March 2008

DIS 29500, Office Open XML, was submitted for Fast Track review by Ecma as 6,045 page specification. (After the BRM, it is now longer, maybe 7,500 pages or so. We don’t know for sure, since the post-BRM text is not yet available for inspection.) Based on the original 6,045 page length, a 5-month review by [...]

Here begins the lesson on Embrace, Extend and Extinguish (EEE). Classically, this technique is used to perpetuate vendor lock-in by introducing small incompatibilities into a standard interface, in order to prevent effective interoperability, or (shudder) even substitutability of competing products based on that interface. This EEE strategy has worked well so far for Microsoft, with [...]

JTC1 has been improvising its Fast Track processing from the start of the DIS 29500 procedure. The latest “let’s invent a new rule” came at the BRM in Geneva, where a novel approach to tallying meeting votes was surreptitiously foisted on delegations, one which is clearly against the plain text of JTC1 Directives. The question [...]

“There is it some game in this wood?” Pedro Carolino wanted to write and publish an Portuguese/English phrase book. “Another time there was plenty some black beasts and thin game, but the poachers have killed almost all.” But one small problem — Carolino did not know English. “Look a hare who run! let do him [...]