Say, you get the following sequences:
0, 1010, 1011, 1101000, …, 1101011,
11011000, …., 11011111, 11101000000, …, 11101001111
Guessing these should be self delimiting sequences, you can work out the code (prepend a binary of the length in bits, eg, 100 = 4, and prepend that with a 1 for every bit in the length code followed by a 0, eg, 11110).

Having established this code, start defining a universal turing machine using code -> output relations. Eg, “A” “B” is a turing machine that on input A generates B and halts. Then, work up to more complex machines, enumerate symbols and state change tables.

If the other side know their mathematics and assumes you want to communicate too, this should eventually work.

Winter

Certainly, they completed their version faster. All they really needed to do was to transcribe some internal Excel documentation. That isn’t much of a standardization activiity. The ODF TC however, sat down and looked at the wide range of spreadsheets in use today, commercial and open source, involved multiple vendors, brought in experts (a professor of statistics, for example) identified what was in common, what the conventions where, categorized the functions by frequency of use, etc., and wrote up a much more detailed specification.

When you compare the two, you’ll see the difference. For example the Ecma version doesn’t even state whether the SIN() and COS() functions take their arguments in degrees or radians. You could think that this is something important to know and would have been noticed in even a cursory review by Ecma.

Like when they were making all the noise about ODF spreadsheets not being portable because formulae weren’t specified, when their own formats didn’t either.

With the patent saber-rattling about Linux, it’s interesting to look at how many patent lawsuits have been brought against MS and how often they’ve settled, and then looking at how many patent lawsuits have been bought against the OSS products they claim infringe upon theirs.

I’ve often found when MS start bad-mouthing another company/group, they’re normally /more/ guilty of the thing they’re screaming about than the person they’re accusing.

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-11857/microsoft-puppets-spamming-ansi

The above link, clickable

how about all the duplicate letters at incitis, with more and more every day (tenfold duplicate!)

” Dear Lisa Rajchel,

We are writing to voice our strong support for the approval of Ecma’s Office Open XML File Formats as an ISO/IEC International Standard. We strongly urge the American National Standards Institute to communicate its support for the ISO/IEC ratification of this standard to the JTC1 Secretariat.
Open XML represents an important advance in document standards that offers benefits to technology users, the technology industry, consumers, businesses and governments worldwide. The standard received a strong endorsement when it was approved by Ecma in December 2006 and submitted to JTC1 for fast-track approval.

Open XML will enable backward compatibility with billions of archived documents, and the extensive standard accommodates a wide range of languages and cultures, as well as assistive technologies that help people with disabilities. Governments and businesses will both benefit from the standard itself, as well as from the range of new products that implement the standard. Furthermore, Open XML in no way contradicts any other international document standard.

Thank you for your support for Open XML. If you have any questions, please contact ____ ____ “

http://boycottnovell.com/2007/06/19/iso-spam-ooxml/
http://www.incits.org/DIS29500/DIS29500.htm
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-11857/microsoft-puppets-spamming-ansi

I’ve seen those form letters. We’re getting 3 or 4 a day in INCITS, but I’ve heard that they are arriving in other countries as well.

Oh, there’s also been a mention that ANSI is getting form letters, see the Groklaw news picks, it’s somewhere on the sidebar. I liked the “although this is a form letter” type bit on one of them :-)