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Showing posts from January, 2010

Late Night Thoughts

It's 11:39. I'm usually dead to the world by now, but I'm sitting at a computer that I've now moved to the basement for my music arranging projects. Staying up late, waiting on the glue to dry on some pipes I've patched so I can turn on the water to the house before I get some shut-eye. At the risk of sounding like a religious nutcase, I'd like to invite you to give some thought to the possibilities of the unknown. Do you know everything there is to know? I sure don't. Half of everything? Me neither. A tenth? Not me. Considering how much there is to know that the human race doesn't know, don't you think that maybe God might be somewhere in that vast expanse of the unknown? Consider the possibility. I've made no attempt to hide the fact that I'm what is called by some as a born-again Christian. I'd hardly say I fit that mold, though. The whole concept for me conjures up imagery of some guy in a bad suit and slicked-back hair waving his

The IE6 Google Hack Worsens, Good for the Rest of Us

Any time I see bad news for Micro$oft like this , I it makes me happy. Really happy. Especially when Redmond knew about the exploit since September . The company that does so much to try to keep a strangehold on the minds and pocketbooks of millions of computer users has taken more than a few lumps this time around. Good. No wonder the French government has joined Germany in telling its citizens to stop using IE . Does this mean that I can't stand the people at M$? Nah. Not even Steve Ballmer or Mr. Gates himself. I just can't tolerate their computer products. All of this just makes me wonder: how many of these exploits are going to come to light before users start taking the hint?

Why I Still Run Ubuntu Jaunty

I've been really disappointed with Ubuntu Karmic Koala since just shortly after its release last October. My main computer at home runs Jaunty after a nice fiasco of upgrading, playing with it actively for about two weeks, and then downgrading . I have a couple other machines that run it so I can see if it has improved any. I can safely say that in the months since its release, it hasn't really gotten much better. Need some examples? I just installed Karmic using Wubi this weekend. Guess what? Updating her machine rendered it unbootable. SuperTux, a fun mario-like game, works great under Jaunty and crashes merrily under Karmic. The "unstable" development version, however, runs just fine. How ironic. Grub2, despite being a beta, is the default bootloader for clean installs. In the years of Ubuntu use that I've had, I've reluctantly learned enough about the first one to do what I need -- which is nothing fancy. Now it's been made even more difficult for Joe

The IE 0-Day == Good News For Other Browsers

At least if you're a proponent of using a browser besides Internet Exploiter. The 0-day attack last month that nailed Google and 30+ other companies is now a real reason to tell regular people to prefer another browser. According to C|Net , the source code for the exploit is now out there for anyone to use examine. The German government has recommended that its citizens use something else until Microsoft issues a patch. Having a notable government make such a recommendation speaks volumes about security and certainly would help your position in an argument. My thought: why bother going back?

I Need a Life

It dawned on me that I'm something of a black box. Since I enjoy writing, I figured that this could be a place for me to talk about anything... kinda like Bryan Varner's blog subtitle: "the runoff of my brain in digital form" with the difference that it's distilled. Stuff I'm thinking, uncensored, unedited, and uncut. Watch this space!