...This kind of intelligence operation is something you want to be available due to its good uses...
In threat analysis the proper approach it to contemplate the *POSSIBLE* uses another player could make of his capabilities. Your assessment of his probable motives, intentions, etc. don't enter into this phase. The correct move is generally to prevent another player from becoming a deadly threat, even if you trust him implicitly. I would also claim, however, that anyone who trusted the US government implicitly, in any period throughout history, was being dangerously naive and shortsighted. (I'm not claiming any other government has ever been any better. I didn't study other governments as intensively, so I feel less free to make blanket comments about them.)
I do feel that it is essential to retaining any hope of a better future that centralized power be minimized. This doesn't mean destroyed, and this doesn't mean that some alternative approach doesn't need to be found. (And it also doesn't mean that designing the alternative is easy. And it also doesn't mean that there is any easy transition path from here to the desired state.)
But our current government seems to feel that it should always choose the path that makes things worse for the citizenry in general, whether or not it helps those currently in power. So it doesn't appear to be a matter of corruption at the top, unless it's a kind of Après moi, le déluge (After me, the deluge") corruption.
Then it would be like the jams that advertise that they are "Sole supplier of Lemon Curd to the Royal Family", an honor, and an economic plus, not not a death blow to any possible competition.
Now governments are a bit more extensive than the Royal Family, so perhaps it should, perhaps, only bind the federal government and those it directly grants money to (as opposed to indirect grants). So, e.g., if the DARPA gives you a grant, then you couldn't violate anyone else's patent when you did your histone detection research, but if the college did, you could, even if the college got some (but less than half) of it's money from the feds. And states wouldn't be bound at all...unless some states chose to set up their own patent offices, and be bound by their own patents.
I agree it's a bad idea, but it's not as bad as you are making it seem. At least now that they've got an agreement to not mix tabs and spaces at the start of lines in the same file. That DID cause problems.
OTOH, I remember the first time I opened one of my Python files with an editor that automatically converted tabs to spaces...and 8 spaces at that! (My default is 3 spaces/tab...and indent with tabs, but some of the code came from someone else, who used spaces to indent, and the editor assumed without asking that a tab was 8 spaces. OUCH! And I saved before I figured out what had happened. OUCH!) The editor was glimmer, it was several versions back, but I still don't use that editor anymore, for ANYTHING. I've stopped even considering it.
Still, with a decent editor, and the rule of not mixing tabs and spaces, Python's whitespace rules are only unesthetic, and not THAT unesthetic.
Re:Back in the day, before C++ was the "winner"...
on
EiffelStudio Goes Open
·
· Score: 1
Actually, even Ada would have been a better "winner". I really dislike C++. I dislike it to the point that when I can I choose Python or Ruby. But C/C++ have the libraries. That's the downfall of all new alternatives. (So Python gets Pyrex, and has a HUGE collection of libraries, but it's still too slow for a large project where the limiting time isn't human reaction time. And Ruby gets RubyInLine, and has a smaller set of libraries, and IT'S too slow.)
Eventually I'm going to decide to use D and write C interfaces to get to the libraries that I need. I know it, but I keep refusing to take that step. (Well, D hasn't reached version 1.0 yet. So it's reasonable to not have committed to it. But I know that's the direction I'm headed.)
At least he's been choosing people that deserve to be made to look bad. There have been much worse prosecutors.
The only thing wrong with his approach is the culprits get off easier than they should. The positive side is that if he didn't attack them, they'd get off scot-free.
I don't always agree with RMS, but when I don't, I always make sure I have a way to recover if I'm wrong...with one exception. GNU/Linux just won't fly. Zipf's law says that when words are used frequently the shorter forms will come to predominate. I use Linux frequently, and I want it to be a common IDEA, so the phrase is Linux, not GNU/Linux. I agree with his reasons as to why it would be a legitimate name, but it still isn't going to be either the name I use or the one I promote.
Wrong answer. If it's important to you, run your own benchmarks.
To me, the proprietary nature of Java rules it out, except for gcj, which doesn't have an easy graphic library. So benchmarks are no longer relevant. Back when they *were* relevant (i.e., before I insisted on libre compilers) I ran some. At that point Java was dog slow. They were, at that time, claiming that Java was as fast as C. As far as I was concerned, they were lying.
I thought that was supposed to be Swing's fault. Mind you, I don't have any experience...I've been waiting for gcj to get a decent tutorial on using SOME graphic tool kit. Gtk for all I care, but something! (I know it's supposed to be possible...but I don't see any examples/tutorials on HOW it's possible. OTOH, since everyone keeps saying it's beta, this is perhaps not TOO unreasonable. But they won't get 1,000's of people switching in a day the instant they proclaim that they've got rc1 available.)
Yeah, lots of people have been successful with Eclipse and SWT. But I also havent' seen a good tutorial on using THAT with gcj. (I'm picky...but I'm looking at a dozen or so languages, and I can't devote much time to any particular one until I've decided that THAT is the one I'm going to choose.) I've got tests running with Ruby and Python, I'm working on C now, and my intended next stop is D, or possible Croquet, if it gets ready in time. (Squeak was scratched because the application lock down is so obnoxious.)
Currently my best guess at what I will chose is D, with a C layer to handle library interfaces. Ugh!, so I keep looking for something better. Proprietary languages are not under consideration. Ada is too verbose, and I really *don't* like it's lack of garbage collection. (Still, it's a choice that I *could* make work, and that has a lot going for it.) Io is a long shot, but I do keep looking at it, because of it's simple syntax.
But Java *does* have the reputation of having all of the drawbacks of Python and Ruby, and none of the advantages. This may be unfair, but it's what I think of when I think of Java. Now my opinion isn't very significant, since the only Java I'm considering is gcj (i.e., non-proprietary), but when I think of Java the adjective that occurs to me is "SLOW!". Perhaps they've speeded it up, but I was looking at Sun Java several years ago when they started advertising that it was as fast as native C, and they were lying through their teeth. Perhaps now they aren't, but now I'm insisting on my languages having a free license, so now I'm not running benchmarks. And since they are still saying what they were then, I see no reason to give them any more belief now than was warranted then.
What causes you to think it would be cross-platform? They *could* make it that way, but they could do that anyway, open source or not. And *YOU* won't be able to migrate it. The key would be tied to a check-sum of the binary...otherwise it wouldn't be secure. (They certainly aren't going to allow binary patches to be implemented. That would break DRM totally.) And this is probably intended to be implemented in hardware. I don't do much hardware hacking in the first place, and I really doubt that many do. So from the start I'm believing that very few will be in a *position* to contribute code patches, even were they to want to.
Not to mention, DRM is an access control measure. In the US you probably couldn't admit to finding a bug without also admitting a violation of the DMCA. Few will risk that. So even fewer will be contributing patches.
I just can't see this as a project that gets people contributing patches, except, perhaps, anonymously. And of *course* you would trust patches contributed anonymously... Even if you'd already intended to apply this as a patch, getting it also from an anonymous source would make you have second, or third, thoughts. And possibly spend some time searching the patent archives.
Well, I didn't used to be their enemy. I have been since the DMCA. These days I'd cheer an axe murderer, if he restricted his depredations to media company managers (not just the executives, ANY manager). Who knows, in a few years I might cheer hem even if he just restricted his depredations to media company employees.
I'm never knowingly violated the DMCA, because to me the game isn't worth the candle. It's still an evil law, and I consider anyone who supports it actively evil. I.e., their actions are evil, even if they don't personally know it. In most cases I also believe that they are personally evil, but this means that I am assuming that they know the probable results of their actions. They may just be too stupid. (Willful ignorance I count with evil. If you are ignorant you should either suspend judgement or remedy your ignorance.)
Why do you think that there will be fewer bugs? Do you think lots and lots of developers will eagerly be submitting bug fixes to Sun? For *this* project?
The roman arena, at least. Perhaps earlier, but historical records tend to be highly censored, so even if we know, the "we" is likely to be only professional archaeologists or anthropologists.
I agree with everything EXCEPT your assertion that religion is, at least, harmless. Religion can be as destructive as any other addiction, perhaps worse. I have never heard of a junky who was willing to kill someone else because he preferred a different drug. It may have happened, but you KNOW it's got to be RARE!!, because if it were detected, every newspaper in the country would have carried it on the front page.
That said, I will agree that religion generally does nearly as much good as bad, on the average. Nearly, but not quite. And the error bars are pretty large. It may do a lot more harm on the average, depending on whether you believe that religious wars are usually power politics in disguise. I haven't counted them against religion, because I count them as power politics.
Do remember what the price of fuel is likely to be in a few years. A plane is probably a poor investment. (Of course, if you have actual need, then I suppose excessive costs aren't an argument, but few people really need one. And I guess if you just want to have is sit around and look impressive, then THAT'S a reason why higher fuel costs might even make a plane a more impressive status ornament. But if you're planning on actually flying around in it, then consider how long it will take you to earn it's value (personal ledger, not tax law). If it's more than four years, consider what increasing fuel costs will do to this.
*I* wouldn't chose to buy a plane. A fancier house or land would be a better investment.
OTOH, I also think you got started decades ago. I've heard that the margins have gotten slimmer than they were, so the business may not be as good as it was.
OTGH, I guess that anyone starting up would be building specialty custom computers. For that you can charge a premium price *IF* you can find the customers.
If you say so, but then I must class intentionally installing a root kit up with axe murder. I had considered Sony the most reliable company for electronics. They haven't hit the bottom, but they are down below the point where I would willingly pay money to own any.
Yes, there is an accusatory tone of voice. Yes, someone is mightily pissed off at Diebold.
There, are you pleased? I agree with you. I also think that Diebold merits every single criticism that anyone lays on it. It has recorded votes far in excess of the number of voters numerous times. It won't allow either the hardware or the software to be inspected by multiple independent experts. The president of the company promissed to give the election to someone, and then went into the voting machine business. Anyone who trusts them needs... no, make that anyone who *claims* to trust them is probably an astroturfer. I can't believe than anyone literate would actually trust them. It's not like the reports of their misdeeds are hard to find, or all come from (or through) the same source.
In the first place, that's not what I mean by affordable. That's *not* a SOHO priced solution.
In the second place, that doesn't address the backup problem: How to create archival records that will be durable and to keep track of them. It doesn't even ADDRESS the problem. It might be great for active files, I'm not sure, but systems fail. A good backup requires that you be able to make snapshot dumps of the entire system and store them off site in a medium that will be readable at least a couple of decades later. (Longer would be better.) This entails both the medium still being readable, and there still being a player to read it.
Now I'll stipulate that you could just by multiple copies of your system and mirror the system every now and again, and then store the entire system off-site. I do wonder, however, how many disks will start up again after having been turned off for a decade. I have a suspicion that you might have an extreme case of frozen bearings. Still, if that's the approach you are taking, a RAID tower STILL doesn't address the problem. AND it's then FAR too expensive for a SOHO solution.
Mag tapes (800 BPI 7 track, odd parity) would be stable for decades in a sealed, air conditioned vault. At the end of a decade possibly half of the tapes would have unreadable spots on them, so you would need not only readers and duplicates, but software that would allow you to merge two tapes, each of which had spots which needed to be skipped. This was within the capabilities (just) of a small government agency. (I was there.)
What has there been since then that provides even THIS amount of backup recovery? I haven't encountered ANYTHING. There was an early variety of CD where a laser burned holes (pits, actually) in the metal foil. The writer was so expensive that they never sold many copies, I think it was $30,000-$50,000 for just the writer, and it was slow, and the disks were relatively expensive. But they were claimed to be durable. It was claimed that if you kept the disks until the plastic had turned to gunk, still, you could dissolve it away, re-cover the disks with plastic, and the message would still be readable. These days most CDs have started erasing the message within 5 years. The recording technique is different, and spontaneously degrades.
It sure would be nice if this new technique is more durable. But they aren't advertising it, at least not yet, and if they could, I think that would be a major plus.
I'm sorry, but we can't be letting MS set our agenda. If they are on the standards committee, then we must, perforce, ignore the standards committee. There really *isn't* any other choice...well, one. We could set up a new standards committee.
I understand that we would like to get approved through the committee, but if they have decided to allow MS on the panel of "judges", then that has to become a "trailing edge" kind of loose end. It may not be what we want, but it's what's necessary. And if the ISO insists that we go through a checkpoint throttled by MS, then the ISO needs to start being ignored.
There are good reasons why Linux never tried for POSIX standardization. Cost, expense, and timeliness. This looks like the same situation repeating itself. The ODF is currently a workable standard. It's open, and free for anyone to implement. Release a dated and versioned copy and declare THAT the ODF standard. If various people want to suggest improvements, have a project manager who vets them and a team that decides which to include and which to reject, just like a normal software project. And release updates.
If we can't go through the official channels, we'd best take advantages of the strong points of the methods *we* have developed. Stick it in a cvs or subversion tree, let people download and submit fixes. Etc. Release early and often. Things we couldn't do with an ISO standard, but if they're going to put MS on as a gate keeper, well, "You can't fight corruption with card tricks". (I got that from someone's sig, and I don't know the original, but it seems to fit the situation.)
Yaah. Your point is valid. But such people are statistical abnormalities. They exist, but they tend to be more heard of than seen.
Playing the odds, if someone claims to be an MCSE, then I expect them to have very shallow computer knowledge, and a strong investment (CASH, where he cash goes, his heart will follow) in MS. And a fear that they will suddenly decide to obsolete his credentials (as they periodically do, sometimes without warning) the internal denial of which will cause him to be even more fiercely an MS partisan that mere cash & time invested would warrant.
I've met some who were different. But they were the exceptions rather than the rule.
Slashdot Mirror
...This kind of intelligence operation is something you want to be available due to its good uses...
In threat analysis the proper approach it to contemplate the *POSSIBLE* uses another player could make of his capabilities. Your assessment of his probable motives, intentions, etc. don't enter into this phase. The correct move is generally to prevent another player from becoming a deadly threat, even if you trust him implicitly. I would also claim, however, that anyone who trusted the US government implicitly, in any period throughout history, was being dangerously naive and shortsighted. (I'm not claiming any other government has ever been any better. I didn't study other governments as intensively, so I feel less free to make blanket comments about them.)
I do feel that it is essential to retaining any hope of a better future that centralized power be minimized. This doesn't mean destroyed, and this doesn't mean that some alternative approach doesn't need to be found. (And it also doesn't mean that designing the alternative is easy. And it also doesn't mean that there is any easy transition path from here to the desired state.)
But our current government seems to feel that it should always choose the path that makes things worse for the citizenry in general, whether or not it helps those currently in power. So it doesn't appear to be a matter of corruption at the top, unless it's a kind of Après moi, le déluge (After me, the deluge") corruption.
Have patents only bind the government.
Then it would be like the jams that advertise that they are "Sole supplier of Lemon Curd to the Royal Family", an honor, and an economic plus, not not a death blow to any possible competition.
Now governments are a bit more extensive than the Royal Family, so perhaps it should, perhaps, only bind the federal government and those it directly grants money to (as opposed to indirect grants). So, e.g., if the DARPA gives you a grant, then you couldn't violate anyone else's patent when you did your histone detection research, but if the college did, you could, even if the college got some (but less than half) of it's money from the feds. And states wouldn't be bound at all...unless some states chose to set up their own patent offices, and be bound by their own patents.
This strikes me as fair and equitable.
The ??????? happens when the lawyers get involved, after someone complains about the toll booth.
I agree it's a bad idea, but it's not as bad as you are making it seem. At least now that they've got an agreement to not mix tabs and spaces at the start of lines in the same file. That DID cause problems.
OTOH, I remember the first time I opened one of my Python files with an editor that automatically converted tabs to spaces...and 8 spaces at that! (My default is 3 spaces/tab...and indent with tabs, but some of the code came from someone else, who used spaces to indent, and the editor assumed without asking that a tab was 8 spaces. OUCH! And I saved before I figured out what had happened. OUCH!) The editor was glimmer, it was several versions back, but I still don't use that editor anymore, for ANYTHING. I've stopped even considering it.
Still, with a decent editor, and the rule of not mixing tabs and spaces, Python's whitespace rules are only unesthetic, and not THAT unesthetic.
Actually, even Ada would have been a better "winner". I really dislike C++. I dislike it to the point that when I can I choose Python or Ruby. But C/C++ have the libraries. That's the downfall of all new alternatives. (So Python gets Pyrex, and has a HUGE collection of libraries, but it's still too slow for a large project where the limiting time isn't human reaction time. And Ruby gets RubyInLine, and has a smaller set of libraries, and IT'S too slow.)
Eventually I'm going to decide to use D and write C interfaces to get to the libraries that I need. I know it, but I keep refusing to take that step. (Well, D hasn't reached version 1.0 yet. So it's reasonable to not have committed to it. But I know that's the direction I'm headed.)
Business method patents are as bad as software patents...well, not quite, but at least as absurd.
At least he's been choosing people that deserve to be made to look bad. There have been much worse prosecutors.
The only thing wrong with his approach is the culprits get off easier than they should. The positive side is that if he didn't attack them, they'd get off scot-free.
I don't always agree with RMS, but when I don't, I always make sure I have a way to recover if I'm wrong...with one exception. GNU/Linux just won't fly. Zipf's law says that when words are used frequently the shorter forms will come to predominate. I use Linux frequently, and I want it to be a common IDEA, so the phrase is Linux, not GNU/Linux. I agree with his reasons as to why it would be a legitimate name, but it still isn't going to be either the name I use or the one I promote.
Seeing as how this is Unisys, a gif would seem the preferred graphics format.
Wrong answer. If it's important to you, run your own benchmarks.
To me, the proprietary nature of Java rules it out, except for gcj, which doesn't have an easy graphic library. So benchmarks are no longer relevant. Back when they *were* relevant (i.e., before I insisted on libre compilers) I ran some. At that point Java was dog slow. They were, at that time, claiming that Java was as fast as C. As far as I was concerned, they were lying.
I thought that was supposed to be Swing's fault. Mind you, I don't have any experience...I've been waiting for gcj to get a decent tutorial on using SOME graphic tool kit. Gtk for all I care, but something! (I know it's supposed to be possible...but I don't see any examples/tutorials on HOW it's possible. OTOH, since everyone keeps saying it's beta, this is perhaps not TOO unreasonable. But they won't get 1,000's of people switching in a day the instant they proclaim that they've got rc1 available.)
Yeah, lots of people have been successful with Eclipse and SWT. But I also havent' seen a good tutorial on using THAT with gcj. (I'm picky...but I'm looking at a dozen or so languages, and I can't devote much time to any particular one until I've decided that THAT is the one I'm going to choose.) I've got tests running with Ruby and Python, I'm working on C now, and my intended next stop is D, or possible Croquet, if it gets ready in time. (Squeak was scratched because the application lock down is so obnoxious.)
Currently my best guess at what I will chose is D, with a C layer to handle library interfaces. Ugh!, so I keep looking for something better. Proprietary languages are not under consideration. Ada is too verbose, and I really *don't* like it's lack of garbage collection. (Still, it's a choice that I *could* make work, and that has a lot going for it.) Io is a long shot, but I do keep looking at it, because of it's simple syntax.
But Java *does* have the reputation of having all of the drawbacks of Python and Ruby, and none of the advantages. This may be unfair, but it's what I think of when I think of Java. Now my opinion isn't very significant, since the only Java I'm considering is gcj (i.e., non-proprietary), but when I think of Java the adjective that occurs to me is "SLOW!". Perhaps they've speeded it up, but I was looking at Sun Java several years ago when they started advertising that it was as fast as native C, and they were lying through their teeth. Perhaps now they aren't, but now I'm insisting on my languages having a free license, so now I'm not running benchmarks. And since they are still saying what they were then, I see no reason to give them any more belief now than was warranted then.
What causes you to think it would be cross-platform? They *could* make it that way, but they could do that anyway, open source or not. And *YOU* won't be able to migrate it. The key would be tied to a check-sum of the binary...otherwise it wouldn't be secure. (They certainly aren't going to allow binary patches to be implemented. That would break DRM totally.) And this is probably intended to be implemented in hardware. I don't do much hardware hacking in the first place, and I really doubt that many do. So from the start I'm believing that very few will be in a *position* to contribute code patches, even were they to want to.
Not to mention, DRM is an access control measure. In the US you probably couldn't admit to finding a bug without also admitting a violation of the DMCA. Few will risk that. So even fewer will be contributing patches.
I just can't see this as a project that gets people contributing patches, except, perhaps, anonymously. And of *course* you would trust patches contributed anonymously... Even if you'd already intended to apply this as a patch, getting it also from an anonymous source would make you have second, or third, thoughts. And possibly spend some time searching the patent archives.
Well, I didn't used to be their enemy. I have been since the DMCA. These days I'd cheer an axe murderer, if he restricted his depredations to media company managers (not just the executives, ANY manager). Who knows, in a few years I might cheer hem even if he just restricted his depredations to media company employees.
I'm never knowingly violated the DMCA, because to me the game isn't worth the candle. It's still an evil law, and I consider anyone who supports it actively evil. I.e., their actions are evil, even if they don't personally know it. In most cases I also believe that they are personally evil, but this means that I am assuming that they know the probable results of their actions. They may just be too stupid. (Willful ignorance I count with evil. If you are ignorant you should either suspend judgement or remedy your ignorance.)
The license, I dunno...but
Why do you think that there will be fewer bugs? Do you think lots and lots of developers will eagerly be submitting bug fixes to Sun? For *this* project?
The roman arena, at least. Perhaps earlier, but historical records tend to be highly censored, so even if we know, the "we" is likely to be only professional archaeologists or anthropologists.
I agree with everything EXCEPT your assertion that religion is, at least, harmless. Religion can be as destructive as any other addiction, perhaps worse. I have never heard of a junky who was willing to kill someone else because he preferred a different drug. It may have happened, but you KNOW it's got to be RARE!!, because if it were detected, every newspaper in the country would have carried it on the front page.
That said, I will agree that religion generally does nearly as much good as bad, on the average. Nearly, but not quite. And the error bars are pretty large. It may do a lot more harm on the average, depending on whether you believe that religious wars are usually power politics in disguise. I haven't counted them against religion, because I count them as power politics.
Do remember what the price of fuel is likely to be in a few years. A plane is probably a poor investment. (Of course, if you have actual need, then I suppose excessive costs aren't an argument, but few people really need one. And I guess if you just want to have is sit around and look impressive, then THAT'S a reason why higher fuel costs might even make a plane a more impressive status ornament. But if you're planning on actually flying around in it, then consider how long it will take you to earn it's value (personal ledger, not tax law). If it's more than four years, consider what increasing fuel costs will do to this.
*I* wouldn't chose to buy a plane. A fancier house or land would be a better investment.
OTOH, I also think you got started decades ago. I've heard that the margins have gotten slimmer than they were, so the business may not be as good as it was.
OTGH, I guess that anyone starting up would be building specialty custom computers. For that you can charge a premium price *IF* you can find the customers.
This depends on who the next guy is. My choice has been to not buy any rather than to buy Sony. Your choices ARE your values.
If you say so, but then I must class intentionally installing a root kit up with axe murder. I had considered Sony the most reliable company for electronics. They haven't hit the bottom, but they are down below the point where I would willingly pay money to own any.
Yes, there is an accusatory tone of voice. Yes, someone is mightily pissed off at Diebold.
... no, make that anyone who *claims* to trust them is probably an astroturfer. I can't believe than anyone literate would actually trust them. It's not like the reports of their misdeeds are hard to find, or all come from (or through) the same source.
There, are you pleased? I agree with you. I also think that Diebold merits every single criticism that anyone lays on it. It has recorded votes far in excess of the number of voters numerous times. It won't allow either the hardware or the software to be inspected by multiple independent experts. The president of the company promissed to give the election to someone, and then went into the voting machine business. Anyone who trusts them needs
In *that* case, I don't think they are common carriers. If not, they rightly lose all the provided "common carrier" protections.
CoLinux (http://www.colinux.org/)
In the first place, that's not what I mean by affordable. That's *not* a SOHO priced solution.
In the second place, that doesn't address the backup problem: How to create archival records that will be durable and to keep track of them. It doesn't even ADDRESS the problem. It might be great for active files, I'm not sure, but systems fail. A good backup requires that you be able to make snapshot dumps of the entire system and store them off site in a medium that will be readable at least a couple of decades later. (Longer would be better.) This entails both the medium still being readable, and there still being a player to read it.
Now I'll stipulate that you could just by multiple copies of your system and mirror the system every now and again, and then store the entire system off-site. I do wonder, however, how many disks will start up again after having been turned off for a decade. I have a suspicion that you might have an extreme case of frozen bearings. Still, if that's the approach you are taking, a RAID tower STILL doesn't address the problem. AND it's then FAR too expensive for a SOHO solution.
Mag tapes (800 BPI 7 track, odd parity) would be stable for decades in a sealed, air conditioned vault. At the end of a decade possibly half of the tapes would have unreadable spots on them, so you would need not only readers and duplicates, but software that would allow you to merge two tapes, each of which had spots which needed to be skipped. This was within the capabilities (just) of a small government agency. (I was there.)
What has there been since then that provides even THIS amount of backup recovery? I haven't encountered ANYTHING. There was an early variety of CD where a laser burned holes (pits, actually) in the metal foil. The writer was so expensive that they never sold many copies, I think it was $30,000-$50,000 for just the writer, and it was slow, and the disks were relatively expensive. But they were claimed to be durable. It was claimed that if you kept the disks until the plastic had turned to gunk, still, you could dissolve it away, re-cover the disks with plastic, and the message would still be readable. These days most CDs have started erasing the message within 5 years. The recording technique is different, and spontaneously degrades.
It sure would be nice if this new technique is more durable. But they aren't advertising it, at least not yet, and if they could, I think that would be a major plus.
I'm sorry, but we can't be letting MS set our agenda. If they are on the standards committee, then we must, perforce, ignore the standards committee. There really *isn't* any other choice...well, one. We could set up a new standards committee.
I understand that we would like to get approved through the committee, but if they have decided to allow MS on the panel of "judges", then that has to become a "trailing edge" kind of loose end. It may not be what we want, but it's what's necessary. And if the ISO insists that we go through a checkpoint throttled by MS, then the ISO needs to start being ignored.
There are good reasons why Linux never tried for POSIX standardization. Cost, expense, and timeliness. This looks like the same situation repeating itself. The ODF is currently a workable standard. It's open, and free for anyone to implement. Release a dated and versioned copy and declare THAT the ODF standard. If various people want to suggest improvements, have a project manager who vets them and a team that decides which to include and which to reject, just like a normal software project. And release updates.
If we can't go through the official channels, we'd best take advantages of the strong points of the methods *we* have developed. Stick it in a cvs or subversion tree, let people download and submit fixes. Etc. Release early and often. Things we couldn't do with an ISO standard, but if they're going to put MS on as a gate keeper, well, "You can't fight corruption with card tricks". (I got that from someone's sig, and I don't know the original, but it seems to fit the situation.)
Yaah. Your point is valid. But such people are statistical abnormalities. They exist, but they tend to be more heard of than seen.
Playing the odds, if someone claims to be an MCSE, then I expect them to have very shallow computer knowledge, and a strong investment (CASH, where he cash goes, his heart will follow) in MS. And a fear that they will suddenly decide to obsolete his credentials (as they periodically do, sometimes without warning) the internal denial of which will cause him to be even more fiercely an MS partisan that mere cash & time invested would warrant.
I've met some who were different. But they were the exceptions rather than the rule.