On 04/11/2012 12:15 AM, daniel jimenez wrote:
It is shameful that, so many years after the digital revolution, proprietary formats such as those championed by microsoft are *mandated* by the industry, educational institutions and (in mexico at least) government departments. In fact, I recently had problems with my yearly tax declaration due to it only supporting and running on some version of Internet Explorer.Hopefully, we can all make that change.In the case of skype, I understand that their contributions to VoIP have been pioneering and extremely successful as a tool for individuals and the enterprise community alike. However, every company that doesn't support standardization is extremely short sighted and detrimental to the healthy growth of the field they represent.Anyway, sorry for the hijack.. Daniel
/snip/Microsoft and Skype are sure to tell you that _their_ formats _are_ the standard. And to a great extent, they're correct! (Microsoft would have a better case if they didn't keep changing it, so much so that their own word processor can't even read what an earlier version of the same program wrote!)
I don't know who standardized on the placement of the clutch and brake pedals, but whoever it was, the rest of the industry was forced to follow. Can you imagine what a mess we would be in if they didn't? Similarly for the basic gear-shift pattern. Only reverse moves, and, afaik, only to one of two places. And, I must say, that annoys me, since I once had a car with reverse left and up, and now I have one with reverse right and down. Especially since left and up was pretty much standardized back in the 1930s. To make things worse, both cars that I refer to here were made by GM in the United States.
To get back to the point, I would have no problem with .doc if it would only stay put! And who is to say that the Skype format does not deserve to be the standard? It's probably as good as any, so long as everyone will agree to use it.
I have to say that a lot of the complaints from people in our Linux community seem to be of the NIH variety: Not Invented Here!
Just my 2¢. --doug