It seems that the countries voting on OOXML in ISO were against the fast-track approval of this standard (official ISO announcement). It means, that Microsoft will have to take care of hundreds of problems found in the specification and the final decision is postponed at least until February 2008.
Blog, Internet, Technology
» OOXML denied by ISO!
2007/09/04 18:41 | computers/microsoft/
» Poland votes yes on OOXML
The inevitable happened. The Polish Committee for Standardization (PKN) will most likely agree to OOXML fast-track approval within ISO, as the Technical Committee 182 voted so on August 30th. The votes were: 17 approval with comments, 3 abstain.
2007/09/01 13:22 | computers/microsoft/
» Microsoft bought Swedish votes for OOXML case
Another day, another shocking news related to the heated debate about OOXML format. It seems that Microsoft bought votes in the Swedish standards organisation (SIS) thus winning the support of Sweden in ISO. During earlier meetings it seemed that most of the OOXML working group where against the proposed standard. However, on the day of the voting, August 27th, about twenty representatives of various companies – Microsoft partners – showed up in the room and paid the membership fee (2500 dollars). People opposing OOXML were given an option to leave without paying the fee if they wanted. In protest against buying the votes they have left, including IBM representatives who called the event a farce.
2007/08/28 22:17 | computers/microsoft/
» OOXML protest brings a result
Yesterday the Polish Committee for Standardization announced, that the Technical Committee 182 charged with decision on OOXML standardisation will be supplemented with two representatives of the Free and Open Source Software Foundation (FWiOO). The decision must have been influenced by a large number of important mistakes in the format specification and also the open consultation made by PKN, which I also participated in with my humble letter.
2007/08/26 00:34 | computers/microsoft/
» My opinion on OOXML standardisation
As some of you might know, Microsoft is trying hard to push its Office Open XML (OOXML) format. It was created as a competitor to the existing, ISO-standardised ODF format (used, among others, in OpenOffice.org). The company is also lobbying for ISO approval of OOXML, which is a decision by all ISO member organisations in many countries. The Polish Committee for Standardization (PKN) passed the OOXML application to the Technical Committee 182. It was almost approved automatically, but thanks to a pretty big outcry on the Polish web, they accepted to postpone the decision and allow public comments submission. In spite of numerous technical mistakes and – contrary to the name – partially closed specification, OOXML seems to have a great support in the standardisation bodies, most likely thanks to the Microsoft's campaign. I strongly advise you to read more about the issue and contact your local standardisation organisation if you feel the proposed standard is not ready for approval yet. For Polish speakers, there's more in the Polish version of this post.
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2007/08/21 20:20 | computers/microsoft/
» Virus attack
For almost a year now one of the servers I take care of is under a constant attack by viruses. To be exact – a series of mutations of Bagle worm. I thought that the basic mechanism looks like this: a new virus shows up, quickly spreads out, people install fixes and after a couple of weeks the virus no longer exists in the wild. The truth is, that the epidemic doesn't subside that quickly and many users have no idea that their computers were infected all year long.
2007/06/06 08:20 | computers/microsoft/
» Speech recognition - Vista vs. Perl
This is a great movie showing how Perl programming can now be done with the new Windows Vista speech recognition system. This guy should be particularily interested, cause he's using both Perl and Windows :-)
2007/02/28 22:14 | computers/microsoft/
» MSN Soapbox - does it make sense?
Recently Microsoft came up with a beta version (obviously!) of MSN Soapbox, a product competing with video sharing services like YouTube and Google Video. In test phase, full access is limited to a group of beta-testers only and anonymous users are only shown a welcome page with a random video.
2006/11/13 05:02 | computers/microsoft/
» Microsoft: we share your pain
A nice skit from Microsoft labs about sharing pain with the users of their buggy applications.
2006/10/29 19:03 | computers/microsoft/
