Posts by Ted Powell

ISO rejects Office Open XML appeal (redux)

The author doesn't get it.

"First, Microsoft does not support Open Document Files (ODF), a rival ISO file format standard used in OpenOffice, among others."

ODF stands for Open Document *Format*. It is not a "rival" standard; it is the *incumbent* standard.

"Second, many in the anti-camp are against OOXML - because they are against Microsoft."

Not the main reason. The author should have consulted somebody knowledgeable, somebody qualified to comment on the subject.

"But considering the efforts made by both sides, it must be very a important game, mustn't it?"

The name of the game is open standards (with multiple deployed implementations) versus vendor lockin (with *no* conforming implementations).

EC probes OOXML standards-setting process

How much better?

"OOXML is exceptionally bad, but ODF isn't much better."

How much better is ODF? One way to calculate that is (number of conforming implementations of ODF) / (number of conforming implementations of OOXML). Let's see now... That works out to about... (half a dozen or so) / (zero).

Remember the old joke about how many MS programmers does it take to change a lightbulb? MS _has_ defined darkness as the new standard!

MS-OOXML is a dead parrot nailed to the ISO/IEC perch.

OOXML approved as international standard?

Astroturfing

There's quite a bit of whining here in these comments, complaining that MS is being unfairly bashed. One of the more recent instances asks: "Well think carefully - why was the ODF first created and rushed through?"

Rushed through??? According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_standardization

"The first official OASIS meeting to discuss the standard was December 16, 2002; OASIS approved OpenDocument as an OASIS standard on May 1, 2005.

"The group decided to build on an earlier version of the OpenOffice.org format, since this was already an XML format with most of the desired properties, and had been in use since 2000 as the program's primary storage format"

I think a lot of people here are simply regurgitating what they've been fed by MS, rather than doing their own research. Here is somewhere to start: http://www.noooxml.org/

Supremes reject Microsoft's Novell request

Supreme Court rejects Microsoft appeal: Novell v. Microsoft can go forward

See articles and comments at

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080317124445613"

and

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/12/those-who-forget-santayana.html

Richard Gere not obscene, rules Indian court

The nation that brought you what?

I do not think that phrase means what you think it means...

sutra -- a collection of rules or aphorisms

kama sutra -- a sutra about enjoying the world of the senses

karma sutra -- presumably a sutra about the sum total of the ethical consequences of a person's good or bad actions

US gives thumbs up to OOXML for ISO standard

We need backward-compatible _applications_, not _formats_!

The idea of a standard format that incorporates a whole raft of older formats is just plain silly.

For years we have had applications, e.g. ApplixWare, AbiWord, OpenOffice.org, that have their own native format but also recognize (automatically or with user direction) various other file formats and deal with them.

In particular, OO.o and its fellow ODF-implementers quite adequately deal with files in various foreign formats, _despite_ the fact that these formats have not been incorporated as part of the ODF standard.

Having multiple formats as part of the same standard might make sense if one wanted to be able to handle documents where each paragraph was in a different format (various versions of MS-Word, WordPerfect, etc), but let's not go there.

If it's true that for most MS file formats and communications protocols the only defining document is the source code of a specific (MS) application, this would go a long way toward explaining why they have come up with the kitchen-sink attempt at a standard that they have. (Speaking of kitchen sinks, how about we have an alternative standard for pipe threads, so plumbers have a choice? Ugh.)

Mobile phone signals prevent sleep, claim boffins

Measurement Units

According to the PDF, the power level used was "an average of 1.4 W/kg" yet neither the article nor any previous comment has questioned this!

I mass just under 100kg, so for me 1.4 W/kg works out to 140 Watts!

Is this for real?