Bonum Certa Men Certa

Embargo, Ignore Microsoft-Controlled ISO

Killed again by Microsoft's well-documented corruption

There is not much to add to the news. Andy Updegrove has already offered this fairly detailed analysis.

ISO TMB Recommends Rejection of OOXML Appeals



[...]

A final source of frustration is that despite the fact that one basis for appeal under the Directives is a negative impact to the reputation of ISO/IEC, the document makes almost no response at all to the comments made in this regard. Whether one concludes that ISO and IEC have justifiably or unjustifiably suffered such an impact, I think that it would be hard to conclude that a substantial hit has not been taken.

In my view, ISO/IEC would be wise to acknowledge that fact, and take more intelligent actions to address it. Acting in the open (i.e., publicly releasing documents like this) and acknowledging that those that must live with the results of what ISO/IEC decides are entitled to better answers than they have received to date would be a great place to start.

[...]

At the end of the day, even winning an appeal is cold comfort after the time has been wasted by countless peole around the world, the marketplace has been confused, and the reputation has been tarnished.


Groklaw has posted information as well.

In short, it's all been a farce, in keeping with the rest of the OOXML processing. ISO thinks there not a thing wrong with the job they did on OOXML, they do not countenance criticism, and if we don't like it, we can lump it. Or, ISO has decided to go down with the ship. Anyway, stay tuned. It ain't over 'til it's over.


"ISO should hang their heads in shame for allowing it to happen."

--Tim Bray



Earlier on I received the following interesting response from Rex Ballard. ISO has been irrelevant for quite some time in fact -- only a hero in its own mind and the perception it bought itself.




Message-ID: <2ef3a606-bcc3-4c0d-b82d-371a7a4435bc@b1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com> From: Rex Ballard <rex.ballard@gmail.com> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: Leaked ISO Document Reveals Crooked ISO Amid MS OOXML Corruptions Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 00:19:06 -0700 (PDT)

[...]

This wouldn't be the first time that the ISO was bought and sold like a $3 hooker. Dig into the OSI specifications, especially the versions circulating in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and you can easily see the work of shills working for IBM, DEC, HP (Apollo), AT&T, IT&T, Xerox, and several X.25 switch vendors.

The result was a specification that spanned about 65,000 pages, cost about $150,000 per reader, and was impossible to implement. Furthermore, the extensions, subsets, supersets, and options pretty much assured that there would be no interoperability.

As a result, the ARPA/NSF RFC standards, which were freely published, and were required to be so clear and complete that each RFC could be implemented by an undergraduate college student, resulted in a set of standards that became what we now know as the Internet. It was based on the ARPA Internet, but included the directory services, LDAP, security, encryption, and other key standards required to handle a huge network that eventually grew to over 2 billion users.

The IETF did adopt some good ideas from OSI, including LDAP, tunneling, and Mime types, as well as improvements in e-mail routing, but even then, the specifications were so clear and concise, that they could be implemented by undergraduates, eliminating the threat of patents that would "lock up" the internet, allowing one party to work against the best interests of the whole community.

One of the key factors in the success of the Internet, was the availability of Open Source implementations of the protocols and drivers. BSD Sockets, Lynx, Viola, Mosaic, Mozilla, and Firefox, for example, made it possible to implement working solutions we now know as "The Web" and deploy it to millions of Windows 3.1 machines, as well as Linux workstations, back when Bill Gates and Microsoft were saying that the Internet would never be a viable network. For almost 2 years, Gates and Windows were under direct threat, because Linux, Java, and low priced Unix Workstation options, as well as Warp had already implemented robust internet support, much of which didn't make it into Windows until Windows XP (and much of which is still missing in Windows).

Even when the Internet did become established, Microsoft attempted to pervert and corrupt these standards. They tried to corrupt HTML by introducing VBScript and ActiveX controls. The result was a plethora of viruses, worms, and malware that often adversely affected corporate networks for weeks, even months, because the Windows PCs spread them so quickly using these corrupted standards.

Today, Microsoft is trying to do the same thing with OpenXML, embedding "oleObjectx.bin" objects into zipped documents, making it a trivial matter for hackers to embed malware in OpenXML documents and spread them to carefully qualified targets. These documents, when read, or even previewed, to create, open, read, write, execute, and/or delete any file on the hard drive, to modify the registry, and to send or receive content from almost anywhere on the internet that can be accessed by the user, including VPNs, protected networks, and secured corporate networks.

The user must trust that proprietary code, known only by a hand-full of people at Microsoft, hasn't opened up other back-doors that are also unknown. Even the so-called "trusted" applications and OLE objects can't really be trusted, but they will get circulated to Banks, insurance companies, politicians, corporate executives, and other key leaders, giving Microsoft executives direct access to information that even the FBI, NSA, and DHS can't get, with the ability to publish what it finds, and trigger scandals, investigations, and even corporate collapse of any who oppose the interests of Microsoft.

Meanwhile, Open Document format, which is much more robustly documented, and much more secure, has been gaining the support of major players including numerous government agencies, companies like IBM, and key players all over the world.

Ironically, the opinion has come full circle. In 1994, people assumed that only high-priced software like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint could be trusted, and that Open Source software couldn't be trusted. Today, most network administrators are for more concerned about the consequences of proprietary shareware, proprietary 3rd party software, and even Microsoft software, because they have discovered that these are the vehicles used for spreading all sorts of Malware,

Meanwhile Open Source, with it's public peer review process, has gained endorsements from the NSA, the FBI, MI5, and numerous other police, military, and intelligence organizations, many of which have even expressed that OSS and Linux is "too secure", making court ordered wire-tapping into PCs more difficult, sometimes even impossible.




It sums it all up really.

I sold out

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Gemini Migration and Backup Capsule (Archive)
At the end we'll end up with something a lot better than before and latency should be massively reduced
Links 01/10/2023: Science, Education, and pro-Russia Slovakia Leadership
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 01, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, October 01, 2023
Links 01/10/2023: Climate, Patents, Programming, and More
Links for the day
Apple and Microsoft Problems
half a dozen links
Malware in the Ubuntu Snap Store, Thanks to Canonical Bloatware Mindset
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Gemini Rising
There are 3523 capsules
Richard Stallman Gave a Talk Yesterday, Will Give Another Talk Today, and Will Give Two More Talks in Germany Later This Week
Those cover at least 2 different topics
Beware the Microsoft Sharks
We won't forgive and forget
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, September 30, 2023
IRC logs for Saturday, September 30, 2023
Don't be Afraid of the Command Line, It Might Even be a Friend
There's a tendency to think that only graphical interfaces were made to simplify usage, and any declarative interface is by design raw, inherently unfit for usage
One Positive Note About GNU/Linux Coverage in 2023 (Less Microsoft)
GNU/Linux users do not want this, with very rare exceptions
Snaps Were Never Good at Security, But the Media Coverage is Just Appalling
The media should focus on culling Windows, not making a huge fuss over minor things wrongly attributed to "Linux"
Better Footage of Richard Stallman's Talk Last Week: “Freedom in computing, forty years after starting to really protect it”
Richard Stallman speaks about the cancer situation early in his speech
Links 30/09/2023: A Government Shutdown and More Blizzard Layoffs
Links for the day
Links 30/09/2023: Bing Almost Offloaded Due to Failure/Losses, Nvidia Raided
Links for the day
A Lot of Technological 'Progress' Has Been Nothing But Buzzwords
Free software does not try to excite people people over nothing
Community is the Lifeblood of Freedom in the GNU/Linux World
Removing or undoing the "cancerd" (systemd) is feasible but increasingly difficult
Proprietary Software: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
Proprietary software has an entirely different mindset, revolving around business models rather than science
Web Hostnames Down to Lowest Number in More Than 7 Years!
the number of hostnames is falling rapidly (they hide this by choosing logarithmic scale)
Over at Tux Machines...
2 days' worth
Richard Stallman Says He Will Probably Live Many More Years
"Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphona, so he will probably live many more years nonetheless. But he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19."
Quitting 'Clown Computing' and GAFAM is Only the Start
The Web and the Net at large became far too centralised
Stop Begging Companies That Don't Value Your Freedom to Stop Pushing You Around
That's not freedom
They Say Free Software is Like Communism When They, the Proprietary Software Giants, Constantly Pursue Government Bailouts (Subsidies From Taxpayers)
At the moment Ukraine is at most risk due to its dependence on Microsoft (inside its infrastructure)
Social Control Media Has No Future, It Was Always Doomed to Fail (Also Promoted Based on Lies)
Recent events, including developments at Twitter, meant that they lost a lot of their audience and then, in turn, sponsors/advertisers
The forbidden topics
There are forbidden topics in the hacker community
They're Been Trying to 'Kill' Richard Stallman for Years (by Mentally Tormenting Him)
Malicious tongue wanted to do him what had been done to Julian Assange
We Temporarily Have Two Gemini Capsules
They're both authentic and secure, but they're not the same
Consumerism is Lying and Revisionism
We need to reject these liars and charlatans
Links 30/09/2023: Open VFS Framework, CrossOver 23.5, Dianne Feinstein Dies
Links for the day
Security Leftovers
GNU/Linux, Microsoft, and more
Microsoft Down on the World Wide Web, Shows Survey
down by a lot in this category
IRC Proceedings: Friday, September 29, 2023
IRC logs for Friday, September 29, 2023
A Society That Fails Journalists Does Not Deserve Journalism
It's probably too later to save Julian Assange as a working publisher (he might never recover from the mental torture), but as a person and a father we can wish and work towards his release
Almost Nothing To Go With Your Morning's Cup Of Coffee
Newspaper? What newspaper?