Considering all that might lie ahead for anything - be it Open Source, the housing market, outsourcing, insourcing, upward mobility or downward spirals - we thought it auspicious humorous that 2008 is the Year of the Rat. If you’re a big cheese, you might be in trouble. If you’re a rat, then this is your year to shine. We just hope you’re a fake rat like the one shown above, as this would make you cuddly, inexpensive to maintain, fundamentally harmless and less prone to disease.
Be safe, have fun, and celebrate the turning of the calendar accordingly. We’ll see you in 2008!
Posted by FA Editors at 8:00 AM PST
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BSI British Standards states: “… a standard is an agreed, repeatable way of doing something. It is a published document that contains a technical specification or other precise criteria designed to be used consistently as a rule, guideline, or definition. Standards help to make life simpler and to increase the reliability and the effectiveness of many goods and services we use. They are intended to be aspirational - a summary of good and best practice rather than general practice. Standards are created by bringing together the experience and expertise of all interested parties such as the producers, sellers, buyers, users and regulators of a particular material, product, process or service.”
In an effort to win quick converts to its bid to have Microsoft Office Open XML (MOOXML) accepted as an ISO standard, Microsoft is deprecating parts of its widely-criticized MOOXML. But whatever the new Microsoft OOXML file format with deprecated parts will eventually look like (if such a format ever appears in an actual application), these cosmetic changes don’t really make a difference for Microsoft or the world. Neither Microsoft Office 2007 or the version after that will ever likely produce a standards-compliant format. Besides, OpenDocument has been around now for a few years and is becoming widely supported in industry. However, there has been no meaningful movement from MS towards support. Actions speak louder than words.
What is described in the ECMA OOXML specification is not what is currently implemented in MS Office 2007. The actual specification: says ECMA OOXML is a format that Microsoft Office 2007 can *read*. Note, however, that it is not the format that Microsoft Office 2007 is actually *writing* for example: The Scripts, macros, passwords, Sharepoint tagshooks, DRM and other tie-ins used by MS Office 2007 are not part of the ECMA OOXML specification. If you try encrypting a document in Office 2007, it is no longer even a zip file + XML at that point. There is no editor reference application for Office Open XML, so an application can send Office Open files to Microsoft Office, and Microsoft Office can open those files, but any edits are saved in a different format!
Read on, mon cher! »
Posted by Russell at 4:18 PM PST
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I’m one of those folks who can easily spend four hours in a tub reading, sleeping, and grooming. Fortunately, I found an apartment with a “garden tub” that’s deep and that keeps water hot for hours. But, at heart, I’m a clawfoot tub gal. My grandmother had a clawfoot bathtub and I never forgave her when she “modernized” the bathroom and sent that tub to the salvage yard. After all, I could have converted that tub into a sofa like the one seen above.
I’d be in seventh heaven with two tubs. In fact, I might never leave home.
Via: Inhabitat
Posted by Linda at 8:00 AM PST
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My daughter will be nineteen years young this upcoming May, 2008. She’s my only child, and perhaps it’s that singularity that made my pregnancy and her birth so momentous for me. But, some shocking and world-shaking events happened during that time, and I’ll never forget them. It seems that when my daughter entered my life, she altered my memory (and my heart) forever.
One of those events happened on the 22nd of December in 1988, nineteen years ago today. Like President Kennedy’s assassination and the murder of Martin Luther King, I remember where I was and what I was doing when I learned that a bomb had exploded on Pan Am Flight 103, a Boeing 747, as it flew over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 258 individuals on the plane perished, as well as eleven people on the ground. As the plane smashed into the ground, it destroyed 40 homes and triggered an explosion at a gas station.
That bomb seemed to emphasize a year filled with international tension. Iran’s leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, had condemned author Salman Rushdie to death for his book, “The Satanic Verses
” in 1988. In this book, Rushdie challenged Islamic fundamentalists’ claims to an immutable religion founded by an infallible prophet. Khomeini promised heaven to anyone martyred in the attempt to kill Rushdie, who had a $6 million bounty on his head. Rushdie survived the death threats to began a five-year term as ‘Distinguished Writer in Residence’ at Emory University this year. At that time, however, Rushdie personified the fears many Americans had about Khomeini and Islamic fundamentalism.
Read on, mon cher! »
Posted by Linda at 7:00 AM PST
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