As background you may wish to consider the following video, which UNC recently made available (a couple of months ago to be precise). At the beginning of this talk, Bob Sutor explains why Microsoft feels threatened by Web technologies and standards. Think about Silverlight, OOXML and a family of server-side technologies Microsoft wants replaced by something it controls.
While we're presenting the views of one IBM employee, it might as well be added that Microsoft's DOS attack with heaps of pointless pages received a pushback from China, the world's largest population. From the blog of another IBMer:
For another demonstration of pure disingenuousness let’s look at Microsoft/Ecma’s response to China’s comment.
China filed along with their No vote in September a comment explaining that “we found it is a very complex technology […] We think the fast-track procedure is not suitable for this DIS” and ending with “more time is necessary and essential to conduct a credible and responsible evaluation.“
Seems reasonable enough and it’s fair to say that this sentiment is shared by many.
Georgia, Syrian Arab Republic, Cyprus, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Turkey, and Russia
"In the past 18 months," Berkholz writes, "I’ve lost 75 pounds and gone from completely sedentary to fit, while minimizing the effort to do so (but needing a whole lot of persistence and grit)."
