August 2007

Pseudorandom Thoughts

August 29, 2007

We’ve heard a lot of coverage of events in Sweden, Mexico, Australia, the US, etc. But we should remember that there are 150 or so countries eligible to vote. Here is a first-person account of the Microsoft medicine show in Ghana, from Kwasi at Ramblings of an African Geek: So, the Q&A section rolls around, [...]

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The OOXML BRM

August 27, 2007

Microsoft’s Stephen McGibbon updates us on the OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM), now scheduled for February 25-29 in Geneva. He ends his otherwise informative post with a little jab: I hear that IBM is still telling national bodies that a BRM isn’t guaranteed. I am unsure how IBM reached that conclusion but this seems to [...]

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Disenfranchisement

August 26, 2007

The word for today is “disenfranchisement” which according to Webster’s means “to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity.” You sometimes hear it used in connection with the policy in some U.S. states where convicted felons are not allowed to vote. That is legal disenfranchisement. There is also [...]

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Defective by Design

August 24, 2007

If you are a regular reader of this blog, or almost any other blog covering the file format battle, then you have certainly come across comments from Stephane Rodriguez. He brings a unique perspective, knowing more about the legacy binary Excel formats than any sane person I know. So it a treat to have from [...]

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Is it safe?

August 23, 2007

My mind sometimes works in weird associative ways. One thought leads to another, all connected, but only tenuously so. I was having a conversation the other day with my wife, and I was all over the place and it only struck me later that the topics were all connected by their tangential association to a [...]

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The dog that didn’t bark

August 21, 2007

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes. — Silver Blaze by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle A curious blog post from Brian Jones, looking at [...]

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e to the power of hype

August 12, 2007

I had a good chuckle over the new content at Microsoft’s Open XML Community web site. Please take a look. What it lacks in accuracy it makes up for in the use of shiny graphics and stock photos of shiny people, the kind of eye candy that years of shiny PowerPoint presentations have numbed us [...]

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The most recognized tune of all time

August 10, 2007

Simple question. What tune would you say is the most recognized tune? If we limited ourselves to the United States and the present day, the answer might be “Happy Birthday.” What if we included all time and all nations? “Happy Birthday” goes back to only 1893. Some tunes are much older, like “Greensleeves,” (16th century) [...]

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Two Feet, No Feathers

August 2, 2007

We typically use words to communicate, to be understood. That is the common case, but not the only case. In some situations, words are used like metes and bounds to carefully circumscribe a concept by the use of language, in anticipation of another party attempting a breach. This is familiar in legislative and other legal [...]

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An Invitation: ODF Interoperability Workshop