Posted on 09/29/2005 8:52:01 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
The broader media usually take little interest in public policy debates about technology, but theyre missing a big story in Massachusetts.
The technology trades, blogs and industry are buzzing about a monumental policy shift in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Officials in the state have proposed a new policy that mandates that every state technology system use only applications designed around OpenDocument file formats.
Such a policy might seem like something that should concern only a small group of technology professionals, but in fact the implications are staggering and far-reaching. The policy promises to burden taxpayers with new costs and to disrupt how state agencies interact with citizens, businesses and organizations.
Worse, the policy represents an attack on market-based competition, which in turn will hurt innovation. The state has a disaster in the making.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
" TCP/IP was created by the US federal government."
Wow, you've managed to quote back to me an almost accurate but very sparse version of what I previously posted.
I guess that makes you an expert!
Again,what is your tech experience?
What is your experience with open protocols?
Microsoft formats have been imperfectly reverse engineered. Reverse engineering of something like the .doc format is extremely difficult to do. Has Microsoft made an irrevocable offer of all past, existing, and future .doc/.xls/.mdb/etc-related patents offer to anyone who wants to implement the format? Is the offer free and unconditional?
Sure...the day that we see truth in advertising from Microsoft...
Well, anything I can print with my Mac can be saved as a .pdf file. This is a built-in part of the OS. Yes, for the most part I pay for the software to create the content, but once I have it created, making it into a .pdf is free.
Of course, I had to pay for the OS somewhere along the line, but the last time I looked people had to pay for Windows also.
Perhaps he's a bot.
DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!
Your introductory 3 paragraphs sure didn't give that impression.
Microsoft just fears it won't have MA taxpayers stuck on it's useless Office product upgrade cycle anymore when their are free word processors and spreadsheet programs available to use.
Wrong, if they were worried about that they'd simply impelement the format, they have historically provided more compatiblity filters than any other vendor, and ones that worked.
This is about MA taking a radical position that disallows the industry standard product while claiming they are doing it in the name of user access. They are claiming they want the formats "open" but ignore Microsoft's existing open format compatibility and the open nature of their future standard formats. MA is instead insisting on software formats endorsed by radical leftist Richard Stallman, and his GPL license, which is incompatible by nature with any products that contain software patents, even if the rights to use those patents freely is given away.
There's a line developing, theologically, and practically, between those who believe in intellectual property and those who don't. The liberals in MA, just like the communist governments across the world who have passed similar mandates, are on the side of Stallman and the free software fanatics. Microsoft, and other closed source software companies that believe in effective intellectual property enforcement, are on the other. This is a political issue, I've been out front since the beginning, and I believe the existing caplitalistic point of view will previal, no matter how many shrieking liberals are out there. In the end, they're nothing but noise that actually discredits their own cause.
It wasn't working when you bought it?
"In the end, they're nothing but noise that actually discredits their own cause."
Actually, that's what you do all the time.
So, what's your tech experience, and/or your working knowledge of open protocols?
Open Office has a 2.0 release candidate! Kewl. Time to move beyond the beta.
Every successive beta version has loaded and run faster.
I've seen many horrors in my day...McDonald's "food," Starbucks "coffee," and even clothing styles championed by singing bellybuttons...but nothing prepared me for the sheer, naked horror of Microsoft BOB! NOTHING!
Microsoft is disallowing itself, by refusing to implement ODF.
I've forgotten. Did Bill become involved with Melinda before or after she was put in charge of Bob?
Notice how they still kept the dog from 'bob' and put him in with the search feature for windows xp?
One of the first things I did when I installed XP was to disable the stupid dog. And then I disabled a bunch of startup programs that microsoft puts on its bloated default startup.
Opinion: Switch to OpenDocument format will make state documents more accessible to the public because anyone can have the software to read the format.
What he doesn't tell you is basically NO ONE has the software to read or write this format.
If MA wanted to be taken seriously, and realistically wanted to create a format that everyone could easily read, they would have worked with the company that created and maintains the current industry standards, to develop an acceptable open format, instead of running off with some obscure crap no one has or wants, and threatening to lock MS out from the begining. Unfortunately that's what they did, and the result is they look like idiots that care more about making a political statement than actually making things better for their constituents.
MA says that all the tires it uses on state vehicles must be round.
Microsoft, which has been making a fortune with its clunky 'octagon' tire design, protests, saying taxpayers, capitalism, and cute little puppy dogs will suffer if it is forced to make round tires.
If that sounds absurd, it's actually less absurd than the truth. All MS is worried about is other companies possibly benefiting because MA residents aren't locked into a MS file format.
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