or can it? Some news out on the blogosphere about Microsoft releasing the entire spec to their binary formats(IE: .ppt, .doc, and .xls specifically)

No specifics on what version of those formats will be made available, nor on how far back the documents go. I for one, hope that I’ll be able to convert a .doc I wrote in 1994, and am able to open in Open Office, but not MS Office 2003!

Or, I could just stick with Open Office for the time being.

It appears that Microsoft is making an open-source converter for the binary formats, to OOXML, their “widely used” office document format. Widely used because everyone had a choice. Right.

Will this bode well for us? Or is this yet another brilliantly evil plan that falls over in execution?

I was reading wired(always a good magazine), and stumbled across an article that was quite touching and even alarming in a way.

First, the link: Climate Change and Mental Health

I think this is a rather interesting, and depressing phenomenon. It shows that at heart, we’re still hominids crossing the savannah. I can see where such a connection would evolve from. It was essential to our survival to move out when the enviroment changed. However, the fact that we are being affected by it, does show that no matter the source of climate change, we do need to do something about it.

/political rant