Idle State

I have been doing a large amount of reading on ODF vs OOXML over the last few days - particularly as the verdicts of various countries' standards bodies become finalised. There a quite a number of publicly available analyses of the ECMA-376 Office Open XML Spec available for reading on the internet - comments on Groklaw and the British DIS 29500 Wiki are particularly comprehensive.

Several thoughts strike me as I read though the wealth of material:

Where are the safeguards that prevent interference in standards organisations' decision making processes? Incits would appear to have been stacked over the last few months to create a favourable decision for the proposer of the standard. Surely the composition of voting rights should be decided at the outset of the consideration of a particular proposal. The least of the problems is that the composition of voting members becomes unrepresentative. Other concerns are that a voting member who joins in the last few days prior to an actual vote has not undergone the same exercise in diligence of the proposed standard as the other members.

Furthermore, in the case of documented interference (see www.noooxml.org) there needs to be some mechanism of automatically registering a "no" or "yes" vote, for the standards body in the country that has been interfered with, to counter the interference. This cannot be at the discretion of the standards body of the country involved since their vote is possibly tainted. This effectively immediately removes the sting from any attempted interference.

It would seem that the standards processes are ill-equipped, possibly naïve, for dealing with the intense lobbying and influence of commercial interests. Standards and Standards processes must have unyielding integrity.

Secondly: What the hell were ECMA thinking? They should be downright embarrassed. Given the lack of quality, lack of clarity and lack of technical integrity of the document that they have proposed as an ISO standard, clearly ECMA have failed in their duty at being a trusted source for candidate standards. ECMA should no longer have right to submit a proposed standard for fast tracking.

Thirdly - and this is more a personal note - the countries which I am closely related to - Australia and Qatar - are distressingly quiet on this issue. The Qatar Government is an entrenched Microsoft shop. It's IT environment is immature and somewhat subservient - so I guess it's not much of a surprise that not a wrinkle has emerged from here. Australia's response which amounted to "we're not completely happy with this proposed specification" is insipid in the extreme.

Lastly: Is ECMA-376 indicative of the quality of work that is carried out within Microsoft? The poor workmanship of the ECMA standard speaks volumes about the quality of processes, thinking and product created by Microsoft. It serves to demonstrate yet again that Openness (Source and Standards) yield quality whilst closedness leaves you with a steaming pile of crap. After this demonstration we get a deeper understanding of why Microsoft do, indeed, have reason to fear Open Standards and Open Source.

Back to the beach.

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Peeves, Software

Seen in the Classified Section of The Gulf Times - Qatar's top-selling English daily newspaper last Monday 6th August 2007:

The advertisement seems a trifle Dickensian at best. A little elementary arithmetic and an educated guess on number of workers that may reside in each room makes me think that, more often than not, someone living here would need to be up very early in the morning to find a free bathroom, let alone the kitchen. The advertisement mentions that the "Labour Camp" is air conditioned - a necessity - considering the daytime temperature in Qatar in Summer is often 40 degrees celsius plus. So surely this is moot point?!?

This is not an isolated advertisement:

• Gulf Times Classifieds 24th July 2007


• Gulf Times Classifieds 23rd July 2007 Accommodate more than 200 in 20 rooms!!

For some interesting results, Google "Best Price Labour Camp".

Are we to start seeing a bear-market for hard to rent vacant "Labour Camps"?

Recent (well, May 2007) statements by the Qatar Prime Minister, regarding sponsorship changes, likening the current Sponsorship arrangement to slave labour, suggest that the winds of change are blowing through Qatar.

On the sponsorship law and the exit permit system in Qatar, the prime minister said he believed this was internationally unacceptable. “It is close to slavery,” he opined. “Laws are the same for Qataris and foreigners alike.”

Gulf Times Article 28th May 2007.

These changes will result in greater protection for expatriate workers, and a collective sigh-of-relief from those caught in the middle of this somewhat bureaucratic system and maybe an end to "Labour Camps" overfilled with expatriate labourers.

However, Interior Minister of State HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani said that a study conducted by a committee in his ministry had recommended keeping the law in force.

ibid.

Perhaps it would be closer to say the winds of change are a light breeze at the moment rather than a cobwebs-out-of-the-attic gale. Nonetheless, change is on the way.

However, moves by the Philippines Government to ensure that Filipino expatriate domestic workers are paid reasonable minimum wages in the GCC were met with knee-jerk reactions in some member countries: stopping immigration of Filipino nationals and aghast comments about the inequality of minimum wages since expats of other nationalities would be being paid far lower than their Filipino counterparts. Seems to me that the solution is obvious and that minimum wages need to be reviewed across the board to make them fairer and less on the border of poverty.

So recent events such as these make me doubt that, for the time being, "Labour Camp For Rent" will be the last advertisement of this type that we shall see, nor will this "Labour Camp" be uninhabited for very long which is a pity. That would be a welcome sign of change.

BTTB.

It's true. Believe it or not. Our dog (Afghan puppy named Dylan) managed to render my GPS completely useless by attempting to eat it.

I blame Garmin. Really. If they hadn't made the leather carry case quite so inviting with it's fresh leather "this smells like it probably has lots of tasty flesh inside it" odour then it might not have been subject to the oversized-puppy equivalent of a ram raid.

Either that - or Dylan took exception to the strange small box that kept speaking with a female American accent and very sloppy diction - which is perfectly understandable.

I did a quick web search and found some guy who's cockatoo had eaten his GPS... so it's not the first time animals have viewed GPS' as tasty morsels.

So my month old Garmin Nüvi 310 ended up with a cracked touch screen - the cracks starting in the bottom corner, from where it was incised by a canine tooth, radiating pretty much across the entire screen. Now you need the touch screen (which is normally excellent, by the way) to do virtually everything on this unit which left it, as I said, completely useless.

Needless to say, I was reasonably annoyed about having almost brand new but non functioning GPS. Particularly in Qatar where navigation is a challenge at the best of times, streetnames and numbers are not well used even when they do exist and it's easy to get trapped in one-way hell.

BTW - the Nüvi 310 is a great little addition to my Jeep - I'm very impressed with it. It's great value for money. Along with standard GPS stuff, it has a bunch of other features - like:

• Bluetooth handsfree for your mobile.
• MP3 player
• Flash card slot
• Clocks, calculators, unit converters etc

Here are details of the box from Garmin's Web Site.

Stuff I do and don't like about the Nüvi 310...

Menu navigation is very responsive and the touch screen is accurate. However, the actual navigation is crap. I have to back out of menus and into others to achieve stuff. (I should be able to get to a map from any screen since this is the primary function of the unit.) Sometimes extra options are provided on another screen. For instance, when making a phone call - why not just put all the call controls together on one screen? The positions of the "Back" and "Done" buttons are not consistent. Some options are not easy to find (setting the time zone, for example).

Volume Control The audible navigation, hands free phone and MP3 player all need independent volume controls. For fairly obvious reasons.

MP3 Player is pretty good. It doesn't seem to respect volume settings embedded in the MP3 file itself though. The volume control needs to be on the MP3 controls page rather than another "click" away.

Suction Cup Mount Why do people make these? They don't work. Find a better way.

Petrol Stations It knows where the closest Petrol Station is. Golf Courses as well. All very cool stuff.

Garmin Support is achingly slow. It took several weeks for them to respond to me despite the web site saying they would respond within 3 days. The knowledge base is half hearted at best - I had to ask a question which really should have been on the knowledge base and then wait two weeks for the answer. The trouble ticket system doesn't play well with Firefox.

Product Documentation is pretty weak - in the fashion of Apple Documentation. The font is lovely but the content is thin on the ground. The manual, for instance, refers you to the web site for more detailed specs. The web site content isn't that much more comprehensive than the manual specs though. Try finding out the maximum size for the removable flash memory... (it's 2GB on the 310, by the way).

How to repair a GPS that your dog has tried to eat.

Originally, I sent a request to Garmin asking for the price to replace the screen. A couple of weeks later, Garmin replied to me, asking me what the problem was, when I had purchased the unit, what the damage was and so on. They also suggested recalibrating the screen. Some of the information requested seemed a little redundant since the already supplied serial number was registered with most of this information. Nevertheless, I duly replied and then received what must be the stupidest technical support response ever:

Dear Campbell,

Try a hard reset, that should cure the problem. Follow the prompts on the attachment.

Thank you for contacting Garmin(Europe)Ltd.

Kind regards

Garmin (Europe) Ltd
______________________________________________________________

Original Message Follows: ------------------------
Hi,

The touch part of the screen is cracked so it is not a recalibration issue.  The LCD proper and backlight work fine...

Sigh.

Fortunately, Al-Lingawi, the local Garmin reseller here in Qatar were completely on the ball. They said that the unit could be replaced for a cost of about 40% of the new purchase price. I turned up at the shop, paid the money, and was given a completely new unit - all in the space of about 15 minutes. So I'm happy again.

Kudos Lingawi. By the way - if you're in Qatar and looking for a GPS unit (or fishing tackle, for that matter) the guys at Al-Lingawi are always really helpful.

So the moral of the story... If you're going to buy Garmin, make sure that the guys you are buying from have got the support base covered. And keep your dog away from it.

Back to 25° 41' 37.75" N 51° 30' 33.16" E.