you're missing the more significant reason why. Both independent claims have the following requirement:
wherein all of the text of the document is stored within text elements such that only the text of the document is contained between start text tags and end text tags; wherein there are no intervening tags between each of the start text tags and each of the corresponding end text tags
This means that document formats that use a HTML-like mixed content model to do their formatting aren't affected by the Microsoft patent, and that includes ODF.
That's a very good point; thank you for pointing this out! I've added a link to your comment at the bottom of my article under "Notes on feedback from readers".
"CustomXML" has a specific meaning in the OOXML spec, and there is a corresponding API in Microsoft's "Word" product that plugins can use. See here for an explanation of what it is about.
The submitted article cites the patent owner saying it doesn't apply to ODF. Why would I care what someone who says about himself, "I am not a lawyer, and specifically not a patent lawyer. I have never spent a lot of time on learning about the intricacies of patent law" has to say on the matter at this point? In fact, why would I care even what experienced patent lawyers have to say now? Hasn't it been definitively settled by i4i's statement?
What hasn't been settled by i4i's statement is the (IMO false) claim that the MS patent affects ODF more than the i4i patent does.
It would not matter what a third party thinks as long as i4i thinks it is not infringing. Unlike trademarks, patents do not expire unless enforced. So i4i is within rights to sue Microsoft and not Sun.
From the perspective of a company which invests into integrating its business processes with the office software that it is using (that's the area of application where the kind of stuff that the patent talks about is relevant), it matters a lot whether you can base your work on ODF without having to fear that essential features (for your purposes) might get removed from future versions due to patent trouble.
yea, openoffice is free so there is little to no money in sueing them, but microsoft there is millions in there
Sun is distributing OpenOffice, and is legally liable for any patent infringement that would be involved. Pretty soon Oracle will be legally responsible. There is plenty of money there to be gotten by a patent infringement lawsuit, if there was a case to be made. But OpenOffice simply doesn't infringe any patents on OOXML's extension mechanisms simply because ODF doesn't have any such extension mechanisms.
It's a decision based on the facts of the matter. OOXML has a mechanism (called "CustomXML") which does what the i4i patent describes. ODF doesn't have anything like it.
I do it myself, with cheap Linux software RAID boxes in separate locations, piggybacking on existing Internet services to do rsync mirroring between the sites. The machines are kept alive, running disk scans.
Just fsck scans, or full disk scans in which you read every sector that actually contains data? If the latter, I'd be very interested in any statistics that you may have accumulated about disk blocks going bad. For example, is there a correlation between bad blocks, with blocks close to each other on the physical medium having a greater probability of going bad at roughly the same time than blocks with are further away from each other?
The other alternative is doing it yourself with RAID arrays at different locations. Sync your 'must be preserved folder' nightly to both locations using rdiff-backup or similar. Regularly test recovery and make sure all the disks in both arrays are working without error.
If there is fully redundancy by storing the data in two locations anyway, and this is a back-up solution only anyway, is it really so beneficial to use RAID? I mean, sure, using RAID in one or both locations increases redundancy, but also increases complexity (increasing the number of ways in whcih something can possibly go wrong) and cost.
Meanwhile ODF is great for developers but it lacks the functionality that users demand. The most obvious example is formula definitions.
When you want additional functionality to be standardized, you should submit a "New Work Item Proposal" or "Fast Track submission" for an amendment or separate specification document which extends the existing standard by also standardizing the additionally-desired functionality.
You should not (like Microsoft + ECMA did) use such examples of incompleteness as an excuse for essentially suggesting that the existing standard should be ignored in its entirety in favor of an entirely different, huge, conflicting, half-baked and bug-ridden specification. In addition, if an existing specification is as big and as needy of further work as the OOXML spec, it is really unjustifiable to attempt pushing it through the ISO/IEC system by means of the "Fast-Track" process which is totally inadequate for that kind of situation, as can be seen from the fact that this process has resulted in changes to the specification which led Microsoft to conclude that they cannot implement the ISO/IEC version of OOXML anytime soon.
When users find they can't do something they expect to be able to do, it can have huge consequences. What's better a feature that takes time to implement in software or a feature that can't be?
When a feature is not formally standardized, that does not imply that it cannot be implemented. Of course e.g. spreadsheet formulas can, and have been implemented by ODF implementations such as OpenOffice.org.
That's how politics come to a close about an issue. Those who lost complain, publicly, loudly, and with no effect whatsoever on the process itself. Then everyone goes back to business.
You can love it or hate it, but if you watch enough politics closely enough, you see this pattern repeat over and over and over again.
There's a difference here though: In most political contexts, nonviolently establishing an alternative process is prohibitively difficult.
In this context, it's still difficult, but much easier. ISO is not an intergovernmental organization. It's just simply a private-sector organization with seat in Geneva. Nothing and nobody has the right stop us from setting up a competing organization.
The key challenge is in convincing governments that the new organization is more worthy of paying attention to than ISO/IEC JTC1. In this context it's very good news that some governments are expressing doubts about ISO/IEC.
Note that since nations are sovereign, it is not necessary for an organization that aims to become a better alternative to ISO/IEC to convince a majority of countries. Even convincing a handful of countries is probably enough if a heavyweight like e.g. Brazil or India is among them, since that would suffice for putting very strong pressure on e.g. Microsoft to allow true interoperability.
As long as no significantly more credible replacement exists, ISO will continue to matter, at least with respect to government procurement (which again sends strong signals to the economy as a whole) -- even in fields like informatics where practically all knowledgeable people primarily look elsewhere for standards.
Replacing ISO is not an easy task, but IMO it needs to be done. If you're willing to help, please join the effort at OpenISO.org
ISO is supposed to be about standards which work for everyone. There are written rules in place which are designed to guarantee that specifications will be accepted as international standards only when there is very broad acceptance. In the case of OOXML, these rules were bent again and again (having participated in the process both as a member of the relevant committee in my national standardization organization and at the international "Ballot Resolution Meeting", I know this from first-hand observation). In view of this, it is IMO quite reasonable to interpret the dismissal of these appeals (the first appeals ever in the history of ISO/IEC JTC1) as very strong evidence that ISO/IEC approval of a specification can not longer be interpreted as an indication that the specification has very broad acceptance among those who care about the topic area.
As a matter of fact, what will become the ISO/IEC standard on OOXML is not likely to be truly implemented by anyone. Microsoft has already announced that they will not anytime soon implement the changes relative to the OOXML format that they're currently using.
Just be glad we have a standard that we can work from
Why would anyone want to "work from" the ISO/IEC version of the OOXML specification?
What *we* can do when the goverments, corporations and organisations are corrupted and we cant turn to ask help from them, because those who has power, controls those who could help us....?
Despite the name, ISO is not an international organization in the same sense as e.g. WTO or WIPO are international organizations with countries as members. ISO is simply a cartel of national "standardization organizations". Everyone has the right to start an organization to compete with them. I believe that ISO is so strongly committed to acting in the best interest of the dinosaurs that there is no real alternative anymore to doing this. If you agree, please join us at OpenISO.org.
He said it twice, I know some guys who were there.
I've just been pointed by a contact at Microsoft corporation to this blog posting which by not deying the quotation implicitly confirms it. At this point even the big sceptic in me concedes: yes, you're right, the quotation is legitimate.
Still, it feels good to hear a Microsoft employee admit that OOXML lost.
I don't think that that's what Mr McKee was trying to say. Objectively, it is far too early to make such a statement anyway.
I'd consider it far more plausible that Mr McKee may have been pointing out that the controversy has benefited ODF by raising the general awareness of ODF. Many more people than before are now aware of the fact that a credible alternative to Microsoft's formats exists.
But OOXML hasn't lost in any meaningful way yet, and I'll believe that Mr McKee has been misquoted unless someone can quote his statement and its context in enough detail to make clear that he's not being quoted out-of-context.
Even if buying a computer bundled with a Microsoft license does not cost you more, it means that some money goes to Microsoft corporation. The question is, are you ok with that? If you'd rather not support what Microsoft is doing, it might be a good solution to offset the effect of that financial support for Microsoft by making a donation to one of the various organizations that work towards achieving a more reasonable future in the field of IT.
What can you say when technology will always improve, standards will always become outdated. Saying you shouldn't adopt a standard because it will become outdated is precisely akin to saying you shouldn't drive a car because it will eventually run out of gas. It's just a mask to allow them to justify to the public why they won't move forward. Actually there are different ways in which a standards could foreseeably become outdated. Only one of them is a valid reason for not adopting it.
The current version of the ODF standard will become outdated because it will be superseded by a new, improved version. That is no reason against implementing the current version of the ODF standard now, because the other players in the Marketplace (now including Microsoft) are doing the same, and when the new version comes out, your investment in support for the current version is not lost. Rather, it enables your program to continue using documents in that version of the format, and to interoperate with other implementations of that version of the format.
By contrast, it looks likely that IT reality will completely ignore ISO/IEC IS 29500:2008 (the ISO standard for OOXML) because Microsoft has said publicly that they're not going to bother implementing any of the changes until "Office 14", so for the foreseeable future there isn't going to be anyone to interoperate with via that format. And when "Office 14" comes out, it'll certainly introduce further changes to the storage format. Therefore, why would anyone want to implement the current ISO version of OOXML? Inaction regarding that is totally justified!
While Red Hat correctly acknowledges the significant difficulties
which exist with regard to creating a sustainable business ecosystem
around GNU/Linux as a desktop OS, the actual article makes clear that
Red Hat is working hard on developing solutions for these problems:
The list of their investments in free software development in this
area is impressive, and they're pre-announcing commercial products
in this area. What more would you want?
What I'm arguing against is the view that "free will" in an absolute sense is taught by the Bible or logically required by moral religion.
I quite agree that we have the ability to choose.
However, what the study that we're discussing here shows is that a very large part of the mental process which leads to these choices is unconscious. That invalidates a particular philosophical notion of "free will" which presupposes 100%-conscious decision-making. GP asserted that "much of religion" is based on this kind of notion of "free will" which is invalidated by this research, and I just wanted to clarify that he is wrong if he thinks that the criticism applies to Bible-focused Christian faith.
Actually, the Christian faith, taken as a whole is much more complicated than that. It consistently asserts opposite and contradictory truths, often in its core doctrines: A god of infinite justice and infinite mercy. Total predetermination and total free will. Absolute obedience to the Law, and absolute freedom from the Law. Etc. What you quote as "core doctrines" is a list of philosophical assertions that may be helpful as approximations, just like the notion of "free will" is an approximation, and like the various theories of physics are approximate descriptions of various aspects of reality.
I do not at all agree with the idea of giving up the principle of logical consistency by endorsing a set statements as "core doctrines" which includes any such pair of contradicting absolute statements.
It is true that there are Christians who do not value logical consistency as highly as I do, and who don't really mind giving it up. However, I assure you, it is quite possible to come to an understanding of what the Bible is trying to tell you, and into the experience of getting to know God as a father, without giving up logical consistency in how one thinks about things.
For example, I don't see how I could possibly define the terms "total predetermination" and "total free will" without creating a contradiction if I endorse both of them as "core doctrines". However if instead you view both of these as approximations, i.e. you believe that instead of "total free will", there is a vast amount of degrees of freedom in human action among which people are able to freely choose, that leaves room for the degree of predetermination which is actually asserted in the Bible.
Why is it that proponents of religion think that the only way to understand the why of morality and ethics is via faith-based adherence to ancient mythology?
The Bible describes human experience, including the possibility of entering into a personal relationship with God, so much better than the mumbo-jumbo of philosophical notions like "free will" or the mumbo-jumbo of modern psychology.
Slashdot Mirror
you're missing the more significant reason why. Both independent claims have the following requirement:
wherein all of the text of the document is stored within text elements such that only the text of the document is contained between start text tags and end text tags; wherein there are no intervening tags between each of the start text tags and each of the corresponding end text tags
This means that document formats that use a HTML-like mixed content model to do their formatting aren't affected by the Microsoft patent, and that includes ODF.
That's a very good point; thank you for pointing this out! I've added a link to your comment at the bottom of my article under "Notes on feedback from readers".
I'm sure you'll notice that Sun and Oracle disclaim any liability whatsoever.
Microsoft also routinely disclaims all liability that can possibly be disclaimed. So what?
"CustomXML" has a specific meaning in the OOXML spec, and there is a corresponding API in Microsoft's "Word" product that plugins can use. See here for an explanation of what it is about.
The submitted article cites the patent owner saying it doesn't apply to ODF. Why would I care what someone who says about himself, "I am not a lawyer, and specifically not a patent lawyer. I have never spent a lot of time on learning about the intricacies of patent law" has to say on the matter at this point? In fact, why would I care even what experienced patent lawyers have to say now? Hasn't it been definitively settled by i4i's statement?
What hasn't been settled by i4i's statement is the (IMO false) claim that the MS patent affects ODF more than the i4i patent does.
It would not matter what a third party thinks as long as i4i thinks it is not infringing. Unlike trademarks, patents do not expire unless enforced. So i4i is within rights to sue Microsoft and not Sun.
From the perspective of a company which invests into integrating its business processes with the office software that it is using (that's the area of application where the kind of stuff that the patent talks about is relevant), it matters a lot whether you can base your work on ODF without having to fear that essential features (for your purposes) might get removed from future versions due to patent trouble.
yea, openoffice is free so there is little to no money in sueing them, but microsoft there is millions in there
Sun is distributing OpenOffice, and is legally liable for any patent infringement that would be involved. Pretty soon Oracle will be legally responsible. There is plenty of money there to be gotten by a patent infringement lawsuit, if there was a case to be made. But OpenOffice simply doesn't infringe any patents on OOXML's extension mechanisms simply because ODF doesn't have any such extension mechanisms.
It's a decision based on the facts of the matter. OOXML has a mechanism (called "CustomXML") which does what the i4i patent describes. ODF doesn't have anything like it.
The claim about the MS patent affecting ODF is not true. See here for details.
What's the error rate which results from copying the data?
If less than 50gb, I'd suggest a few SD cards.
What's the rate of bad blocks for SD cards, over time?
I do it myself, with cheap Linux software RAID boxes in separate locations, piggybacking on existing Internet services to do rsync mirroring between the sites. The machines are kept alive, running disk scans.
Just fsck scans, or full disk scans in which you read every sector that actually contains data? If the latter, I'd be very interested in any statistics that you may have accumulated about disk blocks going bad. For example, is there a correlation between bad blocks, with blocks close to each other on the physical medium having a greater probability of going bad at roughly the same time than blocks with are further away from each other?
The other alternative is doing it yourself with RAID arrays at different locations. Sync your 'must be preserved folder' nightly to both locations using rdiff-backup or similar. Regularly test recovery and make sure all the disks in both arrays are working without error.
If there is fully redundancy by storing the data in two locations anyway, and this is a back-up solution only anyway, is it really so beneficial to use RAID? I mean, sure, using RAID in one or both locations increases redundancy, but also increases complexity (increasing the number of ways in whcih something can possibly go wrong) and cost.
Meanwhile ODF is great for developers but it lacks the functionality that users demand. The most obvious example is formula definitions.
When you want additional functionality to be standardized, you should submit a "New Work Item Proposal" or "Fast Track submission" for an amendment or separate specification document which extends the existing standard by also standardizing the additionally-desired functionality.
You should not (like Microsoft + ECMA did) use such examples of incompleteness as an excuse for essentially suggesting that the existing standard should be ignored in its entirety in favor of an entirely different, huge, conflicting, half-baked and bug-ridden specification. In addition, if an existing specification is as big and as needy of further work as the OOXML spec, it is really unjustifiable to attempt pushing it through the ISO/IEC system by means of the "Fast-Track" process which is totally inadequate for that kind of situation, as can be seen from the fact that this process has resulted in changes to the specification which led Microsoft to conclude that they cannot implement the ISO/IEC version of OOXML anytime soon.
When users find they can't do something they expect to be able to do, it can have huge consequences. What's better a feature that takes time to implement in software or a feature that can't be?
When a feature is not formally standardized, that does not imply that it cannot be implemented. Of course e.g. spreadsheet formulas can, and have been implemented by ODF implementations such as OpenOffice.org.
That's how politics come to a close about an issue. Those who lost complain, publicly, loudly, and with no effect whatsoever on the process itself. Then everyone goes back to business.
You can love it or hate it, but if you watch enough politics closely enough, you see this pattern repeat over and over and over again.
There's a difference here though: In most political contexts, nonviolently establishing an alternative process is prohibitively difficult.
In this context, it's still difficult, but much easier. ISO is not an intergovernmental organization. It's just simply a private-sector organization with seat in Geneva. Nothing and nobody has the right stop us from setting up a competing organization.
The key challenge is in convincing governments that the new organization is more worthy of paying attention to than ISO/IEC JTC1. In this context it's very good news that some governments are expressing doubts about ISO/IEC.
Note that since nations are sovereign, it is not necessary for an organization that aims to become a better alternative to ISO/IEC to convince a majority of countries. Even convincing a handful of countries is probably enough if a heavyweight like e.g. Brazil or India is among them, since that would suffice for putting very strong pressure on e.g. Microsoft to allow true interoperability.
Really, I really mean this question.
As long as no significantly more credible replacement exists, ISO will continue to matter, at least with respect to government procurement (which again sends strong signals to the economy as a whole) -- even in fields like informatics where practically all knowledgeable people primarily look elsewhere for standards.
Replacing ISO is not an easy task, but IMO it needs to be done. If you're willing to help, please join the effort at OpenISO.org
As a matter of fact, what will become the ISO/IEC standard on OOXML is not likely to be truly implemented by anyone. Microsoft has already announced that they will not anytime soon implement the changes relative to the OOXML format that they're currently using.
Just be glad we have a standard that we can work from
Why would anyone want to "work from" the ISO/IEC version of the OOXML specification?
What *we* can do when the goverments, corporations and organisations are corrupted and we cant turn to ask help from them, because those who has power, controls those who could help us....?
Despite the name, ISO is not an international organization in the same sense as e.g. WTO or WIPO are international organizations with countries as members. ISO is simply a cartel of national "standardization organizations". Everyone has the right to start an organization to compete with them. I believe that ISO is so strongly committed to acting in the best interest of the dinosaurs that there is no real alternative anymore to doing this. If you agree, please join us at OpenISO.org.
He said it twice, I know some guys who were there.
I've just been pointed by a contact at Microsoft corporation to this blog posting which by not deying the quotation implicitly confirms it. At this point even the big sceptic in me concedes: yes, you're right, the quotation is legitimate.
Still, it feels good to hear a Microsoft employee admit that OOXML lost.
I don't think that that's what Mr McKee was trying to say. Objectively, it is far too early to make such a statement anyway.I'd consider it far more plausible that Mr McKee may have been pointing out that the controversy has benefited ODF by raising the general awareness of ODF. Many more people than before are now aware of the fact that a credible alternative to Microsoft's formats exists.
But OOXML hasn't lost in any meaningful way yet, and I'll believe that Mr McKee has been misquoted unless someone can quote his statement and its context in enough detail to make clear that he's not being quoted out-of-context.
Even if buying a computer bundled with a Microsoft license does not cost you more, it means that some money goes to Microsoft corporation. The question is, are you ok with that? If you'd rather not support what Microsoft is doing, it might be a good solution to offset the effect of that financial support for Microsoft by making a donation to one of the various organizations that work towards achieving a more reasonable future in the field of IT.
The current version of the ODF standard will become outdated because it will be superseded by a new, improved version. That is no reason against implementing the current version of the ODF standard now, because the other players in the Marketplace (now including Microsoft) are doing the same, and when the new version comes out, your investment in support for the current version is not lost. Rather, it enables your program to continue using documents in that version of the format, and to interoperate with other implementations of that version of the format.
By contrast, it looks likely that IT reality will completely ignore ISO/IEC IS 29500:2008 (the ISO standard for OOXML) because Microsoft has said publicly that they're not going to bother implementing any of the changes until "Office 14", so for the foreseeable future there isn't going to be anyone to interoperate with via that format. And when "Office 14" comes out, it'll certainly introduce further changes to the storage format. Therefore, why would anyone want to implement the current ISO version of OOXML? Inaction regarding that is totally justified!
While Red Hat correctly acknowledges the significant difficulties which exist with regard to creating a sustainable business ecosystem around GNU/Linux as a desktop OS, the actual article makes clear that Red Hat is working hard on developing solutions for these problems: The list of their investments in free software development in this area is impressive, and they're pre-announcing commercial products in this area. What more would you want?
I quite agree that we have the ability to choose.
However, what the study that we're discussing here shows is that a very large part of the mental process which leads to these choices is unconscious. That invalidates a particular philosophical notion of "free will" which presupposes 100%-conscious decision-making. GP asserted that "much of religion" is based on this kind of notion of "free will" which is invalidated by this research, and I just wanted to clarify that he is wrong if he thinks that the criticism applies to Bible-focused Christian faith.
I do not at all agree with the idea of giving up the principle of logical consistency by endorsing a set statements as "core doctrines" which includes any such pair of contradicting absolute statements.
It is true that there are Christians who do not value logical consistency as highly as I do, and who don't really mind giving it up. However, I assure you, it is quite possible to come to an understanding of what the Bible is trying to tell you, and into the experience of getting to know God as a father, without giving up logical consistency in how one thinks about things.
For example, I don't see how I could possibly define the terms "total predetermination" and "total free will" without creating a contradiction if I endorse both of them as "core doctrines". However if instead you view both of these as approximations, i.e. you believe that instead of "total free will", there is a vast amount of degrees of freedom in human action among which people are able to freely choose, that leaves room for the degree of predetermination which is actually asserted in the Bible.
The Bible describes human experience, including the possibility of entering into a personal relationship with God, so much better than the mumbo-jumbo of philosophical notions like "free will" or the mumbo-jumbo of modern psychology.