Category: English

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OOXML vs. OpenDocument

One of the latest most talked about “wars” in the software world is the office document formats war. Both formats are XML based, and both are used to describe the miscellaneous office documents like Word and Excel documents. The OpenDocument format was developed by a committee and is already an ISO standard. OOXML, on the other hand, was developed by Microsoft and isn’t yet an ISO standard. Microsoft has been pushing and lobbying OOXML (Open Office XML) very hard to become an ISO standard.

However, from a technical point of view, OOXML is barely manageable. The format contains in it the legacy of all Microsoft Office’s previous versions and is impossible to edit correctly by external tools despite the fact that it is so-called “open”. Stรฉphane Rodriguez wrote 10 technical points why OOXML is defective by design. In one of the points, Rodriguez quotes one of Bill Gates’ memos that was exposed because of a legal case:

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Saturday, December 5 1998
To: Bob Muglia, Jon DeVann, Steven Sinofsky

Subject : Office rendering

One thing we have got to change in our strategy – allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of
the most destructive things we could do to the company.

We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities.

Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destroy Windows.

I would be glad to explain at a greater length.

Likewise this love of DAV in Office/Exchange is a huge problem. I would also like to make sure people understand this as well.

While making Office documents work only in Internet Explorer is a legal move by Microsoft (and I’m not even sure about that), obviously it’s an anti-consumer move that locks non-IE users out of the ability to view some documents online. Therefore there’s no surprise that Microsoft tries to appear to have an open document standard while in practice creating another proprietary format that can only be correctly used in Microsoft Office.

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Ace And I Moved To A New Apartment, Doing Integration At Work

This post was initially supposed to be called “Sorry For The Lack Of Updates”, but instead I decided to write about what’s currently going on in my life so that it’ll be apparent why I haven’t been updating as much as before.

I moved to a new apartment a few days ago. In four days I managed to pack all my stuff and move out. The move itself was OK, but naturally the movers sucked (it was the first time I didn’t tip the movers). Then I had to close every door and window in the apartment because I feared Ace would run away. When I finally brought her into the apartment, I took her in my car without a cage. It was actually a funny experience – she looked out the closed windows like dogs do and people were staring at the car with a lot of bewilderment.

After four days in the closed (yet air conditioned) apartment, I took Ace outside with a leash. She didn’t seem to be scared and didn’t try to run, so I let her go free. She did a lot of sniffing, and then (using some Tuna) I lured her in through the window so that she could see the connection between the inside and the outside of the apartment, which is on the ground floor. Being the smart cat that she is, that was enough for Ace. She is now a happy, free cat. She goes in and out a lot, and it seems as if she thinks the outside is an extension of the apartment.

I don’t have an Internet connection in the apartment yet. I will have on in three days. Not having an Internet connection at home isn’t nice, but isn’t too bad also – I wasn’t doing much surfing during weekdays at home anyway. But I couldn’t update the blog from home, as well.

At work I’m doing integration work for a few weeks. It’s not something that I enjoy too much – I prefer programming much more – but it’s part of the job. Doing integration has some positive side – you learn about parts of the system you didn’t know too much about before. One of the negative sides is that I don’t manage to catch up on my RSS feeds. I mean, I do read some (Internet-related) news, but not as much as I do when I’m programming. And naturally – I don’t have time to update this blog.

Today, though, I decided to take a few minutes and write this post. I’m not going to even proof-read it. So there you go.

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Best. Sales Pitch. Ever

Imagine you’re a defibrillator salesman (you know, the medical device you need to shout “CLEAR” before you attach it to someone’s chest and zap them) and you walk into a store to make the case for your product when suddenly the guy standing next to you falls because his heart stops. Then you manage to revive him with the defibrillator you’re trying to sell.

I call this the best sales pitch ever. (via Digg)

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Ideas That Made Money Although They Shouldn’t Have

Every once in a while someone comes to me asking if I want to participate on a new idea. I guess everyone wants their “million dollar exit”. Naturally, so do I. Unfortunately I haven’t made any progress lately with ideas, but I’m not pushing it – when the right idea comes, I’ll have all the time I need to implement it.

MadConomist.com came up with a list of ten ideas that shouldn’t have been profitable, but were very much so. Some items there are really surprising. (via Digg)

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Moving To A New Host

Over the weekend, I moved this blog to a new host. My previous hosting plan was at the Israeli provider HostCenter. I would recommend them to anyone specifically looking for an Israeli host and in need for person-to-person customer service in Hebrew (their customer service is very good). But the Internet is global by nature and if you don’t need personal technical support there’s no reason not to look for a better hosting plan for your website.

For the same price I used to pay HostCenter I got from IX Web Hosting more storage space, more databases, more mailboxes and a dedicated IP address. Unfortunately it seems like they don’t allow shell access (ssh) to the server, but that’s usually not needed.

The move went pretty smooth, although there were some hiccups during the period when DNS records got updated (I’m not sure that’s over – 48 hours is the time it may take) – the thing is that if you want a smooth transition, you need to leave the content on the old server live while making sure no one enters new data (e.g. comments). Another strange thing that happened was that during the transition, my Google ads started showing anti-Israeli ads that are not from Google. I have no idea how that happened and I didn’t have the time to investigate it. I immediately removed the ads from this website and I’m not sure if I’ll bring them back.

So that’s it. I feared this move a little bit – the part where I dropped all the tables from the old databases was extremely scary – but all in all it went smoothly. All 5 readers of this blog: did you feel anything?

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More Things People Do With Spare Time (and 66,000 business cards)

Yesterday I thought it was funny that a writer typed an entire book on his cellphone. It seemed like a strange way to spend your time. But now there’s a contender – Dr. Jeannine Mosely, who found herself with 66,000 business cards and decided tot build a big Menger Sponge (yes, I said Menger Sponge. This isn’t a mistake), which is a fractal cubic structure. Click the link for cool-yet-nerdy photos and information.