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musings of mark since 2001

Those darn Canadians, Neil Young put something together old-style, meaning three days in the studio with a trumpet, drums and guitars and another protest song is born. As the eonline.com article notes, those Americans in the Red States must be a little chagrined to hear this album coming out from the same guy that wrote in 2001 the massively popular call to arms, “Let’s Roll” for the victims of Flight 93 and now penning songs with titles like “Let’s Impeach the President” on an album named Living With War.

One of the better articles I’ve read lately about why people should not be using Linux en masse is over at http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

I get asked all the time why I use Linux, and then they want to know how to get it themselves and that finds me convincing them that they don’t want to use Linux. It’s a long article, the last paragraph sums it up well. IMHO, he’s right on about Windows. I still use it at least every other day to test CSS for web sites and have yet to get a virus myself and do not use anti-virus software, just common sense and a willingness to learn.

Dominic Humphries :
If the answer is “I want Windows without the problems”: Do a clean install of Windows XP SP2; set up a good firewall; install a good anti-virus; never use IE for browsing the web; update regularly; reboot after each software install; and read about good security practices. I myself have used Windows from 3.1 through 95, 98, NT, and XP, and I have never once had a virus, suffered from spyware, or been cracked. Windows can be a safe and stable OS, but it relies on you keeping it that way.

If the answer is “I want a replacement for Windows without the problems”: Buy an Apple Mac. I’ve heard wonderful things about the Tiger release of OS X, and they’ve got some lovely-looking hardware. It’ll cost you a new computer, but it’ll get you what you want.

In either case, don’t switch to Linux. You’ll be disappointed with both the software and the community. Linux is not Windows.

Dave Pollard has a great review of Gray’s “Straw Dogs” that he’s titled the same as this entry.

Linux users have been using various methods of using Windows on the same operating system boot with tools like VM Ware and WINE. I like WINE because it is not a Windows emulator, but actually all the Windows drivers and dll’s required to run the system are part of the Linux tree and when you run a Windows program with WINE on Linux, you use the Windows bits to do it.

In order to use all the fonts available for Windows, I have the Win partition permanently mounted and can access it any time to copy other files over to my day-to-day operating system. This is fine, and a better solution for me than is available with the Mac “Boot Camp” software that entails a reboot any time you want to go to the Windows side, but not as nice is that VM Ware and WINE don’t run *everything* that Windows will natively.

None of that matters anymore, now even Windows users can experience what it is like to use other operating systems with “Parallels” about to go from Beta to a Gold release. With Parallels, you actually run both, (or all three!), operating systems at the same time in their native environment. A small difference, each operating system is available to the other through a network that is similar to a home network with multiple machines, so people unfamiliar with how that works will be scratching their heads reading the unfinished beta instructions.

The testing completed so far over at Mac World shows that Windows runs significantly faster on Mac Hardware, the blazing fast Linux OS that I’m using should show similar results using their hardware one would think. The ultimate solution for me it would seem to be would be to have a Mac box that would boot to my Red Hat distro to use during the day, and have Windows and Mac when needed.

Wired News the other day had an article about a whistle blower talking about some of the internet and phone monitoring that was going on, and today the Daily Kos has run with the story and have dug up some more information to go along with it.

Reading the Wired article, it was hard not to think that the wiretapping was happening on a grand scale from the description provided, but after going through the Kos article one finds that this actually is “the biggest invasion of privacy in history by several orders of magnitude.”