Now With 50% More Open-Source

Made the leap today: I wiped OS X off the hard drive on my MacBook and put a fresh, clean install of the newest version of Ubuntu (7.10, or 'Gutsy Gibbon') on it.

Everything worked out of the box save for wifi, and there's a workaround for that. 7.10 looks great, the MacBook feels more responsive, and getting/installing software is easier than in OS X.

No Leopard for me. I'll stick with the penguin.

Short Book Reviews: Heart-Shaped Box

Title: Heart-Shaped Box

Author: Joe Hill

Synopsis: Ageing rock star purchases a ghost for a laugh; then finds the ghost is not only real, but wants revenge.

Cheers: Smooth, flowing prose style. Scary without relying on shock.

Jeers: None.

Quirks: Several passages describing the haunting could also be used to describe the Hypnagogia sleep disorder. Does Mr. Hill suffer from Hypnagogia, or know someone who does?

Bottom Line: Buy this modern ghost story, but don't read it alone in a dark house.

Religious crazy vs the Troops

Apparently the only counter-force to crazy American fundamentalist Christians is the urge to support the troops: a Baltimore judge just ordered a church to pay $1 million in damages to the father of an Army Lance Corporal killed in Iraq.

The church members drove all the way from Kansas to attend the kid's funeral and hold up such uplifting, Christian signs as "God hates fags," and "Thank God for dead troops." Really, who would Christ persecute?

Now I'm no fan of the war, but I don't want to see any more American troops die; that's why I'd like them brought home. Contrary to the what article says, these people aren't "protesting," they're co-opting the death of someone's son to push a message of hate. Isn't that what Republicans accuse liberals of doing all the time? So how many righties are going to come out and chastise these people? Or will they keep giving airtime to Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and others who cloak their prejudice in righteousness?

Too Weird to Not be True

I can't make this kind of stuff up, people: the CEO of Budget Hotels (yes, those hotels) is building a series of inflatable space habitats to put into orbit.

Even weirder: he's apparently already got two inflatable spacecraft up there.

Science Skeptics

Got involved in a forum discussion today about Climate Change that really depressed me.

It wasn't just that no one else follows the scientific consensus of human-caused global climate change. What frustrated and depressed me was how thoroughly they misunderstand the very nature of science, let alone the science of the Earth's climate.

One poster even claimed there was plenty of room for "his science" and "my science." He may have thought he was being nice, but he couldn't have been more wrong.

There is no "your science" or "my science." There's only Science. You either believe in the expansion of human knowledge through repeatable experiments or you don't. Science is based on consensus, not opinion.

How can these "skeptics" undermine faith in the scientific method using technology only possible because of that method?

Help me out here. Am I way out of line to come down hard on them? Should I just let it go? Or have I stumbled onto a nest of irrationality that must be confronted?

Freebird

I've switched. Not from PC to Mac, but from Mac to Linux.

That's right. I'm a card-carrying geek.

But I've switched to the friendliest Linux flavor I could find: Ubuntu. It's free, it's open source, and it's MINE.
Mine, because everyone that uses Ubuntu owns Ubuntu. Everything is customizable, from the Desktop background down to the very kernel the operating system runs on. I can even use entirely different desktop environments if I want, kind of like being able to run a Mac OS 9-style interface on Mac OS X's code. Unlike a Mac, I can change the code anyway I want, and no one'll come after me with a lawyer.

In fact, if I make it better, they'll thank me. That's how I get tech support now: from other users, who have tweaked and poked and written code and twisted things to work just how they want, then published how-to's online. Check out the Ubuntu Forums for some examples.

So yeah, I've gotta use a command-line interface a little more now than before. And yeah, I've gotta spend time testing and tweaking some things to get them to work. But I *can* get them work, and I didn't have to pay a dime for them.

Oh, and did I mention I can get Windows games to run, in Linux, without booting up Windows? Check out the Wine project. That's the power of open source, folks.

First New Post!

A bit of doggerel to start us off:
(best recited with a thick brogue)

"Yer man's head took a piss
When he went for a hit 'n miss;
Now his name's on the list
Of them that got no wits!"