Bonum Certa Men Certa

OOXML Poison: Melvin Calimag Received Redmond's Kool-Aid Too

""If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good."

--Bill Gates



Yesterday we mentioned an article written by a man who had received a free trip and special treatment at Redmond, where the spinmeisters kept busy with their brainwash sessions. It would be pointless to repeat yesterday's story and include the same pointers (free gifts in exchange for good publicity), but here is another victim/collaborator of this Brainwash Machine.

Why doesn't Microsoft just hand over $1500 for a trip, restaurants, hotels and the like, possibly then saying to journalists "write something nice" (like H-P was caught saying to journalists last year)?

Anyway, here is second incident which is spotted.

We landed directly at the Seattle-Tacoma airport to attend a press briefing by software giant Microsoft, in the nearby cities of Kirkland and Redmond.

Why am I telling you this? Well, I'd like to think that Microsoft is going out of its way to reach out to technology journalists from the far corners of the world, to argue its case in what has become a very contentious issue in the IT industry.

[...]

The Philippines is one of the countries that voted "no", which partly explains why we were invited to attend the press briefing.


By the end of the article, you can clearly see the effect of the brainwash. Too. Much. Kool-Aid. You will find more information and pointers about OOXML in the Philippines here (mind the cross-references too). We have known about this media blitz for quite some time. Yesterday, even Andy Updegrove expressed his concerns. At the very top of a a prominent page he added a sticky which states:

What happened at the OOXML Press Briefing? Last week, Microsoft flew press representatives in to Redmond from around the world (and particularly from those countries, like Australia and the Phillipines) that had voted against OOXML in last summer's ISO/IEC JTC1 Fast Track vote, for a press briefing. At the briefing, they heard Microsoft representatives such as Tom Robertson and Jean Paoli make the pitch for OOXML, as well as Burton Group research director Peter O'Kelly. The articles that those journalists wrote are beginning to pop up, and excerpts from four appear below. The first notes that Microsoft has also been holding four conference calls a week for National Body representatives, while the last notes that journalists from Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.S. were in attendance.

Hasan at Open Malaysia blogs about the latest paper (PDF-formatted) from the ODF Alliance, which does not invite journalists over for a week of 'chats'.

As seen from the ODF Alliance document just released called "Ecma's Proposed Disposition of Comments on OOXML: How we got here; What is missing; Why you should vote No," there are at least 8 reasons why Ecma's proposed "dispositions" or handling of the NB comments are not satisfactory:

A. What is Missing? Time. Legitimate defects acknowledged by Ecma, why rush?

B. What is Missing? Harmonization. Why not move toward one standard?

[...]


At the time of writing, the article from Australia which we mentioned yesterday (published by a journalist that went to Redmond) has found its way into ZDNet and CNET also. This means that people outside Australia will get exposed to the same type of brainwash, which propagated from the spinmeisters at Redmond. It's just the nature of the funnel. Rinse and repeat.

Novell blinded by money
Image from Wikimedia

Recent Techrights' Posts

KillerStartups.com is an LLM Spam Site That Sometimes Covers 'Linux' (Spams the Term)
It only serves to distract from real articles
Did Microsoft 'Buy' Red Hat Without Paying for It? Does It Tell Canonical What to Do Now?
This is what Linus Torvalds once dubbed a "dick-sucking" competition or contest (alluding to Red Hat's promotion of UEFI 'secure boot')
 
Links 21/11/2024: TikTok Fighting Bans, Bluesky Failing Users
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: SpaceX Repeatedly Failing (Taxpayers Fund Failure), Russian Disinformation Spreading
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Earned Two More Honorary Doctorates Last Month
Two more doctorate degrees
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 20, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: Game Recommendations, Schizo Language
Links for the day
Growing Older and Signs of the Site's Maturity
The EPO material remains our top priority
Links 20/11/2024: Politics, Toolkits, and Gemini Journals
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: 'The Open Source Definition' and Further Escalations in Ukraine/Russia Battles
Links for the day
[Meme] Many Old Gemini Capsules Go Offline, But So Do Entire Web Sites
Problems cannot be addressed and resolved if merely talking about these problems isn't allowed
Links 20/11/2024: Standing Desks, Broken Cables, and Journalists Attacked Some More
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: Debt Issues and Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban
Links for the day
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar), Magna Carta and Debian Freedoms: RIP
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar) & Debian: from Frans Pop to Euthanasia
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
This Article About "AI-Powered" is Itself LLM-Generated Junk
Trying to meet quotas by making fake 'articles' that are - in effect - based on plagiarism?
Recognizing invalid legal judgments: rogue Debianists sought to deceive one of Europe's most neglected regions, Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Google-funded group distributed invalid Swiss judgment to deceive Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: BeagleBone Black and Suicide Rates in Switzerland
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 19, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Links 19/11/2024: War on Cables?
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Private Journals Online and Spirituality
Links for the day
Drew's Development Mailing Lists and Patches to 'Refine' His Attack Pieces Against the FSF's Founder
Way to bury oneself in one's own grave...
The Free Software Foundation is Looking to Raise Nearly Half a Million Dollars by Year's End
And it really needs the money, unlike the EFF which sits on a humongous pile of oligarchs' and GAFAM cash
What IBMers Say About IBM Causing IBMers to Resign (by Making Life Hard/Impossible) and Why Red Hat Was a Waste of Money to Buy
partnering with GAFAM
In Some Countries, Desktop/Laptop Usage Has Fallen to the Point Where Microsoft and Windows (and Intel) Barely Matter Anymore
Microsoft is the next Intel basically
[Meme] The Web Wasn't Always Proprietary Computer Programs Disguised as 'Web Pages'
The Web is getting worse each year
Re-de-centralisation Should Be Our Goal
Put the users in charge, not governments and corporations in charge of users
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Rain Music, ClockworkPi DevTerm, and More
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 18, 2024