Microsoft OOXML opponents won’t back down

Electoral politics is a winner-take-all power orgy. OOXML is merely a waste of time, a supposed "standard" that cannot be implemented by anyone but Microsoft, and which even Microsoft does not implement.

About the only way that power politics and OOXML are similar is in how OOXML was railroaded through the ISO by the combination of lots of money and no ethics.

Oh, never mind, OOXML and American politics are a perfect match. Well, that is if somehow Microsoft gains the power to force people to _use_ OOXML.

Yes, Bob, we get the idea, you're an anarchist, you hate American politics.

I'm angry at Debian, but do you see me posting a swipe at them under every Ubuntu article?

Give it a rest already.

> Give it a rest already.

Never.

I'll be breaking my fingernails on the inside of the gas chamber door, too.

Of course, you could always point out where I'm wrong.

> I'm angry at Debian...

No one has a gun to your head taking "contributions" to Software In The Public Interest. Can't say that about the IRS.

>> Of course, you could always point out where I'm wrong.

You're wrong to evangelize your political viewpoints on a Linux site.

Bob, all you're doing is creating an audience of people who wish you would go away. It doesn't matter how right you you might be, and with politics nobody will ever agree on who's right- this is a Linux site and that's why we're here. If you were continually going on about how horrible mass-market American beers are, or how much better imported vehicles are, or the pleasures of breathing clean air, drinking clean water, and having great sex, it doesn't how right you are- it's all off-topic. Why don't you host your own discussion forum for the folks who are interested?

> Why don't you host your own discussion forum for the folks who are interested?

And this is....? Folks seem quite interested.

Anyway, I wasn't the one who wrote/posted the original article. I am commenting on the article. If the subject matter of the article is inappropriate, why put my butt on the burner?

Uhm, guys, Bob wasn't the one who inject politics into the conversation. The story itself did that.

OOXML is an international problem, not an American problem. Bob, you're confused about what "interested" means.

> You're wrong to evangelize your political viewpoints on a Linux site.

Looking back up at the original comment I made, I don't see where I'm advocating a particular political point of view.

The article drew a parallel between (or at least drew together) the ISO certification of OOXML and the American political process, so Tuxchick you're ire at me is completely misplaced. Or did you not read the article?

I bemoaned corrupt, destructive power politics regardless of the forum in which that cut-throat political maneuvering takes place. Certainly both OOXML and this (and prior) US elections have been marked with the bending and twisting of the "rules" past the point of absurdity.

So is disliking abuses of the "political" decision making process now going to be declared anathema? Certainly both Gus and Tuxchick jumped to extreme and unwarranted conclusions, reading into what I had written here far more than what I had in fact written.

If Dino and I can find common ground, anything is possible.

> Bob, you're confused about what "interested" means.

Not at all. You always have the option of _not_ wasting your time reading what I write. Morbid curiosity is still "interest", and you continue to be interested enough to have posted in this thread _twice_.

>> Looking back up at the original comment I made, I don't see where I'm advocating a particular political point of view.

Yes, I thought about that after I posted. But I thought I would allow you to rebut before pointing out that (me takes a deep breath) my response was a response to your response to gus3. Gus3's response, although inspired by your thread primer, was directed more generally at the political rhetoric characteristically present in your posts.

> was directed more generally at the political rhetoric characteristically present in your posts.

The mind is a very powerful filter. One generally sees what one expects to see. Human nature.

Well Bob, you do turn most of your posts into political rants, so it's no wonder people are flinging their hands in the air and groaning "argh not again!"

I think you all missed the point. The article was pure spin, it attempted to turn the objections to OOXML, and how it was pushed through th ISO/IEC standards process, into a partisan anti Microsoft effort.

> The article was pure spin...

It should have been an "Onion" article, agreed.

People, people!

We must remember that political expediency can never be achieved in said forum if the sum total of our writings are to simply broach Linux minutae. Nay, we must always be open to new and interesting diatribes no matter from whence they come. To do any less would be to forfeit the freedoms that make this forum so great.

So let us humbly admit that all who post do so at their own level of sociological acumen. And bravado, no matter how quaint, in the face of opposing views, will never close the ever-widening gap between technical ideologies.

So let us now be at ease with one another and respect the psychological backdrop to any posts which henceforth appear on this most pleasant forum.

(I haven't got the faintest idea of what I just wrote...) :- )

The Onion and Minutiae? You got it! http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/researchers_disc...

"These tiny sub-minutiae, or 'boredons,' are so insignificant that they contain almost no information, useless or otherwise,"

Glorious!