They swooped on residential areas, looking for tell-tale signs of rogue trader and distraction burglar activity - and identified a total of 433 crimes, of which 102 were trading standards offences.

In some areas, the Department of Work and Pensions, the Immigration Service, the Vehicle Operator Services Agency and Environment officers also took part, detecting a further 140 offences.

A total of 51 people were arrested - 15 of them for trading standards offences, three by Immigration officers and the rest by police. A further 1,600 people were spoken to and given advice or warnings about their trading activities.

Ron Gainsford, chief executive of the Trading Standards Institute (TSI) said: 'This was a very successful operation, which should send a strong message to rogue traders that they cannot keep conning the public. Local authority trading standards departments, as well as the police and other agencies, across the country are on to them!

'Doorstep criminals are a major problem facing the safety of our communities. The only effective way to tackle and help combat this issue is by all agencies working together and using all the tools available to them to clamp down on the rogue traders.'

[[[http://www.yourtrustedtradesmen.com/#/sitehutnews/4528628970[[[http://www.yourtrustedtradesmen.com/#/sitehutnews/4528628970]]]

• is irrevocable but only for now
• covers specifications, not code
• has no consistency with the GPL

http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/osp-gpl.html

Groklaw has the text also and some commentary:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080312151954507

1. Internet… probably it was nowhere on M$'s horizon, public quoting against the concept of Internet is well known.
2. GUI… Apple had it first. M$ started using it in Windows
3. Spreadsheet… well known and broadly used product was Lotus 123 before M$ had Excel
4. Document Editor… WordStar, WordPerfect and many more were broadly used before Word came.
5. Browser… NetScape was the first popular browser, M$ almost did whatever they could do so people use their browser… end result, Internet Explorer.
6. Internet Programming… PHP, PERL, Java, Java Server Pages (JSP)… well M$ need to respond to market so in rush they had ASP/COM
7. Internet/Distributed Programming… CORBA… M$ came back with proprietory, buggy, troublesome COM/DCOM
8. Internet/Distributed Programming… JAVA… itself a big story, M$ initially tried to hijack whole JAVA, years after they found a work-around to fool ECMA and they had .Net, which IMHO, a nothing but part of their hidden agenda to hijack whole computing platform… probably the worst mistake of the century.
9. Gaming Platform… Nintendo, PlayStation were pioneer… well m$ wanted its share… XBox
10. Message Queing… MQSeries (and probably others)… its about business, M$ responds back with M$MQ
11. Dashbiard/Groupware… Lotus Domino… Outlook/M$ Exchange
12. OpenSource… I believe programmers on M$ platform especially those work with .Net, are M$ Guinea pigs… this one requires a separate discussion
13. Interactive Content… Macromedia Flash… how can M$ be left behind especially when they want to hi-jack whole internet initiative, late but now they have Silverlight… probably soon they will find a way to compel so that people "NEED" to use Silverlight (M$ always finds a way to find free Guinee Pigs… and its surprises me however M$ developer community is the first victim… again a big one, may need separate discussion
14. SmartPhones… BlackBerry (ok, ok… not phone itself, however mobile e-mail, calendaring etc.), you can get M$ Pocket PC
15. Messanger… ICQ… I cannot tolerate this, use my M$ Messanger
16. Media Players… oh another big one, and controversial… there were "Real Player" and many others… after all this is a big industry, why M$ cannot dominate it… let people force to use Media Player (Shame ECMA, Shame I had high regards for you, you were (probably) the only one who can defeat M$ in the world, however at the end you surrendered to M$.
17. OOXML… OpenDocument (I believe M$ is hiding lots of evil intentions to hijack whole programming world, by monopolizing information itself, again requires a separate post).

Above list can grow to almost any imaginable area of computing. I believe this list can grow over 50 well known products which helped M$ to seat on 40 Billion cash… so far creativity lied somewhere else.

Promote Open Document Format (ODF) and stop OOXML. This is the ONLY chance, we have to stop M$. If we loose this, every human being will pay (yes directly or indirectly) to M$, probably in the end more than taxes you pay. You asked how? Well, OOXML is the ONLY thing M$ need to virtualize whole computing platform so that they can make 40 billion cash to 40 trillion (reaaly?). In that case, there will be many ECMAs arround the world, almost all governments, all businesses, and ultimately every human being, has to give hardly earned money to M$.

I have decided, to never gave up. What do you want to do?

LiveFree.

Working from home is a growing trend that provides employment to several million people worldwide. Here at HomeBasedOnlineJobs.com you will find information, resources and tips about how to start and grow your own home business, Work From Home Jobs and Business Ideas, How to Build Your Own Successful Work at Home Business, How to Make Money with Affiliate Programs, How To Make Money With Google AdSense and much more… Our aim is to help you find & create your own opportunities to work from home, and achieve a more balanced life of work, family & self by providing the most practical and relevant resources available. Many of you are qualified professionals seeking to transition from the traditional office to a "work at home" lifestyle. Some are unable to work in a traditional workplace for health reasons.

Thousands of people DO successfully run home businesses or have jobs they do from home. You can too! I encourage every individual to start their own home businesses whenever possible. If you have computer skills or writing skills it makes sense to market yourself rather than buy into business opportunities that are being marketed to you.

Work from Home ads has been around for years in magazines and newspapers. Now they've moved to the Internet. They promise easy work from home ideas, unlimited opportunities and high pay.

Unfortunately they usually promised more than they delivered, and the buyer was disappointed once again. There are real business opportunities though. It just takes personal discipline to determine which the best business is for you. An honest and thoughtful analysis of your skills, abilities knowledge and resources is the first steps to choosing an easy work from home idea.

You know you are ready to work at home, and you know you have the desire and motivation to make it work, but you have no idea where to begin?

When choosing your new home based venture, make sure you don't base your decision solely on the potential income. Instead, choose ideas that you would enjoy doing, or have a strong interest in learning and doing, because you'll be spending a lot of time doing them. Of course, income potential should be considered, but definitely should not be the sole reason for choosing a type of home business.

Tips to Start and Grow Your Own Home Business

Set up a separate working space in your home. It doesn't matter if this is a small bedroom, one part of the garage, or a corner of the living room. The important thing is to have some space that you can designate as your working area. This will give you the space and room you need to craft your dream.

Stock your working space with required materials. This sounds basic, perhaps, but one underlying element of success is that you have easy access to the tools, materials, and other resources you need. Gathering everything close by also keeps you from wasting time searching for it, so this step can be considered a time management strategy, too.

thkx

This reminds me of an exchange of email during the efforts by Microsoft to standardize the file sharing protocol that Samba implements (CIFS). After a white paper was published demonstrating a man-in-the-middle security attack against the current protocol Microsoft responded by publishing a specification for cryptographically signing the packet exchange. This change fixed the security hole and was a good first response to the attack. Unfortunately, after analysis by some of the experts on the list we discovered that there were some theoretical holes to the new signing protocol, which needed a few trivial changes in order to fix and improve the security. After these proposals were submitted, the response came back from Microsoft that although the fixes were valid, unfortunately the code was already written and was going to be shipped in the next service pack. End of discussion. It wasn't even in a shipping product yet, but the specification was determined to be unchangeable as they didn't want to change their existing code.

Let's bet on the fact that Microsoft/ECMA will propose changes that will look like this:

We don't correct the NetworkDays() function in order to add support for Muslim countries, but we flag it as deprecrated, and we create another one named NetworkDays2() that has the support for this feature. The right thing would be to correct the function, not to create a new one. I take the bets on this one.

Russia blindly votes for Microsoft office standard

September 12, 2007, Wed 5:51 PM Moscow

The Russian IT-community has been surprised at Russia to approve of using Office OpenXML, developed by Microsoft in cooperation with other companies, as an international standard. However, the most striking was the fact that the Russian representatives proposed no remarks and supplements to the standard. At present the question whether Russia might make any amendments by February, 2008 remains open.
On August, 27th, 2007 Russia approved of Office OpenXML to become an international ISO standard. Nataliya Shevchenko, Cief Specialist of the International Cooperation Department of the Federal Agency on Technical Regulating and Metrology and ISO Manager in Russia voted for Russia. Mrs. Shevchenko tells CNews Evgeny Petrosyan, Deputy Director of the Federal Agency on Technical Regulating and Metrology informed her about the necessity to vote for the standard. CNews was not able to get in touch with Evgeny Petrosyan when preparing the publication. The Federal Agency on Technical Regulating and Metrology promised to give comments in the near future.

However, IT-community was greatly surprised by Russia having made no remarks and supplements, as most experts and ordinary users point out to some problems in Office OpenXML to be settled.

CNews found out the Russian Technical Committee Information Technology, which was to study OpenXML, did not cope with the task in time and handed down no expert opinion. Askold Piavchenko, the Russian Technical Committee Information Technology Chairman tells CNews “they were to speed up OpenXML study, so 6 thousand pages were to be studied in half a year”.

Finally, a special session of the Technical Committee was held, where Mr. Piavchenko said half a year was not enough to study the standard in due case, so he recommended not to vote. Those present at the session and aware of the study results approve of the given point of view. “We reached a consensus at the session. However, as we were to speed up the standard study, we were able only to express our point of view, the final decision being made by the officials. So another decision was made”, - Askold Piavchenko noted.

The Federal Agency on Technical Regulating and Metrology did not pay attention to the Technical Committee recommendations and insisted on a positive voting
The Federal Agency on Technical Regulating and Metrology did not pay attention to the Technical Committee recommendations and insisted on a positive voting

Besides, the Technical Committee Chairman tells CNews he proposed to carry out a scientific research regarding OpenXML as compared to its alternatives, and came to an agreement with Vladimir Sukhomlin, Moscow State University Professor. “If works are to be continued and corresponding finance allocated then the study will be carried out, and, I believe, we might finish by February, 2008 and hand down our expert opinion”, - Mr. Piavchenko believes.

Viktor Alksnis, the State Duma deputy has already sent his claim to the Federal Agency on Technical Regulating and Metrology demanding to clarify the mentioned situation. According to Mr. Alksnis, “the story smells badly. Even not knowing the details one can say the situation is not easy to resolve. It is not clear why ODF being accepted as an international standard is not implemented in Russia. We are to use the experience of developed countries, as we know .doc and .xls formats used in Microsoft Office do not always operate properly and rise many problems to be solved. So, there are certain reasons to suspect Microsoft interests to be lobbied at all levels. Certain people using their official position act in favor of the US Corporation. If it turns out to be true, then we are to rap their knuckles”.

Finally Victor Alksnis says “we are to operate in favor of our national interests and the Russian IT-industry, but not in favor of the Americans. If OpenXML is really such a nice product, then why not holding overall discussions attracting specialists. If IBM, Novell, Sun and other large corporations are against OpenXML, then we are to defer to their point of view and not to the opinion of one corporati on only. So we are not to hurry and to make the right decision”.

OpenXML as ODF is a unified office file format. It makes it possible to look through various files regardless their type and the supplement version used. Last May ODF was adopted as an ISO-standard.

The comments represent the closest the Norwegian committee was able to come to a consensus and are therefore not as sharp as some opponents of OOXML would have liked. However, reading between the lines, it is hard to see how they can be resolved short of OOXML renouncing its ambition to become a standard for future documents. Standard Norway welcomes OOXML as a standard for legacy documents but favours a single standard for future documents. By voting No with comments, Norway hopes to improve the quality of OOXML and persuade Microsoft to put its weight behind ODF.

Steve Pepper

[1] http://www.standard.no/pronorm-3/data/f/0/17/24/1_2401_0/2008-08-31_NO_ISO_IEC_DIS_29500_comments.pdf

http://www.standard.no/imaker.exe?id=17235

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=42055

France has not announced its final decision yet, and likely won't before offices open again on Monday. The majority in a pre-vote ballot was No. However, the French standards body AFNOR apparently is required by its rules to reach consensus on ISO decisions, and Microsoft and its minority of supporters are reportedly refusing to accept a No decision. If AFNOR cannot reach a consensus by Sunday to vote either Yes or No, France might have to abstain.

Just a note that weekend list provided below is wrong. The weekend in
most Gulf countries is Thursday and Friday, in Jordan it's Friday and
Saturday, and in Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey it's Saturday
and Sunday.

While we're on the topic, anyone visiting most Arab or a Muslim
countries during Ramadan, which begins around 13th Sept. this year ,
should know that the work day and week are much shorter.

In brief: Finland doesn't say anything on OOXML. (Abstains)

From "computer.fi", http://www.tietokone.fi/uutta/uutinen.asp?news_id=31076
- "Microsoft wished that Finland would say 'approval with comments'"
Haven't we seen all this before, many times? Hello, here's my so-called standard, please approve it or you will cry and approve.

Other lies, I mean highlights from the same newsstory:
- Microsoft's managing director Ari Rahkonen said "the company decided already over 10 years ago to move from closed binary format into an open one. Also EU has wished for this."
Rahkonen told about ending with xml-based solution and progress of the process via ECMA towards ISO.
- Microsoft was praised for finally standardizing the file format of Office. (?!!)
- Patents in the standard were discussed. Microsoft manager Kimmo Bergius defended that their company won't sue anyone over them and no royalties or licences would be collected.
- Chairman Nirhamo from SFS concluded: "If the state branches would have been unanimous, we would have come to decision. Now it wasn't so. I don't see a chance to vote for either approve or disapprove."

EFFI.org liveblogged results from the meeting, here's a quick translation:

First comment from Microsoft: Approval. (Surprise?)
Pekka Pere (Tietoalojen liitto/Proha): Approve. We must trust ECMA
Pirkka Palomäki (F-Secure): No opinion. Open standards are important - no comment on quality
Ville Salmela (Ministry of education): Not fully open as it is now. No with technical comments
Manu Setälä (COSS): Plenty of problems. No with technical comments
Tuomas jotain. (Sun Microsystems): Openness is splendid. ISO-standard must be independent from any manufacturer, which it ain't now. OASIS/ODF is better. No with technical comments
Finnish tax administration: No opinion
Karjalainen (ministry of justice): Overlaps with ODF, No with technical comments
Heikki Sinervuo (EK, Confederation of Finnish Industries): Open APIs are good, two standards would be too expensive, one is enough. No with technical comments
Juha Hakala (National libraries): Openness is extremely important, preservation of digital files is obligatory. Must be compatible with other standards. No with technical comments
National archives of Finland: Timespan is hundreds of years, a few months or an year doesn't matter - when doing something, do it properly. No with technical comments
Ville Oksanen (EFFI ;-): No with technical comments
Jyrki Kasvi (The greens): Openness is important, Microsoft has historical ballast. No for fast-tracking
Jyrki Koskinen (IBM): Plenty of problems. No with technical comments
Timo Skytta (Nokia): There are standard organizations of various quality in the world. ISO is on the top and no reason to change this. No for fast-tracking
Riitta jotain - City of Helsinki: Standard helps with compatibility, must trust ECMA. Approve.
Anne Honkaranta (University of Jyväskylä): OOXML is an ok standard - a little bit worried that ISO must regain its credibility.
Want to favor the some group of companies? If we say no, it will get out of hand. No opinion from university. Instead, from SysOpenDigia, approval
Juha Varronen (Nordea bank): De-facto standard - pondered between no opinion and yes - approve
TietoEnator: It will come anyway - better if its more open. Approve
Finnish customs: We must trust the experts, 6000 pages tells something about quality. Mining of information is important. Approve
Satama Interactive: As a representative for Microsoft ecosystem - de facto-standard. Approve
Some researchproject from university of Kuopio: We've gotten familiar of this, too many problems. No with technical comments
Ministry of trade and industry: Important matter for us as users. ISO-standardization adds to openness, fixes/changes should be possible also in fast-tracked process (?!). Approve
Juha Turunen (Cap Gemini): Backwards compatibility is important. Approve
Sami Köykkä (WM-Data): Important for our clients - hopefully problems can be fixed, anyway approval
Systems Garder: A loud yes
Ministry of finance: A question for Nirhamo - what's the contradiction about standard, how will the process continue?
(intermediatory comments * Microsoft says there were no perceived problems at the beginning * Nirhamos's reply - Microsoft might _not_ want to go into that discussion or that how this got into fast-track in the first place)
Nirhamo's reply: No exact definition for contradiction, but if there is, they _shall_ be intervened. (He said shall, not should) Ballot will be taking place in any case and only No will matter.
Microsoft: ECMA has promised that comments with Yes-votes will be taken notice of.
Nirhamo: ECMA has no significance in this.
Ministry of finance: We're along to demand open standardization - thus approval is justificated. There are things that need to be thought about - no showstoppers. (Nirhamo took this as a No with technical comments - wow!) General MS-noise ensued ;-)
Simo Tanner, Association of Finnish local and regional authorities: There are technical problems that should be fixed. No with technical comments
Tieke (Finnish Information Society Development Centre): Plenty of discussion going around, no own opinion.
Novell: Ei opinion
FiCom (Finnish Federation for Communication and Teleinformatics): Yes (Whoops, usually they go along with EK, Confederation of Finnish Industries)
TietoTapiola: As I haven't read this myself at all, approve
Jarkko Lehtinen (Miriabilis): The question isn't about rejection but revising. There is a lot more at stake than just technical quality. It's probable that ODF / OOXML-compatibility won't be realized.
Ministry of finance: Revised our opinion - Approve.

And finally, why is Microsoft allowed to vote in a matter that benefits them - mostly only them alone?
Would any court of law allow the accused to join the jury and vote in their own judgement?

You can try to identify the Microsoft business partners in the voting participants.