If MS can convince/bribe a bunch of national bodies to vote in favor, I'm pretty sure IBM can find one willing to appeal. Given how terrible the OOXML "standard" is, they may not even need to bribe them into it.
Re:Weirdest April 1st Ever!
on
ISO Approves OOXML
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The fools are those at ISO who voted to approve this horrid "standard". It definitely wasn't good enough to be fast-tracked, let alone made into a standard.
Should be interesting to see the next moves from IBM and Sun though. Could there be some sort of challenge or appeal coming? I don't think we've seen the end of this.
The trap is Silverlight. The standards compliant web is being extended with Silverlight, and a number of companies are already buying into it.
IE becomes the browser that can best view all the old broken IE-only HTML, all the compliant HTML, and all of the Silverlight pages that "enhance" the web. All of the other browsers will only render standard HTML well.
Sure Mozilla renders XUL, but Silverlight probably has more adoption than XUL already. Too bad someone didn't come up with a really friendly IDE to XUL early on in Mozilla's lifetime, since that is one thing MS tends to do well that drives adoption of their languages and tools. Developers, developers, developers!
Then they can file anti-trust complaints with government regulators. Try to give Google a taste of what it is like to be MS right now.
Except Google hasn't been abusive, so in theory they shouldn't have trouble with any complaints. But I guess it makes it harder for Google to use abusive tactics to compete with MS in the future.
For a while, that was the rumoured strategy for OS X Leopard. Supposedly Apple was working on technology that would allow Windows Apps (up to WinXP) to run inside of Leopard. That way, Leopard could be a better successor to XP than Vista was.
That turned out to not be the case. Though Parallels and VMWare Fusion do give you something very similar, if you are willing to deal with having Windows XP around still (even if it is hidden).
That is unfortunate. I guess standards shouldn't be changing quickly anyhow, as it defeats the purpose of having a document standard (preservation and compatibility). But when it comes to weaknesses and ambiguities, it'd be nice to see those shored up a bit quicker.
So as far as I undestand it, spreadsheets are using the "do it like OpenOffice.org" approach in this area, until 1.2 is final. Though this is certainly not ideal (MS will spin it to be the same as "do it like Word 97"), at least the code to OpenOffice is available to inspection, making it possible for other vendors to actually implement it and get interoperability.
I see others have replied, but I'll give the shorter version:
- The table thing is fixed in the latest ODF draft and in current applications.
- Even if OOXML is somehow approved by ISO, MS has said it will retain control of the standard. This is quite different from ODF, which is not controlled by one company.
ODF is a community, and therefore the format keeps improving. OOXML is developed and maintained by one company to work with their own product, so they're likely to take the "won't fix" attitude to the format's deficiencies (as this article claims).
Balmer has vowed to bury Google. Microsoft wants Google dead, and doesn't hide that desire.
Google would have to be pretty stupid to ignore that threat. If MS werne't so worried about killing Google, I'm sure Google wouldn't be nearly as worried about what Microsoft was doing either.
The letter at least appeared to be sensible until this bit:
It is our view that Microsoft has significant potential upside given the continued solid growth in our core businesses, the recent launch of Windows Vista, and other strategic initiatives.
When their biggest bomb is listed as potential upside, you have to wonder how bad the other strategic initiatives will turn out. Or why they wouldn't list something else, anything else, besides Windows Vista.
Had to love this line too:
This includes synergies across both search and non-search related advertising that will strengthen the value proposition to both advertisers and publishers.
Usually it gets near this cold at least one week every winter. Was a relatively balmy -28C today. Though not having wind most of the day was nice - windchill factors of -54C aren't fun.
Normal temperatures aren't this bad though - I'm not living in Siberia or the North Pole or anything. Just feels like it once in a while.
Yeah, but the idea of a trademark like "Open Office" is that it would apply only to that specific field. One of the reasons for trademarks in the first place is to prevent this very sort of confusion that MS is trying to cause.
You can bet that MS would sue if I released an operating system called MacroSoft Windows, and they'd be well within their rights, as the only reason to name it that is to cause confusion and/or leech of the well known product's name.
However, you do make a good point about it being a very generic name. Though that is allowed up to a point, it can work against a company. In Sun's case, the Open Office trademark was actually already owned by someone else, so it turned out to be a poor choice, and forced them to use the name OpenOffice.org everywhere instead.
They could just be using a plain VESA video driver though. It isn't like a browser needs to use the full 3D rendering capabilities of an ATI or NVIDIA card.
It would be much better if a Microsoft would become as two corporation, other to build and sell basic OS and other to sell all other software like WMP, IE, Office, Games, Outlook etc etc. Together user could get windows as it is now and every one would be happy.
That was the original ruling against MS in the DOJ case (in fact the break up might've been into 3 companies), but unfortunately two bad things happened:
1. Judge Jackson spoke the truth to reporters about the reprehensible conduct of MS executives during the case. MS cried that he didn't like them and wasn't being fair, forcing a new ruling due to this possible bias.
2. Bush got elected. The DOJ had a very strong case and already had a guilty ruling - all that was left to do was come down hard on MS. Bush didn't allow them to do so. Instead, MS pretty much got to write their own settlement.
The one government that had the most power to change Microsoft's ways blew it almost 10 years ago. The entire industry has suffered because of it. Including probably Microsoft, which likely would've been better off in the long run had they broken up.
Yeah, but anytime you use hardware RAID, your disks and data are usually tied to that specific RAID controller anyhow. So I'm not sure if it matters whether you use RAID5 or X-RAID.
Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris are definitely interesting options for file servers nowadays though, if you do wish to go with the software route.
I don't have one of these ReadyNAS units myself, but I have a friend with an earlier revision. They look very nice.
Their proprietary X-RAID is quite handy, since you can add drives later on and have the volume dynamically scale up. And being an appliance, it will use less power and be less hassle than a PC. Slightly less flexible, but it supports so many protocols already that it likely does everything you'd need as a file server.
I personally just use an old Pentium II system with some large drives. Originally it was NetBSD on an Pentium 133 with only 24MB of RAM, and this ran great for us. Might want a bit more power if you're using RAIDFrame for software RAID though.
Eventually we switched to Linux, because we added a PCI-ATA card that NetBSD didn't support at the time. Linux was painful to install and set up in that limited RAM/CPU environment, but ran fine once it was installed. However, we eventually upgraded to a mighty P2 450 with 256MB of RAM, which is a lot more comfortable.
So if you want to build and customize it yourself, Solaris, any BSD, or any Linux should work fine. I found the BSDs to be very lightweight and efficient as a file server. Linux has journaling file systems, which may be a consideration for it over the BSDs. Not sure what Solaris 10 hardware support is like, but perhaps ZFS would be nice for your needs.
If you just want to plug it in and have it work (and use less power to boot), something like the ReadyNAS is the way to go. Despite being very much able to set up routers, file servers, etc, I find myself recommending these low-hassle appliances over PCs.
It might be, but you still have to be very lucky. People have died from landing very badly when jumping off of the 10m diving platform at a swimming pool. The odds of dying from a 10m fall are fairly slim, but it shows how hard of a surface water can be. And when you're going at terminal velocity, the water's surface would feel about as hard as cement, assuming you felt anything at all.
Pretty sad when random Warez downloads are safer than the real product. Kind of like how the music industry has become, with illegal MP3 downloads being safer than sticking the CD in your machine.
At one point, the major downside to downloading illegal software was that it may contain a virus and you couldn't trust the person who cracked or uploaded it. Now, we still don't know if we can trust a particular warez file, but we are certain we can't trust the publisher's CDs. So might as well take the chance on the free version as opposed to paying for the known damaged copy.
Why would legacy binary formats be a part of any "standard"? Wouldn't parsing those formats be a job for the filter that does the conversion?
The fact that the legacy junk is in there shows that the format wasn't built with the intention of creating a shared standard. It was simply the next file format for MS Office. It has only been submitted for standardization for political reasons.
Actually, OpenOffice 1.x used its own open XML file format stored in.sxw/.sxc/.sxi files. And although ODF is based on that prior work, there was effort made to sure it did not depend on the StarOffice/OpenOffice codebase, and was actually a format that could be implemented by others. OpenOffice 2.x defaults to the vendor neutral ODF, and uses filters to read the older OO/StarOffice XML and even older StarOffice binary formats.
Whereas OOXML was not developed in such a matter. It was created by one company using their own code as a reference. Outside groups did not have much influence until it was already in the standards body process, open to "comments". ODF encouraged participation of others from the beginning.
The formats aren't even the issue here though. MS clearly bribed countries in an effort to pollute the ISO process. Evidence of this is popping up all over the place. If OOXML was as worthy as ODF, would OOXML have failed (even in a tainted vote) where ODF had already succeeded?
They don't necessarily have to do Halo 4 (though they have left the door open to do it).
The could do a prequel. They could do some side story with some other characters. Or they could just do a sequel with a "new threat". There are plenty of ways they could slap 'Halo' on the side of a game and not have to make it a direct sequel to the current storyline.
Inevitably it will happen. Perhaps they will wait until XBox 3 (whatever it ends up being called) to do it, but it'll happen.
I was actually just going to post something about NeoOffice, wondering if they'd perhaps take part in this fork. But I guess they already are.
It seems many of the major improvements regarding native look and feel have come from fork projects, and not OOo itself. Novel's native widgets were available in their 1.1 build well before Sun included the capability. And of course NeoOffice actually has a build that looks and feels native on the Mac, whereas Sun has an alpha quality OOo port for Mac that they just started.
In some ways it'd be sad to see Sun's version completely lose relevance, since they did do a great service by releasing the code in the first place. But I think a complete fork is necessary to move the project ahead at a faster speed. Perhaps the two sides will eventually reunite.
It'll be interesting to see where IBM's contributions take place.
Slashdot Mirror
If MS can convince/bribe a bunch of national bodies to vote in favor, I'm pretty sure IBM can find one willing to appeal. Given how terrible the OOXML "standard" is, they may not even need to bribe them into it.
The fools are those at ISO who voted to approve this horrid "standard". It definitely wasn't good enough to be fast-tracked, let alone made into a standard.
Should be interesting to see the next moves from IBM and Sun though. Could there be some sort of challenge or appeal coming? I don't think we've seen the end of this.
The trap is Silverlight. The standards compliant web is being extended with Silverlight, and a number of companies are already buying into it.
IE becomes the browser that can best view all the old broken IE-only HTML, all the compliant HTML, and all of the Silverlight pages that "enhance" the web. All of the other browsers will only render standard HTML well.
Sure Mozilla renders XUL, but Silverlight probably has more adoption than XUL already. Too bad someone didn't come up with a really friendly IDE to XUL early on in Mozilla's lifetime, since that is one thing MS tends to do well that drives adoption of their languages and tools. Developers, developers, developers!
Then they can file anti-trust complaints with government regulators. Try to give Google a taste of what it is like to be MS right now.
Except Google hasn't been abusive, so in theory they shouldn't have trouble with any complaints. But I guess it makes it harder for Google to use abusive tactics to compete with MS in the future.
For a while, that was the rumoured strategy for OS X Leopard. Supposedly Apple was working on technology that would allow Windows Apps (up to WinXP) to run inside of Leopard. That way, Leopard could be a better successor to XP than Vista was.
That turned out to not be the case. Though Parallels and VMWare Fusion do give you something very similar, if you are willing to deal with having Windows XP around still (even if it is hidden).
That is unfortunate. I guess standards shouldn't be changing quickly anyhow, as it defeats the purpose of having a document standard (preservation and compatibility). But when it comes to weaknesses and ambiguities, it'd be nice to see those shored up a bit quicker.
So as far as I undestand it, spreadsheets are using the "do it like OpenOffice.org" approach in this area, until 1.2 is final. Though this is certainly not ideal (MS will spin it to be the same as "do it like Word 97"), at least the code to OpenOffice is available to inspection, making it possible for other vendors to actually implement it and get interoperability.
I see others have replied, but I'll give the shorter version:
- The table thing is fixed in the latest ODF draft and in current applications.
- Even if OOXML is somehow approved by ISO, MS has said it will retain control of the standard. This is quite different from ODF, which is not controlled by one company.
ODF is a community, and therefore the format keeps improving. OOXML is developed and maintained by one company to work with their own product, so they're likely to take the "won't fix" attitude to the format's deficiencies (as this article claims).
I found that an odd accusation too.
Balmer has vowed to bury Google. Microsoft wants Google dead, and doesn't hide that desire.
Google would have to be pretty stupid to ignore that threat. If MS werne't so worried about killing Google, I'm sure Google wouldn't be nearly as worried about what Microsoft was doing either.
I believe IBM were the real inventors of FUD. But perhaps MS bought an exclusive license in the OS/2 days.
When their biggest bomb is listed as potential upside, you have to wonder how bad the other strategic initiatives will turn out. Or why they wouldn't list something else, anything else, besides Windows Vista.
Had to love this line too:
Holy execuspeak Batman!
Usually it gets near this cold at least one week every winter. Was a relatively balmy -28C today. Though not having wind most of the day was nice - windchill factors of -54C aren't fun.
Normal temperatures aren't this bad though - I'm not living in Siberia or the North Pole or anything. Just feels like it once in a while.
I think even in a more liberal society, I'll opt to wear clothing when it is -39C outside.
Yeah, but the idea of a trademark like "Open Office" is that it would apply only to that specific field. One of the reasons for trademarks in the first place is to prevent this very sort of confusion that MS is trying to cause.
You can bet that MS would sue if I released an operating system called MacroSoft Windows, and they'd be well within their rights, as the only reason to name it that is to cause confusion and/or leech of the well known product's name.
However, you do make a good point about it being a very generic name. Though that is allowed up to a point, it can work against a company. In Sun's case, the Open Office trademark was actually already owned by someone else, so it turned out to be a poor choice, and forced them to use the name OpenOffice.org everywhere instead.
What makes you think that the name Office Open XML was intended to be confused with the OpenOffice's XML file format (ie. ODF)?
.org), otherwise they could probably do something about it.
Too bad OpenOffice.org doesn't even have the trademark for Open Office (hence the
They could just be using a plain VESA video driver though. It isn't like a browser needs to use the full 3D rendering capabilities of an ATI or NVIDIA card.
That was the original ruling against MS in the DOJ case (in fact the break up might've been into 3 companies), but unfortunately two bad things happened:
1. Judge Jackson spoke the truth to reporters about the reprehensible conduct of MS executives during the case. MS cried that he didn't like them and wasn't being fair, forcing a new ruling due to this possible bias.
2. Bush got elected. The DOJ had a very strong case and already had a guilty ruling - all that was left to do was come down hard on MS. Bush didn't allow them to do so. Instead, MS pretty much got to write their own settlement.
The one government that had the most power to change Microsoft's ways blew it almost 10 years ago. The entire industry has suffered because of it. Including probably Microsoft, which likely would've been better off in the long run had they broken up.
Yeah, but anytime you use hardware RAID, your disks and data are usually tied to that specific RAID controller anyhow. So I'm not sure if it matters whether you use RAID5 or X-RAID.
Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris are definitely interesting options for file servers nowadays though, if you do wish to go with the software route.
I'll add briefly to the other reply.
I don't have one of these ReadyNAS units myself, but I have a friend with an earlier revision. They look very nice.
Their proprietary X-RAID is quite handy, since you can add drives later on and have the volume dynamically scale up. And being an appliance, it will use less power and be less hassle than a PC. Slightly less flexible, but it supports so many protocols already that it likely does everything you'd need as a file server.
I personally just use an old Pentium II system with some large drives. Originally it was NetBSD on an Pentium 133 with only 24MB of RAM, and this ran great for us. Might want a bit more power if you're using RAIDFrame for software RAID though.
Eventually we switched to Linux, because we added a PCI-ATA card that NetBSD didn't support at the time. Linux was painful to install and set up in that limited RAM/CPU environment, but ran fine once it was installed. However, we eventually upgraded to a mighty P2 450 with 256MB of RAM, which is a lot more comfortable.
So if you want to build and customize it yourself, Solaris, any BSD, or any Linux should work fine. I found the BSDs to be very lightweight and efficient as a file server. Linux has journaling file systems, which may be a consideration for it over the BSDs. Not sure what Solaris 10 hardware support is like, but perhaps ZFS would be nice for your needs.
If you just want to plug it in and have it work (and use less power to boot), something like the ReadyNAS is the way to go. Despite being very much able to set up routers, file servers, etc, I find myself recommending these low-hassle appliances over PCs.
Reminds me of this satirewire story: http://satirewire.com/briefs/netscape6.shtml
It might be, but you still have to be very lucky. People have died from landing very badly when jumping off of the 10m diving platform at a swimming pool. The odds of dying from a 10m fall are fairly slim, but it shows how hard of a surface water can be. And when you're going at terminal velocity, the water's surface would feel about as hard as cement, assuming you felt anything at all.
Pretty sad when random Warez downloads are safer than the real product. Kind of like how the music industry has become, with illegal MP3 downloads being safer than sticking the CD in your machine.
At one point, the major downside to downloading illegal software was that it may contain a virus and you couldn't trust the person who cracked or uploaded it. Now, we still don't know if we can trust a particular warez file, but we are certain we can't trust the publisher's CDs. So might as well take the chance on the free version as opposed to paying for the known damaged copy.
Why would legacy binary formats be a part of any "standard"? Wouldn't parsing those formats be a job for the filter that does the conversion?
The fact that the legacy junk is in there shows that the format wasn't built with the intention of creating a shared standard. It was simply the next file format for MS Office. It has only been submitted for standardization for political reasons.
Actually, OpenOffice 1.x used its own open XML file format stored in .sxw/.sxc/.sxi files. And although ODF is based on that prior work, there was effort made to sure it did not depend on the StarOffice/OpenOffice codebase, and was actually a format that could be implemented by others. OpenOffice 2.x defaults to the vendor neutral ODF, and uses filters to read the older OO/StarOffice XML and even older StarOffice binary formats.
Whereas OOXML was not developed in such a matter. It was created by one company using their own code as a reference. Outside groups did not have much influence until it was already in the standards body process, open to "comments". ODF encouraged participation of others from the beginning.
The formats aren't even the issue here though. MS clearly bribed countries in an effort to pollute the ISO process. Evidence of this is popping up all over the place. If OOXML was as worthy as ODF, would OOXML have failed (even in a tainted vote) where ODF had already succeeded?
They don't necessarily have to do Halo 4 (though they have left the door open to do it).
The could do a prequel. They could do some side story with some other characters. Or they could just do a sequel with a "new threat". There are plenty of ways they could slap 'Halo' on the side of a game and not have to make it a direct sequel to the current storyline.
Inevitably it will happen. Perhaps they will wait until XBox 3 (whatever it ends up being called) to do it, but it'll happen.
I was actually just going to post something about NeoOffice, wondering if they'd perhaps take part in this fork. But I guess they already are.
It seems many of the major improvements regarding native look and feel have come from fork projects, and not OOo itself. Novel's native widgets were available in their 1.1 build well before Sun included the capability. And of course NeoOffice actually has a build that looks and feels native on the Mac, whereas Sun has an alpha quality OOo port for Mac that they just started.
In some ways it'd be sad to see Sun's version completely lose relevance, since they did do a great service by releasing the code in the first place. But I think a complete fork is necessary to move the project ahead at a faster speed. Perhaps the two sides will eventually reunite.
It'll be interesting to see where IBM's contributions take place.