[Malvern] Knoppix & Meetings

[Andy Morris]

ISO = International Standards Organisation

Amongst other things, the people who specified the international format for
CD-ROMS, who didn't take kindly to Bill Gates trying to railroad the
original MS format into the international standard, 'cos MS didn't like
having to accept anybody else's format(s) (including Unix).

BG wasn't impressed when he found that US law prohibited him from taking on
the ISO in the courts to force them to MS requirements, in fact MS could get
stung by the US Federal standards people, if they didn't comply with ISO,
'cos the US Government would have eventually had to stop using MS software
if it didn't comply with ISO 900x quality rules. Hence W98SE, 'cos W98
wasn't fully compliant, and lots of European governments decided to adopt
the 'If you're not registered as ISO900x, we won't buy from you' idea back
in the 90's. This ruled lots of US companies out of the running for
Euro-government contracts, because ISO900x takeup was much less in the US
(you didn't need it for US government contracts), than it was in Europe. The
US could not complain that this was a non-tariff trade barrier, because they
dreamed up the idea in the first place!

Watching the mad scramble to get ISO900x registration by US companies, in
97-99, was an interesting side-line at the time - especially as I worked for
a Canadian company that was registered in the 80's when ISO 900x quality
rules were first published - the take-up in Canada was much greater than in
the US - and Canada also announced in 1997 that it was going to exclude
non-ISO900x compliant companies from government contracts, prompting the
nearest thing to governmental apoplexy by the US that I have ever seen!

Isn't business and politics wonderful?


Andy M
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Geoff Bagley" <geoff.bagley at btopenworld.com>
To: "Phil Ironside" <phil at creativespaces.co.uk>; "MalvernLUG"
<malvern at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2004 10:50 AM
Subject: Re: [Malvern] Knoppix & Meetings


> A suitable subject for a talk, at a future meeting, might be the Live CD
> Mode used by Knoppix, and one or two other Debian spin-offs.
>

> What does "ISO" stand for ? What steps are needed to get from such a
distro
> to a bootable CD or USB stick, and what are the subtle differences ?
>
> There's a challenge for one of of the experienced sys-ops !
>
> Best wishes to all;.
>
> Geoff.
>
> PS I see that the next release of Debian ("Sarge")  will have a completely
> new method of installing and setting up.  No date available to anticipate.