Call me sentimental

..but there's something about seeing "Griese" on the back of a Miami Dolphins jersey that makes me smile. I'm not a Dolphin's fan, but I hope that Brien Griese finds a little more success down south than he did up in Denver. I remember watching his last game as a Wolverine, the 1998 Rose Bowl for which his father was half of the CBS broadcast team. Bob Griese was professional throughout, but when his co-announcer - all-time announcing great Keith Jackson - complimented Griese on Brian's success and the pride Jackson knew the father took in his son, Griese came perilously close to breaking down.

A good moment in college football. Of course, I've got Peyton Manning going today, so here's hoping for a 42-35 shootout.

Madden 2005 needs a Coach Mode

Front Page Sports Football Pro used to have one, and it was a blast. You call the plays and let the AI-controlled players implement them. The chess aspect of football is the most interesting one, in my opinion, and this is the only way to be able to make the experience a purely strategic one. It's a little ironic that the only role you can't play properly is the one that the guy for whom the game is named made his name playing.

Love the new logos, though, especially the ability to use your own colors with them. I'm approaching the playoffs in my fourth sixteen-game season with 2004 - the addiction is under control.

Linux Bunny

And then I realized I loved her more than I ever had before.... Yes, she's hot, she's blonde and now she's down with the Penguin. I'm even a little envious of her setup, as her Windows partition is VFAT, not NTFS, so she has full write access to her old Windows files. Come on, hackers, let's get cracking on that NTFS format! The mountain is not yet climbed!

Anyhow, installing Linux on her machine - more to the point, downloading 1.7 Gigs of CDs - has taken a bit of time and caused the relative dearth of bloggage lately. And since everyone has different operating idiosyncracies, her use of web mail has necessitated my learning a bit about the so-called poppers, which allow POP and STMP access to the more popular web programs such as Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. There are a bunch of them, but Hotwayd is proven to work with Evolution, so that's the one I went with. Report to follow soon.

For some reason, I just had a very strange flashback to that weird Apple commercial with Jeff Goldblum. That was a humiliating experience for me, as I was absolutely sure the IMAC was going to bomb. Who would want a computer that was crippled to the point of being little more than an email machine, but cost as much as a real computer? Well, a lot of people who hadn't used the Internet before, it turns out.

Since Linux now has no trouble handling all the email, surfing and word processing that consists of the vast majority of casual computer usage, it can only be a matter of time before someone creates a cheap Linux blackbox and sells a bunch of them. They probably won't come in tangerine, though. So, Apple still has that going for it.

A vast intellectual chasm

As readers of my column know, a friend of mine committed suicide a few months ago. I wrote Shadows, Sex and Sorrow in an attempt to express some thoughts that my friend's action had inspired, as well as to say a few things that I wish I had thought to say to her. I was not writing a eulogy, nor was I writing for the benefit of those who knew her. Indeed, I did not even tell anyone who knew her about that particular column.

Nevertheless, word has a way of getting around, and so a number of her friends and family have apparently come across the article. Many of them understood the spirit in which the piece was written, some, however, have not. I received one interesting email - an extremely polite one, I hasten to add - which raised some points worth addressing. It was from a friend of my friend of whom I was previously unaware and who I have never met.

I'm sure you can imagine that I, and others I'm sure, would be pained by your description of her suicide as a decision of "cold logic in its remorseless nihilism." I don't know whether anyone besides God knows the reality of her suicide. Perhaps you were completely accurate in your description, through your own spiritual confirmations. But either way, it is my hope that all of our spiritual convictions are always tempered by our most compassionate vulnerabilities when writing or reflecting about [her] or others who share struggles similar to hers.

Now, it was never my intention to inflict pain upon anyone in writing this particular column, most particularly not upon those who have already suffered a tremendous loss. And yet, something bothered me about the assertion that one should temper one's spiritual convictions simply to spare the feelings of those who do not share them. Would one temper one's view of the gravitational force and the role it played in the death of one who jumped from a rooftop? Especially if one was speaking with those who did not share one's belief in gravity?

It was clear to me that the writer did not understand that although my friend was obviously the inspiration for the column, the piece was also addressing much more universal matters than a single human life. From the perspective from which I write, all nihilism - and thus suicide - is rational given an atheistic worldview. This logic contradicts the mainstream perspective, which, being a veneer of Judeo-Christian ethics without the underlying belief system, is highly irrational. I am far from the first to point this out, however, people are more accustomed to hearing it from the likes of Nietszche, Sartre and Camus, not to mention Voltaire and Socrates, than an evangelical Christian. And yet, I am not saying anything that has not been said before, and more eloquently, by some of humanity's greatest minds. Very few people are truly able to handle the inherent implications of being their own god.

I said as much in a response to the writer, who in his response clarified that my initial take on his email had been correct. "I... am writing to restate my hope that you grow to gain a more heartfelt appreciation of [her] and perhaps of those who do not share your specific religious views." At first I though this was strange, as I could not see how anything I had written could possibly be construed as a lack of appreciation for my friend. But to the faithless, the notion that an individual is responsible for his own actions is frightening, since relying only on oneself to bear the entire weight of an uncaring universe is simply more than can be faced by any except the most exceptional. This is why Nietzsche - not one to shirk the dark - considered Christianity a coward's path, and likely why the writer interpreted my bringing up the point as being uncompassionate. But in what sense can it be considered compassion to leave others to drown in the dark? I do not regret a single word I wrote; I regret only that I did not articulate them in time to share them with my friend.

Pat Buchanan and others have written of a great cultural war that is dividing America. They are no doubt correct, but what is perhaps more ominous is that the two poles of religious faith and secular humanism have separated to the point that it is becoming very difficult to communicate effectively across the divide. The friend of my friend also added "I'm not sure this dialogue will be fruitful right now.... In any case, I would like to leave off corresponding here."

I'm afraid his instincts are probably correct.

Grokking Microsoft's Waterloo

The GPL is their downfall. It's almost amusing watching them get all tangled up in its terms. They can't satisfy their greed and abide by the GPL at the same time. Poor SCO. Poor Microsoft. They will have to write their own software, and they can't. They write it, but it isn't as good. They can't match our software because they won't use our method. The open source/free method of developing software results in better, more stable, more secure code, and it's developed blazingly fast in comparision to their pokey ways. They want the results, but they're so terrified of the open process, they won't use it. The apparent solution they have come up with is to steal GPL code. Maybe they think if they can get it put in the public domain, not that they can, then maybe Windows software will finally become secure, once it's running on Linux, like Apple runs on BSD. - Groklaw

How is this guy not a lawyer yet? For those - the vast majority across the globe - who haven't been following the SCO debacle, I'll explain it briefly and almost surely more than a little inaccurately. But you'll grasp the point.

1. The GPL is the license that allows anyone to use a large library free open source code, as long as they freely release the source code that they subsequently derive from it.
2. GPL code is very good, and many corporations want to use it.
3. They don't want to abide by the GPL, however. But they are scared sans fecal matter since they also are trying to sell their software in competition with the free GPL software which in many cases is arguably better. This is Microsoft, in case you haven't guessed, by the way.
5. SCO received a big investment from Microsoft in order to act as its sock puppet and attack the GPL in court, arguing that it is not legally valid and therefore they can use GPL code without having to operate under its restrictions. Some of the parties to the lawsuit SCO has brought includes their own customers!

Keep in mind that every bit of Microsoft software is licensed, which, if you read the fine print, means that even though you paid for it, it isn't yours, it's theirs, unless it breaks something or causes you to suffer some kind of damage, in which case the liability is yours - although you can sue them for the princely sum of $5 at which point your damages are capped. That license, of course, is considered Holy Writ, but a license that says: here, it's free, you can use it if you want it, but you have to release anything derived from it under the same license, that is apparently unenforceable, null and void.

Why? Well, because it prevents Microsoft from making large sums of money off other people's intellectual property! Considering that they've been doing it that way from the very beginning, no wonder Bill and company are having a hard time understanding that they won't be able to do it here.

Skyclad is a state of mind

Gerald Gardner, writes Cerelia, "holds the distinction of bringing contemporary Witchcraft to the modern world." Indeed he does. Somewhat awkwardly for those who maintain that Wicca is descended from an ancient cult of the Goddess, this retired British civil servant made most of it up sometime in the 1940s and 1950s. The eccentric Mr. Gardner's pastimes were not confined to witchcraft. He was also a keen naturist and a fan of flagellation. Cerelia grumbles that many of Gardner's "personal likes and fantasies" may have crept into the rites that he developed. Indeed they did. As she notes, the insistence that witches had to be "skyclad" (naked) while practicing their craft was "probably" (probably?) his idea, and her description of the initiation ceremonies in Gardnerian Witchcraft does seem to include a remarkable amount of binding, blindfolding and "whipping with cords."

The estimable Stuttaford has written a timely essay for Halloween. It doesn't surprise me in the least that an occupation which involves women running around naked and going in for bondage should have been conceived by a man. I always find it amusing how every new 'religion', from the first Gnostics to the Albigsenians to modern Gaiaism, always involves women taking their clothes off and sexually servicing men. And if you dig deeply enough, you can almost always find the clever, fast-talking Lothario who invented the new way to get some action.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Fooling the Gender Genie

The Gender Genie purports to be able to identify the gender of a writer by their choice of words and phrases, but it's pretty clear that it's only accurate in that men tend to write more about things and ideas and women tend to write more about their feelings and relationships. A man who writes about the latter or a female who writes about the former will likely be able to confuse it. I ran my last three columns through it and it came up with the following results:

Shadows, Sex and Sorrow = Female +36.4%
Breaking up with Bill = Female +9.3%
The End of Art = Male +19.9%

It did correctly identify a fiction short, though, as Male +16.8%. It occurs to me that these gender tendencies may be why I so loathe women writing about sports. Almost invariably, they tend to write about how the game affects them and their feelings, so their columns are devoted to how cheering for two different teams can pose a challenge to a relationship (McKendry), how other writer's attitudes affect them personally (McKendry), how their knowledge of football can intimidate a man they are dating (Pressman), and then, you have the mystifying subject matter shear of how it feels to imitate Sarah Jessica Parker (Casey).

Meanwhile, the male writers are writing about who should get into the Hall of Fame (Dr. Z), who will be the best rookie wide receivers this year (Ralph Wiley), which team is blowing its salary cap (Pasquerelli), and how the Red Sox losing makes him sad (Simmons). Of course, the Sports Guy is clearly a bit of a girl from time to time - after all, he not only watches the Oscars, but keeps a running diary on them. Still, to be fair, his usual motif is massive multipart prognostications on how the various NFL/NBA/MLB teams will do in the coming season. Not to mention even longer pieces devoted to the seasonal fantasy drafts. And diaries of the actual professional drafts. A lot more snails and puppy dog tails than sugar-and-spice, actually, if you consider his entire oeuvre.

This subjective/objective dichotomy reminds me of a girl I dated long ago, a model who tended to attract an amount of attention wherever she went. I realized I couldn't keep seeing her when we met up at a nightclub one night after having hit different establishments earlier in the evening. When I asked her how Club X had been - in other words, were there a lot of people there, was it fun, is it hopping tonight, should we go there later - she answered with an encyclopedic litany of who had noticed her and exactly how they had reacted to her. At the end of her recitation, I had no more information about the question I'd asked than before she opened her mouth. That brief glimpse into the yawning horror of life with someone who believes that the entire universe is nothing more than a mirror encouraged me to run, not walk, out of that relationship.

She was an extreme example of total narcissism, of course. But just as it behooves male writers to open up from time to time and allow their readers to learn more about them as human beings, I think it would also be a good thing if female writers - especially female sportswriters - would keep in mind that the subjects about which they are supposed to be writing generally have very little to do with them and their feelings.

Lighter fluid or paint thinner?

Bad enough that ESPN fired Tuesday Morning Quarterback Gregg Easterbrook, one of the more amusing writers dedicated to the NFL, for the sin of criticizing Michael "my evil plan to destroy Disney is working, ha ha ha!" Eisner and his role in pushing a carnucopia of gore on America. Unbe-freaking-lievable is that they replaced him with a little blonde girl who writes about riding the trapeze in New York City. Just like Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex in the City! Eek!

[insert expression containing roughly balanced degrees of vulgarity and disbelief here]

Did I miss it, or did ESPN hire its new web editor from Chick Flick magazine? This is akin to having Dr. Z write a hard-core article on offensive line blocking schemes for Cosmopolitan. Chris McKendry was highly annoying at times, but at least she knew a bit about sports. Now we've got Stacy Pressman and some older woman writing about their dating mishaps, a dork making lists about Hollywood actors, and now a girl living out her dream to recreate Sex in the City scenes. Bill Simmons - now, with Ralph Wiley, officially the only good thing about Page 2 - is no doubt debating whether he should use lighter fluid or paint thinner to set himself on fire.

On target

Looks like Mr. Joseph Farah has nailed it again. He called the DC sniper, and he also predicted that the California fires would turn out to be a form of Muslim terror attack. I have to admit that I was skeptical about the latter case, but it turns out that the first arsonist arrested is named Dikran. I don't know my Arabic names well enough to be sure of Mr. Arnouchian's heritage, but it surely isn't a name that turns up frequently in the Lutheran churches around here.

Update - DZ points out: "Nationality -- Surnames ending in "ian" are generally Armenian. Armenians are generally Christian. They are certainly not fans of Islam, given the genocides precipitated by the Turks."

Fair enough. Ergo, the jury is still out on Mr. Farah's prediction.

Conceptual cameo

As next week's will be my first syndicated column, I thought I'd wade in with heavier artillery than usual. What do F.A. von Hayek, Karl Marx, Benito Mussolini, Madonna and Neal Stephenson all have in common? They all make conceptual cameos, as it were. Ten points for anyone who can name the literary tie-in of the subtitle come Monday. Comments will be welcomed.

Ready, aim, FIRE

So, conservatives are not cultural. Strange, considering that the list of signatories quite clearly demonstrates that exhibiting an inordinate interest in other people's bottoms - of the same sex, mind you - suffices to qualify one as cultural. It seems that being capable of breathing and pulse would qualify one to surmount a bar set that low. Looks like it's time for FIRE to smack some leftie heads around again - legally speaking, that is. I don't know what minority status has to do with culture, but if Bucknell is a typical college campus, there's no doubt that conservatives are in the minority.

Dear Bucknell University Conservatives Club,

We would like to thank you for your time and interest in becoming a member of the Multicultural Council of Presidents. As a result of the council's vote, we are unable to offer you a seat on the council at this time.The Multicultural Council of Presidents (MCOP) has determined that the Bucknell University Conservatives Club (BUCC) does not meet the qualifications for membership as stated by our Constitution.

A significant piece to the MCOP constitution is that all members of the council must be " multicultural organizations," as stated in Article III Section 3.01. At this time, the Multicultural Council of Presidents does not feel that the Bucknell University Conservatives Club sufficiently defined their organization as a cultural organization in the application process. The application was presented as a claim to culture rather than providing a historical context of cultural heritage of the organization. The BUCC failed to convince MCOP that the organization is either a culture or minority.

The application committee clearly stated that the Conservatives Club share a similar viewpoint as an organization, but the council does not feel that shared viewpoints equal a shared identity. I may also note that although the individual members within organizations seated on the Multicultural Council of Presidents do not necessarily share the same viewpoints, each organization does share a unified culture as defined above.According to MCOP Constitutional guidelines, as delineated in section 3.02, council members vote on the admittance of potential new members. Approval is dependent on the favorable opinion of 2/3 of the quorum. BUCC failed to secure this majority.

In light of these proceedings, your application has been respectfully declined.The members of the Multicultural Council of Presidents (MCOP) highly regard and thank you for your time and interest in this matter.

Best Regards,

On behalf of the Multicultural Council of Presidents,
Nicole R. Thompson, Bucknell Multicultural Theatre Ensemble
Alisha Lang, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority
Philip Martoma, FLAG & BT

Free State

I have been searching your blog for your thoughts on the freestateproject.org; are there any?

I am certainly a supporter of the Free State Project. I think it is one of the few freedom-loving organizations that stands any chance of making a difference - or at least helping people avoid some of the consequences - as the country continues in its long tailspin towards socialist crisis. I think Jason Sorens' conception of the project was brilliant and I also believe that the choice of New Hampshire was optimal. When I first heard about it, I assumed that they'd go to New Hampshire, but it's better that everyone had a chance to contribute to the debate and thus ensure mental buy-in.

Will I go there myself? Quite possibly, if only to support the cause of American liberty. New Hampshire's pretty easy for me, too, as I've had family living there and am pretty familiar with it.

Space Bunny says

Nothing is scarier than hearing: "Hey, I fixed your computer!" She was, however, prompted to revise her statement upon hearing "As soon as I get the new distro downloaded, I'll have a whack at your system." Apparently that's worse.

Fedora... you can leave your hat on....

Partitioning software

One of the difficulties in migrating to Linux is the probable need to partition your hard drive if you want a dual-boot system. Since Microsoft doesn't want to make it easy for you to escape Windows, you need to turn to third party software. Partition Magic is the best known, but I just tried out BootIt NG, which is a shareware package that does the trick rather nicely. It's actually far more powerful than most people need - I don't want a boot manager - I just needed to split one giant drive into two partitions.

Anyhow, it's pretty easy to use, not very expensive, and I'll post a how-to up here after I tackle the third machine's drive.

On the upcoming election

Why don't I write much on the political horse race? Because that's all it is. A horse race, devoid of significance. Regardless of whether George Bush, or, to choose the leftmost Democrat for illustration's sake, Howard Dean, are elected, there will be very little change in US government policy. Mild differences in tax rates, sure, a mild variance in judges nominated, of course.

But, in either case, will we leave the UN? Will the tax fraud be abjured? Will the troops stationed in 100 countries where we are not at war be brought home? Will Federal Reserve paper be replaced by money that can't be inflated at will? Will abortion be banned? Will the 10th Amendment be obeyed? Will the right of the People to Petition be honored?

No. So, I don't care who wins the next election, must less the Democratic nomination.

Thus spake Neal

"The U.S. Government's assertion that Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS market might be the most patently absurd claim ever advanced by the legal mind. Linux, a technically superior operating system, is being given away for free, and BeOS is available at a nominal price. This is simply a fact, which has to be accepted whether or not you like Microsoft.... this is not the sort of power that fits any normal definition of the word "monopoly," and it's not amenable to a legal fix. The courts may order Microsoft to do things differently. They might even split the company up. But they can't really do anything about a mindshare monopoly, short of taking every man, woman, and child in the developed world and subjecting them to a lengthy brainwashing procedure."

Mr. Stephenson, a devotee of Debian Linux, is not a fan of Microsoft. I am in the midst of what can only be described as a purge, methodically eliminating Microsoft applications and operating systems from every machine in the house. But, as I have said before, Microsoft is not a monopoly.

I realize the federal government has pronounced otherwise. They have also taken the position that ketchup is a vegetable and that the United States is still facing a national emergency due to "the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security" posed by the Burmese government.

Capitalism vs corporatism

"Linux stands on the verge of ousting Apple in the OS stakes.... As Linux continues its apparently unstoppable march over the server and desktop market, more and more people are writing to PC Plus asking why we don't try hardware out on Linux for compatibility checks. Questions like these make sense after all, with so many users weighing the pros and cons of ditching Windows in favour of Linux, they want to know how good Linux hardware support is, and particularly for cutting-edge kit."

PC Plus provides some reasonable answers as to why they will not be providing the same sort of coverage to Linux-compatible hardware that they do to Microsoft and Apple hardware, but it is certainly interesting that they even feel they need to address the issue at all. It's also interesting to hear that the writer believes that Apple - "so fragile, and yet so vicious" - is on the verge of being pushed off to the side, although we've heard that death knell before, and I, for one, imagine that they'll be around for a while, if only to market hardware to those who believe that style, sophistication and moral superiority can be purchased from a computer manufacturer.

I was more intrigued by the following paragraph:

"...it's a sad fact that some manufacturers have no wish to be associated with Linux. Over on my day job at Linux Format, we recently ran a 'Linux on laptops' feature, for which one particularly big name suddenly refused to send us a review unit when we mentioned we'd be installing Linux on it. "We don't support Linux, and don't want our customers thinking we support Linux," they explained, despite the fact that the same company had previously made a big deal over its new line of dedicated Linux systems."

I've been working on a column delving into the strange quasi-capitalist, quasi-socialist corporation-centered economy in which we currently live, and I found it very curious that a laptop maker would: a) not support the fastest-growing operating system, and b) not want their customers who are interested in that operating system to know that they could run that OS on their products. Far from being the champions of the free market, it seems that corporations are increasingly focused on supporting centralization, government regulation and standardization even if this means they must sacrifice customers in the short term.

There are some real doubts about whether modern corporations and the corporatist system are truly compatible with human liberty, capitalism and the free market. I think that the next stage of the thirty-year OS saga may prove to shed some interesting light on whether corporatism finally sheds its capitalist facade in the 21st century and reveals itself as the true Third Way or if capitalism again throws off another challenger to its throne as the optimal means of secular human progress.

Stay single, young man

If you or your potential wife-to-be are non-Christians, that is. I'm serious about this. Only a woman who believes that her commitment is before God has a reason to take her commitment seriously once the initial romantic high wears off. Women choose to end 75 percent of marriages and now, contrary to what one would assume, are apparently committing nearly half of the adultery as well.

This is not to say that a Christian wife won't leave you when she gets bored or fail to decline an affair with a good-looking tennis instructor if you happen to be spending too much time out with the guys. But at least she has a solid reason not to do so, whereas if her only reason to remain faithful is because she's in love with you and thinks you're super spiffy, what do you think is likely to happen if she decides she isn't in love with you anymore and starts to believe that you are the one responsible for her being miserable?

I know there are plenty of faithless (in the religious sense) couples who are happily married. I know a few and I have great respect for them. And there's certainly no shortage of Christians who fail to live up to their ideals. But, as the study is apparently an English one, it demonstrates how a lack of faith is likely to correspond with a lack of long-term committment. Since the legal deck is heavily stacked against men, the only real solution for young men is to avoid matrimony like the black plague. This is the strategy that Scandinavian men have pursued, according to a Danish friend of mine, and with some degree of success as 54 percent of the children in Sweden and 46 percent in Denmark are now born illegitimate. As my friend concludes, you're going to lose custody anyhow, so you might as well make sure that you'll be able to preserve your bank account if the relationship falls apart.

The cost to society will be terrible, of course. Which is exactly what many Christians argued, to no avail, when the Godless Leap Forward was made two generations ago. But I can't, in good conscience, tell a young man that it makes any sense whatsoever for him to marry a woman whose only commitment is emotional and legal, instead of spiritual and eternal.

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.