Wednesday, February 12, 2003

Imagine The truth is, if it can be imagined, it can come to be. The solution to your problem, the way through your dilemma or the answer to your yearning must first be conceived in your mind before it can be birthed in life. Conceive it and believe it, then you will achieve it.   Just imagine that!   >>From Steve Goodier's PRESCRIPTION FOR PEACE 8:12:26 PM    Go Ahead, make my day  []

Linux and Me I really did give it a try. When I finally broke down and bought a new Pentium 4 from Gateway I took the 40 GB hard drive I had installed in my old 200 MHz Pentium Pro and added it to the 20 GB hard drive already in the new machine. I then reinstalled the Pentium Pro’s old 4 GB hard drive as the master and reinstalled Windows 95 followed by the Windows 98 upgrade. Since I didn’t have room for both the old and the new, I tried to give my old machine to my parents telling them that now they could talk to us and to my sister by email instead of “snail mail.” They weren’t interested. I mean they still use a phone that’s attached with a cord. Only recently did they even add a second phone extension. They had no interest at all in having a computer, even for free.   Then I came up with a bright idea. I’d move my old desktop to my office at work. Now, I didn’t really need it since I already had a laptop that could outperform it that I used for work. So, I thought, I’ll use it to give this Linux thing a try. I reasoned that I could learn some things about the way computers really work nowadays since my last experience with computer programming was in the era of punch cards and computers that filled entire rooms. So I went out and after some internet research bought Mandrake Linux 8.1. I couldn’t believe how cheap it was compared to Windows. Plus it came with Star Office and an entire suite of programs included with the distribution. Hey, I figured, for the price how can I go wrong?   The installation was simple enough and I got the machine up and running. I was amazed at how what had become a slow creaking machine had suddenly become the Ferrari it used to be. It absolutely flew again with a speed I hadn’t seen since it first came out of the box the day it was delivered. Admittedly, the interface didn’t look as polished as that of Windows, but hell, the effort was put in making the OS work, not in making it look pretty. Anyway, it was fun fooling around with it for a while. Now comes the heresy, so all of you Linux high priests can leave this site now. I found myself more and more preferring Windows, in spite of its problems, for my everyday use. I just didn’t have the time to deal with all of the technicalities of say, downloading and installing the latest release of Mozilla. I still can’t get it to work on my Linux machine in spite of all my attempts at utilizing arcane commands such as “tar –zxvf archive.tar.gz” and other stuff like that. I missed just downloading a program, clicking on its icon, and having it basically install itself. I found that I just didn’t have the time, especially at work, to have to learn all of this stuff. Plus, every time I started my Linux box I had to enter the terminal to reconfigure my sound card because, for whatever reason, Linux would not recognize it unless I manually configured it.   I found that I didn’t want to go back to the dark ages of punch cards, FORTRAN, and all that other crap. I just wanted something that works. My Linux box still sits here unused for the most part unless I want to start it up to impress someone in my office with the fact that I have an OS that nobody here has heard of or can understand. Before a flame war starts, this is not a knock on Linux or a praise of Windows. It’s just Linux isn’t, at least for the time being, the right fit for me. Maybe if I had more time to devote to it I’d be singing its praises. Anyway, it did lead me to something that absolutely rocks. I bought a PowerBook G4 from Apple with Mac OS X 10.2.3 installed. Maybe if I have the time I’ll drop down to the terminal command line and start learning about UNIX. In the meantime, I’ve got a machine that does everything I need it to do with no problems so far.   I’ll keep the Linux box though. If anything, the new life it breathed into my old Pentium Pro sure points out how bloated an OS Windows has become. 8:11:23 PM    Go Ahead, make my day  []

Article from London Daily Mirror I received this as an email from a friend and thought it was worth posting:   No matter what your views on President Bush's statement of upcoming war, this, from an English journalist, is very interesting.  Just a word of background, for those of you who aren't familiar with the UK's Daily Mirror. This is a notoriously left-wing daily that is normally not supportive of the Colonials across the Atlantic. Tony Parsons, London Daily Mirror, September 11, 2002 ONE year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting ---- the mass murder of thousands, live on television.  As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race, September 11 was up there with Pol Pot's mountain of skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi concentration camps.  An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated and so utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on one thing - nobody deserves this fate.  Surely there could be consensus: the victims were truly innocent, the perpetrators truly evil.  But to the world's eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly seen as America's comeuppance. Incredibly, anti-Americanism has increased over the last year.  There has always been a simmering resentment to the USA in this country -- too loud, too rich, too full of themselves and so much happier than Europeans - but it has become an epidemic.  And it seems incredible to me.  More than that, it turns my stomach. America is this country's greatest friend and our staunchest ally.  We are bonded to the US by culture, language and blood.  A little over half a century ago, around half a million Americans died for our freedoms, as well as their own.  Have we forgotten so soon?  And exactly a year ago thousands of ordinary men, women and children - not just Americans, but from dozens of countries - were butchered by a small group of religious fanatics.  Are we so quick to betray them? What touched the heart about those who died in the twin towers and on the planes was that we recognized them.  Young fathers and mothers, somebody's son and somebody's daughter, husbands and wives, and children, some unborn. And these people brought it on themselves?  And their nation is to blame for their meticulously planned slaughter?  These days you don't have to be some dust-encrusted nut job in Kabul or Karachi or Finsbury Park to see America as the Great Satan.  The anti- American alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who blame the Americans for every ill in the Third World, and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter that the world's only superpower can do what it likes without having to ask permission. The truth is that America has behaved with enormous restraint since September 11. Remember, remember.  Remember the gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men phoning their wives to say, "I love you," before they were burned alive.  !  Remember those people leaping to their deaths from the top of burning skyscrapers. Remember the hundreds of firemen buried alive. Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little girl who was on one of the planes with her mum.  Remember, remember -- and realize that America has never retaliated for 9/11 in anything like the way it could have.  So a few al-Qaeda tourists got locked without a trial in Camp X-ray?  Pass the Kleenex... So some Afghan wedding receptions were shot up after they merrily fired their semi-automatics in a sky full of American planes?  A shame, but maybe next time they should stick to confetti. AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world into a parking lot. That it didn't is a sign of strength.  American voices are already being raised against attacking Iraq - that's what a democracy is for.  How many in the Islamic world will have a minute's silence for the slaughtered innocents of 9/11? How many Islamic leaders will have the guts to say that the mass murder of 9/11 was an abomination?  When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those freedom-loving Palestinians were dancing in the street.  America watched all of that - and didn't push the button.  We should thank the stars that America is the most powerful nation in the world.  I still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke all-out war.  Not a "war on terrorism." A real war. The fundamentalist dudes are talking about "opening the gates of hell," if America attacks Iraq.  Well, America could have opened the gates of hell like you wouldn't believe. The US is the most militarily powerful nation that ever strode the face of the earth.  The campaign in Afghanistan may have been less than perfect and the planned war on Iraq may be misconceived.  But don't blame America for not bringing peace and light to these wretched countries.  How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world?  You can count them on the fingers of one hand - assuming you haven't had any chopped off for minor shoplifting. I love America, yet America is hated.  I guess that makes me Bush's poodle. But I would rather be a dog in New York City than a Prince in Riyadh. Above all, America is hated because it is what every country wants to be - rich, free, strong, open, optimistic.  Not ground down by the past, or religion, or some caste system.  America is the best friend this country ever had and we should start remembering that.  Or do you really think the USA is the root of all evil?  Tell it to the loved ones of the men and women who leaped to their death from the burning towers.  Tell it to the nursing mothers whose husbands died on one of the hijacked planes, or were ripped apart in a collapsing skyscraper.  And tell it to the hundreds of young widows whose husbands worked for the!  New York Fire Department. To our shame, George Bush get a worse press than Saddam Hussein.  Once we were told that Saddam gassed the Kurds, tortured his own people and set up rape-camps in Kuwait.  Now we are told he likes Quality Street.  Save me the orange center, oh mighty one! Remember, remember, September 11.  One of the greatest atrocities in human history was committed against America.  No, do more than remember. Never forget! 8:09:43 PM    Go Ahead, make my day  []