Category: Uncategorized

I really don’t understand a lot of the vituperation that is being directed towards Red Hat. First, their CEO didn’t say anything that others, including me, haven’t said before. Linux is not ready for the casual home user who has no clue how to make any modifications to their system, although it is now a very reasonable choice – in my opinion, the optimal choice – for a power user who isn’t afraid to go to the command line every now and then.

I’ve installed several systems over the last week, so I think I have a pretty up-to-date perspective on the question. Red Hat is considered one of the better distros in terms of ease of install, and yet there are numerous issues that Space Bunny, who is a bright girl, simply does not have the technical experience to tackle alone. She couldn’t fix many of her inevitable Windows problems either, heck, half the time I can’t since the problems aren’t fixable, but the plug-and-play drivers and software installation programs are simple enough that she could handle those. But get her printer working with SAMBA, CUPS and whatnot? No way, not yet. Still, with her personal tech support staff, she’s running Redhat 9 with her most serious issue to date being that her favorite crossword wasn’t working in her browser – and after firing up the JRE in Opera, she’s crosswording away again.

As for the much-lamented end of the Red Hat retail line, I think this is potentially great. The Fedora project will allow this line of Linux to return to its roots of community development without requiring things to be held back for the stodgy corporate market. I predict that Fedora will speed up the production of device drivers – I find apt-get and Synaptic to be far more useful than RHN already, so guess which was developed by the community and which was developed by the corporation? Red Hat will use Fedora as a testbed, and incorporate those elements which prove to be most useful and stable into its Enterprise products. Where is the problem in that? It’s obviously going to be in Red Hat’s best interest to see that Fedora remains as healthy, free and open as possible.

In summary, I’m looking forward to this weekend – it’s download time again!

Reader ME writes: “I just wanted to let you know that I thoroughly enjoy your columns, and your blogs. I clicked on your Shadows, Sex and Sorrow column cause it had the word “sex” in it, and I was thoroughly impressed. I don’t come across too many columns on Christian philosophy. I checked out all your other stuff and was almost as impressed. I will definitely be following your stuff from now on.”

I’m a little unsure of what to make of this. I mean, I’m delighted he enjoys the column et al and plans to follow it, of course, but there’s just something disarmingly humorous about how he explains his discovery of the column. So, in the interest of pursuing maximum readership, I’ve decided that henceforth, the titles of all columns will contain either a double-entendre, a direct sexual reference, or spell out something titillating in Bible Code patterns.

I think I just heard my UPS editor’s heart skip a beat. You know I’m kidding, right?

My views have changed somewhat since I was a card-carrying member of the Reagan Youth. But I still have a great deal of respect for the man and what he wanted to accomplish, as well as how he conducted himself personally. I’m also pleased to see that the attempt of CBS to slur his legacy has been shut down, in part due to the inspiration and effort of this man.

The best part, though, is his approach to the fifteen minutes of fame. So many who experience it once are far too willing to whore themselves after it once their time is up This guy, however, handles it with grace, wit and aplomb. I hope I can do the same if mine should ever arrive.

Reader ML writes: “I really like what you have to say. But… your columns can be hard to read and follow. Very hard. I doubt that much more than 2% of U.S. are capable of and are willing to follow some of your deeper articles. I’ve quit in the middle of your column before. Please allow me to make the recommendation that was made to me in high school: consider who your audience is and write for them. It’s still good advice, even after all these years. btw, Who are your audience? Maybe I’m just trying to read someone else’s mail.”

ML is probably correct in saying that my columns can be a little dense at times, though I would imagine that percentage to be somewhat higher. But I have no intention of altering the column in order to [choose your description – a) make it more accessible; b) chase readership; c) dumb it down], since there is already a plethora of columnists writing for the mainstream conservative audience. For example, Rich Lowry’s recent column entitled Black Hawk Down, Again and its stay-the-course theme was predictable within minutes of the Chinook being shot down. In fact, I even predicted it to my UPS editor. Does that make Rich a bad columnist? Of course not – he’s one of my favorites among the younger set – only different than the sort of columnist I want to be. I’d much rather have a career following the likes of George Will or Thomas Sowell instead of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter. That’s just my preference.

My belief is that most readers enjoy being stretched intellectually from time to time. I know I do, though certainly not always. Sometimes I feel like slogging through Calvino in the original, and other times I prefer to take it easy with a trashy Dragonlance novel. Speaking of which, The Dragons of Krynn is pretty good, but avoid Darkness and Light at all costs. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad! Anyhow, I’d rather know that people skip past my column from time to time when they don’t feel like dealing with it than attempt to chase some phantom sweet spot or pursue the lowest common denominator.

Who is my audience? I would say everyone who loves freedom, liberty and Constitutional America. One does not have to grok the fullness or be my Ideal Reader in order to take a useful bit of information away from a column. But don’t worry. I like to keep things simple and light-hearted from time to time too. Just wait for next week’s WND column. It’s as accessible and slashingly contemptuous of the Left as Miss Coulter’s most perjorative missives.

“We tell everybody what our vision is. I don’t think [Linux developers] tell the community what theirs is,” said Craig Mundie, chief technology officer at Microsoft, in Redmond, Wash. “There’s also a difference between a community model that’s sort of an evolutionary process and one that’s actually designed and managed for effect in some specific way, which is what Microsoft is doing.”

That’s exactly right, Craig. Just like there’s a difference between a community model where people not only have the right to input in how their society is conducted, but are the ultimate arbiters of authority, and a managed model where a single elite makes all the decisions for everyone and attempts to control their behavior through increasingly despotic means. Ever hear of Trusted Computing? Well, you will.

So, any more questions about the inherently fascist nature of modern corporatism? I am a free market capitalist. These corporate control freaks absolutely are not.

In case you did not believe that the philosophical battle for the allegiance of corporate America about which I wrote today is a real one, have a look at Groklaw’s latest. IBM is striking back at SCO by looking into the nature of its recent financing, which was likely made in order to seek the destruction of the GPL.

I can’t see how SCO could possibly win, but as I have written before, the state and federal courts are almost entirely corrupt. If the case is put before the right [wrong] judge, SCO will win. Regardless of the nonsensical nature of its case, and its total lack of merit.

It’s not a good sign when your laptop screen suddenly draws a thin white line down the middle, segmenting the screen into a two-thirds/one-third vertical division. It’s especially bad when it shows up in the initial BIOS setup. I’m curious to know, however, if this could possibly have been caused by my selecting the wrong display type in Redhat 9, or if it was just a unfortunate coincidence of timing. My other, identical laptop has the same Dell 1280x Laptop type selected, and I would prefer to avoid ruining both machines if that is possible.

My instincts tell me that it had nothing to do with this, though, since this is only the latest in a long string of hardware failures for this pair of Latitude CPx machines. Considering that I never take them anywhere, I can’t imagine that they would have lasted more than five weeks if they’d ever left the house. But if anyone knows more about this sort of thing, do let me know.

“In a 2002 Washington Post article by Clive Thompson, Chip McGrath, editor of the New York Times Book Review said, ‘I don’t think we’re missing the boat on popular books. We’re missing the boat, calculatedly so, on things like religious books. I don’t think we have to apologize for that.'”

– The Bulletin of the SFWA, Fall 2003, p. 13

Just so we’re clear. The New York Times Book Review intentionally ignores best-selling books in constructing its bestseller lists. Why? My guess is that they wish to establish Christian and other non-secular points of view as being outside the mainstream, which, as defined by the New York Times, bears only superficial resemblance to the actual mainstream of American public opinion.

If you’re wondering what on earth the literary reference for today’s column could possibly be, don’t think you’re going crazy. I titled it Capitalism, Socialism and Technology as a homage to Joseph Schumpeter’s excellent work. However, my WND editor apparently either didn’t like it or didn’t recognize it, as he renamed the piece Bypassing Government.

Of course, if he really wanted to drive readership, he should have used one of the magic words. Sex. Clinton. Hillary. [Insert name of celebrity making political gaffe here]. For some reason, anything mentioning one of those four things is irresistible to people. And speaking of Hillary, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Joseph Farah is right about her running. Sure, she says she isn’t. Like she’s never lied before.

cluge writes: A recent American Rifleman contained small column that said that Symantec’s new Internet Security 2004 would block pro gun rights sites (i.e. NRA sites), while not blocking similar anti-gun rights web sites. Being the eternal skeptic, this claim was tested by downloading the trial version and running some tests against it. To my surprise I found the every NRA site was blocked and was in the category ‘weapons.’ This even included the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. Some sites that were not blocked were notable anti-gun rights sites such as The Brady Campaign, and Good Bye Guns. The only anti-gun rights site that was blocked that I could find was Hand Gun Control’s web site. My rather informal test still raises the spectre that a large corporate entity may be clandestinely trying to sway you or your child’s political views by censoring content from one side of a political debate. This is indeed chilling, especially considering that such software is required to be used in libraries to protect children. Is this political slant common in censorware? Have slashdotters found similar glitches in other ‘parental control’ software?”

I was going to buy a copy of NAV from Symantec after a virus took down my intranet as well as my ISP, but I migrated to Linux instead. Now, I’m even more glad that I didn’t by from these censorware haters of Constitutional rights. Send Symantec a message by nuking NAV from your hard drive and replacing it with McAfee, AVG or Dr. Solomon. Better yet, have done with the Third Way neofascists all together and go Penguin.