Ionica Smeets en Jan Beuving schreven een niet-wiskundig boek over het beroemde driedeurenprobleem, een van de bekendste kansrekeningsproblemen uit de wiskunde. „Het is een boek voor mensen die van taal houden en voor mensen die van wiskunde houden.”

The Document Foundation has taken a swing at Euro-Office, accusing the self-described sovereign productivity suite of doing Microsoft's content lock-in strategy a favor while wrapping itself in the language of European digital independence. The attack came from Italo Vignoli, a founding member of The Document Foundation, who published an open letter on Monday, just hours before after Euro-Office 1.0 debuted as what its backers describe as a "truly open" and sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office. "In recent days you will have read various articles announcing the arrival of Euro-Office, which is being 'marketed' as the first open-source office suite developed in Europe," he wrote. "We feel compelled — reluctantly, since open source should rest on transparency, not deception — to correct this claim.” According to Vignoli, that title belongs to OpenOffice.org, released in 2001 from Sun Microsystems' StarOffice codebase, followed by LibreOffice in 2010. His argument is that Euro-Office is the latest entrant in a market Europe helped create, not the pioneer its marketing suggests. The dispute is the latest chapter in a sovereignty spat that has been brewing since April, when German cloud outfit Nextcloud and hosting giant Ionos unveiled Euro-Office, a fork of the OnlyOffice productivity suite pitched at organizations seeking European-controlled alternatives to US software vendors. The launch immediately drew criticism from OnlyOffice's original developer, who objected to the fork and its branding. Now LibreOffice has joined the pile-on. Vignoli argues that genuine digital sovereignty depends on the use of the Open Document Format (ODF), the ISO-standardized format championed by LibreOffice and other open source office suites. However, Euro-Office defaults to Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format, which remains the dominant format across corporate desktops despite years of complaints from open source advocates. "Euro-Office defaults to the fully proprietary OOXML document format, developed and controlled solely by Microsoft," Vignoli wrote. "This makes it a de facto ally of Microsoft in its content lock-in strategy, with control remaining firmly in Redmond and far from Europe. The project's backers have presented Euro-Office as a European answer to concerns about dependence on American software providers and cloud platforms, part of a broader push for digital sovereignty that is gathering momentum across the continent. In the Document Foundation's view, there's not much sovereignty in swapping Microsoft Office for a suite that still defaults to Microsoft's document format. “The announcement … strengthens Microsoft’s strategy against European Digital Sovereignty, or, if you prefer, against the freedom of European users to control and manage their own content,” Vignoli said. A spokesperson for Euro-Office's creators told The Register: "We agree that proprietary file formats are a serious hinderance to digital sovereignty. We thus need to free users who are stuck using these formats, and enable them to work with an open office platform. This will allow organizations to transition to open document formats like ODF." "Euro-Office will focus development efforts on improving ODF support. Ultimately, ODF should be the standard - not OOXM, and we will work towards that." ®

Reform had previously suggested Farage would be ‘steering clear’ of event, modelled on US conservative gathering

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Nigel Farage will be headlining at an American conservative summit brought to the UK by Liz Truss next month alongside a raft of hard-right speakers, despite his party previously suggesting he would be “steering clear”.

The Reform UK leader has announced he will speak in July at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), which claims it wants to “save Britain, save the west”.

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“Ice burns, and it is hard for the warm-skinned to distinguish one sensation, fire, from the other, frost,” wrote A.S. Byatt in Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice. Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami characterizes ice in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman as a capsule that preserves the past “cleanly and clearly,” but possesses no future. In the ephemeral performance “MIZU,” frozen water takes on the form of a woman in an enchanting and emotive meditation on memory, time, and impermanence.

“MIZU” is the brainchild of puppeteer and director Élise Vigneron’s Théâtre de L’entrouvert and Companie Furankaï, which encompasses the work of choreographer and circus artist Satchie Noro. The composition highlights the fragility of our existence, the necessity of water, and “the passage from form to formlessness, from individual to cosmos,” Vigneron says.

The human body is around 60 percent water; the earth is covered by more than 70 percent. In “MIZU,” the title of which is named for the Japanese word for water (水), the human-size puppet double can be interpreted simultaneously as a unique individual and the dancer’s twin, with whom she communes and watches gradually disappear. “The melting of the ice reveals the nature of the double,” Noro says in a poetic statement. “The reflection slips away before I can escape it / After the ice, there is another material / A framework to explore / Dancing to find oneself again.”

The setting for the performance combines Noro’s interest in unique architectural apparatuses and environments outside of the traditional theater and Vigneron’s explorations of puppetry and creating forms with ice. Puppeteer Sarah Lascar controls the figure from the side and sometimes joins the dance to create a trio as is immersed in water.

“Mizu” is slated for performances throughout the summer at festivals and venues throughout Europe. Learn more on the production’s website. You might also enjoy revisiting Néle Azevedo’s “Minimum Monument.”

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘MIZU’ Contemplates Fragility and Impermanence in a Poignant Dance with an Ice Puppet appeared first on Colossal.

Slechts één bliksemslag legde de woning en het levenswerk van de familie Brand in de as. Anderhalve week na de brand in Bleskensgraaf kunnen Jaap en Marina het nog steeds niet geloven. Toch zegt het stel vooral dankbaar te zijn, ondanks het verlies van hun huis: "De hulp die we krijgen is met geen pen te beschrijven."