Thursday July 6, 2006

Balkenende III

European Union

We Dutch have a new parliament: Balkenende III. It is basically the same as the old CDA/VVD coalition, except that the majority is now provided by filler parties such are the LPF and Christian splinter groups, instead of filler party D66. Rita Verdonk is still member and as such D66 has already announced they might put down another motion of distrust tomorrow. Or at least would definitely vote in favour of any such motion issued by another party.

Wouldn't that be something? Formation in five days (thanks Ruud), disbanded in two. At that rate we could already have Balkenende XXII on election day (November 22) and establish a complete lack of international credibility no later than this weekend.

Microsoft embraces ODF

Software

For the past decade Linux users like me often had to go through all sorts of tricks in order to get Microsoft's proprietary documents working. Import and export filters have improved a lot during the years, but maybe in the future not even those will still be necessary. After all, Microsoft is working on support for the Open Document format:

The initiative covers the Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs from the Office software suite.

The prototype of the first tool to translate between formats will be made available as a free download on 6 July.

Seems like hell just froze over.

(By the way, can anyone explain to me the remaining purpose of KWord now that OpenOffice.org integrates quite nicely with KDE?)


© Copyright 1995-2007 Robert John Kaper. All rights reserved.

Powered by the delicious Kiki CMS! (#8/9)