There was a lot of tech related news yesterday and this story seems to have gotten lost by the mainstream press in all of that (I guess the journalists are too worried about the short term impact of things like Google's stock price -- hmm)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/27/ 1724237&threshold=-1&tid=198&tid=215&tid=109&tid=219 This news will have a big impact on things. Norway has announced that they (the Norwegian government) are moving away from allowing documents, etc. that use proprietary file format to those that use open standards (not quite the same thing as open source that you hear about -- think Linux for open source). This is pretty big because it will force software manufacturers (M$, Adobe, etc.) to open up their undecipherable and closed file documents to ones that other softwares can read and write to. While on the surface this may seem to be a small thing, Norway actually has the clout to make it really take off. They are, after all, one of the richest, most technologically advanced countries in today's world, more so than the US is. This could pave the way to allow you to get a word processor that can really read and write files that folks in other states can read and write as well. Jerry ----------------------------------- Someday, I will come up with a clever signature line. I am not sure if I will use it or not, but I will come up with one. | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be July 26. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
