uk-shec.org

However, ISO spokesperson Roger Frost on Tuesday said that the organization has not received a complaint from its Norwegian ISO member, referring the matter to Standards Norway.

As expected, the ISO on Wednesday announced that Office Open XML (OOXML) has been approved as a standard, marking the end a long and sometimes contentious path.

It also means that development of the specification will be done through the ISO, which counts members from over 100 countries. There were 87 countries which participated in the Open XML vote.

The entire endeavor was opposed by many, although certainly not all, open-source advocates who feared that standards status would give Microsoft more market power.

The Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO) issued a press release with the details of a vote that showed Open XML receiving 75 percent approval and 14 percent disapproval. It needed two-thirds approval and not more than 25 percent disapproval to pass.

News of the vote results circulated on Tuesday when open-document advocates released a document showing the results. Microsoft confirmed the information later in the day.

The run-up to the vote was marked by intense lobbying from Microsoft, IBM, and their business partners.

Microsoft originally submitted the Open XML file formats to standards organization Ecma International in 2005. Ecma then proposed the specification to ISO in its Fast Track process, which many considered to be too fast for a complicated specification.

The effort to make Open XML an ISO standard did not pass a ballot in September, which precipitated a follow-on Ballot Resolution Meeting in February where, after redundancies were eliminated, over 1,000 issues were considered, according to the ISO.

There were reports of what have been called irregularities in the vote which ended Saturday. The head of the committee which formed Standards Norway’s position lodged a complaint saying that the yes vote did not reflect the opposition of the majority of the committee.

ISO standards status means that software that uses Open XML, notably Microsoft’s Office products, will be more attractive to governments and large corporate customers that prefer to purchase ISO-certified goods.

Following the BRM, delegates from participants had the option of changing their position from No or Abstain to Yes–something that enough did to have the effort pass.

Microsoft and other software companies that support Open XML in their products, such as Apple and Novell, are expected to conform to the standard as it changes over time.

One of the things that drive success in online games such as World of Warcraft is the community and ecosystem that surround the game itself. This is much akin to open source where projects grow and become successful as individuals become part of the whole.

The long and short of it? The game makes the player. When we play games, we are at the outset making an agreement that we are going to do whatever the game tells us to. We can change our minds. We can find out beforehand what is in the game.

How we define our individual identities and the forms of social participation that we pursue to shape these identities drive our engagement. Whether it’s software or gaming, we shape the world around us.

This is nearly the exact same sentiment as we see with open source. Users make the software and while we may initially agree with what the software tells us to do, we can change our minds and modify it accordingly.

The Game Anthropologist gets to the root of the issue:

Despite the guiding hand of writers and game engines, it’s the players that shape the game. Just like open-source projects, without a relationship (and obsession) between developers and users most games will flounder.

Not much has changed in the last three years, though the trend of benefit for the greater has been manipulated beyond selflessness and into other means that help users. While a completely for-profit company, Dell’s Ideastorm is one example where the community helps to define how Dell should modify its products. Most participants seem to accept that they will use Dell products and as such want them to be better.

Contrast that approach with packaged applications that force you into their way of doing things, or SaaS applications that require you to change business processes to meet their model.

This existential viewpoint also explains a bit why Spore is such an interesting game (despite its archaic DRM)–we get to define our universe and then engage with it.

Within the open-source space there is an underlying thread of reciprocity and support of the group as a whole over individual concerns. Certainly, not everything done in the open-source realm is noble or even beneficial, but by and large the community does support a greater good–the furthering of open source and open standards across all technology platforms and devices.

Back in 2005, I wrote about the open source angle for a Release 1.0 report (PDF available for free download):

Cloud computing is Internet (”cloud”) based development and use of computer technology (”computing”). It is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them.

So, what is an enterprise to do? Choosing an “own nothing” approach, like any other paradigm shift, is extremely disruptive and requires a major overhaul or outright replacement of existing IT software assets.

So, which is it for you? Will you be taking Benioff’s advice and cease to directly purchase software and hardware? Will you play it conservative and insist on turning your own resources into a cloud before venturing out in force to the public cloud?

Will you leverage both approaches as makes sense, a la David Linthicum’s frequent advice? Will you pushing the boundaries of what you call your IT resources to include third party services, yet tie it all together within one “trust boundary”? Where do you fall in the great cloud computing debate 10 years after the creation of one of its bellwethers, Salesforce.com?

It is a call to jettison traditional IT altogether, and focus efforts on leveraging the work of professional providers of IT applications, platforms, infrastructure, and services. By this definition, it is indeed a complete change in IT paradigm.

What all sides agree on, however, is that some form of cloud computing is coming your way. As always, the devil is in the details.

Meanwhile, the enterprise continues to operate with the perception that everything is running in their own data centers, under their complete control. In the end, I think that is the factor that will make private clouds the winning enterprise cloud computing model in the years to come.

See also:
• Salesforce.com: Pondering the next 10 years

• Cloud computing: How we got here

In the end, I think the debate will evolve away from “own nothing” vs. “internal clouds”, with the latter being replaced by “private clouds.” Then, over time, supporters of the “own nothing” vision will come to realize that private clouds give them a direct route to migrating all application workloads from wholly owned infrastructure to public clouds, achieving their vision.

The ‘internal cloud’
At the other end of the spectrum are those who believe the road to cloud computing begins at home. The starting point for any enterprise with existing IT infrastructure investment, according to this camp, is an “internal cloud.” An internal cloud applies the concepts of cloud computing (on-demand resources, pay-as-you-go pricing, and the appearance of infinite scalability) to resources wholly owned by the enterprise consuming the service.

There is no doubt that it is a view expressed by much of the traditional IT industry, but there are other voices out there as well pointing out the value of providing multitenant, on-demand, at-scale architectures to internal customers. Internal clouds are appealing to IT departments at many levels, though obviously they are not going to provide the economies of scale that public clouds will offer over time. (For a really good explanation of why large public clouds will dominate the next generation of IT, see the University of California at Berkeley paper titled “Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing”.)

A private cloud consists of IT resources under the control of the enterprise consuming it. Those resources may be owned by the enterprise, consumed from a public cloud provider, or some combination of the two. The only requirement is that the resources be under the direct control of the customer under a unified management system, as opposed to each separately consumed offering being individually managed through the interfaces provided by their respective owners.

Ten years after the creation of Salesforce.com, the future of cloud computing is not in doubt; it is just being heavily debated. Two opposing views of how cloud computing will play out–especially enterprise cloud computing–are making the rounds among thought leaders and customer decision makers alike. Interestingly, there is enough to question about both approaches that a third option may, in fact, gain importance.

A hybrid cloud is the use of both public and internal cloud capabilities to meet the needs of an application system. A private cloud meets the needs of an application system by any combination of public and internal cloud resources–and that combination can change moment by moment.

The ‘private cloud’
The term “private cloud” is becoming associated with a third option–an option that has fundamental implications to the way in which enterprise customers will approach cloud computing:

The benefits of internal clouds, however, are a little more subtle. Most proponents will point to the inability of most public clouds to support legacy applications, while internal clouds can be built to handle old and new applications alike. Perhaps the most pervasive argument, however, is that internal clouds allow you to maintain control over security, service levels and regulatory compliance in a way that public clouds are not yet able to offer.

The strength of the “own nothing” argument is difficult to miss. Benioff put it very well. Don’t spend money up front on things that aren’t core to your business. Get them as “on-demand” services, instead, and pay for them only as you consume them.

This view is echoed by the current Wikipedia page for cloud computing, as originally authored by Sam Johnston:

Private clouds, by this definition, overcome the “rewrite everything” effect of “own nothing” cloud computing. On the other hand, they provide the degree of trust that enterprises were seeking from internal clouds, including the ability to change the mix of cloud services consumed completely at their own discretion.

Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com’s “pull no punches” supreme leader, represents one of the debate’s extremes. At “Whose Cloud is it Anyway?”–a cloud-computing roundtable put on by TechCrunch recently–Benioff stated (the emphasis is mine):

In other words, it’s not cloud computing to Benioff unless the IT department doesn’t have to directly handle any form of technology beyond a browser or perhaps an SSH terminal application. This is the very definition one would expect from the leader of possibly the world’s biggest software-as-a-service provider.

You can follow James Urquhart on Twitter.

On the other hand, choosing an “internal cloud” approach really doesn’t gain the full benefits of public cloud computing offerings. With much smaller scale, the economics are not in internal cloud’s favor. As this year and the next progress, I would expect to see it less and less justifiable to rely solely on an internal cloud.

Many of you may be thinking “hey, that’s just the definition of a hybrid cloud”, but there is an important, though subtle distinction to understand.

(Microsoft was) a company that…had a lock on the entire industry in terms of innovation, and was able to hold it through a monopoly. So, that is really broken down through a new, next generation paradigm, which is cloud computing; which is no software, no hardware, don’t hire anyone, just sign up to these various cloud platforms and pick the flavor that is appropriate for your application.

So do you have any plans to open more offices?
Rose: I’m sure, eventually.

In part 2, Rose got a little more specific: What would happen if Digg got hit with a stock-plunging news hoax? Will he be making acquisitions? And most importantly, does “digg” mean anything dirty in any foreign languages?

Do you employ anyone to keep tabs on that?
Rose: No. This is all done by the masses. We’re fortunate enough to have millions of people come to the site every day, and thousands of people vote. (They can say), “this is bad,” and we can apply that tag to it. We’ll display a little stamp that gives a warning that the community has flagged it as potentially inaccurate. We see that every single day.

When you expand into other countries and if you launch localized versions, are you planning to have to deal with governments that may not agree with Digg’s views on freedom of information?
Rose: Absolutely. I think that we have always wanted to create a neutral, level playing field, and I would not be OK with changing that point of view when it comes to Digg. I’m not going to bend our rules when it comes to story promotion or our algorithms that look for a unique, diverse crowd of people thinking that something is interesting, and wouldn’t allow anyone, any government to manipulate that. That might mean that we can’t actively compete in some markets, but those are kind of our core principles, and those will never be compromised.

So you might acquire a smaller competitor?
Rose: Sure, potentially.

There’s a way to, they call it, “raise an internal round” of funding just by cutting back on things that you don’t absolutely need. Cut that out of the budget and it’s like raising money because you’re not spending it. I really unfortunately think that there’s going to be a lot of start-ups that go by the wayside in the next 12 months. The advice I hear out there is that if you can raise money, now’s the time to do it and then just put your head down for the next couple years. I know a lot of start-ups are trying to do that.

(Credit:
Caroline McCarthy/CNET News)

If a company serves a takedown notice because something was dugg about them that isn’t true, would you comply? In the past you’ve been very vocal about not interfering with the community.
Rose: We’ll only take things down that we receive like DMCA cease-and-desists that come to us. Often it’s something like that there’s a link to a pirated copy of Photoshop. But normally that sort of thing gets buried on its own because users won’t promote piracy directly…We get a few a month but it’s never a big deal because it’s usually just blatant piracy.

Do you have any offices outside of San Francisco now?
Rose: We have a small group of people. We have someone that’s working for us in Scotland and also someone that’s working for us in Amsterdam. No official Digg logo on the side of a building anywhere.

Digg founder Kevin Rose, in a photo taken at the last Future of Web Apps conference in Miami.

And they’re unofficial, or do they use your API or anything like that?
Rose: They’re unofficial. They do their own thing. And then there’s also a Digg in Japan that has some traction as well. So we look at this stuff and we say, OK, what do we do? Do we open up a version of Digg out there? Do we acquire these companies? It’s all stuff that we talk about and I think that where you’ll see this expand first is a combination of both requests from users and where our competitors are starting to take off.

CNN had that big debacle with a user-submitted story, about Steve Jobs having a heart attack, which turned out to be fabricated. What’s your policy for what happens if something gets “dugg” that isn’t true and which could have a big impact on stock performance or elsewhere?
Rose: The good news is that we have a lot of people that are actively looking for that and who flag and bury content based on whether or not it’s inaccurate. There’s probably not a day that goes by that there isn’t a piece of content flagged on the site as inaccurate.

Would you look at all into “crowd-sourced” language translations that we’re seeing on sites like Facebook and Hi5?
Rose: The translation, we don’t have a ton of things that would need to be translated. It’s not like we would be translating the U.S. submissions. It would be their own submissions and a whole separate engine running an instance of Digg outside of our own, but still connected so that you could go to the U.S. version of Digg and it would show up in your profile and everything. But yeah, I don’t think we’re that far along. Right now we’re just looking at different areas and where we want to expand and the code that will be needed to make that happen. It’s all stuff that we’ll be doing over the next couple of months.

LONDON–In the first part of our interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose at the Future of Web Apps conference, CNET News asked the Web start-up poster boy about everything from the company’s Series C funding round to whether he’s concerned about when those election stories stop rolling in.

Your talk today was about the future of news. How do you see yourself in the news industry as a whole, beyond the niche of social news?
Rose: I don’t know that we do actually. I think we’re just kind of that platform to level the playing field. We will never become a news publisher in any way, in that we won’t produce our own content or host other peoples’ articles. We’ll always be kind of directing the flow of traffic.

You were talking a lot about how you’ve got a ton of data that you haven’t sourced out yet. Have you thought at all about adding an additional revenue stream by licensing analytics to clients?
Rose: Yeah, one of the big things that our business development team spends a lot of time working on is relationships with publishers. They’re constantly coming to us and saying that (we) have a lot of data about their users–what they do, what they enjoy, where they’re coming from, what other articles and other sites they’re posting on–and it would be cool if we could get some of that data into a type of dashboard.

So talk about internationalization. It’s coming late next year. As a bit of a hint, are there any countries where Digg is extremely popular and a language translation might make sense?
Rose: Well, London is our largest city overall. But outside of that, as far as different languages are concerned, there is demand from certain users coming in and writing to us, but we see a lot of Digg-type clone sites, and those are the ones that we kind of keep tabs on. So we say, OK, where are our competitors and how are they doing? There’s a Spanish version of Digg, there’s a German version of Digg that’s called Yigg or something like that.

At this conference, there are a ton of young independent developers eager to learn. Given this financial climate, things are tougher when it comes to getting venture funding or getting a job. What would your advice to them be?
Rose: E-mail us at jobs dot digg dot com. (Laughs.) You’re absolutely right in that I’ve talked to a lot of investors recently, some of our angels, a couple of VCs, that I know and communicate with, and it’s definitely a weird time right now. Start-ups that don’t have traction and don’t have that kind of hockey-stick-like growth on Alexa or Compete or whatever are going to have a really difficult time raising an additional round of funding. I think that a lot of the advice going out there to start-ups right now is to pare back a little bit and get into a mode that you can survive in.

That’s all things that we’re looking at as far as tools for publishers, like some of the other things I mentioned today like a recommendation engine for publishers. It’s definitely on the road map and it’s stuff we want to develop, but it’s just important that I’m not going to build a custom suite for CNN and not provide it to a blogger. I just want to make sure that when we do build a tool, it’s available to everyone.

When you expand internationally, you’re not going to have to change the name of the site or anything? It doesn’t mean anything offensive in any language?
Rose: Somebody told me it did in one language. I can’t remember what it was.

Apple released a security update on Thursday for its Apple TV. Version 2.1 includes six patches that address buffer overflow and arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities.

The update addresses a buffer overflow vulnerability described in CVE-2008-1015. According to Apple, “an issue in the handling of data reference atoms may result in a buffer overflow. Viewing a maliciously crafted movie file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.” Apple credits Chris Ries of Carnegie Mellon University Computing Services for reporting this issue. The update addresses a buffer overflow vulnerability described in CVE-2008-1017. Apple says “an issue in the parsing of ‘crgn’ atoms may result in a heap buffer overflow. Viewing a maliciously crafted movie file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.” Apple credits Sanbin Li, working with TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative, for reporting this issue.
The update addresses a buffer overflow vulnerability described in CVE-2008-1018. Apple says “viewing a maliciously crafted movie file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.” This update addresses the issue through improved handling of format strings.” The update addresses an arbitrary code execution vulnerability described in CVE-2008-2314. Apple says “a URL-handling issue exists in the handling of ‘file:’
URLs. This may allow arbitrary applications and files to be launched when a user plays maliciously crafted QuickTime content. This update addresses the issue by no longer launching local applications and files. Apple credits Vinoo Thomas and Rahul Mohandas of McAfee Avert Labs, and Petko D. (aka pdp) Petkov of GNUCitizen working with TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative, for reporting this issue.
The update addresses a buffer overflow vulnerability described in CVE-2008-0234. Apple says “a heap buffer overflow exists in the handling of HTTP responses when RTSP tunneling is enabled. Playing maliciously crafted QuickTime content may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.”
The update addresses a buffer overflow vulnerability described in CVE-2008-0036. Apple says “a buffer overflow may occur while processing a compressed PICT image. Opening a maliciously crafted compressed PICT file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue by terminating decoding when the result would extend beyond the end of the destination buffer.” Apple credits Chris Ries of Carnegie Mellon University Computing Services for reporting this issue.

Apple TV 2.1 can be automatically downloaded when the update is detected by the Apple TV device. The patches may take up to one week to be detected, depending on the day a device checks. A manual update can be accomplished by using the TV interface and selecting Settings > Update Software. This update will not appear in your computer’s Software Update application or in the Apple Downloads site.

Here’s an overview of the six patches, which affect only users of Apple TV:

Due to “crazies…who do not have a life of their own and so insist on ruining the lives of others” by comment-bombing Patry’s blog, and due to the deteriorating use of copyright to harm rather than help, Patry has opted to leave the blogging building:

But on the latter, it’s dispiriting to see confirmation from such a copyright expert that we may be past redemption. In both copyright and patent law, the powerful continue to hoard their power (which is natural), while judges and lawmakers seek to capitulate to that power (which is not natural–or shouldn’t be).

We have extended copyright terms to the point of inanity–competition moves ever faster, to the point that technology copyrights and patents seem to be measured in decades. And then there is patent law, home of a widening array of specious, obvious patents.

On the “crazies,” I completely understand. Anonymity and geographical distance make people bold to say things that ought not be said. I’m also guilty of this. I suspect we all are. Some things are too easily said with a keyboard.

Copyright law has abandoned its reason for being: to encourage learning and the creation of new works. Instead, its principal functions now are to preserve existing failed business models, to suppress new business models and technologies, and to obtain, if possible, enormous windfall profits from activity that not only causes no harm, but which is beneficial to copyright owners. Like Humpty Dumpty, the copyright law we used to know can never be put back together again.

commentary

It was depressing to read that William Patry, Google’s senior copyright counsel, has decided to stop blogging. With only occasional gusts of lucid intelligence in the blogging community, Patry’s blog was a full-out gale.

And so we’re increasingly getting the industry that we deserve: a collection of monolithic monuments to old ways of delivering value. Let’s hope that Google, open source, software as a service, and other disruptions to the static way of doing business succeed (so that we can have new monopolists to topple 10 or 20 years from now :-).

Much like Ravelry, the social network for knitters, Folia’s claim to fame is that it lets you share and track your gardening with others whether they’re near or far. It’s also been built up to help you keep an inventory on all your plants and aid you in making swaps with other growers for plants you’d normally have to go out and buy yourself. Think of it like a giant swap meet for plants.

Gardening goes Web 2.0 with Folia, a tracking and plant resource side with a great social twist.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

One of the site’s biggest assets for newbie gardeners is that it’s set up to help you learn about a plant you’ve just acquired, or are thinking about getting, and let you see how well it will work in your region based on the USDA zoning–a list of the ideal growing conditions. While this is helpful, the site can be even more useful if people nearby are posting information on plants that have been successfully grown in your area–something you’re unlikely to find on the back of a seed bag. There’s also a built-in wiki that will give you information on each variety and tips on growing it.

Folia launched in earnest in late 2007. Competing gardening social networks include The Garden Network and GardenWeb.

Curious about gardening? Check out Folia, a social network for plant enthusiasts who want to share and learn tips from the successes and failures of those around them.

Besides being a reference service, Folia throws in some publishing and productivity tools like a garden blog and a scheduling tool. It ties into Flickr and Google services like Picasa Web Albums and Blogger, so you can take pictures of your plant and post them to your virtual gardens to show to others. This goes along with a tracking tool that notes how many days each plant has been growing since you put it in the ground and when you should water and tend to it based on your care preferences.

[via Unclutter via Lifehacker]

(Credit: CC Nyki M)

And the most natural thing for some male Uruguayan politicians was to besmirch Tourne’s character. Former Vice President Luis Hierro Lopez told El Pais: “I think it’s in very bad taste that the minister exposes herself so intimately.”

No, this is not the interior minister. It’s just another woman in a shower.

Then she cries out loud to those trying to make political capital out of her Facebooked facewashing frankness: “…atras de la aparente correccion politica hay una montana de fantasias eroticas reprimidas en esas cabecitas”.

So, as we head to a new administration in the United States, there remains only one question: what would Hillary do?

Tourne, meanwhile, has decided to fight back in a manner that surely deserves a cascade of applause.
Please read the Spanish version taken from her Facebook page (and quoted in El Pais) and feel the heat: “Cuantos insultos, desprecios, miserias, crueldades vivimos por ser diferentes?”

Well, I suppose we all have our own ideas of what is the most natural thing on Earth. But Tourne’s shower scene showed nothing more than her bare face and arms. Not even a hint of areola for Facebook to be upset about.

A loose translation for you: “Do we all have to suffer like battery turkeys at Thanksgiving, like anyone forced to watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop and like Boy George in jail for being just a little different?”

More translating looseness: “Behind our supposed political correctness there there is a stinky pile of naughty, naughty, dirty, disgusting, filthy fantasies scurrying around the dumb little repressed heads of my critics.”

One assumes that by “these things,” he means searching for pictures of ministers washing themselves after a rugged hike, a mud-wrestling match, or a mean-spirited debate with duplicitous politicians.

The country’s president, Tabare Vazquez, poured a little cold water on the supposed scandal: “I log on to the Internet. But in general I don’t have much time for these things.”

That’s apparently why she put a picture of herself performing her morning ablutions on her Facebook page.

“There nothing more natural than a woman in the shower,” Uruguay’s interior minister, Daisy Tourne, told Montevideo’s El Pais newspaper.