Open Format Debate

I want to talk about this some more, but I'm afraid it's not worth our time. What does a transition to an open patent-free format really mean? What does it mean that ooXML is free to use?

It means that the developers of an application won't pay any royalties for their application's data structures. It means that the people who have invested so much time to figure out what is the best way to store a particular document as data will not be compensated for their attention to detail.

This could be a positive thing, or it could be a negative thing. Surely if formats are not designed with the best interests of their data in mind, the users will not be as happy with the quality and arrangement of their data, or the application developers will have to spend more time making the formats fit the typical data of their application users.

It means: software as a subscription (these developers have got to eat), or software development as slave labor or software as idols to be worshiped. (Or, sure, you can bet the developers will derive enough revenue from reselling and using their own software to repay their investment into the works).

What did I just say? Those paragraphs are a mess.

Word of the Day

profluent - The first imaginary word in our series of words, this is the newspeak replacement for confluent. It means flowing together!

Why newspeak so soon? It was bound to come out sooner or later, I am reading "Get Ahead by Going Abroad: A Woman's Guide to Fast-track Career Success." A woman's guide, which clearly men are not allowed to read! OK, I'm actually quite sure that's not what the author meant when she chose that for a title.

Patricia Kranz, who is cited as one of the primary sources for this book, says: "As a journalist I sometimes found it useful that the Russians never considered women to have powerful jobs—you could blend into the scenery more and hear things maybe they didn't want you to hear or see things they didn't want you to see."

I'm a little bit surprised to hear a powerful woman pleased to be referring to herself as scenery here, but be sure there is some truth to what she's saying! As for the paranoia in her sentiment, it's not really any surprise to have paranoid thoughts coming out of the mouth of a journalist... especially one working in New York International Business news!

Bluetooth Transactions

From what I'm reading so far, the anticipated limitation of the protocol is that audio data is not to be encoded in BluetoothTransaction packets without support for A2DP. I don't know how this compares to the encrypted Quicktime support that is embedded in the Apple Airport Express (that's WiFi, not BlueTooth) except that both protocols seem to make it prohibitively difficult for devices to support VoIP routing or transfer of audio packets without manufacturer support for A2DP. The jury is still out, whether this makes an effective copyright control device or not.

TODO: Expand this article to include code examples and a working implementation of two-way Bluetooth Transactions. Check on the filesystems available to the Sidekick developer, targeting the question of whether I can write a program that backs up my contacts, notes, schedule, and replicate other application files to a desktop interface, database, or other hiptop computer. Find out if there is any way to play my mp3s over a bluetooth A2DP headset without A2DP support in the hiptop from Danger and T-Mobile.