1231203
submission
what about writes:
If this is true, as it seems, it is makeing me angry !
Groaklaw writes
if the takeover were to succeed, that SC 34 would get to maintain ODF as well as Microsoft's competing parody "standard," OOXML. How totally smooth and shark-like. Under the guise of "synchronised maintenance", without which they claim SC 34 can't fulfill its responsibilities, they get control of everything. So utterly Microsoft. Microsoft yearns for interoperability, it seems. More like yearning for ODF's air supply to be ... well, you know. Microsoft never seems to change, does it? Yoo hoo! EU Commission! Are you watching? You can read all the public resolutions of the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 Plenary Meeting, 2008-10-01, held in Jeju, Republic of Korea. It will either make you laugh or throw up. I did both. Sequentially.
685792
submission
mauritzhansen writes:
From http://www.digistan.org/
Steve Pepper (chairman of the Norwegian standards committee responsible for evaluating OOXML) reports that:
"The South African national standards body, SABS, has appealed against the result of the OOXML DIS 29500 ballot in ISO. In a letter sent to the General Secretary of the IEC (co-sponsor with ISO of JTC1), the SABS expresses its "deep concern over the increasing tendency of international organizations to use the JTC 1 process to circumvent the consensus-building process that is the cornerstone to the success and international acceptance of ISO and IEC standards."
Steve writes, "having resigned as Chairman of the Norwegian committee responsible for considering OOXML for exactly this reason, I congratulate South Africa on its willingness to stand up for the principles on which standardization work should be based."
347761
story
ais523 writes
"As reported by Tectonic, South Africa's new Mininimum Interoperability Standards (pdf) for Information Systems in government (MIOS) explain the new rules for which data formats will be used by the government; according to that document, all people working for the South African government must be able to read OpenDocument Format documents by March, and the government aims to use one of its three approved document formats (UTF-8 or ASCII plain text, CSV, or ODF) for all its published documents by the end of 2008. A definition of 'open standard' is also included that appears to rule out OOXML at present (requiring 'multiple implementations', among other things that may also rule it out)."
310005
submission
HansF writes:
Microsoft itself is the surprise winner of
the FFII's "Kayak Prize 2007", offered by the FFII in its OOXML call
for rejection of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) standards proposal.
The software monopolist is honored as "Best Campaigner against OOXML
Standardization".
FFII president Pieter Hintjens explains, "we could never have done
this by ourselves. By pushing so hard to get OOXML endorsed, even to the
point of loading the standards boards in Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland,
Portugal, Italy, and beyond, Microsoft showed to the world how poor
their format is. Good standards just don't need that kind of pressure.
All together, countries made over ten thousands technical comments, a
new world record for an ISO vote. Microsoft made a heroic — and costly — effort to discredit their own proposal, and we're sincerely grateful to
them."
308387
submission
Jasper Bryant-Greene writes:
Although a tzdata release which includes New Zealand's recent DST changes (2007f) has been out for some time, Debian are refusing to push the update from testing into the current stable distribution, codenamed Etch, on the basis that "it's not a security bug". This means that unless New Zealand sysadmins install the package manually, pull the package from testing, or alter the timezone to "GMT-13" manually, all systems running Debian Etch in New Zealand currently have the incorrect time, as DST went into effect this morning. As the last comment in the bug report says, "even Microsoft are not this silly".
306871
submission
biscuitfever11 writes:
ZDNet has a great interview with Michael Meeks, the distinguished Novell engineer, who's currently in the throes of considerable efforts behind open document format and OpenOffice.org. In the interview, Meeks takes Microsoft to task on its alternative format OpenXML. He argues why Microsoft should adopt open document format and why the flexibility of open source software would have avoided the need for that horrid paperclip icon from Microsoft Word, Clippy.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39289664,00.htm
114521
story
TodoInSATX writes
"Oracle has filed a lawsuit against SAP. Among the claims made against SAP are violations of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, Unfair Competition, Intentional and Negligent Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage and Civil Conspiracy. From the actual complaint:
'SAP has stolen thousands of proprietary, copyrighted software products and other confidential materials that Oracle developed to service its own support customers. SAP gained repeated and unauthorized
access, in many cases by use of pretextual customer log-in credentials, to Oracle's proprietary, password-protected customer support website.'"
105950
story
jcatcw writes
"Microsoft Corp. will submit a new photo format to an international standards organization. The format, HD Photo (formerly known as Windows Media Photo), can accommodate lossless and lossy compression. Microsoft claims that adjustments can be made to color balance and exposure settings that won't discard or truncate data that occurs with other bit-map formats."
94548
story
Doc Ruby writes
"After an 8-year-long court battle, Welsh activists have finally been allowed to released a Russian study showing an increased cancer risk linked to eating genetically modified potatoes. While the victory of the Welsh Greenpeace members in the courtroom would seem to vindicate the work of the Russian scientists that did the original research, there are still serious questions to be answered. The trials involved rats being fed several types of potatoes as feed. The rats who were fed GM potatoes suffered much more extensive damage to their organs than with any other type; just the same, serious questions remain about the validity of the findings. The Welsh group wants to use this information to stop the testing of GM crops in the UK, tests currently slated for the spring of this year."
