Being in such a mood, I decided to ignore a lot of things and not to blog about them. The remainders of the previous days nevertheless include…

• From Slashdot: Microsoft Patents XML Word Processing Documents. Or rather the idea of storing in XML whatever data is needed by a word processing document. I am waiting for USPTO to grant Microsoft a patent on the idea of storing in a database whatever data needs to be stored in a database. And then the USPTO should grant to themselves a patent on a method and apparatus to transform the concept of patent in a major hindrance to innovation.
• From TIME’s Can China Save the World?
  

  There are certainly signs that some aspects of China’s recovery are ephemeral. Part of the reason China’s stock market has soared is that Chinese companies have received so much cheap financing that they have dumped proceeds into the equity market for lack of better alternatives. [...] Up to 30% of new bank lending this year has wound its way into equities. Why isn’t the money going into new businesses? The evidence suggests that in key parts of the economy growth remains anemic, particularly the important export-manufacturing sector, which continues to suffer from the reduction in global demand. According to a report from Fitch Ratings in the U.S., Chinese lending continues to accelerate even though corporate profits overall are shrinking — suggesting that China may be incubating its own financial crisis that could be triggered when the adrenal rush of the stimulus wears off.

  And (a Chinese Keynesianism?):

  According to a recent study by the World Bank, Beijing’s government spending will generate more than 80% of the country’s overall economic growth this year.

• For some reason, the NYT praises Microsoft: Microsoft’s SharePoint Thrives in the Recession. No kidding? Are the mediocre software portals the future?
• Listening these days: Francisco Tárrega – Integral de Guitarra, and Wes Montgomery – Goin’ Out Of My Head.
• Oh, wait, I still want to mention l’idiot du jour: it’s this guy, for inventing the wrong reasons to ditch Ubuntu: «GIMP just isn’t as easy to use as Paint.NET», «gEdit is nasty to look at, with a gimmicky font, oversized text and horrific colors», then… «Then, the biggest one for me: Cross-browser testing. I severely dislike IE (as a browser and as a development harness), but that doesn’t negate my need to test websites in it. Or Chrome, Safari, or Opera. Sadly, Ubuntu only natively supports Firefox. The rest are all workarounds.» Wow. Ubuntu doesn’t natively support MSIE and Safari. Who could have thought of that?

This is the reading that made my evening: Linux desktops… too much too late, by Tom Callway.

Essential quotes:

Guess what? They all do the same. The GUI was ‘done’ ten years ago but nothing can stop the developers.

Trackball mice, multi-button radio-controlled mice, rotating cubes, wobbly windows, sticky bits, widgets all designed to look pretty and slow your computer down and ideally stop it altogether with a system-crashing bug. Now we have touch-screens so we can do exactly the same as before but without a mouse.

» Read more…

My first contact with SUSE Studio was the day before yesterday, and I’ve told about my initial attempt to build something useful. Being quite in a bad mood, I was not impressed. At a second look, SUSE Studio shows quite a big potential, actually.

That’s because many people would need a customized spin of a big Linux distro. What to do if you want a 1-CD installable LiveCD to match your preferences, for instance to come with something else than GNOME or KDE4? What if this is for an older computer, and it happens that you don’t like LXDE very much?

I could never use Revisor with actual results under the RHEL5 clones. Mandriva’s LiveCD installer is interesting, but Mandriva has a too short supported lifetime for any given release. And there aren’t many other solutions, at least for the mainstream distros.

This is why, regardless of what Novell means to some people, I decided to spend some more time with their online “appliance” building service. How can they afford to offer it for free?! (Note: I hate the word “appliance”, because it’s misused here, mais passons…)

I have made another selection of repos and of packages. No GDM, because it keeps wanting to add some GNOME parts and a GNOME menu entry. No Firefox and a quick selection of lightweight applications.
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A couple of articles from Foreign Policy:

• A shocking and comprehensive explanation (albeit concise enough) on how Somalia was screwed a lot of times, including the criminal mishaps due to the policy of the United States: The Most Dangerous Place in the World. Shocking. (Bonus: Why I Keep Going Back to Somalia.)
• Be afraid of China’s next generation of leaders! China’s Team of Rivals:
  

  The platforms of Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, for example, are strikingly divergent. Xi’s enthusiasm for market liberalization and the continued development of the private sector is well known to the international business community. Not surprisingly, his primary policy concerns include making the economy more efficient, keeping GDP growth high, and deepening China’s integration into the world economy. Xi is particularly interested in keeping wealthy elites in China’s eastern coastal region happy.

  By contrast, Li Keqiang is more concerned about the plight of the country’s unemployed. He has made affordable housing more widely available and understands the importance of developing a rudimentary social safety net, beginning with the provision of basic healthcare. The rejuvenation of the northeastern provinces, China’s old industrial base and one of its most labor-intensive areas, appears to be Li’s regional focus. For Li, reducing economic disparities is far more urgent than enhancing economic efficiency.

Except that Banned Hyperlinks Could Cost You $11,000 a Day in Australia (UPDATE: Activists Use Wikipedia To Test Aussie Net Censors) I won’t touch anything politics today. It would be too depressing. Maybe the IT won’t be as bad though (I must be nuts here).
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…because AIG Disclosed $75 Billion in Bailout Payments, and because I’ve found a relatively detailed list, here’s a quick chart of where the billions went to:

Not a big deal. With a few Linux links at the end.
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Ah, I was missing The Muppet Show! Boy, I am old! I’ve lost today about an hour on You Tube watching excerpts with Beaker, with the fabulous Swedish Chef, obviously I couldn’t skip Statler and Waldorf, and so on. I wasn’t aware that they kinda revived the Muppets with DVD versions of them. Even Region 2! Wee. I am nostalgic…
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Unsorted, mostly uncommented links:

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Now that Watchmen is also a movie, I am curious to see whether the movie can keep up with the comics, the way V for Vendetta was a good cinematizing of the homonym graphical novel. I’m afraid that this time the movie is a shallow production, no matter Dave Gibbons liked it. Here’s what I could find at a very quick search:
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Being dizzy and ineffective, I still collected a few links to post here. No coffee, but several mugs of tea…

Bric-à-brac:
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I still don’t know how to turn myself from an “evening person” to a “morning” one. Especially when I’m not in the best physical shape (e.g. a flu, or a bronchitis), nor in my best mood (there is a kind of a “morning hypoglycemic depression”, and if there isn’t such a thing, then tell the doctors that there is such a thing), my brain starts to function properly only after 3:30 PM (4:30 PM summer time). So here I am, with a few trivialities.
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Busy day… let’s see what I’ve still read on Tuesday.
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My hosting server went down twice today, but I’m back to report a few amazing articles I’ve read in recent times.

Debian 5 vs. Windows 7, the crazy comparison of the season: “Debian 5, une sérieuse alternative à Windows 7 pour l’entreprise”, dixit 01Net.com. Now, this is more than I can handle. Why not Debian 5 vs. Windows 2008 Server?

OTOH, here’s a valid plea for XP: “Vista or XP? It’s all about the money”:
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I suppose this is the new sticker in town, right? OK, let’s move on now.
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