Green & Red

綠紅,不是立宏(冷)。跟政治沒有關係。

全世界除了台灣和中國(大陸)兩個地方,其他地方的股票漲跌都是綠=上漲、紅=下跌,就連香港也是。不相信的人可以看看 CNN 或是逛逛世界各地的 Yahoo! 首頁。

一片慘綠這個成語在香港會變成一片慘紅(笑)。

Nothing to do with Taiwanese politics.

I was watching CNN one day, and I suddenly noticed the colours of the stock indexes are different: in Taiwan, when stocks rise the up arrows are coloured red; greens are the down ones.

Further investigation (on Yahoo Worldwide portals) shows that Taiwan and China are the only two places on Earth displaying stock indexes the “wrong” way. I don’t know if this was cause by Chinese traditions; red is the fortune colour used in every Chinese/Lunar New Years; green is the colour of one’s face if he/she feel ill or terrible.

On the contrary, Hong Kong does celebrate Chinese New Year – but their colours are as same as international. I guess the Chinese proverb “All terriblely green” don’t apply to them.

Chromatics means a lot in Taiwanese politics. For people who would like to know what red means politically besides Communists read this NYT article.

So Ubuntu is the bad guy?

Ubuntu vs. Debian: What Canonical Doesn’t Want You To KnowDigg 上的文章。

其實我的草稿裡面一直有一篇 My Linux Choice is Ubuntu 沒有發表。Ubuntu 是個很棒的 Linux 散布版本,它的安裝程式很自動,畫面很漂亮,幾乎所有的設定都有圖形介面可以改 —— 就算是要用到命令列的設定,命令也幾乎是剪下貼上就可以了。還有可以一次更新所有程式的更新系統,這比 Windows 上面的 Windows Update 帥多了。

我一直沒有把那篇文章貼上來的原因是因為直接這樣說好像對其他 Linux 散布版本不是很公平 —— 或許其他 Linux (嗯,應該稱作 GNU/Linux) 能做同樣的事,做的比 Ubuntu 還要好也說不定。

倒是那篇文章現在說 Dibian Debian 的 Etch 分支不管安裝程式或是更新程式等都和 Ubuntu 一樣,甚至連 Ubuntu 使用手冊都可以套用在 Etch 身上。文章真正的意思是:Ubuntu 的成功不是這個作業系統的成功,而只是行銷一個品牌,一個自製版本的 Dibian Debian 的成功。

隨便啦XD。Ubuntu 還算是 My “current” Liunx choice。如果您不是 Linux 的用戶想要跳槽而且進行還算平穩的轉換的話,Ubuntu 真的是個不錯的選擇。「Ubuntu 是古非洲語,意思是『我不會設定 Dibian Debian』」還真的是這樣勒。

這個時代誰都可以當壞人呀。

Ubuntu vs. Debian: What Canonical Doesn’t Want You To Know, an article I found on Digg.

I’ve kept a draft saying My Linux Choice is Ubuntu for a long time. Ubuntu is a good Linux distro, it’s easy to install, it’s beautiful, you can do almost all configuration by GUI tools instead of command lines – even if you need to will still be as easy as copy and paste. Not to mention the wonderful update-all-apps-at-once updating service that even beats Windows.

But seriously I choose not to post that “My Choice” post is because it will be unfair to not to understand – at least try to – how other Linux (Oops! the right term is GNU/Linux) distro does; maybe they do everything Ubuntu does and do them as good as Ubuntu but I didn’t know.

But I choose not to publish the post anyway; it seems unfair to other Linux distro since they might able, or even good at, to do the same thing that Ubuntu does. (A reminder: GNU/Linux is the political correct term)

Now, that post claims “The installer in [Dibian Debian] Etch works the same way as it does in Ubuntu, Apt works the same way, even Ubuntu guides usually work fine in Debian.” and saying that “…is Ubuntu’s success really due to the OS itself or the successful marketing of a highly branded version of Debian? And more importantly, with this in mind, is Ubuntu getting far too much press for what it is?“.

Ubuntu is still my “current” Linux choice, and it should be yours too if you are new to Linux and considering smooth transition. Ubuntu is the African word for “I can’t config Dibian.” – it sure is.

In this era, everyone can be the bad guy.

Red Mars

終於把 Red Mars 讀完了。還有兩本,紅火星只是火星三部曲的第一本而已呢(倒)。

火星三部曲真的是鋪陳很精細的小說;它是真科幻(在不遠的未來帶有真實性的科幻),每個章節以第三人稱描述一位角色的觀點、所見所聞與內心想法。雖然英文版裡面細緻描述的部份對我來說還算吃力,但我還是 enjoy 它所描述的世界。

以下劇情洩漏。

Red Mars. I finally finished reading it. Although I had difficulties understanding some of the detail descriptions Robinson used on landscapes and people’s feeling, I still quite enjoy it as the first novel I choose to read the original instead of translated version.

Spoiler Follows.

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