We made a point-to-point SIP high definition video conference over a local area network. Another test used H.323 protocol. We also included my SIP-enabled Nokia E61i in the conference over the office WiFi network in a direct multipoint call simply calling my phone’s IP address. Crystal clear sound.

The equipment statistics showed the following:
Video

• 1280×720 resolution (720p HD) at 30 frames per second
• H.264 compression
• aprox. 1780 kilobits per second for the compressed video stream

Audio

• AAC-LC compression
• aprox. 70 kilobits per second for the compressed audio stream

Total of aprox. 1850 kbps for excellent and smooth audio and video quality.

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In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with a Hard Disk Drive (HDD).

Its weight was close to 1 ton and had a capacity of 5MB. So now please do not complain about the lack of storage in your 2GB pen drive.

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De: Milena Pires
Assunto: Formal Appeal

Prezados Membros,

Por solicitação do Diretor de Normalização, Sr. Eugenio Guilherme Tolstoy De Simone, informamos que, após a análise dos comentários dos Srs. Murilo Dantas e Deivi Lopes, a ABNT decidiu solicitar à ISO o cancelamento de todo o processo de elaboração da ISO/IEC DIS 29500 e seu retorno como um novo item de trabalho (NWIP) seguindo o processo normal de elaboração (sem Fast-Track) no âmbito do ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34.
Atenciosamente,

Milena Beguito Pires

Gerência do Processo de Normalização
ABNT/RJ - Av. Treze de Maio, 13 – 28º Andar
20031–901 – Rio de Janeiro – RJ

Significa que além de o Brasil ter votado NÃO em todo o processo de normalização do ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (mais conhecido como padronização do OOXML), tivemos também coragem de peitar a ISO e pedir o cancelamento de todo o processo por irregularidades que foram documentadas e enviadas a ISO semanas atrás.

Pelo que ouvi falar, isso nunca aconteceu antes em um processo Fast Track. Nunca inclusive houve uma apelação de nenhum país após um BRM antes do OOXML. Mas quatro países apelaram nesse caso.

Nunca antes também os processos da ISO foram tão expostos a níveis populares. Foi preciso um desejo de padronização de algo (o OOXML no caso) que tem enormes impactos populares, sociais, tecnológicos, e financeiros para expor esses processos (e a forma como são tocados) para que o mundo perceba como eles podem ser falhos e sucetíveis a opiniões pessoais. Onde só deveria haver espaço para posições independentes, tecnicamente fundamentadas.

O OOXML virando padrão ISO ou não (pelo andar da carruagem, não vai virar), o mundo aprendeu uma lição: a ISO precisa mudar.

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Explico. Uma empresa que precisa manter uma infraestrutura de computadores largamente espalhados, deve ter uma equipe preocupada com os seguintes pontos:

1. Obter suporte para o sistema operacional
2. Desenvolver customizações do sistema operacional
3. Desenvolver aplicações de negócio específicas que rodam nesses computadores
4. Desenvolver camadas de integração entre essas aplicações e os serviços centrais da empresa
5. Desenvolver novas funções de acordo com constantes requisições da área de negócios
6. Preparar procedimento de instalação e atualização automatizado para tudo isso
7. Testar constantemente tudo isso

Com excessão do primeiro ítem, todos devem acontecer obrigatoriamente dentro da empresa — ou terceirizado para uma equipe que trabalha de forma tão integrada com a empresa que pode também ser considerada interna.

Para uma equipe que precisa mergulhar tão profundamente na tecnologia de um projeto como esses, adicionar o primeiro ítem em seu conjunto de responsabilidades pode até ser benéfico porque traz mais controle.

Então, em casos como esse, ao invés de sair no mercado em busca de suporte pago ao SO, criar inteligência interna para prover esse suporte é um passo pequeno e fácil de ser absorvido, além de reduzir custos de licenças e suporte anual.

Empresas deste tipo são os grandes varejistas como Casas Bahia, Pão de Açucar, Droga Raia, Lojas Marabraz, etc — todos eles casos de sucesso no uso de Linux em seus Pontos de Venda.

Da perspectiva de TI, grandes bancos não são muito diferentes de varejistas. São idênticos na verdade, em termos de arquiteturas e fluxo da informação.

Banrisul e Bando do Brasil são os pioneiros no Brasil a entrar neste caminho, e anunciam o ingresso dos outros monumentais Itaús e Bradescos e Unibancos neste domínio de ATMs e caixas rodando Linux. Simplesmente porque não faz o menor sentido técnico e financeiro usar qualquer outro sistema operacional.

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Then you can also browse brand names and see their tag cloud.

For example, Linux is associated with “penguin”, “free”, “tux”, “cute”, “free” etc. Windows gets “computer”, “crap”, “crash”, “monopoly”, “sucks” etc. Apple gets “apple”, “computer”, “awesome”, “cool”, “design”, “innovation”, “love”, “trendy”. IBM gets “big big blue”, “boring”, “computer”, “corporate”, “old”, “pc”, “thinkpad”. Nike has a scary association with “child labor”. Oracle has a plain “database”.

In portuguese we use to say that people’s voice is God’s voice.

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The important part of it is this:

According to the ISO/IEC rules, a document which is the subject of an appeal cannot be published as an ISO/IEC International Standard while the appeal is going on. Therefore, the decision to publish or not ISO/IEC DIS 29500 as an ISO/IEC International Standard cannot be taken until the outcome of the appeals is known.

Which means OOXML cannot become a standard until the appeals get resolved and all countries get satisfied with the outcome.

In other words, OOXML is stucked in the limbo. It can’t be described, considered or even sold as an ISO standard.

It was sort of approved but can’t be approved. Well, the final specification text was not published yet anyways. With some luck, to technically fix OOXML can take the same amount of time as of solving the appeal.

Then we’ll go back to first question: does the world need tow standard ways to describe “helvetica, 12pt with red” or “a table with 3 columns and 5 rows” or even “page layout with 1.5cm margins” ?

As a reference, Brazilian appeal was published in Andy’s blog and is an informative yet concise enough text to understand the technical and process issues around OOXML.

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Só faltou isto para ficar definitivamente provado que usuários de Slackware são assassinos e bebem o sangue de suas vítimas !

Bem, a notícia é verdadeira mas minha afirmação foi brincadeira… Eu, como a maioria dos usuários antigos de Linux, começamos com Slackware e é uma grande distribuição.

Fonte: Rodrigo Missiaggia

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The Iron Man movie is all about programmers. Being challenged and have to invent something that will make you get rid of hand work, the adventure of a project, to mold, test and debug, and the joy of having a prototype inspiring the next perfect design.

Just don’t miss it. The metal man movie has a lot of Heavy Metal music and Robert Downey Jr., both fit perfectly.

Oh, and stay until after the final credits to see what are the plans for the next movie.

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Não é o CIO não. Este conversa com outros gerentes e assina o cheque, mas só e somente só quem sabe “meter a mão em código” pode transforma um problema de negócio em um software capaz de resolvê-lo, e estes são os desenvolvedores.

Dias 18 e 19 de de Junho a IBM vai fazer um evento para nós desenvolvedores no WTC Hotel em São Paulo (Av. Nações Unidas 12551, clique para ver no mapa). O Development Conference 2008.

Um sumário da agenda:

• Arquitetura Orientada a Serviços (SOA).
• Segurança no ambiente de desenvolvimento.
• Open Computing.
• Web 2.0.
• Gestão de Qualidade em ambiente de desenvolvimento.

Você também pode submeter um assunto e ser o palestrante. Aproveite o evento também para se certificar.

Detalhes sobre inscrição estão aqui e no telefone 0800 707 1426, ramal 1105.

Bom evento !

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Many developers are clamming that good specifications are more important than standards, specially now that the OOXML process opened to the public the dungeons of ISO processes and how the organization produces standards. This is a clear example on how ISO’s reputation is compromised.

But unfortunately “ISO standards” are what governments tend to use. These are the words they put in their Request For Proposals when they are going to buy things. These “ISO standards” are the words they use to claim how they’ll interoperate and trade across borders. And also how public institutions will interoperate with private institutions. Over time, it defines also how private institutions use technology.

So yes, ISO standards for Information Technology do matter from a developer standpoint because they are crucial in shaping the flow of information in the society in general.

Lets put it this way: technical specifications stand for research and development team while to be an ISO standard equals to have a strong sales force. An IT product needs both to succeed.

So you, developer, can use whatever you want or like. But if you want to interoperate with non-developer folks, you — the smartest guy in this context — will have to use what non-developers use, and they use what has a stronger marketing force as “this is an ISO standard”. This is why ISO standards (good or bad) should be in the focus of our attention.

Since the world already has an International Standards Organization, and since we learned it must be patched, it is our responsability — we, the developers, geeks, sysadmins etc — to be aware of and get involved with what ISO is standardizing right now and help the technical process of standardization to happen solely with technical arguments and not political interests.

Otherwise the future world will still be divided in two groups of developers: those that develop with/for good stuff and those that develop with/for stuff used by non-developers just because a powerful company had the strength to standardize it whatever it takes.

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Fontes

Por Doc Searls. Original: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9976#mpart1

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Fontes

• 1, 2: IBM and its Power Estimator Tool, CNN
• 3: IDC, via Guardian.co.uk
• 4: The Register
• 5–7, 12–16: Forbes
• 8: Bob Frankston
• 9, 10: Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2007, from the ITU, via Dilanchian.com.au
• 11: Laptop Magazine
• 17–20: Netcraft.com

Por Doc Searls. Original: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9943#mpart1

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There was an ISO/IEC/JTC1 meeting in Oslo, Norway wednesday and the local community protested against OOXML and demanded more integrity in ISO’s processes. I couldn’t agree more.

Photos by Martin Bekkelund. More info on Zak Greant’s blog.

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Percebia em seu tom de voz (ou nas linhas do Jabber/Google Talk) que na verdade perguntavam se a IBM está parando de suportar Open Source. Não está.

A IBM continua a suportar Linux, Open Source e Padrões Abertos de forma absolutamente central.

Muitos dos produtos mais estratégicos da IBM tem elementos Open Source em seu núcleo, como o Eclipse, Apache, diversas bibliotecas etc. Além do mais, Linux ocupa um papel fundamental como plataforma operacional para uma série de iniciativas de Cloud Computing, Grid, Web Services etc.

Linux é inclusive a plataforma sugerida, sempre que possível, na implementação de soluções em clientes.

Sem usar meu chapéu da empresa, minha opinião é que a IBM tem uma estratégia muito bem balanceada sobre como usar e integrar Open Source. Muita inovação ainda acontece no universo do software de código fonte fechado e não há porque não explorar isso comercialmente. Mas é muito claro dentro da empresa que Open Source está deixando de ser algo somente para a infraestrutura e vem avançando no middleware e níveis acima também. Isto é muito be visto como uma rota natural da indústria de software. E se por acaso a IBM demonstra uma resistência ou outra quando algum Open Source passa a concorrer diretamente com um de nossos produtos, isso é só um reflexo do instinto de preservação que em seguida abre espaço para adaptação.

A IBM este ano não está participando do FISL por uma questão tática temporária interna. Alguns grupos mudaram, pessoas se movimentaram (como acontece em todas as empresas) e simplesmente não deu tempo. Só isso.

Mas ficou uma vontade enorme de ir.

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Veja, não estou dizendo que o Second Life é importante, mas que muitas pessoas e empresas chegaram a discutir isso seriamente.

Levante a mão quem já entrou no Second Life. Agora levante a mão quem entrou mais de uma vez e continua usando.

A Sociedade da Informação de hoje não esta pronta nem tecnológica nem psicologicamente para esses mundos virtuais. Mas eles nos ensinaram uma lição: muito relacionamento humano está acontecendo em forma de fluxo de bits, e as empresas querem estar onde as pessoas [seus clientes] estão.

O Second Life (e similares) é a manifestação máxima dessa malha digital de relacionamentos (também conhecida como Web 2.0), mas se é ainda inusável, que tal as empresas clarearem seus objetivos - estar perto das pessoas, lembra? - e usarem outras ferramentas da mesma família para atingí-los?

Que tal criarem blogs corporativos para se comunicarem de forma mais direta, descontraida e interativa com seus clientes, como a IBM, Sun, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Nokia tem feito ?

Que tal aumentarem sua participação em comunidades onde as pessoas estão, como Orkut, Facebook etc? Essas festas online, especificamente, são um prato cheio para fabricantes de produtos de uso final. E não estou falando de spam, mas de uma participação oficial que realmente agregue valor.

Que tal usarem conceitos de Wikinomics a fim de criar novos produtos baseado diretamente no desejo do consumidor ?

Agências de propaganda que tiverem afinidade com essas novas características da Sociedade da Informação poderão levar seus clientes a graus de competitividade mais confortáveis.

Profissões como Gerente de Redes Sociais, Blogueiro Corporativo, Evangelizador Digital estão surgindo no horizonte, são profissionais raros e que começam a ser procurados pelas empresas.

Esse profissional precisa de alguns ingredientes bem apimentados: capacidade de comunicação, bom conhecimento dos produtos da empresa, entender como redes sociais digitais funcionam, seus códigos de ética etc, alguns conhecimentos do linguajar dessa nova esfera (feeds, podcasts, trackbacks, avatars, OpenIDs etc) para fazer a tecnologia efetivamente trabalhar a seu favor, noções de user-friendlyness, etc. Meio técnico, meio comunicador, meio designer, meio webguy. Uma mistura bastante peculiar de características.

E como se trata de comunicação externa, há um certo risco e medo envolvido. “Será que meu blogueiro vai falar o que não deve, revelar segredos, etc?”.

Posso contar como isso aconteceu aqui na IBM. Há anos foram criados blogs, wikis e outras ferramentas típicas da Web 2.0 na Intranet. Todo funcionário pode ter seu blog interno, pode criar um wiki, etiquetar sites e pessoas, e automaticamente tem um perfil online tipo Orkut, que chamamos de Bluepages. Há também uma atmosfera e incentivo quase que formal para fomentar inovação, mas isso é outra história.

Alguns funcionários que começaram a blogar internamente passaram a fazer isso para a Internet. Houve uma espécie de seleção natural dos escritores.

O curioso é que essas ferramentas internas não foram criadas para fazer tal seleção. Mas seu uso é tão marcante no dia a dia dos funcionários que elas até viraram produtos para empresas que querem criar sua infraestrutura para a Web 2.0 sem o uso das ótimas opções em Software Livre que existem por aí.

Mas voltando às profissões, o mais interessante é que não há curso universitário que forme para tal missão. Pense nisso.

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Upgrade was as easy as:

$ cd avi.alkalay.net
$ svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5/

Everything worked without any changes, including my experimental content-optimized Plasma theme.

The new WordPress has lots of improvements, specially in the administration part and I recommend it.

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I was a member of the brazilian committee and I also analyzed the specification. My country disapproved OOXML and I think this was a decision based on logic lead by the process.

The JTC1 rules page 49 item 9.8 says:

NBs may reply in one of the following ways:

• Approval of the technical content of the DIS as presented (editorial or other comments may be appended);
• Disapproval of the DIS (or DAM) for technical reasons to be stated, with proposals for changes that would make the document acceptable (acceptance of these proposals shall be referred to the NB concerned for confirmation that the vote can be changed to approval);
• Abstention (see 9.1.2).

[Note: Conditional approval should be submitted as a disapproval vote.]

In other words, from my understanding, if there is one or more technical problems, the NB must disapprove the DIS. Many countries found many technical problems in OOXML that are still unresolved even after the BRM.

I also understand that such an important matter as an International Standard for Office Documents can’t be defined by 10 or 30 opinions collected as votes in a committee. Thats why the JTC1 process above talks about technical content, not opinion or vote. What I learned from studying the OOXML specification is that it is not ready for acceptance since many countries have found and reached consensus that the spec has problems, even after the BRM. If the NB-leveraged technical team — formed by people that would vote YES and NO — has produced a list of submitted problems in the spec, this list is by itself the consensus that the spec is still problematic.

I would like to understand why an NB that has produced technical comments voted YES or ABSTAINED. I thought abstention is a position for countries that were not able to create a committee to technically discuss the specification for reasons such as logistics or lack of quorum.

I am learning about all this and I’d like to have more solid arguments to build an opinion about these NB’s maturity to run a well documented process.

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From: “***FONDONORMA***” <in*&%@fondonorma.org.ve>
To: <ki*%$#@itscj.ipsj.or.jp>, <br*%$#%@iso.org>, <tak*%$#%@iso.org>, <ga*%$#%@iso.org>, “Maria Teresa Saccucci” <mar*%$#%@fondonorma.org.ve>, “Norma Arias” <norm*%$#%@fondonorma.org.ve>, “***FONDONORMA***” <in*%$#%@fondonorma.org.ve>
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 14:04:26 -0430
Subject: Modification to the vote on DIS 29500 - Venezuela (FONDONORMA)
Toshiko Kimura
Secretary ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34

Att.: Mr. Keith Brannon, Mr. Maho Takahashi, Ms. Martine Gaillen

Dear Mr. Kimura,

Attached please find a letter from Mrs. María Teresa Saccucci, Standardization Manager of FONDONORMA (Venezuela) through which Venezuela wishes to modify its position on DIS 29500, Information technology - Office Open XML file formats from “Approval with comments” to “Disapproval with comments”.

Best regards,

Leonardo Di Bartolo
Coordinator of International Relations
FONDONORMA
Venezuela

This NO was a result of a very difficult meeting. Consensus was not reached and a lot of confusion happened. Exactly as in the first brazilian NO.

The NB had to decide the final vote based on technical issues still open in OOXML. The problem was the method of deciding and those technical points were not presented. So people only had in their head the Microsoft arguments that I already knew were part half trues and part complete lies.

I participated in the OOXML process in 3 countries and I was able to build an opinion on how normalization happens today in the world, and I’ll show some ideas in a future post.

By the way, this is how Caracas looks like, a city surrounded by huge green mountains that have behind them the Caribbean Sea.

Caracas and the Caribbean Ocean in the map

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Oh, and talking about dirty playing, check the domain www.DocumentFreedomDay.com but remember that the original one is www.DocumentFreedom.org. The first one really deserves a DDoS attack.

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Our first vote, in august, was also NO, due to the same reasons: OOXML is an awful specification.

That outcome was expected because we simply followed the process: technically analyze the OOXML specification, make comments, wait for responses, analyze them and see if all problems were fixed. Is there any single remaining unresolved problem? Vote NO. And in fact there were many many unresolved problems.

If every country followed this simple process, OOXML would receive a NO from 100% of them.

But in some countries, how is the process? Invite a few companies and simply count their votes. The problem here: 10, 20 or 80 votes can never represent what is the best for that country. Only, maybe, if you collect one vote for each citizen.

What I am trying to say is that in this case a decision must be reached by technical consensus, not vote. It is not a matter of will, but a technical issue that can only be reached by rational analysis and deliberation.

In Chile for example, 21 voting companies will define a 15 million people country vote in ISO. How easy is to lobby these 21 companies with Power Point presentations telling complete plain lies ?

Technically speaking, if your country’s vote was YES or ABSTENTION, one of these possibilities happened:

1. Nobody had time to analyze the OOXML specification and the ABSTENTION was the right choice.
2. Nobody had time to analyze the OOXML specification and a few people decided for you to vote YES, based on ideology or a result of lobby, not technology benefits.
3. Even having time to analyze the OOXML specification, a few people decided for you to vote YES, based on ideology or result of lobby, not technology benefits.

Seems stupid, but these are exactly the 2 possibilities of OOXML getting YES votes in ISO. It is still an awful specification.

By the way, Brazil would vote NO again and again and again even if all OOXML’s technical issues could be resolved. OOXML would still have legal issues and also serious overlap problems with the OpenDocument Format ISO standard.

I was not present in today’s meeting in ABNT because I already knew what would be the result, since the process of analysis and deliberation in Brazil was very strictly followed. Hopefully Jomar will write about it and you can check more details.

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A few days ago I was playing extensively with Apple’s iPhone, investigating each sub-menu and little details. There is a section listing legal stuff and software being used with each license. GPL, LGPL, BSD and other Open Source licensed software rule the iPhone.

Some I have noted:

• BSD kernel
• PPPD
• poll emulation by Brian Clapper
• stack_protector by Hiroaki Etoh
• FreeBSD software
• libgcc
• libstdc++
• libm by Sun Microsystems
• libiconv
• ncurses
• FreeType
• zlib
• SHA2 by Aaron Gifford
• AES and SHA2 by Brian Gladman
• SQLite

• JPEG lib by Thomas Lane
• TIFF lib by SGI
• Kerberos, WebDAV, install-sh by MIT
• Spidermonkey by Netscape
• OpenSSH
• OpenSSL
• OSF’s DCE
• libpng
• Eric Raymond’s giflib
• bzip2
• libuuid by Theodore Ts’o
• Perl Compatible Regular Expressions
• libxml2
• tidylib
• WebKit
• ipsec-tools and racoon

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This is real Interoperability

• Technical specifications for global interoperability and freedom
• Interoperate through standards
• Software product is less important
• Switch products and keep access

Microsoft started their so called “interoperability” initiative. With a deeper look we find that the main objective of the released specifications is to let developers interact with their products only, something I like to call Intra-operability.

This is Intraoperability

• Technical specifications for interaction with and favor the product
• Interoperate through the product
• Software product is the main player
• Switch product and loose access

See the difference?

Microsoft technical specifications have serious technical and legal issues, and are being released not to increase interoperability across people, organizations and applications, but to leverage the use of their products. For the standard document format scenario: OOXML is about allowing other people to interact with files that are primarily generated and manipulated with Microsoft Office. It is not about full interoperability, which would enable competition with Microsoft Office, for obvious reason.

For each purpose or scope, better open standards exist and should be adopted and used instead: Java versus .NET, XHTML versus IE-campatible-only DHTML, ODF versus OOXML, etc

My friend Cezar Taurion has also written some words about Intra-operability (in portuguese). Bob Sutor also put together some words about it.

These graphics are available in a friendly Creative Commons license, in this animated ODF file, in case you want to integrate them in your presentations. PDF export also available.

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Let me show you how it happens with a piece of an OOXML document, the red-marked text is the problematic part (see for yourself, §6.2.2.14, paper page 4,813, lines 7–13):

<v:shape>
<o:ink i="AMgFHQSWC+YFASAAaAwAAAAAAMA..." annotation="t" contentType="application/x-ms-ink"/>
</v:shape>

So you, as a programmer, please tell me what to do if you are developing an application that must read and generate this kind of document. How can I find documentation about this encoded binary stream? Is this a good practice in XML? Anyway, this kind of (bad) design appears in many parts of the OOXML spec. Want more examples of bad design? Have fun.

Suppose I really want to develop this kind of support in my application, I am a master programmer and reverse-engineered a few examples generated with a copy of MS Office 2007 that I had to buy. Or maybe I just found the specification of this proprietary application/x-ms-ink type and go to develop a library to handle it.

Inevitably, my library will reimplement aspects of some Microsoft library with same functionality, and according to a Software Freedom Law Center report, the Microsoft Open Specification Promise (OSP, basically the not-open-enough license Microsoft lawyers wrote for the usage and implementation of OOXML) cover’s the specification only, not code.

I will be sued for patent infringement. On software rewrite, not on specification usage.

Then the rape begins. Microsoft is claiming that this was solved in the ISO’s BRM meeting. This is the solution, from the ridiculous 12 pages resolutions, page 7:

Resolution 25: The BRM decides to accept the editing instructions contained in http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/def/BRM/Response_0135_bitfields.doc in place of R 135, replacing “deprecated” by “transitional”, and with the following addition: The Editor shall ensure that all existing attributes defining the bitfields described above shall be “transitional”—so resolved.

Who reads this resolution with high level eyes may think that all binary fields will be removed from the specification. But please, you, as a programmer, tell me how the so called Editor will find all and every single part of a 6000+ pages specification containing bitfields? How he’ll expand all those bitfields in an XML subspecification? Will he invent some? Is he the right person (or team) to do that?

When done and if done, the specification will be something completely new, full of new parts. Will jump from 6063 pages to maybe 7500. Oh, and did I mention it will be something that even MS Office 2007 or 2008 don’t support today? Supporting or not, implemented or not, this new unexistent specification is the “thing” that countries’ National Bodies are voting right now, without even seeing it, without checking if it was corrected, without having time for this because they didn’t receive it for revision.

They won’t have time to review 6000+ pages because the deadlines defined by the ISO’s Fast Track process are over.

So the question is how ISO/IEC and JTC1 let such a big and problematic specification enter the light Fast Track process? My answare: ISO was raped.

I’ve been talking to several people that will define their country’s vote and their mindset is “are you really putting ISO in such a bad position?” Well, yes. You know, in the end ISO is not god. They are a bunch of people that, like you and me, have religions, aspirations, problems, family, go to the bathroom etc. Like you and me, they may be also naive in regard to some subjects, particularly document formats. Then comes Microsoft excellent speakers showing PowerPoint charts that are plain lies (e.g. “OpenOffice.org supports OOXML”) and people believes them.

People have two choices: to question ISO’s reputation in the OOXML case, or question IBM, Sun, Oracle, Red Hat, Free Software Law Center, ODF Alliance and many other institutions’ reputation when they massively scream in chorus that OOXML has serious technical, legal and standardization process issues.

This is a world where organizations like ECMA has completely lost the respect of the technical community. But this is not a big problem, because we have other similar, still reliable bodies as OASIS, W3C, OSF, etc.

This is a world where we will have to work hard to make ISO regain its (currently damaged) reliable status. This is a big problem, because we only have one (and only need one) International Standards Organization.

This is your responsibility. To start this work get involved with your country’s National Body for standardization and promote the creation of a formal letter to ISO about the OOXML process, its problems and how ISO let that happen. INCITS in USA, ABNT in Brazil, INN in Chile etc.

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This is an example of an old Excel bug that was transported to OOXML for “compatibility” reasons.

In new OOXML, there are several non-standard ways to represent dates. The main one is this, that requires that 1900 is a leap year contradicting the Gregorian calendar, used for centuries now.

More info on this in a post by Rob Weir.

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• 6063 pages written in 12 months
• Only 6 months of analysis pointed 3500 issues that span from intellectual property, to standard date & time representation, to malformed XML definitions, to binary proprietary bits
• 3500 issues where summarized in “only” 1027
• ECMA proposed 2293 pages of mutually conflicting changes to make happy those 3500 comments
• Only 30 days to analyze those 6063+2293 pages against those 3500 comments
• Only 5 days of BRM to discuss 6063+2293 pages
• Only 18% of these 1027 problems where discussed in BRM
• 82% of problems were not even discussed
• BRM produced a short 12 pages document containing alterations to those 6063 pages long spec based on 2293+thousands of pages of comments from all countries+19 months of technical writing and global analysis work. By the way, those short 12 pages propose such nebulous alterations — as Resolution 25 on page 7 — that it is difficult to foretell how they will technically fit in the new specification. If applied, those alterations could turn the original spec upside down, so deeply that it could become a completely new specification, maybe even worse than the first one.
• Now countries must vote if they approve or not this still unfinished new OOXML that will be divided in 4 independent parts for strict conformance class+4 parts for transitional (deprecated) conformance class. These final multipart wannabe standards don’t exist yet and will be released about the same day countries will have to vote for it.

Or graphically:

And you still think OOXML is ready to become an International Standard Format for storing YOUR documents ?

Come on, give me a break !

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I have a lot to improve. Specially in goods (which was a weak test) and transportation.

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Ele me disse que não pode comentar nada sobre estes números e sobre o resultado, pois no último dia do BRM, a autoridade da ISO lá presente alertou a todos que nenhum número deveria deixar a sala de reuniões, pois sem conhecer os processos de decisão lá adotados, nenhum número ou estatística faz sentido.

Avisou ainda que qualquer divulgação ou utilização marketeira destes números é no mínimo irresponsável e segundo o entendimento dele uma
clara violação das regras estabelecidas (mas aliás… alguma regra foi seguinda neste processo todo ?).

Eu tentei insistir com o assunto (e olha que o cara é meu amigo), mas ele se recusou a me dar mais informações. Me pediu apenas para entrar em contato com quem divulgou as informações e pedir a ele os devidos esclarecimentos (incluíndo os critérios e regras de votação).

Como eu sou insistente mesmo, acabei arrancando pelo menos uma explicação metafórica dele:

“Se eu te disser que 85% da população mundial sobreviveu à II Guerra Mundial, você consegue concluir que esta guerra não foi tão ruim assim? Se não consegue é porquê conhece os detalhes do processo. Se consegue… vai ler os livros de história e estudar o processo e aproveite pois este episódio não teve uma “Lei do Silêncio” que obrigou todos os envolvidos a se calar. O BRM não vai ter “livro de história” para explicar a estatística.”.

Números são apenas números e marketing será sempre marketing (e o Jomar não abre a boca mesmo… que chato).

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