Zero-sum zeros

I have been a supporter of US Women's Soccer and the WUSA for five years, but no more. I'll have no part in supporting anything for which the feminasties are waving the pink flag. Julie Foudy, the loud-mouthed former national team player and Reichsfuhrer of the Women's Sports Foundation, has repeatedly revealed herself as a sexist opportunist who will brook no criticism of Title IX, however valid, as BYU swimming coach Tim Powers points out:

Cynthia Cooper, the WNBA player who co-chaired the commission, tried in vain to raise these very points. “The law of Title IX stays as is,” she explained during a recent hearing. “We are talking about the three-part test. Are you attending a university to play sports? If not, then why should you be counted for proportionality?” Cooper was quickly rebuked by Julie Foudy, president of the Women’s Sports Foundation, who argued “If 3 percent of airline pilots are Black, does that means that Blacks are afraid of flying?” Foudy went on to call Cooper’s ideas “crazy” and “dangerous” — exactly the kind of invective that greets anyone who dares to challenge proportionality.

Nice logic, Foudy, and tasteful too, considering that Cynthia Cooper is black. Right, it's crazy and dangerous to suggest that it is possible - possible - that on some college campuses, there are more men than women who wish to play sports. And if there are, Foudy wants them to sit down and forget about it. What a joke. If women want to turn sports into a zero-sum game, then so be it. Perhaps men should boycott the WNBA. Oh, never mind, what's the point? It's not like anyone watches it anyhow.

Space Bunny and the penguins

I can only conclude that Microsoft is toast. After the Digital Ghetto's favorite blonde finished poking her nose around Evolution - she likes to read the email and often has a few choice comments for the haters - she decided that Linux wasn't necessarily a complete freakfest. It didn't hurt that she envied Opera's ability to block pop-ups, so she was already flirting with MS-infidelity. And then, she has a thing for penguins too, so I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised when, after having her Outlook Express start acting up again this morning, she expressed some interest in making the grand migration. Say no more!

I think we'll stick with Redhat, since I already know what I'm doing there and don't have to worry about any hardware incompatibilities with her wireless card. Girl without Internet access = Very Bad Thing, especially when my defenseless machine is sitting there burbling away in the great digital chorus.

From whence the name Space Bunny? It's not really that hard to figure out. Except the real-world version has a laser on her Glock.

Brainwashed from birth

A Minnesota pediatrician writes that public preschool is expensive, doesn't work and has a historically proven tendency to eliminate liberty and the free market. Which, naturally, is why the Federal Reserve is pushing for it in their Economic Development Initiatives. My dream is that one day, Americans will again remember that turning power, money and children over to the government is ALWAYS a bad idea.

Freedom = Responsibility. Give up the latter, and you will lose the former.

The iniquities of Dell

A reader writes in to tell me that based on my description, it is almost certain that my motherboard is dying - post warranty, of course. This is the second Dell laptop in a row in which the motherboard has croaked. The other one, fortunately, was still under warranty when it passed away. The good news is that I can start thinking about my next machine, which will certainly NOT be a Dell. Of all the things there were to be learned from the object lesson of the American auto manufacturers, why is it that planned obsolescence should be the one that they latched onto.

Muslims against Rod Dreher

"Muslims Against Defamation is calling for the immediated removal of known Islamophobe Rod Dreher from the staff of The Dallas Morning News. Rod Dreher is responsible for several articles painting the entire Muslim community as suspicious, a threat and anti-Semites. Rod Dreher is a direct threat to the safety of our community.... Your Muslim child's safety is at stake!"

Somehow, I find it a little difficult to picture the mild-mannered former National Review editor kitting himself out like Duke Nukem and mowing down rows of burkha-clad women and children clutching trading cards of Yasser Arafat, Osama bin Laden and Sheihk Yassin.

Islam does not mean "peace". It means "submission". As in yours.

A man of honor

Jay Nordlinger declares that this letter from Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, a physician imprisoned by Fidel Castro, "deserves some kind of fame — or at least a modicum of attention." I agree, even if I am myself no supporter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which subsumes all human rights to the United Nations. (Dr. Biscet is serving 25 years for defending the declaration, though his real crime is opposing the socialist Cuban dictator.)

Cubans deserve freedom too. Let everyone who thinks that relations with the socialist dictatorship should be normalized read this first.

Free Biscet.

So this is World War III

The points Rumsfeld made include these: The US has no way to measure whether it is winning or losing the global war on terror; we have not made truly “bold moves” to fight terrorists and we are in for “a long, hard slog” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pointing to Iraq’s al Qaeda-linked Ansar al Islam, Rumsfeld asked: “Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the clerics are recruiting, training and deploying?” Later, in a briefing to Washington Times staff, he called for a new agency to help fight “a war of ideas” against international terrorism. He suggested a “21st –century information agency in the government” to help in the international battle of ideas, to limit the teaching of terrorism and extremism and to provide better education.” However, in his memo, he said private organizations could counter Islamist “radical madrassas.”

Clearly, the defense secretary is convinced that the war on terror cannot be won by military victories alone and wants more emphasis on the struggle for hearts and minds. Fighters and defense officials, says Rumsfeld, must start asking themselves: “Are there things we aren’t doing that we might be doing?”

I don't always agree with the Defense Secretary, but he's certainly got a mind of some magnitude and his thinking is always worthy of due respect. As usual, the press is focusing on irrelevant trivialities from the leaked memo, but there are some interesting points revealed here. First, it's pretty clear that the whole "war on terror" and "Islam means peace" line is simply pacification cover for the idiot press and public. You aren't concerned about madrassas - Islamic academies - and memes if you don't view the war as a long-term clash between civilizations, or as the Islamists put it, the inevitable conflict between the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-Harb. Also, his mention of the need for private organizations rightly recognizes that government can only accomplish so much in terms of winning a war of ideas and implicitly recognizes - I suspect - that Christian missionaries and aid societies can accomplish more in Iraq at this point than the USMC. Finally, it's both true and intriguing that Rumsfeld does not consider successfully invading Afghanistan and Iraq to be bold moves.... though perhaps ending the Saudi, Palestinian and Iranian threats would be.

I dislike that our government is still hiding the true nature of this revival of war between Islam and the West, I reject the notion that a new propaganda agency will solve anything and I very much distrust the government's ability to resist the temptation to further assault American liberties while using the war as an excuse. But until our Islamic enemies are willing to declare a real peace with their Christian, atheist and Hindu foes, it's still somewhat of a relief to know that those running the show aren't quite as clueless as they are somehow determined to make themselves appear to be.

Dogs and light bulbs

Yeah, this sort of circular email is only one half-step up from Spam, but some of these were pretty funny and it will amuse a certain pretty blonde girl to see them here. How many dogs does it take to change a light bulb?

Golden Retriever: The sun is shining, the day is young, we've got our whole lives ahead of us, and you're inside worrying about a stupid burned-out bulb?

Border Collie: Just one. And then I'll replace any wiring that's not up to code.

Rottweiler: Make me.

German Shepherd: I'll change it as soon as I've led these people from the dark, check to make sure I haven't missed any, and make just one more perimeter patrol to see that no one has tried to take advantage of the situation.

Greyhound: It isn't moving. Who cares?

Poodle: I'll just blow in the Border Collie's ear and he'll do it. By the time he finishes rewiring the house, my nails will be dry.

Ridgeback: I'll bark at the next delivery guy. He'll change it. After he changes his underwear.

Vizsla: Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

Beagle: WHAT? THE LIGHT BULB NEEDS TO BE CHANGED?? HEY! HEY! THE LIGHT BULB NEEDS TO BE CHANGED! WOWOOOO, WOWOO! SOMEBODY BETTER CHANGE THE LIGHTBULB!!

Cat: "Dogs do not change light bulbs. People change light bulbs. So, the real question is: How long will it be before I can expect some light, some dinner, and a massage?"

Rush was right - Week IV

The Eagles squeaked out another win, moving them to within one game of the NFC East-leading Cowboys. One could argue that McNabb is finding ways to win, though of course even winning a Super Bowl that way wasn't enough for Trent Dilfer to keep his job. Nor is a quarterback usually anointed a superstar because his team wins a few low-scoring games against mediocre opposition.

CMP ATT PCT YDS AVG TD INT RTG
108 213 50.7 995 4.7 3 7 54.8

At least he's got his completion rating up over fifty percent again after last week's 17/23 performance. I'd hardly characterize a 141-yard, 1-TD, 1-INT performance as "McNabb Outduels Pennington", though.

28th in Yards Passing. 34th in Touchdowns. Tied for 12th in Interceptions. Off the charts - below 35th - in Completion Percentage, Yards per Attempt and Quarterback Rating. This is well below quarterbacks who have lost their job this season, such as Mark Brunell and Tim Couch. Of course, we're still waiting to hear the sportswriting community confess that Rush was right about McNabb being overrated.

Dell-iberations

Three of the four laptops I've owned are Dell machines. I'm not sure how I feel about them anymore, though. I was just considered moving from 256 megs of memory to 512, now that Linux will prevent my current Latitude from becoming hopelessly outdated in another year or two, when I had a chilling reminder of a past problem with my other Dell. I've experienced:

1. Broken clamshell holder - old machine, gave it away
2. Broken Delete key - keyboard replaced under warranty
3. Broken PCMCIA socket - replaced under warranty
4. Broken USB socket - didn't even know this was possible, still broken
5. I, K and , keys didn't work this morning. A hard boot seems to have taken care of this, but I'm nervous. It's hard to write without any letter in the alphabet, but partcularly hard wthout one of the fve vowels. Just kddng!

Still, these are not problems that I'd expect, considering that I seldom move my laptop and have never treated it roughly. And when I consider that Dell gives you your choice of which flavor of XP you want pre-installed, I'm not as sure as I once was that my next laptop will be a Dell.

Fantasy Football Freaks

I think that the explosion of interest in fantasy football has created some high profile openings for some very mediocre analysts. Here's some of the "insight" being offered by CNN/SI's vaunted fantasy gurus:

Bob Harris suggests staying away from: the Chicago Bears offense, Cleveland Browns QB, Miami QB, New York Jets QB and Philadelpha WRs. He also recommends not contracting the Ebola virus, not sticking your head in the microwave and not driving your car into a brick wall at 60 miles per hour. Thanks, Bob!

Meanwhile, Dr. Football thinks that Peyton Manning, Daunte Culpepper and Steve McNair are good starts. Are you sure, doctor? Do you really think the three starting QBs with the three highest QB ratings in the league are good starts? Manning is going against the second-worst defense in the league this week, but until I read your brilliant insight, I was planning to sit him and start Kordell Stewart. Dr. Football also just discovered that Joey Harrington, currently leading the 1-5 Detroit Lions into oblivion, is "starting to fade". Starting? I ditched him as a backup after Week 2, when it became clear that my mother could throw for two TDs against Arizona, and probably rush for a third

Who are these jokers? Look, the kind of questions that we need answered are things like: in what order would you rank Onterrio Smith, Michael Bennet and Moe Williams for the rest of the season? Do you start Domanick Davis against Indy, or should you sit him since he's getting vultured at the goal line by Stacy Mack? Does LaDainian's 200 last week help or hurt David Boston against Miami?

Please try to keep this in mind, gentlemen. If you're only going to predict the sure thing, you are as useless as calling a QB draw for Vinnie Testaverde.

Another paper I won't be reading

Not long after the St. Paul Pioneer Press abandoned its register-to-read policy, the paper across the river, the Star Tribune, has initiated one. I won't bother providing a link, since you can't read it anyhow. As I am opposed to all corporate tracking measures that compromise Internet anonymity, I refuse to register for any online newspaper, which is why I no longer read:

1) The New York Times
2) The Washington Post
3) The Star Tribune

I don't read them online, anyhow. There's still nothing to keep me from picking up the office copy of the Star Tribune in the meantime, not until they manage to produce newsprint that bursts into flames and consumes the entire paper should it be touched by a non-registered biometric pattern.

True, I will probably be a little late to the next NYT-manufactured non-story, such as the massive Master's protests that swept the nation - who could ever forget the rage - but I'll survive and thrive nevertheless. I also predict that the Star Tribune will open up its content within six months as its Internet readership drops off a cliff. I'm not saying that they don't have a perfect right to close off their web site to anonymous visitors, I just don't think that culling one's readership is a particularly smart move in this day of media saturation. I quit reading the Nando Times, an early web favorite, when they began to require registration, and it doesn't look as if I was the only one to do so.

Registration is akin to a cable news show declaring: "you can watch us, but only if you first tell us who you are." Yeah, good luck with that.

See, that's why I advised Red Hat

Okay, that's not true. I recommended Red Hat because I'm using Redhat 8 and I know it works. However, I suspect that the many folks who recommended Mandrake 9.2 were doing so on the basis of its 9.1 release, not because they have used it themselves. Mandrake 9.2 is not looking so great at the moment, at least not for those with LG Electronics CD-Rom drives, which apparently are widely used in Dell machines. However, the statement from LG Electronics seemed to imply that the problem is a Linux incompatibility, not a Mandrake one, so clearly more information is needed before we can conclude either:

a) another distro would be a better option for beginners
b) Dell users can't migrate to Linux

Now, (b) can't be entirely true, as I'm typing this on a Dell Latitude CPx running Redhat 8. However, it's pretty obvious that before you install Mandrake 9.2, and quite possibly any other flavor of Linux, you've got to make sure you don't have an LG Electronics CD-Rom drive.

They just don't learn

Neal Stephenson, technoprophet and quite possibly the finest writer of my generation, voiced prescient doubts that Microsoft would be able to wean itself from dependency on its operating systems in his excellent In The Beginning was the Command Line. He saw them as following in Apple's footsteps, missing the opportunity to make a necessary self-transformation in a futile attempt to protect the increasingly less valuable crown jewels.

Microsoft's latest move demonstrates that the dependency is stronger than ever, as after acquiring Virtual PC from Connectix - a means of running multiple operating systems on a single machine - they removed mention of Linux and a few other operating systems from the setup wizard. Jury is still out on whether the Microsoft "improvements" have altogether crippled the product. This is not only short-sighted, if one accepts Stephenson's point of view, but borders on downright stupid considering that Microsoft has repeatedly denied that it buys other companies simply to shut them down and avoid competition. Not that Microsoft has a whole lot of credibility anymore. (Reader DZ points out that this isn't the first time, either.)

One is reminded of Lenin's famous quote about capitalists selling the rope that will be used one day to hang them.

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.

Update on Linux distro recommendations

I'm not asking for a vote on the matter or anything, but just in case anyone happens to care, there have been 15 folks, about half of whom are not Mandrake users, who've suggested Mandrake 9.2 as being the ideal distro for beginners, two who've suggested Libranet/Debian, one Debian user who recommends not using Debian if you're coming from Windows, three Lindows supporters and two SUSE advocates. Oh, and two bitter Windows lovers who are taking my migration WAY too personally.

The general view appears to be that Redhat, despite its virtues, is perhaps a little too corporate-focused for the home user. But the most significant point, I think, is that Linux in all its flavors is now a proven option now for the power Windows user. For those who are using Redhat, FreshRPMs is definitely a site worth bookmarking.

The dark side of public schooling

I expect this story about a dozen elementary school girls being abused will be broadcast on CBS News any day now. That's only 2.4 times as many families involved as Dan Rather required to slander the homeschooling movement on October 13th.

Rabid running dog at Forbes

We capitalists are in bad shape if we think we can rely on these jokers at Forbes to defend it. Daniel Lyons clearly doesn't understand that the fulfillment of voluntary contractual obligations is a foundational element of any capitalist system. In this slimy little article, he does a hit piece on the Free Software Foundation, which is doing nothing more than its job of protecting the GNU General Public License.

Let's break down the logic of Mr. Lyons' position:

1. The FSF is responsible for the GPL. Under the GPL license, if you distribute GPL software in a product, you must also distribute the software's source code as well as the code for any derivative works.
2. Broadcom chose to use GPL code in its router chips, as per the GPL license.
3. Linksys chose to use Broadcom's chips in its routers.
4. Cisco chose to buy Linksys.
5. Broadcom has not released its code, as required by the GPL license. Nor have they argued that they are under no obligation to do so.
6. In order that Broadcom remain in compliance with their contractual obligations, the Free Software Foundation is telling Broadcom (and therefore Cisco), to: a) rip out all the GPL code in the router and use something else, or b) make their code available to the entire world as per the license.
7. Therefore, the Free Software Foundation is communist.

There are adjectives to describe this argument. Generally speaking, they can be described as antonyms for intelligent, logical, persuasive and well-reasoned. To spell out just a few items of which Mr. Lyons is apparently ignorant - communists don't attempt to enforce private property rights. Nor do they permit free choice in deciding what to buy and sell. Nor is the FSF a government entity. Nor did anyone force Broadcom to put the GPL code in its chips. In other words, Mr. Lyons argument is not just flawed, it is profoundly absurd.

Re: Homeschooling

Interesting exchange on the DMN Daily blog. I'd link directly to the posts, except that it's not possible.

John Chamless: Even though home-schooling has become so common as to almost be mainstream here, I am surprised at how defensive some people are about it. I've seen the same thing over and over with National Rifle Association members. They assume a stranger is going to judge them negatively. I wonder if they really do get a lot of negative reactions.

Rod Dreher: John, are you serious? Let me count the ways! Are you a religious nut? Aren't you worried that your child is not going to be socialized? Are you a racist? What, are you too good for the public schools? And so forth. I suspect your in-box is going to be filling up with letters from homeschoolers who talk about the negative comments they receive. It's funny how when lots of folks find out you're a homeschooler, they immediately take it upon themselves to tell you what a menace to your child and to society you are. Most of them are too polite to put it so bluntly, but the message is clear. My wife and I even had one woman nearly in tears, whose opinion we had not sought, exhorting us that it was our duty as Christians to put our kids in the public schools. I'm to the point where my stock response is going to be: Who the hell asked you, anyway?

I think it's time for homeschoolers to turn the tables. There's certainly enough evidence of the inferiority of the government school option to justify it. Don't you care what your children are learning? Don't you want to spend time with them? Aren't you worried that your child is going to be socialized into an amoral monster? Doesn't it bother you that Marx, Hitler and Lenin were all big advocates of public schooling? Don't you love your children enough to want the best for them?

Wow!

According to Sitemeter, there were 2,000 visits yesterday on only the 12th day of this blog. Thanks for stopping by, everyone! The Truth Laid Bear even had Vox Popoli ranked in the Blogosphere's top 150, much to my surprise. Another thing that was kind of cool was seeing that both Linux Today and Linux.org provided links to yesterday's column on their front page; there's also a number of Talkback responses on Linux Today which are interesting to read. One thing I noticed there that a few people who know a lot more about Linux than I do seem to have misunderstood is that I was not recommending RedHat because I think it is the best distro, I was recommending it because, as a longtime Windows user, I have seen that it works and can be installed by a reasonable Windows user with a bit of a clue.

I assume the same is true of Mandrake and a few other distros, but I don't know it from my own experience. Nor, as a user and not a hacker, am I going to install various OSs on my system just to see which one is ideal Okay, I am thinking of messing around with Mandrake and Debian on one of my other machines and I'll certainly offer up a report when I do so, but it's important to keep in mind that Windows users don't think in term of distros the way Linux users do. To them, (until a week ago, us), Linux is a single entity, and it's important to understand that yes, you too can make the migration.

Finally, a surprising number of people don't seem to understand what a monopoly is. From Merriam-Webster:

MONOPOLY
1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
2 : exclusive possession or control
3 : a commodity controlled by one party

Does Microsoft have exclusive ownership of the only OS, desktop or browser? No. Does Microsoft have exclusive possession or control? No. Is the desktop environment a commodity? No. I have said it before and I will say it again. Microsoft is an evil and dangerous corporate empire. It is not, however, a monopoly.

Best Linux distro for beginners

No heat or stone-throwing, but five more experienced Penguin riders have recommended Mandrake 9.2 as being the easiest Linux option for beginners escaping from Windows. Also one vote for Debian, in which I'm already interested. Keep in mind that my recommendation was based on one thing and one thing only: I had it, I installed it and I got it up and running. That is the sum total of my knowledge with regards to the matter.

Get the poor dear a restraining order!

Among other things, Paul Krugman of the New York Times fantasizes that he's an economist. Of course, he can't do simple math, does not have even the most elementary understanding of how the economy works, and, like far too many left-liberals, cannot take the heat of having his words reviewed with a critical eye. His lies, misrepresentations and outright fantasies are exposed on a regular basis by National Review's excellent Krugman Truth Squad, which has apparently caused the frightened little man to hallucinate that he's being stalked. Eek!

Clearly the pressure of having his words thrown back in his face has pushed him completely over the edge. And now he is sad... like a little girl. Poor Paul. If he ever got hate mail one-tenth as astringent as the stuff I get on a regular basis, he'd probably cry for weeks.

Oh, I almost forgot... I'm being stalked too! Lawsy, won't somebody please help me!

How to escape from Windows

1. First, figure out what your primary applications are. For most people, this involves little more than email, surfing and word processing, in which case you're good. If you have other, more esoteric applications which you regularly use, do a little research to make sure it, or a reasonable equivalent, run under Linux. For example, plenty of Palm devices work with Linux, but my Alphasmart Dana does not, so I'm stuck with ducking my head back into Windows twice a week to hotsync it.

2. Choose your Linux distro. I recommend Redhat 9 for those escaping out of Windows for the first time. Download the ISO files and burn the three CDs, buy it, score it from a friend, whatever suits your style.

3. Investigate support for your internet connection. Confirming specific wireless network card support is particularly important, since Linksys is terrible about identifying the differences between its models and versions. For example, versions 2, 2.5 and 3 of the WPC-11 run with Linux, while version 4 doesn't. Version 2.5 of the WUSB-11 runs with Linux, version 2.6 does not. This is because the new versions have entirely different chipsets – they're entirely different products with the same name.

4. Buy the appropriate card/modem, if necessary, and download the specified packages. Read the directions and the readme to determine which three packages to download, and always follow the directions precisely! Linux information is written by programmers, not technical writers, so it is usually maddeningly incomplete, but almost always precise. There is usually a reason for doing things exactly the way they tell you, though they seldom explain why or how to go about doing it. (Example – they will tell you to “install package X”; they will never say “double-click on the RPM file you downloaded to install package X”.)

5. Put the first Linux CD in the drive and restart your computer. Watch the screen closely - you may need to hit F2 during the pre-Windows setup phase in order to tell your machine to boot off the CD instead of the hard drive. Choose the dual-boot option.

6. Follow the install directions. The only real decision involved regards how to divide your hard drive partitions. I think three partitions is a good way to start – have the first (hda1) be NTFS for your Windows boot drive, the second (hda2) EXT3 for Linux, and the third (hda3) FAT for a shared partition that you can access from both Windows and Linux and use to transfer files. Since you'll be working more in Linux, plan to devote more space to the second and third partitions.

7. Write down your passwords, both for root and your username. Remember that it's better to be logged on as username most of the time, not root. You can give yourself root permissions whenever you need to – usually you'll be prompted. If not, open a terminal window, type su, and you will be asked for the root's password.

8. Restart, choose DOS, then copy the three RPM packages you downloaded for the wireless card drivers onto the third drive. Do NOT reformat the second drive, which Windows can't read. That's your Linux drive. Restart and choose Linux this time.

9. Now that you're into Linux, you still need to mount your third partition so you can read it and write to it. Note that you won't be thinking of it as D: or whatever anymore, but as /mnt/winlinux or whatever you decide to call it. It's not too hard, here's how.

10. Now it's time to tackle the Internet connection. If you have a Linksys card and you went with Redhat 9, then find those three RPM packages on your WinLinux partition – just double-click on them or right-click and choose Open With, then Install Packages – and let the installer do its thing. Don't expect any messages or confirmations, just insert your PCMCIA card when it's done and fire up Internet / Web Browser from the Redhat Start menus. It will start Mozilla, and if it works, you'll be online.

11. Once you're up and running on the Internet, download Red Carpet from Ximian. This is a package installation tool that is very helpful in resolving package interdependency problems. Not all software programs are tied in with this very useful tool, but it is so useful that you may find yourself sticking with older versions simply because the new versions aren't incorporated into Red Carpet yet. To run Red Carpet, select System Tools – Terminal from the Red Hat start menus, type red-carpet at the prompt, and enter your root password. Do your updates through Red Carpet and the Red Hat channel, not the Red Hat update agent.

12. Use Red Carpet to upgrade to the latest version of Evolution. Grab Pan, too, if you're a newsgroup junkie. (Reader PB points out that there are over 530 Linux Users Groups where you can find help, including 45 on Usenet.)

13. If you need PDF capability, note that there's some complexity to the installation of Acrobat Reader. Unfortunately, although you can create PDF files with OpenOffice, you can't read them. Download the acroread RPM, and follow the installation instructions. Be careful in vi, it doesn't operate like Notepad or Word. Press i before inserting any text, then hit ESC to exit insertion mode before typing ZZ to quit and save.

14. Celebrate. You are now driving the tank.

I'm no Linux expert. I still don't have my Java Run-time Environment working yet and there are a panoply of basic functions of which I remain ignorant. But I'm out, I'm up and I'm running, and if I can do it, you can too.

Stay away, stay very far away from XP

I hated everything I heard about XP when it first came out, which is why I stubbornly stuck with Windows 2000. After hearing this from reader BB today, I'm sure glad I did. This is pure, corporatist evil - it cannot be considered capitalism as the free market depends on the free flow of information.

"I've been building & repairing systems for about 13 years & I'm going to start migrating my customers to Linux. I read an article about the new Windows coming out next year that specified new hardware would have to be purchased in order to run it. That was the extent of the info it provided about the issue. I figured it is probably some sort of copy protection/ snoop thing. Well, about 4 months ago I had a customer come to me with 2 new Dell PC's they wanted wiped clean & windows 98 SE put on, they came with XP. I did my usual fdisk & format of drive but every time I tried to install Win 98 during the install process it would crash out to black.

This happened every time I tried & I used the latest drive management software to inspect the drives for hidden volumes, nothing. The original Win XP went right back in. I believe Dell has already incorporated this copy protection/snoop system into the motherboard."

It's raining drivers

Referencing point (3) below, if you've got one of the new high-speed 802.11g wireless cards, it looks as if there may be Penguin possibilities for you too, and sooner than expected. The company that's leading the charge isn't exactly an Open Source cheerleader, but the significant thing is that if they've figured out how to make Windows drivers work under Linux, it won't take long for a hacker to do the same. This is potentially huge, I think.

Sweet irony

PB writes: "Google runs on Linux... so does each and every Microsoft Server! (Akamai Linux servers are in front of every Microsoft ip address...)!"

You think that's because NT crashes when it's bored? Computers need love too.

Donovan McNabb, Superduperstar

16/30 157 5.23 1 2
11/26 126 4.85 1 0
09/23 064 2.78 0 1

So, I'm wondering when are all the sportswriters going to start apologizing to Rush Limbaugh? McNabb's completion rating has now dropped to 45 percent! That's called bench city, not the Pro Bowl. By way of comparison, another black quarterback, Daunte Culpepper, is throwing 64 percent strikes for the undefeated Purple.

Personally, I suspect that McNabb is injured. But anyone who still insists that Donovan McNabb is a top quarterback is clearly not paying attention.

Robbery

40-yard completion to my WR. First and goal from the six.
5-yard penalty.
7-yard completion to my WR.
4-yard run by my brother's RB. TD.

That's a six-point switch. There is no justice. Not that I'm bitter....

Firebird

I'm rather liking this stripped-down version of Mozilla. For one thing, it's now my blogging tool of choice, since it supports the Link, Bold and Italic panel buttons in Blogger as Opera and the version of Mozilla that came with Redhat 8 do not. I still prefer Opera for general meandering about the web, but Firebird is a good second option. It's got some nice pop-up controls too.

Also, a little experimentation with txt2pdbdoc has turned out well, and while it is a command line deal, it's a faster and easier way to convert text files into Palm docs than the Microsoft Word macro I was using before. Supposedly it's now up to version 1.4.2, but I haven't been able to find a binary RPM for anything newer than 1.2.1. It works fine, though, which reduces my list of required Windows functions down to three:

1) Fantasy Football stattracks
2) Alphsmart Dana hotsync. I couldn't get this working under WINE, so this looks unlikely.
3) Java-related sundries

Of course, I'll still be popping into Windows to play Combat Mission, but that's not a big deal. Windows will remain the standard interface for computer games for the foreseeable future. The same was true for DOS long after Windows was introduced.

Deactivating Adobe

I read this morning on Slashdot that not long after Intuit gave up on activation codes for its software and took out a full-page ad apologizing to its fleeing customers, Adobe is going to try flexing its muscles and see if it can cram Photoshop activation down the throats of its customers. I think one newsgroup poster summed up the situation accurately:

> The important point is though that up until recent times a software
> license was good for as long as the consumer needed the software as long
> as he didn't break the terms of the license. Activated licenses are
> basically turning software into rentalware. It's only good for as long
> as the publishers want it to be or when they go under. Whichever comes
> first.

Microsoft may be strong enough to get away with forcing activation - though not with me, says the proud new Penguin rider - but Intuit wasn't and I doubt Adobe will be. Christopher Warnock, if you're reading this, tell your Dad to give it up. And give my best to the beautiful Barbara.

I really hate the notion of activation, as it is not only an invasion of computer privacy, but it is also an illustration of the basic dishonesty of software "products". When I buy a t-shirt, I can wear it, I can give it to my friend or I can loan it to my brother. It's mine - I paid for it. But activated software is tied to a single machine, and while it's not too much of a hassle when it's the operating system software, it would be an incredible pain if every manufacturer started trying to require activation for every program. Then again, maybe that would be a good thing as it would certainly speed up the mass Linux migration.

It seems software manufacturers want to have it both ways; they want to be paid as if it's a product, but then control how the customer uses it. No wonder pirates take such overt pleasure in hacking copy protection and distributing it to the masses. In any case, Photoshop is no longer a concern of mine. I'm down with the Gimp.

It's official - ESPN blows

They fired TMQ. What a bunch of small-minded control freaks. I wonder if it ever occurs to anyone that firing everyone who says anything the least bit critical of individuals who happen to be Jewish is probably not the best way to convince the Judenhassen that Jews are not, in fact, running everything.

I'm done with ESPN. Half of Page 2 has already been converted to stupid Hollywood junk and whiny women complaining that they can't get dates because they know too much about sports. Right, that's probably it. They ought to just change the name to Page E-IX and have done with it. Let ESPN know what you think. I did.

Just one more reason to despise Disney. In truth, I believe this contemptible firing had more to do with Easterbrook daring to criticize Disney's chairman than it did with anything relating to Judaism.

Linux and Acrobat Reader

Acrobat Reader is a virtual necessity if you want to read PDF files, so I was surprised at the shoddy level of Linux support by Adobe. I fully expected it to be available via Red Carpet or the Redhat Update Agent, but barring that, I was anticipating an easy RPM installation at the very least. That proved not to be the case, as I got what proves to be a very normal error when trying to run it on Redhat 8:

$ acroread

Warning: charset "UTF-8" not supported, using "ISO8859-1".

Aborted

Fortunately, and this is one of the things I love about Linux, someone has come up with the solution. I can vouch for its efficacy, although the author, being a programmer no doubt, assumes that you will know how to use vi. (He does better than most, actually, in telling you how to start vi.) The thing to keep in mind is that vi requires going into Insert mode in order to make your changes, and then leaving it before you quit and save. It's a little bit like the old DOS Edit command, which was probably copied from vi or another UNIX command in the first place.

Anyhow, i will insert text at the cursor, so make your changes and then hit ESC to exit Insert mode. Then type ZZ to save and quit. You can start Acrobat Reader by going out to the terminal and typing acrobat. The interface is grey and ugly, but the PDF documents look good and everything works fine.

Old age and wisdom...

will overcome youth and skill. That was a favorite saying of the father of one of my best friends, who is very appropriately nicknamed Sly. After re-reading my last post, it occurred to me that another reason why challenging a man on the far side of the half-century does not seem unfair to me is that my sensei just turned 50 this year. He may not have the 17-inch biceps he had when I first met him, but I have no doubt that he can still wipe up the floor with me.

I remember the following exchange very clearly:

Sensei: You are fast. Faster than almost anyone I have ever seen.
Me: Then how come you always get in before I can?
Sensei: (smiles broadly) Because I know what you are going to do before you do it.

The ironic thing about this conversation was that he was paying this backhanded compliment while at the same time extending a hand to help me up from the floor after having dropped me with a rear-hand strike to the solar plexus. He was, and is, a deadly fighter. I once watched him absolutely destroy the 10th-ranked point fighter in the country - he could have easily been a champion if he did not disdain point fighting as a perversion of the art. His teaching was distinctive enough that when a friend and I visited another dojo while he was gone for a time, the instructor, a well-known Tang Soo Do champion, asked us if we were his students after only two rounds of sparring.

Waiting for Franken

The week ends, and still no response from Mr. Franken or his press agent. I suppose he's having too much fun heaping coals on a drug addict going into recovery to defend the manhood of the Democratic party. I was cranking up Creed on the way to the gym today and that, combined with the thought of going back into training mode, got me fired up to hit the weights hard. Topped out preacher curls with five reps at 120 today, which was the first time I've done that in a while. It felt so good that I'm thinking it might be time to get back with the whey protein.

A few people have emailed over the last two weeks to say that they think that it is unfair, or cowardly or somehow otherwise reprehensible to challenge a 51 year-old man. I disagree, as this argument entirely ignores the point that Mr. Franken himself was responsible for introducing the concept of adding a physical element to the political debate. No doubt after reading chapter 38 of Mr. Franken's new book, Rich Lowry was wishing he had taken Mr. Franken up on his challenge.

Second, I'll be perfectly happy to accept a challenge from any national media figure interested in a little banging after Mr. Franken responds in the affirmative to mine. What people don't realize about full-contact fighters - and street brawlers, for that matter - is that they are not confident because of what they can do to you. They are confident because they not only know what to expect if things don't go well, they know they can take it because they've experienced it before. I've been knocked out, I've had numerous bones broken and I've crawled across a concrete floor spitting blood while desperately trying to get air into my lungs. You see, I fully accept the possibility that Mr. Franken or another opponent might do a little damage here and there, but so what? It would hardly be the first time.

How can there be no media bias when they admit it?

Just wondering... first the Los Angeles Times copped to it - before demonstrating it in spades with the timely Schwarzenegger hit - and now NPR is fessing up as well, albeit in a more defensive, mealy-mouthed manner. Don't hold your breath waiting for anyone from the ABCNNBCBS* cabal to follow suit, though. Or the New York Times for that matter.

*CNN admitted they weren't doing their job in Iraq; they did not admit to their open left-liberal bias.

TMQ apologizes....

Along with Ralph Wiley and the Sports Guy, Tuesday Morning Quarterback is the best thing about ESPN's Page 2. TMQ, or Gregg Easterbrook, is also an editor of The New Republic, a left-liberal magazine of some regard. Although he did apologize for the way in which he felt he mangled his words, I don't really see that he had anything for which to do so and I'm glad to see that he's standing his ground on the substance, if not the style, of his remarks. Jews, no less than Christians, have a responsibility to answer to God for their actions and decisions, and I think it is eminently reasonable to question both Michael Eisner and Harvey Weinstein for their decision to inflict what is apparently a new low in movie-making violence on the American public. No executive - Christian, atheist or Jew - should be permitted to hide behind modern guilt over historical prejudices in an attempt to escape being held responsible for what appears to be another vicious assault on the values of our civilization.

The very notion that one needs to watch one's tongue about implying that Jews, as opposed to Christians or atheists, are inordinately interested in money several hundred years after the Catholic prohibition on usury was broken is ridiculous. Jews have far more serious problems these days, for example, the fact that the schools in many Muslim countries are teaching another generation of children to believe that one day the trees will cry "O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!" And while the Euro elite sneers in scorn, hoping secretly that someone else will finish the job their grandfathers started.

But that's just my opinion. As I've written before, the Jewish people, in addition to suffering the unwarranted hatred of the nations, have also been remarkably stupid at times with regards to their own self-preservation in the past. Why on earth would they be concerned now with the opinion of a Gregg Easterbrook, while Israeli leaders like Shimon Peres and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer are attempting to lead the Jewish people down the fatal path of Mordechai Rumkowski and Jacob Gens?

Suicide watch in Boston

Once again, as always, the Sports Guy does not disappoint. I am not a Yankees fan and I hate to revel in schadenfreude, but the Sports Guy without the familiar Red Sox albatross hanging around his neck would be like Abbott without Costello.

As a sports fan, sometimes you know when bad things are about to happen. You recognize the depressing signs because you've been there before. So maybe that's the real "curse," those moments when you turn into Haley Joel Osment in the Sixth Sense . . . only you aren't seeing dead people, you're seeing a dead ballgame. And when it's happening to thousands of fans all at once, the resulting collective karma kills your team.

(Does any of this make sense? Of course not. I'm completely insane. The Red Sox have driven me insane. It's official.)

Meanwhile, the Vikings are 5-0 and the governor of Minnesota has ordered guards to the border, with orders to shoot Sports Illustrated photographers on sight. Take no chances, Gov. Pawlenty. Everyone saw what happened when they put Jake Plummer on the cover.

You VILL update

I wrote on the need for Linux migration before reading an interview with Bill Gates which did not change my opinion one little bit. Do you want control over what is going on inside your own computer? Tough cookies, cowboy:

Microsoft is also going to make sure that people install firewalls and updates by default.... From now on, Microsoft will install these patches automatically.

Bill's claim that Windows gets patched quicker than Linux has also been vigorously contested, as one buglog posted recently showed that it took Microsoft, not the 24 or 40 hours as claimed by Bill, but 2000 hours, to patch a bug that cropped up in August.

When murder isn't murder

So it looks like the government courts, having decided that it's just fine to murder unborn babies, have now made the long-predicted next step of approving involuntary euthanasia by starving Terry Schiavo to death. And if you don't think depriving someone who can't feed herself is murder, then just don't feed an infant for a few months and see if you're charged with a crime - not that Dr. Peter Singer thinks there's anything wrong with that. Apparently it's been decided that we're to go the way of Holland, where the doctors of death have been creating their own mini-massacre behind closed doors for almost 20 years now:

Euthanasia in The Netherlands is "beyond effective control", according to a report which shows that one in five assisted suicides is without explicit consent. British opponents of assisted suicide say that the figures are a warning of the dangers of decriminalising euthanasia, as Holland did in 1984. By 1995 cases of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Holland had risen to almost 3 per cent of all deaths. The Dutch survey, reviewed in the Journal of Medical Ethics, looked at the figures for 1995 and found that as well as 3,600 authorized cases there were 900 others in which doctors had acted without explicit consent. A follow-up survey found that the main reason for not consulting patients was that they had dementia or were otherwise not competent.

Doesn't anyone else see that there is a connection between these cardinal beliefs of the American left and their globalist counterparts?

1. There are too many people: (environmentalism, overpopulation worries, etc.)
2. Abortion must remain legal. (kill the unborn)
3. Irresponsible homosexual behavior must be indulged. (kill the queers)
4. Suicide and involuntary euthanasia must be made legal. (kill the incompetent and the unfit)

It makes sense, of course. If there are too many people, then why not just kill off the weak, the sick and the unproductive. Think of it as intelligent evolution in action, plus, it would surely keep Social Security solvent for another decade or two. And eventually they'll get around to those pesky Jews, like they always do.

No names, no prisoners

Joe Farah, as he so often does, hits them hard and hits them where it hurts. He's absolutely right, too. If you care even a little bit about your kids, if you have any regard for them whatsoever, get them the (insert your favorite noun here) out of the public schools. Or, as they should more properly be called, the soulless, mind-killing, cog-in-the-machine-programming, government-run propaganda factories.

There's a reason why Hitler, Marx and Lenin were all big fans of the public school concept, after all.

Follow me to freedom

I just turned in next Monday's column, a passionate screed on OS migration. I considered holding off on it until the column was running in the Dallas Morning News, but then I decided that it was perhaps a bit too technophilic for the poor unsuspecting readers of the Dallas editorial page. At least WND's readers are used to me and my idiosyncracies by now.

A distinguished tradition of failure

I don't mean to sound cruel, but I have to admit that despite my near complete disinterest in baseball, I'm kind of glad that the Cubs lost. From an outsider's perspective, it would seem kind of a shame to cast aside such a long and distinguished record of failure. As for the Red Sox, the only question is whether the Sports Guy - may he live forever - would be more suicidal if they A) lost to the Yankees in Game 7 of the ALCS; or B) went on to the World Series and lost to the Marlins.

I'm going with (B). Florida is still an expansion team in the hearts and minds of baseball's purists. You'd think, as a Vikings fan who can still remember crying his eyes out when the Vikes lost their fourth Super Bowl to Oakland, I'd have more sympathy. But I don't.

By the way, did anyone else think it was funny that Tom Clancy matched up the Vikes against the Broncos in The Sum of All Terror? Of course, the joke has lost its punch now that Denver has two wins under their orange-and-blue belts. Tom, you know you should have gone with the Bills! I bet it still annoys him that he didn't.

Derb remembers Bruce Lee

John Derbyshire of National Review writes an interesting account of his brief clash with fame, when he appeared as a bit character in a Bruce Lee movie. I tend to agree with his opinion that Bruce Lee and jeet koon do were basically one and the same; it's not a fighting style so much as it's the way a uniquely talented fighter fought. You can train one hundred fighters in exactly the same discipline, and they will still fight one hundred different ways.

Except, that is, for tae kwon do. Take one hundred tae kwon do fighters chosen at random, and not a one will know what to do with his hands or bother to guard his head.

Jew haters at State

There is simply no excuse for this intentional slight of Israel. Thanks to DG, who brought this State Department map of Saudi Arabia to my attention. Notice how State was able to find space for labeling the tiny little island of Bahrain, but somehow, they just couldn't fit the six letters that make up the name of the only Jewish country in the vicinity on the map.

I am not Jewish. I am not particularly fond of Jewish culture. I dislike the quasi-socialism that has made up Israeli government policy for the entirety of its existence. But I have nothing but contempt for the Arabists at State, who would like to help their murderous proxies finish what the National Socialists started by wiping out what they consider to be a "s----- little country".

There has got to be a spiritual component to this irrational, illogical Jew hatred. There's simply no other credible explanation for two millenia of rabid cross-cultural antipathy.

Palestinians killing Americans... again

I have never understood why the Palestinian murderocracy is permitted to play whack-a-Jew while the State Department cheers them on and lobbies for the PA to receive more financial support from the U.S. government. What really infuriates me, though, is that Arafat and his bloodthirsty gang are again being permitted to murder Americans with total impunity. Arafat has killed Americans before, and I have no doubt that he will do so in the future until President Bush finds a backbone and shows more resolve in shutting down the monster than did his predecessors: Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Carter. You can't tell me that Arafat believes we're going to strike back, when we jump all over Israel every time they justifiably hit back at the poor, defenseless murderers. I have no doubt that later today we'll hear plenty of somber condemnations worded in the harshest possible terms. Whatever.

I have many doubts about the so-called War on Terror, but chief among them is this: if we are truly fighting against terror, why is the godfather of terror, the creator of modern terrorism, left in peace?

Voting for the New Blog showcase

Why not? Here's my three votes:

Father Joe's Corner...

Inspiration

NOVAK KNEW BETTER THAN TO BURN VALERIE PLAME

No harm, no foul

Blogspot was acting up for about two hours. I couldn't view it, either via the general Internet or from within Blogger itself, and while I could see and edit posts, I couldn't publish. At first, I assumed it was something I'd done - sign of an inveterate tinkerer's guilty conscience - but after checking out other blogs in the Blogosphere, I was relieved to discover that whatever it was wasn't of my making. Which would have been hard to credit anyhow, considering what a plain vanilla blog this is... and will remain. The text is king!

On the Redhat front, some fortunate poking around revealed this important message with regards to kernel upgrades and Linksys drivers:

A final note to remember. In the future, whenever you need to upgrade to a newer kernel, you'll also need to reinstall these drivers. These files are compiled specifically for your current kernel version/arch, so they won't work with upgrades. For this reason, I always check that driver site to see if a new set of drivers has been released before I upgrade to newer kernels.

In other words, don't trust your friendly neighborhood supertechnical stud programmer who guesses that the low-level changes are unlikely to mess with your PCMCIA drivers. Or rather, trust, but verify. Anyhow, I'll definitely wait for Saint Tim to get around to updating the kernel RPM before upgrading the kernel now.

Russian dolls and the monkey solution

Linux is not a digital paradise, as yet, but we're getting there. One of the biggest annoyances I've run into thus far is the package dependency problem. I wanted to download a newsreader, but XNews doesn't run under Linux, so I did a little research and learned that Pan is considered to be roughly equivalent to Agent, one of the more popular Windows newsreaders. Then, after downloading Pan's installation package, I learned that I needed eight other packages in order for it to install properly.

Fine, fair enough, since the new version of Pan is quite a bit newer than the Redhat 8.0 discs from which I installed Linux a while back. I downloaded five of the eight packages, installed two of them, and then learned that the third required two additional packages. Hmmm. So I downloaded those two, installed the first, and then learned that the second required an additional package. Grrrrrr. It was rather like a mixed drink: two-parts cracking open those increasingly smaller Russian dolls and one-part fighting the Hydra sans a fiery brand for the regenerating stumps.

At that point, I gave up, assuming that there had to be a better way. Sure enough, there was. Ximian's Red Carpet is a little like the Red Hat update agent, only it works a lot better. Not only did it have the Pan interdependencies worked out, downloaded and installed in minutes, but it also resolved a package interdependency issue that had caused the Red Hat update agent to throw in the towel. Very impressive! So much so that I went ahead and upgraded Ximian Evolution, the email program I'm using, without even bothering to read the new features list. Good on ya, Monkey Men.

Unfortunately, Evolution Pilot doesn't seem to recognize my Dana. But my list of Windows-necessary functions is now down to three. Adieu, sweet Bill....

Waiting for Mr. Franken

I still haven't heard a response from Al Franken, the great champion of Democratic Party manhood. I assume he's simply been tied up with his book tour, but in case he somehow missed seeing the column in which I posed a challenge to him, I decided to send the following email to his press agent.

Dear Mr. Franken,

I'm a little disappointed that I have not heard from you as yet. Perhaps this column did not happen to come to your attention, in which case I am rectifying matters by sending this to you here. I should also like to interview you, either pre- or post-incontro della contesa.

Very best regards,
Vox Day
Universal Press Syndicate

I hope he'll get in touch with me soon. I was also interested to see that Rich Lowry has finally addressed the question of Mr. Franken's slur on his character, although I'm disappointed that Mr. Lowry seems content to contest the matter on the field of words, not combat. My profile is quite a bit lower than the editor of the National Review, but I still feel that it's a real pity Mr. Franken did not address his original challenge to me. I would have been happy to take him up on it.

Anyhow, Mr. Franken, I eagerly await your response.

Donovan McNabb, Superstar

16/30 157 5.23 1 2
11/26 126 4.85 1 0

That's Donovan McNabb's performance since the affaire d'Limbaugh, which has mysteriously inspired a panoply of headlines crowing that the quarterback was not only not overrated, but was back in a big way as proved by the Eagles' win over the Redskins. Right, a 48 percent completion ratio to go with an average of 1 TD and 1 INT per game is really stellar, gentlemen. Of course, a lot of these jokers who purport to be sportswriters picked the Eagles to run away with the NFC East, which now looks like this:

4-1 Dallas
3-3 Washington
2-3 New York
2-3 Philadelphia

Looking at that sparks one big thought - dang, but the Big Tuna can coach! The Eagles are by no means out of it, as yet, but a loss to New York next week would make it very, very difficult for them to reclaim the division title if Dallas beats Detroit as expected. Look, Donovan is a decent quarterback, but he's inaccurate and is looking less and less likely to be a top QB over the next few years. I wouldn't have dumped James Thrash earlier in favor of picking up Andre Johnson and keeping the faith with superpsycho David Boston - which won me a big game last week - if I had any faith in Donovan's ability to get him the ball in the end zone.

If you want a black quarterback to talk up and cheer, there's one in Minnesota worthy of high regard. Welcome back, Mr. Culpepper!

Adding a Blogroll

Okay, after some thought and a bit of reader lobbying, I've come to the conclusion that it does make sense to add a blogroll. I've always been of the opinion that quando a Roma, fa cosi come i Romani, and a brief tour of the blogosphere has proved that a blogroll is standard operating procedure. While I still believe that it is important for a person in the public eye, even one who is barely in the far corner of the public's peripheral vision such as myself, to be careful of their words and their associations, it would be crazy to be held responsible for something that someone else has written on a site over which one has zero editorial control.

Nevertheless, I fully expect that at some point, my critics will throw a hissy fit when someone on the blogroll goes off the deep end. They've shown very little logic or reason in their past attacks, so there's no reason to assume that they'll start exhibiting it now that I've got a blog.

I've also decided to distinguish my readers blogs from the general blogroll, because without them, a writer is basically just talking to himself. Doug Kenline and Christian Bowman, two long-time readers who encouraged me to start blogging, have the distinction of heading the list. I will not be adding a comments section, however, as my blogosphere tour also taught me that an unacceptably high level of public comments on many sites are polluted by trolls, salesmen and porn ads. If you want to make comments about my blog, well, you've got a blog too, don't you?

I will be publicly addressing the occasional email here, though, so if you don't want me to address yours openly: a) don't be derogatory, and b) tell me so.

Answering a Drudge challenge

You have to love Matt Drudge. He is the proverbial middle finger, not simply raised to the left-liberal mainstream media, but jammed painfully into its collective eye. While speaking with my fellow WND columnist Bill Press, Drudge challenged everyone in the media to 'fess up to whatever medications they are on before slamming Rush Limbaugh for his admitted drug addiction. That's pretty funny, considering that more than a few of them are likely on Prozac, Xanax and the various prescription drugs du jour:

"And I will just state this, because we're headed into quite a weekend of media bashing here, I know all is fair in media wars, but I challenge everybody in the media business, listening to this today, empty their pockets! Empty their pockets! We will be passing out jars and dishes and they can go to their respective washrooms during the commercial break -- and come out with the pills they're on! This story is very sensitive in a lot of ways and before all the big media bigwigs point their finger, they should really question their medicine cabinet."

I myself have a drug habit, albeit one that is both legal and reasonably under control, of two cappucinos per day. And it is a real addiction, I think, as I get to enjoy a fairly nasty headache if I don't get the first one steamed before two in the afternoon. But I'll never quit. Just the smell of the first one in the morning is JUST SO GOOD!

Also, being somewhat of a weightlifter, I can get downright homicidal if I don't get that much-needed endorphin release from lifting heavy pieces of metal and putting them back down again. Caffeine and iron, that's pretty much it for me.

Pondering Debian

Now that I'm fully operational on Linux - there are two or three applications for which I stil require Windows, but nothing vital - I'm beginning to wonder if I've chosen the right distro. I'm using Red Hat 8, primarily for the rather prosaic reason that one of my boys happened to have the CDs at the time I decided to take the plunge. Red Hat is up to version 9 now, but I'm a little loathe to bother upgrading since everything is working fine and having a slightly prettier interface is not at the top of my list of concerns right now.

It's typical, of course, that one no sooner makes the leap to Linux than one begins to plunge headlong into the endless debate of which is the One True Distro. Fortunately, the general consensus appears to be that Red Hat is a reasonable choice for us non-hacker power-user sorts.

Of growing interest to me is Debian, which not only appeals to my libertarian ideals and comes with Neal Stephenson's recommendation, but also makes what now, post-deflowering, appears to be an increasingly plausible case for fewer operational headaches down the road. The Red Hat Update Agent, while incomparably less intrusive than Microsoft's odious automatic update system, is more than a little clunky, and the August timeout bug that I had to wrestle with today is exactly the sort of problem that corporations regularly create for themselves and their customers in the interest of preserving their competitive advantages. They have a long, long way to go before they can be accused of aping the nefarious ways of the evil empire, of course, but it's annoying to encounter even a faint echo of the very sort of thing one is trying to escape in the first place.

I'm happy with Red Hat, though, which in combination with the Opera web browser and Evolution email, makes me feel almost giddy, as if I'm breathing in the fresh air of the country for the first time after spending years choking down the polluted smog of Redmond. So, I'm going to resist the urge to upgrade the kernel for now, and instead I'll let the happy little penguin amuse itself downloading Debian via jigdo while I'm taking in the NFL action. Just in case... just in case. By the way, it's worth considering a switch from IE to Opera even if you don't have the skillz or the gutz to make the big OS switch. Opera is small, fast, and has a brilliant radio button for controlling pop-ups that's incredibly easy to operate. It's got some definite quirks, especially related to the fonts used on some web sites, but on the whole it is much better than the increasingly bloated space hog that is Internet Explorer.

From what I've seen so far, while Linux is by no means ready for mainstream prime time, it is now fully practical for the power-user who isn't afraid to tinker. A few years ago, that was really not the case, as one needed to be a hacker with programming skills if one wished to use it. The conclusion: Don't be afraid. Go for it. Drive the tank. Be the penguin.