UK Police say they have stopped 21 suspects who were going to blow up a plane from the UK to the US. Effective immediately at Heathrow, people cannot take beverages, hand lotions, or USB thumb drives onto an airplane. What were these suicide bombers going to do? Get drunk, lather up, and throw USB sticks at everyone? More news after work. In the meanwhile check out Google News.

Thought this song was pretty interesting - I had it on my computer, but hadn’t heard it in a long time. Pretty relevant to the current news stories.

lyrics: No tomo te, tomo cafe mi amor Yo como arepa y pabellon Con mi sumbao machuco el English when I talk Im Venezuelan in New York

Me ves pirao por Roosevelt avenue Con mi tabaco y mi baston Siempre me escondo cuando viene imigracion Soy un emigrante ilegal en New York I’m an alien, I’m an illegal alien Emigrante ilegal en New York I’m an alien, I’m an illegal alien Emigrante ilegal en New York

F-Spot is looking really good and sporting a much better looking website. They now support RAW files as well as XMP data. Perhaps some of their programmers can share this with the GIMP people - hint hint!

Fluxbox, one of my favorite window managers, and the one I’m using now, won a 2005 linuxquestions.org Choice award!

Fedora Core 5 release has been pushed back to 20 March.

Search engines have been in the news a lot recently. For example, this BBC News story talks about how Google is refusing to hand over their search results to the Justice Department. This could come back to bite them in the butt when they try to buy some company and the DoJ denies their application. I believe they are probably doing the right thing as we are already giving up too much privacy involuntarily. This week a story broke on all the major news networks that for about $100 I can buy the cell phone records of a complete stranger.

there will be a series of short posts today to make up for a long and substantial one.

SETI at Home is now over! I never thought this phenom would end, but, sadly, it has.

Richard Pryor died yesterday of a heart attack. His comedy set the stage for a whole slew of comedians like Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock who told jokes about the differences between whites and blacks. Although many chastised he and his disciples for their use of profanity and the fact that their jokes hindered racial progress, I feel that, by pointing out our differences and exagerating them, they helped us to realize the frivolity of racism. As a quote from a GRITS track points out, “both whites and blacks who are most interested in bringing about racial equality shy off certain facts that deserve recognition. There are cultural differences, a truth that not only supports integration, but will help bring about honest equality. This is, after all, the ultimate goal of integration.” We shouldn’t ignore our differences or hate each other because of them. We should just realize that we are different and there’s not one thing wrong about it.

Some tidbits I’ve gleaned and where to get more in depth info:

KDE3.5 has been released! Hopefully this means that it will make its way into the Fedora Core 5, due out in Feb 2006. Or, if they’ve completely moved KDE to the extras packages, maybe it will be available even earlier! Lots of info here and screenshots here!

Speaking of Fedore Core 5, there is a review of the latest devel freeze to be found at this O’Reilly site.

With all of the job cuts being announced right before the holidays, I was wondering if it might be time for a new capitalism. Here’s a rhetorical question, what if the board lowered their salaries and the CEO’s salary instead of firing people? A typical CEO for these big companies like Delta makes a few million. He or she doesn’t need millions - no one does! Somewhere around $50k can allow someone to survive in the US. $100k is very comfortable depending on the housing market. Certainly, $500k could be enough to live VERY well, even in New York. Let’s say they are firing white collar workers who each make $50k. If the CEO were to lower his salary by just $500k, he could save 100 jobs! If we’re talking about people who make less money, even more jobs could be saved! So why can’t they do this? Well, obviously, no one would ever lower their own salary. But why isn’t there much of a public outcry? People are losing their jobs right before Christmas and these CEOs are flying around in private jets. I know we have even more ridiculous things like basketball players making millions, but I would assume that people would say stuff. For the first time today, I heard them say something on CNN this morning. Of course, it was 6 AM and no one was listening - it wasn’t repeated all day like their typical stories. I know it’s a bunch of BS, but I had to get this off my chest - it’s really been bothering me.

An update to the story I talked about on 8 Nov - BBC News has revealed that at least three viruses have emerged that take advantage of the malware Sony has installed on user’s machines without their permission. Sony says its sorry, but sorry doesn’t bring back the bits! This is exactly why music CDs should do only one thing - play music! If they want, they can include some music videos, but that should be the extent of the software on the CDs. They don’t need all this Macromedia crap on them that loads when I pop in the CD. That’s part of the reason why I just rip the music to my computer instead of popping in a CD each time. I hope this REALLY backfires on them!

BBC News has reported today that Sony BMG implanted malware into one of their country music CDs to prevent it from playing in certain Windows Media players. Not only that, but the software installs itself into the dark recesses of the computer where only the most technologically savy can find it. This is the kind of crap I expect when installing Kazaa, not when LEGALLY using a STORE BOUGHT CD. I don’t want anything installed on my computer unless I installed it myself purposefully. That’s why I use Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer and limit my usage of shady Internet-downloaded software. And, if I decide to do one of these things, I take a calculated risk. How badly do I want a program to, for example, remove region restrictions on dvds? Is it worth possible spyware and malware? But NO ONE thinks of those things when they put a musical CD into their computer. This is a blatant faus pax and Sony is extremely lucky that this story doesn’t seem to have made news in the United States. Again, people escape media wrath because American news organizations are relatively lazy. I advocate making this a huge deal and I hope more bloggers help push this story to the mainstream.