Get your five a day at dis29500.org
We have been busy little sourcerers over the past week, rewriting large parts of the dis29500.org site to give it a facelift with lots of fancy widgets from the dojo toolkit. As well as being able to comment on the many interesting dispositions (my favorite so far is CO-0158) you can press one of the handy “tag and go” buttons to record your thoughts and move on to another. We are asking the Free and Open community (yes, that includes you) to help us by reviewing and tagging five a day so we can review all of them by the start of the Ballot Resolution Meeting on the 25th of this month.
3000+ Good Reasons to Dump Windows. Every day…
Everyone knows that there are lots of Viruses, Malware, Spybots and the like out there….
But now, according to the BBC these malicious programs have reached unprecedented levels.
Reports vary but some estimates suggest there were five times as many variants of malicious programs in circulation in 2007 compared to 2006.
Security company Panda Software said it was getting more than 3,000 novel samples of so called malware every day.
And it gets worse…
Security software testing organisation AV Test reported that it saw 5.49 million unique samples of malicious software in 2007 – five times more than the 972,606 it saw in 2006.
And to cap it all…
Most of the malicious programs detected by these security organisations are aimed at the various versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
Now there are many reasons why the criminal hacker writes mainly for Windows, and most are to with the very poor system level architecture of the file and operating system itself.
There are countless examples and descriptions on the Internet as to why viruses and the like do not seem to target Unix, Linux and Macs and they all, in the main, boil down to the fact that these systems use proper, multi-user file and process management.
As with any virus in the real world, if it can’t jump from one host to another, it can’t propagate and will simply die or fester on its own. This is just the same with computer viruses.
Microsoft’s Windows OS, when connected to the Internet, is just like the world’s biggest toddler’s nursery. You know (if you’ve have ever had kids) how they all mix fluids and spread diseases between themselves faster than you can get a tissue to wipe their dribbly nose.
On a “proper” computer operating system, the analogy would be each kid living in a hermetically sealed bubble. But with the tools to be able to communicate and transfer “solids” through appropriately secure membranes specifically fit for purpose.
Go on, dump Windows.
[Update] I just went and checked the latest WILDLIST. The list of all “active” known viruses actually in the wild. Just read the list and look at the names. Notice how many are for non-windows architectures… About 2. One for Javascript and one html based.
Should ISO throw out OOXML?
According to several reports this morning, the EU (god bless ‘em) are digging deeply into Microsoft’s attempts to steamroller OOXML through the ISO last September.
As part of its battle against proponents of ODF – which was approved as the ISO standard last year – Redmond swelled the ranks of standards bodies with Microsoft allies in the hope of ratifying its Office file format as the default standard for international use.
Microsoft had tried to fast-track OOXML via Ecma International, the group which originally rubber-stamped the format. However, a vote of the draft (DIS 29500) failed to gain sufficient approval last September.
According to the Wall Street Journal, EU officials are now considering if Microsoft’s actions – which came under fire from critics who accused the firm of underhand tactics and even vote-rigging – were illegal.
The timing of this release couldn’t really be better for the “no campaign“. Just a few weeks before the NBs (National Standards Bodies) meet to discuss the proposed resolutions to the 3522 comments raised against the specification, this can only help to fuel the concern of many that Microsoft are endeavouring to push through not just simply a flawed standard, but one whose sole intention is to prolong their lock-in of customers (and so maintain their Office cash cow) with proprietary and binary storage methods and Intellectual Monopoly.
Please let your national body know that the EU obviously has some serious concerns about Microsoft’s intentions with their OOXML proposition.
Personally, I think enough is enough. The ISO should drop this whole fiasco like a ton of bricks, throw out dis29500 and force Microsoft, and their puppet ECMA, to go through the normal processes and abide by the normal rules. Just like Adobe did with PDF…
Thanks to Matt Assay’s blog where I first read about this.
[Update] Here’s something I found quite amusing whilst getting the urls for this item. If you search Google for “no ooxml” see what the ad is that crops up? I’m not going to spoil your fun, but please click on it! 
