support is for ISO/IEC 29500 Transitional, and they claim to be able to read ISO/IEC 29500 Strict.
11. Re:does office even support the standard? by Mystra_x64 · 2011-01-18 22:33 · Score: 1
  
  You say it like it's a good thing.
  
  It is.
  
  --
  Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on /.
12. Re:does office even support the standard? by DMiax · 2011-01-18 23:44 · Score: 1
  
  Was not. But people started to think this way long ago, even geeks. The Acid tests are assumed to come out pixel perfect. Slashdot requires me to scroll horizontally on my cell phone.
13. Re:does office even support the standard? by shutdown+-p+now · 2011-01-19 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  Acid only does it on some HTML/CSS bits where it is, indeed, guaranteed. But there's no way to get e.g. pixel-perfect text (or even text layout), because text rendering engines differ a lot - just compare e.g. Windows to OS X; or some of the various available Linux font settings against each other.
14. Re:does office even support the standard? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 09:45 · Score: 0
  
  To be fair: how is the cross-application support for ODF? Does it really look the same in various word processors? Honest question, not trying to troll here.
  
  Good question. See here: ODF Plugfest: Making office tools interoperable
  and here: http://officeshots.org/
good? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:20 · Score: 0

so there standardizing everything? sounds good to me...
1. Re:good? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:30 · Score: 1
  
  so there standardizing everything? sounds good to me...
  Too bad they haven't standardized their grade school grammar and capitalization tests.
This is why... by GF678 · 2011-01-18 16:22 · Score: 0, Troll

This is why I can never bring myself to move to Linux and cut ties with Windows entirely. It's just too much hassle when you end up having to interact with content produced using Windows-only software and you cannot guarantee perfect parsing of the file formats used.
I confess, Windows 7 with Office 2010 has basically meant I've given up. It's time to give up the fight against Microsoft and succumb. There are too many other stresses and important things in life to give a shit anymore about open-source and freedom and whatnot, particularly since you're surrounded by people (real, physical people and not Internet avatars) who don't care about such things and hence you can't have a useful discussion with them about.
The world is not moving towards greater openness. I don't think we can win anymore. It's fucking depressing.
1. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:28 · Score: 0
  
  It's called capitalism, get used to it.
  As long as the entire western world keeps sucking Americas !@#$ it's not going anywhere.
2. Re:This is why... by bieber · 2011-01-18 16:34 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Speak for yourself. I haven't used Windows in years, and I haven't suffered for it. Anytime I'm forced to open an office document (which is more often than you would think over the course of a CS degree), I just use Openoffice and everything works.
  
  At least at University, I'm seeing more and more students primarily using free operating systems. In my CS courses especially, it's all over the place: a show-of-hands survey in one of my upper-levels recently had probably upwards of ten Linux users in a class of thirty. Of course, it's a lot more prevalent among CS students, but even among the less technical students Linux usage is extremely common. When I first got here, I was shocked when I would see a Linux laptop or two near me in a class...nowadays I'm a little surprised if I don't.
  
  Free software may not be catching on as well as we would like with the older generations, but it most certainly is with the younger folks.
3. Re:This is why... by amiga3D · 2011-01-18 16:34 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  That's right. Freedom is a lot of trouble. Just give it up.
4. Re:This is why... by amiga3D · 2011-01-18 16:35 · Score: 2
  
  It's not capitalism. Capitalism is based on open markets. When a government mandates a certain platform that is not open. Actually....it's more like socialism.
5. Re:This is why... by CommanderEl · 2011-01-18 16:39 · Score: 1
  
  I'd argue that greater openness isn't what we should be striving to achieve. Openness stunts development because no one is trying to one-up each other and that having private, closed environments can be healthy in the development of new technologies.
  If America and the USSR had open space programmes, do you think they'd still be assing around trying to get to the moon right now?
6. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:39 · Score: 0
  
  Open Office works for most things. In the rare case where it doesn't you have VMware, VirtualBox, WINE, etc.
  I haven't used Windows as my primary OS in something like 12 years (not since VMware was beta). This despite having to work with lots of Windows-centric projects and vendors. VMware eliminated the need to have Windows loaded as the primary OS.
  I can still use Windows when I absolutely have to but have the security, power and performance of Linux as my primary OS.
7. Re:This is why... by SanityInAnarchy · 2011-01-18 16:39 · Score: 1
  
  This is why I can never bring myself to move to Linux and cut ties with Windows entirely. It's just too much hassle when you end up having to interact with content produced using Windows-only software and you cannot guarantee perfect parsing of the file formats used.
  This is indeed why I keep a Windows partition around, occasionally remote into a Windows terminal server or boot a VM.
  But I'm not quiet about it. If they can write docx, that implies they've got a decently new version of Word. Decently new versions of Word natively support odt.
  Fortunately, I find I have to do this less and less, both as I have fewer documents I have to read from people period, and as people get the hint and start producing PDFs that everyone can read.
  
  It's time to give up the fight against Microsoft and succumb.
  Remember IE6? Remember how fucking long we were stuck with IE6?
  Because a few people kept fighting, we have Firefox. Call them crazy, call them zealots, but it worked. In the end, they dragged Microsoft kicking and screaming into this century.
  That has to continue. Microsoft has repeatedly shown that they only really do their best work when they actually have competition. Let them completely dominate an area, and you end up with crap like Vista, and the long, long gap between IE6 and IE7.
  I'm sorry you've given up. It also means you've become part of the problem -- you're yet another person who might one day decide to email me a docx instead of a pdf, an odf, or even html.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
8. Re:This is why... by hairyfeet · 2011-01-18 16:43 · Score: 1
  
  Or you could just use different tools for different jobs instead of trying to do everything with one. I use Xubuntu (or Wary Puppy if the machines is more than 2 years old) as a "Use this if you break your PC until you can get it to me" for those customers that can tear up a Sherman tank with a toothbrush, and it works just fine. I have also set up several older machines with Edubuntu for kids and any old 1.5GHz and up with 512Mb of RAM makes a great "my first PC" for the kiddies while giving them plenty of learning tools that are fun to use.
  But to try to switch the masses to using Linux daily? Or interacting with businesses and government? You'd really have more luck pissing in the wind. There is always one app and unlike what many FOSS advocates think it is NEVER Windows or Office that ends up biting you in the ass, like Photoshop, Quickbooks, that app they need to run from work, etc that there NEVER seems to be even a halfass solution that will work on Linux, and of course all those proprietary data formats takes a big old bite out of your ass when dealing with businesses.
  So don't try to build a house with just a screwdriver, use the right tools at the right times. If you want to use Linux at home just set up a dual boot or use a cheap KVM switch and have a dedicated Linux box. That way that "Windows only" app can't bite you in the ass and you can still play/surf/do whatever in Linux without consequences. I tried selling Linux boxes alongside Windows and quickly found out unless the customer was an ubergeek (in which case they wouldn't be buying B&M, they'd be DIY) there was simply too many gotchas involved. Now I simply hand out a Linux live CD with the PC and if they break their PC on a weekend it'll get them through until they can bring her in. But even then I found I never had a customer go "I want to keep that live CD thing, can you install it?" but instead got "I was able to check my mail okay but it won't run (insert Windows app) so I need my real PC fixed." I've found it is just better to accept it and move on and leave the evangelism for the militants.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
9. Re:This is why... by shentino · 2011-01-18 16:49 · Score: 1
  
  Freedom is only trouble because it steps on the toes of the powerful.
10. Re:This is why... by icebraining · 2011-01-18 16:51 · Score: 1
  
  Government is mandating for itself, not for companies or anyone else. There is no political theory that prevents the government from choosing its own internal tools, it would make no sense (except completely stateless anarchism, I guess).
  What could - but its hard to say - be happening here is corruption, which is possible in every organization (including private companies) regardless of the political ideology.
  
  --
  Dilbert RSS feed
11. Re:This is why... by icebraining · 2011-01-18 16:57 · Score: 1
  
  What about the ISS, the LHC and all those science programs which are based on international cooperation, and hence openness? Openness doesn't preclude competition. In fact, it stimulates it by ensuring you can't rest on previous achievements, since they'll all be copied soon.
  Of course, I don't see what any of this has anything to do with the choice of software by the government - it's not their secrets that closeness is protecting, it's lock-in to manufacturers.
  
  --
  Dilbert RSS feed
12. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 17:10 · Score: 0
  
  Works for my father, has done for 3 or 4 years now.
13. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 17:17 · Score: 1
  
  If you have to interact with government systems and the system confines you to one platform for that task it is by default a government mandate. You must use the platform specified to do business with the government. If you don't want to do any government business of course their is no problem. Nice.
14. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 17:28 · Score: 1
  
  freedom is trouble because you have to get your fat ass off the couch to claim it.
15. Re:This is why... by aiht · 2011-01-18 17:38 · Score: 1
  
  freedom is trouble because you have to get your fat ass off the couch to claim it.
  Freedom is trouble because you and enough other people to make a difference have to get your (our!) fat arses off the couch.
  
  (That's right, I said "arses". I'm Australian, and I don't have an ass or any other equine.)
16. Re:This is why... by SanityInAnarchy · 2011-01-18 17:42 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Here's the thing - we're all gonna die in the end, so all these fights against proprietary formats won't mean jack.
  In that case, so is replying. Yet you seem to care enough about justifying your position (perhaps to yourself) to reply, so don't give me this nihilistic bullshit.
  
  In life we pick the battles we can fight. These are potentially important issues, but basically given you're effectively saying about 90% of people are part of the "problem", I don't give a fuck anymore.
  When 90% of the people are part of the problem is when I absolutely do care.
  Take another battle I've picked: Religion. There's a small minority which does some really crazy shit. And they get away with it in the name of "religious tolerange", because a majority of the world believes enough crazy shit of their own that it takes a lot to make us as a culture say, no, you can't let your child die because you'd rather fucking pray than get help.
  Easily 80-90% of the US population is religious, which makes it a safe bet that you are, too -- probably also Christian, probably believe faith is a virtue. If so, merely by supporting the idea that faith is a virtue, you are encouraging yourself and those around you to turn off their critical thinking and skepticism when the situation calls for it. That kind of thinking leads to atrocities. Never mind that merely by calling yourself "Christian", you lend credibility to these fuckwits.
  Am I going to win? Not really. I do hope to reinforce separation of church and state, to promote actual science education instead of "Intelligent Design", and to establish some basic rights the religious would deny, like the right to marry. I'd love to see people tolerate less of the extremists. I really doubt I'm going to see the religious become a minority in my lifetime.
  But you know what? I'd like to think that when I'm lying on my deathbed, I lived for things that matter. I'd like to think that I'd still be the kind of person who would be ashamed to think I gave up because it was too hard, or because there were too many people who disagreed with me.
  
  Life shouldn't have to be some damn crusade.
  You're right, it shouldn't. But this is the world we live in, and there are some issues which tend towards exactly that -- either you're a good little worker propping up the status quo, or you're actually helping to move things forward.
  And life should be meaningful -- and it's up to you to find that meaning. Maybe you honestly don't care, but that's not what I'm hearing. What I'm hearing is that you do care, you're just too lazy to do anything about it anymore.
  Yet somehow, you're not too lazy to post, and to try to justify how much you don't care. That says a lot.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
17. Re:This is why... by GF678 · 2011-01-18 17:52 · Score: 1
  
  In that case, so is replying. Yet you seem to care enough about justifying your position (perhaps to yourself) to reply, so don't give me this nihilistic bullshit.
  It's called a rant. People do it on Facebook and Twitter all the time, and on forums for even longer. I care enough to reply, because it's bothered me for ages. Trust me, this will be the last I say of it but won't be the last anyone else says of it.
  
  which makes it a safe bet that you are, too -- probably also Christian, probably believe faith is a virtue.
  Technically I'm Greek Orthodox but I'm not practicing. I'm not ready to say there is no God, but I'm not prepared to believe in a God either.
  
  Am I going to win? Not really. I do hope to reinforce separation of church and state, to promote actual science education instead of "Intelligent Design", and to establish some basic rights the religious would deny, like the right to marry. I'd love to see people tolerate less of the extremists. I really doubt I'm going to see the religious become a minority in my lifetime.
  Good, you're realistic about your hopes and hence are someone who understands how the real world works (compared to some zealots who can't see reason).
  
  But you know what? I'd like to think that when I'm lying on my deathbed, I lived for things that matter.
  Ditto. I suppose we just have differing opinions as to what matters enough.
  
  ou're right, it shouldn't. But this is the world we live in, and there are some issues which tend towards exactly that -- either you're a good little worker propping up the status quo, or you're actually helping to move things forward.
  And life should be meaningful -- and it's up to you to find that meaning. Maybe you honestly don't care, but that's not what I'm hearing. What I'm hearing is that you do care, you're just too lazy to do anything about it anymore.
  Yet somehow, you're not too lazy to post, and to try to justify how much you don't care. That says a lot.
  I've tried to convert to Linux, on and off, for about 5 years. Believe me it's not for a lack of trying. However, time has caught up with me and it's become clear that instead of actually using my computer, I've instead focused more on trying to get the Linux desktop up to scratch with the standards I've become accustomed to in Windows. I've given up because I've realized how much time I've wasted try to achieve something I ALREADY HAVE (i.e. Windows), so why am I making life more difficult for myself?
  I care because of all the suck effort I guess. All that time I won't get back for a pursuit that wasn't (for me) a worthy goal.
18. Re:This is why... by Max+Littlemore · 2011-01-18 18:10 · Score: 1
  
  I'd argue that greater openness isn't what we should be striving to achieve. Openness stunts development because no one is trying to one-up each other and that having private, closed environments can be healthy in the development of new technologies.
  
  That may be true for product development, but it is a load of unadulterated steaming dog shit when it comes to standards.
  For example, and here's where I get to use a car analogy, would you argue that there should be special roads for Toyota that Ford can't use at all and Mercedes Benz has only figured out how to drive backwards on? Perhaps Mercedes could require mandatory 6-monthly servicing to ensure that all other cars attempting to drive on their roads crash by frequently changing the way the roads are built?
  How about a different type wall outlet for each appliance in your house, including different pin size, shape and arrangement as well as different voltages and frequencies? Some AC and some DC?
  Sounds abso-fucking-lutely tremendous to me! So much opportunity to get rich!!! BRILLANT!
  Or didn't you read the bit about this being about carriage and storage of information across a large group of often disparate organisations, much like roads are for the carriage and storage of cars?
  A format is not a product. Software that reads and writes a format is and if a commercial company can compete on quality without having to resort to creating false "standards" good on them. If an information storage format is so dependant on kludges and proprietary code, then it clearly has no place in public service.
  
  --
  I don't therefore I'm not.
19. Re:This is why... by erroneus · 2011-01-18 18:31 · Score: 1
  
  Not sure you realize this, but many people are STILL stuck with MSIE6.
  And for Microsoft, competition is a "last resort" measure.
20. Re:This is why... by flimflammer · 2011-01-18 18:51 · Score: 0
  
  I hate to be that guy but I've had the opposite experience in opening office documents in openoffice. Almost any time I open a document that is more than a file that could be made in an old version of wordpad, I always stumble across glaring issues, along with font quality issues with pretty much any font I use. I would love to be able to drop office, but I just can't make that transition work for me...
21. Re:This is why... by Bigjeff5 · 2011-01-18 19:01 · Score: 1
  
  Not really, since MS Office is better than OO.org in just about every way (except for price, but hey that may change soon!) it makes sense that they would choose an MS based standard.
  Too MS is going to spend more money pushing their standard (not necessarily greasing palms, but maybe) than Oracle. You can't win if you aren't even trying.
  
  --
  Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
22. Re:This is why... by Nursie · 2011-01-18 19:21 · Score: 1
  
  It's really strange to hear of someone who has ahd the opposite experience to me.
  Windows... you have to mess around with finding and downloading drivers, you can't find decent (free) software equivalents to most of the stuff available on linux, if you do then you have to download them from some untrusted third-party. The platform experience just isn't that good.
  The other day win 7 popped up a "you didn't shut down properly" or "failed to start properly" screen whilst I was booting. Naively I hit the top option which took me to some auto-recover tool that proceeded to take two hours to 'attempt recovery', denying me the opportunity to cancel out whenever I hit the cancel button, and then finally reported that recovery failed. Then I rebooted it and everything was fine.
  Updates to windows take absolutely forever these days too.
  Linux now just works. For me, anyway.
23. Re:This is why... by CrashandDie · 2011-01-18 19:37 · Score: 1
  
  I guess this confirms the other story about sharks swimming down Australian business streets?
24. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 20:07 · Score: 0
  
  I almost got out of the school because of using OOO to open the power point (pptx, specifically). No wonder the economic analysis slides with graphs were so difficult for me. When I accidentally opened them with PowerPoint 2007, JUST BEFORE THE NIGHT BEFORE THE FINAL I was shocked to see all the missing details. The slides made much more sense with those details.
25. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 20:10 · Score: 0
  
  You know the only thing worse than a religious fundie is an athiest fundie. Have fun with your crusade there dude.
26. Re:This is why... by emj · 2011-01-18 20:22 · Score: 2
  
  If you are used to one thing the other is always going to be worse.
  You are going to have a hard time using the same fonts as Office uses since Open Office doesn't license the same fonts, you can choose to install them by yourself. OO will keep the font settings of a Office document but use its own fonts. Having done the switch my self, and having a big and expensive font collection I can tell you that OO handles fonts perfectly fine, even the standard OO fonts are fine.
27. Re:This is why... by gmhowell · 2011-01-18 20:23 · Score: 1
  
  In racing, everybody knows the course. And much money is spent trying to keep the secrets under the hood (and, especially in F1, the shape of the 'hood' itself).
  I think your point is good, but your analogy sucks. Open standards are there for automobiles: width of the road, location, how many lights are required, etc. The exact details of meeting that implementation is left up to each manufacturer. If they want to open them up to the world, so be it (and Mercedes essentially does this when they offer an S420 for sale at the dealership. Ford is more than able to purchase one and disassemble it. Not so much for the McLaren racing engines and chassis.)
  
  --
  Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
28. Re:This is why... by emj · 2011-01-18 20:23 · Score: 2
  
  That's why they should publish the slides as pdfs.
29. Re:This is why... by Bert64 · 2011-01-18 21:07 · Score: 1
  
  The same thing happens when using different versions of msoffice, their formats are so poorly documented that even their own apps can't open them reliably.
  This is why a properly specified open format is important, so that everyone can implement it reliably... Unfortunately it seems that even tho MS have implemented OpenDocument, they have done so pretty badly...
  
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  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
30. Re:This is why... by Bert64 · 2011-01-18 21:13 · Score: 1
  
  The analogy is good, noone really cares *how* someone implements a given standard so long as their implementation complies with the standard and interoperates with other implementations...
  Perhaps a better example is TCP/IP, there are thousands of different implementations out there including open ones (linux, bsd etc) and closed ones (windows, various proprietary embedded systems) and yet they all manage to talk to each other over the Internet just fine.
  The Internet exists and has prospered precisely because it's based on open standards. There were plenty of proprietary networks back in the days, and they have pretty much all died out.
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
31. Re:This is why... by flimflammer · 2011-01-18 21:25 · Score: 1
  
  Well it's not actually so much the collection of font faces that I'm talking about (although it can be an issue) but the font rendering itself. Whenever I open (or create a) document in openoffice, I find that many of the fonts I like to use or are used by others in existing documents (Calibri is a good example), rendering the font face is often blurry or the lines are poorly rendered compared to pretty much any other program I use the font with.
  I've not personally used openoffice in Linux so I'm not sure how the quality shows up there, but on Windows it has been an issue for me.
  I used to have a screenshot that illustrated the problem but I can't seem to locate it anymore.
32. Re:This is why... by Bert64 · 2011-01-18 21:27 · Score: 1
  
  The masses don't use photoshop, and certainly don't buy it... They also don't use quickbooks... Most people browse the web (and a significant proportion these days do so using firefox or chrome - which also run on linux), read email (probably via a web interface anyway) and talk to their friends through an im client (again, sometimes through the browser)...
  A lot of people would get on just fine with a stripped down linux that booted straight into a browser.
  Sure there will be niche users who require particular apps, but they are generally in the minority and if the masses switched over to linux you can guarantee these niche apps would make the move sooner or later too. That said, there are also various niches in which windows is either poor or completely unusable.
  Giving someone a livecd isn't terribly useful, they will use the livecd environment as if it was windows and get a bad impression of it because running from cd is slow. Instead, install it as a dual boot and show them what it can do and explain its advantages (eg package management, greater safety online etc).
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
33. Re:This is why... by trickyD1ck · 2011-01-18 21:32 · Score: 1
  
  Do you mean that the only way you can achieve your goals of universal OSS adoption is through government force? Doesn's sound free to me.
34. Re:This is why... by trickyD1ck · 2011-01-18 21:36 · Score: 1
  
  Fortunately, at my university most everyone uses MS Office either with Windows or a Macintosh. Although occasionally a student you work together on a project opens a Powerpoint file that you so carefully crafted and screws the layout up with that abomination that OOO is. Computer science has nothing to do with dicking around with file formats or office software.
35. Re:This is why... by jonwil · 2011-01-18 21:43 · Score: 1
  
  What I want to see is for someone to step up to the plate and provide evidence that OpenOffice (or LibreOffice or whatever its called these days) and Microsoft really do render documents differently.
  Specifically, a set of documents along with screenshots of the document in LibreOffice and the document in Word showing the differences in formatting between the 2 and an explanation as to why these differences matter.
  There is no reason (other than a lack of information/patches) why it wouldn't be possible to improve the reading and writing of the Office document formats in LibreOffice so that more documents will appear the same in LibreOffice and Microsoft Office.
36. Re:This is why... by angus77 · 2011-01-18 22:05 · Score: 1
  
  I've never had problems with .doc files in OpenOffice, but I have had problems with excel files. I try to avoid both, though.
37. Re:This is why... by IWannaBeAnAC · 2011-01-18 22:27 · Score: 1
  
  It's not capitalism. Capitalism is based on open markets. When a government mandates a certain platform that is not open. Actually....it's more like socialism.
  I think you're confused. Socialism is about the cooperative management of resources and the means of production, leading to equal power sharing among citizens. I don't see how mandating a particular proprietary format (which it is, despite the ECMA and ISO standards) fits anywhere in the socialist spectrum.
  On the other hand, it seems to be capitalism at its finest (or worst, depending on point of view); a company on the free market gets big enough that it has an effective monopoly and can use that power to leverage government regulation. Of course the end result is counter to free market principles, but a completely laissez-faire market almost inevitably results in the biggest fish taking over the pond, so it is a natural consequence.
38. Re:This is why... by Cwix · 2011-01-18 23:27 · Score: 1
  
  Thats not socialism, thats fascism.
  
  Fascists seek to organize a country according to a particular nationalist strand of corporatist values and perspectives, with an emphasis on enforcing a collectivist form of political and economic organisation based on a tightly prescribed national identity.[5][6]
  
  Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
  
  --
  You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
39. Re:This is why... by grepppo · 2011-01-18 23:30 · Score: 1
  
  *snip* *Free software may not be catching on as well as we would like with the older generations, but it most certainly is with the younger folks.* I'm over forty and I use Linux you insensitve clod
40. Re:This is why... by MeNeXT · 2011-01-18 23:32 · Score: 1
  
  I run Windows. I run Mac. I run Linux. I run FreeBSD. Openoffice will open ODF files consistently across all these platforms. Word has trouble amongst different versions doc. Trouble really arises when you have various versions of Word and complex documents.
  
  --
  DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
41. Re:This is why... by Nite_Hawk · 2011-01-18 23:38 · Score: 1
  
  I felt similarly until I left my (higher paying) job in industry and went back to work in academia at a supercomputing institute. It's not perfect but I'm a lot happier there. Why? Because the values of the people there and the Institute itself are a lot closer to mine than where I used to work. If you really care about openness, freedom, and open-source, there are ways you can surround yourself with it and still make a living. It may not be as glamorous and it may not pay as well, but its still possible.
42. Re:This is why... by tiedemann · 2011-01-18 23:43 · Score: 1
  
  Same here.
  I wrote a docx-generating module in C# for reporting around 2 years ago. There were no problems with OO then and I've heard no complaints since (I tested it on OS X, Windows and Ubuntu).
  It is after all just a zipped xml-file.
43. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 23:47 · Score: 0
  
  Unlike a (religious) fundie, his reasoning is sound. Big difference there.
44. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 00:17 · Score: 0
  
  Holy crap I think you're me! Keep up the good fight(s) bro, the world is a better place for it.
45. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 00:32 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, let's all give up! Ra ra ra, let's go back home.
  You do realize that everything that has taken over the face of this Earth has started with a handful of people. One person doesn't have to convince everybody, just a handful of those around them who tend to spread it onwards. With the Internet, that's a lot easier to do. Anyway, it's not that hard of a fight, and it's not a "crusade" either so stop trying to spin wanting format freedom into a religion anyway. It sounds like you've just hitched your wagon to some proprietary shit and are trying to argue for a bad status quo. That's for you, but I don't understand why people who don't care feel they have to work so hard to convince others to give up unless their money or education is tied to it. Oh there it is.
46. Re:This is why... by icebraining · 2011-01-19 00:33 · Score: 1
  
  That's true regardless of the tool they choose.
  What I mean is that you can disagree with the solution chosen, but it's absurd to call them any -ism because of it.
  
  --
  Dilbert RSS feed
47. Re:This is why... by Lorien_the_first_one · 2011-01-19 00:42 · Score: 1
  
  Hmmm. Thanks for the observations. I was beginning to feel like I was surrounded by people who wouldn't touch Linux. I had no idea that the younger generation was so willing to experiment and I'm glad to see that is happening.
  
  I use Linux myself after years of using Windows and a Mac. I started out on an Amiga and at the time, I so wanted to avoid Microsoft. Eventually, Amiga gave way to a Mac, then to Windows. I laughed when I saw how much software was available for the PC. Now I laugh when i see how much software is available for Linux and it's only one sudo command away.
  
  It took me a few years to make a complete break from Windows and it's been a few years since I have done it. I'm now quite comfortable with Linux and I just cannot see myself going back. When the antivrus license expires on my wife's laptop, we're going to install Linux for her, too. Then the transition will be complete. She has watched me work and noticed that I'm doing just fine.
  
  I am so grateful for Linux and I share what I know with anyone willing to listen to get them started.
  
  --
  The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
48. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 00:55 · Score: 0
  
  I really doubt I'm going to see the religious become a minority in my lifetime.
  Move to the UK, and you will. Most people are not religious are don't bother trying to hide it.
49. Re:This is why... by Kjella · 2011-01-19 01:06 · Score: 1
  
  When 90% of the people are part of the problem is when I absolutely do care.
  While 90% may be religious, 90% aren't part of the problem. Many, many people manage to reasonably combine spiritual beliefs with science and a secular state. Some 90% are religious in my country as well (85% christian, 5% other). Yet there's no problem teaching science in science class, in fact I think this problem is largely limited to the US. Committing adultery is a pretty clear violation of the ten commandments, but it's not a crime. Religious matters are a matter between you and God, not you and the state. And in this case, your spouse.
  There was a discussion up this christmas regarding christmas dinners and muslims, as a traditional christmas feast has both alcohol and pork. I think the general sentiment was clear, we will provide alternative food and non-alcoholic beverages as we generally do for allergics and pregnants and drivers and people who simply don't like it but trying to impose on everyone else that they won't eat or drink it either is out of the question. We would not be excluding them, they would be excluding themselves. I'm not afraid of others living their lives differently, I'm only afraid of them imposing on my life.
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
50. Re:This is why... by lwriemen · 2011-01-19 01:23 · Score: 1
  
  Computer science also has nothing to do with carefully crafting Powerpoint presentations. Leave that to the management majors. Most everyone using MS Office shows a lack of curiosity and critical thinking skills. Please post your university's name, so I can make sure my kids don't apply there.
51. Re:This is why... by lwriemen · 2011-01-19 01:28 · Score: 1
  
  The over forty crowd is where you get the users who tried to avoid Windows in the first place. We remember when there used to be choice, and the term PC wasn't associated with Windows.
52. Re:This is why... by jo_ham · 2011-01-19 01:39 · Score: 1
  
  I assume you got your definition of socialism from Fox News.
53. Re:This is why... by WankersRevenge · 2011-01-19 01:59 · Score: 1
  
  A few points ... one can still buy a commercial operating system and support open source / free software to push the "cause" forward. Mind you, the "cause" doesn't give a rats ass about him or you in any way.
  Two ... life isn't defined in binary oppositions. Saying that you either support the status quo or are moving forward is disingenuous at best.
  Three ... just because a person is religious does not mean he or she has turned off critical thinking skills. Start using your own critical thinking skills for you are defining the whole by a very small albeit extreme part.
  Four ... if you see someone losing faith in something you believe in (ie, free software), you don't bring him back to the fold by making grand speeches with "big" ideas and how he is failing to meet those ideals. You reach out to him and offer personal support. You become the bridge. Save the speeches for the politicians.
54. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 02:00 · Score: 0
  
  I know, "don't feed the trolls", but as a Christian I'll mention a couple of things:
  1. The heading "Christian" is so broad and overused as to have little meaning unless clarified. In particular, those who want to criticize religion have an easy time of pointing out nutcases who call themselves "Christian" and implying that they are typical of religious people.
  2. Most mainstream Protestant denominations, as well as the Catholic church, fully accept scientific findings like evolution and the 15 billion year age of the universe. I think promoters of "Intelligent Design" and the like are completely wrong.
  3. Many Christians are fully supportive gay rights and other social issues that are considered "liberal". Christianity teaches us to love everyone, even those we don't agree with. The "fuckwits" you mention above have nothing to do with Christianity - they have just stolen the name.
  4. (Important) - "Faith" doesn't really mean what you think it means. This took me a big portion of my life to figure out, and is why I was atheist or at least agnostic for a couple of decades before I became a Christian. Faith doesn't mean "believing things without evidence". It means recognizing the limitations of one's knowledge (and mankind's knowledge) and trusting that our lives ultimately have a purpose. I don't claim to know what will happen to me after my death, but I accept that I should live my life by the principles taught by Jesus (tolerance, forgiveness, humility, etc) and that in the end, God will take care of me.
55. Re:This is why... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 02:09 · Score: 0
  
  Try IBM Lotus Symphony.
  Also, I don't know if you got the memo, but Linux is free. Why don't you make a Ubuntu partition?
  I've not used Open Office in Windows but it works great on Mac OS and Ubuntu. No font problems here, and I regularly view documents created on Office on a Windows box. I do have problems with Excel documents in OOo, but Symphony reads these fine.
56. Re:This is why... by RazorSharp · 2011-01-19 02:27 · Score: 2
  
  Unlike a (religious) fundie, his reasoning is sound. Big difference there.
  What all religions have in common is that they declare a universal cause of human suffering and claim to know the cure. Fundamental atheists claim religion is the universal problem and fundamental, evangelical atheism is the only cure. It's a religion of religion-bashing. That type of circular logic makes me think of a dog chasing its tail.
  The logical flaw is that religion isn't the cause of all human suffering. People are, according to Sartre, but I lean toward the more broad, Buddhist perspective: Life itself is the cause of suffering.
  Notice how few militant atheists attack Buddhism, Taoism, and even Judaism. They go after easy targets: Fundamentalist Christians born out of the Great Awakenings who lack a solid theology, Islamic extremists from countries that aren't very advanced, and a Hindu caste system that doesn't even really exist anymore.
  What I find especially humorous is that the parent used South Park in some of his citations. I guess he missed the Dawkins episode.
  
  --
  "From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
57. Re:This is why... by Miser · 2011-01-19 02:39 · Score: 1
  
  This, shentino ...
  It rings so true that I think I'm going to add it to my random ring of email signatures. (think back to the QWK mailer days where your offline mailer on FidoNet would randomly pick a signature from your signature file.)
  Thank you kind sir.
  Cheers,
  Miser
58. Re:This is why... by Draek · 2011-01-19 02:47 · Score: 1
  
  Font problems are a common problem when dealing with WYSIWYG word processors, not only with OpenOffice but also between different versions of Office itself, or even installs on different computers.
  It's been long known that, if you want your document to look exactly as intended everywhere else, you make a PDF out of it. Or use baseline TeX, Knuth was pretty good about backwards compatibility when designing it.
  
  --
  No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
59. Re:This is why... by Just+Some+Guy · 2011-01-19 03:21 · Score: 1
  
  Never mind that merely by calling yourself "Christian", you lend credibility to these fuckwits.
  I bet you, I, and Fred Phelps have a lot more in common than we don't. I'm an American, and I like it here. I like hamburgers and apple pie. My family immigrated from Europe. I think republican democracy is a good idea. The mutual cultural background I share with Phelps should not in any way be construed as endorsing him, condoning him, or giving him credibility.
  
  --
  Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
60. Re:This is why... by StuartHankins · 2011-01-19 03:22 · Score: 2
  Early versions of OpenOffice rendered fonts relatively poorly. I haven't had that problem in a long time though. That said, I can't speak for Calibri -- I don't have that font installed on my Mac or my XP VM -- but my experience with problems with particular fonts (and not all fonts) had to do with the font files themselves.
  
  Some font files provide only the "regular" version, and simulate italics by applying a transform to it. They look like crap as a result. Since it's up to the program (different versions of different programs do this different ways), expect different results onscreen and in print while using these different programs.
  Some fonts have corruption that you may not attribute to that font -- crashing programs when accessing the font, font previews not working correctly, etc. It may have only a partial corruption that doesn't appear unless perhaps you use an em dash or some subset of characters.
  The software you're accustomed to using may not have a dropdown for all the styles, so for instance instead of getting the Oblique you're getting the simulated Italic. Makes more difference when you go above (was it 8?) styles. Yes I have run into fonts with more than this number, I researched it and it was an OpenOffice limitation at that time. Apparently it wasn't an easy fix. I just chose a font with fewer versions as a workaround.
61. Re:This is why... by j-beda · 2011-01-19 03:31 · Score: 1
  
  ...and the term PC wasn't associated with Windows.
  You mean the Pocket Computer from Radio Shack? A friend of mine had a PC1 that was so cool! I think he had a printer for it too!
  http://oldcomputers.net/trs80pc1.html
62. Re:This is why... by dkleinsc · 2011-01-19 04:18 · Score: 1
  
  If you don't give up your freedom, the terrorists might come and take away your freedoms!
  At least, that's what they keep telling me here in the USA.
  
  --
  I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
63. Re:This is why... by MadUndergrad · 2011-01-19 05:43 · Score: 1
  
  Fundamental atheists are a strawman.
64. Re:This is why... by bieber · 2011-01-19 06:19 · Score: 1
  
  Amazingly enough, this is the first semester (and this is my sixth semester here) that I've had a professor publish slides in PDF.
65. Re:This is why... by SanityInAnarchy · 2011-01-19 16:18 · Score: 1
  
  I don't see how you can have such a thing as an atheist fundie, given that the only unifying property of atheists is the lack of belief in gods. What "fundamentals" would I be trying to get back to?
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
66. Re:This is why... by SanityInAnarchy · 2011-01-19 16:40 · Score: 1
  
  Fundamental atheists...
  Contradiction in terms. The only unifying property of atheists is the lack of belief in gods.
  
  ...claim religion is the universal problem...
  Not even Hitchens claims that.
  
  It's a religion...
  While religion is incredibly poorly defined, I don't see how you can have a religion without any dogma or core belief.
  
  The logical flaw is that religion isn't the cause of all human suffering.
  So, your logical flaw right here is a strawman. Who claims religion is the cause of all human suffering? If I ever made such a claim, I'll gladly retract it, but please, show me where!
  What's more, I know plenty of atheists, and I can't think of a single one which would make that claim you just suggested. Again, not even Hitchens, let alone Dawkins, Dennett, or Harris. None of the atheists I know personally would make that claim. Some of them agree that religion is a cause of suffering in the world, even that it's an exceptional cause -- and not all even agree on this -- but none would say it is the sole cause.
  For what it's worth, I've also noticed that outspoken atheists tend to be assumed "fundamentalist", "extremist", or "militant", simply for expressing their lack of belief. Not for "evangelizing", not for picking fights -- many are offended simply that atheists exist.
  
  Notice how few militant atheists attack Buddhism, Taoism, and even Judaism.
  There's that word again. I don't think it means what you think it means.
  For one, Buddhism and Taoism can both be atheistic -- neither require a belief in any gods. As for Judaism, note that many of the arguments against Christianity are also valid against Judaism and Islam. The Problem of Evil, for instance, is equally problematic for all Abrahamic religions unless they want to define God in a very, very strange way -- and it seems likely that any answer to that problem would apply equally to all Abrahamic religions as well.
  Also, note that the major outspoken atheists are generally British or American, and in both countries, Christianity is the dominant religion. For my part, I live in America, where we not only have a majority of Christians, we also have a pretty sizable percentage of Creationists -- roughly 40% of Americans reject Evolution.
  
  Islamic extremists from countries that aren't very advanced,
  Islamic extremists also tend to blow people up, and they do so for explicitly religious reasons. So hell yes, if I can present a compelling argument that convinces a few of them to stop believing or at least not to blow themselves up, that's a Good Thing.
  
  a Hindu caste system that doesn't even really exist anymore.
  I don't tend to argue against that except in the company of followers of Transcendental Meditation -- the TM movement seems like it would very much like to bring the caste system back.
  
  What I find especially humorous is that the parent used South Park in some of his citations. I guess he missed the Dawkins episode.
  I have, in fact, seen every South Park episode. I found that one hilarious -- also another in which the majority of South Park become atheists at the same time as they find a way to eat by shoving food up their asses, and shit out their mouths -- the punchline being something like, "But when you become an atheist, a bunch of shit starts coming out of your mouth." Remember that?
  Yes, I do have a sense of humor, and I am able to laugh at myself, unlike Isaac Hayes. Is that so surprising?
  I also understand the difference between humor -- even pointed political humor directed against me -- and an actual argument. For example, "Praise Science!" If someone actually attempted to use that as an argument that atheism is a religion, yes, I'd laugh -- I'd laugh them out of the room!
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
67. Re:This is why... by SanityInAnarchy · 2011-01-19 17:06 · Score: 1
  
  Very good points. Just a few clarifications:
  
  one can still buy a commercial operating system and support open source / free software to push the "cause" forward.... Saying that you either support the status quo or are moving forward is disingenuous at best.
  I think I may have reacted too harshly here. After all, I own a copy of Windows myself. But if I can find a way to do it outside of Windows, I will. The person I was replying to had not only given up on using Linux, but had done so in order to deal with having to work with MS Office documents -- this is something for which clear open alternatives exist, and for which I don't think it's too much to ask to suggest that an office use open standards instead.
  But I didn't mean this as a "with us or against us." I was drawing a clear line here between either using MS Office -- thus creating, manipulating, and consuming content that will work best on MS Office, thus making it harder for the next person to try Linux -- or pushing things forward, which is really the only other alternative if you have to collaborate on documents. The only way to really have a third position is to do what I do, and avoid sharing editable documents in the first place.
  
  just because a person is religious does not mean he or she has turned off critical thinking skills. Start using your own critical thinking skills for you are defining the whole by a very small albeit extreme part.
  Using both my critical thinking skills and my observations, I conclude that the vast majority of religious people turn off their critical thinking skills where religion is concerned. One I was talking to today -- a happy, friendly, relatively new Mormon, who didn't seem to be particularly brainwashed or "extreme", someone who shared quite a bit in common with me, in fact -- flat-out admitted that she didn't know how to explain logically why she believes what she does.
  Even in politics, people can answer that question, though how well they answer it might vary. Certainly in other areas of our lives, it often becomes a habit. For example, which should I get for a new laptop, solid state or spinning disk? Should I eat cake for lunch, a stir-fry, or a salad? What's the best place to park my car? Should I own a car? Can I afford one? We may have vastly different answers to these questions, and certainly, there's more information needed -- for instance, the fact that I want to lose weight should rule out the cake -- but we generally either analyze these with reasoning skills, or decide we don't care enough (one cake won't kill me.)
  And the bigger a decision it is, the more likely we are to use careful reasoning. Which university should I attend? Which job should I take?
  Only very occasionally do we turn this off. Do I want to spend the rest of my life with this person? Far too few couples actually apply enough critical thought to ask the right questions, like "Do you want children?"
  And of course, religion. If there really is a god who may send you to heaven or hell based on what you believe, and you think there's any chance this god is real, you'd think that would be the most important decision you've ever made! It'd certainly be the most important bit of knowledge you could ever possibly have, so you'd think people would want to be sure they're right.
  Instead -- and again, these generalities come from personal experience talking to so many of these people -- they haven't asked the simplest questions, and they don't like being challenged on this issue. Actually, it's worse than that -- they see "faith" (roughly translates to "believing something without good reason") as a virtue.
  I don't think that religious people are incapable of critical thought. Instead, I think the better educated ones, the ones who should know better, are just good at compartmentalizing. These are the things you're allowed to question, examine, poke at, chew on, tease apart with logic and see if they make
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
68. Re:This is why... by SanityInAnarchy · 2011-01-19 17:21 · Score: 1
  
  Most mainstream Protestant denominations, as well as the Catholic church, fully accept scientific findings like evolution and the 15 billion year age of the universe. I think promoters of "Intelligent Design" and the like are completely wrong.
  That's good, though about 40% of the US disagrees with you.
  And the Catholic church has its own problems. If I recall, the Pope himself has said that condoms do more harm than good when it comes to preventing AIDS, which is also factually wrong.
  
  "Faith" doesn't really mean what you think it means.
  Apparently, it also doesn't mean what almost anyone I talk to thinks it means. Be careful, or you might make it have as little meaning as you claim Christianity does. Nevertheless:
  
  Faith doesn't mean "believing things without evidence".
  Let's try to keep this in mind. More specifically, I claim Faith, in the religious sense, means "believing things without sufficient evidence." There are enough eyewitness accounts of alien abductions to count as evidence, but I imagine you don't find that to be sufficient to believe aliens have visited us.
  
  It means recognizing the limitations of one's knowledge (and mankind's knowledge)...
  Ok. I recognize my limitations.
  What's more, I recognize that there are things humans may never know. That's fine. I'm alright not knowing. It's good to acknowledge what I don't know. I see no need to fill the gaps with a god, no reason to accept anything on faith when I could simply not know.
  
  ...and trusting that our lives ultimately have a purpose.
  If you mean "purpose" in the universal sense, this is exactly the moment where you are believing something without sufficient evidence. What evidence do you have that our lives ultimately have a purpose?
  And if your evidence is sufficient, why do you need faith?
  All you've done is restate "Faith" as a more specific sort of thing to believe without evidence. You haven't presented another meaning. This is painful to read, and I apologize for splitting you up by the sentence fragment -- I don't normally do that -- but you keep sounding like you're going to say something good, I agree with everything you say, almost... and then you lose it. For example:
  
  I don't claim to know what will happen to me after my death,
  Neither do I. We have some pretty good ideas, but I'm not sure there's enough evidence to say that I know that what I call "me" is entirely physical.
  
  but I accept that I should live my life by the principles taught by Jesus (tolerance, forgiveness, humility, etc)
  While Jesus taught a few things I absolutely don't agree with, those three I can accept. Thomas Jefferson would also agree with you, but he was a Deist who found the stories of Jesus' life so unbelievable that he created his own bible which was essentially the story of Jesus and his teachings, with all the miracles taken out.
  So far, we're in complete agreement, and indeed, you can find good reasons for these, or you can at least reduce them to matters of opinion. For example, should you live your life according to the teachings of Jesus? How you want to live your life is largely a matter of opinion.
  And then...
  
  ...and that in the end, God will take care of me.
  ...now we're back to believing something without sufficient evidence.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
69. Re:This is why... by SanityInAnarchy · 2011-01-19 17:35 · Score: 1
  
  For what it's worth, I don't really like hamburgers, and most of my family are essentially all-American mutts -- sure, my ancestors immigrated, but from too many places for me to bother trying to count. I'm not convinced Phelps thinks a democratic republic is a good idea, or that he likes it here, though I may be entirely wrong about that.
  However, being American, eating hamburgers and apple pie, being the descendant of immigrants, and even liking the idea of a democratic republic are all incidental.
  To put it simply, Phelps doesn't claim apple pie hates fags. He claims God hates fags.
  I'm beginning to think this is a bad argument, and that you're absolutely right that you personally don't condone him, and that I shouldn't assume that you or anyone else does.
  However, there is a sense in which the fact that we have such mainstream tolerance of religion and religious ideas, and the fact that they're seen as off-limits to criticism, leads to exactly the sort of environment in which we can even ask whether or not parents are allowed to deny their children life-saving medical care because they'd rather pray.
  If you want to be able to criticize others for their beliefs, you have to open your own to criticism.
  So, I withdraw my comment about lending credibility, and I realize I'm actually changing the subject a bit, because what I really (now) want to say is this (watch till about 11:10). I suspect that's much more a point about culture than religion.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
70. Re:This is why... by SanityInAnarchy · 2011-01-19 19:28 · Score: 1
  
  However, the monopoly of IE6 is broken. It is no longer considered acceptable for a website to slap a "best viewed with" disclaimer on a site which effectively only works with IE6. In general, it's not even acceptable anymore to have a website which is "best viewed with IE" and doesn't work in Firefox.
  That's the important point. It means that the public Internet is no longer tying you down to IE6. It also means that in general, the lowest common denominator is no longer IE6, so it's also considered acceptable to develop a site which requires newer browsers and newer standards, which means standards can actually move forward.
  And Firefox did that. So did the users who refused to "just use IE" and complained loudly until people switched -- those people who refused to give up brought Firefox to critical mass. Several critical masses, really, sort of a snowball effect -- as more sites tolerate Firefox, it becomes easier for people to switch.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
71. Re:This is why... by Just+Some+Guy · 2011-01-20 02:19 · Score: 1
  
  However, there is a sense in which the fact that we have such mainstream tolerance of religion and religious ideas, and the fact that they're seen as off-limits to criticism, leads to exactly the sort of environment in which we can even ask whether or not parents are allowed to deny their children life-saving medical care because they'd rather pray.
  On that, I'll agree completely. I hate the word "sensitive". I respect everyone's opinions on things that only affect themselves. You like liver and onions? I think it's gross, but have at. But when someone's opinions cross the line into making another person's life worse - or shorter - then I reserve the right to tell them that their ideas are stupid. Fred Phelps and Jenny McCarthy are sociopaths who don't care which lives they harm, and I have no respect or sensitivity for their harmful opinions.
  
  --
  Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
72. Re:This is why... by hairyfeet · 2011-01-20 06:36 · Score: 1
  
  Actually Quickbooks and TurboTax are THE big apps in my area, along with those downloadable little popcap style games which also don't run on Linux. And why would I want to go through all the trouble of setting up dual boots and dealing with devices and hardware with flaky/non existent drivers for no money or advantage to myself? The whole point of looking into Linux was the "free as in beer" would have allowed me to sell for lower than my competitors. And you must be messing with some seriously crappy hardware if a Live CD is slow for you. On modern duals and triples with 2GB+ of RAM (the minimum I sell anymore except for a few off lease) both Puppy and Xubuntu run from RAM so if anything it is faster than the HDD since the entire OS is in memory.
  But again the Live CD is simply a courtesy that gives me an advantage over my competitors, just as giving them Firefox with ABP and a free Office Suite (along with several other freebies like a scheduled reg and HDD cleaner/defragger, codec pack, etc) means machines from MY shop do more OOTB than the other guy does. But I think you are seriously underestimating the ease of use of Windows when compared to FOSS. My customers can walk into ANY store in the nation, grab ANY device off the shelf, and it will "just work" thanks to every device coming with a CD that has XP, Vista, and Windows 7 drivers now. Looking at my local Walmart you are looking at less than 35% Linux support for the devices being sold and without serious research there is no way for the customer to tell and with their exchange only policy on most computer gear you are looking at burned customers on Linux.
  So until I can sell a machine with Linux only and know it will 1.-Work for at least a year with upgrades/updates with ZERO driver problems and 2.- Be able to sell a Linux only PC and have a simply way for a customer to walk into Walmart and just "look for the penguin on the box" so they don't get burned then it simply isn't worth my time. It gives me NO advantage over my competitors, it irritates the customer because the PC doesn't "just turn on" without choosing or waiting for a timer to end, it takes more of my time (which I can't charge for) and doesn't drive more business to me (because geeks that have heard of Linux don't shop B&M) so there really isn't a point.
  It is the same thing Walmart found out when they tried selling Linux, and those OEMs like ASUS found out when faced with higher returns on their Linux offerings VS Windows XP. While Linux as a desktop sounds good in theory in practice it raises my after sales costs while giving me no advantage over the competition with the local consumer. So if it works for you great, I'm happy for you. But from a retail standpoint Linux as an OS simply doesn't drive sales or even break even. It simply takes too much work and comes with too many hassles. Hell if it wasn't for the "free as in beer" I'd probably just use Windows Live CDs, but the price MSFT wants for WinPE licenses is just insane.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
73. Re:This is why... by RazorSharp · 2011-01-21 06:39 · Score: 1
  
  With a few notable exceptions (Scientology), religions are not formed with the intent to be a religion. Religion is just the hoopla that forms around an idea (specifically, one that claims to hold the solution to mankind's ills). The religiously atheistic aren't being religious about their atheism intentionally, it's just the result of worshipping their material worldview.
  What I consider 'militant' or 'fundamentalist' atheists are those who make the claim that religion is the cause of all of man's problems. When you cross that line, you've made a religion of atheism. You've asserted a dogma and condemned those who don't abide by it.
  You're the one who referred to your anti-religious stance as a battle you've picked. How does the word militant not apply?
  
  militant - combative and aggressive in support of a political or social cause, and typically favoring extreme, violent, or confrontational methods
  The beliefs you've purported are the subject in question, so it's not a strawman I've propped up to attack. Dawkins has repeatedly made it clear that religion is an impediment to a better society, that we suffer unnecessarily because of it. His solution for society? Abolish religion.
  No religion claims to abolish all suffering, that was a careless hyperbole on my part. But every religion makes a claim of a primary cause of suffering and offers a solution to it. All of your evangelical atheist heroes and your own little rant make it explicitly clear that there is nothing that causes more suffering in the world than religion, and that the only solution is to end religion. That's making a religion of atheism.
  Mankind is inherently religious because we reflect on our dilemmas and conceptualize solutions to these problems. Sometimes these solutions make sense, sometimes they're riddled with fallacies, sometimes they're hypocritical.
  
  Religion isn't invented by man. Man is invented by religion. -- Robert M. Pirsig
  
  --
  "From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
74. Re:This is why... by SanityInAnarchy · 2011-01-21 19:27 · Score: 1
  
  Religion is just the hoopla that forms around an idea (specifically, one that claims to hold the solution to mankind's ills).
  The dictionary definition disagrees. Yes, it's what forms around an idea, but it's not just any idea.
  
  You're the one who referred to your anti-religious stance as a battle you've picked. How does the word militant not apply?
  Have you never heard the phrase "choose your battles" in a non-militaristic scenario? Maybe as a general life principle? By your logic, what wouldn't be "militant"?
  
  Dawkins has repeatedly made it clear that religion is an impediment to a better society, that we suffer unnecessarily because of it.
  I would agree with that.
  
  His solution for society? Abolish religion.
  Ah, but here, citation needed.
  
  make it explicitly clear that there is nothing that causes more suffering in the world than religion, and that the only solution is to end religion.
  If I said so explicitly, please show me where. You do know what explicit means, don't you?
  You'd think you'd be more careful after your earlier "careless hyperbole". Perhaps you meant implicitly? If so, I'm waiting to hear your explanation, because I think you were inferring something which simply isn't there -- that is, yet another strawman.
  In fact, I'm not convinced that religion causes the most suffering, but I find it particularly evil because it's one of the few things which can make a good person do evil things, while believing they are doing the right thing.
  I certainly don't think the "only" solution is to eliminate religion, and I don't think that's a solution at all, largely because it wouldn't work, and if it did, the cost would be too high. I would rather seek to ensure religion has no privileged status, that it can be freely questioned and debated, and that it loses the influence it still has on government. That would be sufficient.
  Certainly, I would rather a majority accept the same epistemology I do, but I would never seek to abolish something simply because I disagree with it.
  Even here, it doesn't work. Unlike religion, I am open to being shown where I am wrong -- I would rather be proven wrong than forever be wrong.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I love a luddite country by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:26 · Score: 0

I love a luddite country
A land of vendor-locked red-tape ..
1. Re:I love a luddite country by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 17:11 · Score: 0
  
  A land of vendor-locked red-tape ..
  Damn those open standards back to hell from whence they came! We want...wait what?
Compression must default to .zip by sapphire+wyvern · 2011-01-18 16:27 · Score: 1

Urgh.
Even better, mandated support for .zip as the default compression format. LZMA is so much better, and free too.
7-zip does have a pretty horrible UI though. I can see why you might want to standardise on WinZip, but still use LZMA compression.
I also note that Firefox's crap central management support will probably also rule it out of being included in Aussie federal SOEs. Guess it'll be the latest version of IE for the government (again)...
1. Re:Compression must default to .zip by SanityInAnarchy · 2011-01-18 16:44 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  The nice thing about .zip is that it is, in fact, supported everywhere, out of the box.
  It's also nice in that it actually supports directory trees. The legacy lzma, and the newer xz, well, don't. I like tar in principle, and I use these formats for all sorts of things that I don't have to share with others, but there are definitely cases where zip is nice -- where it's nice to be able to effectively "mount" a zipfile, "seek" to an appropriate file within it, and read it, without having to decompress the whole thing. This is why zip is used by tons of games, where they might not even be using compression, but they can't trust most filesystems to handle that many small files properly. It's why it's used by both OpenDocument and MS OOXML -- it's the easiest way imaginable to embed multiple files into a single document, including multiple XML files that are compressed well.
  It also depends what your goals are. Zip compresses and decompresses a hell of a lot faster than lzma. These days, I standardize on either lzop for speed or xz for compression ratio, but zip and gzip are nice compromises.
  
  --
  Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
2. Re:Compression must default to .zip by RightSaidFred99 · 2011-01-18 17:53 · Score: 1
  
  This is why they don't let nerds make decisions like this - you're generally clueless. Being free and getting a better compression ratio would be fairly low in their priority list.
3. Re:Compression must default to .zip by aztracker1 · 2011-01-18 18:13 · Score: 1
  
  Chrome s making some progress on the policy side in windows.
  
  --
  Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
4. Re:Compression must default to .zip by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 19:49 · Score: 0
  
  They actually are using 7zip in the current SOE test.
  But zip support is there as most people can read it.
5. Re:Compression must default to .zip by sapphire+wyvern · 2011-01-18 20:30 · Score: 1
  
  Some good points on the directory tree support. In my work, I mostly use archival compression on files that need to be handled as a package, but I can see how other use-cases would benefit from more efficient partial extraction.
6. Re:Compression must default to .zip by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 21:58 · Score: 0
  
  Guess it'll be the latest version of IE for the government (again)...
  Ha Ha Ha. I am contracting at one of the biggest federal government departments and they are still on IE6!
7. Re:Compression must default to .zip by jonwil · 2011-01-18 22:07 · Score: 1
  
  I worked for a government department (my contract just finished) doing software development and that department was running IE7 on Windows XP.
8. Re:Compression must default to .zip by Plug · 2011-01-18 23:12 · Score: 1
  
  Chrome it up: an MSI installer and Group Policy support out of the box.
9. Re:Compression must default to .zip by daid303 · 2011-01-18 23:36 · Score: 1
  
  Small note, zip does not create a directory tree, it stores filenames with paths. Which you can seek and decompress individually, but you will have to read all the filenames to find the file you are looking for.
Locked in Already by CommanderEl · 2011-01-18 16:32 · Score: 1

Is there any doubt that the Australian Government were locked in because of volume licenses and their user base familiarity to the Microsoft product anyway?
Is this really such a big issue? Microsoft isn't the personification of the devil, they're a business who are good at doing business. A little less tall poppy syndrome is in order.
1. Re:Locked in Already by exomondo · 2011-01-18 16:56 · Score: 1
  
  Is this really 'locked in' though? An ECMA and ISO certified standard.
2. Re:Locked in Already by CommanderEl · 2011-01-18 17:09 · Score: 1
  
  From a financial perspective and the decisions made in the past, they probably already have budget forecasts for the use of Microsoft Office suites for the next 25 years.
3. Re:Locked in Already by sltd · 2011-01-18 17:11 · Score: 1
  
  Technically, you can read OOXML in the latest OpenOffice. However, they probably are just assuming that since it's a Microsoft-backed standard, Microsoft Office actually produces valid OOXML files. Unfortunately, that just isn't true, so if they ever make an attempt at interacting with another program, it won't work very well, which will result in this lock in.
4. Re:Locked in Already by ancienthart · 2011-01-18 17:26 · Score: 2
  
  But why go with a commercial format when OpenDocument formats have been around earlier, supported for longer and on just as many (if not more) software packages, including Microsoft Office? There's nothing saying that we can't use Microsoft Office and store/save in OpenDocument. All the IT managers would need to do is change a site-wide setting for default save format.
  I get the feel that it's a bit more than the Government being locked in with volume licenses. I suspect that either:
  1) There was a bit of pressure on them from Microsoft to support the format, either though threats of "renegotiating volume licenses" (Which Microsoft has done to the Australian Government in the past) or promises of lower costs;
  2) Microsoft spread a bit of FUD to the government officials about their version being "better supported", which is completely ridiculous when you consider the concept of an OPEN document format. :/,
  or my favourite supposition;
  3) The people who make these decisions are misinformed, as well as too lazy/stupid to properly research alternatives.
  As a government employee, I'd love the Australian Government to get the balls to publicly announce a project to trial opensource alternatives (Firefox instead of IE, OpenOffice/LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Office) in pilot schools/offices/whatever. Even if it didn't happen, I'd imagine that Microsoft would scrabble to keep such a big customer by offering some discounts. (If they didn't just bring out the big stick again.) Wow, we might be able to cut an IT expense that comes out of the taxpayer's pocket ... naahhh, that sounds too much like common sense.
  Thank god we've switched to a web-based email/calender a'la Gmail/GCalender-like system. That's one set of Outlook license that we can hopefully get rid of in the future.
  *sigh* If it wasn't so hot, dry and isolated in the Northern Territory, I'd be tempted to teach there simply because they've switched to Linux. I guess Microsoft wasn't concerned enough about keeping that territory as a customer to bring out the big twitchy stick.
5. Re:Locked in Already by Max+Littlemore · 2011-01-18 17:48 · Score: 1
  
  Is this really 'locked in' though? An ECMA and ISO certified standard.
  Actually just the ECMA standard. Nobody, not even Microsoft supports the ISO standard. So yep, effectively locked in.
  
  --
  I don't therefore I'm not.
6. Re:Locked in Already by exomondo · 2011-01-18 18:08 · Score: 1
  
  Actually just the ECMA standard. .... So yep, effectively locked in.
  Locked in to standards-conformant software...hrm...
7. Re:Locked in Already by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 18:29 · Score: 0
  
  If it wasn't so hot, dry and isolated in the Northern Territory...
  You've obviously never been to Darwin in the wet season.
8. Re:Locked in Already by tsa · 2011-01-18 18:45 · Score: 1
  
  So indeed basically nothing changes because I don't believe they moved from OO to Word.
  
  --
  -- Cheers!
9. Re:Locked in Already by Max+Littlemore · 2011-01-18 19:16 · Score: 1
  
  In practice no. It just formalises a crappy situation. They could have mandated PDF and ODF. Sure it would mean rolling out plugins to all of the word installations, but it would level the playing field a bit and buy better long term data security.
  
  --
  I don't therefore I'm not.
10. Re:Locked in Already by Max+Littlemore · 2011-01-18 19:28 · Score: 2
  
  If it can only be implemented by a single company and is a "standard" that only exists through what could reasonably be called corruption of a standards body, it's not really a standard.
  The ISO standard is much stronger because it is supported well across the entire range of office suites available. None fully support it.
  No, this is a myopic piece of crap from people who are either corrupt, inept or both. I have nothing against proprietary software, I work for a company that makes proprietary software and doesn't share source code. In the highly specialised market we are in, I see that as entirely fine. All the data our software transmits, receives or stores is freely accessible using tools from any number of sources.
  I do have a problem with my federal government, the people I pay to maintain the security and standard of living I enjoy, mandating that all documents must be in a format that can only be handled correctly using software that must be bought from a foreign company. Especially when excellent alternatives exist.
  
  --
  I don't therefore I'm not.
11. Re:Locked in Already by sapphire+wyvern · 2011-01-18 20:39 · Score: 1
  
  This confuses me.
  As I understand, OOXML is mostly a compressed XML serialization of the pre-existing DOC, XLS etc binary formats. That's why Microsoft pushes it - it's extremely compatible with MS Office by default.
  Now, you can complain that this means that other office software vendors will be required to structure their stuff to fit MS's existing designs. But they already do! Lots of people here say that OpenOffice has pretty good compatibility with MS Office binary files. Why would it be so hard to adapt those existing compatibility filters to read MS Office files in a published XML format, compared to reverse-engineering MS's proprietary binary formats?
  It seems to me that switching from an undocumented format to a documented format (albeit with similar structure and capabilities) is inherently going to reduce lock-in. Whether OOXML is the best format is another question. To me, OOXML seems overcomplicated (due to all the legacy support), but ODF is rather underdefined (no specification for spreadsheet formulae, wtf?)
12. Re:Locked in Already by Bert64 · 2011-01-18 21:34 · Score: 1
  
  The ECMA version is very different to the ISO version...
  The ECMA version is the one that was thrown out by ISO in the first ballot, and its also fairly close to what MS have actually implemented.
  The ISO version is based on a set of changes mandated by ISO, and likely even more changes would have been required were it not for the shady happenings around the second ballot... That said, nothing implements the ISO version whatsoever.
  The ECMA version has various flaws which make it virtually impossible for anyone other than MS to implement fully, there is plenty of documentation on these flaws online. The ISO version addresses some of these flaws, but many still remain.
  ODF had a very different path through ISO a couple of years earlier, i believe the ballot votes were all yes aside from one abstention and it passed through in the first ballot, also the ISO version of ODF is the same as OASIS version 1.0.
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
13. Re:Locked in Already by Bert64 · 2011-01-18 21:36 · Score: 1
  
  Nothing actually supports the ISO version of OOXML...
  The ISO version of ODF is actually very widely supported, even MS now include support for it... However, the support is quite variable and there has been more than a little bad faith in the MS implementation...
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
14. Re:Locked in Already by Bert64 · 2011-01-18 21:37 · Score: 1
  
  Word supports ODF since 2007 SP2, and 2010 includes this support by default...
  The support doesn't seem to be very good however...
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
15. Re:Locked in Already by Gadget_Guy · 2011-01-19 01:23 · Score: 1
  
  The problem that Microsoft had with their implementation of ODF was that it did support the standard strictly. Unfortunately, ODF doesn't standardise all the functionality of the OpenOffice.org format. Specifically, the current version doesn't mention any spreadsheet functions at all. The complaints that Microsoft got were not because they didn't impement the standard, but that they didn't implement what OOo wrote.
  So in summary, Microsoft Office documents don't use all the features from the ISO standard, and OpenOffice.org documents implements more than their ISO standard. Microsoft needs to update their software while ODF needs to update their standard.
16. Re:Locked in Already by spitzak · 2011-01-19 06:20 · Score: 1
  
  This is incorrect.
  Microsoft's FIRST version of ODF conversion, written by their programmers as a plugin for Office, did produce spreadsheets that interoperated with OOo. This is pretty obvious because OOo copied the Excel expression language and thus they did not have to alter the expressions at all to make them work with it.
  Later management stepped in and instructed the programmers to locate some way to weasal around the ODF standard and make a file that technically adhered to the standard but failed to load in anything so that it insured that ODF could not be used for interoperability with Office.
  They decided that because ODF did not specifically specify the expression format (instead relying on the implication "use what works on Excel and Open Office") they could convolve the expressions into something that nobody else could read, and ignore any expressions written the obvious way. This is like saying that because the C language standard does not specify that the sine of an angle is taken by a function called "sin(x)" (that is specified by libm and there are C implementations that lack it), they can make a "standard C" that uses postfix + and - because "expressions are not standardized".
  They also used the fact that OO interpreted the string "1" in a spreadsheet cell differently than Koffice did (OO actually was the buggy one because it was disagreeing with Excel) as "proof" that the only way to obey the standard was to write something that neither program could read. This was done by spewing tons of meaningless jargon that impressed the PHBs. The people who wrote that crap are probably the most vile scum in software, far more evil than any of Microsoft's management.
Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by mmj638 · 2011-01-18 16:32 · Score: 5, Interesting

Sneaking the word "Open" into this specification was a really dirty trick by Microsoft because
- it implies that this standard is somewhat "open", and the word "open" has positive connotations
- it (seemingly deliberately) creates confusion with "Open Office" ie the product OpenOffice.org, or open source in general.
I wouldn't be surprised if a number of people were taken in by this, thinking that by making the decision to support OOXML they were somehow contributing to more "openness" in the sense of open government and/or open source.
1. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by amiga3D · 2011-01-18 16:37 · Score: 1
  
  Nothing new...it's similar to calling a tyranical government a "people's" republic.
2. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:44 · Score: 0
  
  Stalling tactic - new law requiring reading of the specification aloud. Have you seen the documentation? War and Peace is a few times smaller.
3. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by b4dc0d3r · 2011-01-18 17:01 · Score: 2
  
  Like calling a windowing operating system "Windows"? Or an office suite "Office"? Or a word processor "Word"? Or a worldwide identity "Passport"? Or a competitor to Java called ".net"? How in the holy shit do you search for ".net"?
  "I want to do [x] in .NET"
  Results: you can do anything at zombo com. Anything at all.
  Fuck their marketing department, it makes it impossible to search for anything relevant until the search engines optimize for their retardedness.
4. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by GF678 · 2011-01-18 17:07 · Score: 0
  
  Sneaking the word "Open" into this specification was a really dirty trick by Microsoft because
  I'm not sure "sneaking" is the correct term here - the word is used several times in the specification, so it's not like they're trying to hide the word from view somehow.
  Also, how is it a dirty trick? There's no dirt involved really, even if the standard isn't as open as we'd like. It's a simple tactic that worked, so maybe you're just annoyed that it worked.
5. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by NJRoadfan · 2011-01-18 17:09 · Score: 1
  
  dotNET works pretty good. That or the API name or one of the languages (C#, VB.NET, ADO.NET, etc.)
6. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by exomondo · 2011-01-18 17:21 · Score: 1
  
  How in the holy shit do you search for ".net"?
  god forbid you need help doing something in GIMP.
7. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by hedwards · 2011-01-18 17:56 · Score: 1
  
  That's usually accurate, for certain values of "people."
8. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by corsec67 · 2011-01-18 18:20 · Score: 1
  
  Or the time I was trying to flip a \ding{51} in LaTeX. That was an interesting search.
  (LaTeX is the most interesting language to search for, which is why I use the book so much at work)
  
  --
  If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
9. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by erroneus · 2011-01-18 18:27 · Score: 1
  
  Using government and politics to push an unimplemented standard through the fastrack process is a dirty rule breaking move. The fastrack process is for "standards" that are in current use and has been fully implemented. OOXML is neither of those. The fact that ISO is supposed to be separate from political influences and was completely ursurped by it is another example.
  Are you intentionally looking the other way or do you simply not know what happened?
10. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by flimflammer · 2011-01-18 19:01 · Score: 1
  
  You search for .net articles by typing ".net" into the search anyone. Every single search engine knows what .net as a word is. You could also search dotnet, or better yet search for how to do what you want in your language of choice because that's the logical thing to do. As for your other complaints... Really? The only thing this shows is your inability to properly utilize a search engine. Every single example you've given can be easily researched.
11. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by am+2k · 2011-01-18 20:58 · Score: 2
  
  OOXML has only become a standard due to monetary reasons (read: bribes, lots of it), not techical ones.
12. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by Bert64 · 2011-01-18 21:47 · Score: 2
  
  The WebM specification is complete enough that it can be implemented by third parties. There are already multiple open and closed source applications implementing WebM.
  The WebM specification also comes with a reference implementation which is licensed under liberal terms.
  OOXML includes references to proprietary technology which is not documented in any open standard.
  OOXML (and perhaps WebM too) includes ambiguities which will force anyone implementing it to either make a guess or consult a reference implementation... The only reference implementation of OOXML is closed source and would require reverse engineering to fill in the blanks in the spec. Aside from areas where the spec is unclear, MSOffice also doesn't comply with some aspects of the published spec which are clearly defined. Also the ISO version of OOXML has no reference implementation at all.
  If WebM includes any such ambiguities they will be picked up by any third parties who try to create their own implementations, and the documentation can be filled in accordingly.
  Google are open to improvements from third parties, MS are not.
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
13. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by Kashgarinn · 2011-01-18 22:04 · Score: 1
  
  the OOXML format does 2 things..
  1) it should mean that you could technically open the file in notepad and read what it says - I tried saving a word XML file and opening it in notepad, and I could read it, this means that yes, you're data isn't locked into some arbitrary machine code no one can read but Mr. word 95, and if that's possible, then great, technicalities aside, anyone can create a "convert OoXML to HTML/PDF" if they so desire.
  2) if you're already comfortable within the MS Office environment, you can stay in that comfortable place.
14. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by Draek · 2011-01-19 02:54 · Score: 1
  
  Can be implemented by anyone willing, with no payment of royalties, NDAs or reverse-engineering needed.
  By that standard WebM is open, while OOXML and h.264 are not.
  
  --
  No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
15. Re:Naming of OOXML a really dirty trick by MS by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 08:00 · Score: 0
  
  Try adding more clarifying words like "Microsoft Windows" or "Microsoft Word" etc.. it doesn't take much effort!
Typical by Twigmon · 2011-01-18 16:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

Unfortunately this seems pretty typical of this government. They like to make policies up on the spot and those policies don't have any thought put into them. We've had stimulus spending that - helped keep the economy going. They didn't actually plan what they were going to spend on though and they never put proper policies in place and we ended up spending way too much on stuff that didn't work.
I especially like the opt-out section:
51. This policy is subject to the process for administration of opt-outs from Whole-ofGovernment arrangements.
52. Initial opt-out considerations will be factored into the transition plan and are expected to
show how alignment to the policy will be achieved as part of the transition plan. Claims for
opting out will not be considered during the transition phase.
53. When seeking an opt-out, an agency will need to include a remediation plan to detail how it
will return to the WofG COE policy. Opt-outs are limited to a maximum of 3 years, after
which the original business case will be reassessed to ensure it is still valid.
54. While it is recognised that agencies may have a need to develop separate SOE images, it is
expected that these images will comply with the standards set out for the COE to ensure
that agencies can still share data and services in a seamless manner.
Whoa shite! Opting out is a massive process and has to be reviewed every 3 years.............
1. Re:Typical by julioody · 2011-01-18 17:11 · Score: 1
  
  Unfortunately this seems pretty typical of this government. They like to make policies up on the spot and those policies don't have any thought put into them.
  Oh I like to think that there's just the right amount of thought put into this. Let me guess how it went: a MS rep took the right people out for dinner, blow, and hookers, and that's pretty much all it took.
  Because frankly, there's no shortage of OSS advocates in touch with the government. That at least at some point in the discussion someone would've pointed out that when MS says free, they don't mean it, I can almost guarantee.
  Sure, I got no proof of what I'm saying, but neither does the next guy who thinks that incompetence comes first than malice, when lobbying is a well documented phenomena.
2. Re:Typical by AfroTrance · 2011-01-18 18:35 · Score: 1
  
  Unfortunately this seems pretty typical of this government.
  Which government? The stimulus stuff came from the executive branch of the government. This apparently comes from AGIMO. I assume the people who run this are not members of/affiliated with the Labor or Liberal party. I assume that they make their decisions mostly independent of whatever party is in control of the government.
  Do you really think the same person(s) who thought of the stimulus also decided something as insignificant and mundane as what standard documents are stored as? Or that these two things are somehow (even remotely) related and a symptom of an inept 'government'?
3. Re:Typical by David+at+Eeyore · 2011-01-18 19:28 · Score: 1
  
  If you are an IT policy decider in an Australian Government agency, you have buckley's of getting any serious attention paid to a non-MS solution for a SOE. Pushing for 'open'ness such as seriously considering say 7-Zip or OpenOffice, even where it can be demonstrated convincingly that they are both user-friendly and cost-effective will have you labelled as not a team player or worse, plain eccentric. It can be very detrimental to your career prospects in the APS. (been there, done that in the past)
  Do not underestimate MS' very unhealthy hold over governments and senior management in this country. I'd like to see a Senate inquiry into that!
  
  --
  "Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups" seen on someone's blog...
4. Re:Typical by deniable · 2011-01-18 20:16 · Score: 1
  
  It's not the elected muppets, but the well-place bureaucrats that made these decisions. What idiot would let politicians near anything like this?
5. Re:Typical by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 07:22 · Score: 0
  
  Unfortunately this seems pretty typical of this government. They like to make policies up on the spot and those policies don't have any thought put into them.
  I enjoy good govt bashing as much as the next guy, but this is just a very ignorant comment. You should follow up legislative process one day -- one thing it is not is a quick ad-hoc process. Most of the time lots of time is used (probably much of it even wasted). Problems that come up mostly have to do with wrong people being involved (often times lobbyists; other times just inexperienced people, amateurs), not due to rushing things through.
Australia truely is the unlucky country by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:37 · Score: 0, Insightful

~223 years on, they are still ruled by idiots.
1. Re:Australia truely is the unlucky country by c0lo · 2011-01-18 16:48 · Score: 1
  
  ~223 years on, they are still ruled by idiots.
  Was ever a country ruled by smart people? Please provide examples if possible.
  
  --
  Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
2. Re:Australia truely is the unlucky country by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 16:54 · Score: 0
  
  You're presuming people want to be ruled. Fuck that. I want freedom from government.
3. Re:Australia truely is the unlucky country by GrpA · 2011-01-18 17:08 · Score: 2
  
  ~223 years on, they are still ruled by idiots.
  Was ever a country ruled by smart people? Please provide examples if possible.
  Hutt River Province...
  Seems rather pertinent under the circumstances.
  It is, after all, the second biggest country in Australia.
  GrpA
  
  --
  Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
4. Re:Australia truely is the unlucky country by blind+monkey+3 · 2011-01-18 18:09 · Score: 1
  
  ~223 years on, they are still ruled by idiots.
  If only! Sycophants (Imagine a prime minister saying I did but see her passing by, and yet I love her till I die". About the Queen...)
  and (G.W. Bush visit, US agents decide who gets into our parliament, allow CNN in despite Australian security saying no)
  lackeys (Chinese officials allowed to question Chinese political dissidents .. in private... one by one...) would be far more accurate.
  
  --
  BM3
5. Re:Australia truely is the unlucky country by c0lo · 2011-01-18 18:28 · Score: 1
  
  ~223 years on, they are still ruled by idiots.
  Was ever a country ruled by smart people? Please provide examples if possible.
  Hutt River Province...
  Seems rather pertinent under the circumstances.
  It is, after all, the second biggest country in Australia.
  GrpA
  Is secession still possible?
  How does it work with "compulsory land acquisition" laws - see the current Kimberley-related matters?
  
  --
  Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
6. Re:Australia truely is the unlucky country by DeathFromSomewhere · 2011-01-18 18:29 · Score: 1
  
  Must be pretty nice to be able to say that on a network developed by a government agency.
  
  --
  -1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
7. Re:Australia truely is the unlucky country by flanktwo · 2011-01-18 18:42 · Score: 2
  
  Can't comment on the "smart people" bit, but if a kingdom is ruled by a king and a principality is ruled by a prince, then a country is ruled by...
8. Re:Australia truely is the unlucky country by deniable · 2011-01-18 20:44 · Score: 1
  
  ~110 years actually.
9. Re:Australia truely is the unlucky country by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 21:05 · Score: 0
  
  Best viewed in IE, don't block pop ups. Nice example.
10. Re:Australia truely is the unlucky country by Rennt · 2011-01-18 23:57 · Score: 1
  
  Was ever a country ruled by smart people? Please provide examples if possible.
  Hutt River Province... [principali...-river.com]
  This site is best viewed on: IE 5.5 or better.
  Nope.
representative govt. and squeaky wheels by xzvf · 2011-01-18 16:37 · Score: 1

The thing about government and politicians is a small number of loud and aggressive people can change things. Sure you can give up, but open standards are good for consumers, good for every business that doesn't have a locked down IT product, good for transparent government. Quit if you want to, but they haven't won.
1. Re:representative govt. and squeaky wheels by DarwinSurvivor · 2011-01-18 20:12 · Score: 1
  
  The thing about people is a small number of loud and aggressive people can change things. Sure you can give up, but open standards are good for consumers, good for every business that doesn't have a locked down IT product, good for transparent government.
  
  Quit if you want to, but they haven't won.
  FTFY
2. Re:representative govt. and squeaky wheels by Lorien_the_first_one · 2011-01-19 00:44 · Score: 1
  
  They haven't won by a longshot. Linux adoption and adoption of open standards continues around the world. One look at the membership of the OpenDocument Foundation gives a pretty clear hint.
  
  --
  The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
Wait ... by bsquizzato · 2011-01-18 17:06 · Score: 1

According to the policy PDF, the only limitation is that the office application used supports ECMA-376. It doesn't state whether it needs to be ECMA-376 Strict or Transitional conformance.
So why couldn't someone use one of these?
1. Re:Wait ... by FrootLoops · 2011-01-18 18:25 · Score: 2
  
  It's even more confusing than that. Ecma-376 has two editions, the first being rejected by ISO and the second being accepted as ISO/IEC 29500. The first was more or less Microsoft's old proprietary format, and the second includes either "transitional" or "strict" versions. I suppose the Aussie standard means ecma-376, 2nd edition (since it's newer), and either the transitional or strict formats contained therein. In that case, TFA seems to be close to correct--MS Office appears to be one of the only software suites that supports it.
2. Re:Wait ... by bsquizzato · 2011-01-19 15:53 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, Office 2010 doesn't support Strict, only Transitional. The next release of Office will support both. The problem is, I doubt anything else supports Transitional other than office. See this blog that was posted on MSDN.
3. Re:Wait ... by FrootLoops · 2011-01-19 18:09 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, sorry I was ambiguous. I meant Office supports Ecma-376, 2nd edition inasmuch as it pretty much supports the transitional half. Nothing (or very little) seems to support strict.
Jumping the gun by apoorv020 · 2011-01-18 17:06 · Score: 1

Are we not jumping the gun with the claim that this will lock people into Microsoft Office? OpenOffice does open and write .docx format(if I remember correctly) and only the document standard is fixed, not the software to be used. I Don't see any other choice for a standard, since the standard has to be widely used and Microsoft Office is the market leader right now.
1. Re:Jumping the gun by FrootLoops · 2011-01-18 17:32 · Score: 2
  
  From the article,
  
  Applications that only support .docx read capabilities include Apple's iWork, IBM's Lotus Notes, Oracle's OpenOffice.Org and Google Docs, amongst others.
  I also just checked, and it's true--I can't save as .docx with OO.O Writer. Read-only capability isn't good enough, since "[software] must have the ability to read and write the endorsed file format".
2. Re:Jumping the gun by am+2k · 2011-01-18 20:57 · Score: 1
  
  OpenOffice does open and write .docx format(if I remember correctly) and only the document standard is fixed, not the software to be used.
  Only because ooo interprets files with the .docx file extension in the best way it can does not mean that it fully complies with the standard. The ooxml spec is written in a way that only Microsoft Office can ever hope to fully achieve this accomplishment.
3. Re:Jumping the gun by domatic · 2011-01-19 01:22 · Score: 1
  
  go-oo and go-oo derived versions of OpenOffice of which LibreOffice is one can save in docx actually. Not perfectly I'm sure but they can. I've even used go-oo to convert MS Works files to Office.
4. Re:Jumping the gun by am+2k · 2011-01-19 01:27 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, just like Frontpage can produce .html-files :)
Most public servants daily lives are unaffected... by Lord_of_the_nerf · 2011-01-18 17:12 · Score: 1

...as long as the Australian Government doesn't lock them into Myspace over Facebook.
Good, by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 17:15 · Score: 0

Now Office 2007 would be incompliant .
I read this as... by pookemon · 2011-01-18 17:32 · Score: 1

Australian government announces that it will officially keep doing what it has done for years.

aka - use microsoft products. Not sure how this is news, but I guess it gives the /. ers something to complain about.

--
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
Ironically by TangoMargarine · 2011-01-18 17:34 · Score: 1

Said documentation is in .docx format...

--
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Insist on FULL compliance with the standard by flyingfsck · 2011-01-18 17:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

If they insist on actual compliance with the standard, even MS will be out...

--
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
1. Re:Insist on FULL compliance with the standard by jimicus · 2011-01-18 21:27 · Score: 1
  
  How will they test that compliance?
Is it really that hard? by drdrgivemethenews · 2011-01-18 17:47 · Score: 1

I'd like to see some experience from someone small who's tried to support OOXML as standardized by ISO. All this polemic is just that.
1. Re:Is it really that hard? by Bigjeff5 · 2011-01-18 19:28 · Score: 1
  
  There is no office product that has read/write support for ECMA-376 (the OOXML spec in the story) yet.
  Office 2010 has read support for it (though what document it could read, I don't know, since nothing writes it yet), and writes the transitional ISO standard. SoftMaker 2010 and OO.org both import it, and SoftMaker can output the ISO transitional standard like Office 2010. I don't know if OO.org can do that yet.
  Give it another year and all three will likely support it.
  Small software companies don't make office software, and individuals definitely don't if they are interested in being at all relevant (seriously, SoftMaker is about as small as is capable of such a thing - office suites are huge and complicated). You could make a sweet text editor, but that's a far cry from a word processor.
  This actually opens the market for the little guy, since an office suite focused on a single standard might be doable for a smallish company. And while OOXML isn't as open as ODF, it's open enough. Microsoft's "promise not to sue" is legally binding in most countries, so it's safe enough for companies to write software for it.
  Seriously, why else do you think OO.org and SoftMaker support docx?
  
  --
  Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
2. Re:Is it really that hard? by lahvak · 2011-01-18 20:10 · Score: 1
  
  Small software companies don't make office software, and individuals definitely don't if they are interested in being at all relevant
  I am not sure if you will judge this to be relevant, but individuals can for example write conversion filters such as docbook2docx, lyx2docx etc.
  
  --
  AccountKiller
That's a GUARANTEE there will be leaks by erroneus · 2011-01-18 17:54 · Score: 1

Was Australia not paying attention to the Stuxnet situation? It was a HIGHLY TARGETTED malware designed for the purpose of infiltration of very specific systems. The fact that Windows and office is a highly predictable execution environment guarantees that there will be vectors of attack that Australia will be vulnerable to. And there WILL be people who see this as easily as I do because I'm no genius in these matters. And of course, the empowerment of anonymity combined with the foolishness of youth, they just painted a big target on their backs if for no other reason than the "glory" of it all.
1. Re:That's a GUARANTEE there will be leaks by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 18:49 · Score: 0
  
  Difference is, we're not making nuclear fuel against the wishes of powerful countries with our word processors :)
2. Re:That's a GUARANTEE there will be leaks by wvmarle · 2011-01-18 19:18 · Score: 1
  
  Yes yes Windows has a lot of holes in it, we know. Now think of what you just wrote. Not using Windows doesn't stop attacks like Stuxnet.
  Stuxnet was designed to attack very specific systems; the real target being some embedded computer in a controller. No idea what OS that runs, not Windows I'd guess.
  If someone were to specifically attack a government, they would target that specific system. It's not that if the government chooses Linux, that there will be dozens of versions around. As any large organisation would do, they would make it all the same. Central management and identical installations, preferably down to a standardised set of hardware. So it may not be Windows, it's still a "highly predictable execution environment".
  Windows may have more openings for attack than Linux, it doesn't mean Linux is immune to attacks. Especially targeted attacks. Of course it is immune to your run-of-the-mill botnet worm, and not likely to be infected through USB drives and the like.
3. Re:That's a GUARANTEE there will be leaks by Bert64 · 2011-01-18 21:57 · Score: 1
  
  It's not the fact that they run windows which makes an attractive target...
  It's the fact that you can guarantee with 99% certainty that any government or corporation you choose to attack will be running windows and msoffice... Diversity is the key, and a lack of diversity is extremely dangerous.
  Also while linux will have security bugs, bugs can get fixed... Many of the problems with windows are fundamental design flaws which cannot be fixed without breaking compatibility, and if your going to ditch windows compatibility you might as well just run linux anyway.
  
  --
  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
4. Re:That's a GUARANTEE there will be leaks by erroneus · 2011-01-18 23:21 · Score: 1
  
  Let's look at Linux. There are many Linuxes, for example. But they are not all the same. They use different default configurations, different libraries, different patches of their different libraries -- they are not homogeneous.
  Now let's look at Windows. Windows versions are many but they are all essentially based on the same kernel and code which is why discovered vulnerabilities seem to effect so many versions from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003. (I am allowing an exception for Windows 2008 for now but as 64 bit becomes the norm, you can expect it to be included soon enough) Windows is a tribe of pygmies waiting for the first outside invader to come along and cough on them.
  It's not so much that Windows is more vulnerable (though it is) it is that it presents a very large and homogeneous target that has the highest probability of being able to spread. And it's not only because Windows is homogeneous and not only because it is pervasive. It is also because the calibre of most Windows users and admins is typically low. YOU might be an expert of security practices and procedure and you might be able to lock your machines down tighter than any Linux distro out there by default. But will your users? Will other admins? I guarantee they will not. I guarantee that most CAN not and the majority of those who can, WILL not.
Public information should be open by DeathElk · 2011-01-18 17:59 · Score: 5, Informative

As long as they provide information to the public in an open format such as HTML or PDF, I don't care what they adopt in an SOE.
The major beef I do have however, is the Windows only tax return software provided by the Australian Taxation Office. The fact that I have to use Windows if I want to file my tax return electronically is totally unacceptable.
1. Re:Public information should be open by Pastis · 2011-01-18 19:55 · Score: 1
  
  > As long as they provide information to the public in an open
  > format such as HTML or PDF, I don't care what they adopt in an SOE.
  Try filling up a PDF form with open source software and save it. Very practical.Not.
  
  --
  Sneak teach kids Algebra using a game
2. Re:Public information should be open by Rennt · 2011-01-18 23:26 · Score: 1
  
  The tax pack software runs fine under wine. I know, I know, we shouldn't have to use wine. But you can. Funnily enough, I only got the idea after the tax department website said (paraphrasing here) "eh, try running it under wine stupid".
3. Re:Public information should be open by gronofer · 2011-01-21 22:09 · Score: 1
  
  As long as they provide information to the public in an open format such as HTML or PDF, I don't care what they adopt in an SOE.
  The major beef I do have however, is the Windows only tax return software provided by the Australian Taxation Office. The fact that I have to use Windows if I want to file my tax return electronically is totally unacceptable.
  Yeah, that Windows tax pack thing is complete incompetence. I always fill the thing out on paper and post it to them - let them waste time keying it in again.
4. Re:Public information should be open by gronofer · 2011-01-21 22:12 · Score: 1
  
  The tax pack software runs fine under wine. I know, I know, we shouldn't have to use wine. But you can. Funnily enough, I only got the idea after the tax department website said (paraphrasing here) "eh, try running it under wine stupid".
  No thanks, I'm not going to run the thing under Wine unless they have properly tested it and support it. It's not *that* hard to install Linux and Wine, is it? Surely they must have somebody in their organisation who can do it.
Franklin's words seem apropos by jargonburn · 2011-01-18 18:00 · Score: 1

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. *sigh*
1. Re:Franklin's words seem apropos by iPhr0stByt3 · 2011-01-18 18:25 · Score: 1
  
  No... no that doesn't really apply. But it is a GREAT quote :)
2. Re:Franklin's words seem apropos by jargonburn · 2011-01-18 19:04 · Score: 1
  
  I was trying to describe their choice of formats as "security," and the portability of their documents as "essential liberty." I re-read the post, though, and can see the comparison does fall a bit short/is overkill. :)
3. Re:Franklin's words seem apropos by Bigjeff5 · 2011-01-18 19:31 · Score: 1
  
  What does any of this have to do with liberty or safety?
  It's the government's internal documentation standard for god's sake! Get a grip!
  
  --
  Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
4. Re:Franklin's words seem apropos by jargonburn · 2011-01-25 17:48 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, yes. Next time I'll paraphrase when using a quote lacks a direct/obvious application.
That's why I always preferred MOOXML by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 18:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

MOOXML, aka Microsoft Open Office XML
Quick! Spread the meme!
Slashdot must have Aussie owners. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 18:28 · Score: 0

Rupert Murdoch? Whoever. But why else would every third story here be from or about Australia?
Business as usual. by Enter+the+Shoggoth · 2011-01-18 18:35 · Score: 1

This really isn't a drastic change from policy that was already in place within many government agencies in Australia.
As much as our Amercian cousins here on slashdot lament the stupidity of their representatives they are streets ahead of those who inhabit the parliaments of Australia in terms of their tech savvyness - our mob are truly luddites and assume that M$ are the only competent people in the whole IT industry.
It's especially true in the national capital... it's one of the few places in the country where you can get a job in IT with reasonable working conditions. The unfortunate down side is that unless it's defence or foreign affairs no one seems to have heard of any other OS apart from windows.

--
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
correction by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 19:06 · Score: 0

money in microsofts pocket and the persons implementing it , NOT a tax payer savings....
Re:does office even support the standard? MOD UP by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 19:09 · Score: 0

Has an AC ever spoken truer words? Looks like Aussies just locked themselves out from all existing software products. Nice one.
I still simply cannot believe that ISO made the move and standardized OOXML and instantly lost all credibility with computer oriented people, at least all people who know how the process was carried out. I'm sure that includes also people in favor of OOXML, if any. Standards are supposed to be accepted on grounds of technical excellence and financial benefit to the global community.
http://www.noooxml.org/
Compatibility by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 19:22 · Score: 0

I bet it has more to do with compatibility than anything. If everyone is using Office 2010, then you don't have to worry about some weird .doc format screwing stuff up. Not to mention how much better Excel is than any Open Source spreadsheet program. They'd rather have things work, instead of pander to some zealots on the internet. God knows trying to get everyone to use the same distro, and actually have that distro be easily installed on numerous different computers, would be hell.
1. Re:Compatibility by ThePhilips · 2011-01-19 00:11 · Score: 1
  
  If everyone is using Office 2010, then you don't have to worry about some weird .doc format screwing stuff up.
  
  Have no experience with Office 2010, but document formatting never was its forte. WinWord encourages bad formatting practices by making proper formatting a chore. Ribbon doesn't help. But both WinWord and Writer, as reliable formatting goes, ages behind WYSIWYM editors like LyX (though the latter lacks embedded/embeddable graphics editor).
  
  Not to mention how much better Excel is than any Open Source spreadsheet program.
  
  In my experience, OO is better than Excel in many aspects. Both have bunch of problems, but at least for OO workarounds are plenty, while in Excel it is generally "it is a feature, not bug."
  
  They'd rather have things work, instead of pander to some zealots on the internet.
  
  That is precisely my sentiment against M$O. In OO, albeit it is oftentimes is slower than M$O, document editing is much smoother. Add here the lack of ribbon - and you have the winner.
  
  --
  All hope abandon ye who enter here.
is there are really better alternative? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 19:30 · Score: 0

I've been using both open office and ms office for almost 10 years. Honestly open office is not even comparable to ms office from productivity point of view.(I bet you have all been using it and think it is even better but it does not work for me) I was involved in a corporate "let's move to open office" move but we switched back to ms office after a few months of suffering. And we lost much more money than license fees because of loss of productivity.
Why would not they choose open office or any other office suite if there was an alternative as good as ms office? Why would millions of people, companies etc would prefer to pay for something if it has a free equivalent? What's wrong with them?
Active Directory Rights Management Services by blarkon · 2011-01-18 19:37 · Score: 5, Interesting

Built into Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is a role called "Active Directory Rights Management Services". It allows authors to control what can be done with documents. You can stop cutting, pasting, forwarding, editing, the whole shebang. Office 2007 and 2010 follow the rules set down in the rights templates. So does the operating system.
After Wikileaks, governments are going to be all about rights management protection for documents. RMS stops people opening sensitive documents that they've copied to a USB stick.
Open / Libre Office doesn't have this functionality (and because of the Open Source movement's philosophical objection to rights management technologies probably will never have this functionality).
The recent wikileaks saga has been a big wake up call to business and government - because they want to do their best to make sure that their information isn't plastered all over the Internet. Office 2007 / 2010 support this out of the box (just that few people use it). Open / Libre Office won't support it in a million years because "DRMs is Teh Evil"
1. Re:Active Directory Rights Management Services by ChunderDownunder · 2011-01-18 20:46 · Score: 1
  
  RMS stops people opening sensitive documents that they've copied to a USB stick.
  Damn you, Stallman! :)
2. Re:Active Directory Rights Management Services by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 22:09 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  The fact that this "rights management" service requires cooperation from individual client side applications renders the whole idea flawed... If it's not enforced at the kernel level, its pretty trivial to bypass.
  As a classic extremely simple example, get a workstation where group policy prohibits your user from running cmd.exe, now open up cmd.exe in a hex editor and search for the unicode string "disablecmd" and change it to something else... Save it out and run the binary, it will run just fine. Alternatively you can load up a debugger and modify the program in memory.
  If you implement restrictions like this, people will find ways around it, even if they just point a camera at the screen. If you don't implement restrictions people will just take the easiest approach and probably not realise their actions have been logged. If you log their actions you can catch them. If they're leaking data in a more sneaky manner they're likely to get away with it for a long time (and thus a huge amount of data) before you can find out who did it.
  Also the more onerous restrictions you enforce, the harder it becomes for people to do their jobs.
  OpenOffice won't implement DRM because the whole idea is fundamentally flawed, all it does is provide a false sense of security and a hindrance to legitimate users. However you implement it, hackers will soon work out how to break it and the naive staff who implemented it won't even consider that its been broken, and waste time trying to investigate other possible sources of the leak.
3. Re:Active Directory Rights Management Services by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 22:58 · Score: 0
  
  No way. RMS/Richard Stallman would never defect to the MS side!
4. Re:Active Directory Rights Management Services by Rennt · 2011-01-18 23:53 · Score: 1
  
  NONE of the above is suitable for government documentation. Even the top-secret stuff. Can you imagine the problems trying to extract data from archives that were "protected" decades ago by some flavor-of-the-month DRM solution?
5. Re:Active Directory Rights Management Services by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2011-01-19 01:03 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, yeah and all it takes is a stupid cellphone camera to take screen shots of the screen! How is this security hole going to be fixed?
  
  --
  sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
6. Re:Active Directory Rights Management Services by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 01:25 · Score: 0
  
  All this DRM magic only works if u stay inside MS ecosystem. It will not prevent any leaks.
7. Re:Active Directory Rights Management Services by datapharmer · 2011-01-19 01:36 · Score: 1
  
  Don't allow cameras in high security zones.
  
  --
  Get a web developer
8. Re:Active Directory Rights Management Services by jedidiah · 2011-01-19 02:34 · Score: 1
  
  This sort of nonsense also prevents you from getting actual work done when you need to transfer data between internal systems in a manner that the policymakers didn't account for.
  
  --
  A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
9. Re:Active Directory Rights Management Services by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-19 04:29 · Score: 0
  
  Built into Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is a role called "Active Directory Rights Management Services". It allows authors to control what can be done with documents. You can stop cutting, pasting, forwarding, editing, the whole shebang. Office 2007 and 2010 follow the rules set down in the rights templates. So does the operating system.
  That isn't real security, because you still HAVE the data, and you can still copy it anywhere you want (just copy the file). It's the same as with group policies - for example, you can stop users from opening the registry editor or a command line, and this group policy thing is absolutely useless, because it affects the application level and not the OS API.
  You can drop in a modified registry editor, a modified command line, or write your own registry editing macro in MS Excel's Visual Basic editor if you don't have anything better around (and I have actually done that; the modification of cmd.exe is exactly 3 bits in one byte, which turns the Jump-non-zero into an unconditional Jump, thus circumventing group policies).
  
  After Wikileaks, governments are going to be all about rights management protection for documents. RMS stops people opening sensitive documents that they've copied to a USB stick.
  So RMS is crap. What you want is Bell-La Padula mandatory access control, which stops people from mixing data at different levels of sensitivity (at the operating system level).
  MS Office runs on Windows ONLY, and Windows does not have multilevel security.
  Actually, I have OpenOffice on a multilevel secure installation of Solaris, so the situation could be:
  * Firefox, running under the 'unclassified' label, surfing the internet
  * An OpenOffice process, running at the 'unclassified' label, where you edit an article meant to be published on the internet
  * An OpenOffice process, running at the 'confidential dev' label, where you edit a document at the 'confidential dev' label
  Now you can copy&paste from the 'unclassified' OpenOffice to Firefox, or you could access that 'unclassified' OOo document file from Firefox.
  You can NOT copy&paste from 'confidential dev' OpenOffice to the other OpenOffice or to Firefox, and Firefox can not access the 'confidential dev' OOo document file, because the mandatory access controls won't let it.
  Of course, you could start a 'confidential dev' labeled Firefox process, however, then it would have an internet connection, because obviously, the network card that has an internet connection would be labeled 'unclassified', so the mandatory access controls deny access.
  
  Open / Libre Office doesn't have this functionality (and because of the Open Source movement's philosophical objection to rights management technologies probably will never have this functionality).
  Because it is virtually useless, see above.
  
  The recent wikileaks saga has been a big wake up call to business and government - because they want to do their best to make sure that their information isn't plastered all over the Internet. Office 2007 / 2010 support this out of the box (just that few people use it). Open / Libre Office won't support it in a million years because "DRMs is Teh Evil"
  DRM doesn't do the job. MAC does, mostly - anyway, you can just type into one window what you see in another window, or you could take a photo of your screen with a cell phone camera. So it's really up to the personnel in the end. Your staff must be trustworthy.
10. Re:Active Directory Rights Management Services by blarkon · 2011-01-19 15:36 · Score: 1
  
  Security isn't a complete barrier, but there is no way you are going to be able to cellphone camera more than a couple of documents (and remember you have access to that document anyway because you've been able to open it) What this stops is mega document dumps like Wikileaks as you can't cell phone camera 10,000 documents or even 100 easily.
11. Re:Active Directory Rights Management Services by blarkon · 2011-01-19 15:38 · Score: 1
  
  You'll probably find that they'll chose the risk long term unreadability over allowing wikileaks style information leakage (because whatever solution they choose will be sold as being able to recover from encrypted archives)
12. Re:Active Directory Rights Management Services by gregzeng · 2011-01-20 02:00 · Score: 1
  
  Spy camera gadgets are tiny, cheap, ... almost undetectable. Check eBay for normal users. Military & para-military of every nation have access to gadgetry (& mods) that we cannot imagine possible. Perhaps all public servants should be equipped with RFID sun-skin implants when viewing/ hearing/ speaking any official documents. They should also be forced to wear RFID-linked vision filters when viewing deliberately fuzzy government screens.
  
  --
  Australian Capital Territory
They didn't say if by www.sorehands.com · 2011-01-18 19:43 · Score: 0

They didn't say if the sharks had laser beams attached.

--
Fight Spammers!
That is why the title for the next article by mAriuZ · 2011-01-18 20:11 · Score: 1

That is why the title for the next article makes more sense : Sharks Seen Swimming Down Australian Streets
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/01/18/1724200/

--
developer http://flamerobin.org
So sad. by Jane+Q.+Public · 2011-01-18 20:51 · Score: 1

It really does make me sad. Lately it has been looking like the Australian government had gone even loonier than the U.S. government has.

Weird. And sad.
Can't OpenOffice do this? by Peeteriz · 2011-01-18 21:03 · Score: 1

As far as I remember, Open Office could read and write .docx formats easily, so wouldn't OO also qualify for this requirement?
missed criteria by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-18 21:19 · Score: 0

Here's a criteria they missed in the security document: Must securely support whistle blowing by allowing any data, up to and including top-secret classified, to be exported in a format readable by the public.
But people in the US should thank them.... by ron_ivi · 2011-01-18 21:22 · Score: 1

... for paying the "Microsoft Tax" in addition to their own taxes, to prop up the US economy at their expense.
I can't imagine why they'd do it; but the US sure could use the money to pay off some of it's debt.
1. Re:But people in the US should thank them.... by porl · 2011-01-18 21:29 · Score: 1
  
  hahaha yeah, good point. enjoy my money, you bastards! :P
2. Re:But people in the US should thank them.... by TheRaven64 · 2011-01-18 23:28 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Actually, they are now required not to pay the Microsoft Tax. The last tests I saw showed that Microsoft Office got over 5,000 failures in Microsoft's own OOXML conformance tests. It therefore does not support OOXML and can therefore not be used by the Australian government. I suggest that anyone in Australia points this out to their elected representatives.
  Amusingly, Microsoft Office actually did better in ODF conformance tests (with a plugin, I think), than it did in OOXML conformance tests. I'm not sure how OO.o does with OOXML, but it's managed to open both of the the OOXML files I've ever been sent.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
3. Re:But people in the US should thank them.... by ThePhilips · 2011-01-18 23:41 · Score: 2
  
  ... for paying the "Microsoft Tax" in addition to their own taxes, to prop up the US economy at their expense.
  I wouldn't be that optimistic.
  
  I can't imagine why they'd do it; but the US sure could use the money to pay off some of it's debt.
  Lobbies and money funneling come to my mind first. The business as usual for MS and the likes. And the gov't officials.
  
  --
  All hope abandon ye who enter here.
4. Re:But people in the US should thank them.... by marcosdumay · 2011-01-19 02:17 · Score: 1
  
  Except that Microsoft doesn't have a lot of debt. You could make better use of that "tax" if it was sent to your government instead.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
5. Re:But people in the US should thank them.... by marcosdumay · 2011-01-19 04:40 · Score: 1
  
  That is not that amusing. Nothing can conform to OOXML, it is a mathematical impossibility.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
6. Re:But people in the US should thank them.... by MrKaos · 2011-01-19 14:08 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, they are now required not to pay the Microsoft Tax. The last tests I saw showed that Microsoft Office got over 5,000 failures in Microsoft's own OOXML conformance tests. It therefore does not support OOXML and can therefore not be used by the Australian government. I suggest that anyone in Australia points this out to their elected representatives.
  Amusingly, Microsoft Office actually did better in ODF conformance tests (with a plugin, I think), than it did in OOXML conformance tests. I'm not sure how OO.o does with OOXML, but it's managed to open both of the the OOXML files I've ever been sent.
  Thank you, that's exactly what I intend doing.
  
  --
  My ism, it's full of beliefs.
7. Re:But people in the US should thank them.... by Lunzo · 2011-01-19 16:28 · Score: 1
  
  You know it's not the government as in elected representatives and senators that wrote this document. "The Government" in TFS/TFA is a group of unelected public servants who authored it and will be implementing it. If you representative even gives you an answer it will be along the lines of don't care because it wasn't their decision and doesn't affect them or you.
8. Re:But people in the US should thank them.... by MrKaos · 2011-01-19 20:48 · Score: 1
  
  If you representative even gives you an answer it will be along the lines of don't care because it wasn't their decision and doesn't affect them or you.
  Bullshit. I've written to Pollicritters numerous times and not only received a reply but been asked to advise them.
  Further, I've also been able to play a part in making sure stupid legislation doesn't pass.
  I can understand your cynicism, but if you don't want to participate in your democracy, that's your business, not mine.
  
  --
  My ism, it's full of beliefs.
9. Re:But people in the US should thank them.... by TheRaven64 · 2011-01-20 01:18 · Score: 1
  
  The point of having elected representatives is to provide oversight for the unelected ones. In a parliamentary system like the UK or Australia, all civil servants report to a senior civil servant, who reports to a minister, who in turn reports to the parliament. The members of the parliament, in turn, report to the electorate. If you want to hold unelected civil servants to account, you hold your MP to account, he raises parliamentary questions, the relevant minister then instructs the head of that branch of the civil service, and the commands go down to the junior civil servants who actually made the error.
  If your elected representative ever gives you an answer of 'don't care' then forward it to your local papers. They'll be happy to publish it on a slow news day.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
10. Re:But people in the US should thank them.... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-20 16:43 · Score: 0
  
  Actually, they are now required not to pay the Microsoft Tax. The last tests I saw showed that Microsoft Office got over 5,000 failures in Microsoft's own OOXML conformance tests. It therefore does not support OOXML and can therefore not be used by the Australian government. I suggest that anyone in Australia points this out to their elected representatives.
  Amusingly, Microsoft Office actually did better in ODF conformance tests (with a plugin, I think), than it did in OOXML conformance tests. I'm not sure how OO.o does with OOXML, but it's managed to open both of the the OOXML files I've ever been sent.
  Have you a link to these test results? I'm not sure that they would take me seriously if I pointed them to just your /. post
11. Re:But people in the US should thank them.... by TheRaven64 · 2011-01-20 22:50 · Score: 1
  
  Not to hand, but they made the front page of Slashdot, so you can probably find the by digging in the archives, or using your favourite search engine.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This means they have to wait for office 15 by Chrisq · 2011-01-18 21:29 · Score: 1

Do they know that Microsoft won't fully support the standard until Office 15, Office 2010 is non-compliant.
Capitalism != Free Market by angus77 · 2011-01-18 22:01 · Score: 1

Capitalism's not based on open markets. A free market economy is only one way to implement capitalism. Another is to allow all the people who have capital to use their capital to crush any potential competition and form monopolies. Check out the history of Standard Oil for a fascinating example of laissez faire capitalism that produced the richest man in history at the expense of nearly all competition.
1. Re:Capitalism != Free Market by angus77 · 2011-01-18 22:02 · Score: 1
  
  What went wrong there?!? I tried to link to wikipedia and somehow produced a link to slashdot. Just wiki Standard Oil!
2. Re:Capitalism != Free Market by sFurbo · 2011-01-18 23:06 · Score: 1
  
  You forgot the http:/// (**)in front of the link. If it is not there (and, IIRC, the adress does not start with www.), slashcode assumes it is an internal link.
  href="en.wikipedia.org"
  href="http://en.wikipedia.org"
  href="www.wikipedia.org"
  
  Yup, www.* also works, but en.* only works with http://en./
  
  (**) should only be with two slashes, but slashcode thinks it is a link
3. Re:Capitalism != Free Market by angus77 · 2011-01-19 16:03 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks for that!
Are they nuts? by prefec2 · 2011-01-18 23:37 · Score: 1

There is no single program on the world which can read and write the ISO certified OOXML correctly. Beside that, other countries like South Africa, Japan, France or Germany (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#National_level and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption).
To make it short. Why in hell do they adopt a format which is not used in the western world and will most likely not succeed in Asia? As such India is heading for ODF and even though China has developed UOF they rather go for ODF than for OOXML.
This is definitely not a logical decission.
Resting on laurels by Lorien_the_first_one · 2011-01-19 00:50 · Score: 1

Exactly. Open standards prevent entrenched incumbents from resting on their laurels while they collect their checks. This is not just true in open standards and open source software, this is true in terms of the rate of innovation. If there were no patents (note that OOXML is encumbered by patents), then anyone could copy anyone else's ideas. Even the incumbents would have to keep moving and making things better as the competition would follow them.

That is the best way to describe why patents aren't really a net gain to society. Thanks for that.

--
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
Picking Microsoft software for security reasons... by lwriemen · 2011-01-19 01:34 · Score: 1

...is a joke that writes itself.
It's open as in goatse by Nimey · 2011-01-19 02:24 · Score: 1

en tee

--
Hail Eris, full of mischief...

E pluribus sanguinem
Reducing the potential for leaks ? by doperative · 2011-01-19 03:57 · Score: 1

"The Australian Government has released a .. desktop policy .. aimed at reducing the potential for leaks of Government data — mandates .. Microsoft Office," ..
"Core Services: Antivirus MANDATORY" ..
"Operating System: MANDATORY" ..
"a. The operating system must be procured in accordance Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines and in accordance with Whole-of-Government ICT policies including the ICT Customisation and Bespoke Development Policy" ..
"Network: MANDATORY" ..
"a. Must support the WofG Internet Protocol Version 6(IPv6) Strategy" ..
"Hardware: All desktops need to be procured in accordance with the WofG Desktop Hardware panel" .. link
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Microsoft, the company that made text dangerous ..
1. Re:Reducing the potential for leaks ? by Dan541 · 2011-01-19 10:55 · Score: 1
  
  The thinking here is that allot of people shun Microsoft Office in favour of open alternatives. Therefore if a document is released fewer people will be able to read it. This is how our government often thinks about security.
  
  --
  An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Open Office doesn't have this functionality? by doperative · 2011-01-19 04:07 · Score: 1

"Built into Windows.. is a role called "Active Directory Rights Management Services" .. You can stop cutting, pasting, forwarding, editing ..
If you can see it, you can copy it ...
1. Re:Open Office doesn't have this functionality? by blarkon · 2011-01-19 15:34 · Score: 1
  
  All forms of security are an inconvenience rather than a total barrier. You might be able to copy one document manually by typing it out - but that is extremely time consuming. AD RMS would stop the mega document dumps that wikileaks is performing unless you have a million monkeys manually retyping every document.
Bribery is just part of big business by bussdriver · 2011-01-19 06:31 · Score: 1

They bribe to get ISO to approve the format which nobody does yet on a fast track when they already have one that had to do the process. It shows ISO isn't honest and doesn't function well enough to sustain an attack.
They bribe governments to start Microsoft addictions at low prices and high bribes or even charity "donations."
Now with governments having over a decade of problems with their Microsoft addictions started looking for standardization to avoid many big problems CAUSED by Microsoft we have Microsoft bribing them to solve the problems they created by standardizing upon ...Microsoft!
Corruption and ignorance continues well funded.

--
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Because it is condecending and literal minded by bussdriver · 2011-01-19 07:07 · Score: 1

Some people, possibly most Americans are stupid; HALF are below average....
The rest of us get upset when you tell use the obvious and are just being argumentative and literal minded. It is a democracy just like the "1st democracy" in ROME thousands of years ago-- not literally democracy (narrow minded) because that was NOT possible millenniums ago in "simple society."
Democracy picks the reps, there are various systems on how that works (largely hacked.) The reps democratically vote for you with various systems on that (largely hacked, or DoS in the US Senate.) Repeated all over at all levels is the democratic process (functioning or not) because its fundamentally democratic; but practically not an extremely ideal literal minded implementation which is impossible and not worth serious consideration.
Your distribution is not linux! It came with more than just the kernel. Or its not linux, its compiled linux-- only the kernel source code is linux...
Amy Goodman probably already gets death threats from foxtards.

--
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Alas! We are undone! by Eclipse-now · 2011-01-20 08:10 · Score: 1

When Russia and China appear to be moving away from paying for a ridiculously overpriced OS and Office software, our government is locking it in! Aaaargh! Don't they realise that if Western governments finally wean off the evil giant by growing their own Open Source versions of Linux, and creating beautiful efficient User-Interfaces in Open Office software, the whole economy can eventually wean off America's software and we all win? The Australian government should have mandated exactly the opposite! Today is a sad day to be an Australian. Geeks across the land will be tearing their shirts and throwing ashes over their heads, crying "Alas! Alas, we are undone!"