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Microsoft Software

Microsoft Announces OOXML-UOF Project with China 106

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the tit-for-tat dept.
Andy Updegrove writes "Today, Microsoft announced its own interoperability project to bridge the gap between China's domestically developed Uniform Office Format (UOF) and Microsoft's OOXML. In the continuing tit for tat battle between ODF and OOXML, this announcement tracks the intent of an already-existing 'harmonization' committee, hosted by OASIS, that is exploring interoperability options between ODF and UOF. Like the OOXML-ODF translator project announced by Microsoft last year, the new effort will be an open source project hosted by SourceForge. The announcement is, in one sense, no surprise. Microsoft has been waging a nation-by-nation battle for the hearts and minds of ISO/IEC JTC1 National Bodies, in an effort to win adoption of OOXML (now Ecma 376) as a global standard with equal status to ODF (now ISO 26300). In order to do so, it needs to offset the argument that one document format standard is not only enough, but preferable. With UOF representing a third entrant in the format race, easy translation of documents would obviously be key to lessen the burden on customers of products based upon one format or the other."
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Microsoft Announces OOXML-UOF Project with China More

Microsoft Announces OOXML-UOF Project with China

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  • Haaaa (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mockylock ( 1087585 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @04:22PM (#19212721) Homepage
    Microsoft: "You want to go together on a new 'standard'?"
    China: "Sure, whatever."
    Microsoft: "What's wrong?"
    China: "Can we still pirate software?"
    Microsoft: "Sure, whatever."
    • No ODF and OOXML aren't working toward compatibility and interchange.
      They are just both converging with UOF, each on it's own.

      Looks just like bad behaving child that up until the end won't admit working together, and China (!) takes up the role of the elder brother/parent coming to help them.

      Sometimes you can try hard making up thing, but reality will always beat you a the weirdness contest. (China is the superglue holding microsoft and Free software together).

  • How about... (Score:3, Funny)

    by omgamibig ( 977963 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @04:23PM (#19212749)
    ...yet another freakin format? Seriously!

  • Why? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why are so many people so satisfied with the status quo of being locked-in to Microsoft products? Why would you want to put all your information in a basket owned by a single vendor who keeps you at their mercy? I don't want to wear any software vendor's handcuffs, even if I trusted them, and I really don't trust Microsoft at all at this point.

    The only straight answer I've heard thus far was from one guy who told me it was because he owned stock in Microsoft. Windows & Office, after all, are the only

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DragonWriter ( 970822 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @04:28PM (#19212821)

      Why are so many people so satisfied with the status quo of being locked-in to Microsoft products?


      Because for the average user, Microsoft products (at least Office) do the job required, and do it fairly well, and no one is providing anything that, despite file format incompatibility, provides a compelling reason to change aside from "we're a bit cheaper". Without that, no one is going to get up in arms.

      If someone comes up with a way to fill the role of the word processor or spreadsheet in a way stunningly better than Microsoft has, then substantial numbers of people will start chafing at vendor lock-in. As long as most competitors are just making "me too, and you can run me on more OS's" products, they'll have a niche, but not a big push for change.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by presidentbeef ( 779674 )

        Because for the average user, Microsoft products (at least Office) do the job required, and do it fairly well, and no one is providing anything that, despite file format incompatibility, provides a compelling reason to change aside from "we're a bit cheaper". Without that, no one is going to get up in arms.

        Well...a couple hundred bucks for most home users is a lot just to do word processing, spreadsheets, etc. Compare that to OpenOffice, which is free. That is a huge savings.

        I'd say it's more likely t

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
          Well...a couple hundred bucks for most home users is a lot just to do word processing, spreadsheets, etc. Compare that to OpenOffice, which is free. That is a huge savings. [...] I'd say it's more likely that most users don't know the difference between Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, don't know there are alternatives, and assume that "free" means cheap and worthless.

          Free means cheap huh?

          Anyway, you know, I like, and even use (sometimes) OpenOffice, but honestly, if you put it side by side with Of
          • All I know is that I've saved files in Excel, just to have Excel unable to read or recover them. Yet I open the document in OpenOffice.org, and it strips out the crap, and gives me a perfectly formatted Excel file back, minus whatever brain damage Excel saved into it when it did anesthetic-free gall bladder removal on the document. Office may look like a flashy product, but fuck if it isn't still a piece of shit underneath the GUI. I still use MS Office at work because we have macros and plugins written
          • Anecdotes aren't data, I know, but I have a story about a friend of mine (an older guy, 70-ish). He's not a tech-savvy guy, but he's been a "joe user" kind of guy for probably 15-20 years now. He doesn't care how it works, really, but he'll sit and listen to a semi-technical description of things while you fix his system occasionally. And by occasionally, I mean once every couple of years when a hardware component is going on the fritz. He knows the various external components of a computer and knows that a

            • I've recommended Ubuntu to him a few times, but his wife likes playing those stupid Popcap-style games she gets from Yahoo and similar places.

              In Ubuntu, plenty of "Popcap-style" games are built in -- all you have to do is check the boxes next to them in the package manager and hit "install." Between that and installing Flash (so she could still play online games), his wife would be better off with Ubuntu!

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
              What this confirms, is that OpenOffice is nice for casual use by amateur users. I really mean people who do a lot of content in Office though, and they would definitely go for Microsoft Office.

              It can be comapred to Gimp vs Photoshop. If you want to adjust the levels and remove the red eye of a photo, Gimp's nice (hell, even Picassa is nice). If you want to make a button or background for your web page, then Gimp is again nice.

              But if you do complex photo retouch, ton of design, every day, then Gimp is unbear
        • I think most consumers who use Office do so because that is what they use at work.

          I think businesses would always be skeptical of how exact a clone an exact clone really is. I think a fair amount of businesses use Word and Excel especially as application platforms to a degree, and if their applications won't transfer then it is not really a clone or really compatible.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by barik ( 160226 )

          Well...a couple hundred bucks for most home users is a lot just to do word processing, spreadsheets, etc. Compare that to OpenOffice, which is free. That is a huge savings.

          I think the important thing to remember is that a large number of these installations are pirated from work or another source for home use. Now that Microsoft Office has introduced GenuineAdvantage in its latest offering, expect that people will start to take a more serious look at OpenOffice and other alternatives.

        • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by cheater512 ( 783349 ) <nick@nickstallman.net> on Monday May 21, 2007 @05:07PM (#19213301) Homepage
          There probably should be a 'Get OpenOffice' campaign just like the 'Get Firefox' campaign when Firefox 1.0 was released.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by eMbry00s ( 952989 )
            It would hardly have the same succeess as Firefox has seen. Firefox was vastly superior to the alternative, OOo is not.

          • There probably should be a 'Get OpenOffice' campaign just like the 'Get Firefox' campaign when Firefox 1.0 was released.
            There was the Get Legal [openoffice.org] campaign but I don't think it had the same support as the FF campaign.

          • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            How about before that, we have a "Make OpenOffice not suck compared to MS Office" campaign among developers?

          • I do recommend Firefox to people, and offer Opera as an alternative if they do not like Firefox as IE is just that bad, but the difference between MS Office vs. OpenOffice. is not the same. Put simply: MS Office is a perfectly fine office suite, which most people buy with their computers. There is no good reason to switch, and OpenOffice's GUI feels unfinished. If OpenOffice gets to the point where its GUI is actually as usable as MS Office's, then I will start recommending it as opposed to simply mentionin

        • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

          by Frosty Piss ( 770223 )

          I'd say it's more likely that most users don't know the difference between Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office

          This is a commonly voiced anecdote among the FOSS crowd, but in reality it's almost complete self-serving bullshit. It's part of the Open Source mantra that assumes most "users" are complete idiots. And, since in most cases users must pay several hundred dollars in addition to their computer that came pre-installed with Windows, it would be had to miss that the Office Suite is not a part of the

          • Dude what are you talking about? Maybe for power users they need the enhanced functionality of Office 2007 but what extra "Average" features does it add? I use openoffice to type my school papers, powerpoints, and schedule my classes in a spreadsheet. It works perfectly for my needs and I guarantee it works perfectly for just about anyone's needs unless youre doing something like writing a book. And thats what Final Draft is for (which happens to run 100% under wine, by the way). MS Office is useless.
            • I would like to say, whilst I am a fan of open source in general, OpenOffice is far behind MS Office.

              For a start, on every computer I've tried it on, it loads much slower than MS Office, and just seems sluggish in general. This may be anecdotal, but for me, MS Office seems faster and nicer.

              That's not to say that MS Office isn't hideously expensive for what it is. I'd love to use an open source office suite, but open office if not for me.

        • Well...a couple hundred bucks for most home users is a lot just to do word processing, spreadsheets, etc. Compare that to OpenOffice, which is free.

          Word is often bundled with Windows now, and—and, look, I'm pro-OSS—Office Home and Student 2007 has a lot more polish than OpenOffice.org, and OneNote is, at least to me, a big plus.

          I'd say it's more likely that most users don't know the difference between Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, don't know there are alternatives, and assume that "fr

          • OneNote is, at least to me, a big plus.

            Yeah, me too. I absolutely loathe the facts that I'm forced to use Windows and that I'm putting my notes in a proprietary format, but there's really nothing in the Free Software world that even slightly competes with OneNote. It really pisses me off, especially since I'm too busy to do anything about it.

            OTOH, people have to get out of the "how do we duplicate Office" mindset, and think beyond Office.

            I'd be happy if people got into the "how do we duplicate OneNote" m

      • The reason it flies now is most people do not really pay full price for office and do not realize microsoft plans to put office on a rental basis with subscription fees.

        OOo now opens even my most complicated documents. It's free. I don't prefer it yet but I'm headed that way. There will be a day in the next few years when I leave office behind except for work.

        • The reason it flies now is most people do not really pay full price for office and do not realize microsoft plans to put office on a rental basis with subscription fees.

          I realize Microsoft plans that. I still bought Office Home & Student 2007. Heck, I realized that when I bought Office 2003. I think I'd heard talk of it about when I got Office 97 (I skipped 2000). Microsoft has planned software as service for as long as the internet has been popular. When Microsoft decides to put Office on a rental basi

      • Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)

        by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) * on Monday May 21, 2007 @04:58PM (#19213167) Homepage Journal

        If someone comes up with a way to fill the role of the word processor or spreadsheet in a way stunningly better than Microsoft has, then substantial numbers of people will start chafing at vendor lock-in. As long as most competitors are just making "me too, and you can run me on more OS's" products, they'll have a niche, but not a big push for change.


        But OpenOffice.org Writer is stunningly better than Microsoft Word [newsforge.com], in many, many ways, unless you're one of those people that simply must have Word's outline view. Better bullets and numbering, better support for templates, support for conditional formatting, and better support for master documents are just a few of reasons why I use OpenOffice.org Writer instead of Word for my writing projects, despite having access to both at home.

        • I have heard that it is still pretty rough compared to Word. The one killer I have heard is that documents do not always format 100% identical when opened with the other application. I would be leary to use it for important business correspondance or a resume for example.

          Another important issue is that the average consumer does not think in terms of document formats, they think in terms of programs. If something "needs to be in Word", then that means using Word the program to them.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Knuckles ( 8964 )
            I would be leary to use it for important business correspondance or a resume for example.

            You don't realize that Word documents will be formatted depending on the local printer, do you? You do NOT have absolute control over the look of your .doc when you email it out. For the purposes you listed there is PDF, and OO.org has native support for it, while MS Office does not (up to 2003 at least, dunno about 2007).

            • You don't realize that Word documents will be formatted depending on the local printer, do you?

              On screen formatting in MS Office programs (I've noticed this more in Excel than Word) varies considerably based on View Zoom as well. I'm not sure if this is the same in OOo (it may be, since I suspect at least part of it is how Windows renders fonts.)

              You do NOT have absolute control over the look of your .doc when you email it out. For the purposes you listed there is PDF, and OO.org has native support for it, w

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dbIII ( 701233 )

            The one killer I have heard is that documents do not always format 100% identical when opened with the other application

            PDF is the answer when you don't want anybody to change it. I am surprised by the number of contracts in word or excel - leaving things open to change by the unscrupulous.

            Time for a rant. Ever since Word97 could not open documents produced by a revision of Word97 that came in an identical box it has been clear to me that "simple" document sharing is over rated and not as simple as it ap

        • We must also remember that OpenOffice looks like a tool (it is, and a very good one I might add), and that Microsoft Office looks like a toy (pretty paint on the outside, choking hazard on the inside). The average user, especially those who are still slightly intimidated by computers (like my father) prefer the look and feel of Microsoft products. People like my father just need to create a spreadsheet, they don't necessarily need to create a GOOD spreadsheet. Microsoft Office came with his computer and tha

        • But OpenOffice.org Writer is stunningly better than Microsoft Word, in many, many ways

          Those ways don't include startup time (amazingly slow even on my Core Duo T2600 system with 2GB RAM and thus no over-paging problem), being reliable, et cetera. And while I haven't done this experiment in Writer, opening an Excel spreadsheet, removing some data from it, and re-saving as excel grew a fairly simple sheet from 26kB to over 160kB. So clearly there are some issues to be worked out of OO.o.

          • Those ways don't include startup time (amazingly slow even on my Core Duo T2600 system with 2GB RAM

            Both Word 2003 and Open Office Writer 2.2 open too quickly for me to measure on my Athlon 64/4600 with 2GB RAM, likewise Calc and Excel open almost instantly.

            If it's amazingly slow, there's something wrong with your system.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dbIII ( 701233 )

              If it's amazingly slow, there's something wrong with your system.

              I'd be looking at DMA - openoffice does a lot of disk access at startup and on machines with DMA turned off on the disks it took a very long time to start up. Version 2 is a lot faster to start than version 1 - on an old laptop with vectorlinux the most recent openoffice was usable while earlier versions vere not.

              • I'm using intel SATA. This is a compaq nw9440 running Ubuntu 7.04, previously running Windows XP, on which the same program had the same problem. OO.o is slow, it just don't want to go, and other such doggerel.

                And yes, 2 is better than 1 IME.

        • But OpenOffice.org Writer is stunningly better than Microsoft Word, in many, many ways, unless you're one of those people that simply must have Word's outline view. Better bullets and numbering, better support for templates, support for conditional formatting, and better support for master documents are just a few of reasons why I use OpenOffice.org Writer instead of Word for my writing projects, despite having access to both at home.

          First, none of those is really a stunning advantage. Its a few areas of sm

        • Outline view (Score:4, Informative)

          by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @06:07PM (#19214105)

          But OpenOffice.org Writer is stunningly better than Microsoft Word [newsforge.com], in many, many ways, unless you're one of those people that simply must have Word's outline view.

          I keep hearing about Word's outline view - what does it offer that OpenOffice.org's Navigator does not offer? I can move sections around, demote and promote sections, quickly jump to a section/table/picture in the document from the Navigator. Please enlighten me!

          Cheers,
          Toby Haynes

          • Outline view in Word is just different. There are some people who think that Navigator isn't good enough. The only way I can really see from a functionality standpoint is that Word's outline view will show you complete body text, while Writer's won't because there is no support for word wrap in Navigator. That's an easy fix and I suspect that eventually someone will get around to making it. (It won't be me, though, because I can't seem to make head nor tail of OOo's cryptic source code)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by killjoe ( 766577 )
        Why can't MS office support ODF?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by zcat_NZ ( 267672 )
          There's one important feature of Microsoft's Legacy Document Formats that ODF simply cannot support; vendor lock-in.

          That one feature is a total deal-breaker for Microsoft.
      • I use OOo all the time and when working with odf files I find that anything I need to do I can do. Yes, it doesn't look as pretty as office but I'm not a slave to fashion. I like many people wouldn't pay hundreds of pounds (or dollars) just so that I can write documents and produce spreadsheets with a pretty frame wrapped around them. I went through a phase of trying to skin every app that I use but it really has nothing to do with productivity.

  • Competition?? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by l2718 ( 514756 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @04:25PM (#19212783)
    We've been through this before, but why would the user benefit from multiple standards when they are essentially equivalent? The user does not interact with the document on the disk. He interacts with a computer program -- so there is a natural room for competition in the field of word processors, which benefits the user. In fact, a single accepted office document format will simplify this competition and hence help the user.

    A design competition for file formats would persumably benefit programmers who write word processors. But once the design is fixed, they too would rather implement one format rather than two. Again, the word processor has an internal representation of the data, and reading/writing to disk can be done in many ways. Of course, having the format be a dump of the internal (binary) data structures of your program would be a big boost -- but that can hardly be said to foster competition.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nine-times ( 778537 )

      A single format would be beneficial so long as there was a single format which everyone could agree was suitable for their own purposes. It's not clear to me whether that could happen. If you include all the features in the spec that anyone could possibly want, there might be someone else who complains that it's too complicated and bloated for their purposes.

      And besides the technical features of the format, it's clear to me that, if you want everyone to use it, it needs to meet certain requirements. It

      • as there are people with a lot of money who are interested in one format winning over the other, things will not be allowed to be worked out 'organically'.

        in the case of odf vs ooxml (i'm tempted to call ooxml msooxml, but i might get flamed), odf is sort of linked to how openoffice/staroffice is designed. ooxml is _very_ closely linked to how ms office is designed. essentially, there are two formats and they're not that similar though they have very similar purposes. both sides would want theirs to be chos

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Wylfing ( 144940 )

      We've been through this before, but why would the user benefit from multiple graphics formats when they are essentially equivalent? The user does not interact with the image data on the disk. He interacts with a computer program.

  • OSPC? (Score:5, Funny)

    by WrongSizeGlass ( 838941 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @04:25PM (#19212787)
    One Standard Per Child?
    Open Standards are great! ... let's start a organization to develop a lot of them.

  • The Churchill quote (Score:4, Interesting)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @04:34PM (#19212887) Homepage Journal
    The article uses a quote from Churchill's WWII speech:
    We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans,...we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender...
                                                                                      - Winston Churchill, June 4, 1940

    It is sort of disturbing to see that and then this text in the next paragraph:

    If there was any doubt left in anyone's mind that Microsoft will do everything that it can, and wherever it must, to ensure that ODF makes the minimum inroads possible into its vastly profitable Office franchise, the news of the day should put that doubt to rest. In the continuing tit for tat battle between ODF and OOXML, Microsoft announced yesterday it's own interoperability project to bridge the gap between China's domestically developed Unified Office Format (UOF) and Microsoft's OOXML...

    and then this little piece: This will hardly be the last beach upon which Microsoft will defend its Office franchise.

    So by this logic MS is a liberator fighting against the evil forces of Free Software.

    Probably there is some comedic value in it, but honestly this leaves a very unpleasant taste.

    • Microsoft announced yesterday it's own interoperability project...
      **Head asplodes**

      • Why would that be surprising? Microsoft starts "interoperability" projects all the time! It's the first third of "embrace, extend, extinguish" you know...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Shatrat ( 855151 )
      Think of this particular battle as Normandy, and not the Battle of Britain.
      The entrenched ones are definitely the bad guys.
    • Microsoft can be rather compared to Goebbels speech in the Berliner Sportpalast on 18. Februar 1943:
      "... Wäre die deutsche Wehrmacht nicht in der Lage, die Gefahr aus dem Osten zu brechen, so wäre damit das Reich und in kurzer Folge ganz Europa dem Bolschewismus verfallen. ..."
      "... The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. [...] Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everythin
      • Out of context quotes are fun, but I think the author of the article brough along Godwin with Churhill's quote, so what does that do to the article?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbIII ( 701233 )
        Even better - someone with a tag of "Sweetshark" coming in to talk about an article that has obviously jumped the shark. Sweet!

        There is no way I would take anything that puts that quote in seriously unless it is actually on the topics of fighting against invasion or Churchill himself. Otherwise it indicates IMHO either a tenous grip on reality / a complete misunderstanding of the circumstances described in the quote / an attempt at argument by emotional manipulation / other bullshit I have not considered.

    • http://www.searls.com/m+n.html [searls.com]

      Note, in particular, Bill Gates' notorious "Pearl Harbor" speech of December 7th 1995, in which he warned of the emerging global threat from Java and Netscape. The author of the page cited above, Doc Searls, seemed to think that all the warlike references were just good clean fun. Gates began his speech as follows:

      MR. GATES: Well, good morning. I was realizing this morning that December 7th is kind of a famous day. (Laughter.) Fifty-four years ago or something. And I was trying
  • I'm curious what benefits this will have to Microsoft? I thought Office as their big money maker next to Windows. The main reason to have it is because of the format war. If they support an open format, and OSS can adjust (like they have been with OpenOffice) this would drastically hurt sales of Office. There must be something that will work to their benefit else they wouldnt do it.
    • If they want to stay in the Chinese office software market, the have to adopt Chinese standard. There are already three software providers making UOF compatible software, kingsoft's WPS [kingsoft.com], EIOffice [evermoresw.com] and Open office based RedOffice (Chinese) [ch2000.com.cn]. Some of them are very good.

  • What's the big problem? (Score:4, Funny)

    by asciimonster ( 305672 ) on Monday May 21, 2007 @04:54PM (#19213133) Journal
    I don't know why these people take so long to make their standards (or "standards") into one unified format. I did it in 2 minutes. Here it is:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <gandunifieddocumentformat xmlns="...">
        <ODF>
            <!-- ODF stuff -->
        </ODF>
        <OOXML>
            <!-- OOXML stuff -->
        </OOXML>
        <UOF>
            <!-- UOF stuff -->
        </UOF>
    </gandunifieddocumentformat>

    DONE!!!
    • w00t! now that my 10k file is 30k it is time for the unified compression format. pkgbziprar sofuxdup.zip.gz.bz2.rar -r lots-o-slop/*.doc.odf.wtf.now

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ajehals ( 947354 )
      So... For an application to support your grandunifieddocumentformat it would have to understand al three... OK.

      Does this mean that a document can be composed of multiple elements from the different formats?

      I would suggest that wat you would achieve with this is a format a file that does not work with any application that only supports any one format, which would be most of them.

      Oh and if you are suggesting a format whereby the file is stored in a manner that is acceptable under all three standards, then you

      • So... For an application to support your grandunifieddocumentformat it would have to understand al three... OK.

        Hey, it's not any worse than OOXML, where for an application to support it, it has to understand the old binary format from Word 95!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ajehals ( 947354 )
          Erm, wouldnt an application that support all three standards need to have support for that binary format too?
  • I think it's only fair if everybody gets a standard of their own.
    It's only right.
  • I thought so :) As Andy Updegrove writes on his blog, Microsoft is taking a balls-out effort to do whatever is within its power to kill ODF. Gosh, I wonder why... And in other news: http://www.bytesfree.org/bfblog/index.php/2007/05/ 21/all-your-rights-are-belong-to-us/ [bytesfree.org] -Cyrus
  • Your documents interoperate you.

  • PR (Score:1)

    by instagib ( 879544 )
    The press release starts with: "As part of its continued commitment to deliver interoperability by design, Microsoft ...". This is just hilarious. If lies would hurt, MS PR writers would scream the whole day.
  • ...the pedantic "Owe owe ex ehm ell dash you owe eff" or the retarded "Ooksmul dash you off"...
  • Looks like it should be the caption after Batman socks The Joker in the jaw.
  • That's the great thing about standards - there are so many to choose from !
  • I get too much work from the .NET realm to ever diss Microsoft, because some of their stuff works quite well and saves me quite a bit of time. Some other products... forget it. I think however that when a corporation takes on more than (arbitrary number) say 40 workers, it becomes evil. And now Microsoft has fallen into that evil, and is joining with the empire that emits more greenhouse gasses than the USA [independent.co.uk], spies on our military [yahoo.com], threatens minorities [bbc.co.uk], pollutes recklessly [boston.com], threatens the US with nuclear weap [wikinews.org]
  • We still haven't got a 'standard' image format, so why should we ever expect to see a single document format?

    Consider that images are fairly easy to describe - "a grid of pixels, each pixel being a particular colour" - and then consider the plethora of image formats still in use today - bmp, jpeg, tiff, gif

    Why is this the case? Because needs change depending on context - for images, format choice depends on: file size, fidelity/lossyness, multiple image support, transparency, and the doozy - backward compat
  • Is this in revenge of the small number of Vista copies sold in China?

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