5) Any 'yes' vote from a representative who has been disqualified from voting due to his/her affiliation (as described by 1-4 above) is converted to two 'no' votes. Any vote taken by a chairperson who is disqualified from voting above automatically tallies to a 'no'.
As a previous poster pointed out, having a sustaining voting penalty provides a way for a corruptor to adversely affect the process. By specifying the voting penalty to be specific to a single vote, but making it more costly (getting an 'abstain' may not be seen as very damaging - 'abstain' is better than a no, and so if they see that the vote will be 'no' unless they act, that being a penalty won't deter them.)
As 'legal means' ranges all the way from lawsuits to legislative/policy making, I very strongly suspect that 'legal means' will be appropriate for most of the committees. I fully admit that the exact means used in the US will almost certainly not work in most other countries - but the laws, policies, and proceedures for each country are generally adapted to each country and are applicable therein.
That having been said, I see no reason to press for a 'legal means' solution where none is applicable. If there were no rules broken, and no rules that could be utilized to facilitate the defeat of OOXML, and no rulemakers willing to work on producing such rules, attempting to work via rules is a waste of time.
I also don't see any reason, given the number of people involved, to not pursue all feasible solutions simultaniously. Note that I do not feel 'illegal means' are ever feasible - the cost is too high, the risk too great.
No resubmit needed - this didn't kick it out of the process, just from the fast-track process. OOXML is *still* in the ISO standards process, and the abuse of the ISO process that Microsoft has thus perpetrated will continue to aid them in the ongoing process.
The good news is, at this point in the process, Microsoft will have a difficult time getting OOXML accepted without significant changes.
The bad news is, Microsoft will undoubtedly continue trying to stack the deck even more, and they will focus on the least worthwhile changes that are being required. As things stand currently, they only need a few more percentage points yes, and a few less percentage points no. Unless something is done about their vote stacking soon, they'll have those, without doing any changes.
Hopefully, the countries that voted 'yes, with comments' will realize from the way votes were tallied that they in fact, voted 'yes, have a nice day' - but don't count on it. It may still be possible to convince some of those countries to correct their votes to what they really intended, but even if that's possible, it won't be easy in most cases.
Basically, we won a battle - we held the bridge. That doesn't mean Microsoft's army is defeated, merely that they need to go the long way around.
His claim of 5 years was based merely on his experience; it wasn't the limit.
I can claim 10 years of backwards compatability - I have on my desk a Sparc 20 (note I did not say Ultra), which has on it some programs that were compiled on a still-older machine (I do not know how much older, although it was limited to Solaris 2.4 as the newest OS it could run). That software works just fine on our new SunFire-V880s running Solaris 8. Not that we're running it there; we're too worried about the lack of source code, so we've rewritten it. The point was it ran flawlessly when we were blackboxing it for the re-write.
That may be the limit. It may not be. However, I really don't think pathological backward compatability is a good thing; I kinda like the idea of breaking away from the requirements of the old instruction set every now and then.
In the US, there's something known as a Good Samaritan law, which protects any individual trained in first aid, emergency medicine, or any other specialty useful in treating injuries at an accident scene, so long as it cannot be shown they deliberately injured the people they were supposedly helping. Even someone like myself, with an expired Red Cross First Aid certification, is protected (although this doesn't mean I couldn't be taken to court, and it doesn't mean I wouldn't get grilled something fierce.)
I was under the impression that many civilized countries had similar laws.
Admittedly, it is true, if a doctor without such training helped at an accident scene, they could be in trouble. However, I'll point out, such an individual could be worse than no help at all, if they have a false sense of confidence because of their doctorate.
Some poor stupid college freshman who can't download a goddamned virus scanner sends out a fresh batch of Nimda every day. Should there be action taken against him?
If he's at a school which has a site anti-virus license, and a policy mandating use, then yes. If there's a policy requiring use, then why would the answer not be yes?
IMHO, that action should be:
first offense, confiscation of the hardware for a week.
second offense, confiscation of the hardware for the rest of the semester.
third offense, confiscation of the hardware for the rest of the school year.
fourth offense, "I'm sorry, sir, if you cannot be bothered to read and obey the rules required of a student at this institution, you're too stupid to go to school here."
If there is no action taken against him, then what is the point about having the policy requiring students to use the site licensed anti-virus product?
Note that, I do not believe in witch-hunts - action should be based solely on incidents involving actual virus outbreaks/spews; if someone chooses to run without an AV solution but never gets a virus, there's no harm done.
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Well, they managed to sell it to Massachusetts. Of course, that was before OOXML failed this fast track vote.
I'd like to replace your #5 with
5) Any 'yes' vote from a representative who has been disqualified from voting due to his/her affiliation (as described by 1-4 above) is converted to two 'no' votes. Any vote taken by a chairperson who is disqualified from voting above automatically tallies to a 'no'.
As a previous poster pointed out, having a sustaining voting penalty provides a way for a corruptor to adversely affect the process. By specifying the voting penalty to be specific to a single vote, but making it more costly (getting an 'abstain' may not be seen as very damaging - 'abstain' is better than a no, and so if they see that the vote will be 'no' unless they act, that being a penalty won't deter them.)
As 'legal means' ranges all the way from lawsuits to legislative/policy making, I very strongly suspect that 'legal means' will be appropriate for most of the committees. I fully admit that the exact means used in the US will almost certainly not work in most other countries - but the laws, policies, and proceedures for each country are generally adapted to each country and are applicable therein.
That having been said, I see no reason to press for a 'legal means' solution where none is applicable. If there were no rules broken, and no rules that could be utilized to facilitate the defeat of OOXML, and no rulemakers willing to work on producing such rules, attempting to work via rules is a waste of time.
I also don't see any reason, given the number of people involved, to not pursue all feasible solutions simultaniously. Note that I do not feel 'illegal means' are ever feasible - the cost is too high, the risk too great.
No resubmit needed - this didn't kick it out of the process, just from the fast-track process. OOXML is *still* in the ISO standards process, and the abuse of the ISO process that Microsoft has thus perpetrated will continue to aid them in the ongoing process.
The good news is, at this point in the process, Microsoft will have a difficult time getting OOXML accepted without significant changes.
The bad news is, Microsoft will undoubtedly continue trying to stack the deck even more, and they will focus on the least worthwhile changes that are being required. As things stand currently, they only need a few more percentage points yes, and a few less percentage points no. Unless something is done about their vote stacking soon, they'll have those, without doing any changes.
Hopefully, the countries that voted 'yes, with comments' will realize from the way votes were tallied that they in fact, voted 'yes, have a nice day' - but don't count on it. It may still be possible to convince some of those countries to correct their votes to what they really intended, but even if that's possible, it won't be easy in most cases.
Basically, we won a battle - we held the bridge. That doesn't mean Microsoft's army is defeated, merely that they need to go the long way around.
His claim of 5 years was based merely on his experience; it wasn't the limit.
I can claim 10 years of backwards compatability - I have on my desk a Sparc 20 (note I did not say Ultra), which has on it some programs that were compiled on a still-older machine (I do not know how much older, although it was limited to Solaris 2.4 as the newest OS it could run). That software works just fine on our new SunFire-V880s running Solaris 8. Not that we're running it there; we're too worried about the lack of source code, so we've rewritten it. The point was it ran flawlessly when we were blackboxing it for the re-write.
That may be the limit. It may not be. However, I really don't think pathological backward compatability is a good thing; I kinda like the idea of breaking away from the requirements of the old instruction set every now and then.
Oh, really? What country are you from?
In the US, there's something known as a Good Samaritan law, which protects any individual trained in first aid, emergency medicine, or any other specialty useful in treating injuries at an accident scene, so long as it cannot be shown they deliberately injured the people they were supposedly helping. Even someone like myself, with an expired Red Cross First Aid certification, is protected (although this doesn't mean I couldn't be taken to court, and it doesn't mean I wouldn't get grilled something fierce.)
I was under the impression that many civilized countries had similar laws.
Admittedly, it is true, if a doctor without such training helped at an accident scene, they could be in trouble. However, I'll point out, such an individual could be worse than no help at all, if they have a false sense of confidence because of their doctorate.
Some poor stupid college freshman who can't download a goddamned virus scanner sends out a fresh batch of Nimda every day. Should there be action taken against him?
If he's at a school which has a site anti-virus license, and a policy mandating use, then yes. If there's a policy requiring use, then why would the answer not be yes?
IMHO, that action should be:
first offense, confiscation of the hardware for a week.
second offense, confiscation of the hardware for the rest of the semester.
third offense, confiscation of the hardware for the rest of the school year.
fourth offense, "I'm sorry, sir, if you cannot be bothered to read and obey the rules required of a student at this institution, you're too stupid to go to school here."
If there is no action taken against him, then what is the point about having the policy requiring students to use the site licensed anti-virus product?
Note that, I do not believe in witch-hunts - action should be based solely on incidents involving actual virus outbreaks/spews; if someone chooses to run without an AV solution but never gets a virus, there's no harm done.