Whatever Happened to OOXML?

Why aren't we referring to this by its correct name? It shouldn't be "Office Open XML" [OOXML] it should be "Microsoft XML" [MS-XML] since no one other than Microsoft can develop products to use it. And that's assuming that the public documentation is even correct and complete. Which it isn't and never will be.

On a related topic, if I had a dime for every co-worker who came up to me in the past couple of months with the "what the heck is this .docx/.xlsx thing, and why can't I open it?" followed by me going over to their box and installing OpenOffice 3.0, I'd have a lot of dimes.

And if Bill Gates had a dime for every time there was a BSOD, He would be a...

Oh wait, He is a Billionaire.

Never mind!

Billionaire? He'd have to be at least a gazillionaire if he had a dime for every BSOD.

He would be, but he has to keep paying for lobbyists and donating money to governments to keep them buying his swill.

These days you don't so much get a BSOD as you get a box that sludges to a halt. At least with the BSOD, I knew for sure when I was done. Now I have to open the Task Manager and look at what's eating my RAM. Then I reboot ...

Quoting:Now I have to open the Task Manager and look at what's eating my RAM. Then I reboot ...

Not so much in a "corporate" environment. I mean, sure, you can "accidentally" kick the power cord out of the wall. But "Task Manager" may or (probably) may not show you what's causing XP to swap once a second, on the second.

Sarb-Ox gets used as an excuse to install a root-kitty type of thing that "monitors usage". And doesn't show up in "Task Manager", or anywhere else, really. Sure, there's a disk file in C:WINNT or some oddly-named place, but you can't delete that anyway, and if you're not 100% sure, you don't want to delete anything at all, even if you have "Administrator" permissions on your user ID, which most don't.

As a native Unix user, I'm always shocked at the superstition and cargo cultism that surrounds Windows use. On the other hand, "NetMeeting" and "Outlook" are doing their level best to convince me that programs are not a mechanical, repeatable process.

The Corporate Control Freaks (Or "CCF" as they like to be called) will never allow something as well-documented as Linux in majority use in a lot of corporations. It would mean that the users could figure out what was wrong with Cherished Pieces of Corporate Standard Software.