Looking for something to do? Here are Steve Bass' Favorite Time-Wasters of 2007. "Ring in the New Year with loads of artistic videos, addictive games, and DIY projects - like how to avoid alien abductions."

 
Bizarro by Dan Piraro - 30 December 2007

Small World by Tom Briscoe - 31 December 2007

Journey to the Dark Side: The Bush Legacy (Take One) - TomDispatch

If you don't mind thinking about the Bush legacy a year early, there are worse places to begin than with the case of Erla Osk Arnardottir Lilliendahl. Admittedly, she isn't an ideal "tempest-tost" candidate for Emma Lazarus' famous lines engraved on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. After all, she flew to New York City with her girlfriends, first class, from her native Iceland, to partake of "the Christmas spirit." She was drinking white wine en route and, as she put it, "look[ing] forward to go shopping, eat good food, and enjoy life." On an earlier vacation trip, back in 1995, she had overstayed her visa by three weeks, a modest enough infraction, and had even returned the following year without incident.

This time - with the President's Global War on Terror in full swing - she was pulled aside at passport control at JFK Airport, questioned about those extra three weeks 12 years ago, and soon found herself, as she put it, "handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep... without food and drink and... confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned." It was "the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected."

By her account, she was photographed, fingerprinted, asked rude questions - "by men anxious to demonstrate their power. Small kings with megalomania" - confined to a tiny room for hours, then chained, marched through the airport, and driven to a jail in New Jersey where, for another nine hours, she found herself "in a small, dirty cell." On being prepared for the return trip to JFK and deportation, approximately 24 hours after first debarking, she was, despite her pleas, despite her tears, again handcuffed and put in leg chains, all, as she put it, "because I had taken a longer vacation than allowed under the law."

Read on ...

 
Tom Toles - 2 January 2008

Some numbers from last year:

Posts to the blog:
425
(for comparison: 2006 - 200; 2005 - 249; 2004 - 305)

Sitemeter Numbers:
(the first complete year site wide for my Sitemeter account)
Visits: 48,278
Page Views: 165,575

The top entry pages are Circumventor and Circumventor Archive by far. After those two the only one that stands out month to month is Programs. Of course, during the month of July Tour De France and Cycling are pretty active.

Adsense Numbers:
Page Impressions: 39,926
Clicks: 269
Earnings: $41.68

At this rate, my website almost pays for itstelf every two years.

Either I lied blatantly or I'm not taking enough notes in those lectures with Dr. Evil. Maybe I should see if Dr. Lecter is offering anything in this coming quarter.

How evil are you?

A sled, a cow, the future - Mountain Gazette

Few people may believe that at age 57, I recently T-boned, so to speak, a pregnant, 1,000-pound cow while riding my Flexible Flyer sled down the steepest county road in western Montana. To rural sledders, this is plausible, but perhaps not to adults of my generation. The mean age for the 55,000 sledders injured badly enough last winter to need an ER visit is 9.9, a dismal statistic that reveals a paucity of Baby Boomers still willing to have fun hurtling down mountains with a minimum of control. Sledding down icy back roads is a pure and noble calling that offers countless opportunities for high-speed rides on metal-runners that are only somewhat steerable. Obstacles to doing so abound, from so-called common sense, to cows, like the one I collided with.

Foolproof Online Dating Tips for Desperate Guys - Wired

There are a lot of guys out there on the internet who desperately want to find a woman to share their life with, and who don't want to have to go outside to do it. If you're one of them, you may find yourself wondering why the women you meet in chat rooms, discussion groups and online games have so far failed to love you.

California Sues EPA; Says State Law Greener, Cleaner Than Feds - Wired

California today sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency today for preventing the state from reducing greenhouse gas emissions in its cars.

Big Brother gets bigger, says global privacy study - C|Net

According to a new international privacy report, governments around the world are increasingly invading the privacy of citizens with surveillance, identification systems, and archiving of private data.

US Near Bottom of Global Privacy Index - AP/Wired

Individual privacy is under threat around the world as governments continue introducing surveillance and information-gathering measures, according to an international rights group.

Top ten reasons I procrastinate:

1.

Hmm ... I'll finish this later.

This administration is running on empty legally and morally. The EPA's New Year's resolution should be Face the Truth. Do your job or get out of the way, is what we say to the EPA. We will not accept no as an answer from do-nothing federal environmental officials when our public health and planet's future are at stake. Top EPA officials are blocking responsible state steps against intolerable auto pollution, adding insult to injury and defying the law, common sense, science and their own staff.

- Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal in a press release on joining Californias' lawsuit - along with 14 other states - against the EPA for not allowing states to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in cars.

 
Jeff Danziger - 03 January 2008

Till today I didn't realize there where so many limitations to the Iowa Caucus. Sounds pretty poor as a indicator for who eventually goes on to be a candidate for the presidential election.

New Government Openness Law Not All That Open - Wired

Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists points out that an Associated Press story that appeared in top newspapers recently -- including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal -- was wrong in its assessment of a new law that President Bush signed on December 31 that purports to promote more open government.

Flipping the Linux switch: 5 tips every new Linux user should know - DownloadSquad

Linux is a powerful operating system, but chances are it's a very different operating system than any you've used before. The dizzying number of choices in distributions alone is enough to make your head spin, but it also means there's something out there that really suits your computing style. There are some things in Linux you just have to work out for yourself -- distributions, applications, neato screen savers (hey, we like distractions as much as the next guy).

We're taking a departure from the norm this week and not discussing a specific piece of software. Instead, we've been thinking about what we most wished we'd been told on our first foray into Linux-land. These tips run the gamut from installation planning to how to best ask for help. We chose these tips because they are not distribution-specific, and the majority of new users will at least find a few tips apply to their situation at some point.

Read on ...

Life-saving program BANNED by the Feds! - ZDNet

Pardon me while I bang my head on my desk Less than 3 weeks ago I wrote about a simple storage device that saved 1500+ lives and over $175,000,000 in just a couple of hundred hospitals out of 3700 nationwide. Now the Feds have ordered the program halted.

Read on ...

Academy stresses evolution's importance - Reuters

The National Academy of Sciences on Thursday issued a spirited defense of evolution as the bedrock principle of modern biology, arguing that it, not creationism, must be taught in public school science classes.

Sony BMG Plans to Drop DRM - BusinessWeek

In a move that would mark the end of a digital music era, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is finalizing plans to sell songs without the copyright protection software that has long restricted the use of music downloaded from the Internet, BusinessWeek.com has learned. Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony (SNE) and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter.

 
Ben Sargent - 04 January 2008

 
Tony Auth - 04 January 2008

 
Small World by Tom Briscoe - 07 January 2008

 
Slowpoke by Jen Sorensen - 07 January 2008

Picasa 2.7 a slick upgrade on Linux - Linux.com

Google has released a public beta of its Picasa photo organizer for Linux. The new release adds some important features for image browsing, image searching, and creative image export. If you haven't tried it before, now is the time.

This beta release is a preview of Picasa 2.7, which will bring the Linux version of the application up to speed with the Windows edition. Picasa remains the only Google app which is unavailable for Mac OS X, a fact you can brag about to your Apple-loving friends.

It's a Matter of Choice - LoCo About Ubuntu!

Yesterday I realized that I have run over 30 different kinds of Linux on my laptop. My final choice? Ubuntu.

Not much of a surprise here, I guess -- seeing as my blog is called "LoCo About Ubuntu." For me, it's a matter of choice.

Promises They Can't Keep - Washington Post

The big lie of campaign 2008 - so far - is that the presidential candidates, Democratic and Republican, will take care of our children. Listening to these politicians, you might think they will. Doing well by children has now passed motherhood and apple pie as an idol that all candidates must worship.

License and (Voter) Registration, Please - MotherJones

Washington Dispatch: On Wednesday the Supreme Court will hear what may be the most significant voting rights case since Bush v. Gore—and it could affect the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.

RIAA Still Thinks MP3s Are a Crime, Despite Post's False Correction of File Sharing Column - Wired

Following a crusade on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America by News.com journalist Greg Sandoval, the Washington Post posted a correction to a column about a file sharing lawsuit which was misleading headlined "Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use."

Unfortunately, the correction is actually wrong ...

Red Wine Drug Shows Proof That It Combats Aging - Wired

For the first time, scientists have proof in human subjects that a derivative of an ingredient in red wine combats some symptoms of aging. Sirtris Pharmaceuticals announced the results here on Monday at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference.

Check out this video on youtube from Bills 2007 CES keynote. It is a funny look at his retirement coming this summer.

Found the coolest extension for OpenOffice the other day. It is enables you to bookmark documents for easy opening. It places a Bookmark button on your the main menu for easy access.

Read more about the extension on Linux.com.

OpenOffice Bookmarks Menu download

~ Update ~

I have been using Bookmarks Menu for a few days now and have come to find it very useful. I don't care for desktop shortcuts and since you are unable to put documents/files in the Gnome panel Drawer feature, this extension has become invaluable to me. I definitely suggest it.

The $100 Barrel of Oil vs. the Global War on Terror
The Bush Legacy (Take Two)
By Tom Engelhardt

Consider the debate among four Democratic presidential candidates on ABC News last Saturday night. In the previous week, the price of a barrel of oil briefly touched $100, unemployment hit 5%, the stock market had the worst three-day start since the Great Depression, and the word "recession" was in the headlines and in the air. So when ABC debate moderator Charlie Gibson announced that the first fifteen-minute segment would be taken up with "what is generally agreed to be... the greatest threat to the United States today," what did you expect?

As it happened, he was referring to "nuclear terrorism," specifically "a nuclear attack on an American city" by al-Qaeda (as well as how the future president would "retaliate"). In other words, Gibson launched his version of a national debate by focusing on a fictional, futuristic scenario, at this point farfetched, in which a Pakistani loose nuke would fall into the hands of al-Qaeda, be transported to the United States, perhaps picked up by well-trained al-Qaedan minions off the docks of Newark, and set off in the Big Apple. In this, though he was surely channeling Rudy Giuliani, he managed to catch the essence of what may be George W. Bush's major legacy to this country.

The Planet as a GWOT Free-Fire Zone

On September 11, 2001, in his first post-attack address to the nation, George W. Bush was already using the phrase, "the war on terror." On September 13th, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz announced that the administration was planning to do a lot more than just take out those who had attacked the United States. It was going to go about "removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism." We were, Bush told Americans that day, in a state of "war"; in fact, we were already in "the first war of the twenty-first century."

That same day, R.W. Apple, Jr. of the New York Times reported that senior officials had "cast aside diplomatic niceties" and that "the Bush administration today gave the nations of the world a stark choice: stand with us against terrorism... or face the certain prospect of death and destruction." Stand with us against terrorism (or else) -- that would be the measure by which everything was assessed in the years to come. That very day, Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested that the U.S. would "rip [the bin Laden] network up" and "when we're through with that network, we will continue with a global assault on terrorism."

Read on ...

Wow, I didn't even notice,but Bob has been busy. Thingamablog has been updated quite a bit in the last few months.

Check out What's New.

I just cracked up when I saw this, a Neiman-Marcus Signature Dog Bone. And they say people spoil their pets.  

Tom Toles - 09 January 2008

Ann Telnaes - 10 January 2008

Nick Anderson - 10 January 2008

Lisa Benson - 10 January 2008

 
Tom Toles - 10 January 2008

Thank [Deity of Your Choice] For Choice - The Mental Proctologist

Lately I've been reading a lot of criticism about the number of Linux distros -- too many choices with too many interfaces and too much duplication in software application development. KDE, GNOME, Xfce, fluxbox, Enlightenment... it's all too intimidating -- too confusing for potential Linux converts. I'm not certain I agree, but then I'm trying to speculate about the perceptions of users less immersed in the Linux universe than I am.

Ubuntu Tweak off to a good start - Linux.com

For years, discerning Windows users have relied on Tweak UI, a semi-official Microsoft program for system settings not available on the default desktop. Now, in the same tradition and with something of the same name, Ubuntu Tweak (UT) offers the same advantage to Ubuntu users. Currently at version 0.2.4, for now UT is limited to features for GNOME and focuses mainly on changing default desktop and system behavior and how GNOME interacts with your hardware, but this small feature set is more than enough for proof of concept.

I haven't tried it yet, once I do I'll let you know how it goes for me.

Bob Marley Interview Circa 1978 Surfaces - Fox31 News

In this never-before-seen interview from 1978, Marley talks with FOX 31 reporter Jon Bowman about topics ranging from the meaning of reggae music to his Rastafarian faith, to his use of marijuana. The interview also includes video of Marley's live performances.

Portland, Ore., Acts to Protect Cyclists - NY Times

"Ghost bikes," riderless and painted white, were placed at two busy intersections in Portland, Ore., last October, makeshift memorials to two bicyclists killed when they were hit by trucks in accidents that month.

This spring, at those same intersections and at 12 others across the city, "bike boxes" will be laid out on the roadway to provide a clearly designated place for cyclists, in front of and in full view of drivers, to wait for traffic lights to change. The boxes will be marked with signs and wide stripes alerting drivers to stop behind them at red lights.

Justices Indicate They May Uphold Voter ID Rules - NY Times

There are many ways to lose a Supreme Court case, and by the end of an argument that was before the court on Wednesday, the Democrats who were challenging Indiana’s voter-identification law appeared poised to lose theirs in a potentially sweeping way, with implications for many future election cases.

Criminal Probe Opened Over CIA Tapes - AP

The Justice Department opened a full criminal investigation Wednesday into the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, putting the politically charged probe in the hands of a mob-busting public corruption prosecutor with a reputation for being independent.

What are you doing here? - Reuters

A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

The development of our cerebral cortex has been the greatest achievement of the evolutionary processes. Big deal. While allowing us the thrills of intellect and the pangs of self-consciousness, it is all too often overruled by our inner, instinctive brain, the one that tells us to react, not reflect, to run rather than ruminate.

Maybe we have gone as far as we can go, and the next advance, whatever that may be, will be made by beings we create ourselves using our own technology, lifeforms we can design and program not to be ultimately governed and constricted by the rules of survival.

Or perhaps that step forward has already been achieved on another planet by organisms that had a billion years head start on us. If these beings ever visited us, would we recognize what we were seeing? And upon catching sight of us, would they react in anything but horror at seeing such mindless, primitive, hideous creatures?

- Fox Mulder

NBC Nightly News highlights New Belbium Brewery for NBCs America Goes Green segment.

http://www.newbelgium.com/sustainability_nbc.php

Hey Internet Surfer,

If you happen upon this sight, I am trying to get the right div go all the way down to the bottom of this <div>. If you have any insight let me know.

Thanks.

css file

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Yoda

Dubya: Deaf and Blind!How the president hears and sees what he wants - Slate

I'm not sure, but I think President Bush just admitted that when somebody briefs him, he consciously prefers what he wants to hear to what the truth happens to be. As do we all, I suppose. But I see no evidence of irony, let alone self-criticism, in what Bush said. The subject was the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, from which, as Slate's Fred Kaplan noted yesterday, Bush has been distancing himself in private conversations with foreign leaders.

Mystery web infection grows, but cause remains elusive - The Register

The mystery over a cluster of poisoned websites distributing a toxic malware cocktail may be better understood but it's still not solved.

Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software - Times

Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence.

Judge suspects CIA duped court in destroying tapes - Reuters

A U.S. judge deciding if the CIA should be held in contempt for destroying video tapes of interrogations of suspected Islamist militants said on Thursday he believed the court had been deceived by the agency.

The battle over bottled vs. tap water - CSM

For most of the past seven years, Kate Daniel was "a fiend for bottled water." Believing that bottled water was healthier and better tasting, the Tufts University junior would carry along a bottle wherever she went. But after she failed to identify bottled water in a blindfolded taste test sponsored by a group called Think Outside the Bottle, Ms. Daniel's confidence in bottled water faltered. "I felt slightly duped," she says.

Flickr brings tagging to vintage images - C|Net

Scores of gorgeous historic photos - from shots of early 20th century baseball players to 1940s-era images of horse-drawn carts and factory workers, showed up on Flickr this week - and the public is busy tagging them in an effort to bring new context to the collection.

Go here to see the photos

Poisoned websites attack visitors - BBC

Thousands of small web shops have been unwittingly poisoned with malicious code that infects PC users who visit.

Wars Cost $15 Billion a Month, GOP Senator Says - Washington Post

The latest estimate of the growing costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide battle against terrorism -- nearly $15 billion a month -- came last week from one of the Senate's leading proponents of a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq.

USDA Recommends That Food From Clones Stay Off the Market - Washington Post

The U.S. Department of Agriculture yesterday asked U.S. farmers to keep their cloned animals off the market indefinitely even as Food and Drug Administration officials announced that food from cloned livestock is safe to eat.

Should AT&T police the Internet? - C|Net

A decade after the government said that AT&T and other service providers don't have to police their networks for pirated content, the telecommunications giant is voluntarily looking for ways to play traffic cop.

Tony Auth - 17 January 20

And hopefully they give us one. I have read the past few days how most groceries want nothing to do with cloned meat. Of course, the at this point the USDA is 'staying the course' and asks that no one actually sell cloned meat at this time.

 
Gary McCoy - January 2008

Peacefire.org newest Circumventor site:

http://www.tigerhelmet.com/

Remember, always try https://www.stupidcensorship.com first.

The big list.

via Ubuntu Gallery

 
Ann Telnaes - 18 January 2008

 
Chip Bok - 17 January 2008

 
Jim Morin - 18 January 2008

 
Nick Anderson - 18 January 2008

 
Paul Combs - 17 January 2008

 
Tom Toles - 18 January 2008

RIAA Must Pay Attorneys' Fees of Vindicated P2P Lawsuit Victim - Wired

A federal judge on Wednesday cleared the way for file swapping defendant Tanya Andersen to seek attorney's fees and file a counter claim against the RIAA over a botched copyright infringement suit.

I'm watching President Bush right now and have two questions:

1. Why the striped grey jacket with blue tie and shirt?

2. What books are behind him?

Yep, they are off topic.

Mr Burkill and Mr Coward are said to have shared a curry on Thursday night after the incident.

What the BBC reported reported today about Captain Peter Burkill and Senior First Officer John Coward of British Airways flight BA038.

Those English chaps are so cool and casual, no wonder 007 came from England and not the U.S.

I found this after perusing BBC further:

The British Air Line Pilots Association (Balpa) said Mr Burkill and his co-pilots went for a curry on the night of the crash in an attempt to "return to normality".

Ah ... those Brits and their "return to normality". Curry ... we have so much to learn on the other side of the pond. Here it would have been "return to normalcy" and thus beer, wings and scantily clad young woman.

OK, maybe that's just me. You may be different.

Did oil canals worsen Katrina's effects? - AP

Service canals dug to tap oil and natural gas dart everywhere through the black mangrove shrubs, bird rushes and golden marsh. From the air, they look like a Pac-Man maze superimposed on an estuarine landscape 10 times the size of Grand Canyon National Park.

US intel chief wants carte blanche to peep all 'Net traffic - Ars Technica

In a long profile published by The New Yorker this week (not yet online, but there's an audio interview with the profile's author at The New Yorker's site), Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell discusses a plan in the works to dramatically expand online surveillance. As The Wall Street Journal sums it up, "in order to accomplish his plan, the government must have the ability to read all the information crossing the Internet in the United States in order to protect it from abuse."

Analysis: Metcalfe's Law + Real ID = more crime, less safety - Ars Technica

"We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'" Thus spake security consultant Ed Giorgio in a widely-quoted New Yorker article on the US intelligence community's plans to vacuum up and sift through everything that flies across the wires. But Giorgio is wrong—catastrophically wrong. The story of Fidencio Estrada, a drug runner who bribed Florida Customs agent Rafael Pacheco to (among other things) access multiple federal law enforcement databases on his behalf, suggests that when it comes to the government collecting data on innocent civilians for law enforcement purposes, privacy and security are essentially the same thing.

Peacefire newest Circumventor site:

http://www.retiredsanta.com/
(You can access it by typing either "http" or "https" at the beginning.)

Remember, always try https://www.stupidcensorship.com first.

The big list.

 
Ann Telnaes - 22 January 2008

A Berlitz guide to Washington English - The Atlantic

Just as modern French-speakers who travel to Quebec often find the dialect of French Canadians to be archaic and quaint, English-speakers who visit Washington, D.C., are frequently bemused by the language spoken there. Though the Potomac dialect shares the alphabet and grammar of English, it has a vocabulary all its own.:

It's be a year (to the day I believe) since I've installed Ubuntu on my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop and it's been a fun ride. So, if you have a few minutes, let my tell you my story.

Last winter we had a bit of snow here in Denver that left us with little we could actually do outside. After the first few weeks of January, cabin fever started setting in and I began playing around of the idea of putting Linux on my computer. I can't remember exactly how or why, but I ended up downloading Ubuntu 6.10 and tried the LiveCD on my laptop. It worked wonderfully and I decided to do a dual boot with XP so I could see how it actually functioned day to day. Well, I dun f***ed up the dual boot and ended with a PC that would do anything. Can you say nOOb!

I have been a practitioner of the backup for years, so after a few minutes of utter panic, I calmed down and remembered everything was backed up on an external drive. (OK, I did inevitably loose a weeks worth of emails, no great loss.)

As luck would have it, having been an experimenter and no great fan of MS, I had moved onto programs that where all cross-platform (Thingamablog, Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird) but one (MS Money). Thus, I thought, what the hell, maybe I should just install Ubuntu by itself. So I did.

It was shocking once Ubuntu was installed. I have media buttons on the front of my laptop, they worked. All my data for Thunderbird, Firefox and Thingamablog was easily loaded. All the function (Fn key) keys on keyboard worked. It was amazing to me, I never expected this all to work so well. I was sold.

I did have some problems, suspend had issues and there was the problem with no wireless. I spent some time on the Ubuntu forum and after some time of trial and error the wireless kicked in. Honestly, I still have no idea how I was able to get the wireless working, all I know is, boom, it worked one day and has ever since. Suspend came around after a month or so.

I spent the next few months perusing everything Linux. I learned cool commands to run from the Terminal. I played with installing and removing programs from the Add/Remove manager and the Synaptic Package Manager. I screwed things up and re-installed 6.10 a few times. The first time I did this, I was amazed by the fact that quite a few of the settings in my /home folder (set on a different partition, something I started doing way back when from my 2-3 re-installs per year of Windows to keep it clean) kicked right in. Things like Tomboy notes where all there, KeyPass knew where to look for its database, JAlbum and Thingamablog where able to start without having to re-install them. These kind of things where unheard of from my Windows days, it was re-install everything and update all settings to my liking.

Then, along came 7.04. I promptly upgraded to it. Oops. Then I downloaded and did a fresh install. Much better. The first few weeks it acted a little funny, issues mainly with suspend. Once a month went by it was smooth sailing. I spent more time on anything Linux or Ubuntu. I downloaded and tried other distros LiveCDs, spend more time exploring the Linux OS and even tried to help out on the forums (I never really did learn enough to be much help, but I tried).

With the other distributions, I found no reason the change. I was happy with how my laptop worked, so why change. I spent some time on Gnome-look and figured out how to change my splash screen, login in screen and themes. In all I was settling in quite nicely with my new OS and how it worked.

As October was coming closer I was getting excited with the prospects of 7.10. Once it was released I promptly upgraded. Oops. Then I downloaded and did a fresh install. Much better. The first few weeks it acted a little funny, issues mainly with suspend. Once a month went by it was smooth sailing (hmm, sounds familiar?) I played around with the new graphics for a while, installing software for widgets and desktop toolbars. In the end, I removed Compiz as I am happy a simple UI and don't need the fancy graphics. The Panel with shortcuts on it works just fine for me and I never really did like things all over my desktop (see). This also explains why I never switched to a KDE distribution.

Of course there was that Load_Cycle_Count issue. For me the fix was removing Tracker, something I didn't use anyway.

So now I am just waiting for 8.04 to come out. I've learned to wait for a month or so before I install the upgrade. Actually I will probably do a fresh install, I never have liked how upgrades go whether Windows or Linux. Once it is running I probably will not upgrade again, what, with 8.04 being a LTS version. For this laptop it should be just fine for it's life.

All in all, it has been a fun little adventure. I'll keep running Linux and helping all my friends with their Window boxes and laptops. I doubt I'll ever be one to get anyone to switch to Linux, Windows works for them and there is no reason tor them to change right now. Maybe when XP is no longer supported the time may come. However, I will do what ever it takes to keep them away from Vista.

I'll keep perusing Ubuntu forums and the various Linux sights - I especially loved finding the flame wars between Linux and XP/Mac, KDE and Gnome and the various distributions. The second two seem so ironic to me, isn't Linux suppose to be about choice? Occasionally I might throw my 2 cents in, but I think pretty much I just be user from here on out. I have found an OS that works and I don't have to worry about.

I am one happy Ubuntu camper.

Ann Telnaes - 24 January 2008

935 Iraq Falsehoods - Washington Post

A nonprofit group pursuing old-fashioned accountability journalism is out with a new report and database documenting 935 false statements by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials hyping the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001.

The Center for Public Integrity reports that its "exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

The database also documents how Bush and others had reason to know, or at least suspect, what they were saying was not supported by the facts.

John H. Cushman Jr. writes in the New York Times: "There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war. Muckrakers may find browsing the site reminiscent of what Richard M. Nixon used to dismissively call 'wallowing in Watergate.'"

Read on ...

The Tao of ScreenIn search of the distraction-free desktop - Slate

If your computer desktop is anything like mine - and, brother, it is - you've paved over every spare pixel in an iconistan of clutter. Desktop design originated in a wistful visual metaphor, the clean, still work surface, encouraging users to productive ends. Leaps forward in computing horsepower and the rise of constant Internet use has transformed the tabletop terra firma into a cockpit, an antic terminal for the networked self. Our desktops are now a thick impasto of tabbed windows, pull-down menus, dashboard widgets, and application alerts. No possible distraction gets left behind, no link, feed, IM, twitter, or poke unheeded.

Senate Delays Eavesdropping Vote - AP/US News

The Senate granted at least a temporary victory to the White House on Thursday, turning back an attempt to increase court oversight of the government's surveillance of phone calls and e-mails that involve people inside the United States.

Rising Anti-Americanism in Russia - US News

Vladimir Dobrovinsky, 33, a teacher at a design school in Moscow, says he's not interested in politics. But bring up America and the well-traveled, university-educated Dobrovinsky holds forth. He criticizes Washington's "crude interference" in world affairs. He complains that Russia is not treated as an important partner by the Bush administration. "A lot of Russians," he says, "are angry that America deals with us like we're Thailand."

Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs? - NY Times

It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science. If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

U.S. Given Poor Marks on the Environment - NY Times

A new international ranking of environmental performance puts the United States at the bottom of the Group of 8 industrialized nations and 39th among the 149 countries on the list.

Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo model - Reuters

Entrepreneur Richard Branson on Wednesday unveiled a model of the spaceship he hopes will be the first to take paying passengers into space on a regular basis as soon as next year.

Geophysicists Urge Steep Cuts in Greenhouse Gas Emissions - Scientific American

The scientists of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) warn that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must be slashed in half to keep temperatures from rising 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius)—or else. "Warming greater than 2 degrees Celsius above 19th-century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity and - if sustained over centuries - melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea levels of several meters," the AGU declares in its first statement in four years on "Human Impacts on Climate."

Dear Rich People ... All you wealthy Americans, stop complaining and save the economy!
By Daniel Gross

To: The Filthy Rich
CC: The Stinking Rich; the Pretty-Darned Rich
From: America

Look, you've had a pretty good deal these past few years. We gave you everything you wanted. Massive reductions in the top income-tax rates? Happy to oblige. Cuts on dividends and capital gains taxes, which overwhelmingly benefit you? No problem. Going after the estate tax—excuse me, the death tax? You got it. We've even agreed to overlook the fact that you private-equity and hedge-fund managers pay only a 15 percent tax rate.

Because we like you, we've pretended not to notice your gauche taste and rude manners. (You know you're benefiting from the greatest concentration of wealth since the 1920s, right? The share of national income taken down by the wealthiest 1 percent rose from 14.6 percent in 2003 to 17.4 percent in 2005, according to Emmanuel Saez of the University of California-Berkeley.) We have sat patiently on JetBlue and Southwest as your private jets clog runways. We continue to bust our butts, defend the borders, and uphold the rule of law in order to protect your fortunes and property.

Read on ...

Use Ubuntu, check this out

Ubuntu User Map

Create an account (top of the page), using your Ubuntu Forum Name as user name.
Type in some coordinates of where you live. (Perhaps the nearest intersection.)
Pick your Ubuntu flavor.
Wait a minute or two and you'll be on the map.

Pretty Cool

OK, we a photo of the Apollo 11 crew left to right - Neil A. Armstrong, commander; Michael Collins, command module pilot; and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot.

Now, check out the pocket just above Michael Collins arm.

Looks like a slide rule to me!

 
Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller - 25 January 2008

Administration Forest Plan Assailed - Washington Post

Proposal Would Allow Logging, Roads in Alaska's Tongass - Millions of acres of the country's largest national forest would be open for logging and other development under a Bush administration forest management plan released yesterday, a move critics said will hurt wildlife and destroy pristine lands.

 
Chip Bok - 25 January 2008

It's Time To Drink Toilet Water - Slate

Officials in Orange County, Calif., will attend opening ceremonies today for the world's largest water-purification project, among the first "toilet-to-tap" systems in America. The Groundwater Replenishment System is designed to take sewage water straight from bathrooms in places like Costa Mesa, Fullerton, and Newport Beach and—after an initial cleansing treatment—send it through $490 million worth of pipes, filters, and tanks for purification. The water then flows into lakes in nearby Anaheim, where it seeps through clay, sand, and rock into aquifers in the groundwater basin. Months later, it will travel back into the homes of half a million Orange County residents, through their kitchen taps and showerheads.

Crayons Down! - MotherJones

If there is a creature more fickle than your typical four-year-old, it's hard to think of one offhand. One day they're buttoning their own shirts and uttering words of ancient wisdom, and the next they're pooping on the living room floor because monsters have invaded the bathroom. They are immune to logic and can barely sit still long enough to nibble a chicken nugget. In a nutshell, "standardized" and "preschooler" are not words you'd normally use in the same sentence.

In Endorsing Obama, Kennedy Anoints a Prince and Tells Clintons To Cool It - MotherJones

Democrats don't come much more traditional than Teddy Kennedy, the grand man of the Democratic Party. So his endorsement of Barack Obama--implicitly an anti-endorsement of Hillary Clinton--has punch. Endorsements routinely don't matter much in presidential campaigns--with a few exceptions. A politician who controls a machine--say, a governor--can come in quite handy on Election Day. In this case, Kennedy brings two piping hot dishes to the Obama potluck.

 
Bob Gorrell - 28 January 2008

 
Stuart Carlson - 28 January 2008

Let's do away with the legislative fiction of the terrorist alarm clock. - Slate

The cliche holds that we are always fighting the last war. I disagree. For the last seven years, congressional Democrats have been fighting the next one: the war perennially set to erupt if they don't deliver whatever the president asks of them immediately. Time and again, they've been rendered so terrified by White House threats about imminent terrorist attacks that they have caved on issues ranging from detainee rights to secret surveillance to torture. And every time they've caved, it's under the threat that if they withhold from the president extra powers (ones that he's often already seized in secret), terrorists will mass against us instantaneously, and they will be blamed.

A political speech the West needs to hear - High Country News

"One of our most urgent projects is to develop a national energy policy. The United States is the only major industrial country without a comprehensive, long-range energy policy. Our program will emphasize conservation ... solar energy and other renewable energy sources. ... We must face the fact that the energy shortage is permanent. There is no way we can solve it quickly. But if we all cooperate and make modest sacrifices ... we can find ways to adjust." - Imagine those words spoken by the next president shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, 2009, continuing a theme originally established on the campaign trail.

In What City Did You Honeymoon? And other monstrously stupid bank security questions. - Slate

Verizon wants to know my favorite ice cream flavor, Google's got designs on my library card number, and Wachovia needs my favorite all-time entertainer. Yahoo! is asking where I met my spouse, and Bank of America wants the details of the honeymoon. Like those squiggly pictures of letters and numbers, weird personal questions have become ubiquitous totems of online security. If you tell the bank your favorite grade-school teacher or cartoon character, the thinking goes, it'll be easy to confirm your identify when you misplace your account number. This thinking is dumb.

 
Thomas Boldt - 29 January 2008

Cagle.com has a great collection of "State of the Union" cartoons.

Contrary to what some people might believe, there is nothing wrong with having pleasures and enjoyments. What is wrong is the confused way we grasp onto these pleasures, turning them from a source of happiness into a source of pain and dissatisfaction.

Lama Thubten Yeshe, "Introduction to Tantra"

French police deal blow to Microsoft - AFP

The French paramilitary police force said Wednesday it is ditching Microsoft for the free Linux operating system, becoming one of the biggest administrations in the world to make the break.

Your First Steps with Linux - Terminally Incoherent

Over the years I think I helped to influence few people here and there to actually start experimenting with linux. I count that as a personal success. I’m sure I was not the primary influence in most cases, but I’m glad I could help people to start tinker with the new OS

Found this little gem while cruising the interent today.

Hmm, a canned cheeseburger! Although, you have to wonder if the picture doesn't quite show what the morsel would actually look like coming out of the can. I doubt the lettuce would be quite that green!

I've got to get a few for my bunker as I wait for the apocalypse.