04.01.08

Bye-Bye ‘S’ Oh-Oh!

Posted in Australia, Europe, Formats, ISO, Microsoft, Open XML, Standard at 7:27 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Does ISO teach our children that crime pays?

First off, before proceeding to the latest batch of irregularities, you may wish to know that ISO’s announcement has been leaked prematurely (well, obviously) and unsurprisingly it revealed that ISO had become a lot less relevant, whereas Microsoft can give the illusion that technical qualities — not crime — granted it a standard.

ISO is furthermore an irrelevance in technology standardisation.

It is a sad day for standards as a whole. Moving on to stories which are yet to be discussed, maybe even reverse the decision or put it in great doubt afterwards, here are new bits about the story from Norway.

OpenDocument and OOXMLOne of the things that most of us learn at our mother’s knee is that you shouldn’t rush things. If you do, you’ll make silly mistakes. Mothers also tend to tell their children to play by the rules, but some apparently listen better than others to that advice as well.

The wisdom of the first truism was demonstrated most clearly during the Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva, although its effects had been evident throughout the entire Fast Track process. In the latest evidence of the other truism, the first formal protest has been filed with ISO over a National Body vote. The National Body in question is Norway, and the protest has been filed by…(wait for it)…Norway itself.

How can all of this be true in a country like Norway? Elections this flawed usually only occur in Florida.

For more information about Norway see:

Someone can hopefully use whatever information is available in pursuit of justice. Australia’s process is described as one resulting in “controversy” over at the Australian press.

CONTROVERSY over the proposed Office Open XML standard forced Standards Australia to abstain as international balloting concluded overnight.

As we wrote yesterday, the process had been stalled. Some say it’s because April 1^st is an inappropriate date for such an announcement to be taken seriously. It also makes a dark day for everyone but Microsoft and its partners. The significance of this to Microsoft was explained earlier and here is another take on the subject.

If Microsoft gets its technology approved, it will be a blow to internet connectivity and issues of data ownership. They already refuse to comply with web standards for their Internet Explorer browser and make using their operating systems next to impossible, especially the newest version of Windows, Vista. To assume they’d remain compliant with ISO regulations once approved is ludicrous, this is, after all, Microsoft we are talking about.

The story isn’t over yet. The next post deals with H-P’s latest shilling for Microsoft — a recurrence of unfortunate past events. █

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3 Comments

CoolGuy said,

April 1, 2008 at 8:59 am

ISO has lost all credibility

I – I
S – Sold
O – Out
CoolGuy said,

April 1, 2008 at 8:59 am

ISO has lost all credibility

I – I
S – Sold
O – Out

We need a new logo for this…
Roy Schestowitz said,

April 1, 2008 at 9:08 am

I’ve just spent 5 minutes with the GIMP putting something rough together.