<incom> RE : incom-l Digest, Vol 45, Issue 6

[maurice elpazo poli]

                                               please don't give me some message again.
                                                 funk you. have a good day.

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: OII invites applications from the global South
(McLaughlin, Lisa M. Dr.)
2. OOXML and the Politics of Standardization (Soenke Zehle)
3. India overtakes U.S. as Nokia's No.2 market (Geert Lovink)


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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 20:03:36 -0400
From: "McLaughlin, Lisa M. Dr." 
Subject: Re: OII invites applications from the global South
To: Incom 
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Fuzzy to say the least, particularly given that the "digital divide" is not strictly a North-South divide. I teach International and Comparative Media Studies and Global Media Governance, and the question of accuracy in terms and designations is one of the more difficult conceptual and material issues to address. Globa North/Global South, First World/Third World, developed/developing (underdeveloped--very troubling), industrialized/industrializing or NICs....each of these binaries has its problems, perhaps because heuristic devices typically are unhelpful if one doesn't consider how their terms of reference are fused to one another.

By the way, recently I contributed a chapter to a book on knowledge work and heard from the editors that one of the most difficult editorial decisions had to do with which binary to use for consistency purposes, as authors made reference to the full range of possible designations comparing those with information resources to those with fewer information resources. I have wondered if there are better descriptors in other languages, much as 'public sphere' is captured in German in a way that is inexpressible in English.

Regards,

Lisa
________________________________________

From: incom-l-bounces at incommunicado.info [incom-l-bounces at incommunicado.info] On Behalf Of Steve Cisler [sacisler at yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2007 2:54 PM
To: Incom
Subject: Re: OII invites applications from the global South

Does anyone else find the designation 'global South'
to be rather fuzzy? The application from the Institute
did not help. Evidently, you are supposed to know if
you fall into that category. Of course, if you are
Dutch, Canadian, Japanese, etc. you need not apply. If
you are in Uganda, or Nepal or Paraguay, fine. Fill it
in.

But there are other countries with resurgent or
booming economies (or just a steady stream of oil
revenues) that make me wonder. What about places like
Chile, Russia, Dubai. When does a country move from
global South which has little to do with geography and
like S. Korea, join 'the north'?

Steve Cisler
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Message: 2
Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2007 10:18:19 +0200
From: Soenke Zehle 
Subject: OOXML and the Politics of Standardization
To: incom 
Message-ID: <46E25ACB.3010408 at kein.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed

While the status of OOXML is still uncertain (the issue is back on the 
table in Feb 2008), it seems that standardization processes have been 
politicized to an unprecedented extent, raising questions as to whether 
standardization bodies are in fact prepared to mediate these kinds of 
infopolitical conflicts. The breakdown of the votes does in some sense 
reflect the 'new south' that has been discussed as a placeholder for 
some kind of post-developmentalist cartography; beyond the petition/info 
campaign at I have not seen any specifically 
'south-south' campaign against the proposed standard, however, is anyone 
aware of one? It would be an interesting example of whether the 
'new/global south' idea has already translated into specific 
(infopolitical) alliances,

Soenke

http://blogs.freecode.no/isene/2007/09/07/an-open-letter-to-iso/

Is it time to standardize ISO? [via FOSS-PDI]

In light of the recent events relating to the standardization process of
EOOXML, it seems appropriate to look into possible standardization of
the process itself.

The DIS 29500 (EOOXML) process has revealed several shortcomings, both
on the national level and on the level of ISO.

The organisations representing each country have very different
procedures for determining the nations vote in ISO. Some countries will
vote only if their technical committee is unanimous on the issue. Others
will reach consensus defined by a 3/4 majority vote or even 2/3
majority. In some countries there is no vote and the technical committee
is only advisory to the national standards organisation. Others yet have
a two-stage process where the nations vote is determined through two
committees. In short there is no standard for accepting a standard.

It seems ISO is not prepared for a politicized process where a big and
influential commercial enterprise will use any means possible to push
its own standard through to certification.

Committees are flooded by the vendor in support of the standard. Votes
are bought and results are hijacked. Several national bodies have flawed
and skewed procedures open for corruption.

The list is much longer, but a few examples should suffice:

Norway - originally a process decided by unanimity but altered on the
fly
Sweden - voting seats bought and the result thus hijacked
Switzerland - process rigged in favor of the vendor, the chairman
excluded the option of voting ?reject? or ?reject, with comments?
Portugal - process skewed by blaming on lack of available chairs
Malaysia - two committees voted unanimously ?rejection with comments?
and mysteriously overturned by the government to ?abstain?

Even if this is the tip of an ice berg, the examples should warrant a
thorough examination of the national processes.

The fact that ISO enforces no standard for national bodies opens the
standardization process for manipulation or corruption. I strongly urge
ISO to adopt a strict policy for its members detailing the rules for how
a national body shall determine its vote in ISO and that it enforces
such policy vigorously.

On the level of ISO, criticism has been raised against the fast track
process. An investigation should be called to see if EOOXML was unduly
put on the ISO Fast Track.

During the Fast Track, many new countries have joined as P-Members
(Participating members) in the technical committee, the JTC1. Several of
the countries have no credible track on standardization work, have
joined very late in the process only to vote an unconditional ?Yes? to a
standard that has obvious room for improvement. It may be purely
coincidental that the countries that came late in the process score much
lower on the Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International.
It is possible to corrupt the process by pressuring countries to join a
process and vote without sufficient knowledge. I urge ISO to adopt a
policy that P-members may not be accepted later than 3 months before the
committee is to vote.

It may be time also to reevaluate the one country one vote principle. In
ISO, the Chinese vote carries the same weight as that of Cyprus. In the
JTC1/SC34 the late-comers includes Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia,
C?te-d?Ivoire, Cyprus, Lebanon and Malta.

As for approving standards within the field of IT, ISO would greatly
benefit from adopting the IETF requirment of two independent reference
implementations for passing a standard. This should increase the quality
of ISO?s IT standards.

The strength, integrity and scalability of ISO have been tested. The
organizations agility and adaptability will now be measured. May ISO
move quickly to fix its own PR and more importantly its own
standardization process.

The publicity that ISO has been given through the DIS 29500 process is
phenomenal. ISO and standardization in general has reached a peak in
public awareness. I hope the organization will use this publicity to
show strong integrity and potential.

The intent of this letter is to safeguard future standardization and to
ensure that the processes scale in the face of increased pressure from
large commercial interests.

Geir Isene
CEO FreeCode International


Ref.: 1070

Vote closes on draft ISO/IEC DIS 29500 standard

2007-09-04

A ballot on whether to publish the draft standard ISO/IEC DIS 29500, 
Information technology ? Office Open XML file formats, as an 
International Standard by ISO (International Organization for 
Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) has 
not achieved the required number of votes for approval.

The five-month ballot process ended on 2 September and was open to the 
IEC and ISO national member bodies from 104 countries, including 41 that 
are participating members of the joint ISO/IEC technical committee, JTC 
1, Information technology.

Approval requires at least 2/3 (i.e. 66.66 %) of the votes cast by 
national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 to be positive; and no 
more than 1/4 (i.e. 25 %) of the total number of national body votes 
cast negative. Neither of these criteria were achieved, with 53 % of 
votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 being 
positive and 26 % of national votes cast being negative.

Comments that accompanied the votes will be discussed at a ballot 
resolution meeting (BRM) to be organized by the relevant subcommittee of 
ISO/IEC JTC 1 (SC 34, Document description and processing languages) in 
February 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The objective of the meeting will be to review and seek consensus on 
possible modifications to the document in light of the comments received 
along with the votes. If the proposed modifications are such that 
national bodies then wish to withdraw their negative votes, and the 
above acceptance criteria are then met, the standard may proceed to 
publication.

Otherwise, the proposal will have failed and this fast-track procedure 
will be terminated. This would not preclude subsequent re-submission 
under the normal ISO/IEC standards development rules.

ISO/IEC DIS 29500 is a proposed standard for word-processing documents, 
presentations and spreadsheets that is intended to be implemented by 
multiple applications on multiple platforms. According to the 
submitters, one of its objectives is to ensure the long-term 
preservation of documents created over the last two decades using 
programmes that are becoming incompatible with continuing advances in 
the IT field.

ISO/IEC DIS 29500 was originally developed as the Office Open XML 
Specification by Microsoft Corporation which submitted it to Ecma 
International for transposing into an ECMA standard. Following a process 
in which other IT industry players participated, Ecma International 
subsequently published the document as ECMA standard 376.

Ecma International then submitted the standard in December 2006 to 
ISO/IEC JTC 1, with whom it has category A liaison status, for adoption 
as an International Standard under the JTC 1 "fast track" procedure. 
This allows a standard developed within the IT industry to be presented 
to JTC 1 as a Draft International Standard (DIS) that can be adopted 
after a process consisting of a one-month review by the national bodies 
of JTC 1 and then a five-month ballot open to all voting national bodies 
of ISO and IEC.

About ISO
ISO is a global network of national standards institutes from 157 
countries. It has a current portfolio of more than 16 500 standards for 
business, government and society. ISO's standards make up a complete 
offering for all three dimensions of sustainable development ? economic, 
environmental and social. ISO standards provide solutions and achieve 
benefits for almost all sectors of activity, including agriculture, 
construction, mechanical engineering, manufacturing, distribution, 
transport, medical devices, information and communication technologies, 
the environment, energy, quality management, conformity assessment and 
services.

About IEC
The IEC, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, is the world?s leading 
organization that prepares and publishes International Standards for all 
electrical, electronic and related technologies ? collectively known as 
?electrotechnology?. IEC standards cover a vast range of technologies 
from power generation, transmission and distribution to home appliances 
and office equipment, semiconductors, fibre optics, batteries, flat 
panel displays and solar energy, to mention just a few. Wherever you 
find electricity and electronics, you find the IEC supporting safety and 
performance, the environment, electrical energy efficiency and renewable 
energies. The IEC also manages conformity assessment schemes that 
certify whether equipment, systems or components conform to its 
International Standards.


------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2007 10:14:23 +0200
From: Geert Lovink 
Subject: India overtakes U.S. as Nokia's No.2 market
To: incom-l at incommunicado.info
Message-ID: <7e49722f1ddc6a2a6e9c280fccb869e7 at xs4all.nl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed

India overtakes U.S. as Nokia's No.2 market

NEW DELHI, Aug 23 (Reuters) - Nokia (NOK1V.HE: Quote, Profile, 
Research),
the world's top cellphone maker, said on Thursday India overtook the 
United
States in the second quarter to become its second-biggest market by 
sales
after China.

http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSBOM17893620070823? 
sp=true



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