11.11.08
Posted in General Management, Political, Small Business at 23:24 by lnxwalt
Starting, growing, and operating a small business is an all-encompassing job. It includes many tasks that we do not always associate with business. For example, if you are in business, you are affected by (and in turn have some minimal effect upon) the economy. You are affected by taxation. You are affected by education. You are affected by policy decisions made by pointy-headed bureaucrats, decisions that benefit LOOACs at the expense of SLOBs.
This means that any small business forum or discussion must admit that questions of faith, politics, societal improvement, and economics are germane to any competent business discussion. After all, if your faith does not influence or govern the way you run your business, you don’t really have a faith. If your voice is not allowed in a political or social discussion, then whose voice will be? If you, the provider of jobs, are not included in talks about jobs in the inner cities or jobs for ex-convicts, how can these problems be addressed? When talk turns to taxation, you, the payer of taxes, need to be the first and foremost part of the discussion.
Zoning issues, environmental regulations, safety regulations, all affect you, and not just negatively. Safety regulations, for example, reduce your insurance costs by reducing accidents and reducing the damage caused by those that do occur. Zoning can prevent “Big Blue” from opening a superstore across the street from your little grocery, or it can keep you from opening in the part of town you desire to serve. Even economic empowerment initiatives, which often involve tax subsidies for businesses that open / move into certain areas and hire local residents, affect you. This is especially true if you are already in the area and your taxes are being used to subsidize competitors who move into your market area.
Small business is an everything job. Everything you are, everything you do, everything you believe is all wrapped up in that enterprise. And if it is not, you should be thinking about how you’re going to replace your business, because you have certainly lost your hunger and desire.
Therefore, do not feel that you cannot or should not be involved in the debate around any issue, whether schools, the economy, taxes, or foreign imports. You will be among the first affected by any decision that is made, so get involved. Attend your town’s board and council meetings. You cannot hit them all, but pick one or two and hit those (school board, water district, sewer district, cemetery district, irrigation district, public power district, resource conservation district, park district, fire protection district, et cetera). If we are going to make this country run right, it is going to be small business owners that make it happen.
small business
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09.04.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:39 by lnxwalt
Often, those of us who work around computers, particularly support staffers, will give regular computer users the impression that security is about having a good firewall, a good anti-virus program, and a good anti-spyware program, and keeping those programs updated. The fact is, there is no such thing as perfect and unbreachable security. There is only harder to breach and easier to detect when a breach occurs security. Today’s article is a short and non-detailed statement about what to do after your security is breached.
What do you do when your computer is infected with Antivirus XP 2008? What do you do when every time you turn the computer on, it opens up a porn site? What do you do when your computer is sending out spam? When you suspect that your computer is infected with something that may collect your banking or credit card information and send it to someone else?
We have been discussing online security and spam recently. It occurred to me that someone might say “you just do this, this, and this, and you won’t have any problem with security”. And in fact, that is exactly what people tend to say: stop using Internet Explorer and your security problems will go away; do not log in with admin rights, and your security problems will go away; use restrictive “group policy object” settings and your security problems will go away. Each of those actions may reduce the number of potential security holes, but none of these, either by itself or in tandem with other actions, will completely eliminate security problems.
I think we have to compare it to the physical world. We think we are secure in our homes, but from time to time, we read of someone killed in his or her own home by bullets fired from a passing vehicle. We think we are secure in our local cities, but we can all recall hearing about this or that violent crime which took place in those very cities. We think we are secure because we do not carry cash, but many a criminal has stolen credit card information from unsuspecting victims. We think we are secure because of our new sheriff or police chief, our new mayor or governor, because of Senator so-and-so, or even because of our President. But presidents, governors, senators, mayors, and even sheriffs and police chiefs cannot protect us from every possible threat.
We have to accept that some threats are so unlikely to happen, or will do so little damage if they do happen, that we cannot justify taking any action to prevent them. Otherwise, we’ll build ourselves little cages to keep the danger out, never realizing that we are really just keeping ourselves in. It is important to realize that we can never completely eliminate threats to our well-being. The only thing we can do is reduce the likelihood of the most serious and likely threats and the potential damage that could happen as a result.
If your door is unlocked, you have nothing to complain about if your stuff gets stolen. At the same time, you do not need to become so paranoid that you have fifteen different locks on your door. If a serious felon comes after you, the locks will only slow him down a little–they will not stop him from entering your home.
In the same way, if you go to the ATM at midnight, especially in a bad section of town, you have nothing to complain about when you get robbed. But do not let paranoia keep you from ever visiting the bank. If there is money around, it will attract those who want to have money without working for it. You can become a smaller target, but you cannot completely stop thieves and robbers from coming after you.
And so it is in the online world. You can reduce the likelihood of a security breach and make it harder for someone to breach your security, but you can never make it impossible.
What, then, should you do about this? Accept it. Only then will you also accept the need to back up your computer’s contents regularly. Backing up, as I’m using it, means to make a copy that is not on the computer’s hard drive.
One place I worked set up daily, weekly, and monthly backups, after a user on the network accidentally erased a shared folder on a server. Oops! Who hasn’t had a hard drive suddenly fail, instantly shutting down access to everything that was on it? Usually, we have not taken the time to back the data up, so whatever was there is generally lost. This is why we need to always be sure to back up our files regularly. This is even more important in a small, locally-owned business (SLOB).
There are many different kinds of backups, and different kinds of software to make them, but that is beyond the scope of this article. I would suggest that you get a book about data backups (try Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Borders) or that you write down your operating system and hard drive size and take that information to one of the bright young “associates” at your local consumer electronics store. Whatever solution you wind up with is probably better than what you have right now.
I know a family that buys a new computer about once per year. It seems that they have a teen who downloads things and winds up infecting and destroying their computer. I believe that they would benefit from backing up their data, especially since they refuse to follow any of the other security advice.
If they had a fairly recent full-disk backup, they could sledge* the hard drive, install a new hard drive, and do the recovery. In reality, there are some complications to deal with. But certainly, it is better to have your data than it is to lose it.
Please be aware that some potential threats, such as a fire, would really require that your backed-up data be kept off-site, but a home or even a home-based business is not going to have an off-site location to store that data. Also, you should occasionally test to ensure that you can recover a file from the backed-up data. If you cannot retrieve lost information from it, it isn’t really a backup, is it?
*
- sledge
- v.: to break apart with a sledgehammer
online security
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08.20.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:37 by lnxwalt
I am “the tech guy” at work, so I get asked pretty regularly how someone can know whether an online merchant is trustworthy. And honestly, I have found that you cannot know that any particular merchant is trustworthy in the absence of someone you trust reporting their experiences with a company.
First, let me tell you what you should not trust, or at least not very much.
- If the site is encrypted and “secure”, all that means is that it will not be easy for someone to steal your information as it transfers to the site–it says nothing about what happens once the information gets there.
- Those seals of approval that say a site is “hacker-proof” mean nothing, because online vandals could suddenly find an undiscovered flaw at any time.
- The green highlighting on the address bar on certain encrypted sites is also deceptive. It means that the site owner went through some additional identity verification. But all identity tells you is whom you are dealing with. It says nothing about whether that individual or organization is honest or deceptive, nor does it tell you how well the site is safeguarded against tricks that could leave you unintentionally sending your information to some organized crime ring.
- Likewise, when an encrypted site doesn’t use a security certificate vendor that your browser company approves of, you’ll get warnings that the certificate is invalid or could not be verified. Sometimes invalid is invalid–perhaps the certificate is expired or revoked–and sometimes invalid is quite valid, such as https://mail.yahoo.com/, which gives an error because the certificate is for https://login.yahoo.com/. Sometimes, you will get an error because the site’s owner signed the site’s certificate themselves. This is similar to people who are born in certain areas or time periods when reliable records are not available, using witness testimony, family Bibles, and church records to verify their identities. (If you don’t see it yet, all that a state issued identification card does is say that the state agrees that the witnesses [such as the doctor that signed your birth certificate] are reliable. Similarly, a certificate signed by one of the major certificate companies merely says that they say your site’s identification documents are reliable based on the testimony of the site owner.)
But this is not intended to scare you. I just do not want you to be deceived that just because your address bar turns gold or green that you can trust that site with your money or your private information.
In a way, it is similar to conducting business over the telephone. Unless you have personally met someone and spoken with them long enough to reliably recognize the person’s voice, conducting any financial transaction over the telephone is inherently dangerous. You really have no way to know whom you are talking to. And so, you should be at least as careful about whom you give financial or personal information to when you are on a telephone call as you are on the Web.
Which brings me to the point. I do not do business with unknown parties without some kind of personal recommendation. I do not buy a lot of things online, because there are very few organizations that I trust with my information. I do not buy anything over the phone for the same reason. In general, I walk into a retail location to purchase whatever I am getting. If I’m in an area long enough, I get to have a feeling about which of the locally-owned business are worthy of trust. Sometimes, I misjudge, as will you. Which why I try to err on the side of caution.
You can only know a certain number of companies, as to whether they are reliable or trustworthy. For others, you can either throw caution to the wind or you can choose to avoid them. We all do both, based on some inner (and probably unconscious) self-preservation system. We do, however, have to choose where the balance lies. In non-personal, electronic transactions, we have no way to “sense” where the balance should be. We have to think about things and try to overrule our emotions in this area.
With online transactions, though, we have a kind of trusted recommender. You do not have to give your credit card information directly to Joe’s Fertilizer Factory–you can conduct the transaction using PayPal, Google’s Checkout, or one of several other payment intermediaries. Many of these have anti-fraud protections built into the service. I recommend that you look for PayPal or Checkout on every site you choose to do business with. In this way, you can have a small number of trusted partners who help you to do business with hundreds of other businesses.
If you operate an online business and you are not using PayPal and Checkout, why not? You are losing out on potential sales. Because both vendors have the trust of the general public, they tend to calm prepurchase anxiety. Also, the offer some protection to your business–no more worries about fraulent credit purchases.
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08.11.08
Posted in Political, Society at 5:02 by lnxwalt
The Poverty Business
In recent years, a range of businesses have made financing more readily available to even the riskiest of borrowers. Greater access to credit has put cars, computers, credit cards, and even homes within reach for many more of the working poor. But this remaking of the marketplace for low-income consumers has a dark side: Innovative and zealous firms have lured unsophisticated shoppers by the hundreds of thousands into a thicket of debt from which many never emerge.
Federal Reserve data show that in relative terms, that debt is getting more expensive. In 1989 households earning $30,000 or less a year paid an average annual interest rate on auto loans that was 16.8% higher than what households earning more than $90,000 a year paid. By 2004 the discrepancy had soared to 56.1%. Roughly the same thing happened with mortgage loans: a leap from a 6.4% gap to one of 25.5%. “It’s not only that the poor are paying more; the poor are paying a lot more,” says Sheila C. Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
In college classes on finance, we learned that reward follows risk. In one particular class, FIN 432: Financial Institutions and Capital Formation, we discussed in great depth the thrift crisis of the 1980s. One of the primary causes was the removal of the interest caps that limited the amount of interest that banks and other consumer finance institutions could charge and collect. Overnight, rates went up and most of their assets consisted of long-term fixed rate real estate loans.
In today’s economy, one of the chief problems is that those caps are not low enough and any enforcement is long after the fact. It does not take much looking around to realize that there is an imbalance. People, like the woman in the article, are placed at a disadvantage versus lending corporations, who control the contracts to prevent individual consumers from having any legal refuge or remedy. Even the extreme remedy, bankruptcy, has been stripped of some of its restorative power, as some debts may survive bankruptcy.
I call upon Congress and our regulatory agencies to immediately act to contain and restrain the actions of all consumer finance lenders. The next US Attorney General should set a goal of marching fifty financial industry CEOs into courtrooms in orange jumpsuits and leg irons in the first eighteen months of the next administration. Already, many people do not vote because they do not see their voices as being heard. They feel that their votes have no effect on the course of this nation or their day to day lives. But fifty no-bail arrest warrants, complete with heavy TV coverage, will do a lot to restore confidence in our system of governance. I suggest that the fifty CEOs be accompanied by 25 CFOs and 25 regulatory agency heads (or employees, where applicable) who stonewalled action against the misbehavior.
It would be too much to hope for public hangings. If that woman saw the person who arranged her exploitive auto loan hanged, she would begin to have hope that justice will prevail, and so would numerous others who have experienced similar situations. However, we will have to be content with prison sentences for the scumbags getting rich by targeting lower-income people with take-it-or-leave-it financing contracts. This, even though they risk turning us into one of those third world countries where they change leadership as often as we change our underpants.
I also want to take this opportunity to praise the honestly-run, small locally-owned businesses (SLOBs) in your community. There are plenty of scammers, large and small, but the honest SLOBs deserve your business. They deserve your support. They deserve your advocacy. They are the businesses that will hire your nephew, your brother-in-law, and the kid down the street. While the big guys lay off more people than they hire, smaller businesses are the ones that keep the economy going. Shop the local stores, buy the locally-produced products, hire locally-owned companies for your service needs, do at least some of your banking with a locally-owned bank. Celebrate your small, locally-owned businesses (SLOBs), for they are real American heroes.
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07.28.08
Posted in News and Announcements at 4:12 by lnxwalt
I have been pretty busy, what with being on the road eleven out of the past fifteen months. There are a lot of partially-completed projects around the house and around the sites. Even though I probably will not be home for another two to three months, I have started trying to clean things up a little, starting with the WCC site.
There is very little in the way of content, other than the blog articles, but I’m also planning on fixing that as well. The WCC home site, like our communities site, is absolutely barren and undecorated now, but we’ll soon be prettying it up a little. Probably nowhere near the way it should look by launch day, but certainly an improvement over the burned-out ghetto it has been.
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07.04.08
Posted in Economy at 0:31 by lnxwalt
By now, everyone knows that the higher cost of fuel is causing airlines to tack on fees and restrictions, as well as to cut back on flights to smaller cities. The airlines do need to raise prices and reduce some costs in order to stay (or more accurately, become) profitable. However, the fees are like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.
Airlines, like most other businesses, need to operate in such a way that their customers do not mind paying a profitable rate to obtain the company's product or service. Given all the unpleasantness of airports (thanks to security hysteria and airline routes & scheduling that turn a short trip into an all-day ordeal), airlines really should be thinking about making planes a more pleasant place to be.
Personally, I love the flight from point A to point B. I might feel differently if it was a longer flight, but for the few hours I am aloft, I really enjoy it. Yet, I would gladly drive across the nation if it meant I could avoid airports.
I flew from California to Newark, New Jersey last year. It was quite an experience, because I found myself waiting for a few hours at Dallas-Fort Worth airport. The year before that, flying to Albany, New York, I spent a few hours at Atlanta airport. A couple of weeks ago, I spent hours at Minneapolis airport. These may all be pleasant cities, but I really do not desire to go through their airports any more.
And that, to me, suggests a way out for the airlines. You see, the airlines' business model is based upon charging very high prices to those who are most desperate to buy your product, while discounting to attract those who are price-sensitive. Because business fliers are usually absolutely desperate, they pay the highest rates, moderated by frequent flier miles and bulk discount plans. Because many business fliers' flights are paid by their companies, they take the lowest priced from point A to point B, even if that means going through points C and D before arriving.
One thing the airlines might want to look at is going back to direct flights to most destinations, coupled with fixed-price tickets that cover the costs and bring a decent profit. I think this would be the best way to restore the profitability of airlines while giving a more pleasing experience to their customers. One thing is sure: the current model of treating paying customers like cattle to be herded and prodded is failing under the strain of our current economy.
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06.17.08
Posted in General Management at 4:26 by lnxwalt
Anthropogenic global warming is taken as a proven fact and an article of faith, but many climate and weather scientists disagree. Science, if you did not know, is a religion. This means that it may be time for the founding of non-AGW-believing branch.
The founder of The Weather Channel recently wrote a guest article on “Watts Up With That?“, a blog that debunks much pro-AGW doctrine.
The future of our civilization lies in the balance.
That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming. According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees. Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences.
I read Watts Up from time to time. What I’m seeing there interests me. You see, with my main job, I go to places that are devasted by fires, floods, and earthquakes. Let me tell you, this year looks to be a busy year for me. And I’m seeing, thanks to Watts Up, that it may all be caused by the sun. Hundreds of years ago, there was a period of time we call the “little ice age” because it was so bitterly cold. It appears that the pattern of sunspots observed then resembles the pattern observed today.
The article attempts to refute much of what former Vice President Al Gore is telling us (that man’s activities are causing the earth’s temperatures to rise, and that one of the possible consequences of our activities is the extinction of our species). I’m not a weather or climate expert, so I have to rely upon what those who are experts tell me.
I saw on the news that skiing is still happening in Colorado in the middle of June. Heavy thunderstorms and rainstorms have stayed over much of the Midwest, producing tornadoes, flooding, and lots of damage. If sunspot-caused global cooling is now in session, this is what lies ahead for us over the next few years. The cool year we are experiencing in 2008 could be the blueprint for the next few years.
What can you do? There are some things you can do, and should. First of all, check to see whether you are living in a low-lying area that is prone to flooding. Are you in a floodplain? Perhaps in an area that is protected by dams and levees? If the answer is ‘yes’, you need to start working toward relocating. Remember, one wise move can save the lives of yourself and your family.
There are other things you can do. Contact your state’s disaster preparedness / response / recovery agency for information on what you can do to prepare for an event.
The important thing is that you take the time to become acquainted with the possible kinds of disaster, from fire, to earthquake, to flood, to windstorm (e.g., tornado or hurricane), to societal breakdown, to a meteorite hitting and destroying your home. Then, develop a realistic plan for dealing with each situation, including possible actions you can take beforehand to lessen the impact of the situation. Finally, act on the plan, preparing for disaster–it will come eventually, so your best bet is to be ready.
Another important thing to look into is insurance. If your home or business burned down, you’d be in a world of hurt. But with insurance, you at least have a fighting chance at getting back to where you were. Be sure to ask about the national flood insurance program and any corresponding programs for earthquakes or other big events.
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06.05.08
Posted in Economy, Society at 2:42 by lnxwalt
PlexNex: Wind Will Power Our Future
According to the report, the DOE expects coastal states to harness 50,000 megawatts of offshore wind in shallow water depths of less than 100 feet. The report notes for some coastal states (like Massachusetts) shallow water offshore wind can provide 100 percent of the electricity supply.
The DOE further states that increasing the use of wind power to supply 20 percent of the nation’s electricity would reduce carbon dioxide emissions (that contribute to climate change) from the electricity generation sector by 25 percent while creating up to a half million new American jobs.
Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I have been harping on the need to act for some time. Being a California resident, I have seen how our state and local leaders are harming our economy by waiting until they are forced to start moving us toward energy independence.
I think of the proposal to build a wind farm in the hills Northeast of Apple Valley. The Town council spoke up against it, fearing that the appearance would keep people from buying homes in the part of the Town nearest that area. We’re talking about a place that has occasionally suffered blackouts because of California’s lack of power capacity. Even the slightest bit of common sense would say that having local generation capacity is a good thing in times of scarcity.
Maybe there is a silver lining in the fuel price increases. If the price increases force our governments and our society (including individuals and families) to seek out alternatives to fossil fuels, then that part, at least, is good.
What we have been doing is unsustainable. Our homes are large, with large expanses of glass, and poorly insulated. We make up for this by turning up the furnace or air conditioner. We live in places that are distant from where we earn our livings, so we spend a lot of time getting to work and back home. Because we are so far from our workplaces, there aren’t many people following exactly the same routes, so we almost have to use private vehicles to commute–sure, we could take the bus or the train, but we’d add an hour or more to our commute time.
We need to change, but not just as individuals. We need change society-wide. We need to have our leaders behind these changes, whether it means public financing or changing regulations and zoning to make sustainable living allowable and in fact preferred. That our state and local governments have ignored this for the past thirty years is tragic. If they continue their present policies, there will be a very painful time when the lights go out and the tanks run dry. At that time, we will all suffer unbearable anguish, although wealthier and better-connected individuals might escape the effects longer or suffer less than their neighbors do.
It’s Time To Change
Sam has found an important editorial in support of these ideas. I am not an East coast resident, and have no opinion as to the desirability of the “Cape Wind” project. However, we can either do something, even if it isn’t a perfect solution, or we can sit on our hindquarters until the lights go out and we are trying to survive a breakdown of society. At the very least, we’ll learn more as we proceed, including whether existing technology is sufficient or we need to develop new technology.
Technorati Tags: alternative energy, economic development
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05.26.08
Posted in Economy, Political at 1:14 by lnxwalt
Even while the bad economic news continues, we need to continue to invest in our communities. Instead of giving tax breaks to large corporations that move operations into the area (which are paid for by smaller businesses and families), we need to use a two-fold strategy:
- Invest in building small, locally-owned businesses in the community, particularly those whose product or service is sold to buyers outside of the area. They bring funds into the local economy, and are intimately tied to the local area by the residency of their owners.
We should not be afraid to set goals for hiring of local employees, including both number and compensation levels of those employees. Nor should we be afraid to work out a deal to help with job-skills training for the employees that get hired. Remember that during the heyday of aerospace in Southern California, it was said that each job supported five other jobs in the economy. We may not reach that level, but even 1.5 other local jobs is preferable to giving funding to big box retailers paying minimum wage and costing more jobs than they bring.
- Find an area of town with reasonable land costs and build whole communities of “starter homes”. The idea is that people earning the local median income should easily be able to afford these homes. This helps with stabilizing the economy (homeowners have a reason to participate in making things better, where renters do not) and with helping your local construction, real estate, and financial industries to recover from the recession.
It does not have to be solely funded by taxpayers. A cooperative project with a group like Habitat for Humanity can have a wonderful effect on the area. Habitat often has the buyer help with the construction, which gives them some skills and experience they’ll need during the maintenance phase, and which may even open the door to a new career in construction.
In areas where it is possible, these homes should be heavily-insulated (protects occupants from temperature extremes, reduces utility costs) and maybe even utilize solar and wind generators to augment the power grid. Also, make housing areas as close to business areas as possible. Ideally, employees will be able to walk to work (this means that businesses have to follow strict environmental and safety standards, including regular inspections by regulating agencies).
What we know is this: Washington is too “bought and paid for” by large corporations that have too much at stake to truly be concerned about your little community. Instead, your community needs to take the lead and break its dependency upon outside funding, imported goods, and the now-nonexistent loyalty of corporate America. Let me say it again: most of what your community needs will not come from the feds.
Your small business is intimately tied to your community by the fact that you live and work there. This is even more true if your customers live or work there. It is in your best interest to begin promoting these concepts to your town or city council members and staff. Join your local chamber of commerce or other local business alliances and make sure they also understand and work toward this goal.
We already know from past experience that giving subsidies to large companies to come into your town does not work. Your taxpayers pay up front, and before the company’s contribution matches the benefit it received, it closes up shop and moves to the next town. The large discount retailer nicknamed “Big Blue” is well-known for this strategy, leaving empty stores in town after town. It is time to return to something that works: local community investment in local businesses is a key part of a strategy for preserving your community’s economic future.
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Posted in FLOSS, Industry News at 0:22 by lnxwalt
Suddenly, a flurry of OOXML-ODF related news « CyberTech Rambler
Fourth. We may in fact, never see a full implementation of ISO OOXML. Microsoft already said that it will support ODF 1.1, not ISO ODF (version 1.0). That is a correct technical decision, since ODF 1.1 is the norm today. Superimpose this tread of thinking on to OOXML and what do you get? Microsoft not implementing ISO OOXML, but a later, “enhanced” version which they dictate the development of. To critics who says this will not happen, let me remind you that ISO OOXML support is still an raincheck. We know that the earliest posible date is in two years time, i.e. 2010. Do you really believe that Microsoft Office format will stay stagnant at ISO OOXML for the two years??? I put my money on Microsoft Office in 2010 saving in the “updated” OOXML format, with the ability to save to ISO OOXML. When that comes true, every other office suite will still be in the same situation as they are today: forever playing catch up.
Lastly, to those who says OOXML is needed urgently, therefore we should sacrifice quality for speed, you just had egg on your face. The urgency is so strong that we can wait till 2010. Yeah!
CyberTech Rambler always has some interesting insights on the OOXML / Ecma 376 / ISO 29500 situation. I recommend reading his blog along with mine, Rob Weir’s, Andy Updegrove’s, and Pamela Jones’s. Others to read include Arnaud Le Hors and Bob Sutor.
For pro-OOXML propaganda, I recommend Brian Jones, Doug Mahugh, and Jason Matusow. Just recognize that they are constrained by their employer and so cannot speak their true minds. For example, Jason often states that he’s always against technology mandates, but if the mandate was that software used had to faithfully interpret and preserve compatibility with files used by an agency’s existing (Microsoft) software, I sincerely doubt that he’d oppose that. Rick Jelliffe’s posts on XML.com are another excellent read, once you understand that he is still sore about being branded as a wiki-editing prostitute by some overzealous OOXML opponents.
When ODF was being created at OASIS, Microsoft chose to let things go without their input. The knew that it was meant as a vendor-neutral open format that could be easily implemented by office applications suites. So why did they wait? Because their secret weapon has always been their file formats. Truthfully, nearly all of the important functionality in an office suite was already present in 1997. Very little has been added since then, other than bundling some other applications with the suite. The reason that MS Office has been used so widely is because only their product fully-understood their file formats. If you use Word and I use WordPerfect, there will always be little variations in the way the products render documents using Word’s file format. They saw ODF as just another attempt to dethrone them. If the product that runs on 90% of computers does not support the format, it will just die, they must have reasoned. But it did not turn out that way.
It turned out that the timing was right for ODF. Governments and end-users were tiring of having a single vendor for their software. They wanted vendor neutrality in their file formats and in their network protocols. They also wanted open standards, so they did not have to fear the wrath of patent-holders’ legal departments for accessing their own data. The wanted choice, not of file formats, but of vendors and products that use those formats. This is what ODF offers. OpenDocument Format (ODF, ISO 26300) is designed primarily for use by multiple vendors (althoug some claim that OpenOffice.org specific markup still exists within the format). ODF is mostly compatible with existing standards, so there is already a lot of experience with implementing parts of the standard. ODF has multiple implementations, including some that are completely independent. Once ODF went through the ISO-ification process, Microsoft suddenly realized that there are some areas (such as Europe) where laws may require governments to prefer ISO standards.
As a result, Microsoft sent their then-proprietary XML formats (dubbed Office Open XML [OOXML, sometimes called OpenXML]) through Ecma for standardization, with a target of getting the ISO seal of approval. In a contentious process that was far too short for the kind of detailed examination and changing that was needed, ISO recently approved OOXML as a standard, pending the disposition of a recent challenge. They have opened up considerably, although there are still some challenges for outside implementers of the formats.
The goal of the MS 2007 formats, as well as OOXML to some degree, is to prevent you and your business from having a choice of applications to use in creating, modifying, and reading your data. If you are locked-in by file format incompatibilities, you will not normally be willing to endure the pain of conversion to a competing product, even if that product fits your needs better. This also enables MSFT to charge higher prices, which leads to higher profits, which enables them to continue to subsidize their money-losing MSN / Live and XBox / Zune businesses. Their eventual goal, in my estimation, is to have an intravenous line into your wallet. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that they want to have you so dependent on Microsoft that you buy Microsoft-branded underwear because no one else makes undergarments compatible with the software that operates your chair.
The important thing for you to know is this: Microsoft’s Office 2007 does not support ISO standardized OOXML, and will not until at least 2010. Your .docx / .xlsx / .pptx documents are now in a doomed format that may shortly be unreadable by most software. Likewise for the corresponding macro-containing formats. If you care about continued access to your data, do not save in MS 2007 formats. Use the older .doc / .xls / .ppt formats, or even better, use ODF formats (.odt / .ods / .odp). If necessary, install the Sun plug-in (NOT the CleverAge plug-in) to enable support for ODF in your Microsoft Office software. (Unfortunately, there is not a Mac version of Sun’s plug-in yet.)
For your SLOB (small, locally-owned business), OMB (owner-managed business), or FOB (family-owned business), you might be better off holding onto what you have for a while and whenever you have to upgrade or replace a computer, going with Sun’s commercially-licensed StarOffice product (or the related open source licensed OpenOffice.org product). If you really prefer MS Office 2007, wait until SP2 is released next year, so you will have some level of ODF support built-in (and also PDF saving, the most requested feature in my workplace). Or you may want to check out IBM Lotus Symphony, which has a similar interface (like MS Office 2007, I can never find the functions I want).
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