ISO-Vote.com is an OOXML voting visualizer that also lets you play around with various voting scenarios to see how a pass or fail is achieved at the ISO. It also lets you realize how big Kazakhstan is.
There's also some stories about what OOXML means in non-technical terms, so please send it around to people who you think might benefit from understanding this issue.
For those looking at open source for the first time take a look at our Getting Started page. This details where you can go to find applications to browse the net, run email, write letters, maintain spreadsheets and much more. Open source is high quality, free, legal to copy to as many computers as you want, more secure than common desktop software and compatible with common desktop software. So why not make the change today?
On the eve of trial SCO have filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. The outcome of the slander of title suit against Novell had been reduced to deciding how much SCO owed Novell as a result of selling UNIX licenses to Sun and Microsoft. According to their agreement Novell would receive the license revenue and give SCO a administration fee of 5%. SCO returned none of the money received from Sun and Microsoft to Novell. According to SCO they have filed for bankruptcy in order to protect their assets.
Otherwise known as ECMA-376.
Disapproved.
The ISO press release is here. Again, thanks to all of those involved who gave up time and resources to ensure that the correct decision was made on the day.
It doesn't stop here though. There will be a Ballot Resolution Meeting to consider the comments and that meeting will be run by the JTC1/SC34 subcommittee... of which New Zealand is not a member. We would strongly urge Standards New Zealand to register as a Participating Country on that subcommittee to ensure that the views expressed in the recent workshops are considered at the BRM.
The subcommittee membership is also important as apparently there has been a recent surge in P-Country membership there as well.
Strange as it may seem, once upon a time IBM sold scales and other useful things a retailer might want to have. Over the years the focus of the company changed to adopt new technologies, including large computers. A problem soon arose in that each version of the hardware used it's own unique software and nothing was really reusable. This affected not only IBM but all the other players in that market. IBM then took a punt... they decided to standardise and generalise the systems and offer a range that to all intents and purposes would be interchangeable.
