I’ve had this rhetorical question in my mind for quite some time now.  There was a time, not too long ago, when the Iraq War dominated the news.  Not only that, but people were protesting.  Remember Cindy Sheehan who was camped outside Bush’s house in Texas and leading all these anti-war rallies.  About four months ago, it all disappeared.  Coincidentally, this is more or less the same time when Britney Spears had her breakdown and the Presidential Primaries started getting interesting.

Ars Technica is reporting that Netflix is promising that they will be working very hard to get Macintoshes supported. Looks like they read my letter and now they have my brother covered. Now they need to work on Linux support. And drop the DRM because I guess they ignored my paragraph on how it’s BS and it’s broken. I’m waiting…

Today they were saying that Imus will be getting a new radio show. They started talking about the incident he had with the basketball team. One person mentioned that his contract specified he should be offensive and stuff like that on the radio. It’s not a new excuse for what he said, but I saw it differently for the first time. Basically, people who use this line of reasoning are saying that his contract excused him from hate speech and racist speech. That’s pretty ridiculous! So any entertainer who has a contract to be offensive should be able to say racist things without penalty? I think it’s interesting that, for the most part, the people making this argument are not African-American.

For a while it seemed as though Debian couldn’t stop the hemorrhage of distros decided to be based on Ubuntu instead of Debian. For months on end people talked about whether Debian was still relevant and whether its long release cycle was to blame. Well, now it seems that perhaps some of those derivative distros were a little quick to jump on the bandwagon! SimplyMepis has decided to be based on Debian again.

The founder said that each time Ubuntu is build from scratch and it was hindering the ability of SimplyMepis to have a sensible upgrade path. I don’t know enough about that side of Linux distros to know how different that is from what most of them do, but apparently Debian does not have that problem.

I found this online and had to include it because this is my favorite scene in The Princess Bride. It concerns the current lawsuit between IBM and SCO. (Click that link to find out more about it).

It appears on slashdot and is written by Titanium Fox:

SCO: So, it is down to you, and it is down to me…if you wish Linux dead, by all means keep moving forward. IBM: Let me explain… SCO: There’s nothing to explain. You’re trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen. IBM: Perhaps an arrangement can be reached? SCO: There will be no arrangements…and you’re killing Linux. IBM: But if there can be no arrangement, then we are at an impasse. SCO: I’m afraid so. I can’t compete with you physically, and you’re no match for my brains. IBM: You’re that smart? SCO: Let me put it this way: Have you ever heard or Kernighan, Ritchie, Torvalds? IBM: Yes. SCO: Morons! IBM: Really! In that case, I challenge you to a battle of wits. SCO: For the kernel? To the death? I accept! IBM: Good, then untar the source code. [SCO# tar -xvfz code] Inhale this but do not touch. SCO: [taking a vial from IBM] I smell nothing. IBM: What you do not smell is our patent portfolio. It is odorless, tasteless, and dissolves instantly in source code and is among the more deadly portfolios known to man. SCO: [shrugs with laughter] Hmmm. IBM: [turning his back, and adding the patents to one of the code trees] Alright, where are the patents? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both compile - and find out who is right, and who is dead. SCO: But it’s so simple. All I have to do is divine it from what I know of you. Are you the sort of company who would put the patents into his own source code or his enemies? Now, a clever man would put the patents into his own goblet because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool so I can clearly not choose the code in front of you…But you must have known I was not a great fool; you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the code in front of me. IBM: You’ve made your decision then? SCO: [happily] Not remotely! Because Linux’s SMP code originally came from England(1). As everyone knows, England is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me. So, I can clearly not choose the code in front of you. IBM: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect. SCO: Wait ’till I get going!! …where was I? IBM: England. SCO: Yes! AH! And you must have suspected I would have known the source code’s origin,so I can clearly not choose the code in front of me. IBM: You’re just stalling now. SCO: You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you! You’ve beaten my giant, which means you’re exceptionally strong…so you could have put the patents in your own code trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the code in front of you. But, you’ve also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied…and in studying you must have learned that Man is mortal so you would have put the patents as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the code in front of me! IBM: You’re trying to trick me into giving away something. It won’t work. SCO: It has worked! You’ve given everything away! I know where the patents are! IBM: Then make your choice. SCO: I will, and I choose…[pointing behind IBM] What in the world can that be? IBM: [turning around, while SCO switches goblets] What?! Where?! I don’t see anything. SCO: Oh, well, I…I could have sworn I saw something. No matter. [SCO laughs] IBM: What’s so funny? SCO: I…I’ll tell you in a minute. First, lets compile, me from my code and you from yours. [They both compile] IBM: You guessed wrong. SCO: You only think I guessed wrong! That’s what’s so funny! I switched branches when your back was turned! Ha ha, you fool!! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia; and only slightly less well known is this: Never go in against SCO, when intellectual property is on the line!

First of all, Debian has finally turned 4.0! It’s been YEARS in the making and they are 4 months late, but better late than never! Believe it or not, this is a huge improvement over the prior release cycle! With Ubuntu and Fedora releasing every sixth months now, it’s up to Debian to find a good compromise between releasing often and undoing their reputation as a nice stable distro to base other distros off of and not moving at glacial speed so that distros like Linspire/Freespire move to being based on Ubuntu.

Despite what the MPAA claims, it’s not us consumers who need to be restrained by DRM, but their own people. This website demonstrates how movies are pirated by the movie companies and members of the Oscar committee.

Here are some key quotes:

For the last few years, the movie industry’s battles with Internet pirates offered an entertaining diversion during Oscar season. Their problem: they need to “leak” their films to Academy members for consideration, but don’t want those official leaks to fall into the hands of pirates. In 2003, the MPAA banned all screeners, causing a massive uproar from directors, actors, critics and indie studios. The plan was eventually scrapped in December 2003

A couple of stories that I found interesting today.

First of all, there’s a new Red Hat Fedora Core-based disto on the block, and it’s called Linux XP. It’s meant to be a drop-in replacement for Windows users. The screenshots look VERY nice and it definitely seems like a pretty enticing distro to show your Redmond-loving friends. However, this review found the Linux XP to be lacking in some stability features.

To read an article by someone who’s pretty much been with Linux since the beginning, check out this article.

“…and it’s September Eleven.”

Those were the first words to pop into my consciousness this morning. It’s been a week worth of tributes, speeches, and remembrances. Today’s main thought for me involved pondering if anyone from NYC actually watched any of the 11 Sept movies this year. Personally, I think it’s way too soon and too real for these events to be fictionalized. Even movies “based on a true story” lose their dramatic edge when compared to the real events. My wife told me she’d never see those movies (and neither would her siblings). I wonder how other NYers feel. Personally, I have a hard enough time getting myself to watch tragedies; and that’s with fake characters. To watch an event which left so many widowed and parent-less is just too much for me. We didn’t even watch the names being called out today.

As the British (and even some Americans) begin discussing the possibility of racial profiling after this latest foiled airplane terrorism plot, we should remember that not all terrorists are Arabs or Middle-Eastern-looking. Take, for example, the worst terrorist attack in the US prior to the attacks of 11 Sept 2001 - The Oklahoma City Bombing. The terrorists in that plot, which blew up a federal building and killed many people, were white guys. In fact, although I was young at the time, I remember them saying in the news that they had delayed in capturing the guys and even had given them the chance to get away because they were looking for Arabs instead of white guys. So think about that before you start racial profiling. Also think of the DC Sniper - a black man. There are a lot of people who hate the US government or just like to kill people and they don’t all have “al” or “bin” in their name.