Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Massachusetts:  More about their Document Standards On the usually quiet day before a US National holiday, ever-vigilant Groklaw Blog updates twice about Massachusetts decision to open up to OpenXML: Massachusetts Lowers its Standards - Updated 2 Xs Massachusetts has added Ecma-376 Office OpenXML to the list of potentially acceptable "open formats". Folks are writing headlines like Massachusetts Kowtows to Microsoft. [More reactions.] But it is worse than that. From my reading, they've lowered the bar for choosing what standards to use, rather than requiring Microsoft to rise to the open formats/open standards level the state originally set. Read GrokLaw's coverage and find an appropriate verb for what Massachusetts is doing for--or to--Microsoft. 9:01:05 PM    comment [] Massachusetts Document Format Story Continues Over at BetaNews Open Format Duel Enters New Round After Mass. Decision: Following BetaNews' story yesterday on the State of Massachusetts' decision to propose formally accepting Microsoft's Office Open XML as a "suitable" format, advocates on two of the three sides of this issue wrote us to say they were concerned our story's contents might tend to favor a different side. 8:50:23 PM    comment [] Old File Formats Warning of data ticking time bomb. The growing problem of accessing old file formats is a "ticking time bomb", the National Archives head says. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition] This should be related to the Open Document Formats thread on this blog. Anecdotally, many people in IT have horror stories of some proprietary formats being hard to move into the future. Personally I have some 1980s Wordstar documents I'll probably never expose to the light of day again.  My dictionary--Macs spell check text boxes as I blog into them--doesn't even recognize Wordstar as a word. 7:45:42 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2007 barbara haven. Last update: 8/16/07; 9:39:19 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.