Norwegian Standards Body Members Resign Over OOXML 208
tsa writes "Ars Technica reports that 13 of the 23 members from the technical committee of the Norwegian standards body, the organization that manages technical standards for the country, have resigned because of the way the OOXML standardization was handled. We've previously discussed Norway's protest and ISO's rejection of other appeals. From the article: 'The standardization process for Microsoft's office format has been plagued with controversy. Critics have challenged the validity of its ISO approval and allege that procedural irregularities and outright misconduct marred the voting process in national standards bodies around the world. Norway has faced particularly close scrutiny because the country reversed its vote against approval despite strong opposition to the format by a majority of the members who participated in the technical committee.'"
Take this job and shove it dept. ??? (Score:4, Funny)
I thought it was the 'Take this chair and throw it' department? What gives?
Conflicted (Score:5, Insightful)
My first thought was "It's good that these people are taking a stand against injustice.", but my second thought was "These principled people just resigned. Norway's board is entirely corrupt now." Bummer.
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Re:Conflicted (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you seen Norwegian TV news? It goes from one scandal to the next. There's always someone stealing big chunks of money in one way or another.
Of course the magnitude is smaller because they have far less people, but they're far from corruption free.
Transparency helps, but there's not much you can do if you can't kick the crooks out easily. Plus, who are you going to replace them with? Honest people don't like government work very much.
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I disagree.
There are much scandals because of transparency.
Opposed to other countries where everything happens under the hood.
Re:Conflicted (Score:5, Insightful)
"Plus, who are you going to replace them with? Honest people don't like government work very much."
That is one of the more profound statements I have encountered here (on slashdot) about politics for quite s while!
I hope some moderators are here and share some '+insightful' love with you.
That is the situation with the upcoming Presidential elections here in the USA.
It seems to be a choice between a turd sandwich, or a shit casserole.
Does it really matter at this point? You already know it will taste like crap!
I guess all you can do is vote as you think is best, and hope it will work out.
Another option would be a revolution, and overthrow of the existing government.
This has not worked out well in the past, as the incoming 'party/gov't.' has not planned much farther ahead than getting 'there'.
I, for one, do not have the answers to the questions that have/can/will come about...just more questions.
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People that want political office are usually the same people that you would least want to have it. Honest, smart people never want the job. You have to inflict it on them! ...
I think one way to help clean things up is to make the office holder PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for their choices and actions while in office. There will suddenly be an absence of fat-asses in cushy chairs, and a lot of people deciding that private sector work is where it's at. Of course, they'll fail there too
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We already hold them personally accountable when they do wrong. Look at all the congress members who are in trouble right now.
What your wanting to do is punish people for political opinions and being wrong or mistaken about the outcome. That isn't really possible if we are going to claim to be a free nation with freedoms such as free speech.
Government work (Score:2)
Well I quite enjoy government work, but maybe my situation's different since I'm working in the New Zealand government which doesn't sound as if it's very stereotypical as governments go around the world. I also know that the other people in my IT department know their stuff and are really good a
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Re:Conflicted (Score:5, Interesting)
You miss the point.
Norwegians still have a concept in their culture of a "scandal" that isn't just juicy, salacious news.
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agreed, which is nice.
However the GGP had the impression that Scandinavia has very little corruption. No matter how dry the scandal is, it's still a sign of some sort of corruption.
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"The New Zealand Labour government - ostensibly centre-left in political leaning - finds itself somewhat out of touch with its constituency, having furthered some very sinister policies (believe it or not, it is now actually illegal to smack your child for discipline in NZ). "
The far reaching implications are indeed scary. I frequently joke about getting spankings as a child like vitamins: One A Day (tm). But I would also acknowledge the fact that I never received one undeserved-I worked hard for every one
Re:Conflicted (Score:5, Funny)
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A few poisoned herrings would have done the trick.
Agreed, but you seem to have overlooked the old scandinavian "put a few sour herrings in the ventialtion" ploy.
Re:Conflicted (Score:5, Insightful)
didn't IBM also resign from ISO over OOXML? i think this form of passive protest is important as it draws attention to the corruption at hand. if nothing else, it's garnered media attention and highlighted how serious an issue this is.
i think all principled members of ISO need to show solidarity and resign together. a mass exodus from the organization would force the industry to stop ignoring the issue. it says to governments and companies who care about standardization that ISO is no longer a legitimate vendor-neutral standardization body.
the next step would be for IBM, the Norwegian technical committee members, and other parties serious about standardization, to form a new organization for promoting international standards--and to make reforms to safeguard against an incident like this from happening within the new standards body.
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I thought there already existed safeguards within the ISO/IEC framework, but that they basically were sidestepped. Whats to stop a new organization from doing it again?
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It could also pave the way to setting up an alternative standards body for file formats.
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the correct next step is for the ISO to cop on, and realize that, like other supernational bodies (eg ICANN), it can only be effective (and hence exist) if it is seen as incorruptible and representing the best interest of those involved in an industry and their clients.
While a new organization will clearly be more effective than the ISO in its current state, it is really should be a last resort option.
That said, maybe the ISO model just isn't the right one for the software industry.
Which media attention? (Score:2)
didn't IBM also resign from ISO over OOXML? i think this form of passive protest is important as it draws attention to the corruption at hand. if nothing else, it's garnered media attention...
Where? MSNBC? MS Newseek? MS WashingtonPost?
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you make a good point, but that has more to to with the consolidation of mainstream media, which is really a separate issue (though its implications and effects are broad and far-reaching).
in the meantime, the web has done a lot to diversify the media sources that the average person is exposed to. from here, it's up to the individual to make a conscious effort to get their news from independent news sources and check multiple news sources to account for inherent biases and verify accuracy of reported info.
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No, they've threatened to do so [nytimes.com], but as of yet haven't resigned.
I doubt they ever will. ISO is about a lot more than just the OOXML. Consider the number of standards a company like IBM needs to deal with on a daily basis. Giving up their rights to influence what goes into said standards because of one failed process wouldn't make any sense from a business point of view.
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i understand what you're saying, but if their membership still does not allow them to overturn such an obvious case of commercially motivated corruption/corporate strong-arming tactics, then they really don't have much of a say anyway--at least not in any meaningful sense.
basically, this incident shows that ISO is up for sale. if you can afford to purchase the votes, then you can have whatever you want become an ISO standard. this not only makes ISO standards meaningless, but it also demonstrates that ISO d
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didn't IBM also resign from ISO over OOXML?
Is there a list of high-profile ISO members who have resigned over the OOXML scandal? I would like to naively ask why X, Y, and Z left at the next ISO inspection, and hear what the techs say.
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It will help... (Score:3, Interesting)
...if (and only if) those principled individuals set up a rival standards organization, have as part of their charter that they refute corruption and automatically negate standards tainted by corruption, re-certify where legal all known-to-be-"safe" standards under their own name, and then lobby research shops and companies hurt by the ISO scandal to work with them. Fork the certification market, but because of rebranding existing standards, no other standards body would ever need to be involved.
Another alt
Re:It will help... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary. Good people remaining in the service of a bad organisation only adds to that organisation's strength. Walking away takes from the strength of that organisation. These people tried to redeem the organisation - they protested, they appealed and they went public. The organisation did not reverse its actions. To remain is to continue to lend support to its actions, to walk away is to diminish its authority. Whilst it could in theory help if they set up an alternate standards agency, these are merely people from a national group. Unless they started organising with other protestors from around the World, they can't set up anything to rival ISO. But they don't actually need to. Standards emerge and get organised without the aid of ISO. In fact, ISO often merely turns up and codifies such standards. Weaken ISO and where there is a need, other parties will start to fill in the gap in authority. I don't think you can ask more of these people than they have already given up. I assume there's a paycheck they have renounced somewhere in this, as well a privileged position.
I have full respect for their actions.
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They have achieved something (Score:5, Insightful)
When principled people withdraw from an endeavor, they take with them the credibility they leant to it. The credibility of principled participants is all a standards body has to offer.
They are by their action hastening a day when a new, credible standards body can displace the corrupt corpse of ISO.
Good on 'em.
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That is only true when people associate the credibility of the organization with the people in it.
I think the day has passed when the individual members were needed to support the credibility of ISO. It holds it's own in a special right because of all that has been done successfully in the past. Staying and protesting would probably have more of an effect then leaving. Perhaps introducing junk standards that mimic the corruption like a standards compliant framework for making ISO OOXML protest signs that sa
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Wow, looking at your journal, you seem to have an obsession. Who cares if someone has a couple of accounts - if a person's comment is worth something then it will be moderated up.
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It's probably impossible to get you and twitter to take your battles elsewhere, but could you at least try to keep it down a bit? Ignore the stuff already at -1 or 0.
Simple math and vandalism. (Score:2, Funny)
Let's see. As of this moment (7:30 AM), this article has 102 posts.
Going through the accounts listed in willyhill's journal, I
count 19 posts by 13 different accounts, most of them in
this [slashdot.org] thread.
That means that a single person posted 18.6% of all comments
so far on this article alone.
willyhill posted exactly four times on this article, all with the
same account (that I can tell).
Who's 'cluttering up' the place again?
Slashdot is broken when twitter can post some "M$ sux" drivel, have
someone point out he's shill
Microsoft at its best (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft seems to want to to take over ODF too.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080825162905645 [groklaw.net]
Apparently they are not happy there is a working specification in the wild. It being a standard must hurt even more.
Form a new standards body (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a good time to start a new standards body with a new goal.
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The toughest part would probably be being recognised as a standards organisation. But something really needs to happen as ISO do not appear to be sorting their shit out.
How soon people forget ... (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFA:
Actually, you can only read part of the resolutions passed by this stacked committee. As usual, there are deep secrets that the public can't access. That's just one part of what's wrong with those people and why ODF must never fall into their secretive clutches. If it does, I have little doubt that ODF will end up brain dead, on life support, turning blue for lack of oxygen, and then suddenly, sadly, we'll find it dead as a doornail.
This was the same state Unix was in around the early 1990s. We're not dead yet! In fact, we've taken over the large computer market since then.
ISO has lost its street cred so expect an Open Source replacement. Open Standards benefit everyone, so I expect someone to fill in the gap.
Re:How soon people forget ... (Score:5, Informative)
Ahem. Linux Is Not UniX. Linux owns the big iron these days, holding over 85% [top500.org] of the Top500 [top500.org]. It's pretty dominant on the small end too, with home routers and file servers being the extreme of that bracket. The middle is getting squeezed out as thin-is-in netbooks and nettops push into the mainstream.
Unix was never open source until Open Solaris (the provenance of which is still subject to vigorous debate).
But of course you knew that. I was a Unix admin in 1984. At the time it was the stuff. Unfortunately because it was born before the age of software as property it wasn't designed to be protected from the greatest threat progress has ever faced: intellectual property lawyers. Linux was.
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Unix was never open source until Open Solaris
BSD isn't Unix?
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No, BSD is not Unix [opengroup.org]. To say that BSD is Unix is perhaps like saying that grass is rice. That's not quite correct. Some grasses are rice. Some grasses are differently purposed and differently used. They may share some genetic material but a putting green is not a bowl of cereal.
However, all rices are grasses. All of the currently used Unixes owe the vast majority of their genetic material to the University of California at San Diego and Berkeley. It would be fair to say that modern Unixes are all Be
Re:How soon people forget ... (Score:4, Informative)
This is true now, but not in a historical context. After the AT&T lawsuit, AT&T UNIX was found to contain BSD code, and BSD was found to contain only a few headers from AT&T, which were subsequently replaced. The subsequent 4BSD releases were both UNIX and open source. The assignment of the UNIX trademark to the Open Group happened much later, and it wasn't until 1993 that the UNIX93 specification was released, which redefined what UNIX meant. Oh, and The Open Group didn't buy the name, it was given to them by the Open Software Foundation, who were given it by AT&T.
Before 1993, UNIX meant 'a descendent of AT&T UNIX, source compatible with with programs written for this operating system.' After 1993, it meant 'an operating system conforming to the UNIX93 specification and certified as conforming by The Open Software Foundation.'[1] Note that neither of these is a subset of the other. A Linux distribution[2] could be certified as SUS conforming and then it would be UNIX (according to the post-1993) definition, but it would not be according to the pre-1998 definition. All BSD systems are UNIX according to the pre-1993 definition, but only OS X 10.5 on Intel[3] is UNIX according to the newer definition.
[1] After 1998, it meant 'an operating system conforming to the Single UNIX Specification and certified as conforming by The Open Group.' It was redefined in 1995, 1998, and 2003, and so some systems in each of these years went from being UNIX to being not-UNIX, due to increasing demands by the standards.
[2] The Single UNIX Specification covers a load of userspace utilities, including the C compiler and shell, and defined the functions the C standard library must implement, so Linux alone can never be SUS certified. A minimal GNU/Linux system conforming to SUS would have around an order of magnitude more GNU code than Linux code. A BSD/LLVM/Linux system could also, potentially, be certified, or one containing userland stuff taken from OpenSolaris or even something like Minix.
[3] Certification is per version and per platform. As such, Solaris is usually not UNIX - only the major releases are certified and some are only certified on SPARC, not on x86. Note that the other versions are still able to pass the tests, it's just that no one wanted to spend money getting them certified.
Max OS X (Score:2)
Nor is any particular flavor of BSD.
Mac OS X is a certified BSD based Unix.
Martin
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No, GNU's not Unix.
Only Mac OS X (Score:2)
Only Mac OS X is a certified Unix with BSD roots. The other BSDs aren't certified. But then - as symbolset has pointed out: OpenSolaris isn't certified either.
Martin
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But of course you knew that.
Of course. But what that comment referred to was the lawsuit that effectively ended Unix' chances at the time, but spurred all the BSD spinoffs and later Linux. Maybe I had the year wrong, that was during the time I took a sabbatical from Unix hacking to pursue professional bowling.
I was a Unix admin in 1984. At the time it was the stuff.
Ah. Right on and yes, Unix was very much the cutting edge then.
Now that I think about it, I'm at the tipping point. I started with Unix in late 1981, Linux in late 1995 and I have very nearly spent more time with Linux than U
Re:How soon people forget ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I took a hiatus too. I didn't miss the show - I was just sidelined playing with stuff I knew was good. It didn't take me more than three months of Windows development to figure out that it was a trap. The last month of that I spent looking for specifications for a sound card so I could do audio capture before I discovered that the company that wrote the drivers for SoundBlaster was actually a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary that wasn't giving up the specs at any price or terms I could live with.
OS X bought [opengroup.org] Unix certification because it was an important selling point. They had to do significant engineering to qualify for the mark, but they have it not in recognition of their engineering, but because they licensed the right to call OS X a Unix from The Open Group.
Unix is not what it was in the 1960s and 1970s - the love child of great minds. It's now just a service mark. A brand. Intellectual property law ruined it, and Ransom Love killed it with his hubris. It's time to let it go.
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The Inquirer story has a translation (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/10/02/norway-standards-members-walk [theinquirer.net]
I was shocked by how excellent the "rough Google translation" was. Unless they had a human clean up the translation a bit, that is amazingly good English prose for a machine translator to emit. (I can't speak for how accurate it is, but it seems plausible enough.)
English is a mess, with lots of irregular usages. How about Norwegian -- is it particularly easy or particularly hard to translate?
steveha
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Brilliant! (Score:2)
1) Destroy standards body.
2) This makes your closed proprietary format the de facto standard.
3) Which locks out the competition and locks in users.
4) Profit!
Article is BS? (Score:3, Interesting)
While MS pulled some dirty tricks to get OOXML approved and many of us are rightfully questioning ISO's credibility, this article appears to be (at best) sensationalizing things according to one of the arstechnica comments:
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For anyone [slashdot.org] thinks this "conversation" is a little strange, twitter, "right handed" and "inTheLoo" are the same person.
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Probably... this guy is hardly [slashdot.org] that clever [slashdot.org], though *grin*
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It's said the next Euro-war will be between Britain and Norway, over the North Sea oil.
What?! Who the hell says that?
Firstly, prosperous modern democracies with large middle classes and a lot to lose do not go to war. There has never been a single case. It is just not going to happen.
Secondly, there could be no victory. If Norway attacked Britain, the rest of Europe would stand by and watch Norway reap its well-deserved stomping from the vastly superior British armed forces. If Britain attacked Norway, the rest of the EU would declare war on them. Either way would bring utter disaster for the
What the hell (Score:4, Informative)
Erris
Mactrope
gnutoo
inTheLoo
willeyhill
westbake
Odder
ibane
myCopyWrong
right handed
GNUChop
All these accounts belong to the same person And he's getting modded up? Where do I sign up
for this deal? Where I can game Slashdot so blatantly and be rewarded for my troubles?
Once you've crossed that threshold, whatever you had to say is completely irrelevant. I don't care
who you are. Rules exist in online communities for a good reason, and this... sorry, shitstorm of
"I agree with you" replies by a single person is just too much.
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I'm curious (and I don't mean this in any sort of confrontational way), do you really think all these accounts are owned by different people?
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Twitter, you are clearly an idiot. MS posts one of the highest net profit margins of the sector, easily outstripping all "open source" friendly companies.
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Dude, you said the same thing Macthorpe [slashdot.org]. Can't you keep your sock puppets straight?
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No offense to GP, but I'd like to think I write more eloquently than that. Furthermore, I'm not scared of writing "fuck" on a website.
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No one is migrating to OOXML because no one is supporting it. Not one product on sale today. Not even from Microsoft. They claim they will in the future but I will wait and see. If Microsoft holds true to form then there is no chance in hell that OOXML will ever be supported as written (and the written documentation is incomplete as it stands).
His head is in the clouds or is being paid to write crap like that. Get help???? Don't waste your time with this he's probably running norton to clean his system as w
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Microsoft only fails Transitional OOXML on one count, which is that one function returns the wrong type of positive result, which you can find from the blog of the guy who originally tested it: [griffinbrown.co.uk]
Sure enough (again) the result is as expected: relatively few messages (84) are emitted and they are all of the same type complaining e.g. of the element:
since the allowed attribute values for val are now "true", "false", etc. this was one of the many tidying-up exercices performed at the BRM
You can find a list of other supported implementations here: ECMA 376 implementations. [wikipedia.org]
I'm not paid to write crap like this, it's all my own work I'm afraid to say. What about your crap? Do you get paid to write that, or are you a freelance crapper like myself?
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Microsoft only fails Transitional OOXML on one count, which is that one function returns the wrong type of positive result, which you can find from the blog of the guy who originally tested it
This may look like a minor issue, but it isn't. It means that any program written to the standard won't be able to read documents created by Microsoft Office, since it will encounter invalid truth values. It probably also means that Microsoft Office won't be able to read documents created by compliant implementations, for the same reason - they may have patched this since, but it won't help with people who haven't installed the patch. (Yes, this does mean old Microsoft Office could end up incompatible with
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Mactrope is pretty much on the ball here. He may have some issues, I really don't know, but Microsoft can make as many mistakes as they want, stuff everybody up and generally be the worst player in the field.
The world is so entrenched in the MS paradigm that to them MS=Computers and Computers=MS. That's all he is saying.
is there ANYone to explain me why parent (Score:3, Insightful)
are there any morons among us, who are STILL saying that microsoft did nothing wrong in this ooxml scandal ?
Re:is there ANYone to explain me why parent (Score:4, Interesting)
I wasn't commenting on that, I was commenting on the 7 sockpuppet conversation that twitter decided to have with himself at the start of the comments.
I am seriously beginning to question his sanity - I mean, in the last 6 months he's accused me of sending him death threats, of working for Microsoft and of harbouring multiple Slashdot accounts, none of which are remotely true and the latter being supreme hypocrisy. He's a newspaper headline waiting to happen.
are there any morons among us, who are STILL saying that microsoft did nothing wrong in this ooxml scandal ?
Come to mention it, some actual concrete proof would be nice, but I've already found out that I'm as likely to get that as Ellen Degeneres is of settling down with a nice man. Call me a moron if you like, but I tend to like evidence that isn't circumstantial groklawed hogwash before accusing people of anything.
A lot of people on Slashdot forget how many companies rely on Microsoft's dominance of the market to make a living. Instead of thinking "Well, maybe the reason a lot of companies registered to vote is because their profit margin relies on OOXML becoming a standard", they instead jump to the most extreme conclusion they can find.
Re:is there ANYone to explain me why parent (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of people on Slashdot forget how many companies rely on Microsoft's dominance of the market to make a living. Instead of thinking "Well, maybe the reason a lot of companies registered to vote is because their profit margin relies on OOXML becoming a standard", they instead jump to the most extreme conclusion they can find.
there were a lot of companies who depended on the nazi party to make a living. and they did.
results were less than desirable for entirety of the rest of the world.
just because someone needs to make a living doesnt justify any of their actions by itself.
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there were a lot of companies who depended on the nazi party to make a living
This kind of comment is why it's so hard to have a serious conversation about this with anybody on Slashdot.
and ? (Score:2)
its because a multitude of stupid morons using the internet have taken to a stupid fad named 'godwinning' and started to debase and trivialize the biggest lesson mankind ever learned ?
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its because a multitude of stupid morons using the internet have taken to a stupid fad named 'godwinning' and started to debase and trivialize the biggest lesson mankind ever learned ?
Comparing companies trying to make money from software licensing to them profitting from the wholesale slaughter of the Jews puts you firmly in the multitude.
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before the slaughter of jews, there was the power grab. and in the power grab there were a lot of companies that aided nazis because they were benefiting from their rule. a lot of big german industry names you know today, shamefully fall within that group. it was their support that provided the nazis with the final leg of their power grab, ending in 1933 reichstag fire.
analogy holds. the behavior mod
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Then I misunderstood your point, and I apologise.
I still disagree, as I don't believe that Microsoft can be objectively compared with the 3rd Reich, but I understand where you are coming from.
If you call Groklaw 'hogwash'... (Score:2)
If you call that 'lack of proof' and 'hogwash' then you might as well change your name to "Microsoft shill #732"
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PJ has a history of misrepresenting various pieces of evidence, especially regarding Microsoft. For example, take PJ's take on OOXML compatibility:
"17MB (around 122,000) of invalidity messages" in the strict test; less in a "transitional" model, meaning one no one on the planet will be using, since the entire point of the BRM was to fix stuff and none of those fixes are yet incorporated into Microsoft Office 2007. And by the time they are, will Microsoft Office 2007 have moved on, so we can continue to play catch up with Microsoft forever and a day?
She failed to mention that the transitional model only had 84 failure messages, all of which relating to the renaming of a naming schema which was fixed in the BRM, hence why the version of Office at that time didn't support it, which I'm led to believe it now does.
PJ is a blogger. She has her own personal agenda and she approaches every story from the same point
what difference ? (Score:2)
they were just corporations like microsoft, normal companies, back in the day.
this is a transition. a company's actions transforms bo
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I can't see how anyone would rely on the dominance of microsoft except microsoft themselves... Surely having a single incumbent supplier is a negative for everyone else.
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I agree - competition is good for everyone.
However, there are still a lot of companies who are heavily invested in Microsoft technology to the point where it's cheaper to pay the fee and vote for OOXML than to think about retraining in other specifications.
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Also, Microsoft Office
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Hahaha.
Seriously. I don't get paid to mod down twitter & friends' inane drivel. It gets modded down because its complete rambling bollocks, on par with the time-cube guy.
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Ibane, Odder and Whiteox are all twitter sockpuppets. The current list is:
Please read the full, but incomplete, description [slashdot.org]
What is a standards body? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe no laws were broken in this process. Why can't the EU courts take this up?
Easy - a "standards body" is not an entity with any legal weight. All it is is a group of people who get together and make recommendations that others may choose to follow. It's purely a political process but not at all a legal one. The only value that a standards body has is that other entities (EG: companies) trust it to determine what technologies to implement and in what fashion.
For example, there there is no legal requirement that any software vendor implement TCP or IP. But TCP and IP are detailed by the ISOC [isoc.org]. If you are a software company, you will implement your TCP stack in accordance with ISOC standards or your implementation will be considered sub-standard.
But if you screw up your implementation, there's little ISOC can do, and nothing legally. They can say you are bad, they can make recommendations against your software. But that's it.
The only weight that a standards body has is that others trust the insight and recommendations made by the standards body. When a standards body can be legitimately accused of shenanigans, that's pretty much it's end.
Goodbye ISO, it's been nice knowing ye...
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Wasn't this one of the areas of highest contention in ISO with regard to OOXML; the fact that since a reference implementation had never been produced, a test suite could also not be produced?
Re: Why can't the EU courts take this up? (Score:2)
Norway is not a member state of the EU.
Some other European countries whose standardization bodies showed pretty biased behaviour in the OOXML issue (like Sweden, Austria,...) are, however.
Many laws were broken (Score:3, Insightful)
First among them treason. Agents of a US corporation have subverted major agencies of sovereign nations. Those government employees of non-US nations have by their participation betrayed their nation, the public trust they held in their positions, and their duty. They've done it to preserve the profitability of a foreign enterprise, and by extension line their own pockets.
It's only a matter of time before this is figured out. Heads will roll - in some cases figuratively and in some cases literally.
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You must be new here. And I don't mean "new on Slashdot". I mean "new in the real world". No heads will roll. Nothing will happen. Life and corruption will go on just like before. Business as usual.
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Beautiful though it is to imagine arrest warrants for treason in several countries - including a lot of banana republics that aren't exactly known for their progressive attitude towards capital punishment - against top-level Microsoft executives, I really don't think it's going to happen.
The only way it can happen is if all these countries which were previously shown to be corruptible suddenly decide that they have some principles after all and aren't afraid of the US bombing the hell out of them when they
Re:Can the EU courts look at this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Normally, it would be illegal for a bunch of companies to get together and collude like they do at a standards body. But anti-trust laws have exceptions to promote the creation of open standards. You would think such an exception would not apply if participants were paid or otherwise compensated/coerced into voting to benefit an existing monopoly.
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I can't believe no laws were broken in this process. Why can't the EU courts take this up?
Most laws are written on the assumption that everyone will play fair most of the time, and only changed after it becomes apparent that under some circumstances this isn't happening in order to prevent anyone else getting any smart ideas. I daresay few people anticipated orchestrated international fraud and corruption.
Furthermore, standards bodies don't have any legal weight. Their sole purpose is to provide a recognised standard which companies can use to say "Your product must meet or exceed the specific
Norway is not a member of the EU (Score:2)
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It's not the ISO entities themselves; it's M$ and their hired cronies.
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Whale meat used to be a cheap alternative to beef when I was a kid. That was the only reason we ate it, as it's damn tough and needs a lot of work to get tender, and needs to be cooked properly to get it to taste nice - you used it when you couldn't afford beef.
Thanks to the way opposition to whaling acted,
well, thats a negative point for you then. (Score:2)
protesters that have pissed off the Norwegian public to the point that it's now a symbolic action to keep it going.
acting with stubbornness, like a middle eastern nation who havent been able to grow out of religious dictatorship yet ...
norway got way lowered in my perception scale of civilized countries just now, with your post.
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My father was a chef; my brothers went into the food industry. We were food people before there were foodies. I have tasted many "delicacies" in my time. Delicacies are, by definition special, but they don't have to be good. Good is quite beside the point. If you want good, go for a loaf of bread fresh out of the oven.
Based on my experience, I have to conclude that to be a delicacy a food has to be either hard to get, or a bit revolting at first, or ideally, both.
Sounds like whale meat's a winner.
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In a way, this does lend credence to how much of a joke ISO is/has become. The fact that people saw what MS was doing and countered in a like-wise fashion does not dismiss the flaw, but only highlights it. OOXML being accepted wasn't the fundamental problem - it was the means by which it passed. This still draws attention to how broken the system is.
lets by the gp argument and suppose these people did come by to block ooxml. Lets assume these people were able to successfully block the passage of OOXML t
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ODF, unlike OOXML, was *not* fast tracked through standards, *and* it is a far more concise standard; OOXML was far too large to reasonably be managed via fast-track IMO, so it shouldn't have been.
It sounds like ODF was pushed through as a standard before it was ready, and Microsoft's reaction was 'well, if you're going to approve one crappy standard for office docs, you should approve ours as well.'
No, MS couldn't really care less, but some of it's clients (large orga