Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us
Here's an amazing video on YouTube from Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology of Kansas State University on what web 2.0 really is about: people. It's only a draft and the final version isn't expected to arrive until late Februaury, so be sure to leave your comments.
The Contradictory Nature of OOXML (Part II) – 19 Nations Respond
Well the results are in, and an unprecedented nineteen countries have responded during the contradictions phase - most or all lodging formal contradictions with Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC), the ISO/IEC body that is managing the Fast Track process under which OOXML (now Ecma 476) has been submitted. This may not only be the largest number of countries that have ever submitted contradictions in the ISO/IEC process, but nineteen responses is greater than the total number of national bodies that often bother to vote on a proposed standard at all.
Ordinarily, contradictions would be posted at the JTC1 site relatively quickly. However, in this case I am told, Ecma will be given the opportunity to prepare responses before the contradictions will be posted, with a deadline of February 28. On or before that date, Ecma will respond with its proposed "resolution" for each contradiction. Once this has been received, JTC 1 will publish the response, accompanied by the text of the contradictions themselves, as submitted by the national bodies. At that point, a decision can be made on the next step.
From: The Standards Blog.
A simple unix/linux daemon in Python
by Sander MarechalI've written a simple Python class for creating daemons on unix/linux systems. It was pieced together for various other examples, mostly corrections to various Python Cookbook articles and a couple of examples posted to the Python mailing lists. It has support for a pidfile to keep track of the process. I hope it's useful to someone!
Update 2009-05-31: An anonymous contributor has written a version of the Daemon class suitable for Python 3.x.
Yankees in the Court of King Arthur, with a Microsoft Agenda
ANSI/INCiTS has completed their review of Ecma 376, and is ready to cast their ISO/IEC Contradiction Review Phase Fast Track Ballot in favor of Ecma 376 being rammed through ISO, as Sam Hiser points out in his PlexNex blog:
Rather than confront the clear evidence of contradictions and inconsistencies, the brave hearts at ANSI/INCiTS choose to narrow the definition of what a contradiction is. And narrow it they did. They decided that one standard contradicts another standard only if the proposed standard causes the existing standard not to work. […] Because both files can physically exist on the same disk without interfering with each other, our champions determined that OOXML did not contradict ODF. Maybe they thought this would go unnoticed, but as one disheartened friend of open standards pointed out:
“this argument can be used for every XML format, every programming language, every operating system, in fact every software standard, since software is ultimately data, and data can be segregated on disks. So they essentially chose a definition so narrow that it nullified the concept of ‘contradiction’ for most of what JTC1 has authority over.”
I can only hope that the European standards institutes have more sense and see ANSI's recommendation for what it is and fight this thing untill the end.
From: Open Stack.
