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

Microsoft GitHub Exposé — In the Alex Graveley Case, His Lawyer, Rick Cofer, Appears to Have Bribed the DA to Keep Graveley (and Others) Out of Prison
Is this how one gets out of prison? Hire the person who bribes the DA?
 
Techrights Extends Wishes of Good Health to Richard M. Stallman
Richard Stallman has cancer
endsoftwarepatents.org Still Going, Some Good News From Canada
a blow to software patents in Canada
The Debian Project Leader said the main thing Debian lacked was more contributors
The Debian Project Leader said the main thing Debian lacked was more contributors
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 28, 2023
IRC logs for Thursday, September 28, 2023
Links 28/09/2023: Openwashing and Patent Spam as 'News'
Links for the day
Links 28/09/2023: Preparing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.9 and 9.3 Beta
Links for the day
We Need to Liberate the Client Side and Userspace Too
Lots of work remains to be done
Recent IRC Logs (Since Site Upgrade)
better late than never
Techrights Videos Will be Back Soon
We want do publish video without any of the underlying complexity and this means changing some code
Microsoft is Faking Its Financial Performance, Buying Companies Helps Perpetuate the Big Lies (or Pass the Debt Around)
Our guess is that Microsoft will keep pretending to be huge, even as the market share of Windows (and other things) continues to decrease
Techrights Will Tell the Story (Until Next Year!) of How Since 2022 It Has Been Under a Coordinated Attack by a Horde of Vandals and Nutcases
People like these belong in handcuffs and behind bars (sometimes they are) and our readers still deserve to know the full story. It's a cautionary tale for other groups and sites
Why It Became Essential to Split GNU/Linux Stories from the Rest
These sites aren't babies anymore. In terms of age, they're already adults.
Losses and Gains in an Age of Oligarchy - A Techrights Perspective
If you don't even try to fix something, there's not even a chance it'll get fixed
Google (and the Likes Of It) Will Cause Catastrophic Information Loss Rather Than Organise the World's Information
Informational and cultural losses due to technological plunder
Links 28/09/2023: GNOME 45 Release Party, 'Smart' Homes Orphaned
Links for the day
Security Leftovers
Xen, breaches, and more
GNOME Console Won’t Support Color Palettes or Profiles; Will Support Esperanto
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Let's Hope GNU Makes it to 100
Can GNU still be in active use in 2083? Maybe.
GNU is 40, Linux is Just 32
Today it's exactly 40 years since Richard Stallman sent a message regarding GNU
GNU/Linux and Free Software News Mostly in Tux Machines Now
We've split the coverage
Links 27/09/2023: GNOME Raves and Firefox 118
Links for the day
Links 27/09/2023: 3G Phase-Out, Monopolies, and Exit of Rupert Murdoch
Links for the day
IBM Took a Man’s Voice, Pitting Him Against His Own Work, While Companies Profit from Low-Effort Garbage Generated by Bots and “Self-Service”
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer