September 18 Chuckellania (5 items)

The Indecision 2005 edition.

1. Pointless German Election?

   It would appear that the advanced German election 2005 yielded little of a useful result: per the German WikiNews results graph, the two major parties have almost the same amount of votes (which could possibly change to a tie once all of Dresden is done voting on October 2), and none the three minor parties have received enough votes to create an absolute majority coalition with one of the majors — though the FDP’s high results were a surprise for everyone. The Lefts expectations were obviously way off from actual results, too. This leads to several possibilities, none of which appeal to all political spokespersons asked: CDU/CSU and SPD could form a grand coalition. Depending on who you ask, this would in the long run weaken either of the coalition partners, and whether it would truly benefit anyone remains to be seen. The similar situation from 1966-1969 caused several things, amongst which were an apparent increased political awareness, but also decreased useful actual political activity from the acting government. Other options include the more common models of CDU/CSU with the FDP or SPD with the Greens, except this time, unless they wanted a tolerated minority government, they would have to add a third party. The CSU has indicated interest in a CDU/CSU-FDP-Greens coalition, though the Greens on the other hand don’t seem inclined. The SPD doesn’t want a coalition with the Greens and the Lefts, and the FDP wouldn’t want the SPD to have a coalition with the Greens and them. Obviously, one of these solutions will have to turn out as the one picked, or, as Ta’nernin is worried, there might be new elections yet again. I doubt it, but then again, at this point, nobody really has a clue what will happen. An Indecision 2005, anyone?

2. CC Radio

   wandering_nomad is hosting CC radio yet again!

3. Microsoft RSS Support

   ViaDave Winer: “Vista (Hearts) RSS!” made me check a few Microsoft RSS and Atom feeds, with several of them not validating according to Feed Validator. Of course, I feel like a real hypocrite now, seeing as my own blog’s Atom feed doesn’t validate either, for whatever reason. WordPress bug, or am I doing something wrong?

4. Microsoft Manager at my Blog

   Unless we’re dealing with an imposter (doesn’t look like it), it would appear Kevin Schofield is not only the first Microsoft employee to post at my blog, but also the first General Manager. Moiety thinks I’m famous now. Eee, or eep?

5. Weird Tickets

   Real Adium bug reports with really weird descriptions: #142 “Event speech feature request”, #1247 “Adium hates Kelly” and #1600 “Status Hot Keys”. Warning, some language.