There aren’t hanging chads, but there’s something fishy about the just-completed standards vote for OOXML.

Microsoft, creator of the Office Open XML file formats, pulled out all the stops in order to win OOXML’s approval as an ISO/IEC standard. It succeeded. However, the bitter struggle leaves behind a bad taste.

The question is, did Microsoft cross the line? Was the company merely lobbying hard, which it was certainly permitted to do? Or did it using dirty tricks to discredit opponents, challenge votes, and otherwise inappropriately influence the outcome of the standards process?

I’ll be honest: I don’t know. I suspect that the company’s eagerness to win business for its Microsoft Office business unit – by putting OOXML on an equal standards playing field with its top competitor, the OpenDocument Format from OASIS – pushed it to do anything needed to win the votes.

To put my prejudices out on the line (as if you can’t tell already): I’m not a fan of OOXML. I believe in draft standards that were developed by multiple parties – vendors, customers, researchers – in an open, transparent process.

The best standards come from evolutionary technologies that evolve to suit new requirements, and which have time to converge onto a strong, vendor-neutral platform for future development. OASIS’s ODF is such a format, and deserved to become ISO/IEC 26300.

By contrast, the OOXML specification was created by Microsoft specifically to drive its Office products, and was rubber-stamped by Ecma, a vendor group. The 6,000-page spec didn’t evolve out of years of industry work on interoperability. Rather, it evolved out of a proprietary format that Microsoft used to lock customers into its products.

OOXML does not serve as a foundation for other players to come together to interoperate and innovate. OOXML does nothing for the industry. It does nothing for consumers. The only beneficiaries of OOXML are Microsoft and its partners, who now can assure governments and multinational customers that by storing documents in OOXML, they’re storing them in a de jure standard format.

Thus, I was delighted last September when Microsoft failed to win fast-track approval from the ISO. It was only a temporary victory, however. The revote took much of March, and just closed, with Microsoft apparently succeeding in its lobbying effort.

That lobbying effort is troubling. If you read anti-Microsoft blogs like Groklaw, you can see numerous allegations of influence-peddling, committees being urged to vote Abstain instead of No at the ISO, scandals in countries like Norway and Denmark over their votes, and reports of formal complaints filed by Microsoft against countries like India which voted against OOXML.

OOXML passed anyway, trumpeted by ECMA and Microsoft even before ISO could announce the vote results. ISO/IEC 29500 makes a mockery of the standards process, and my respect for the ISO is gone.

Quark recommends that modern Mac users run the latest version of QuarkXPress 7.x with Intel-based Macs using Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard.” However, it’s my experience that you can run Quark 6.52 on those machines with very few problems.

Yes, some features don’t work correctly. However, most do work right. This is good news if you’re migrating an existing machine from Mac OS X 10.4 to 10.5.

But what if you need to do a clean install from, say, QuarkXPress 6.0 for the Mac? Perhaps you chose to wipe your hard drive clean before installing Leopard, and now you have to reload your apps. It is necessary to install all three dot-release upgrades to Quark 6.0 in order. If you try to skip one, you’ll see cryptic “file not found” error messages during the upgrade process.

So, here’s what you have to do. Note that the slowest part is downloading the updaters.

1. Install QuarkXPress 6.0 from your original CD-ROM. Verify that the software runs; you may see error messages. Ignore them. Quark should launch after you get rid of the error messages.

2. Download and install the QuarkXPress 6.1 (from 6.0) upgrade. It’s an 80.5MB download. Verify that Quark launches after installing. There should not be any error messages.

3. Download and install the QuarkXPress 6.5 (from 6.1) upgrade. It’s a 154MB download. Launch Quark afterwards; there should be no errors.

4. Download and install the QuarkXPress 6.52 (from 6.5) upgrade. It’s a 20.7MB download. When it’s finished, Quark 6.52 should run properly.

For future installations, burn all three updaters onto a CD-ROM. Keep it with your Quark 6.0 disc. That’s what I just did.

I had the honor of returning as a judge for this year’s Eclipse Community Awards, presented last week at EclipseCon. (I also judged the awards in 2006 and 2007).

This is one of my favorite awards to judge, although it’s not easy to determine the winners. The quality of the Eclipse-based tools and technologies gets better every year.

The difference between winner and finalist is razor-thin. You can see the list of winners here.

This year, the Eclipse Foundation continued the tradition of give out the awards during a fun-filled ceremony. We presented during breaks in a fast-paced game of Eclipse Jeopardy, hosted by Bjorn Freeman-Benson.

It’s worth mentioning, in case you’re ever in a game of Eclipse Jeopardy, that the question for most answers is, “What is an Approved CQ?”

(A CQ is a Contribution Questionnaire, used to document the origin of source code to ensure sure it meets the Eclipse Foundation IP policies.)

It’s been a challenge, thinking of the best way to eulogize Arthur C. Clarke. It is doubly difficult because I’ve never met him, and because so many other sources have done such a tremendous job that there’s little to add. (One that you might not have seen is from the International Telecommunications Union.)

Instead, I’ll mention a few of my favorite Sir Arthur’s books — the ones whose pages are crinkled, and whose spines are cracked. These books have spoken so eloquently over the years, but aren’t well known today.

You’ll note that many of these are his earliest fiction, which I read as a teenager. (I’m leaving out 2001, 2010 and Rendezvous with Rama, because they’re so well known, but they’re also excellent.)

Imperial Earth (1976): Introduced us to an Earth colony on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and their society and politices. There was amazing predictions of personal communications technology. This book introduced me to Pentominoes, and after reading the book I wrote a pretty good Pentomino solver in FORTRAN. I wish I had that source code.

Childhood’s End (1953): This was the first Clarke novel I read, and the copy I have has my brother’s name written inside. I hope he doesn’t miss it. The book discusses the next stage in human evolution, and the sad story of how we get there. Very haunting, very moving. (The graphic is the cover art in my 1969 edition.)

Against the Fall of Night (1953) and The City and the Stars (1956): Clarke wrote two versions of this story. Against the Fall of Night was his first novel, telling the tale of Diaspar, the last city on Earth, a billion years in the future. Later on, he changed it substantially. I like both versions. Tales of Diaspar, of Lys, and of Alvin, appear frequently in my dreams.

Tales from the ‘White Hart’ (1957): Tall tales told by scientists over drinks at the local watering hole. The stories are quick reads, and demonstrate Clarke’s easy writing style and sense of humor.

Earthlight (1955): A tale of espionage and intrigue on the Moon, as an accountant tries to stop a war between two Earth factions fighting it out for scarce resources.

A Fall of Moondust (1961): What happens when a lunar tourist bus sinks into a lake filled with moondust? A true adventure story, and very thought-provoking from an engineering perspective.

The Fountains of Paradise (1978): One way to get into orbit is to ride in a rocket. Another is to take the elevator. This is the story of how the elevator was built, and the visionary who pushed it through.

Ahh, I could go on… but of all of Clarke’s books, I think these mean the most to me.

When I was a young kid, an avid science-fiction reader and budding scientist, my superheroes were Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan. I revered their craft and their biographies — all three were genuine scientists as well as brilliant writers.

My initial academic goal, of becoming an astronomer, was largely due to my reverence for Clarke, Asimov and Sagan.

I had the pleasure of meeting Carl Sagan briefly, and always dreamed of meeting Clarke and Asimov. It never happened.

Asimov lived in New York, so it might have happened. Tragically, he passed away in 1992 before the chance ever came up.

Today, Arthur C. Clarke passed away.

Realistically, I never was going to meet him: He lived in Sri Lanka, had been wheelchair-bound for years, and was unlikely ever to visit the U.S. again. And I couldn’t think of any reason to visit Colombo.

This is a sad, sad day, and the loss of a great man. Sir Arthur, you stretched my imagination, and gave me delight. Thank you.

View Clarke’s farewell message, recorded in December 2007, on Youtube.

Sometimes a press release is too cute not to share, especially when it comes with an adorable photo. This just in:

Here’s an idea for last-minute Easter related coverage. For parents searching for an alternative to the traditional Easter basket, Saitek suggests its version of the Easter basket which includes the colorful Notebook Optical Mouse.

The Notebook Optical Mouse is the perfect size for smaller hands and is available for $19.95 at www.saitekusa.com.

Our customer service department shares the comments that they receive from readers. I could appreciate one particular note which asked us to cancel a subscription to Software Test & Performance. Normally we don’t like cancellations, but you can’t fault this guy’s motivation.

The subscriber wrote:

I am fed up with the testing job, so don’t send any more.

I thought we’d see some SCOs, some Microsofts, some Oracles. Nope. Not a single nomination in the SD Times’ newest award, THE WORST OF 2007. Lots of clicks on the nomination form, but nobody submitted.

What a disappointment!

Sometimes a press release just makes you scratch your head, like this one from MKS on Friday morning. It’s a customer-win press release, which doesn’t name the customer.

(Actually, it’s not even a customer win: The release talks about an unnamed existing customer who agrees to buy more stuff.) Here’s the release:

MKS Announces Enterprise-Wide License Agreement
09:10 EST Friday, March 07, 2008

WATERLOO, ONTARIO—(Marketwire – March 7, 2008) – MKS Inc. (MKS) (TSX:MKX) announced today that it has entered into an enterprise wide license agreement with an existing customer in the automotive industry, pursuant to which MKS will continue to provide MKS Integrity for use in the customer’s global embedded systems software engineering operations. Under the terms of the three-year agreement, MKS will expand deployment of its products in the customer’s existing installed base. MKS will receive a license fee of approximately USD $5 million together with additional annual maintenance fees over the term of the agreement.

That’s all there was: a deal with an unnamed, existing customer, sent to me (as a journalist) in the hopes that SD Times would do a story about it.

Well… not really. Sometimes, press releases are for reporters, sometimes they’re for investors, and sometimes they’re for lawyers. That’s what happened here. (The word “pursuant” should have been a giveaway.) When I queried MKS to ask for the customer name, my contact responded that:

Yes, I know the customer is (yet) unnamed. Because of the size of the deal its considered a material issue/release, and we had to rush out the legal obligation immediately upon contract signing.

Later on that morning, she wrote,

As I said this was a legal obligation that had to be issued the moment the contract was signed.

So: If you wonder why companies put out worthless press releases, it’s because their lawyers tell them they have to. What a world!

Are all of your computers, applications and devices ready for tonight’s Daylight Savings Time changeover? If you’re in the United States, the answer probably is “no.”

In its infinite wisdom, the U.S. government changed the rules for Daylight Savings Time in 2005, to take effect in 2007. Most modern software systems have been updated, but not everything has been.

Here are the rules for this year and next, for those U.S. states which observe DST:

Standard Time begins each year at 2:00 a.m. (local time) on the first Sunday of November.

Move your clocks back one hour at the resumption of Standard Time.

In 2008, DST is from 2:00 a.m. (local time) on March 9th until 2:00 a.m. (local time) on November 2nd.

In 2009, DST is from 2:00 a.m. (local time) on March 8th until 2:00 a.m. (local time) on November 1st.

Before the 2005 legislation, DST begin on the first Sunday in April, and ended on the last Sunday in October. So, there’s a good chance that for the next few weeks, your home or office will have some devices or applications that won’t pick up the DST change, and thus they’ll display the wrong time for nearly a full month, from March 9 through April 6.

Don’t forget: Tonight, at 2:00am on Sunday, change all your clocks forward to 3:00am.

Stefan Klein wrote a nice piece about Daylight Savings Time in the New York Times.

I can only imagine the headache that Ziff Davis Media’s announcement of bankruptcy is causing for Ziff Davis Enterprise — an entirely different company.

Ziff Davis Media, whose bankruptcy I noted last week, publishes PC Magazine and several other magazines and Web sites. Ziff Davis Media is a subsidiary of Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings, which put Ziff Davis Media into bankruptcy to dump debt.

Ziff Davis Enterprise, which publishes eWeek, Baseline and a whole bunch of other magazines and Web sites, is not bankrupt. This company is not related to Ziff Davis Media, and is owned by Insight Venture Partners.

Confused? A lot of people probably are. That’s why Steve Weitzner, CEO of Ziff Davis Enterprise, put out a clarification about this last week. I don’t blame him!

Jon Erickson, editor-in-chief of Dr. Dobb’s Journal, totally stumped me yesterday. He asked me how many companies had published DDJ, and I guessed four. The correct answer is five.

Dr. Dobb’s was founded by

1. People’s Computing Company (PCC)

which sold DDJ to

2. M&T Publishing, the U.S. subsidiary of the German media giant Markt und Technik Verlag AG.

M&T Publishing was then sold to

3. Miller Freeman Inc. (MFI), a subsidiary of United News & Media (now United Business Media).

UBM then merged MFI into another division, the newly purchased

4. CMP Media LLC

which last week split up, retiring the CMP name, with DDJ going into the new business unit called

5. Think Services.

I flat-out forgot about PCC.

Here’s a great article on the earliest history of DDJ, which was founded as a newsletter to distribute technical information about Tiny BASIC, a language designed for 1970s-era microcomputers like the MITS Altair.

Over time, and under the editorial leadership of Michael Swaine (1984-1987), Tyler Sperry (1987-1988) and Jon Erickson (1988-), DDJ expanded its coverage to become a beloved hobbyist/enthusiast publication like Byte. CMP Media ceased publishing Byte a decade ago, in 1998. I’m glad that DDJ is still around.

Everyone at BZ Media is amped for the launch of Systems Management News, which will debut on April 15.

Systems Management News (SMN) is a newspaper very similar to SD Times in format and appearance. Its will provide timely news and analysis to IT systems managers — your colleagues who manage data centers, database administrators, network administrators, and so-on. You can subscribe online at http://www.sysmannews.com.

As part of the launch effort, several members of SD Times‘ editorial team are moving over to SMN: David Rubinstein, editor-in-chief; Mara Leonardi, art director; Alex Handy, senior editor; and Jeff Feinman, assistant editor. I’d like to thank them for their tremendous contributions to SD Times. Dave was part of the launch team for SD Times, back in 1999, Mara came on for our third issue in early 2000, Alex joined us in 2005, and and Jeff signed on in 2006.

By the way, you’ll still see their contributions in SD Times now and again — we have a lot of joint projects planned.

So, where does that leave the SD Times editorial team? In short, strong. I’m putting the chief editor hat back on; I’d worn it from our launch until handing it over to Dave a few years ago. Erin Broadhurst, with SD Times since 2006, is promoted to art director.

P.J. Connolly remains SD Times’ executive editor, and has day-to-day responsibility for writing and reporting. David Worthington, who came to us in 2007 as associate editor, was joined last week by Robert Mullins, our new senior editor. The back-end production of SD Times will continue to be the responsibility of Greg Lupion, managing editor, and Adam LoBelia, associate copy editor.

You know, very few media companies are starting new projects — and even fewer are starting new print publications, like we’re doing with Systems Management News. The trend has been to shut down or de-emphasize newspapers and magazines, and focus on Web sites.

While we certainly believe in the Web — we’ve invested a lot in SDTimes.com — we also believe in the value of hard-copy publications like SD Times, Systems Management News and Software Test & Performance. We know you do too.

Thank you for your support.

Talk about weird: On the recommendation of a friend, we rented The Fifth Element from Netflix, and watched it last night.

What a bizarre movie! It’s a 1997 sci-fi action/comedy, starring Bruce Willis as a 23rd-century flying taxi driver, Gary Oldman as a corrupt businessman, Ian Holm as a priest, Chris Tucker as a talk-show host, and Milla Jovovich as an orange-haired “perfect being.”

The non-stop action is a bizarre mixture of Stargate (1994), Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (2002), Die Hard (1988) and Rush Hour (1998).

The Fifth Element’s story is hard to follow, and the characters are 100% strange. It’s worth renting, if you’re in the mood for something different. Very different.

“Which development environment do you use?“

That’s one of the most eagerly awaited questions in BZ Research’s annual study into the use of Java within the enterprise and at ISVs.

The top development environments, according to the December 2007, study are:

Eclipse 62.7%
Sun NetBeans 24.4%
Oracle JDeveloper 20.4%
IBM Rational Application Developer 19.4%
IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer 18.7%

Macromedia Dreamweaver 14.2%
Sun Java Studio Enterprise 13.6%
Sun Java Studio Creator 10.5%
BEA WebLogic Workshop 9.3%
JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA 9.2%

Emacs or related editor 8.3%
In-house-developed IDE 6.6%
Borland Enterprise Studio for Java 5.3%
SlickEdit Visual SlickEdit 5.0%
Sybase PowerBuilder 4.9%

Borland/TogetherSoft Control Center 3.9%
Apple Xcode 3.2%
CodeGear JBuilder 3.2%
Compuware DevPartner 2.3%
Compuware OptimalJ 1.7%

While Eclipse continues to completely dominate the field, the “pure Eclipse” score did slip back a little from 2006, where it had 69.6%. Given the platform’s strong position, and that just about every competitor is gunning for Eclipse, it’s not surprising that it took some hits. In fact, that statistic might be a bit misleading.

Why? Companies that use Eclipse as their foundation, like IBM or CodeGear, aggressively market their Eclipse-based JBuilder against “plain old” Eclipse. So, every time one of those products gains another user, it appears to be a blow against Eclipse, but in actual fact, it’s either neutral or a net gain for Eclipse.

Meanwhile, we saw some growth in NetBeans (23.3% in 2006) and Oracle JDeveloper (19.0% in 2006). The NetBeans-based Sun Java Studio Enterprise also took a leap (from 9.5% in 2006).

The most surprising change, to me, was the number of people who say they are using an in-house-developed IDE. That jumped up from 2.8% in 2006.

Copies of the full study are available for sale from BZ Research. It contains comparative records back to 2002, as well as data about app servers, Java APIs and a lot more.