yoonkit - Slashdot User

New York and Minnesota Publish Open Document Studies 62

Posted by Soulskill on Friday May 23, 2008 @02:04AM from the jury-is-in-but-still-out dept.

Multiple readers have written to point out that New York and Minnesota have reached the end of their lengthy deliberations on open document formats. Both reports agree that an open format would be beneficial, but neither were willing to endorse a particular choice. New York's executive summary notes, "The State Legislature should not mandate in statute the use of any specific document creation and preservation technologies, as technologies can easily become outdated." Minnesota's report claims, "The marketplace is still in flux, and it is not certain that a single standard will emerge." In related news, yesterday's announcement from Microsoft that they would provide support for ODF in a future update to Office 2007 has EU antitrust investigators optimistic, but cautious. Microsoft has said that the ISO process was what prevented OOXML from receiving support in the same time frame.

How NASA Will Bring the Phoenix Mars Mission To the Web 60

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday May 22, 2008 @07:55PM from the real-time-feed-of-real-angry-martians dept.

lgmac brings us a story about how NASA will bring information from the Phoenix Mars lander to the internet in the coming days. CIO Magazine speaks with JPL's chief knowledge architect and others about how they'll provide massive amounts of data from the lander to suit the needs of an audience ranging from professors to 8-year-olds. We've been discussing the Phoenix mission for quite a while now. The landing is on schedule for Sunday at roughly 5PM PDT. "'In previous missions, a system like this didn't exist and people were sharing images via external drives,' Bitter says. Some of the images are put up immediately and captioned, or sent to museum audiences, while others are made part of huge mosaic pictures that display the majesty of what the NASA spacecraft encounters, she says. In addition to the sheer volume of data that must be sifted through, challenges included the large, dispersed team, Holm says. 'The content management system has to be easy to use and agnostic,' she says, 'It's all about speed and accuracy of data.' Video on the Web represents one of the biggest changes for modern-day missions for the public, Holm says. 'There's a visceral response we get from people. They feel like they're really there.'"

Submission + - Microsoft standing firm on OOXML ISO vote (fanaticattack.com)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Monday February 11, 2008 @10:29PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "Microsoft has responded via the industry trade goup ECMA to some of the thousands of criticisms of its submission of Office Open XML (OOXML) as an ISO standard. Open standards advocate Russell Ossendryver takes a look at those responses to see if Microsoft has made significant changes in either the substance of OOXML or the manner in which the OOXML specification will be maintained going forward. Ossendryver concludes that Microsoft's position has not siginficantly changed, but only hardened in place in advance of the Ballot Resolution Meeting which is to occur from February 25 through 29 in Geneva, Switzerland. While no one can say for certain whether Microsoft will succeed in having its OOXML specification win the nod from the international community, Ossendryer thinks that Microsoft's firm stance will actually backfire."

Submission + - NY State decision on ODF v OOXML approaching (state.ny.us)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @06:09PM

christian.einfeldt writes: "In August of 2007, the State of New York passed legislation requiring its CIO, Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, to gather information on the advantages and disadvantages of adopting either ODF or OOXML as a document standard, and to report her findings by 15 January 2007. As part of her duties under that legislation, CIO Mayberry-Stewart issued a Request For Public Comment to get feedback on the topic. The deadline for that public comment is 28 December 2007, so there is still time for the Slashdot crowd to be heard."

Comment Long term use of Open Source is better for the Gov (Score 1) 534

by yoonkit on Thursday October 02, 2003 @05:30AM (#7111944) Attached to: CCAGW Misreads Mass. Policy, Open Standards Generally

At first impressions, 'limiting' the choices for govts to choose only open source solutions may sound monopolistic.

However the benefits of going open source is the freedom the govt departments will receive in terms of future use, and this itself is quite a valuable right.

> Would it then fall upon the government to contract somebody to write the code that would bring PostgreSQL up to par with their existing Oracle installs?

If the goverments of the country/world will only use open source, we, taxpayers will now benefit from our contribution$ of our goverments directly.

Imagine the m/billions currently spent on licensing now to be diverted to fund Open Source projects to maintain and increase features for govermment departments.

All software houses contracted by the govt will have to release their source leading to (hopefully) better and more full featured software. Everybody wins!
Govt gets good software for good money, software engineers get paid at market rate, common people get to use the new software for free, and this cycle of benefits repeats itself.

What is the use of giving our country's/state's money to a philanthropist, when we can clearly see where our money is going, and enjoy the direct benefits?

yk.

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