Paranoid Idealism

So, I’m sort of ashamed of myself. You see, I’ve become something of a fan of Windows 7. This sort of bothers me because, until now, I’ve been a devoted Linux user and supporter. I’ve never been a fan of general Microsoft bashing, although they’ve done plenty in the past to warrant bashing. I tend to believe in using the best tool for the job, and for me, until now, that was Linux.

Windows 7 may have changed that. I’ve been using the beta and release candidate since they were released. It has been extremely stable, looks good, and is very configurable. I love the new taskbar. It’s got all the benefits of the Mac OS X dock (few though they are) and none of the drawbacks. And it stays out of the way. For once, Windows is letting me just get stuff done.

I’m not sure what to do about this. I still love Linux. I would much prefer to be running it on my laptop. But, in Windows 7 everything “just works.” That, and I’ve gotten so used to the new Windows 7 taskbar with its jumplists and the rest that I have a hard time going back to Gnome’s or KDE’s simple taskbar. I have yet to try the newest KDE 4 update, but it’s looking better. Ubuntu’s new theme for Gnome is a definite improvement. I really dig the monochrome system tray icons. I’ll have to give them another try. For now I’ve been running a few different distributions and desktop environments in VirtualBox on my Windows 7 laptop.

To be honest though, I’m not really planning to change.

This is just a test. Move along.

It appears that Internet Explorer is finally removeable from Windows. AeroXperience has found an option in recent builds of Windows 7 to remove Internet Explorer. This doesn’t actually remove the core of IE from Windows. Explorer is necessary for a great deal of functionality in Windows these days. It does remove it as an option for browsing the web, which I think is about as good as can be expected, given that an HTML rendering engine is kind of expected for a modern desktop environment.

Via Lifehacker.

I’ve just spent the better part of a day installing various distros on my laptop. I’ll talk about the ones I tried and why I didn’t like them in another post. I wound up sticking with the latest alpha of Kubuntu 9.04. It’s not perfect (what OS is?) but it’s pretty good so far. I have high hopes for the final release. My biggest problem with it so far has been fonts. They’re broken in so many ways. I’m typing this in Firefox right now, and I have it set to use KDE’s fonts. The WordPress console looks OK, but the text that I’m typing looks horribly broken. Varous parts of the UI look too big, while other parts look too small.

One thing I’m really glad to see is choqoK, a newish KDE client for identi.ca and Twitter. However, it too suffers from the screwed up fonts. It’s only at 0.4, so it’s got some time before I start seriously criticizing it. I’m actually planning to download the source and see if there’s anything my limited coding skills can do to help.

I like the new Network Manager Plasma applet. It still needs some polish, but it looks good even now, in its alpha form.

I’ve missed having a usable KDE since the 4.0 release. I’ve liked where KDE was heading, but I just couldn’t make the pre 4.2 releases usable for my day-to-day computing. 4.2 has finally done it for me. I can’t wait to see where it goes next. There’s so much potential in the 4.x series. It should be exciting.

So, I obviously haven’t been blogging regularly. I don’t know what my problem is. It’s not for lack of ideas. I have things popping into my head all the time. I guess it’s more of a motivation thing. Well, I’m still working on it. I haven’t given up yet.

I’m also considering switching away from WordPress… again. This time I think I’m going to go for something more homegrown. I’ve been playing with Django lately. I kind of like it, although I’m nowhere near ready to throw up my own creation. I’ll continue to use WordPress until I come up with something that I like, most likely with Django. We’ll see how that goes.

So, I said that I would be trying to post more regularly, and I’ve obviously failed miserably. Unfortunately, I can’t hit on everything that’s happened since my last post, but I did want to mention two big things of importance in the last week. One of them is hopefully good, the other somewhat saddening.

The first is, as you’ve probably heard already unless living under the proverbial rock, the election of Barack Obama as the next President of the United States of America. While I am skeptical of any politician (and make no mistake about it, he is one), I feel this particular politician shows a great deal of promise.

Don’t let me down, Barack.

The second, sadder bit of news is that NASA has lost contact with the Mars Phoenix Lander. I’ve been following the little fellow on Twitter for months now, and I have to admit, I felt a little choked up when he sent out his last tweet. The long, cold Martian winter has cut off the lander’s power, and it is unlikely that he will survive until spring well enough to reactivate when the sun returns with sufficient strength to charge his panels. It’s wierd how some clever, talented woman working for NASA has been able to turn a little, unmoving robot into someone we all felt an attatchment to. And not just once, but four times.

I never cease to be amazed at the lengths people will go to to promote their own view point. I received the following email today from a family member:

Subject: Obama and the soldiers

Tiffany and Jeff Porter are some friends who live in Virginia.  (Below is from  Tiffany)

I don’t know each of your personal political convictions, and apologize if anyone finds this offensive.  I  thought it was important enough to share.

This is Jeff’s first hand view of Senator Obama.

Tiffany

Hello everyone,

As you know I am not a very  political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama  came to Bagram Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to ‘The  War Zone’. I wanted to share with you what happened.
He got off the plane and got  into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the  Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram.

As the Soldiers were lined  up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn’t say a word as he  went into the conference room to meet the General.
As he finished,  the vehicles took him to the ClamShell (pretty much a big top tent that military personnel can play basketball or work out in with weights) so he could take his publicity pictures playing
basketball. He again shunned the opportunity to talk to Soldiers  to thank themfor their service.

So really he was just here to make a showing for  the American’s back home that he is their candidate for President.  I think that if you are going to make an effort to come all the  way over here you
would thank those that are providing the freedom  that they are providing for you.
I swear we got more thanks from the NBA  Basketball Players or the Dallas Cowboy Cheer leaders than from  one of the Senators,who wants to be the President of the United  States. I just don’t understand how anyone would want him to be our Commander-and-Chief. It was almost that he was scared to be
around those that provide the freedom for him and our great  country.

If this is blunt and to the point I am sorry but I wanted you all  to know what kind of caliber of person he really is. What you see in the news is all fake.

In service,
CPT Jeffrey S. Porter
Battle Captain
TF Wasatch
American Soldier

First, let me get this out of the way: I plan to vote for Barack Obama this November. While I am more enthusiastic about Obama than I have been about any candidate in recent memory, I am hardly an “Obamaniac.” I passionately disagree with him on some issues, and passionately agree with him on others. What I do believe is that he will bring more considered, civil, and reasonable discourse to American politics, and I believe that this is something we desperately need. Now for my main point:

This email has actually been making the rounds on the internet for a couple of weeks now. It is, in fact, a genuine email from a genuine soldier genuinely serving in Afghanistan. The problem is that this email is just wrong. It’s been discredited several times. I don’t claim to know the soldier’s motivations in writing the email in the first place; he claims it was meant for family only. What I do know is that it is still making the rounds of email chain letters.

Normally I just ignore stuff like this. It’s just another email chain letter, right? Normally, I would agree. But, for some reason, people are willing to believe all sorts of things about Barack Obama that simply are not true. I’m hearing it from friends, coworkers, and now family. For instance, I’m still hearing people say that Obama is a Muslim. My response is always, “Number one, why does it matter if he is? And, number two, that is a lie, plain and simple.”

I guess this is the blessing and curse of the internet. It has never been easier for a person to preach their message to the world, no matter how inaccurate, misled, or just plain wrong that message may be.

The Democrats have let the nation down yet again. They have passed a bill that grants unprecedented powers to the executive to spy on our own citizens. I consider this an absolute failure of our elected officials at so many levels that I can’t even relate my anger. I’m nearly incoherent.

My only hope is that the Senate has a change of heart and blocks the bill before it reaches the President. It’s a very slim hope.