04.19.09
The OOXML Frauds and Other Potential New Frauds
Summary: From ISO to Washington, a vigilant’s view helps the understanding of particular deeds
ANDY UPDEGROVE has just found this news which is titled “New ISO Technical Committee Addresses Fraud Countermeasures and Controls.”
Oh, the irony! Can ISO use this standard to finally take care of itself? For the uninitiated, OOXML’s reputation as a fraud is well earned and the evidence too compelling, not just plentiful. ISO took part in this alongside Microsoft, which has its share of cronies inside ISO [1, 2].
Looking at the news, we find this article which speaks about Microsoft’s deprecation of old formats that application adapted to over the years. In relation to this article, writes Andre:
The latest discussed advocacy scheme for OOXML: The old binary formats implementations are insecure and attention to fix security flaws of implementations is reduced.
This would not be the first time that Microsoft is using this strategy. We wrote about it many time since the issue first arose [1, 2, 3, 4]. The only security menace appears to be Microsoft OOXML, which is new, untested, and whose code is not available for inspection.
For those who want a mature product which uses the international standard, there is already OpenOffice.org, whose situation is explained in the following new article from IT Pro.
IBM, Sun and OpenOffice.org
During the ongoing flirtation between IBM and Sun Microsystems, little has been said about OpenOffice.org, which has been viewed as one of the less significant parts of Sun’s open source portfolio.
Here are some remarks on the product’s relation to Novell’s fork [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
“OpenOffice.org [...] is claimed to be downloaded 2-3 million times per week.”More and more nations are moving to OpenOffice.org and the software is claimed to be downloaded 2-3 million times per week. That’s a stunning number which shows it just about doubling in over a year. It’s probably due to the economic slump around the world — a slump which stimulates savings. Microsoft is of course very worried about this because its Office margins are hurt just like Windows', so it resorts to FUD and thinks about software patents as a weapon.
On a separate note, does the state of Washington even consider anything but Microsoft Windows and Office? Of course not, according to the latest findings. Their choice is based on ‘faith’ or relationships (or whose pockets the diplomats are in). Speaking of Washington, watch what Microsoft is doing right now.
Microsoft is offering 30,000 of the vouchers in Washington as part of a national program.
This is part of a broader scam which we covered last week. There are some more Gates public relations stunts at the moment. It helps shift focus away from the principal functions of the Gates Foundation (where far bigger amounts of money are circulating — billions, not millions [1, 2]). █
