"In a democracy (βrule by mobβ), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
…is starting early for me. I’m going to be playing with Virtualbox, and I’m putting other things in… another box, for now. (Lovely Daughter’s dropping by Saturday, so that day’s out *heh*)
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No politics, no rants, no foaming at the mouth with this post. Just a lil fun.
Well, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS “Hardy Heron” has been out for over a week now, and here at twc central, three Windows computers have had it installed… three different ways. The full install (partitioning off a chunck of one hard drive) went slick as goose grease. Nice looks, snappy performance.
Two “Wubi” (Windows-based Ubuntu Installer) installs. One was straight off the CD. (Note: for the one or two readers of twc that don’t know what an iso file is or how to create a CD with one, no sweat. Just visit the Ubuntu home page, download the iso and read up on the well-written tutorial available there.)
A Wubi installation from CD in Windows is just like installing any Windows app you’ve ever installed, only a bit slicker than some. *heh* On a Toshiba Satellite WinXP system, the hard part was putting the CD in the drive. *yawn* Slipped it in during a commercial break (was watching one of my Wonder Woman’s fav shows with her) and autostart brought up the Wubi installer. Told it what user name and password I wanted and let it trundle along. Next commercial break, looked over at the notebook and it was asking for a reboot. Let it. It did its thing and before next commercial break it was rebooting and giving me a choice of booting Windows XP or Ubuntu, using the Windows XP boot manager.
I particularly appreciate the “If you can’t trust your Shadowy Overlords to keep a secret, what is the purpose, really, of voting in a public democracy?” line. Very funny. Sad (because it voices something all too close to a looming reality), but funny.
One of the follow-on ads is ridiculous, though: “…Poverty May Be the Key to Eliminating Polo”? Nah. Once they have the rest of us firmly pidgeonholed as peasants, the ricos will have no problem detailing serfs to pooper-scoop their polo fields…
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Way, way back in the dim dark past of 2007, Diane bought a Mac and moved her Vaio desktop in with her entertainment center (well, there was that huge flat screen TV to hook it up to, so… :-)) after realizing it was a Media Center-enabled PC. *heh* She’s using it a lot in that way now, but I’ve seen los of folks who’ve had MPCs who never really used the platform’s potential. So, when I began thinking about building an MPC, I began gathering info and making plans for a decent media center I could really use. At the same time, I’ve become ever more comfortable with Linux and BSD ways of doing things so when I ran across LinuxMCE (and here), I kinda hunkered down for a good long read… and then looked about for more information. Here’s a taste of why I became so interested:
LinuxMCE is the only all-in-one solution for your home that seamlessly combines media & entertainment, home automation, security, telecom and computing. You can control your whole house with a mobile phone, a touch-screen tablet or a web-interface. A LinuxMCE system is like an appliance – not a computer. It is self-configuring, maintaining and updating. No technical skills are required to use or install LinuxMCE. LinuxMCE is above all simple. The devices are all plug and play. LinuxMCE is also an open platform, offering unlimited expansion potential, and requiring no special cabling. This is LinuxMCE: a complete, comfortable and secure solution for your home. “
Hmmm, ambitious. And using its full–or even much of its–potential will require some rather extensive hardware/infrastructure upgrades if I decide to go whole hog with it.
Still, it’s intriguing, attractive and designed to be integrated with Kubuntu–one of my two fav distros of Ubuntu (the other’s Xubuntu, a good choice for older computers, IMO).
A quick rundown of installing and using LinuxMCE:
I haven’t built an MPC yet, but the day’s getting closer as I gather more info and explore the benefits and pitfalls of various approaches, but the LinuxMCE approach is looking more and more appealing as I go about this process. If/when I get off the dime and actually build a system/upgrade the twc central infrastructure, I’ll be sure to report back in on how it went.
No, no scatology-repressed comments about prisons for kids, politicians *spit*, the Mass Media Podpeople’s Hivemind, Academia Nut Fruitcakes or other typical targets of curmudgeonry today. Just something that never would have been on the Howdy Doodie shows of my childhood, but would have been welcome in my childhood memories anyway, had it been available.
Gee, just seeing Danny Kaye in this lil bit pricked me to recall the song from his 1958 movie, Merry Andrew, “The Sum of the Hypotenuse”.
The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle
Is equal to the sum of the squares of two adjacent sides.
You’d not tolerate lettin’ your participle dangle,
So please effect the self-same respect for your geometric slides.
Old Einstein said it,
When he was gettin’ nowhere.
Give him credit,
He was heard to declare:
Eureka!
The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle [etc.]
Sure as shootin’,
When problems get in your hair,
Be like Newton
Who was heard to declare:
“Eureka!”
The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle [etc.]
The Wright Brothers,
Before they conquered the air,
Like those others,
Orville hollers: “Lookahair,
Wilbur….”
The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle
Is equal to the sum of the squares of two adjacent sides.
You’d not tolerate lettin’ your participle dangle,
So please effect the self-same respect for your geometric slides.
All of which led, inevitably in the age of the web, to this:
“The Pythagorean theorem was an early example of an important fact rediscovered independently and often,” Veljan remarks. Moreover, more than 400 different proofs of the theorem are known today…
The famous Babylonian clay tablet known as Plimpton 322… goes a step further. Dating from the period between 1900 B.C. and 1600 B.C. [perhaps as much as 1,300 years before Pythagoras–ed] , the tablet has columns of numbers that apparently represent what are now called Pythagorean triples.”
(Thank you, Mrs. Heinz–my high school trig/stat teacher–for making these things interesting to me and thanks to Danny Kaye for providing such neat vignettes of playful fun.)
Unnecessary confession: I use Windoze. Because I have to. (I also use PCBSD and Ubuntu, but that’s for pleasure… and some work/productivity.) So far, I have managed to avoid installing Vista on any twc central computers. *whew!* (Wipes forehead gratefully. *heh*) I have seen enough Vista computers “in the wild” to become convinced that, apart from the eye candy, it’s just not worth the hassle for most folks to switch from XP to Vista, if they must use Windows. And even buying a new computer with Vista installed can be problematic; I’ve already seen enough software incompatibilities in the workplace and problems with drivers for peripherals to know it just is not for most of the folks I know, including me. And this is quite apart from the fact that Vista–even installed new on “Vista-ready” computers is generally–from what I’ve actually seen “in the wild”–*heh*–a resource hog and slower than a properly-configured XP computer.
And, despite the monthly or more bug fixes and patches, Vista’s SP-1 is not really available for general installation–not that it is a definite improvement.
The screencap above is on a Win2K machine with some of the functionality of PCMag’s “VistaMagicPack” (the first link above) enabled. Not half bad, and no discernable performance hit on a middlin’ old 1.3Ghz machine with only 512MB RAM and a tiny lil 16MB vidcard. Try running Vista with all the eye candy on that machine. Not.
Saw this some time ago. Can’t remember who to credit with a hat tip:
*heh*
On the road the other night. Saw a semi with a company logo with a motto that read, “Employee owned; customer driven.” Huh! They send the customers out driving those big rigs? That explains some things…
And while I’m on the road, did you ever notice that the idiots are really thick at night? Don’t believe me? Next time you’re out at night, just count how many folks can’t find their dimmer switch.
Anyone ever tell you, “Practice makes perfect”? If that were so, politicians would get it right at least once in a while.
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Gee, I wonder why the statists who are all over The Soccer Mom’s Prohibition (AKA, “The ‘War’ on Drugs”) have let this one slide… *heh*
(Yeh, yeh, I know it’s fake and I know it’s been around since May of 2007, but when Faithful Reader Hugh sent it to me, how could I not post it? Especially given the Hildebeast’s recent slide in polls. *heh*)
THIS is not an official, approved Fred08 ad… but it darned well oughta be. *heh*
What’s not to like?
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The concept’s been around for a while: throw a buncha atomic bombs out the back end and let ’em push… This puppy’s “do-able” in a much nearer time frame than a test bed for a “warp drive” that’s in research now. (Only real barrier? Whiny crybabies scared of the boogyman “A-Bomb”.)
Mars, anyone?
The cat’s outa the cradle over at Adam’s Blog and bombshells are dropping (what a waste of thrust!) at TMH’s Bacon Bits.