I don't know about you but I sent this letter to the newsdesk of my local broadcaster, I'm sure there are better informed heads about here that could turn this into a proper news-release. Journalists, like the rest of us, are lazy and if you do most of their job for them they will gladly run with your story. I'm in Europe so alter to suit your national agenda.
Hi,
I think this story is probably relevant to enough people to be covered, at least in one of the business sections, the facts are here but I'm no journalist and so the sources and dramatic denouement I leave in your capable hands.
The background.
Sun Microsystems released an open document format which any company could use to exchange documents between businesses without needing them using the same software. Any software company could incorporate this format into their software without fear of legal reprisal in the US, (where software is covered by patents rather than copyright). This seemed like a good idea to just about everybody in IT and became an ISO standard.
Microsoft has forced upgrades on customers by making new file formats unreadable to their previous software, thus if you get sent a document from MS-Word-2007 and your still using MS-Word-2003 you can't open the document in your copy of Word and if this happens often enough you will need to upgrade. MS-Office is Microsoft's big cash cow.
This new ISO format (ODF) offered a way out of this lock-in to users and guaranteed readability of the document into the future as the "Rosetta stone" was a published standard. For archival reasons several governments mandated the use of open ISO standards for document storage when this standard became available.
The story.
Microsoft essentially dumped it's internal format into an XML specification and having fast tracked it through the EMCA,( European Computer Manufacturers Association) proposed it as an ISO standard. It is currently being reviewed by the various national standards institutes who will collectively vote for it's adoption, rejection or rejection with comments, (advice on what fails to make it a standard and what must be done before reapplying). There are a number of serious flaws with this standard and many people in the IT and archiving sectors feel it shouldn't be adopted.
Microsoft have been caught stuffing the Swedish Standards Institute with their business partners prior to the vote, in fact this is true globally, however in Sweden an incriminating email leaked showing that MS asked partner companies to join the SIS and vote for adoption of their format in return for MS development assistance for their software. Microsoft is currently under investigation by the EU Commission for unfair trading and exploitation of its monopoly, is convicted as a monopolist in the US (though the present regime overturned the ruling to split the company in three) and is being investigated for monopolistic practice in Japan. The discovery of this ballot stuffing in Sweden may cause the European Commission to look harder at the company's trading practices.
Footnotes.
The Swedish standards institute has overturned the vote to adopt the standard and will abstain from the vote at the ISO meeting.
A quick google of ooxml will throw up a lot of useful information.
Thanks,...
looking forward to seeing improvements/amendments to this.
Adding money to the economy blindly is a zero sum game, however adding money to a sector that you think can productively use this money to increase growth and improve your technological abilities isn't throwing money at the problem blindly it's investment in the future.
Lynx is still available, still maintained and I rarely need to pull the images down to get the details i require. A picture is worth a thousand words, even with jpeg compression
You are totally correct from my limited knowledge on the subject of language development, recently read the language instinct by Steven Pinker.
It would appear that Chomsky et al have found that there is a "grammar engine" hard wired in the mind which assimilates the local grammar until about the age of seven when the brain reorders itself. He makes interesting case studies of pidgin languages where the several different languages are forced together, the first generation develops a common vocabulary but children born into this culture develop the formal grammar. Worth a read.
Surely all the true rockstars have a much shorter lifs span, live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse!(Well perhaps a slightly blue faced corpse
If they can't do the excess thing properly why should we take them seriously as rockstars.
But seriously folks, anyone making money on a song 50 years old is minted and doesn't need the dough, and people messing around in a tasteless fashion with your creation is the fate of all public culture.
Realistically anyone attempting to prosecute Cox for exploiting a backdoor in a botnet is going to have a hard time keeping their client out of jail.
I look forward to Cox meeting their lawyers. Evil_lawyer_dude: You have exploited a vulnerability in my clients software Cox Communications: Ooops, so we have, would you care to name your client Evil_lawter_dude: I don't have to Cox Communications: Well, without evidence of harm done to your client we can't be held liable for anything Evil_lawyer_dude: My client has been unable to carry on his business using the resources of your customers Cox Communications: Yes, and we have a list of customers who would be part of a counter suit, no go away or we will taunt you some more.
I think the parent is trying to say that the 3 DVDs of Debian aren't just an OS but rather an OS, a complete suite of applications, the source of the above, binaries for every platform you can think of and a full set of documentation.
And the Americans are doing real well in the US? I guess running a few casinos has improved their lot but having your culture eliminated and your population decimated tends to lead to a bit of a downturn in your society.
Hong Kong was a trading partner under Imperial rule, that is quite different to being an enslaved population under colonial rule.
I shouldn't feed the troll, but HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, Really dude you need to read the PR briefing material more closely. On a forum of techies blatant lies aren't going to cut it.
I don't believe there;s a single true statement in your entire post. Congratulations no get back to posting goatse links
Yup, you can change the registry key
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cur rentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]
An interesting choice is @="Googlebot/2.1" "Compatible"="+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html"
Many sites offer a cleaner more navigable site to the googlebot for some reason
$ cp/bin/sh sh
$ sudo chown root sh
$ sudo chmod 4755 sh
Get thee from my sight, if having no root user by default is supposed to be secure, having a suid shell to solve resultant problems of inconvenience is without doubt the most hideous idea I've ever seen
Please reply that this was an elegant piss take, please
This story piqued my interest as I got a mail today from our national standards body. In it we were informed that there is a 5 month ballot currently underway with a deadline of September 2 2007. They are looking at the national position WRT this proposed standard and are seeking submissions from those who submitted previously at the one month contradiction stage.
Check your own national standards organisation and see if they too are seeking submissions.
It's a plan to reduce the amount of business that goes overseas, anytime I've to go to the States on business i swear I'll never do a job for an American company again after going through the airport
It's not an either or, enlightened self interest (a better form of greed) ensures you don't piss off your developers and submitting to a racketeer is never a wise course of action, they'll just keep coming back for more
Get a grip, RedHat aren't on the desktop, there in the server room, talking to AD with openLDAP and if MS start suing companies running RedHat they're going to alienate a lot of BIG companies with a huge XP install base who could move to a Linux desktop, Ubuntu LTS perhaps, Fedora for all it's many wonders is a testbed.
And to return to the more obvious hole in your argument What fscking patents are we talking about here? They have 0 court tested patents that Linux infringes on according to a company that sells an indemnity against patent sewage, who I momentarily forget but they have been referenced here before.
Nope this is just a hollow threat and I don't see RedHat or Ubuntu taking the MS coin in return for a figleaf for MS's marketing trolls
Unix and Linux machines may not be as plentiful, they are how ever high net worth targets, granted CS students run Linux on a home made boxin their bedroom, however large institutions run Unix and Linux on their servers and store data of real value on them, the reason windows boxes are targeted is that they are the low hanging fruit, relatively easy pickings
I think the unnamed group was OSRM (Open Source Risk Management), Daniel Ravicer researched an article for them indicating that there were 0 court tested patents infringed in some subset of open source (I don't remember the detail, someone remind me please), there were also
So we're looking at members can easily outgun the least inventive company in the software market today.
AS there were 238 Million PCs sold last year, we could take a rough calculation of 20M PCs sold per month, thus in the first ~= 4 months Vista shipped -20M copies, including pre-existing vouchers !!
Slashdot Mirror
Adding money to the economy blindly is a zero sum game, however adding money to a sector that you think can productively use this money to increase growth and improve your technological abilities isn't throwing money at the problem blindly it's investment in the future.
Lynx is still available, still maintained and I rarely need to pull the images down to get the details i require.
A picture is worth a thousand words, even with jpeg compression
No, it's a command as in shutdown -h now which is precisely what happened ;)
You are correct, Advertising is the customer, users are the product.
It would appear that Chomsky et al have found that there is a "grammar engine" hard wired in the mind which assimilates the local grammar until about the age of seven when the brain reorders itself. He makes interesting case studies of pidgin languages where the several different languages are forced together, the first generation develops a common vocabulary but children born into this culture develop the formal grammar. Worth a read.
If they can't do the excess thing properly why should we take them seriously as rockstars.
But seriously folks, anyone making money on a song 50 years old is minted and doesn't need the dough, and people messing around in a tasteless fashion with your creation is the fate of all public culture.
Indeed or chroot jails ? Sun's containerizationing solution
I look forward to Cox meeting their lawyers.
Evil_lawyer_dude: You have exploited a vulnerability in my clients software
Cox Communications: Ooops, so we have, would you care to name your client
Evil_lawter_dude: I don't have to
Cox Communications: Well, without evidence of harm done to your client we can't be held liable for anything
Evil_lawyer_dude: My client has been unable to carry on his business using the resources of your customers
Cox Communications: Yes, and we have a list of customers who would be part of a counter suit, no go away or we will taunt you some more.
In this context the actual OS itself isn't huge.
And the Americans are doing real well in the US?
I guess running a few casinos has improved their lot but having your culture eliminated and your population decimated tends to lead to a bit of a downturn in your society.
Hong Kong was a trading partner under Imperial rule, that is quite different to being an enslaved population under colonial rule.
Pointless pedantry, but two words that sound the same are homophones
I shouldn't feed the troll, but HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, Really dude you need to read the PR briefing material more closely. On a forum of techies blatant lies aren't going to cut it.
I don't believe there;s a single true statement in your entire post. Congratulations no get back to posting goatse links
Yup, you can change the registry keyr rentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cu
An interesting choice is @="Googlebot/2.1" "Compatible"="+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html"
Many sites offer a cleaner more navigable site to the googlebot for some reason
Please reply that this was an elegant piss take, please
Check your own national standards organisation and see if they too are seeking submissions.
The outcome of the Ecma report can be had here http://www.ecma-international.org/news/TC45_curren t_work/Ecma%20responses.pdf
unless a response of "You must be fskin' joking" was interpreted as a refusal to answer the question.
It's a plan to reduce the amount of business that goes overseas, anytime I've to go to the States on business i swear I'll never do a job for an American company again after going through the airport
It's not an either or, enlightened self interest (a better form of greed) ensures you don't piss off your developers and submitting to a racketeer is never a wise course of action, they'll just keep coming back for more
And to return to the more obvious hole in your argument What fscking patents are we talking about here? They have 0 court tested patents that Linux infringes on according to a company that sells an indemnity against patent sewage, who I momentarily forget but they have been referenced here before.
Nope this is just a hollow threat and I don't see RedHat or Ubuntu taking the MS coin in return for a figleaf for MS's marketing trolls
Read much Iain Banks lately?
Whitehouse release the legislation
Unix and Linux machines may not be as plentiful, they are how ever high net worth targets, granted CS students run Linux on a home made boxin their bedroom, however large institutions run Unix and Linux on their servers and store data of real value on them, the reason windows boxes are targeted is that they are the low hanging fruit, relatively easy pickings
I think the unnamed group was OSRM (Open Source Risk Management), Daniel Ravicer researched an article for them indicating that there were 0 court tested patents infringed in some subset of open source (I don't remember the detail, someone remind me please), there were also So we're looking at members can easily outgun the least inventive company in the software market today.
AS there were 238 Million PCs sold last year, we could take a rough calculation of 20M PCs sold per month, thus in the first ~= 4 months Vista shipped -20M copies, including pre-existing vouchers !!