I went through about a year back in the early part of the decade trying to work with desktop linux on a laptop. It didn't work very well. Eventually I got a mac. The trouble with Apple is that about 30% of the hardware they produce has serious design flaws. After many years of dealing with them I'm tired of the high cost of their stuff and the annual week without a computer.

So I thought I'd give Ubunto a try. I'd been told by many people that it "just works." I installed it on a pretty run of the mill Dell laptop. It did not "just work." Within a few minutes I'm googling around for long winded explanations of how I have to configure this and compile that and download this other thing in order to get this OS working on this extremely ubiquitous hardware.

This HOWTO describes how to get Wifi working on your Dell Inspiron E1505/6400 laptop using Ndiswrapper.

Im sorry, but if in 2007 you STILL have to compile something in order to get a basic thing like wireless networking working on an extremely popular hardware platform, LINUX WILL NEVER BE SUCCESSFUL ON THE DESKTOP.

Ubuntu sucks, nothing has changed.

The history of academic dress goes back hundreds of years to the chill universities where cap, gown and hood were needed for covering and warmth.

In 1321, the University of Coimbra mandated that all Doctors, Bachelors, and Licentiates must wear gowns. In the latter half of the 14th century, excess in apparel was forbidden in some colleges and prescribed wearing a long gown. By the time of England’s Henry VIII, Oxford and Cambridge began using a standard form of academic dress, which was controlled to the tiniest detail by the university.

Not until the late 1800s were colors assigned to signify certain areas of study, but they were only standardized in the United States.

This link has a list of the colors and what they mean.

Color Design Blog / The Colors of Your College Degree by COLOURlovers

Research suggests that while an unmade bed may look scruffy it is also unappealing to house dust mites thought to cause asthma and other allergies.

A Kingston University study discovered the bugs cannot survive in the warm, dry conditions found in an unmade bed.

BBC NEWS | Health | Untidy beds may keep us healthy

A color panoramic photo. Click through for full resolution.

Denver, Colorado in 1898

We are currently preparing the big crowning event of Miss Landmine Angola 2008 in close collaboration with the Angolan government (CNIDAH) and supported by the European Union.The event will be taking place in Luanda, Angola on April 4th, 2008, the UN International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.

Stay tuned!

The web voting for Miss Landmine Angola is open until April 3, 2008.

Have a nice day.

MISS LANDMINE

An Ohio man has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge for being part of a gang of "swatters" -- one of them blind -- who used Caller ID spoofing to phone the police with fake hostage crises, sending armed cops bursting into the homes of innocent people.

Guilty Plea: Phone Phreaks Use Caller-ID Spoofing to Get Foes Raided By SWAT | Threat Level from Wired.com

ETrade Financial Corp. lost more than half its market value after the online brokerage forecast a decline in fourth-quarter earnings and a Citigroup Inc. analyst said the company may go bankrupt.

Bank Failure. If it wasn't for FDIC insurance there would currently be a run on etrade accounts, which would cause them to collapse. This panic would spread resulting in a massive economic catastrophy.

ETrade stock falls 58% after forecast - The Boston Globe

Here is a good example of why I don't like Ron Paul and why I think Ron Paul is anti-immigration.

He has sponsored a bill this year called "Social Security for Americans Only Act of 2007." It prevents any wages earned by people who are not American Citizens after the end of this year from being included in any calculation of any future social security payments made to them. It has two primary impacts on immigrants:

1. Taxes that immigrants pay into the social security system before they become citizens, such as while they are living in the United States on visas, or green cards, are essentially forfeited. The US Government takes that money but does not pay any benefit on it.

2. The US has reciprocity agreements with a number of countries so that people who live some of their life in one country and some of their life in another country can access social security upon retirement based on their payments into both programs. This rule would end those agreements for everyone except people like me who have been dual citizens from a young age.

My father lived about a third of his working life in Canada, a third as a US immigrant on visas, and a third of his working life in the US as a citizen. We could not have immigrated to the United States if such a rule were in place in the 1980's, as the financial impact on his ability to retire would have been prohibitive. If such a rule is made retroactive, as many in this movement would like to see, it will have a huge financial impact on my family, because my mother's future social security earnings will be substantially reduced. It may result in her moving back to Canada.

This isn't anti-illegal immigration. It is anti-immigration. It is not fueled by genuine fiscal libertarianism or any concept of fairness, as it involves taking taxes from people without offering benefits and marooning American Citizens who live abroad by undercutting reciprocity agreements. Its fueled by the "blame the Mexicans" xenophobic scapegoating that became popular just as soon as people realized that there wasn't going to be an emotionally fulfilling military victory in Iraq.

I will not support this. This hurts me and my family.

H.R. 190: Social Security for Americans Only Act of 2007 (GovTrack.us)

Someone sees something, so he says something. The person he says it to -- a policeman, a security guard, a flight attendant -- now faces a choice: ignore or escalate. Even though he may believe that it's a false alarm, it's not in his best interests to dismiss the threat. If he's wrong, it'll cost him his career. But if he escalates, he'll be praised for "doing his job" and the cost will be borne by others. So he escalates. And the person he escalates to also escalates, in a series of CYA decisions. And before we're done, innocent people have been arrested, airports have been evacuated, and hundreds of police hours have been wasted.

How LED signs become a national emergency. Probably one of the most accurate things Schneier has written on anti-terrorism security. There are some interesting links from this article, including a campaign urging people to report suspicions of child abuse that simply shows a man holding hands with a child along with the text "It doesn't feel right when I see them together" and a phone number.

Schneier on Security: The War on the Unexpected

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Industrial Memetics will have a booth at BlogWorldExpo next week in Las Vegas. If you are near the area come by and pay us a visit!

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