Signal Eleven

I’ve already been on the subject before, and I had promised a post about RSS.

Well today is RSS awareness day, and RSS advocates should promote and raise the global awareness of RSS as a tool.

Not this time. Remember ODE? Well, it’s time to try again and this what is going to occupy my labour day afternoon.

Instead, I’m gonna link you to a very informative post on “Avventure Planetarie”, hoping Paolo will forgive me for the recent content piggybacking (Voyager, now RSS…)

It’s in Italian, (and I know a few readers will be pleased), but for you non-italian speakers, check out RSSday, the website promoting the event presenting RSS using a nice video. (with an awful audio, though)

Oh, and I expect to see a definite increase in RSS subscriptions in tomorrow stats,  mmkay? :-)

Stay tuned, more to come.

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Globalisation Institute - Brussels’ most popular think tank website - Unbundling Microsoft Windows

Yes, I did not comment on the fine issued to Microsoft by the EU.

But this is even cooler. An it’s not only because it’s Fall.

Apparently, some one is starting to realize that the de facto monopoly of MS in the PC OSs market isn’t good for the market, for the consumer….for anybody, and they are starting to talk about ways to break this situation. It’s not a natural situation, so the antitrust committee has some solid ground to work upon.

Stay tuned, more to come

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NoOOXML: NO to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard

Yup, I supported this for some time, but admittedly it was more because of “ideologic” haste toward Microsoft than real knowledge of the facts.

This is informative. In brief, it’s about the standardization of the file format used by Microsoft Office 2008.

Historically there hasn’t been any “recognized” standard to store electronic documents, until last year when the ISO ratified the ODF (Open Document Format) as a fully fledged standard. It’s the format used by OpenOffice.org, an office suite open and free and by other office solutions.

This means that ODF is now an international recognized standard, adopted by governments, public administrations, a common ground that ensure that a document written and stored today will be still accessible 50 years from now (if you still give a damn about what you write today), without being hostage of the decision of a single software producer, as happens using .doc and .xls…

who knows if Microsoft Office 2024 (Ultimate Pro! :) ) will still be able to open your high school diary you wrote on your 486 using Office 95 (should you care to do so :) )

Microsoft tried to counteract and keep his “power” on the users by releasing some kind of specs about its new (NEW!) format in Office 200, and formed a commitee to promote the adoption of such format (OOXML) as standard ISO.

First of all, no thanks, we already have ODF. Second, the specs have several questionable carachteristics, and, this was new to me, Office 2008 DOESN’T EVEN FULLY IMPLEMENTS THIS SPECS!

It would be like standardizing a screw with an odd size that IS NEVER BEEN BUILT.

Madness.

I seize the moment to encourage anyone to download and try OpenOffice.org.

If you’re the average Office user you won’t even notice the difference with Microsoft Office and you will save a lot of money. Oh, I forgot, nobody pays for software anymore…well, you’ll have that warm fuzzy feeling of being on the honest side.

And don’t pirate software. It bites you back. If you use Microsoft office for free (!) at home, your governent, school, university, employer, you-name-it will have to provide you the same software in the office, school, public office. And pay for that. Oh sorry, MAKE YOU PAY TAXES FOR THAT.

Oh dear, it’s been years since last time I embarked myself in such a discussion. I feel young ^_^

Stay tuned, more to come.

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