Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Monday 31 March 2008, 8:26 PM
OOXML result will come Wednesday
Reuters is reporting that the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) will announce the result of the OOXML vote on Wednesday.
This is apparently to give them time to let all the national standards bodies, such as our own British Standards Institution, know the result before a press release is issued. However, it would be fair to assume that ISO already knows the answer - it's not that many votes that need counting, after all - so, assuming Reuters is correct, there are two possible reasons why tomorrow (Tuesday) won't be the announcement day:
a) ISO is teasing us, those rascals
b) Because Tuesday is April Fool's Day
I'll let you add your own commentary to that one.
UPDATE (April Fool's morning but not a joke apparently): The chairman of Norway's standards body is appealing to ISO to discount Norway's vote. Because 80 percent of that body were against changing the vote to "yes" - the recorded result. That's the chairman talking. What in the name of Cthulhu went on in these meetings?!
Monday 31 March 2008, 5:14 PM
Windows Mobile ignored time change
This is something I noticed yesterday, when my Windows Mobile phone (a T-Mobile Vario II running WinMob 6.0, since you ask) failed to recognise the British Summer Time shift.
Now today I see that some other users had the same experience (although some didn't, so it may be a version-of-WinMob thing). No biggie, obviously, but certainly odd. I seem to recall the daylight savings shifts happening quite automatically in the past - I wonder why this one was different.
Oh well. Some explanation from Microsoft will surely be forthcoming.
Monday 31 March 2008, 12:24 PM
A textual lesson in story-padding
This one really was too daft to be true. According to a mobile phone website, an anti-street-clutter charity has launched a pilot programme to protect people when they walk into lampposts. Yes, precisely.
"A London-based pilot program has been launched by the charity organisation, Living Streets, to 'pad' lamp posts to protect unwary texters," the article reads. "If successful, the scheme will be extended to other major English cities. A welcome civic assistance program or further proof that the Nanny State has finally flipped its lid?"
This pile of utter nonsense can be traced back, via the ever-estimable Daily Mail, to the directory service company 118.com. As for poor Living Streets, all they did was provide somewhat bemused comment to the Mail reporter about 118's "research" and one-off publicity stunt. Now they're supposed to be running the campaign on a nationwide basis.
Funny what a quick phonecall can tell you. Has journalism finally flipped its lid?
Sunday 30 March 2008, 11:48 AM
OOXML clears ISO voting
That's it. An official announcement is awaited, but it seems certain now that Microsoft's OOXML specification has made its way through the ISO fasttrack process, albeit with many serious concerns over the way in which the voting unfolded. This ain't over yet.
Several sites have been superb at tracking and explaining this convoluted process, including: Pamela Jones' Groklaw, Andy Updegrove's ConsortiumInfo Standards Blog, the OpenMalaysia blog, and the Command Line Warriors blog. My analysis as it stands right now is based on what I'm reading across those sites. We're not talking official final tallies here, so I hope I'm wrong in saying OOXML made it, but it looks to be the case.
To reiterate the voting process, there are lists of Principal Countries (the P-votes) and Observer Countries (the O-votes). For the standard to make it through the fasttrack process, at least two-thirds of the P-votes must be "approve" and less than a quarter of the O-votes must be "disapprove" (this is why "abstain" can count in the standard's favour).
Based on what I can see on those aforementioned sites on this dreary Sunday morning (now extra-dreary), OOXML has achieved both those criteria. Open Malaysia has the P-vote criterion passing at 68.75 percent, and the O-vote criterion at 20.29 percent. Command Line Warriors is (are?) putting P-vote approval at 69.6 percent and O-vote disapproval at 20.2 percent. Of course, these figures are not final, but it looks likely that they're in the right ballpark.
Some countries did change away from approval. It looks like Venezuela went from "approve" to "disapprove" and Kenya went from "approve" to "abstain". However, going from "abstain" to "approve" was Finland, and going from "disapprove" to "approve" were: Denmark, the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Korea, the Czech Republic and Norway.
However, as mentioned previously, the way in which these disapprovals turned into approvals is going to continue to be a matter of contention for a while yet. Beyond what you can see in that link, it now looks (thanks again, Groklaw) like there are more serious allegations of irregularities regarding the German, Croatian and Norwegian votes. Add those, then, to the Polish vote and the...
You know what? It's Sunday. See you tomorrow!
Friday 28 March 2008, 4:59 PM
OOXML process in deranged finale
Catching my breath, I thought it might be worthwhile to recap a bit on the insane flurry of updates coming through about the ISO votes on Microsoft's OOXML spec. Remember, the deadline is the end of tomorrow.
As things stand, it looks like Microsoft may well squeak through to fast-track nirvana. Denmark has changed its vote from No to Yes. The UK may very well do the same. It looks like France is a No, and the same goes for South Africa. South Korea's No appears to have magically mutated into a Yes. Ditto the Czech Republic. Chile's abstaining again. There's an unpleasant whiff emanating from Poland's Yes vote. And an almighty stench surrounding the whole sorry affair.
Democratic primaries? Pah! This is where the action is...
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