Whenever one political party expresses wishes to give a fixed percentage tax cut to all Americans, the other party portrays it as tax cuts for the rich. (I’ve complained on this blog about this before) Their proof: the rich get back a few thousand bucks while the poor only get back a few hundred. The stupidity: if it’s a tax cut where everyone gets 1% off, and the rich people put more in, 1% of their money is more than 1% of the poor person’s money. Of course, they never dig deeply into it in the news and perhaps it’s a tax cut on Porches or something else that only rich people have. Somehow I doubt that or the other party would bring it up.

Next time you find yourself wondering why people like me (or rms) make such a big deal about having the source code to software (especially when it comes to voting machines), ask yourself why we make scientists show us all of their research instead of taking their word for it. Think about why it’s important that other scientists can recreate the experiment and how that analogy applies to software stability, security, and overall quality.

Just tested and, yes, for the small, uncomplicated Hello World program it works just fine on Windows XP. I just had to install .NET. (It took about 10 minutes….I don’t know why)

FiveFour years ago I was on Spring Break and watching CNN at 0000 (midnight) or later. I was talking to my wife (then my girlfriend), although I don’t remember if it was over the phone or on AIM via my dad’s laptop. There was a breaking news bulletin and then I saw a night vission goggles image of Iraq being blown to bits. Shock and awe they called it. I was certainly shocked - although I had been vaguely following Colin Powell and the others making the case for WMD. I didn’t have cable Tv in my dorm, so I wasn’t really following the news at all that year. I was pretty impressed when, about a month later, the fighting portion of the war was over. Actually, as far as I was concerned, the war WAS over. Recently, we have learned, Rumsfeld had hoped the same thing. It was his idea to get rid of Saddam and then let the Iraqis do their own thing. However, some other demons - perhaps Cheney or Wolfowitz - whispered into Bush’s ears about making it into a wonderful Democracy and all kinds of BS that had nothing to do with the WMD/Al Qaeda lies they told us to get into the war.

After reading Linux Format Magazine (LXF) Issue #91, in which they used Mono to code a GTK gui, I decided to take up C# programming. I will follow along with the tutorials and gain another programming language under my belt. Today I started with LXF #87 and completed my C# “hello world” program. The syntax is interesting - it’s a cross between C and Java. Of course, that makes sense as it lists those as its predecessors. Python (and Perl) is still much quicker for short programs, but for complex ones C# seems to be the way to go. At least, a lot of neat Gnome projects have been created with C# such as Banshee, Tomboy, and f-spot.

We’re currently mired down in a war that is wearing our armed forces thin. The military is having a hard time meeting its recruitment targets and they have resorted to lowering their recruitment standards. Reports in the news have talked of people with drug problems and prior prison time being hired. Open gays? No - can’t have that! What about the fact that some of them can speak arabic and we’re fighting in a bunch of arabic countries? No - still don’t want them.

Move your clocks ahead one hour! Congress decided that two weeks earlier would save us tons of oil - so it’s today, not in two weeks. Both my Windows XP SP2 and GNU/Linux Fedora Core 6 automatically updated on time, so your computers should be fine as long as they’ve gotten updates since 2005. (I think that’s when Congress did it)

Enjoy - don’t be late today!