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This is truly hilarious website, not to mention it’s true eh ?

Flying Spaghetti monster god

Switch your lights off tonight

I just stumbled over a great video of what is the so call “crisis of credit”. It explain everything you need to know about the crisis. Once that done, the thing I don’t get is why this disappearing money should affect the real economy, you know the one with working people, who produce real goods and render real services that are useful to other working people. Here’s a little bit of the explanation

I once read a book called Collapse: How Civilizations Choose to Fail or Succeed, in this book the Author Jared Diamond does a sort of  “ecological accounting” of the soil and other natural assets of a civilization and how their management does seal the fate of some. One factor that explain the survival of one society over another is the bad neighbour factor : if your economy is based on the addition of a resource provided by a trade partner that can’t sustain the trade and you have no replacement for that resource then you are in trouble, even if all the basis of your economy are sound. Full isolation is as risky as being too dependent.

You see me coming, US banks are the bad neighbours and the resource we need to make the real economy run is the money, so when the bank went bankrupt the resource that make the industrial and service sector being able to pay their employees and suppliers become extinct.

In our hyperconnected world, money is a too serious matter to let the banks manage it.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

The good folk at ZDnet australia take their laptop a ride in Sidney’s street asking : Do you like the new windows 7 features and interface ?

The funny thing is they were showing the latest instalment of KDE desktop on linux instead of the next Microsoft OS. The oh! and wow! of the people watching the KDE demonstration while they think they are looking at Windows 7 are very informative, people don’t care about what they are using as long as they know the brand :

The Linux foundation launched an initiative to make more people aware of the existence of GNU/linux. They are doing it through small video clips submited by the public, some are quite interesting. If I had some talent I would certainly try to make one, so if you have some arts in your blood, show your love! The following clip is among the good one, enjoy :

If you are into the IT scene, and interested in those “alternative softwares” called Free and Open source than chance are you have heard that Viet Nam, this little country from South East Asia and the second fastest growing economy in Asia, will have its government adopting FOSS massively and convert everything by the year 2010.

And then start all those arguments outside of Vietnam, Free Software pundits jumping of joy, other more conservative type seeing this as a confirmation that Free and Open Source is a liberal thing for hippies and godless communists that is better to avoid. Some, more of the humanist type, have been juggling with numbers and pretend that money is better spent on food and infrastructure than software licence while skeptics aren’t sure it’s a good thing to go only “one way”.

Most of what you’ve heard is wrong, and unless you are vietnamese it’s unlikely you’ll understand the inner working of the Open Source Politics in Viet Nam. In this article I will try to put everything in context and explain what this story is about. To start with a little timeline of the history of Open source politic in Viet Nam (Thanks to Nghia Le Trung where most of content come from) :

• 2002 Viet Nam starts negociating it’s entrance among WTO nations
• 2003 Ministry of science and technology issue a Master plan where “Open Source” is central
• March 2004 the OSS master plan becomes an official policy (aka resolution 235), one reason to explain the move is the necessity to reduce piracy, the goal is to switch the whole government to “open source” in 2008 so it become easier to enters WTO.
• 2004 communist party of vietnam has an internal program to switch its infrastructure and user base to FOSS.
• 2005 A lot of activities around Open Source in Vietnam, congress on Open source and Education, workshops, emergence of groups of users.
• 2006 Intel announce they will invest 300 millions dollars to build a plant in the southern part of Vietnam.
• May, 21 2007 the Government signed an agreement with Microsoft to buy MS Office for all the Government agencies and we see rising rumours about making Microsoft an strategic partner in building eGovernment infrastructures in VN. Agreement will end in 2010.
• September 2007, Vietnam voted “Abstain” (not “Yes”) for OOXML in ISO.
• December 2007, the Governement recommended to use some FOSS (OOo, Firefox, Thunderbird, Unikey) in Govt agencies, Vie Nam enters WTO the same month.
• In March 2008, Vietnam voted “Abstain” (not “Yes”) for OOXML in ISO once again.
• In 2008, the Government. installed legit copies of  MS Office in agencies through the country, according to the agreement with Microsoft and some pilot projects on Microsoft Share Point Portal Server.
• In 2008, with some small pilot projects the Government carried out OO.o, Firefox, Thunderbird, Unikey (application to type vietnamese) in some agencies.
• In October 2008, Microsoft released a patch that cause all pirated copies of windows to display a black screen and telling the user to use the genuine one. It has confused a lot of Chinese users who don’t understand English, Chinese press had criticize Microsoft for doing this.
• In December 2008, the Ministry of information and communication issued the Directive that everyone talks about.

So whoever think it has been a long single and straight process should think otherwise. Vietnamese are very resiliant, you cannot scare them easily and if you push them (like western countries did about piracy) they will push back.

This is exactly what it is happening, although the local authorities are aware of what are the benefit of FOSS for the local economy, the vietnamese government does not have the technical capacity to implement this very ambitious plan of conversion to FOSS. They also have to face strong internal resistance to change. Neither the authorities do have the money to renew the MS office licence in 2010 and they already failed to implement the resolution 235 (OSS master plan). So in order do keep Microsoft at bay for some times, they reissue their interest to shift to FOSS. If MS pushes too hard they may see another “domino” falls again.

In conclusion, at the end of 2010, there will be another round of “communication politics”, but at least many of the computers that the government runs will have more, not all, Open Source software. When ask about the story one of my vietnamese friend commented :

So with its records, the government would exceed expectation if it meets a fraction of the announced goals by the deadline set by the decree. 10% would thrill everybody here, I figure

I do it with Ubuntu because I believe that the best in me comes from everyone around me. That I would have no use of freedom if there was nothing good to do with it.
I do it with Ubuntu because recognizing how I’m connected with my fellow human beings :

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed. Desmund Tutu

Now that is for humanism, for the rest, I’m also using Ubuntu

Thanks Jono for remind us why the ubuntu ethos is so important.

After degrading our place by building ever powerful and GHG producing engines, car makers who are hard hitted by the financial crisis (them too have tasted to those pesky subprimes) are asking for money, billions and billions of dollars.

Anyway, them also too are begging for money, after the banks, we have those billionaire asking for help.

Instead of bailing them out I think they should let them die and invest all that money in energy efficient enterprise and jobs. Plus what is the chance that they will do something positive with that money, something really positive like stoping the production of big, gaz guzzling cars.

I’m afraid that with the actual price of gaz going lower and the billions they will get to pay their debts they will simply continue they way they they are doing right now.

My suggestion would be : let the car makes fix their own issues and invest that money in anything other than the car industry.

This suggestion applies to canadian government as well who wants to help Ontario car industry.

Shift to green NOW!

First I’m stating why I will not vote for the big 3 : Parti Québécois, Parti Libéral and Action Démocratique :

Action Démocratique and the Parti Libéral are like the tories or any conservative parties, they get elected by ordinary people to serve a fraction of the society and will sell our assets if it prove good to them.

Parti Québécois used to have my vote, because it’s a social-democrat, it’s a party of idea, it’s also the party of my parents, they were early militants and contributed to the ‘76 election of the PQ. Now, it has become rather bland, even with a great and experimented chef like Pauline Marois. However they will NEVER agree to have more proportional voting in our system, they have too much to loose. They lost me right there.

Now why I will not vote for the Green Party Of Quebec and choose Québec Solidaire instead

Saying that is a big treason, because I’m a new militant of the Green Party, and I truly I would rather vote for green and state bluntly what I really believe in than switching my allegiance. I wish I could vote green …

However giving one vote is not something one do lightheartedly and until yesterday I was still unsure about what I was going to vote. Here’s why I’m not voting for the green party this time and I’m giving my vote to the party represented by Amir Khadir and Françoise David duo :

• It’s a question of performance, with a lesser vote intention rate than the green party, QS has manage to get much MUCH more traction to its ideas. I haven’t seen much green party press releases.
• QS is better organized, I’ve tried several time to pay for my member card to the party, offline directly to the organizer. Nope I can’t. I gave my name to help with anything… No phone call, no email, no whatsoever… wake up it’s ELECTION time.
• It’s a question of seriousness, for instance the decision of the green party to present someone anyway in Mercier (where QS is most likely to get one elected candidate) is wrong, when you are small you need allies, and QS is the best ally the green party can have. Not to agree to exchange this little service show sectarism at best.
• I went to a demonstration to protest against the absence of PVQ and QS for the chefs debate, it was 7am and there was only one another militant of the green party. Gee, where were you ?
• In term of web campaigning, Quebec Solidaire is a leader, so far it has outshined all the other parties Edit : their domination of the web continue with this new initiative to get the vote out
• My green candidate in my riding is not serious, I met her in person, she’s very kind and gentle person, but she’s very busy something else and did not “campaign” at all or so little. She even won’t show up at the party after the election …
• Finally the program of the Quebec Solidaire is probably as “green” as the green themselves as it was highlighted by Greenpeace Questionnaire aux formations politiques du Québec

To finish, please my friends of the PVQ no hard feelings, I’m still green, I’m just voting for the most efficient medium for my beliefs, that is, until next election.

Most people don’t install themselves their operating system even if this task has become exceedingly easy. That’s rule but I would add the exception to the GNU/linux folks who not only install their favorite OS for themselves but will go the extra mile to do it for you.

That’s what we can call an install party, and right this week in Quebec city we will have one of those

On the menu we will have demonstration of free software and installation of either Mandriva, OpenSUSE et Ubuntu, and an atmosphere of party.

(The following links are in french, sorry…)

For more information: http://www.linuq.org/index.php?id=104

To become a volunteer :  http://www.linuq.org/index.php?id=112
To have Linux installed : http://www.linuq.org/index.php?id=108