Keep God out and let Hollywood in

Here's a cheerful story for everyone who still has any doubts about the brainwashing element of the public school system. Don't read. Don't think. Take your test, accept your assigned place and be a good little cog in the socialist corporasphere. And if you're not clear on the difference between a good little consumer and a bad little consumer, the MPAA, with the aid of Junior Achievement, will send special teachers to your elementary or junior high school to make sure you know right from wrong.

Not that there's any such thing as right and wrong. All morals are relative. Except for what the people responsible for murderous bloodbaths such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Kill Bill tell you, that is.

"We're really trying to teach young people to be responsible and to obey laws that they may not understand," said David Chernow, Junior Achievement's chief executive, apparently oblivious to the fact that children from 5th to 9th grade are seldom considered to be experts in intellectual property law.

Teach them to obey laws they don't understand. Yes, that sums it up nicely.

Borg-tracking

Many states already require vaccinations before children are 'allowed' to attend government schools. Now, a government school is the first to institute universal radio tracking. I wonder precisely how long will it be before implanted RFIDs are required for children attending government schools. Yet another reason to keep/take your children out of the public schools.

Where Hitler feared to tread

"The EU has even described Switzerland's position on future membership of the bloc as 'controversial'. Commentators say Brussels has always seen the bilaterals as a first stage towards full membership of the bloc - a view certainly not held by the People's Party. And they believe Brussels would be unwilling to continue negotiations if it thought Switzerland was reneging on this unspoken promise. 'If this were withdrawn, it would be difficult to explain to the EU member countries why Switzerland had been working on special accords with the EU', said a EU commissioner."

Of course, when getting the first bilateral agreement approved, the Swiss government absolutely denied that its approval had anything to do with joining Europe Uber alles. And the Swiss people voted heavily against putting their necks in the Eurofascist noose, with 80 percent of the population voting against even holding discussions to join the EU in 2001. Which leads one to wonder just what that unspoken promise was, and by whom it was given, since all four of the parties in government were officially against joining the EU at the time.

But it's clear now that three of them were lying, as less than two years later, the Christian Democrats, the Radicals and the Social Democrats are now all lobbying openly for Switzerland to join up. Which, no doubt, is exactly what has propelled the People's Party from a distant fourth place to first. It's not too hard to see how the other three parties might find common ground with the anti-democratic EU, though, since they are banding together to deny the People's Party, the top vote-getter in the most recent national elections, a second ministry of the seven available.

This is not the first time that talk of the inevitability of European union has been heard in Switzerland. Target Switzerland is an excellent history of the Third Reich's failed attempt to swallow the small Alpine country. Here's hoping the new Fourth Reich will have no better success.

The right to kill your wife

It seems that if those nutty Christians are against it, the ACLU is for it. We're not talking about pulling the plug on machines keeping someone artificially alive, we're talking about intentionally starving someone to death here. It just seems very strange that the ACLU would wish to support the right of someone to KILL HIS FREAKING WIFE! To show how absurd this is, what if instead of wanting to starve her, Mr. Schiavo wanted to hit Mrs. Schiavo over the head with a hammer? That would be faster, less painful and less cruel, though admittedly a little messier. If the court decides that husbands have the right to starve their womenfolk to death, doesn't that give them free rein to beat them to death too? This seems to be taking us back to the day of the legally-defined thickness of a cane with which one could beat his wife, and then some.

Of course, since the ACLU also believes in the right of mothers to murder their babies, I suppose supporting the right of men to kill their wives is at least in keeping with their ghoulish philosophy.

Fascists 2.0

Umberto Bossi, Italy's Reform Minister, said Brussels was "transforming vices into virtues" and "advancing the cause of atheism every day". He denounced the European arrest warrant as a step towards "dictatorship, deportation, and terror, instilling fear in the people, a crime in itself". It would lead to a Stalinist regime "multiplied by 25".

I've written warnings about the EU on several occasions. Now there are top European leaders warning you. Remember how when you first learned about the Holocaust and you wondered how Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists could possibly have come to power without anyone protesting or doing anything about it? Well, now you know. I'm just curious. Is it really better for a German government to team up with a French government in order to rule over Europe in a profoundly anti-democratic, freedom-hating manner than for a German government to militarily defeat a French government before teaming up with a second French government to rule over Europe in a profoundly anti-democratic, freedom-hating manner? Many of the people of the so-called member states won't even be permitted to vote on the national death warrant known as the European constitution.

Fascism is not dead. The fascists were simply smart enough to abandon the swishy sado-masochistic uniforms, take their time and use politicians instead of panzers to take control over the people of Europe. I suspect there are those in the United States government who realize this, which is why they are so concerned about the threat that the Euro Army poses to NATO. Because if NATO is not there to keep the fascists new army under guard, it's quite likely that one day the United States will be back in Europe, fighting that same army.

I am desirous of his success

Daunte Culpepper, black quarterback:
QB Rating: 114.9. Completion Pct: 64.2. Minnesota Vikings 2003 Record: 6-0.

That other black quarterback that Rush Limbaugh said was overrated:
QB Rating: 51.1. Completion Pct: 47.9. Philadelpha Eagles 2003 Record: 3-3.

Skoal Vikings!

The best of all possible reasons

"Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates has slammed moves by political parties in Australia and elsewhere to legislate the adoption of open source software. In an interview with The Australian at the Microsoft Office System launch in New York, Mr Gates said any such moves by government were wrongheaded and would result in a reduction in public sector productivity."

If reducing public sector productivity is not a reason to cheer for Linux, then I don't know what is. Private sector productivity = good. Public sector productivity = everything from a drag on private sector productivity (not good) to the increased efficiency of mass murder (really, really bad).

Think that sounds whacked? Then perhaps you should note that 41 of the 191 UN member states have murdered at least 1 percent of their citizenry within the last 100 years. Everyone remembers Germany, China and the Soviet Union. But there's also France, Mexico, Spain, Poland, Turkey, and Yugoslavia, just to name a few. For a human being living in the 20th century, the chances of getting offed by your own government were hundreds of times greater than the chance that you would be murdered by an individual criminal.

Mailbox - You don't have to be clueless, but it helps

Alejandro writes: "First, you "Americans" kill palestinians using the Israeli Army. That land first belong to them, not to the people who is living now there (not all of them, I mean). Yes, probably they killed many US Citizens (you know, America is a continet, so when you say Americans, i think in Brazilians, Cubans,Canadians, Mexicans, US people, Argentinians, etc)."

Strike one - We Americans have the United States Marine Corps. We don't need Jews, or anyone else, to do our deadly work for us. Did you miss the small matter of the successful invasion of two countries in the last two years? Invading Gaza would take about ten minutes, judging by the speed of the assault on Iraq.

Strike two - The majority of Palestinians moved to Israel AFTER European Jews made their long-prophesied return and made the land economically viable. Even their great leader, Arafat, is an Egyptian. Then many of them, the "refugees", moved out of their own accord in order to make way for the expected triumph of the Egyptian and Jordanian armies. Unlike refugees in almost every other country, these "refugees" have not been permitted to settle in the lands of their Arab brothers, who profess to care so much about them.

Strike three - What a load of horse merde! I am so tired of the faux worldly pretending that Americans are globally ignorant and that national terminology is founded solely in geography. I'm sure that when Arab or European demonstrators are waving Hate America signs that they're probably referring to Brazilians and Argentinians, right? Canadians call themselves Canadians, not Americans, and they call us Americans. The same is true for Brazilians, Cubans, Mexicans and Argentinians. I don't know what people are trying to prove by pretending to misunderstand something they obviously understood - and one doesn't exactly make a strong case for one's scholarly superiority by demonstrating that one is unaware that "continent" is spelled with three Ns.

Three sentences, three strikes. Impressive stuff, Alejandro. And, you're out.

Following to Freedom

Nine people have written to tell me that they decided to start their own Linux migrations after reading Breaking Up with Bill, and one dealer informed me that he's going to start encouraging his customers to make the move. I think that's great, since the growth from 1 percent to 2 percent is always harder than going from 10 percent to 20 percent. Even more people told me that they'd like to make the move, but just weren't ready yet.

I don't know if we're on the verge of another OS shift or not, but it's fun to think that we might be. I talked to a friend of mine who is an executive at a computer game company, and he's open to the notion of Linux ports. Once the game makers do that, the floodgates will open. It's really games that drives technology these days, and that's been the little-known case for twelve years now.

By the way, Samba is shaking her thang on my local network now. The instructions were a little more detailed and encyclopedic and a little less how-to than I would have liked, though. And one thing I didn't realize earlier is that the NTFS partition instructions actually caused Redhat to provide a icon link to my newly accessible hard drive - that's pretty handy.

Next step - get WINE working

You're so vain you probably think this post is about you

I read with interest your commentary on television and your friends viewing habits. I am quite convinced that the “one friend” that you refer to is me. I’ll have you know that contrary to your assertions about all men, I enjoy both homosexuality and feminism. The only thing I enjoy more than homosexuals and feminists are homosexual feminists, which is why Camille Paglia will be my third child’s name regardless of that child’s gender. When you press that brown shirt of yours, make sure to accent it with a bold colored scarf or kerchief.

Yeah, so how is life with Everybody Loves Sex in the City with Queer Joe Bachelor Guy? And anyhow, you know perfectly well that I'm not an Autumn.

Mounting NTFS

Always working towards interoperability, Microsoft has refused to release information on working with NTFS partitions - which is basically what NT, 2000 and XP drives are. And, as usual, the Open Source community has made significant headway despite this. Anyhow, it is possible to mount a NTFS drive under Linux, although Redhat users must patch the kernel first. Another point for Mandrake there, I suppose. Fortunately, it is really easy and the NTFS how-to is one of the best I've yet encounted. Total no-brainer.

Next step: get Samba going to access in-house network.
After that: get Alphasmart hotsync working under WINE

Terrible thought on MIAs

John Chamless of the Dallas Morning News writes:

When a government starts trying to hide war casualties, you know its worried about people turning against a war. I have a very personal reminder of such sleight of hand at home. It is a prisoner-of-war bracelet for a friend of mine who was listed as "missing" in Vietnam. He went "missing" from the skids of a helicopter a hundred feet or so above a jungle battle. His parents were told the truth, but the nation was lied to by his inclusion as "missing." The military, or its civilian ledership, created a real problem by hiding all of those dead soldiers. Decades later, it had problems explaining that there really weren't all of these "prisoners" wasting away in Vietnam.

I have to admit, I never understood why North Vietnam would supposedly hold onto so many prisoners after the war while they were busily slaughtering their southern compatriots. Nor why we should have had so much trouble finding our lost men, if they were alive or even executed en masse. This shows, once more, that if something doesn't make sense somehow, it probably isn't true.

There once were children from Narnia

... who gradually got Balmer and Balmer. As in Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer, who appears to be intent on sabotaging any reputation for sanity, much less credibility, by insisting that Windows is more secure than Linux. Um, Steve, did no one send you any email this past summer? Now, I understand that marketing occasionally demands an arms-length relationship with the truth, but the Big Lie doesn't tend to work very well unless you have the benefit of iron-fisted control over the media. Which, for all Microsoft's influence, they simply do not have. Yet.

Somehow, I can't imagine that I'll be asked to write for Slate or MSNBC anytime soon.

Mailbox - Vox Nazi

Dear Hitler Youth

[long rant on Rush Limbaugh's hypocrisy deleted, as well as subsequent exchange of email on how "if you need to present all the Orwellian Hilter was Liberal/Democrat/Whatever BS, we both know it just the rhetoric of Reactionaries trying to distance themselves from the Ultimate Reactionary."]

Do have yourself a wonderful day, Vox. Now that Limbaugh's power is decimated, I know that I will!

Keep that Brownshirt pressed,
J. Fontaine

Like most on the left, Mr. Fontaine is utterly ignorant of the left-wing nature of the German National Socialist Worker's Party. After asking for some clarification from him, I was able to break down his argument as follows:

1) The central fact of Hitler's Nazi ideology is Jew hatred.
2) Hitler was right-wing because he was opposed to Communism.
3) Vox Day is right-wing (It's true, but we don't actually know why Mr. Fontaine believes this since he doesn't understand the spectrum.)
4) Therefore Vox Day is a brownshirt-wearing Hitler Youth Nazi.

Mr. Fontaine subsequently admitted that he was puzzled by my defense of Jews, which, of course, explodes his entire argument with regards to me. Unfortunately, he was not able to admit that the reason his logic fails with regards to me is that it is entirely absurd in the first place. Many other socialists besides the national socialists were opposed to the Marxist variant, just as Mensheviks opposed Bolsheviks and Marx opposed the syndicalists and other socialists himself - the truth is that points 1, 2 and 4 above are simply incorrect. Here, by contrast, is the breakdown of my case for the left-wing Nazi:

1) The central fact of Hitler's Nazi ideology was government control of society.
2) There were a number of social policy actions which the Nazi party wished to and did enact.
3) Most of those policy actions were very similar to those supported by the Communist party and the Democratic party.
4) These policy actions, as well as the fundamental left-wing notion of a collective right to control society, are antithetical to everything for which I, and the libertarian party, stand. I am a right-wing extremist opposed to every plank of the Munich manifesto as well as the entire Communist manifesto. The Democratic party is not only not opposed to either, but in fact explicitely supports the majority of the specific goals of both.
5) Therefore, Nazi ideology belongs to the Left and is an overt enemy of my right-wing libertarian ideology.

Looks like the brownshirt actually fits Mr. Fontaine rather nicely. With a name like that, perhaps Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National might suit his style.

Beauty in the sorrow

I don't care about baseball. I actively dislike ESPN - though not enough to give up The Sports Guy. But there's something a little bit poignant in the emotions being expressed by these Red Sox fans. Sports is not important, but perhaps because they are not important we are able to express ourselves freely about how they make us feel.

Pure Halloween evil

The so-called Halloween document makes for some fascinating reading, especially where it is annotated by open source advocates. I found the following section to be very interesting, considering that I had independently come to the conclusion that Microsoft is a force working against freedom of choice and human liberty. As described by the annotator, it was written by a Microsoft staff engineer "with contributions, endorsements, and reviews by two Program Managers, the Senior Vice President in charge of NT development, and two members of the eight-person Executive Committee (Microsoft's Politburo, answering only to Bill Gates)."

After reading it, you'll probably conclude two things: a) I'm glad I migrated / I really should migrate to Linux; b) Politburo is really an apt appellation.

One of the most interesting implications of viable OSS ecosystems is long-term credibility.

Long-Term Credibility Defined

Long term credibility exists if there is no way you can be driven out of business in the near term. This forces change in how competitors deal with you.

{ TN comments: Note the terminology used here ``driven out of business''. MS believes that putting other companies out of business is not merely ``collateral damage'' -- a byproduct of selling better stuff -- but rather, a direct business goal. To put this in perspective, economic theory and the typical honest, customer-oriented businessperson will think of business as a stock-car race -- the fastest car with the most skillful driver wins. Microsoft views business as a demolition derby -- you knock out as many competitors as possible, and try to maneuver things so that your competitors wipe each other out and thereby eliminate themselves. In a stock car race there are many finishers and thus many drivers get a paycheck. In a demolition derby there is just one survivor. Can you see why ``Microsoft'' and ``freedom of choice'' are absolutely in two different universes? }

apt-get for Redhat

apt-get is a very useful Debian application, which is often cited as the reason that Debian's installation tends to the crude side - not much point in polishing it up when it's so easy to get everything configured after the fact with apt-get. Apt-get has been ported to Redhat Linux, and in combination with synaptic, provides the Redhat user with a graphical apt-get. It's rather like Red Carpet, only with far more RPMs to choose from. This download is a no-brainer - I'll have to add it to yesterday's installation guide.

I've found the combination of apt-get and synaptic to be very useful, in part because they tell me what some of these random applications on my system actually do. I just used it to download XMAME, for which I already have all of the necessary roms to transform my Linux machine into a full-blown arcade. Wocka-wocka-wocka!

Sure you can!

"You can't explain a 12 percent decline in men 18 to 34 or close to 20 percent in men 18 to 24 by saying they're playing a lot more video games," said David F. Poltrack, the executive vice president for research at CBS."

I don't watch much television. There's only one of my friends who watches television with any degree of regularity, except for the NFL, of course. Why would any guy waste his time on vegging out in front of the TV, when it is a) stupid, b) boring, c) broken up into five-minute segments and d) propagandistic. The Internet, computer games and video games are all significantly more entertaining and interesting. Not to mention books. I think it's amusing that the networks try to cram homosexuality and feminist indoctrination down our throats, then are surprised when guys shrug their shoulders, say 'forget that' and hit the off button.

We're guys, after all. We don't make a scene. We don't throw hissy fits and protest marches. We just go away.

Flaky little machine

My Alphasmart Dana died yesterday. Repeatedly turning off on her own, she couldn't recognize her SD card for a minute there before conking out altogether. She's too flaky to even stay dead, though, as a hardware reset and hotsync - Kardorto - has restored her to seeming full health. I get the feeling that she was protesting my repeated attempts to sync her under Linux.

It's okay, baby... it's okay. If you want Windows, you can stick with Windows... for now. In keeping with the theme, I'm reading Copeland's Microserfs on her now. Isilo is a little disappointing, as it doesn't jump pages as inobtrusively as Palm Reader, so I switched back to Palm Reader.

You have to love a device with 30 hours of battery life, a wide-screen and a full keyboard. Great for reading in bed and writing on the go.

Missing the point

She's a lovely woman, and a bright one, but Michelle Malkin completely misses the point. Grover Norquist's pro-growth, anti-tax Republican credentials are pretty close to impeccable. The fact that Mr. Norquist is keeping company with the likes of Alec Baldwin and the left-wing People for the American Way does not mean that he is a closet leftist. Just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, these quasi-sentient socialists are right, for once, to oppose the Patriot Act and some of the ways in which the Justice Department is handling its "terrorist" investigations. You would think that the unusual fact that Mr. Norquist sees fit to join forces with these polar opposites on this particular issue should cause Michelle to reconsider her opinion, not leap to kick Norquist out of the Republican party.

Like Mrs. Malkin, National Review's Jonah Goldberg, of whom I am a fan, defends the Patriot Act because none of its intrusive aspects have been invoked yet: "This would even be defensible if there were one iota, one scintilla (is a scintilla smaller than an iota?) of evidence that the Patriot Act has been abused. But there hasn't been a single allegation of abuse of the Patriot Act that has survived judicial or any other reasonable scrutiny."

This analysis is disturbing, as it seems that some on the Right are now beginning to develop the same historical amnesia that pervades the mainstream media. This fact that the Patriot Act is being unused is nevertheless absolutely in keeping with the history of many other cancerous laws, which are passed and kept in the scabbard for a while, only to be unsheathed later when people are accustomed to the concept and the political protests have lost their steam. No one was concerned about the income tax in 1913 because it did not affect anyone that anyone knew - but everybody sure knows about it now. The reasonable person should assume that those dangerous provisions are in the Patriot Act because there are plans to use them in the future, not that they are harmless because they have not been used yet.

The Patriot Act and the IAO are constitutional abominations. The War on Terror is being used exactly in the same way that the War on Drugs has been used for decades - to provide the federal government with the ability to infringe upon the liberty of the American people. Your house can get stormed with a no-knock raid if an anonymous telephone call accuses you of the wrong sort of botany project, and soon the same thing will be the case if you happen to visit the wrong web sites or use dangerous terminology in your emails. Echelon is still out there transcribing American faxes, emails and telephone calls, after all.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that the same so-called conservatives who support the latter also support the former now. As for me, I'll consider taking the federal government's commitment to fighting "terror" seriously when it stops cuddling up to the Saudis, begins deporting illegal aliens, refuses entry to the citizens of all terrorist states and cuts off funding to the godfather of terrorism, Yasser Arafat.