Rob Weir has documented an incredibly simple, telling and fascinatingly descriptive demonstration of exactly why OOXML is such utter crap and should never become a standard in its current format. He shows how a simple formatting rule looks when saved using OOXML or ODF* based applications.

Rob Weir is reporting some very disturbing news about shenanigans in the OOXML ISO process

"In the spirit of the Anarchist Cookbook, I have written some informal notes to help people understand the GNU-Darwin Distribution.

http://www.gnu-darwin.org/index.php?page=guide-cookbook ..."

Several people, including Rob Weir (just yesterday in fact), said this was coming. The Propaganda Machine is hard at work and it will have you believe that OOXML is the Second Coming. You might be wondering what are we talking about. Where does one even begin? There is is a DDOS of disinformation at the moment.

Rob Weir has taken a look at some semantics and considered again what it is that the world calls a “standard”: 'So, it is a document, a written description, not an embodiment in the form of a product, that is standardized.

Whether you're a hobbyist or seasoned professional, you'll want to grab a copy of Carla Schroder's newest book, the Linux Networking Cookbook.

Jim King, Adobes PDF Architect, has a blog entry up that compares the standardization efforts of PDF (through ISO) and OOXML. It's a very informative look at what makes a worthwhile standard, and well worth reading, especially in the aftermath of OOXML. Given the number of PDFs in the world, it's also a topic we should be aware of.

Alex Brown, the convenor of the OOXML BRM, has been editing Wikipedia's article on ODF. That strikes me odd, like finding out Steve Jobs had been editing the Microsoft Zune page. Some things are simply inappropriate. It puzzles me why Wikipedia allows it, frankly.

I love jQuery. It's not like there aren't other JavaScript libraries out there, but jQuery was the first I became involved with and so far, it's solved every web design problem I've encountered. Of course, I usually go searching for a jQuery solution on the web when I have such a problem. That's why I was looking forward to O'Reilly's jQuery Cookbook.