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mauritzhansen sends us a blog post by Steve Pepper, former chairman of the Norwegian standards committee responsible for evaluating OOXML, reporting that the South African national standards body, SABS, has appealed against the result of the OOXML DIS 29500 ballot in ISO. From the blog: "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.' 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."

Andy Updegrove writes "South Africa has filed a formal appeal with ISO and IEC, challenging the Fast Track adoption of OOXML. I have received copies of the letters of appeal, signed by Mr. M Kuscus, Chief Executive Officer of SABS. The letters include both specific grounds under the applicable Directives, as well as "deep concern over the increasing tendency of international organizations to use the JTC 1 processes to circumvent the consensus-building process that is the cornerstone to the success and international acceptance of ISO and IEC standards." The letter concludes, "It is our opinion that the process followed during all stages of the fast track has harmed the reputations of both ISO and IEC and brought the processes enshrined in the Directives into disrepute, and that this negative publicity has, in turn, also harmed the reputations of all member bodies of ISO and the IEC." With the implementation of the ISO version of OOXML in Office now postponed to the indefinite future (and therefore, presumably, its implementation by any other vendor as well), the formal post mortem on the process that hatched this orphan standard now begins."
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080523052458101

Tokimasa notes a CNet blog predicting that OOXML will make the cut. Updegrove agrees, as does the OpenMalasia blog. Reports of irregularities continue to surface, such as this one from Norway — "The meeting: 27 people in the room, 4 of which were administrative staff from Standard Norge. The outcome: Of the 24 members attending, 19 disapproved, 5 approved. The result: The administrative staff decided that Norway wants to approve OOXML as an ISO standard." Groklaw adds reportage of odd processes in Germany and Croatia.

An anonymous reader writes "This blogger recount what just happened in the Norwegian Standards process. The technical committee was steamrolled by pencil pushers. He points to the standards institute's possible selfish motives."
http://blogs.freecode.no/isene/2008/03/30/promoting-the-repair-shop-philosophy/

The Open Malaysia Blog and others are reporting that last minute vote changes may have put OOXML over. Groklaw is covering new scandals in Norway, Germany and Croatia that made this possible. People in Norway have called for an investigation.

Unbelievable. If it was happening in only one country, you might think it was local difficulties. But when it happens in place after place, one can only conclude that Microsoft, although outnumbered in a fair vote, has sufficient clout behind the scenes to shove this format into the world's mouth and hold its mouth closed by force until the world is compelled to swallow.

Here's how they shuffled the deck in Norway. So they put everyone out of the room, and Standards Norway, three people were left in the room, and they usurped the decision and made it their business to decide to approve anyway. [there were only two votes to approve, from Microsoft and a business partner, Statoilhydro, and all the others voted no, 21 votes]

[In Croatia there] was overwhelming rejection, 14 to 3, but one vote short of being able to overturn their September Yes vote. ... There are 35 members, but only 17 showed up to vote. One thought, according to the account, is that some didn't show up, thinking the vote was not supposed to happen, thanks to Microsoft. So Croatia stays, kicking and screaming or wondering how did it happen, in the Approve column, despite clearly wishing not to be there:

[More subtle trickery held sway in Germany] Thus on March 27, 2007 [sic] the voting members of the NIA Steering Committee had to vote not on the acceptance or rejection of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 as a standard, but rather, on whether the process ran according to the rules and without irregularities. By a majority of 7 votes in favour vs 6 votes against, with 7 abstentions, the Steering Committee acknowledged the process as having run fairly and therefore saw no basis to set aside the "Yes" vote of the working committee. If the majority of the Steering Committee had been of the conviction that the process and treatment of the voting over ISO/IEC DIS 29500 had not been in compliance with the rules, then the German vote at ISO/IEC would have been altered to an abstention. [Andy Updengrove adds] Germany would have changed its vote from "approve" to "abstain" on OOXML if people had voted without pressure according to their intentions and their personal judgement, and without arbitrary restrictions on how you could vote. And the count on the second question (there were severe deficiencies of the procedures) of those who cast their vote and where eligible would have been 8 yes, 6 no, 2 abstain. If the DIN representative had not taken sides, it would have been 8:5:3. And finally, if you add back in the vote of the person who did not vote as a reaction to pressure, but who wanted to vote yes, the actual vote on the second question would have been 9:5:3.

These charges are serious enough to reject the vote and clean house. It does not reflect the opinion or will of the world's technical community.

People everywhere turn off the lights and use candles for at least 60 minutes starting at 8 p.m. Saturday. From the Sydney Opera House to Rome's Colosseum to the Sears Tower's famous antennas in Chicago, floodlit icons of civilization go dark for Earth Hour, a worldwide campaign to highlight the threat of climate change.

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/260840552/WORLD_LIGHTS_OUT

The New Yorker is running a long and thoughtful piece by Eric Alterman on the death and life of the American newspaper. It's not news that newspapers are dying, but the acceleration of the process in the last few years is startling: "Independent, publicly traded American newspapers have lost forty-two per cent of their market value in the past three years... The columnist Molly Ivins complained, shortly before her death, that the newspaper companies' solution to their problem was to make 'our product smaller and less helpful and less interesting.'" The article goes on to profile The Huffington Post as exemplar of what is replacing paper and ink. "The Huffington Post's editorial processes are based on what Peretti has named the 'mullet strategy.' ('Business up front, party in the back' is how his trend-spotting site BuzzFeed glosses it.) 'User-generated content is all the rage, but most of it totally sucks,' Peretti says. The mullet strategy invites users to 'argue and vent on the secondary pages, but professional editors keep the front page looking sharp.

An anonymous reader writes "Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take "immediate steps" to reduce exposure to their radiation. The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks."
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/mobile-phones-more-dangerous-than-smoking-or-asbestos-802602.html

Earlier this week, we discussed Adobe's beta launch of Photoshop Express, a free, online version of the popular image editing software. However, as a number of readers pointed out, the terms of use included language which granted Adobe a wide range of rights to any photos that were made available on the site. Now, after receiving a great deal of feedback from potential users, Adobe has stated their intent to rewrite the terms of use, as Ars Technica reports. David Morgenstern of ZDNet also notes the impending change, and briefly discusses the privacy and ownership concerns involved with content you post online.

mikkl666 writes "German Secretary of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble whose fingerprints were recently published claims this "doesn't bother him" (link to Google translation of the German Original). "My fingerprint is no secret, everyone can have it", says the politician. "There's nothing I have to fear." Although the ministry tries to play it cool, they are still considering legal action, but they first want to check whether the fingerprint is real in the first place. It is also pointed out that it was possible to steal someone's fingerprint in the past, nevertheless the officials claim that the use of biometrics still makes passports more secure. The discussion is likely to be fired even more as the Chaos Computer Club also plans to obtain and publish a fingerprint of German Chancellor Angela Merkel."

Every now and then something happens that reveals the full contempt non free software owners have for their customers. In this case, Creative has gone the distance to make sure their drivers won't work in the future even if others can fix them. The letter they wrote to a man who did this is worth preserving as a warning. They continued the arrogant abuse when partially reversing themselves.

Creative may be a victim here but it's a situation they got themselves into. Microsoft eliminated Creative's sound architecture from Vista chasing DRM snake oil and further dominance of the industry. This has made problems for others too and Microsoft is the biggest jerk of all for intentionally ending all XP driver support right before Vista launched. Just the same, some would say Creative has always been more about marketing than tech. That would not be surprising because monopolies often reward flunkies and eliminate real competence. Now for the more outrageous parts of the letter:

We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards. In principle we don't have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.

... [more threats]

Phil O'Shaughnessy
VP Corporate Communications
Creative Labs Inc.

I would reproduce the whole letter but the kind of people who would write such a stupid thing would probably turn around and claim copyright on it to prevent criticism. As it is, it's already hard to tell what really happened because they eliminated the evidence. They now claim to have restored that evidence but can we trust them given all of their other practices?

Some things are clear. No one was profiting from sharing driver binaries other than to have their sound cards work. If they were, they would not have been doing things through the Creative forums. The other thing that's clear is that Creative intentionally cripples its hardware and considers this a business decision. This is the real purpose of non free software to extract money from divided and helpless users.

Free software might be better for Creative. It's possible Creative was strong armed by M$ or some other company that has licensed something to them. If this is the case, they should abandon the non free software that forces them to abuse their customers. It should not be hard for creative to improve existing free software drivers and use them instead. If they don't it's because they believe in a restricted future and should be shunned the way David did:

The Register asked him if he would accept a job if offered by Creative. "No."

Right now, that's solid reasoning.

Sunday, Slashdot reported a public university's ban of SP1. This week, the reports like this one are rolling in:

I'm losing what little hair I have left...

I'm getting calls. Lots of calls. From friends and colleagues who have downloaded and tried to installed Vista Service Pack 1 this week. ...[M$] had months to iron out any problems, yet it singularly failed to do so. Microsoft claims to be offering free support to anyone having difficulty installing the update, but my friends and colleagues report telephone wait times of 30 minutes or more before giving up.

If there is a Registry inconsistency it won't install. But wasn't Vista touted as automatically working around Registry problems when it was first released? ... SP1 also has severe problems when exiting sleep mode. Most users (including myself) have to reboot their laptops, I've found. ... There are also severe issues with the KB935509 update, which is a pre-requisite for SP1 and which can send PCs into an endless reboot cycle if the user has had the audacity to run multiple operating systems (Linux/Vista, XP/Vista etc.).

Is this man's experience typical? Is SP1 really a bomb?

The part about bombing multiboot systems is particular cause for worry. How much more obvious can a Linux sabotage be? Beware!

Human rights intrude on an otherwise pleasant distraction.

Protestors for Tibet intruded on the lighting of the Olympic Torch. China and Greece failed to stop them completely at the ceremony, but Chinese television suppressed all mention of what occurred.

Isn't it sad to see the "idealistic" Olympic officials who believe (or at least say) that sport should be kept pure of distractions such as human rights? They reminds me of the "open source" supporters that think technology should be kept pure of distractions such as human rights.

As our rights in the US fade, the point is all too painfully made. It is no coincidence that Microsoft is also poised to corrupt OSI - they will steal the next batch of software they way they stole the first one and pretend that "Openess" has won the day, but the definition of what Open is will be drastically changed and then police state will really kick into high gear.

A free society demands free software and vice versa, so the conversation must always be about freedom. If we do not defend our rights on our computers, we lose our privacy, our press, truth in news and all of the rest of our freedoms fall into a pool of ignorance and helplessness from there. Knowledge, ridicule and love are effective counters to ignorance, hysteria and paranoia.

The Atlantic has an interesting discussion of the Great Firewall of China and how effective it is despite it's holes. The author has fascinating and timely inside technical information but the effective elements are not technical. The system is intentionally unpredictable so people can never be sure where the problem is. No wonder they love Windows. More importantly, no good comes out of chasing the truth so people censor themselves out of fear and sense of futility.

What the government cares about is making the quest for information just enough of a nuisance that people generally won't bother. ... All around them is more information about China and things Chinese than they could possibly take in. ... When this much is available inside the Great Firewall, why go to the expense and bother, or incur the possible risk, of trying to look outside?

"Domestic censorship is the real issue, and it is about social control, human surveillance, peer pressure, and self-censorship," Xiao Qiang of Berkeley says. Last fall, a team of computer scientists from the University of California at Davis and the University of New Mexico published an exhaustive technical analysis of the GFW's operation and of the ways it could be foiled. But they stressed a nontechnical factor: "The presence of censorship, even if easy to evade, promotes self-censorship."

Rebecca MacKinnon [a former Beijing correspondent for CNN] says ... "the controls mean that whole topics inconvenient for the regime simply don't exist in public discussion." Most Chinese people remain wholly unaware of internationally noticed issues like, for instance, the controversy over the Three Gorges Dam.

The usual excuses for doing business in China are swatted away.

the vision of democracy-through-communications-technology is so convincing to so many Americans. ... let me emphasize how unconvincing this vision is to most people who deal with Chinas system of extensive, if imperfect, Internet controls.

Blogger Richard Stallman notes that the same social dynamics apply here too.

The same is true of the US corporate media: it is not very hard to find out the things they don't say, but most Americans don't bother, and the result is that Bush repeatedly gets away with lies.

Other issues of great importance to Americans that are nearly impossible to get good information on are the structure and regulation of health insurance, lending, telecommunications, agriculture and the very food on their table. If it was really a big deal, CNN and other broadcasters would cover it ... right? Not if it offends broadcast owners and advertisers. At the same time, alternate sources of information, such as Wikipedia, are constantly maligned.

At least one university liberal enough to accept the deeply flawed and mostly rejected Vista OS is recommending faculty and students stay away from SP1. "University of Pennsylvania tech staffers are advising faculty and students not to upgrade their computers to the new service pack for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. The school's Information Systems & Computing department said it will support Vista SP1 on new systems where it's pre-installed, but added that it 'strongly recommends that all other users adopt a "wait and see" attitude,' according to a newly published department bulletin." And CIO magazine doesn't quite go so far as to call on Microsoft to throw away Vista, but it does ask its readers to weigh in on that topic.