It would be so cool to have images that we could zoom into like they do in the movies, where they might have a picture of a street scene, then 'computer enhance' so they can zoom into a single window in a single building, then zoom throught that to indentify the face of the occupant. Of course that's just si fi because we are lucky to get much more than 2X enlargement before the resolution becomes too poor to see much more.
I think the "breakthrough for creating ultra-high resolution images" you speak of would come down to the capabilities of lenses, which have various limitations. It would be interesting to know, though, what the theoretical limits of resolution are.
Imagine all the thousands of exploits that have been found (and corrected) by now in browsers, operating systems, and applications, with still no end in sight. We are so fortunate that the vast majority of exploits in this past decade were not more sinister and destructive in nature, when they easily could have been so. Because of the efforts of thousands of hackers looking mostly to make a name for themselves, at least we have learned a tremendous amount about computer security in the last decade.
I ask - where would we be right now without them?
Our computers and software would be so full of holes that a concerted attack by a seriously hostile enemy could bring civilization to it knees. How much would have cost if we had had to pay engineers to debug our (collective) software to bring it to the level of security it is at now? In our annoyance with hackers, we must never forget our indebtedness to them for having made our security stronger than it would ever have been without them.
I am sure this must have been considered before, but why don't we focus the energies of hackers into constructive directions, instead of criminalizing them? Most hackers that have been arrested seem to be just kids looking for fame and attention. Putting them in jail isn't going to solve the problem, only drive it deeper underground.
I suggest instead that a large fund be established via a tax on big software companies or even paid into by governments to reward hackers for finding vulnerabilities, perhaps in specially set up target machines on the internet where appropriate. There could be an annual awards ceremony, with big ca$h prizes for the best of the best. A huge network of white hats could arise and contribute their ideas on how to prevent other forms of threats such as phishing and other social engineering methods, and how to counteract the real criminals. It just seems to me that if we are all working together, we can beat these problems.
Imagine the day when a hacker can feel pride in his justly rewarded contribution to society rather than just in how many machines he has managed to knock out.
When correcting others, it's usually good to have a clue yourself. Actually radar stands for RAdio Detection And Ranging. It is not specific to a frequency range.
I stand corrected then - technically. However, I think the vast majority associate radar with gigihertz frequencies. I certainly do, and I was once a ham, and worked in the field of electronics. I think I "have a clue". These frequencies are necessary for the detection of hi resolution targets, such as aircraft and missiles. The story of the development of radar during WWII makes for very dramatic reading. The breakthough involved the ability to generate and detect gigihertz frequencies. It may be that scientists connected with HAARP refer to it as a radar - I have no idea. If one of them should verify this, then I will be much humbled, and offer my most profound apoligies. If this is not the convention, then it is misleading to refer to this as radar.
This is NOT a radar! It must be difficult to make a living calculate exactly what the radar is doing if you don't know the difference between radar frequencies (in the gigihertz region) and HF in the range 2.8 to 10 MHz.
The environmental impact was thoroughly studied by experts in the field prior to granting permission to proceed with the project. The transmitted radio waves would have a power level only slightly higher than radio and television stations. The intensity of the HF signal in the ionosphere is hundreds of times less than even the normal random variations in intensity of the Sun's natural ultraviolet energy which creates the ionosphere. Radiation in the HF frequency range is non-ionizing. HAARP only affects the 0.2% of the ionospheric volume directly over the facility, and does not interact with the remaining 99.8% neutral atoms and molecules in this limited volume. The conclusion of the environmental impact process was that there would be no significant impacts to the ionosphere.
Worked great for me! I published a couple of software items that I offer on my web site. The only problem I encountered was in the label field - I couldn't use an acronym (it complained about too many capital letters). You can ask for a dispensation, but this will take time as humans review your request.
I'm in a similar situation. Just tried tried it - added the filter "Include only traffic to a subdirectory" and directed monitoring to my main page, then checked "Tracking status". I get the following message...
The Google Analytics tracking code has not been detected on your website's home page. For Analytics to function, you or your web administrator must add the code to each page of your website.:(
Without further testing, there is no reason to believe this story. There is no precedent for this. The prostitutes from Africa supposedly remained free of HIV infection in spite of exposure, while they are saying this man had been infected, but was cured spontaneously. It's one of those stories we would all like to believe to be true, and therefore deserves the greatest amount of skepticism.
> Sorry, but what are the ethical concerns of using a weapon in self defense?
They are certainly not MY personal ethical concerns. In my research, I came across some discussion on the issue of using LRAD for crowd control. The concern of some of the posters was that innocent bystanders - women and children in the crowd - could get hit by the beam. Also saw issues about police using this weapon to "control" demonstrators (equated with supression of free speech). Personally, I thinks LRAD is better than rubber bullets - those actually kill people, innocent bystanders included. However, there are people out there that would take issue with any weapon.
Some links from my research:
Hypersonic Sound:
Popular Science
http://www.prisonplanet.com/audios_the_next_big_th ing.html
Popular Mechanics
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/audio/1 279591.html (explains acoustic heterodyning)
Sorry - I've lost the link that said commercial ships at sea are not allowed to use heavy weapons by international treaty. It was in a story published on Sunday, March 6, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times but that factual tidbit was not from an authority anyway, and no source was provided for it.
It's application by the military and police is controversial because of ethical questions, but this seems an ideal use of this technology in private sector. Commercial ships at sea cannot use heavy weapons by international treaty. The Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, is a so-called "non-lethal weapon" developed after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole off Yemen as a way to keep operators of small boats from approaching U.S. warships. The 45-pound, dish-shaped device belongs to a developing arsenal of technologies intended not to kill but to deter. The sonic weapon, which measures 33 inches in diameter, can direct a high-pitched, piercing tone with a tight beam. Neither the LRAD's operators or others in the immediate area are affected. The LRAD's shrill tone can be as loud as about 150 decibels well beyond the threshold of pain. Inside 100 yards, you definitely don't want to be there. The device is currently being tested in regions of Baghdad, Fallujah, and other regions of Iraq as well as by police in New York City during protests of the 2004 Republican National Convention.
It is based on "Hypersonic Sound" - a process called acoustic heterodyning. What makes acoustic heterodyning possible is that air molecules behave nonlinearly. Ultrasonic speakers create sound at more than 20,000 cycles per second, a rate high enough to keep in a focused beam and beyond the range of human hearing.
Step into the beam and you hear the sound as if it were being generated inside your head. Reflect it off a surface and it sounds like it originated there. At 30,000 cycles, the sound can travel 150 yards without any distortion or loss of volume.
Back before we had space stations, Science Fiction always visualized them as a way point for other destinations rather than just for research. Seems scientific research alone can't justify the enormous expense involved, and that the concept of a space station as a jumping off point is not often considered as necessary.
I would like to offer an alternative to completing the ISS, and Pres. Bush's "Moon, Mars, and beyond". How about we make "The Search for Life" the priority instead? For the price of the ISS, we could have had rovers on all the planetary bodies where there is even a remote chance of finding life, and sample return missions as well. The ISS can be used as is, as a quarantine for the returning samples. Put manned exploration on the back burner for now. At the rate technology is always advancing, when we get back to doing manned missions someday, we will have - who knows - space elevators or whatever to make the job much easier. The advantage of the focus as I propose is that it doesn't call for some mega-construction with mega-funding and attendant mega-bureaucracy. By it's nature, it's done in small steps like NASA's "Smaller, cheaper, faster" missions. Just imagine little rovers on the ground, and rovers in the air, all over the Solar System? Scientists will access and guide them via the Internet. Every university in the world will participate. I think it's a good bet were are going to find some microbes somewhere. Even if we don't, we will have learned a tremendous amount of planetary sciences along the way, much more than we ever would as things stand.
Shouldn't somebody write a well written letter to Amazon and warn them about the Sony Rootkit? Certianly a responsible company like Amazon would stop selling the Sony CDs in an instant if they only knew!
How noise is eliminated - from http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/
Noise sources: seismic & thermal vibrations, particle-like quantum behavior of the laser light.
The standard method used to search for signals in noise is known as 'matched filtering' or 'optimal filtering'.
1.) Begin with good theoretical anticipation of what the signal is expected to look like.
2.) Signals are analysed from perspective of many points in the sky where pulsars are expected to be.
3.) Dopplers shifts due to earth's spin and motion around the sun are accounted for.
4.) Multiply the output of the detector by this waveform, and average over time T.
The resulting integral has two terms, one whose expected value grows like the square root of time T, arising from random noise in the instrument, the other which grows in proportion to time T, which is due to the pulsar signal. So if there is enough data, and enough computing power, and the exact sky position and frequency of the pulsar is known, a big enough T can always be chosen such that the term due to the source dominates the term due to the instrument noise.
What made the research ground breaking was the fact that nobody had before considered that there may be such rich information to be found in mouse sqeaks at frequencies inaudible to us, in the range of from 30 KHz to almost 100KHz. But the author failed to prove, or to mention a citation, proving that mice can actually hear and descriminate sounds in that frequency range. Was this already so well proven previously that it didn't even need mention, or is this a major flaw in his research?
The other day Firefox informed me that there was an update available. When I clicked on the little red ball with the arrow in the upper right corner, a box pops up showing a Critical Update is available - Firefox 1.0.6. (checked) I click "Install now", I get the Firefox Update dialog saying "Now downloading and installing updates...". However, it never fetches anything. It will happily sit there spinning it's wheels for hours. I have tried 3 times now over the last couple of days - and yes I have checked - it's not being blocked by ZoneAlarm. Perhaps the server is busy uploading some of those 75 million copies?
Futhermore - I can't tell you how many times I have lost my user prefs upgrading Firefox. Now I know enough to go to C:\Documents and Settings\[User]\Aplication data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles and back up my profiles before doing an update. It took a long time to figure that out, and whenever a new update rolls out I forget where to find this folder again and have to look for it. It shouldn't be like this!
Other than the above, I love Firefox, and use it constantly.
Imagine a 1 gb L1 cache layer. In other words, the CPU and RAM are combined in one chip. Then the entire application will be loaded into the CPU/RAM for execution at least 3 times faster.
I'm not a compiler writter, but I do a lot hand optimizations in assembler everywhere appropriate.
What I have found with MSVC is that the code produced by the compiler is very inneficient. From my experience, I like to say it's philosophy is "Never use the same register twice." In other words, though a register may have a value needed, left over from a previous operation, the compiler will always fetch it again. I always realize significant speed ups with assembler, from a minimum of at least 10X to commonly 100X or more.
This makes me wonder if Microsoft uses the same compiler for their products? Perhaps they have secret compiler switches so that their products compile better? Or maybe they use the Intel compiler? Any thoughts on this?
I read the detailed overview about the new Office XML Formats, and it certainly appears to be very useful.
You can view a summary here: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/fileovervi ew.mspx
Key Benefits and Functionality
Compact file format. Documents are automatically compressed--up to 75 percent smaller in some cases.
Improved damaged file recovery. Modular data storage enables files to be opened even if a component within the file is damaged--a chart or table, for example.
Safer documents. Embedded code--for example, OLE objects or Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications code--is stored in a separate section within the file, so it can be easily identified for special processing. IT Administrators can block the documents that contain unwanted macros or controls, making documents safer for users when they are opened.
Easier integration. Developers have direct access to specific contents within the file, like charts, comments, and document metadata.
Transparency and improved information security. Documents can be shared confidentially because personally identifiable information and business sensitive information--user names, comments, tracked changes, file paths--can be easily identified and removed.
Compatibility. By installing a simple update, users of Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003 Editions can open, edit, and save documents in one of the Office XML Formats.
Whether it follows some recognized XML standard or not, it will still be very useful, because XML is user extensible, it doesn't much matter.
Here it what it says about the format:
The new Office XML Formats are...An open, royalty-free file format specification...and enables any technology provider to integrate Office documents into their solutions.
Exchanging data between Office applications and enterprise business systems is simplified --alter information inside an Office document or create a document from scratch using standard tools and technologies; access to Office applications is not required.
Office XML Formats are based on industry standard XML and ZIP technologies, support full integration by any technology provider, and are available via a royalty-free license. The Format specification will be published and made available under the same royalty-free license that exists for the Office 2003 Reference Schemas--openly offered and available for broad industry use.
From my understanding, derived from careful reading of the detailed overview, it clearly implies that anyone can write applications to do everything that the new Microsoft Office can do and much more.
My question is: Then how does MS intend to meet the competition? We have an enormous number of very creative software development companies in the world. If anyone at all can produce software that does all the tasks in MS Office and much more, in theory the market will soon be flooded with wonderful applications that would reduce MS's share of the market to a small fraction. However nice the new MS Office suite will be, open competition will quickly produce even nicer apps. This is the way it always is in software. In other words, are we to believe that M$ deliberately is giving up the edge of proprietary data formats? If I am understanding what I read correctly, it is the equivalent of M$ simply giving up domination of the office suite market. That conclusion is, of course, unbelievable. So what's the gimmick??? [This was written in OOo]
Slashdot Mirror
It would be so cool to have images that we could zoom into like they do in the movies, where they might have a picture of a street scene, then 'computer enhance' so they can zoom into a single window in a single building, then zoom throught that to indentify the face of the occupant. Of course that's just si fi because we are lucky to get much more than 2X enlargement before the resolution becomes too poor to see much more.
I think the "breakthrough for creating ultra-high resolution images" you speak of would come down to the capabilities of lenses, which have various limitations. It would be interesting to know, though, what the theoretical limits of resolution are.
Imagine all the thousands of exploits that have been found (and corrected) by now in browsers, operating systems, and applications, with still no end in sight. We are so fortunate that the vast majority of exploits in this past decade were not more sinister and destructive in nature, when they easily could have been so. Because of the efforts of thousands of hackers looking mostly to make a name for themselves, at least we have learned a tremendous amount about computer security in the last decade.
I ask - where would we be right now without them?
Our computers and software would be so full of holes that a concerted attack by a seriously hostile enemy could bring civilization to it knees. How much would have cost if we had had to pay engineers to debug our (collective) software to bring it to the level of security it is at now? In our annoyance with hackers, we must never forget our indebtedness to them for having made our security stronger than it would ever have been without them.
I am sure this must have been considered before, but why don't we focus the energies of hackers into constructive directions, instead of criminalizing them? Most hackers that have been arrested seem to be just kids looking for fame and attention. Putting them in jail isn't going to solve the problem, only drive it deeper underground.
I suggest instead that a large fund be established via a tax on big software companies or even paid into by governments to reward hackers for finding vulnerabilities, perhaps in specially set up target machines on the internet where appropriate. There could be an annual awards ceremony, with big ca$h prizes for the best of the best. A huge network of white hats could arise and contribute their ideas on how to prevent other forms of threats such as phishing and other social engineering methods, and how to counteract the real criminals. It just seems to me that if we are all working together, we can beat these problems.
Imagine the day when a hacker can feel pride in his justly rewarded contribution to society rather than just in how many machines he has managed to knock out.
When correcting others, it's usually good to have a clue yourself. Actually radar stands for RAdio Detection And Ranging. It is not specific to a frequency range.
I stand corrected then - technically. However, I think the vast majority associate radar with gigihertz frequencies. I certainly do, and I was once a ham, and worked in the field of electronics. I think I "have a clue". These frequencies are necessary for the detection of hi resolution targets, such as aircraft and missiles. The story of the development of radar during WWII makes for very dramatic reading. The breakthough involved the ability to generate and detect gigihertz frequencies. It may be that scientists connected with HAARP refer to it as a radar - I have no idea. If one of them should verify this, then I will be much humbled, and offer my most profound apoligies. If this is not the convention, then it is misleading to refer to this as radar.
I'm one of the "experts" quoted on the HAARP site
The radar heats ionospheric electrons ... I can calculate exactly what the radar is doing - that's how I make my living.
"The IRI would transmit radio waves over the frequency range 2.8 to 10 MHz." from "Effects in the Ionosphere" http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/ion5.html
This is NOT a radar! It must be difficult to make a living calculate exactly what the radar is doing if you don't know the difference between radar frequencies (in the gigihertz region) and HF in the range 2.8 to 10 MHz.
but blazing blind into something that has the potential to produce huge global problems is not something I would recommend or support.
Then don't blaze blindly - just read a bit about it before you condem it.
The following is carefully summarized from "Effects in the Ionosphere - As stated in the Environmental Impact Statement" http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/ion5.html
The environmental impact was thoroughly studied by experts in the field prior to granting permission to proceed with the project. The transmitted radio waves would have a power level only slightly higher than radio and television stations. The intensity of the HF signal in the ionosphere is hundreds of times less than even the normal random variations in intensity of the Sun's natural ultraviolet energy which creates the ionosphere. Radiation in the HF frequency range is non-ionizing. HAARP only affects the 0.2% of the ionospheric volume directly over the facility, and does not interact with the remaining 99.8% neutral atoms and molecules in this limited volume. The conclusion of the environmental impact process was that there would be no significant impacts to the ionosphere.
Worked great for me! I published a couple of software items that I offer on my web site. The only problem I encountered was in the label field - I couldn't use an acronym (it complained about too many capital letters). You can ask for a dispensation, but this will take time as humans review your request.
I'm in a similar situation. Just tried tried it - added the filter "Include only traffic to a subdirectory" and directed monitoring to my main page, then checked "Tracking status". I get the following message...
:(
The Google Analytics tracking code has not been detected on your website's home page. For Analytics to function, you or your web administrator must add the code to each page of your website.
Without further testing, there is no reason to believe this story. There is no precedent for this. The prostitutes from Africa supposedly remained free of HIV infection in spite of exposure, while they are saying this man had been infected, but was cured spontaneously. It's one of those stories we would all like to believe to be true, and therefore deserves the greatest amount of skepticism.
> Sorry, but what are the ethical concerns of using a weapon in self defense?
They are certainly not MY personal ethical concerns. In my research, I came across some discussion on the issue of using LRAD for crowd control. The concern of some of the posters was that innocent bystanders - women and children in the crowd - could get hit by the beam. Also saw issues about police using this weapon to "control" demonstrators (equated with supression of free speech). Personally, I thinks LRAD is better than rubber bullets - those actually kill people, innocent bystanders included. However, there are people out there that would take issue with any weapon.
Some links from my research: Hypersonic Sound: Popular Science http://www.prisonplanet.com/audios_the_next_big_th ing.html
Popular Mechanics
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/audio/1 279591.html (explains acoustic heterodyning)
Sorry - I've lost the link that said commercial ships at sea are not allowed to use heavy weapons by international treaty. It was in a story published on Sunday, March 6, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times but that factual tidbit was not from an authority anyway, and no source was provided for it.
It's application by the military and police is controversial because of ethical questions, but this seems an ideal use of this technology in private sector. Commercial ships at sea cannot use heavy weapons by international treaty. The Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, is a so-called "non-lethal weapon" developed after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole off Yemen as a way to keep operators of small boats from approaching U.S. warships. The 45-pound, dish-shaped device belongs to a developing arsenal of technologies intended not to kill but to deter. The sonic weapon, which measures 33 inches in diameter, can direct a high-pitched, piercing tone with a tight beam. Neither the LRAD's operators or others in the immediate area are affected. The LRAD's shrill tone can be as loud as about 150 decibels well beyond the threshold of pain. Inside 100 yards, you definitely don't want to be there. The device is currently being tested in regions of Baghdad, Fallujah, and other regions of Iraq as well as by police in New York City during protests of the 2004 Republican National Convention. It is based on "Hypersonic Sound" - a process called acoustic heterodyning. What makes acoustic heterodyning possible is that air molecules behave nonlinearly. Ultrasonic speakers create sound at more than 20,000 cycles per second, a rate high enough to keep in a focused beam and beyond the range of human hearing. Step into the beam and you hear the sound as if it were being generated inside your head. Reflect it off a surface and it sounds like it originated there. At 30,000 cycles, the sound can travel 150 yards without any distortion or loss of volume.
Back before we had space stations, Science Fiction always visualized them as a way point for other destinations rather than just for research. Seems scientific research alone can't justify the enormous expense involved, and that the concept of a space station as a jumping off point is not often considered as necessary.
I would like to offer an alternative to completing the ISS, and Pres. Bush's "Moon, Mars, and beyond". How about we make "The Search for Life" the priority instead? For the price of the ISS, we could have had rovers on all the planetary bodies where there is even a remote chance of finding life, and sample return missions as well. The ISS can be used as is, as a quarantine for the returning samples. Put manned exploration on the back burner for now. At the rate technology is always advancing, when we get back to doing manned missions someday, we will have - who knows - space elevators or whatever to make the job much easier. The advantage of the focus as I propose is that it doesn't call for some mega-construction with mega-funding and attendant mega-bureaucracy. By it's nature, it's done in small steps like NASA's "Smaller, cheaper, faster" missions. Just imagine little rovers on the ground, and rovers in the air, all over the Solar System? Scientists will access and guide them via the Internet. Every university in the world will participate. I think it's a good bet were are going to find some microbes somewhere. Even if we don't, we will have learned a tremendous amount of planetary sciences along the way, much more than we ever would as things stand.
Shouldn't somebody write a well written letter to Amazon and warn them about the Sony Rootkit? Certianly a responsible company like Amazon would stop selling the Sony CDs in an instant if they only knew!
How noise is eliminated - from http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/ Noise sources: seismic & thermal vibrations, particle-like quantum behavior of the laser light. The standard method used to search for signals in noise is known as 'matched filtering' or 'optimal filtering'. 1.) Begin with good theoretical anticipation of what the signal is expected to look like. 2.) Signals are analysed from perspective of many points in the sky where pulsars are expected to be. 3.) Dopplers shifts due to earth's spin and motion around the sun are accounted for. 4.) Multiply the output of the detector by this waveform, and average over time T. The resulting integral has two terms, one whose expected value grows like the square root of time T, arising from random noise in the instrument, the other which grows in proportion to time T, which is due to the pulsar signal. So if there is enough data, and enough computing power, and the exact sky position and frequency of the pulsar is known, a big enough T can always be chosen such that the term due to the source dominates the term due to the instrument noise.
What made the research ground breaking was the fact that nobody had before considered that there may be such rich information to be found in mouse sqeaks at frequencies inaudible to us, in the range of from 30 KHz to almost 100KHz. But the author failed to prove, or to mention a citation, proving that mice can actually hear and descriminate sounds in that frequency range. Was this already so well proven previously that it didn't even need mention, or is this a major flaw in his research?
[Goto Tools -> Options -> Web Features in firefox and make sure "Allow websites to install software" is checked...]
Thanks - That was the problem all right! And of course I put download.mozilla.org as the only site allowed to install software.
Now if only they could make it easier to not loose user preferences...
The other day Firefox informed me that there was an update available. When I clicked on the little red ball with the arrow in the upper right corner, a box pops up showing a Critical Update is available - Firefox 1.0.6. (checked) I click "Install now", I get the Firefox Update dialog saying "Now downloading and installing updates...". However, it never fetches anything. It will happily sit there spinning it's wheels for hours. I have tried 3 times now over the last couple of days - and yes I have checked - it's not being blocked by ZoneAlarm. Perhaps the server is busy uploading some of those 75 million copies?
Futhermore - I can't tell you how many times I have lost my user prefs upgrading Firefox. Now I know enough to go to C:\Documents and Settings\[User]\Aplication data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles and back up my profiles before doing an update. It took a long time to figure that out, and whenever a new update rolls out I forget where to find this folder again and have to look for it. It shouldn't be like this!
Other than the above, I love Firefox, and use it constantly.
Imagine a 1 gb L1 cache layer. In other words, the CPU and RAM are combined in one chip. Then the entire application will be loaded into the CPU/RAM for execution at least 3 times faster.
I'm not a compiler writter, but I do a lot hand optimizations in assembler everywhere appropriate.
What I have found with MSVC is that the code produced by the compiler is very inneficient. From my experience, I like to say it's philosophy is "Never use the same register twice." In other words, though a register may have a value needed, left over from a previous operation, the compiler will always fetch it again. I always realize significant speed ups with assembler, from a minimum of at least 10X to commonly 100X or more.
This makes me wonder if Microsoft uses the same compiler for their products? Perhaps they have secret compiler switches so that their products compile better? Or maybe they use the Intel compiler? Any thoughts on this?
I read the detailed overview about the new Office XML Formats, and it certainly appears to be very useful. You can view a summary here: http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/fileovervi ew.mspx
Key Benefits and Functionality
Compact file format. Documents are automatically compressed--up to 75 percent smaller in some cases.
Improved damaged file recovery. Modular data storage enables files to be opened even if a component within the file is damaged--a chart or table, for example.
Safer documents. Embedded code--for example, OLE objects or Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications code--is stored in a separate section within the file, so it can be easily identified for special processing. IT Administrators can block the documents that contain unwanted macros or controls, making documents safer for users when they are opened.
Easier integration. Developers have direct access to specific contents within the file, like charts, comments, and document metadata.
Transparency and improved information security. Documents can be shared confidentially because personally identifiable information and business sensitive information--user names, comments, tracked changes, file paths--can be easily identified and removed.
Compatibility. By installing a simple update, users of Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003 Editions can open, edit, and save documents in one of the Office XML Formats.
Whether it follows some recognized XML standard or not, it will still be very useful, because XML is user extensible, it doesn't much matter.
Here it what it says about the format:
The new Office XML Formats are...An open, royalty-free file format specification...and enables any technology provider to integrate Office documents into their solutions.
Exchanging data between Office applications and enterprise business systems is simplified --alter information inside an Office document or create a document from scratch using standard tools and technologies; access to Office applications is not required.
Office XML Formats are based on industry standard XML and ZIP technologies, support full integration by any technology provider, and are available via a royalty-free license. The Format specification will be published and made available under the same royalty-free license that exists for the Office 2003 Reference Schemas--openly offered and available for broad industry use.
From my understanding, derived from careful reading of the detailed overview, it clearly implies that anyone can write applications to do everything that the new Microsoft Office can do and much more.
My question is: Then how does MS intend to meet the competition? We have an enormous number of very creative software development companies in the world. If anyone at all can produce software that does all the tasks in MS Office and much more, in theory the market will soon be flooded with wonderful applications that would reduce MS's share of the market to a small fraction. However nice the new MS Office suite will be, open competition will quickly produce even nicer apps. This is the way it always is in software. In other words, are we to believe that M$ deliberately is giving up the edge of proprietary data formats? If I am understanding what I read correctly, it is the equivalent of M$ simply giving up domination of the office suite market. That conclusion is, of course, unbelievable. So what's the gimmick??? [This was written in OOo]