{"id":1764,"date":"2008-02-18T17:31:42","date_gmt":"2008-02-18T21:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1764"},"modified":"2008-02-24T19:06:59","modified_gmt":"2008-02-24T23:06:59","slug":"the-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1764","title":{"rendered":"The, Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">M<\/span>icrosoft&#8217;s move to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/interop\/docs\/OfficeBinaryFormats.mspx\">open up the (file) specifications<\/a> for its Office applications quite surprised me. I don&#8217;t think it has hit Slashdot yet, but it made it to the <a href=\"http:\/\/news.zdnet.co.uk\/software\/0,1000000121,39292894,00.htm\">&#8216;frontpage&#8217; of ZDNews<\/a>. Brian Jones (Program Manager for Office) made the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/brian_jones\/archive\/2008\/02\/15\/binary-documentation-doc-xls-ppt-and-translator-project-site-are-now-live.aspx\">announcement late last week<\/a>. All files are available in PDF format and, they&#8217;re actually quite readable.\n<\/p>\n<p>The news that Toshiba is going to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2008\/02\/18\/toshiba-expected-to-announce-death-of-hd-dvd-tomorrow-stop-sale\/\">announce the end of the HD-DVD format<\/a> is another surprise: Well, not nearly as much as the one above. Rumour has it that many movie distributors decided to go for Blu-Ray. The final nail on the HD-DVD coffin appears to have been Walmart&#8217;s decision to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macworld.co.uk\/digitallifestyle\/news\/index.cfm?newsid=20466&#038;pagtype=allchandate\">exclusively sell Blu-Ray discs<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"reference\"><em>Update:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Toshiba (officially) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.toshiba.co.jp\/about\/press\/2008_02\/pr1903.htm\">announces discontinuation of HD-DVD business.<\/a> (via <a href=\"http:\/\/reddit.com\/info\/697qg\/comments\/\">Reddit<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><em>Update (02\/24\/07)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ap.google.com\/article\/ALeqM5ifXeLMB28kre9AK-YgVq7Y4ZEJ9wD8V0RI780\">Microsoft pulls the plug on HD-DVD players<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/slashdot.org\/articles\/08\/02\/24\/2132255.shtml\">Slashdot thread<\/a>).\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Microsoft&#8217;s move to open up the (file) specifications for its Office applications quite surprised me. I don&#8217;t think it has hit Slashdot yet, but it made it to the &#8216;frontpage&#8217; of ZDNews. Brian Jones (Program Manager for Office) made the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=1764\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[281,282,55,47],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}