Sweden declares its vote on OOXML invalid

SIS, the standards body in Sweden, has declared its vote on OOXML invalid. There is no time to start over, so Sweden will abstain.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070830155109351

Kenya ought to follow suit.

OOXML is defective by design

I haven't tried this yet:

The entire article can be found here

Self exploding spreadsheets.

To reproduce the scenario :

• start Excel 2007 and create a new spreadsheet
• insert a value 10 in a cell
• insert a value 20 next to it
• select the two cells and click on the "sum" button to create a sum of the two cells
• save the spreadsheet (xlsx file)
• close it and unzip it

The corresponding XML in the main part is :

 
  10
 
 
  20
 
 
  SUM(C2:D2)
  30
 

Pretty simple XML. Now say we want to edit cell E2 and set a constant value of 40 in place of a formula. But instead of doing that with Excel 2007 interactively, we are going to do it manually :

• unzip the file
• grab a zip part known as xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml
• make the edit described below
• put the updated zip part back in the zip package
• zip it

The corresponding valid (and carefully changed) XML for setting the constant value of 40 in cell E2 is :

 
  10
 
 
  20
 
 
  40
 

Now open the file in Excel 2007.

The entire article can be found here

OOXML Continued

Brazil and India vote NO.

There's an article here:

Quote from the article:
"I was a member of the technical group that have studied OOXML specification extensively. I learned that it is unbelievable how ECMA (same guys that put together the JavaScript standard!) can think that a wannabe spec like OOXML is ready for submission. It is incomplete (does not provide mappings with legacy standards, since compatibility is OOXML goal), too long (6000+ pages), fully tied to a single product, uses deprecated substandards, promotes bad practices (embedded binary objects), has clear proprietary hooks (like “formatAsWord95″ XML tags), reinvents the wheel all around (date and color formats etc), and most of all does not have a standards-grade look and feel required for a universal and (virtually) eternal document format (doesn’t have to be perfect, but can’t be that imperfect)."

I guess these are enough reasons to say NO to OOXML ....

US votes yes (with comments). Germany voted YES

My favourite comment:

I would say that in the voting “yes” countries the ballot has been rigged by the votes Microsoft has bought by stuffing the voting committees with Microsoft partners. This has been observed and well reported.

and

In Brazil and in all other countries that followed a process, a NO is inevitable because of the quality of the OOXML specification, and the technical issues you can extract from it.

This week should have more country results out with the final result being announced in early September.

Now Showing - Benta

I must say I haven't watched this yet despite my friends being on the production - some behind the camera others in front.

STARTING FRIDAY 24th AUGUST
at the 2Oth CENTURY FOX THEATRE .
A MUST WATCH.

PLEASE SEND THIS TO ALL FRIENDS, RELATIVES and your MAILING LIST.

View our trailers:

*"BENTA" (2007)*

Produced by *Et Cetera Productions* in conjunction with *Sisimka* *
Productions.*

View trailer on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snweii2IyFM

*"BACKLASH" (2006)*

Produced by *Et Cetera Productions* in conjunction with *Sisimka
Productions.*

View trailer on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdwLAB865Hs

*"BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY" (2005)*

Produced by *Et Cetera Productions.*  It won the 2006 Kenya International
Film Festival award for Best Actress.

View trailer on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgVAP_QhnaE
regards

Microsoft kills its ‘Get the Facts’ anti-Linux site

and starts another?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=670

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Microsoft_Unveils_New_Linux_Hate_Site

Which Transformer are you?

I found this very interesting, especially after enjoying the movie :).


I AM
69%
OPTIMUS PRIMETake the Transformers Quiz

Kenya votes in favour of EMCA/Microsoft's OOXML

Just heard that Kenya voted YES.

I am personally sad that this happened, though considering the composition of the committee (a seizable number were Microsoft dealers/partners approx 7 of 12). I hope to get more details on this.

The case for not adopting OOXML remains simple. It is not as open as it is made out to be by the main proponent(s). (visit http://www.noooxml.org/ for more info)

As far as I know, only Microsoft Office 2007 can save documents in this format.

If this standard is to be truly open, it needs to be vendor independent among many things.

More details here:

http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2007/06/05/

Patrick Oboya

This dude is going places. Just seen his website (patrickoboya.com) which has a link to a youtube video with him showing off his ball control skills.


Anajivunia kuwa mkenya.

TRANSFORMERS

If you have not watched this yet, this is a MUST SEE! Opened in Kenya on Friday Aug 10th after making me wait for ages.
As the cliche goes, 'pesa ya ticket iliisha within the first 5 minute'. Action scene after action scene, the graphics work was awesome, a bit of comedy, romance and loads of TRANSFORMING!
I'm seriously considering watching it again while waiting to get an original DVD.