From time to time I take a break from technology blogging and write about backcountry hiking and camping. This is one such entry, and you can find others at the Not Here but There: a Wilderness Journal.
The next day, I walked across a loop of the canyon to watch the sun probe in its depths to find the river, and this time could listened to the twittering of swallows plunging and soaring against the northern wall of the canyon, riding the updraft formed as it warmed in the sun. Again and again, a bird would suddenly wheel and dive, catching a meal as a hapless insect was wafted upwards from the safety of the shadows, and betrayed when its sparkling wings caught the sun.
Along this section of the North Rim, the land for some miles back is protected as a National Park, and therefore off limits to grazing, and protected from resource extraction. Almost all of the few dirt roads that once branched out to stock tanks and corrals are now slowly returning to some semblance of natural vegetation, unlike the land to the north, where only those plants that are sufficiently unappetizing to cattle can thrive.
The single dirt track that branches off the road in from the north leads to the Lava Falls trailhead, which zigzags drops precipitously from the edge of the canyon, and drops rapidly down to the river, a half a mile below. The name of the trail derives from what must have been a spectacular event of only a few thousand years ago, when a lava flow cascaded in a flood of fire over the brink, presumably damning the Colorado far below in a cloud of steam. Over time, the force of the backed up river would have worn the dam away, or perhaps more cataclysmically torn it apart.
Memory technology developer Rambus, Inc. secured an important, but not unexpected tactical victory on Friday, when the Federal Trade Commission released an order partially staying the sanctions that it imposed on February 2, 2007. In the earlier order, the FTC prohibited Rambus from charging royalties to implement two standards in excess of those the Commissioners determined Rambus could have charged, absent its abuse of the standards process that created those standards. Under the new order, Rambus will be permitted to continue to charge the rates it demanded prior to the FTC's intervention – but only if it places the excess amounts in a court-approved escrow. The order is conditional, and will not become effective, unless Rambus files its anticipated appeal of the original decision in a Court of Appeals prior to April 12, the effective date of the February 2 decision.
The Commissioners' latest Order will be welcomed by Rambus' stockholders, because Rambus would otherwise have required to either drop its rates on April 12, or seek to renegotiate all of its licenses in such a way as to require make-up payments from its licensees, should it ultimately succeed on appeal.
But the new Order will not be good news for Rambus licensees, which will be deprived of the near-term use of funds that the FTC had already held to be excessive, and illegally obtained. Those funds would be returned to them – with interest, but minus the fees of the escrow agent – if Rambus loses its appeal at some yet to be determined point in the future.
From time to time I take a break from technology blogging and write about backcountry hiking and camping. This is one such entry, and you can find others at the Not Here but There: a Wilderness Journal.
Returning from my first Linux Foundation board meeting ten days ago required a flight change in Las Vegas, and this gave me an excuse to invest a few dollars renting a Jeep Wrangler and a few days exploring northwest Arizona. My favorite pastime is poking around the parts of the US whose maps reveal neither towns, nor even paved roads. This is one of the last such areas I haven't already explored, and it goes by the name of the "Arizona Strip."
The first part of the name explains itself, given that most of the area lies in Arizona, although in fact the Strip extends up into southern Utah, and a bit west into Nevada as well. The feature that explains its emptiness is the nature of its border to the west and the south: the Grand Canyon – a gulf that along this lengthy stretch has not as yet been (and I hope will never be) violated by a bridge or adjacent highway. In consequence, you can only reach the Strip from the north and east, and only then via one of a small number of dirt roads. For that matter, there's not much to be found to the east, either. Only to the north are there any towns at all.
The emptiness of the Arizona Strip is also due to the fact that it is almost exclusively public land in all of the popular western flavors (National Park, National Monument, State Park, and the balance under the supervision of the Bureau of Land Management). At its greatest extent, the Strip is 150 miles wide, and almost as many again from north to south, and nowhere in that vast expanse can you find a single paved road. No paved roads, and no towns, gas stations or even running water, either – but a great deal of quietly (and often spectacularly) beautiful country can be enjoyed wherever you go.
Deval Patrick, the Commonwealth's new governor, yesterday introduced a $1.47 billion "emergency" bonding bill, intended to cover a broad range of local and statewide projects, including a measure of funding for the upgrading of the state's IT infrastructure. Details regarding the IT funding portion of the bill appeared today in the on-line version of MHT, a New England print journal dedicated to regional high tech news, in a story written by MHT reporter Catherine Williams. Regular readers may recall that it was concern over this funding that led in part to the resignation of State CIO Peter Quinn in late December of 2005 – and to the subsequent resignation in protest of his successor, Louis Gutierrez in November of last year, when the state legislature adjourned without approving a prior IT funding bill.
Unfortunately for the Information Technology Division (ITD) in particular, and state government in general, the new bill would provide only a fraction of the funding that would have been provided under last year's legislation. As proposed by Patrick, the bond would offer only $95 million, rather than the $250 million originally proposed. According to MHT, $75 million would be dedicated to planning and procurement, a further $15 million would fund a statewide system to mange performance and measure efficiency of agency databases, and $4.9 million would be given to the state attorney general's offices for IT projects.
Last Friday I thought I could sneak a few days of backcountry hiking in over a weekend without neglecting the news and my site too badly. But as soon as I was able to connect my laptop again late today, I learned how wrong I could be. So here goes with my effort to catch up.
The first item that broke over the weekend was the not wholly unanticipated news that ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) has approved ECMA 376 (a/k/a the format formerly known as Microsoft OOXML) to progress into the five month second phase of the Fast Track process. That story appears to have been first reported by Eric Lai, at ComputerWorld. And the second and third stories that I've noticed (so far) are by Carol Sliwa, also of ComputerWorld. In the first, Carol once again interviews Louis Gutierrez, the former Massachusetts CIO. And in the second, she reports on a poll of CIO's in which she asked whether they would consider implementing ODF.
Both of these journalists have provided excellent coverage to the ODF/OOXML story. It always pays to pay special attention when they have something to say, because each has provided some of the most carefully researched stories. Lately, Eric has been first to break several stories, while Carol went to the trouble last summer of filing the Massachusetts' equivalent of Freedom of Information Act requests that uncovered the real facts regarding Microsoft's lobbying (and more) in Massachusetts. And in the "welcome back" department, PJ at Groklaw (who has also followed ODF and OOXML tirelessly) weighs in with her own insights on several of these stories here.
I'll take a look at Eric's story first, and see if I can provide any additional context. Eric reports that Lisa Rajchel, of ISO's JTC1, made the announcement Saturday in an email that OOXML would proceed on schedule, despite the unusual level of commentary received from qualified ISO/IEC members, many of whom had objected to the brief time (30 days) allowed to digest the over 6,000 page specification.
Citizens of modern societies lead highly regulated lives. Whether as individuals we agree or disagree with the degree to which governments control our existence, we nevertheless benefit from a myriad of laws and regulations that seek to ensure our safety and welfare. The range of regulation is breath taking, encompassing the purity of air and water, the quality of food, the sanitation of towns and cities, the safety of transportation systems, and the delivery of utilities and other essential services, to name just a few.
To date, however, the provision and usage of information and communications technologies (ICT) are largely unregulated at the technical level, despite the increasingly profound impact that ICT has on our lives. True, the communications side of the equation continues to be subject to significant government control. Radio, television, and a rapidly increasing range of wireless frequencies are the subject of treaties internationally, while the allocation, sale and usage of the bandwidth thus defined remains the province of national regulation. In the United States, Congress occasionally passes a law to accomplish a particular data-related purpose, such as preventing the unauthorized sale of consumer information. But most aspects of the modern networked world are controlled primarily by commercial forces, and to the extent that they are regulated on a de facto basis, it is through the adoption and use of consensus (and sometimes proprietary) standards.
Someone was kind enough to send me the package of materials distributed by JTC 1 earlier today to its members (I have authenticated these materials through a second knowledgeable source as well). The package contains each of the responses filed during the ISO Fast Track Contradictions period for Ecma 376, the specification based upon Microsoft's OOXML formats, as well as the responses prepared by Ecma to those responses.
As you'll recall, I had been told that the majority of these responses were critical, while Microsoft had downplayed them, suggesting that most or many were either neutral, or in fact "laudatory." As they are to be made public shortly, you will be able to perform your own comparison, but here are brief extracts from each of the 20 responses received by JTC 1 (the package confirms, as I had earlier reported, that a total of 20, and not 19, responses were received). While these are only extracts, I have reproduced short out takes that are sufficient to allow you to now see the actual mix between favorable, neutral and negative responses. As you will see, 14 of 20 responses were clearly negative, two indicated divisions of opinion, three were inconclusive or neutral, and one offered no objections. I think that it's fair to say that the over view that I had previously offered has proven to be accurate.
What happens next? The files sent to me also include the JTC1 transmittal note, which indicates that after internal consultation, next steps will be communicated to the National Bodies "in the very near future."
Here are the extracts, divided by category, taken directly from the original responses filed by the 20 national bodies.
Updated 10:50 EST 3/3/07: I have not felt comfortable posting the full documents that I have received. However, I will provide links to them as others get copies and post them on line. You can find the summary Ecma document, with Ecma's proposed actions, through the following link that appears in a March 1 article by Eric Lai at ComputerWorld, or in this link from a March 3 Groklaw article by Mathfox. The same article by Mathfox includes the full text of the French response.
Those who are following government initiatives to mandate the use of open standards and/or open source will be aware that Europe has been a leading change agent in this area, joining the pioneering work in a similar vein of Massachusetts and Minnesota and, more recently, Texas. Those that have been following European initiatives closely will also be aware that Denmark has been in the legislative forefront, and that blogger John Gotze has been kind enough to provide English-language commentary and updates on what's been happening there.
A couple of days ago, John posted an update at his blog on open standards legislative action in Denmark, which you can find here. The following are a few excerpts to set the stage, and you can also find an English language summary of recent developments here in PDF form, and here in ODF format.
On Friday, the Danish Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Helge Sander, made a press announcement (Danish) about his plan for following up on the Parliament Resolution 8 months ago.
The implementation plan is presented in a report which suggests that “open standards should be implemented gradually by making it mandatory for the public sector to use a number of open standards when this becomes technically feasible”.
The report identifies an initial sets of open standards as candidates for mandatory use from 1 January 2008 “if an economic impact assessment shows that this will not involve additional costs to the public sector”.
The next morning, the dawn sun shone obliquely through last season's dead grass, igniting the silica in the dried stems, making the dry slope above my campsite gleam like a meadow after an ice storm. The welter of needles worn by Cholla cacti blazed more brightly, as if invested with St. Elmo's Fire rather than simply catching the brilliant light of the rising sun.