Last one for a while? Could be...

Who said?

1. "I have a dream..."
2. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
3. "First they ignore you..then they laugh at you..then they fight you...then we win."
4. "But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground."
5. "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
6. "Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
7. "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
8. "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
9. "If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
10. "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock."

( Read more... )

I don't have any more in reserve, so don't count on anything soon.

Linux: initial impressions & the first milestone?

Yep, things are normal. I just get started on Mandrake 9.0 and Mandrake 9.1 is finally released. I've decided to hold off for a while. If nothing else, let the ftp servers get less swamped. And, do I really want to try updating/upgrading after getting things (mostly) working the way I want them?

So far, aside from Audacity and windows file sharing, things have pretty much just worked. Some fiddling and learning, of course, but no complete defeats. The file sharing problem can be worked around with ftp. Yakko might have something on Audacity yet. I might just try Sweep if Audacity is too problematic.

I still need to find out how to rip CDs, and how to burn them. And I need to find what file types may have problems. These are mainly video clips. Nautilus is nice, and will allow me to sort out files and directories with relative ease. The XMMS default skin is kewl. Kewl skins, like kewl pages, suck. Fortunately there are other skins and a couple are non-sucking.

I'm sure I have a lot to learn, probably even to do simple things. Yet most things haven't presented any great difficulty, so I'm not too concerned. I expect I will still use Windows from time to time, but probably not too often. The last few days my Windows use (at home) was just to get a few files from percheron (W2k) to belgian (linux).

I must be getting comfortable with things. This morning, I shut the Windows machine down - and I don't know when I might turn it on again.

What do you care what other people think?

That is the title of a book by Richard P. Feynman. It sums up an attitude of not just having independent thought, but actually exercising it. This is a thing generally considered good. Yet, some seem to figure that that applies to them, but not to others.

There was a relay of BBC radio I heard this afternoon that made me think of that title. It seemed to be a bit of meta-media (interviews of reporters, that sort of thing). What got me was the suggestion, one I've heard before elsewhere, that if there were more "world coverage" in the U.S.A. that knowing the opinions of others would, and would be expected to (so therefore, should) change policies. This is inherently false, and dangerously silly.

While greater coverage of the events in the world would be good, coverage of opinion would be of minimal, if indeed any, value. What others may believe should not necessarily have any effect on what one believes. An argument from and with fact might well serve to change a conclusion, but mere opinion must never have such an influence. What is fashionable is not necessarily what is right. Popularity does not assure correctness. Unpopularity does not assure incorrectness. Having policies determined by world opinion might make for popularity, but would be irresponsible.