Well, I found the article well written, humorous, and points well cited. Give it a read, reminds me why I'm using GNU/Linux and open standards... How about you?

"Why bother reviewing OOXML? Why waste the effort reading it and suggesting improvements? Microsoft has ignored every suggestion given it so far by NB's. And if you vote no, Microsoft will just escalate and try to get some mid-level government bureaucrat to set aside the recommendation of your country's technical experts. What waste the next 4 months reviewing a 6,000 page specification? It happened in Malaysia. It happened in the US. The INCITS Executive Board was about to send a contradiction submission against OOXML, saying that it possibly contradicted ODF. But before the committee could reconvene the next morning, enough members had received urgent phone calls to cause them to change their vote and abstain. We saw this in the Netherlands as well, where it was even reported in the papers that they would vote against OOXML. But that vote was changed at the last minute with the cryptic message to the JTC1 Secretariat: “The Netherlands Standardization institute votes ‘abstain’. Please change our vote accordingly and please confirm receipt of this vote to me...” What happened there is still unclear. In India it was even worse, when the committee that was supposed to get the ballot did not receive it. Evidently it was misplaced. The intervention of the leader of a major national political party was required to straighten it out. I also received a note saying that the committee was being told that the deadline for responding to the ballot was two weeks later than it really was, a delay that would have invalidated their vote if they had fallen into that trap."

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/04/...nd-myself.html