Darren New wrote:
> Vincent Le Chevalier wrote:
>> I think the problem is that we should be defining a standard to store 
>> text documents, not Word documents...
> 
> We have one already. ;-)
> 
> Seriously, the only reason this came up is because lots of people are 
> using Word, and their governments basically said "You shouldn't be using 
> Word, because it's not a standard."
> 
Not exactly. Governments were saying that they want their documents to 
be readable in the future. Using an undocumented proprietary binary 
format won't work. There is no guarantee that any MS product will 
support the current file formats in 20 years time, nor that the company 
will even exists, nor that e.g. Word 2003 will run on then available 
hardware. Hence they decided that from now on, or at least as soon as 
possible, data should be saved in a format that is documented. 
Governments being what they are, they also decided to artificially 
enhance competition by requiring that the standard is public available 
and implementable by anyone. Although MS is the most visible target, 
more companies have to change their behaviour.*)

There are two major ways in viewing MS attempt at a standard. One is by 
looking if it achieves the primary goal of this law. I think it does. MS 
documents written in this standard will be readable in 20 years time. 
The other one is to take into account the other objective, i.e. to 
increase the competition. Then it seems to fail miserably, and by 
design. It has been pointed out that this is logical for a company to do 
so. I think part of the underlying differences in point of view in both 
camps is the familiar division whether companies are bound by the ten 
commandments or not (where the ten commandments are short hand for 
ethical and law abiding behaviour).

[snip]

> 
>> It does not bring any of the benefits a standard should bring.
> 
> Right. I'm not saying the standard is good, or should pass. I'm saying 
> the arguments against it that I've seen are stupid arguments. :-)
> 
They only seem stupid if you disagree with the (hidden) premises of the 
speaker. Most arguments are along the line of 'this is not how you 
define a standard'. If you think that they should not have been forced 
to create a standard in the first place, these arguments may seem void.


*) Personally I can't wait until every medical company will be forced to 
save patient data in a format that will make it possible for every 
researcher to reanalyze the patient data in an attempt to improve the 
diagnostic value. Even if it costs me part of my job security. Just 
Thursday I did two minor reverse engineerings of some data files to see 
whether I could reanalyze 24 hour ambulatory ECG measurements of 
patients and if an ECG recording system was able to record at 8kHz, as 
specified, so we could use it for rats too. Answers were yes and no 
respectively, but I would have preferred to spend that time on my own 
project.

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