Author: shacker

Posted on

Feet to the Fire

Something that’s coming out of my discussion with Aunt Geri, regarding me being so critical of our country.

As a technology journalist, one of my most important jobs is not to let companies get away with crap. When a company releases a product with bugs, I make it known in the press. When they have unfair licensing agreements, I let the world know about it. That is the value of the media. That’s what Consumer Reports is based on. Keeping people informed about their options, about who is being fair and who isn’t.

I think that being critical of one’s government (no matter what country you’re in) is not just a right, but an *obligation* of the citizenry. If people accept what their governments and media machines spoon-feed them, they’re sunk. Without being critical, the greedy and power-hungry will get away with murder. I applaud anyone who is critical of corporations and critical of their governemt. In fact, I’m *proud* (yes, there’s something I’m proud of ;) to be critical of my government. I feel that it is my civic duty.

Hold the bastards’ feet to the fire!

Posted on

War Machine Gears Up

Just heard that congress is putting together a “down payment” of $20 billion to put U.S. armed services on highest readiness. The goal will probably be to eliminate entire states (countries) that have provided harbor to terrorists. This may mean total elimination of Afghanistan and/or other countries that stand in the way or show hints of harboring.

We are not going to seek out a few terrorists and kill them. We are going to destroy millions of innocent lives. We are not just going to sink below their level. We are going to sink far below it.

I am sick to my stomach about what lies ahead.

Posted on

Postcard

My thoughts from yesterday can be summarized like this:

Someone sent a postcard as big as our souls directly to the heart of America, and we haven’t even bothered to read what’s written on the back.

Posted on

Pandora’s box

The issues I had installing logjam, and my correspondences with its developer resulted in a pretty interesting discussion about SSL assumptions / mistakes Mandrake made with 8.0, and the related issue of how much security is desirable for a public service like LJ. Read it here.

Posted on

Coasters

Trying to use gcombust to burn CDs in Linux last night… never made so many coasters in my life. Couldn’t figure out why, finally pulled the SCSI card and moved it to the Win machine, only to be beset by a ton of configuration and writing problems there as well (using Nero). Finally figured those out, but there are a dozen wasted CD blanks in the trash now. I don’t think I’ve ever made a blank in BeOS. Damn, Be got so much so right, made so much so easy.

Today found out that you pretty much have to change the priority level of the cd burning app in linux. One guy claims that

nice –15 gcombust &

will do the trick. That makes a certain amount of sense, but I’m not sure how to interpret this. Does it mean that:

A) The Linux scheduler is really dumb and can’t figure out anything for itself.

B) Linux is very coarsely multithreaded.

C) This is somehow “desired or expected behavior” and that a user so clueless that he didn’t know he had to do that to begin with has no business using Linux.

Posted on

logjam

Breakthrough – finally punched out of RPM hell and got the exact combination of library versions of openssl, curl, and libcrypto symlinks to re-enable my Samba network (which I broke while trying to get logjam installed) and for the logjam installer itself to work.

It’s funny how there are so many things that are ridiculously difficult in Linux, and it’s easy to curse them for it because they shouldn’t be difficult, but that’s also what’s attractive about it – the problem solving and the education that comes with that.

But it’s funny – Amy said I only seem to swear at the computer when I’m using Linux, so why am I getting more into it? Good question.

Posted on

LUG

Just returned from a Linux user’s group mtg. Small group, about seven people. But very fiery. Despite all of my complaints about Linux and the weaknesses of the OSS development model (to which few zealots will admit), I have to admit that it’s very contagious. The thing is, there is FIRE in the Linux world now. The last year of BeOS has been almost nothing but depression. People begging for breadcrumbs, grateful for any scrap thrown our way. Linux is very much still in the process of self-creation. The love and the lunacy is still there. I thrive on that. Everyone thrives on that.

Posted on

Cute

The kitties were so cute today. They were sitting around smoking weed and listenting to Rush 2112. Then Plato wouldn’t budge from the couch and was bogarting the Cheetos bag. Louise was running around acting like she had just made a deal with the devil. It just kills me when they do that.

Posted on

Samba

Set up a home Samba network for the first time. Hair-pulling experience at first. Sometimes it’s just a matter of finding one little key, then the whole things busts open…