[mdlug] [MEETING] IEEE SEMichigan: Aug 14, 2007 5:30pm

[Robert Meier]

I suspect the following evening meeting may be of interest.



  ---- Meeting Notice ----

Topic: "ODF: HOW A DIGITAL DOCUMENT FORMAT IS THREATENING A
MULTIBILLION-DOLLAR MONOPOLY (AND WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP)" 

TUESDAY AUGUST 14, 2007 5:30PM 
FAIRLANE CENTER BUILDING, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN-DEARBORN

Our invited speaker will be Dave Scholl, Technical Specialist, Ford Research. 

Agenda: 
5:30pm pizza and networking
6:30pm presentation

Registration: 
New registration page is open at
https://www.ieeeemcs.org/semi/regemcmeet.asp?EventID=081407
Managers, engineers, technical professionals, engineering students, IEEE
members and their guests are invited. The Chapter Presentation is a FREE event.
IEEE Non-Members Welcome. 

Abstract: 
Under the leadership of Bill Gates, Microsoft has become one of the most
profitable companies in the history of the world. There are many keystones to
Microsoft's continuing lock-in as a convicted (yet untrammeled) monopolist in
the personal-computer software market. One of the most important of these
keystones, and one which is a matter of personal experience for many of us, is
their control over access to the information we store in digital documents.
Microsoft Word, by default, stores documents in a proprietary format which can
only be read reliably by other copies of the same version of Word. Therefore,
almost everyone who works in any kind of office needs to purchase an up-to-date
copy of Microsoft Word in order to be able to access thesedocuments. 

Recently, two powerful communities have joined to promote an alternative
digital document format known as Open Document Format (ODF), which is a
published open standard, free for any programmer to implement. The first and
largest of these communities is all those who don't wish to pay Microsoft's
monopoly-inflated prices. The Chinese government, on behalf of the Chinese
business community, is a notable member of this group. The second such community
is government archivists, who have a statutory responsibility to maintain
collections of documents for public access over decades. This group is smaller
than the first, but their voices are heard by lawmakers. They also find the
default Microsoft document format unacceptable. Imperfect conversions to new
formats can change the documents in unpredictable ways, and maintaining
computers running older versions of Word is neither practical nor legal. In many
countries, arranging a government archive in such a way that citizens are
required to make a purchase from Microsoft before viewing public records is
highly objectionable, not to mention illegal. More objectionable yet is the
concept of the citizens of a sovereign government being unable to view their own
government's electronic documents without licensing software patents held by
Microsoft, a foreign corporation. 

Bio: 
Dave Scholl holds a BA in Physics from Rice University, and an MA in Chemistry
from Stanford University. Mr. Scholl worked in Thin-film physics at IBM Almaden
Research Laboratory, and since 1991 has been at Ford Scientific Research Surface
physics, nanotribology, combustion diagnostics, sound quality, and vehicle
emissions. He has been a Linux user since Red Hat 4.2, a decade ago. 

See the poster and more info on the Chapter web site at
http://ewh.ieee.org/r4/se_michigan/ems/20070814_august_meeting.html

Pizza provided by Vector CAN-Tech. 

This meeting is presented by the IEEE ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT SOCIETY, the IEEE
EMC SOCIETY, the IEEE VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY SOCIETY, and the IEEE COMPUTER
SOCIETY Southeastern Michigan Chapters. Opinions expressed by the presenters
are their own and not necessarily those of IEEE.
  ---- Meeting Notice ----


-- 
Dr B