At the Setting of the Sun

January 21, 2010

As my readers have no doubt heard by now, today the EC cleared Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems.  This will undoubtedly have a significant impact on all Sun employees,  many of whom I have worked with toward common purposes, on standards or open source projects, and whom I am [...]

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The Duel: A curious mathematical puzzle

January 20, 2010

Captain Galaxy and Commander Glarcon are locked in mortal combat.   Each mans a battle tank armed with N photonic missiles which move at the speed of light.   They move toward each other at constant velocity=v on a 1-dimensional track, unable to stop or reverse direction.  Assume v << c.  The probability of scoring a [...]

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Top 10 Seed and Plant Catalogs for New England

January 14, 2010

The ground is blanketed in snow, and will remain so for most of the next 3 months. The temperature ranges from cold to frigid. It is hard to think of spring, but now is the time when the garden planning begins, when I start making lists, drawing plot diagrams, calculating planting times, and [...]

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Top 10 Blog Posts of 2009

January 1, 2010

The 2009 wall calendar is now tossed in recycling bin, and I look to 2010 with renewed energy and dedication.  But I did want to take once last parting look at 2009, from the perspective of this blog’s server logs.
Top Blog Posts

Update on ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability (May 2009)
ODF Lies and Whispers (June 2009)
A Game of [...]

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U.S. Postage Stamps of 1959: A View from 50 Years Later

December 30, 2009

What We Commemorate
Commemorative stamps memorialize recently-deceased presidents, mark important anniversaries, acknowledge national institutions, boast of engineering, scientific and artistic achievements and celebrate victory in war and in peace.  Historically, U.S. stamps have portrayed the country as we like to imagine it is, or was.
If history is written by the victors, then that portion of history [...]

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Planned Migration of An Antic Disposition

December 16, 2009

Sometime over the next two weeks I’ll be migrating An Antic Disposition over to WordPress, introducing a new visual theme, and relocating to a new hosting company.  This will allow some additional capabilities that I look forward to enabling down the road.
My plan is to preserve all of the comments during the migration, not to [...]

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The Relevancy of ODF 1.0

December 14, 2009

By the time you read this (actually probably by the time I finish writing this post) a ballot approving the Public Review Draft of ODF 1.2, Part 1 will have passed.  Part 1 is the largest of the three parts of ODF 1.2, and reaching a Public Review Draft status is a major accomplishment.  [...]

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Asking the right questions about Office 2010’s OOXML support

November 17, 2009

Image via Wikipedia
There is more OOXML controversy in the news, this time in Denmark. I don’t claim to understand all the nuances of the accusations, since I don’t read Danish, and Google Translates makes it sound at times like a discussion about loaves of rye bread or something, but the gist of it, as [...]

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ODF 1.2, Part 3 goes out for Public Review

November 16, 2009

A major milestone for ODF 1.2 was reached on Friday. Part 3 of ODF 1.2, which specifies document packaging (how a document’s XML, images and metadata are combined into a single file and are optionally encrypted or signed), went out for a 60-day public review period. This public review period will run [...]

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The Final OOXML Update: Part III

October 27, 2009

This is Part III of an 5-part series on the state of OOXML today. Previous to starting this series, I had not posted about OOXML in over a year. Part I showed how Microsoft, despite their promises that control of OOXML would be handed over to an independent, international committee, have instead stuffed [...]

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