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Farmerkev wrote:

Interesting that an investigation of a public official is termed an attack by political opposition.

Oh please. Will you say anything because it's convenient, even though it's completely obvious that it's inaccurate?

It was intimidation and it accomplished its goal. That's reality, boys.

XYZ wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

Interesting that an investigation of a public official is termed an attack by political opposition.

Oh please. Will you say anything because it's convenient, even though it's completely obvious that it's inaccurate?

It was intimidation and it accomplished its goal. That's reality, boys.

I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be "Barbara please".
Perhaps Beddy will give us a ruling.

Duke Stratosphere wrote:

If I was a public official of Iowa of some sort and the governor wanted to know how I was spending public money and decided to investigate my budget I wouldn't feel intimidated.

The hear no evil see no evil routine isn't working. You and Farmer both know what the real deal is. People who have done nothing wrong don't resign. People who have been bullied into resigning often do.

XYZ wrote:

Duke Stratosphere wrote:

If I was a public official of Iowa of some sort and the governor wanted to know how I was spending public money and decided to investigate my budget I wouldn't feel intimidated.

The hear no evil see no evil routine isn't working. You and Farmer both know what the real deal is. People who have done nothing wrong don't resign. People who have been bullied into resigning often do.

Given the current level of political scandals it doesn't seem terribly out of line.

XYZ wrote:

Bullying someone into resigning isn't out of line?

No, investigating a politician.

XYZ wrote:

Who? Romney?

Might as well start with him and work down to dog catcher.

mahakali wrote:

iBubba wrote:

resedit wrote:

PDF sucks for documents that need to be edited by others.
Sure, it can be done, but it is not a word processor format - and it was never intended to be one.

I have been rather steadfast in refusing to argue this with you, mainly because I am confident I know WTF I am talking about, since I deal with this type of smurf each and every day, have have done so for over 10 years...

With that said:

PDFs can have minor adjustments made, using a variety of applications to do so. MOST people using these forms in the government, however, do not make changes to said documents. Most likely, there is a "typesetting department" in the government, or some third party (say, a business form printer) makes adjustments as copy needs to be updated.

In other words: MOST of the people using these forms are just "filling in the blanks." Not every person using these forms are necessarily making form layout or field adjustments. SO the "others" you speak of are really the ones who are working with the "Masters" and would be using Word/whatever to make said changes, THEN publishing the PDF to the intranet for DL and use by the other 99% of the corporation... err, government.

For the primary function of these forms, namely "filling them out," PDF technology is more than sufficient.

Small KB footprint? Check
Security? Check
Standardized across platforms and OSes? Check
Ease of use? Check

Like I said, the list goes on and on.

Can you do spreadsheet or word processing in PDF forms?

I believe you misunderstood what OpenDocs are for. It's not merely for filling out forms (though it can be used for that purpose). It's for word processing, database processing and presentation (what MS Office apps do). Are you going to tell anyone thinking about getting the Office suite to use Acrobat instead? I suppose not.

The government has been using PDFs for electronics publications and forms after all. I don't think anyone here is for replacing PDFs with OpenDoc raw documents for distributing electronic copies of publications, tax forms, etc.

Exactly.
PDF has its place for document distribution - including forms.
It is not a word processor, it never was intended to be a word processor.

I create PDF files all the time. I do so using a typesetting program called LaTeX.
It's a great format. It is not a word processing format, it is a pubishing format that has been extended for other uses (such as forms and slide shows) - but it never was meant to be a word processing format, nor does it make a particularly good word processing format.

It's great for distribution of fixed documents though - like articles and instructions and stuff.

For colaboration between two authors though - it just isn't suitable, it's much better to use LaTeX (or something else - LaTeX is nice because it is ascii text and thus suitable for just about any versioning control system, Word also works with their colaborative stuff) and turn the final document into a nice PDF file for distribution.

Duke Stratosphere wrote:

Maybe Quinn just found a better job.

Didn't you read the first post at all?

Duke Stratosphere wrote:

"Bullied." I haven't seen any evidence of "bullying" here. If I see some, that'll be different.

It's obvious you haven't seen any evidence, based on the first quote. Read the article and get back to me. Or, better yet, don't, because your level of debate has been in Cyberpawz territory ever since you tossed out the first "loony" personal attack.

XYZ wrote:

Duke Stratosphere wrote:

Maybe Quinn just found a better job.

Didn't you read the first post at all?

Duke Stratosphere wrote:

"Bullied." I haven't seen any evidence of "bullying" here. If I see some, that'll be different.

It's obvious you haven't seen any evidence, based on the first quote. Read the article and get back to me. Or, better yet, don't, because your level of debate has been in Cyberpawz territory ever since you tossed out the first "loony" personal attack.

This is all I can find...

he also attracted a level of public scrutiny that disrupted his private and professional life.

“Over the last several months, we have been through some very difficult and tumultuous times,” he wrote in the memo, which was sent on the evening of Dec. 24 to staff within the ITD. “Many of these events have been very disruptive and harmful to my personal well being, my family and many of my closest friends. This is a burden I will no longer carry.”

According to observers, Quinn’s support of OpenDocument had put him in a difficult position, which was made more difficult earlier this year, following the departure of his powerful supporter within Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s administration, Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Criss.

The Romney administration recently launched an investigation into out-of-state trips taken by Quinn to speak at technology conferences over the past two years, following a report in the Boston Globe which questioned the appropriateness of such trips. Quinn was found to have done nothing wrong following the investigation, according to the Globe.

“I have become a lightning rod with regard to any IT initiative. Even the smallest initiatives are being mitigated or stopped by some of the most unlikely and often uninformed parties,”

The only specific instance of "bullying" seems to be the investigation we've already discussed. The rest of the article is just vague on exactly what was going on. Am I supposed to assume that the governor had hired thugs shaking him down in the restroom for his lunch money every morning or what?

resedit wrote:

iBubba wrote:

LaTeX? I'll have to check that out.

It's extremely cool - but it does have a steep learning curve.
LaTeX can be used for far more than just creating PDF's - it was originally designed to proffesionally typeset books, the native output format is DVI which lends itself well to creating postscript (and hence pdf) files.

It also can be used (via tex4ht) to output xml, including odt and mathml - and I'm guessing soon .docx.

Very powerful, but takes a lot of learning - it basically is a programming language where the output is a document (dvi/ps/pdf/xml/html/etc.)

To do simple stuff, the learning curve isn't too bad.  I've moved to latex for all my school work, cuz Word pissed me off too many times.  It's great if you can check your own grammar, or if you are dealing with a lot of mathematics.  Combined with Bibtex, it makes doing bibliographies easy.

Farmerkev wrote:

Actually, the bullying was done by the media that questioned this guys trips and tried to start a scandal but of course alphabet boy would rather blame the Gov for doing an investigation.

Romney investigated him, at least according to what this alphabet boy has read.

What happens if in two years time the Chinese buy Microsoft, then smurf with office so you have a choice of only Windings and Chinese characters? But, for a price, they will sell you that smurfing Cartoon Font.

The sooner government starts looking at open standards the better.

Last edited by prot (2006-01-18 9:04 pm)

I tried to post this over the last few days, but the forum wouldn't work.

Massachusetts Rolls Over In Open Document Format Fight
By W. David Gardner
November 28, 2005

In a reversal, the state government throws its support to Microsoft in an ongoing battle over office software formats.

In a reversal, the state government of Massachusetts has thrown its support to Microsoft in an ongoing battle over office software formats and has launched an investigation into the state’s former IT chief, who had been championing open-source software.

“The Commonwealth is very pleased with Microsoft’s progress in creating an open document format,” said the state’s Administration and Finance (A&F) Secretary Tom Trimarco in a short statement on Thanksgiving eve. “If Microsoft follows through as planned, we are optimistic that Office Open XML will meet our new standards for acceptable open formats.”

Previously, the administration of Governor Mitt Romney had proposed the exclusive use of the OpenDocument format, which has been vigorously opposed by Microsoft. The previous A&F Secretary, Eric Kriss, who was instrumental in fostering the OpenDocument policy. Kriss has left his position, leaving the state’s director of Informational Technology Division, Peter Quinn, without top-level support.

Romney, a Republican who is expected to announce a run for the Presidency, has seen his support for Microsoft buttressed by leading Democrats including Secretary of State William Galvin and influential state senator Marc Pacheco.

http://www.desktoppipeline.com/news/174402372

Eric Fehrnstrom, director of communications for Governor Mitt Romney, yesterday confirmed that Quinn had submitted his resignation, effective Jan. 12. Fehrnstrom, however, rebutted Quinn's strong implication that the administration was backing away from the recommendations, issued on Aug. 31 and announced by former Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Kriss, that the executive branch was moving toward open format software.

    ''We are moving steadily towards that deadline and we expect no changes in those rules," Fehrnstrom said. Under the Aug. 31 initiative, the state would require all documents produced by the state's executive branch to be stored in a new, universal computer format, called OpenDocument.

Since this statement comes from Romney's spokesman, I'd say it is meaningful. If Massachusetts backed away now from its decision, not only would many reputations in the Commonwealth be sullied, and in this case rightly so, but the stain on Microsoft would be unerasable. All this happened, after all, because Microsoft refused to do the right thing and support ODF like everybody else. And because it has some heavy-handed backers in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts who played hard ball in a particularly ugly way, and unjustly smeared the good name of a decent and honest man, who understood technology better than they do and who wanted nothing but good for the citizens he served. He found a way to ensure that their documents would belong to them and their children and grandchildren in perpetuity, that no one would have to pay a single vendor or be forced into expensive upgrades just to read their own documents someday. That is all he did. And look what happened next.

If the friends of Microsoft in the Commonwealth thought they were helping Microsoft by attacking Peter Quinn, I'd say they miscalculated. The Peter Quinn story makes Microsoft look bad, and the Commonwealth even worse. Haven't you heard, fellows? This is the Internet age. Every dirty trick gets to be known and reported, with the light firmly shining on it, not by mainstream media folks perhaps, some of whom will print any old dirt you send them without even verifying if it's true or not, but by bloggers, by citizen journalists. And there are millions of us.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?stor … 8095613324

Progression:

1. Massachusetts decides to go with Open Document.
2. Quinn's boss gets another job.
3. Microsoft gets mad.
4. Romney's investigation of CIO Quinn, tied to the Boston Globe.
5. Massachusetts says it's going to go with Microsoft's format.
6. Resignation of Quinn, who cites investigation and other bullying tactics. Boston Globe fails to reveal it asked for the investigation in its coverage.
7. Massachusetts says it's decided to go with genuine Open Document.

Number 8 will probably be: Massachusetts adopts Microsoft's "Open Document" format.

Quinn wrote:

I have become a lightning rod with regard to any IT initiative. Even the smallest initiatives are being mitigated or stopped by some of the most unlikely and often uninformed parties...I view these circumstances as quite troubling because the good work laid out by the IT Commission is slowly being strangled and brought to a halt. And the last thing I can let happen is my presence be the major contributing factor marginalizing the good work of ITD and the entire IT community.

From a Slashdot poster:

Actually, MS is VERY connected with all this. As soon as the choice was made to go with ODF, MS was hitting all the politicians. And who do the pols hit? The media. They will feed them a line of crap. After all, the globe took something and blew it way out. Of course, nobody is asking the question of how did they get ahold of it in the first place? That was not public knowledge. It was obviously an inside trip job against Quinn.

Oh, this has MS ALL over it.

Last edited by XYZ (2006-01-18 10:48 pm)