An Antic Disposition

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e to the power of hype

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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 into believing is an adequate substitute for thought.

What especially caught my eye was this claim:

Global support for Open XML is growing exponentially. Thousands of organizations have joined OpenXMLCommunity.org, hundreds of ISVs are developing solutions on Open XML, and more and more governments are opting for Choice in standards policies. Additionally, more than 10 million compatibility packs that allow users of earlier versions of Microsoft Office to work with Open XML have been downloaded around the world. The momentum is growing, the adoption is real.

Exponential growth is quite a claim. But what is the evidence? Microsoft provides this chart further down on the page, showing the growth in their “community”:

Years ago, when I was a student, we had a technical term for curves like this. We called them “lines” and referred to this type of growth as “linear.” We did not call it “exponential growth”

Let’s take a look at the growth in document usage, instead of community membership. Here’s an update of a chart I showed a couple of months ago:

In this chart you see two series, one for ODF (blue) and one for OOXML (red). The horizontal axis shows the number of days since each standard was published, namely May 2005 for ODF and December 2006 for OOXML. The vertical axis shows the number of documents in that format on the web, according to Google, by doing “filetype” searches. For example, a query of “filetype:ods” gives you all of the ODS (ODF spreadsheet) documents on the web.

(Ben Langhinrichs also has some updated numbers and analysis on this topic.)

Is this what you would call exponential growth? Eight months after Office 2007 shipped, and despite the claim of “10 million compatibility packs” downloaded, the OOXML line is only slowing and linearly rising (R-squared=0.943). ODF remains 100-times more prevalent on the web today and is growing 20-times faster than OOXML.

So “Global support for Open XML is growing exponentially”? Uh. I don’t think so. Maybe something is growing exponentially, like the hype. But the users, the documents and the “community” — these appear to be only slowly and linearly growing.

But lest you leave without some dramatic growth to think about, let me share some with you. If you recall, back in April I brought your attention to the fact that two scientific journals, Science and Nature, were both rejecting submissions from authors in OOXML format. I’ve been looking around and found an embarrassingly large number of additional journals which explicitly disallow OOXML.

The Optical Society of America’s journal, Optics Letters, will not accept Word 2007 format. The American Phytopathological Society’s Plant Disease warns in bright red print [pdf], “This journal does not accept Microsoft Word 2007 documents at this time.” The American Institute of Physics, tells their authors “Word 2007 and the new Word docx format should not be used. Docx files will currently cause problems for reviewers and complicate many existing preproduction and production routines.” Vandose Zone Journal warns submitters that they cannot use the new equation editor in Word 2007 and should use MathML instead. “Word 2007 .docx format is not accepted” according to The Journal of Nutrition.

But wait, there’s more!

Wiley InterScience tells authors for almost 200 of its journals that “This journal does not accept Microsoft WORD 2007 documents at this time,” ruling out OOXML for authors of these journals:

  1. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
  2. International Journal of Quantum Chemistry
  3. Software Process: Improvement and Practice
  4. Pediatric Blood & Cancer
  5. Lasers in Surgery and Medicine
  6. Medicinal Research Reviews
  7. American Journal of Physical Anthropology
  8. Journal of Mass Spectrometry
  9. Journal of Polymer Science Part B: Polymer Physics
  10. Developmental Dynamics
  11. Journal of Applied Polymer Science
  12. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
  13. Synapse
  14. Genes, Chromosomes and Cancer
  15. Journal of Medical Virology
  16. Flavour and Fragrance Journal
  17. Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining
  18. Clinical Anatomy
  19. Hepatology
  20. Advances in Polymer Technology
  21. Journal of Orthopaedic Research
  22. Molecular Carcinogenesis
  23. Environmental Progress
  24. Infant Mental Health Journal
  25. Annals of Neurology
  26. International Journal of Imaging Systems and Technology
  27. Developmental Neurobiology
  28. AIChE Journal
  29. Journal of Traumatic Stress
  30. genesis
  31. Meteorological Applications
  32. Process Safety Progress
  33. Atmospheric Science Letters
  34. Systems Research and Behavioral Science
  35. Journal of Community Psychology
  36. Diagnostic Cytopathology
  37. Birth Defects Research Part B
  38. Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution
  39. International Journal of Climatology
  40. The Chemical Record
  41. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing
  42. International Journal of Intelligent Systems
  43. Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds
  44. Statistics in Medicine
  45. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience
  46. Developmental Psychobiology
  47. Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry
  48. The Prostate
  49. Journal of Computational Chemistry
  50. X-Ray Spectrometry
  51. Peditric Blood & Cancer
  52. Random Structures and Algorithms
  53. Microwave and Optical Technology Letters
  54. Lasers in Surgery and Medicine
  55. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry
  56. Weather
  57. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews
  58. International Journal of Finance & Economics
  59. Psycho-Oncology
  60. Chirality
  61. Applied Cognitive Psychology
  62. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B:
  63. Medicinal Research Reviews
  64. Biopharmaceutics & Drug Disposition
  65. Zoo Biology
  66. Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions
  67. Plus 103 more journals!

Oxford Journals, part of Oxford University Press, tells submitters, “This journal does not accept Microsoft Word 2007 documents at this time.” Journals directly effected by this policy include:

  1. Bioinformatics
  2. Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy
  3. American Journal of Epidemiology
  4. PEDS
  5. Briefings in Functional Genomics & Proteomics
  6. The Computer Journal
  7. Health Policy and Planning
  8. Journal of Environmental Law
  9. Review of English Studies
  10. Behavioral Ecology
  11. ELT Journal
  12. Molecular Biology and Evolution
  13. CESifo Economic Studies
  14. Journal of Pediatric Psychology
  15. Cerebral Cortex
  16. Literary and Linguistic Computing
  17. Molecular Human Reproduction
  18. Enterprise & Society
  19. Age and Ageing
  20. European Journal of Public Health
  21. Publius
  22. Integrative and Comparative Biology
  23. Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation
  24. Rheumatology
  25. Glycobiology
  26. And 35 more journals!

Blackwell Publishing, publisher of over 800 journals, rejects OOXML submissions telling authors, “Will authors please note that Word 2007 is not yet compatible with journal production systems.” This adds to our list of journals where OOXML cannot be used:

  1. Psychophysiology
  2. Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica
  3. Transfusion Alternatives in Transfusion Medicine
  4. Acta Neuropsychiatrica
  5. Nursing Forum: An Independent Voice for Nursing
  6. Experimental Techniques: A Publication for the Practicing Engineer
  7. Cytopathology
  8. Asian Journal of Social Psychology
  9. Journal of Anatomy
  10. Annals of Applied Biology
  11. Lethaia: An International Journal of Palaeontology
  12. Journal of the American Water Resources Association
  13. Clinical Physiology and Functional Imaging
  14. Ibis: The International Journal of Avian Science
  15. Basin Research
  16. Digestive Endoscopy
  17. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies
  18. European Journal of Neurology
  19. Surgical Practice: Formerly Annals of the College of Surgeons
  20. FEMS Yeast Research
  21. FEMS Microbiology Reviews
  22. FEMS Microbiology Ecology
  23. FEMS Microbiology Letters
  24. Regulation & Governance
  25. FEMS Immunology & Medical Microbiology
  26. Clinical and Experimental Optometry
  27. Journal of Food Process Engineering
  28. The Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology
  29. Medical Education
  30. European Journal of Clinical Investigation
  31. Diseases of the Esophagus
  32. Sleep and Biological Rhythms
  33. International Migration Review
  34. Computational Intelligence
  35. Asia Pacific Viewpoint
  36. Seminars in Dialysis
  37. Peace & Change: A Journal of Peace Research
  38. Journal of Applied Social Psychology
  39. Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology
  40. Dermatologic Therapy
  41. WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society
  42. Journal of Travel Medicine
  43. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography
  44. Australasian Radiology
  45. Genes to Cells
  46. The Clinical Respiratory Journal
  47. Echocardiography
  48. The American Journal of Gastroenterology
  49. Histopathology
  50. Personal Relationships
  51. Clinical and Experimental Dermatology
  52. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research
  53. Experimental Dermatology
  54. Journal of Social Philosophy
  55. The Journal of Popular Culture
  56. Pathology International
  57. Pain Practice
  58. The Journal of American Culture
  59. Clinical & Experimental Immunology
  60. Religious Studies Review
  61. Entomological Science
  62. Plus 107 more journals!

I won’t claim it is exponential, but I will suggest that the most impressive growth occurring around OOXML is the number of journals that will not accept it.

The most recognized tune of all time

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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) but well-known in only some nations. While others have global reach, but are of more recent vintage, like McCartney’s “Yesterday” (1965).

So what do you get if you account for both factors and try to seek the tune that the most people in history would be able to recognized, something that has great durability over time as well as a global reach?

Any ideas? I’ll hold my guess and post it later.

Two Feet, No Feathers

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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 contexts. Your concept is, “I want to lease my summer home and not get screwed,” and your attorney translates that into 20 pages of detailed conditions. You can be loose with your language, so long as your lawyer is not.

But even among professionals, the attack/defense of language continues. One party writes the tax code, and another party tries to find the loopholes. Iteration of this process leads to more complex tax codes and more complex tax shelters. The extreme verbosity (to a layperson) of legislation, patent claims or insurance policies results from centuries of cumulative knowledge which has taught the drafters of these instruments the importance of writing defensively. The language of your insurance policy is not there for your understanding. Its purpose is to be unassailable.

This “war of the words” has been going on for thousands of years. Plato, teaching in the Akademia grove, defined Man as “a biped, without feathers.” This was answered by the original smart-ass, Diogenes of Sinope, aka Diogenes the Cynic, who showed up shortly after with a plucked chicken, saying, “Here is Plato’s Man.” Plato’s definition was soon updated to include an additional restriction, “with broad, flat nails.” That is how the game is played.

In a similar way Microsoft has handed us all a plucked chicken in the form of OOXML, saying, “Here is your open standard.” We can, like Plato, all have a good laugh at what they gave us, but we should also make sure that we iterate on the definition of “open standard” to preserve the concept and the benefits that we intend. A plucked chicken does not magically become a man simply because it passes a loose definition. We do not need to accept it as such. It is still a plucked chicken.

(This reminds me of the story told of Abraham Lincoln, when asked, “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?” Lincoln responded, “Four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.”)

With the recent announcement here in Massachusetts that the ETRM 4.0 reference architecture will include OOXML as an “open standard” we have another opportunity to look at the loopholes that current definitions allow, and ask ourselves whether these make sense.

The process for recommending a standard in ETRM 4.0 is defined by the following flowchart:

So, let’s go through the first three questions that presumably have already been asked and answered affirmatively in Massachusetts, to see if they conform to the facts as we know them.

  1. Is the standard fully documented and publicly available? Can we really say that the standard is “fully documented” when the ISO review in the US and in other countries is turning up hundreds of problems that are pointing out that the standard is incomplete, inconsistent and even incorrect? We should not confuse length with information content. Just as a child can be overweight and malrnourished at the same time, a standard can be 6,000 pages long and still not be “fully documented.” Of course, we could just say, “A standard fully documents the provisions that it documents” and leave it at that. But such a tautological interpretation benefits no one in Massachusetts. We should consider the concept of enablement as we do when prosecuting patent applications. If a standard does not define a feature such that a “person having ordinary skill in the art” (PHOSITA) can “make and use” the technology described by the standard without “undue experimentation” then we cannot say that it is “fully documented.” By this definition, OOXML has huge gaps.
  2. Is the standard developed and maintained in a process that is open, transparent and collaborative? We’re talking about Ecma here. How can their process be called transparent when they do not publicly list the names of their members or attendance at their meetings, do not have public archives of their meeting minutes, their discussion list or document archive, do not make publicly available their own spreadsheet of known flaws in the OOXML specification nor of the public comments they received during their public review period? How is this, by any definition, considered “transparent”? We can also question whether the process was open. When the charter constrains the committee from making changes that would be adverse to a single vendor’s interests, it really doesn’t matter what the composition of the committee is. The committee’s hands are already tied and should not be considered “open.” If I were writing a definition of an open, transparent process, I’d be sure to patch those two loopholes.
  3. Is the standard developed, approved and maintained by a Standards Body? Without further qualifying “Standards Body” this is a toothless statement. As should be apparent right now, not all SDO’s are created equal. Some of the standards equivalent of diploma mills. Accreditation is the way we usually solve this kind of problem. Ecma’s Class A Liaison status with JTC1 is not an accreditation since their liaison status has no formal requirements other than expressing interesting in the technical agenda of JTC1. In comparison, OASIS needed to satisfy a detailed list of organizational, process, IPR and quality criteria before their acceptence as a PAS Submitter to JTC1/SC34. Why bother having a requirement for a Standards Body unless you have language that ensures that it is not a puppet without quality control?
  4. Is there existing or growing industry support around the use of the standard? Again, very vague. A look at Google hits for OOXML documents shows that there are very few actually in use. My numbers show that only 1 in 10,000 new office documents are in OOXML format. But I guess that is more than 0 in 10,000 that existing last year. But is this really evidence for “growing industry support”? I’d change the language to require that there be several independent, substantially full implementations.

There are two additional questions which I won’t presume to answer since they rely more on integration with internal ITD processes.

We learn lessons and move on to the next battle. Just as GPLv2 required GPLv3 to patch perceived vulnerabilities, we’ll all have much work to do cleaning up after OOXML. Certainly JTC1 Directives around Fast Tracks will need to be gutted and rewritten. Also, the vague and contradictory ballot rules in JTC1, and the non-existent Ballot Resolution Meeting procedures will need to be addressed. I suggest that ITD take another look at their flowchart as well, and try to figure out how they can avoid getting another plucked chicken in the future.

An Invitation: ODF Interoperability Workshop

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The OASIS ODF Adoption TC is organizing an ODF Camp to be held on September 20th in Barcelona, Spain. Facilities for this event are graciously provided by OpenOffice.org, which will be holding its annual conference concurrently.

The hope is that this will be the first of several such events to bring ODF vendors together to explore ways of greater technical coordination, especially in the area of interoperability. I’ve written about and presented on this topic before. Now is the time for action, and I’m extremely pleased that so many vendors will be attending.

On other occasions I’ve called interoperability “the price of success” because a standard implemented by only a single vendor and a single application need not worry about it. Only successful standards with many implementations need to rent a hall to bring the implementors together to review and perfect interoperability.

(It is like capital gains taxes. I grumble when I pay them, but take some solace in the fact that my investments were profitable. Those who make a losing investment don’t pay capital gains taxes on it.)

The focus of this first interoperability event will be on the ODF word processor format. Follow-up events will look at spreadsheets and presentations.

Please have a look at the detailed agenda for the camp and consider joining us in Barcelona.

One Year and One Hundred Posts Later…

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I’m not one for excessive self-reflection. Like the Heresiarchs of Uqbar, I think that mirrors are abominable. However, since I have simultaneously reached my 100th blog post as well as my one year anniversary with An Antic Disposition, I feel that an inward glance is both appropriate and timely.

Only 100 posts in a year? I remain in awe of other bloggers who manage to put out an order of magnitude more material, sometimes several posts in one day. Writing is not easy for me. Although it may not always show, I agonize over every word. I aim for clarity, euphony, a smart rhythm and a bit of wit.

Clarity is difficult, since my readers come from a wide range of technical backgrounds, so some posts are high-level, simplified descriptions, while others dive into the bowels of the beast. But of course, clarity is no excuse for not being understood. As Gertrude Stein wrote:

Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding anyone.

Since I started blogging on document format issues last July, here are the basic stats on the blog, once I subtract out other parts of this website, like my weather observations and family tree pages:

  • Average page views per day: 2,082
  • Average visitors per day: 1,800

The traffic has been steadily increasing over the last 12 months, so I’m actually averaging closer to 3,000 visits/day today.

I’ve been Slashdot’ed a few times and featured on GrokLaw more times than I will ever be able to thank. Such days can drive traffic up to 25,000 visitors.

Technorati shows 787 links to the blog, which is pretty good. It gives me a Google PageRank of 7 which has some humorous implications as we’ll discuss later.

Most popular posts by hits:

  1. How to Hire Guillaume Portes (71,152 hits, 3 January 2007) The intent here was to create a fictional name, which roughly translated “Bill Gates” into French. However I later found out this is the real-world name of a game programmer in the UK. I hope he took this with good humor (or even humour). The post dealt with how overspecification can hurt a standard. This post tipped people off to the weird compatibility flags in OOXML that tie it to undefined legacy behaviors in Word 95, etc. The line, “This is not a specification; this is a DNA sequence” was a spontaneous insight I came up with in response to a question from the audience at the KDE aKademy 2006 conference in Dublin the previous October.
  2. OOXML Fails to Gain Approval in US (48,802 hits, 15 July 2007) This was a report on the INCITS V1 OOXML vote. It became widely quoted, very quickly. I think this was partially because was in a straightforward, factual style of reportage, without overt color or opinion. My working title was “US Technical Committee Fails to Approve OOXML,” but that caused the title to wrap to two lines, which I try to avoid.
  3. The Formula for Failure (37,648 hits, 9 July 2007) OOXML’s spreadsheet formula specification is full of mathematical errors. How was this not detected earlier by Ecma? What does this say about the sufficiency of the Ecma review process?
  4. A Leap Back (20,270 hits, 12 October 2006) A look at the history of the Gregorian Calendar, and how OOXML gets it wrong. Microsoft says it was done for “legacy reasons,” which is another way of saying it is a bug that they don’t want to fix.
  5. Math Markup Marked Down (21,358 hits, 25 April 2007) This post told how Nature and Science journals were rejecting submissions in OOXML format.
  6. The Chernobyl Design Pattern (21,079 hits, 26 October 2006) This one was never widely quoted, but continues to receive sustained traffic from StumbleUpon.
  7. A game of Zendo (9,344 hits, 18 July 2006) This post lacks focus, seemingly trying to discuss Zendo, backwards compatibility as well as Word art borders. The technical points are sound, but I think the post lacks cohesion.
  8. The OOXML Compatibility Pack (8,067 hits, 6 September 2006) This was an early post on the topic, but the later Interoperability by Design post covered it better, I think.
  9. File Format Timeline (9,920 hits, 24 June 2007) I first posted it as just a PNG graphic, with no HTML text. I received no links. It is hard to quote something that has no text. So I added some text and received links and a lot more traffic. A good lesson to remember: A picture is worth a thousand words, but if you don’t have any text, no one can quote you.
  10. More Matter with Less Art (8,730 hits, 31 January 2007) This is a long, rambling response to critics of How to Hire Guillaume Portes. I’m reminded that the old saying “It is impossible to make something foolproof because fools are so ingenious” applies to arguments as well.

My personal favorite posts, in no particular order:

  1. How to Write a Standard (If you must) A look at how Microsoft and Ecma are making a travesty of standards development. I originally wrote this post as a straightforward analysis, but it was ponderous. Then I rewrote in the form of an antipattern, but it still lacked crispness. Then I had the key insight — If I simply state their argument explicitly, it works as a satire.
  2. How Standards Bring Consumers Choice This was written for a general audience who knew nothing about OOXML or document formats. I had a lot of fun reading up on the various electrical standards.
  3. A Tale of Two Formats One of the problems that I perceive is that we are not dreaming big enough when it comes to the future of office applications. Many seem satisfied with simply being a mini-Office or following after Microsoft’s technologies at a delay of a few years. But I think we need a more radical re-imagining of what office productivity applications are all about. What we have today is determined by the dead hand of a monopolist leading us in conventional circles, unable to innovate because of the grip of their own installed base. Are we ready for some real innovation? Or are we happy with 15 more years of paying for upgrades and only getting dancing paperclips?
  4. File Format Timeline I first posted it as just a PNG graphic, with no HTML text. I received no links. It is hard to quote something that has no text. So I added some text and received links and a lot more traffic. A good lesson to remember: A picture is worth a thousand words, but if you don’t have any text, no one can quote you.
  5. The Legend of the Rat Farmer Another parable, this time to refute the specious argument that more standards improves interoperability.
  6. Pruning Raspberries Zero comments, zero links. Sometimes I write for an audience of one, and that is fine.
  7. The Cookbook Another parable. Why parables? For over 2000 years (e.g., Christ, Socrates and Confucius) story telling has been an important rhetorical device. The point is not that a story is the easiest way to explain something. On the contrary, it is much harder. But a story is one of the best ways to explain something if you want it to be remembered. Another good technique is to express the argument in song lyrics with a catchy tune, but I promise you I will not go down that road.
  8. The Case for a Single Document Format (in 4 parts, unfinished) This one is stretching the bounds of what I can do in a blog, due to length. I still need to finish part 4, and in the end I might just redo this as a paper rather than these too-long blog posts. But the material gives a good multi-disciplinary look at the question of standards and tries to answer the question, “Why do some technologies have a single standard, while others thrive with multiple standards?” We must acknowledge that both occur, but we must also acknowledge that it is important to know whether this is random, or whether a single standard regime is the natural and indeed the desired outcome under some conditions.
  9. Essential and Accidental in Standards Yes, it rambles, and takes a long time to make a simple point, but I think it is an interesting trip. A simpler version of the same basic argument (the theme of a sweet spot for technology) has been covered more succinctly (and perhaps more convincingly) by Tim Bray.
  10. The Parable of the Solipsistic Standard Another story, but I think this one went over almost everyone’s head. Solipsism is the ultimate philosophically reduction of the Not Invented Here (NIH) Syndrome. Mixing epistemology with linguistics and standards and satire is asking for trouble. I think I got what I deserved here. But it was fun and some readers enjoyed it.

Top counties based on number of visits:

  1. USA
  2. Germany
  3. United Kingdom
  4. Netherlands
  5. Australia
  6. Canada
  7. Denmark
  8. China
  9. France
  10. Spain
  11. Italy
  12. Slovakia
  13. Austria
  14. Poland
  15. Belgium

Most active states based on number of visits:

  1. California
  2. Nevada
  3. Washington DC
  4. Colorado
  5. Pennsylvania
  6. New York
  7. Washington
  8. New Jersey
  9. Virginia
  10. Ohio

Most Active Cities based on number of visits:

  1. Beijing, China
  2. Mountain View, California
  3. Carson City, Nevada
  4. Washington DC
  5. Denver, Colorado
  6. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  7. London, UK
  8. Gliwice, Poland
  9. Chester, Pennsylvannia
  10. Malchow, Germany
  11. NYC, New York
  12. Dublin, Ireland
  13. Bellevue, Washington
  14. Auckland, New Zealand
  15. West Sacramento, California

So my question is: who is in Gliwice, Poland? I didn’t know I had so many readers from there. Ditto from Carson City, Nevada.

Top search phrases that lead people to this web site:

  1. rob weir
  2. traduttore
  3. jingle bells batman smells
  4. antic disposition
  5. cum
  6. cannibalism
  7. jingle bells batman smells lyrics
  8. ooxml
  9. rob weir blog
  10. jingle bells santa smells

Around 30% of the traffic is directed from search engines. I have observed the danger of having a high PageRank web site. Whenever I use an odd word in a post, this blog automatically becomes one of the top hits for people querying on that term. So a post from last July called, Cum mortuis in lingua mortua generates many search referrals from those who are merely looking, I presume, for more information regarding the Latin conjunction “cum” meaning “with.” I hope they found what they were looking for.

Similarly, an old blog post talking about transmission of culture among children mentioned the “Jingle Bells/Batman Smells” parody. This gets many hits, especially in December. Although I have no particular expertise in Latin conjunctions or Christmas carol parodies I am an instant “authority” on these subjects (according to Google at least) because of this blog’s ranking.

Browsers:

  1. 38% Firefox
  2. 7% I.E. 6.x
  3. 6% I.E. 7.x
  4. 2% Opera
  5. 1% Safari
  6. 1% Konqueror

So some good strength being shown by Firefox.

OS’s:

  1. 35% Windows XP
  2. 30% Other
  3. 19% Linux
  4. 5% Mac OS
  5. 4% Vista
  6. 3% Windows 2000
  7. 2% Windows NT
  8. 1% Sun OS

Aggregation feeds:

  • The Atom feed gets around 1,400 hits per day
  • The RSS feed gets around 300 hits per day

Thanks, everyone, for reading!

-Rob