As we've noted with some disdain, the news has been captivated with the Big Money Buyout this week, as though the world is caught in some terrible rerun of Let's Make A Deal. The dealio continues unabated, but the good news is that at least some of the tech world has returned to normal.

First up to deliver a dose of normality is IBM, which finally got around to responding to Microsoft's whinging about the failure of OOXML, calling them — well — the snakes that they are, and we say hurrah. Big Evil, for their part, is busy assuring the world that they've got plenty up their sleeve — as though anyone ever suspected they didn't — including the dramatic revelation of a new "green mouse" with — you might want to pop a sedative for this one — an off switch. We're pretty sure the rainforest just sighed with relief.

And just where are they getting the funding for all this progress, you ask? Well, from defrauding the government, of course, at least according to the INQUIRER. The quasi-tabloid reports that the Empire has been docking their Death Star in Nevada for the last ten years, and using it as a loophole to game the Washington state government for more than half a billion in taxes. Gasp, we're ever so shocked.

And, of course, we couldn't mention Microsoft without touching on the Yahoo bid, which apparently is attracting the attention of Congress, as though they don't have anything better to do with their time. Yahoo, for their part, is praying that someone else will make a better offer — we feel their pain, and have the Cathedral of St. Charles alight with candles interceding — while some interesting names, including Apple, are turning up as possible counteroffers.

Speaking of Apple, the Australian press is reporting some interesting things Linux Developer-in-Chief Linus Torvalds had to say. Apparently, when asked what he thought of Apple's OSX, the uber-programmer described elements of it as "complete and utter crap." All we can say is "Ouch."

And on the subject of Linux — we are, after all, Linux Journal — a couple more new releases yesterday for popular open source projects. First up is the first maintenance release of KDE's new version 4 series, tagged quite naturally as KDE 4.0.1. And if that weren't enough, Fedora has released the alpha of Fedora 9 a/k/a Sulphur, which interestingly enough boasts support for KDE 4 among it's accomplishments. As with any alpha release, users are cautioned to proceed with care.

That's all from News Chopper 42, back to the studio!