Nearly forgotten about this but I revoked all of my public keys not because anything was compromised but due to much needed catching up on janitorial type work. So please don’t freak out if you get a weird reaction to the new one from your mail client. I wouldn’t mention this but one person has already asked. Get the new public keys from the usual places or alternately:

—–BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)
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=R6r3
—–END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–

Sorry if this inconveniences or bugs anyone. The old keys were just really old and needed to go bye bye. Thanks.

Timothy Butler is going to get my hitting the nail right on the fucking head merit badge this week for succintly and clearly making an argument that I’ve been struggling with for some time. There is a huge crowd of people who love love love Mac OS X and continually wonder why we the GNU/Linux cavepeople don’t simply switch religions like so many of their favorite rock stars and nu celebrity stoners already have. Timothy Butler has your answer smartypants.

It all started at the beginning of this month, when I published the article Mac OS X: An Apple a Day keeps the Penguins Away?, which clearly noted that in every area, GNU/Linux was nearly as good, as good, or even better than Mac OS X for the average user. I was not surprised that my mail box was flooded with dissenting opinions, particularly from Mac users, however something did surprise me – the supposed reasons I was being given for Mac OS X being better than GNU/Linux did not even make sense in the context of my article.

I expected to be told about how easy it was to use Mac OS X, or how much better the software was. Instead, the majority of “reasons” I was given were focused on specialty applications such as Photoshop and Final Cut. One person asked me something to the effect of “tell me where I can get Quark Xpress for Linux.”

Preach on Brother Butler. I’m glad that someone finally got around to writing this instead of letting me continually beat my head against the subject.

I decided to take a day off tomorrow mainly to get caught up with school work which I’ve actually been pretty diligent about but the usual deluge of last minute assignments from professors who don’t have a solid grasp of the there-are-so-many-weeks-in a-semester concept is killing me. Besides reading a couple hundred pages of journal fodder tomorrow I’m also going to try to get at least one of the longer things I’ve been planning up here. I feel like I haven’t been doing anything but school work. Gotta keep in touch with the geeky obsessive compulsive side of my nature.

For the moment go read Linux Orbit review of the Evil Entity distribution. Although I’m not particularly fond of goth themed anything I have to admit that it looks very nice which probably also has to do with Enlightenment being the default (and only as far as the end user uninterested in modifications is concerned) window manager. Not really the best distribution for those with limited resources in terms of display and memory but the truth of the matter is that people in general are willing to take all manner of hits on performance as long as things look cool – think OS X and this will make much more sense. I’m glad there are projects like this that break off from the usual RedHat plus optimized KDE or Gnome package. Linux doesn’t have to look like a Windows knock off and I’m happy to see people trying to get away from it. Their package management also looks promising. It’s modelled after (and actually uses) the Slackware system but they’re promising their own deal called Mausoleum or some goofy shit like that in the future. Go check it.

You can’t beat some self-indulgent weblogging to force yourself to break from reading countless (well, over sixty if precision is your poison of choice) journal articles and page upon page of bibliographical information that interests three people in the entire universe. By the way I am calling an official moratorium on the noun “blog” or the verb “blogging.” Well, maybe not official but I’m trying to avoid using it myself. This isn’t because I’m some squeamish lingual purist but both words remind me far too much of “rolfing” or worse feltching. I can deal without thinking about either deep tissue massage or, uh, the other.

A long time ago I posted some screenshots for folks who were genuinely curious about what a GNU/Linux desktop might look like. Those files are long gone but two people (at separate times even) asked me where I got the all green theme. I actually made it, hated it, and then forgot all about it. After a couple of de-uglifying changes here and there (plus some add-ins for the fluxbox folks) and here it is. Please don’t go blind because I’d feel just awful. I’ll post a few more when I get motivated to add flux friendly stuff to them since I’m a fan of both although I can’t run both at the same time currently.

Also noticed a nice article on the ins and outs of localization that might interest those who aren’t tied to the mast of the sinking ship of the English language like I am. Looks like pretty solid advice or at least a fine place to start if you’re having difficulty with such things. It uses Apache::MP3 as an example.

Geek.com has a very graphic breakdown of a recent /.ing they lived through. I do like the idea of caching smaller sites who can’t take the stomping in terms of performance or bandwidth that a couple zillion casual gawkers bring on.

If you think of Slashdot.org not as a mass of users all with separate thought processes, but as an Internet monolith traveling around from site to site laying waste to everything in its wake, it would potentially be one of the worst Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks/worms/viruses out there today.

They’re lucky enough to have a lot of burstable bandwidth so they managed to make it through that particular torture session.

Oh yeah – Kevin Mitnick interview short and mainly as a book promotion thing but what the hell…

Galeon2 for those who are brave and don’t have seductive package management systems that make them very patient. I’ll wait for the .deb but not everyone else will. The thought of fux0ring this up and rendering two of my most used applications… well, that’s more work than I want to fix in twenty minutes…

See how lame you are at least in relation to your weblog. Pretty funny stuff and I’m alarmed by the description below. I would like to publically state that I have never built a kernel from CVS. Really. I haven’t. That and the Slashdot thing. If you were really geeky in the more generalized sense you’d hang out at Everything2 where unnecessary knowledge of obscure and esoteric topics is rewarded with praise and preserved forever. The best part is that I get to include the sample post in my post. I heart efficiency.

Techie Blogger (Togger)

Percentage of blogger population: 20%
Hours spent blogging: 56/week
Habitat: Usually a messy desk type area with lots of caffeine nearby. Techie Bloggers have been known to be nomads, though, with the advent of wireless internet technology. You may see them anywhere as a result, although most tend towards urban areas.
Average Age: 20 something
Favorite hangout: Slashdot
Last Book Read: Understanding the LINUX Kernel: From I/O Ports to Process Management
Favorite Offline Activities: Microsoft jokes, computer swap meets, hacker conventions.
Mode of Dress: Varies wildly, but you will usually notice at least one obscure reference to linux ruling and microsoft sucking.
Psychological profile: INTP
Typical post: select extract(‘epoch’ from now()) as unixtime; Recompiled the kernel from CVS today. Blech. While waiting for it to compile, I worked some on my project to turn GIMP into an auto-dynamic IP range modifier for my Sega Dreamcast box. The boxen are doing ok, but the 486 piece of crap is pulling too much juice and overheating so I’m thinking of rerouting the fan and mounting it inside my refrigerator. Yeah, yeah, I saw the /. article, but mine is going to be way cooler. More later, my Mac is beeping…

My advice for what is turning out a very wintery day (at least here it is) is to go read this discussion thread and laugh yourself silly. I think we should ask the guy who posted the question to mail us all $6000 – $8000. That would give me a headstart in matching functionality. At least the editors acknowledged this in categorizing the story within don-your-asbestos -suits-folks,-we’re-going-in. If nothing else it’s an interesting look at how Apple users misunderstand Linux instead of the same old boring Windows user misunderstanding Linux.

Speaking of which, where are my Visual Basic Programmer Trolls these days? The place is getting absolutely conflict-free these days. The best I’ve got lately is a heartfelt defense of Corel Linux which is pretty pathetic even on the best day.

Since the cranks are already rolling in about my earlier comments about Xandros albeit in their hamfisted, I-don’t-know-how-to-use-any-search-function-but-Google way I guess here is where I say I was probably wrong. The positive reviews are rolling in and it looks like interoperability within heterogeneous environments (read: interacting with Windows machines and applications) is looking pretty good. When I first wrote about Xandros I was unaware (as was everyone outside of the beta testing program – which I applied for a little late – because they were under a non disclosure agreement) that they were going so far with Codeweavers stuff. Here’s a review from a beta tester which might be helpful since he’s used the OS for awhile and doesn’t go around telling people they’re wet behind the ears for criticizing a product that was released a week ago.

I’m still hoping they’ll release a GPL’d version so people can give Xandros a whirl (even if it’s a live cd or whatever) before they drop $99 on a 1.0 release. Good enough?

Go check out the amazing array of pumpkin carving virtuousity over at The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century and wish that you had that kind of Halloween party instead of the usual drunken couch slouch fest that leaves long streaks of grease paint on your furniture and smells of questionable origin in the bathroom. I’m a little obsessed with the obscenely detailed and amazingly crafted Gilligan pumpkin but I’m a sick man. Scroll down and you will see. I’ll most likely be playing guitar on Halloween at my drummer’s party. Sure I can drink beer and deal with abrupt switches between 3/4 and 7/8. No problem.

but if you want a very explicit guide to installing Debian you can find it here. I haven’t read it all the way through quite yet. I’ve got a very bored yet energetic kitten on my hands who thinks the sound of my keyboard is endlessly fascinating. This leads to 8k strings of single characters leaking into my posts. Little bastard.

This guide looks very adequate, though. I’m sure many will criticize it for being too detailed when all the poor oppressed (l)user should have to do is click twice or whatever. If you’re still hip to the idea of being a participant during major happenings on your computer then this guide should at least get you up and running. Pay no attention to the sneering Mandrake users. If you want some chuckles at someone else’s expense go take a look at one of the many Mandrake user forums and wonder how they got that far along without ever learning about manualing mounting partitions and whatnot. Scary.

Did I mention I’m really tired? Gnome2 is sliding (alternately crashing and burning) into sid on Sunday. I don’t really care but there are some folks who might. If this makes absolutely no sense to you then you absolutely don’t need to be concerned. Read the snide comments about the antiquity of Debian and not having the latest bleeding edge and crashing every couple of minutes here, here, and a billion other places I don’t care enough to link. Go team.

Also —-> the Gilgamesh of Debian history which I’m too fuzzy brained to read right now. Actually it’s called the Past, Present, and Future of Debian but that sounds too much like a forgotten Moody Blues record to me which seems innocuous enough on the surface but I have “Knights In White Satin” stuck in my head right now than you very much. This will be incredibly interesting to like two people who visit here but it’s my dime so fuck it.

I have this head-up-my-ass problem when it comes to events happening in the world outside of technology. On 09/11/01 I was completely unaware of anything except campus being pretty deserted and the fact that no site I regularly read was accessible that day. I figured it was some kind of attack on the root servers (which happened recently) and that I’d read all about it on TechDirt later. Little did I know… Anyhow, I had the same thing happen with the arrest of the sniper this morning. I was reading Debian Planet or something when I realized that the normal background burble of people talking about the sniper had subtlely changed. I don’t listen to most of the actual words people say directly to me but I am very perceptive when it comes to changes in tones. Eventually I found out what happened and then went fishing for some news. I visited the usual big news sites and found the stories quickly built up from news feeds. Then of course the natural thing to do is cruise on over to Fox News to see what insane speculation they’ve posted as news. As I suspected there was something about “a possible Al-Queda link” posted in the sidebar because even before any evidence was in the guy wasn’t white and also Muslim. I’ve checked back since then and the story has disappeared but parts of it are incorporated into this article:

Muhammad, a veteran of the Gulf War, converted to Islam, according to The Seattle Times. Malvo is a citizen of Jamaica. The Times quoted federal sources as saying the two had been known to speak sympathetically about the hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But there was no indication, authorities said, that they were linked to Al Qaeda or any terrorist group.

I’m wondering how they rationalized creating a sensational headline out of that block of text. Lately I haven’t felt much like asking. I’m avoiding the warblogs per usual given my allergy to Muslim-baiting and xenophobia. I’m sure I’ll eventually break down and load up weblogs.com. You can read the response at Slashdot if you have a strong stomach. Funny thing if it wasn’t smack in the middle of a ridiculous flamefest with Debian as the target I wouldn’t have caught it. Jeez.

Anil gets the harsh warblogger treatment and writes about in a really compelling way. It’s funny because even the most skilled writers among the right wing contingent cannot seem to gracefully or reasonably present any idea and Anil’s reply to their shenanigans is both tactful and insighful.

Speaking of things not necessarily related to technology, I found The Assayer after reading a little bit about it on Kenneth Hunt‘s site. I’m pretty excited about the potential of this project. My enthusiasm isn’t so much for the having a bunch of book reviews under a free license although it’s a very cool foundation. I’m excited about having a place to talk about books that isn’t a classroom and with an emphasis on freely available books. The selection is very biased towards technical types right now but with any degree of luck and the careful nudging of some people more knowledgable on more conventionally esoteric topics there is great promise for expanding out onto things unrelated to computers and science. Go take a look, skim some free texts, and grab an account while you’re there. There are also links from some of the reviews to Andamooka which is worth a gander if the name doesn’t ring any bells.

Every addition to the free distribution model makes me insanely happy. While I’m not advocating some paving over of the world with the GPL as some are annoyingly persistent in suggesting but it’s very encouraging to see people fomenting communities based on common interests that are more advanced than gaming or allegiance to a certain GNU/Linux distribution. The awareness that people have about keeping this sort of shared knowledge freely available is what really nails it for me. Yeah, I know, hippy dippy doo but I’m smiling and you’re not Mr. Frowny Pants.