Misc. Ramblings

I've mentioned before that during a college summer break, I worked at Petersen Publishing in Los Angeles. At one time, Petersen was one of the larger magazine publishers with titles including, among others, Hot Rod, Car Craft, Guns and Ammo, Photographic, and SAIL. In some cases, these were pioneering efforts and were way ahead of their time. Each served a useful purpose by providing value to its customers.

Petersen has long since been sold to another company and no longer really exists. At least, not as it once was.

But in the short time I was there, and all I did was run typeset hardcopy from one office to the other, I learned something about human nature.

One of the import things all of the magazines did was to review the latest products in the industry they covered. Product reviews seemed to be a major focus because, I would guess, magazine buyers wanted to get reliable information on new products from a source other than the marketing department of the product being sold. This is logical and, I think, something that continues to this day.

The problem was, how trustworthy were the magazine reviews? No magazine, that I knew of, actually paid for any of the products reviewed (I understand that an independent magazine called Consumer Reports does buy, at retail, all of the products that they review but I don't know of any others). So, the only way to get the products were to ask the manufacturers for either a free sample or a short-term loan of the product. While there is certainly a symbiotic relationship, that is both sides gain by this arrangement, it seems to me that the companies had the upper hand in this deal, especially for costly things likes cars. I mean, if you didn't say nice things about their car, why should they send one to you, for free?

Indeed, not only did the magazines request free samples, they requested the samples months before the public could purchase them. The magazines needed to do this since production lead times required putting an issue to bed three months before it hit the stands. Factor in time to request, receive, and review the product, and you are talking perhaps four to six months prior to public release. If you didn't get the sample in time, your competitor might and your circulation (and revenues) would go down because they got to review the new, whiz bang car of the future. So, there was a large, built in incentive to say only nice things about the product.

Lastly, as I understood it, the cover price of the magazine paid for only a small part of the cost of publishing it. Paid advertising picked up the rest. Who do you think bought those ads? Yes, that's right, the same manufacturers who were being asked to provide the free products. But if an advertiser decided a magazine wasn't being nice to them, why should they spend big bucks on full page ads?

Now, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to understand that the line between the advertising department and the editorial department could, sometimes, become awfully fine. IT seemed to me that whatever the writers did, the magazines would never, ever, say anything negative about a product. At least, not without using code words to do it. Perhaps that's why, when a magazine reviewed a product, they would use certain adjectives instead of others. For example, if a car was just plain ugly, the magazines might talk about the "controversial" styling. If the model had a reputation for riding like it had no suspension, the magazines might say the handling was "firm." If the engine put out less power than a caged mouse with three legs, then the magazine might say the engine was a bit "anemic."

But, people aren't that stupid. Eventually, the clued in folks began to see the pattern. But not everyone did, or do. But now that you know, think about this the next time a magazine announces its "Product of the Year" award. Maybe the product really is great. Or maybe it isn't and the magazine just wants to get the most advertising page buys they can. YMMV. Not all marketing is based on lies. Not all reviewers don't tell the truth. Not all humans will react the same way - but don't depend on it. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

As a public service, I link to this announcement that Friday is No Pants Day. That's right,

Participants are urged to show up for work or play in modest boxer shorts or other types of underwear, such as bloomers, slips or briefs.

But whatever you do, don't wear pants, and wearing skirts, dresses or kilts doesn't count.

Apparently the holiday is popular mainly with college students, and it is especially big at the University of Texas in Austin. The holiday has a Web site in Austin at www.nopantsday.com.

However, if you do this, don't blame me for whatever consequences may befall you. Insert disclaimer here. YMMV. Use at your own risk. The door is a jar. Send photos.

Aloha!

My long-term goal is to have my own web server at home to host my site. I'm headed down this road because I'm having problems with my present hosting company, pair.com. MovebleType (MT), the application that manages my blog page, is apparently taking too much memory when it creates its web pages. As a temporary measure, I've switched to dynamic creation of part of my site. This, for now, seems to keep things stable. But as the number of posts increase, I will need to switch more of my site to dynamic creation. This is not something I want to do because it creates a single point of failure. Namely, the database that holds all the posts. Under a static system, it doesn't matter what happens to MovebleType or the database where posts are stored. If I choose to switch to something else, the pages created are still there (although back end stuff like searching wouldn't work).

There are, of course, downsides to hosting your own site. I don't have the time to go into them but it comes down to time, reliability, and security. Speaking of which, I don't have a lot of time so I'm going to dive right in.

Last night, I downloaded and installed PC-BSD version 1.0. This is a version of Unix based on FreeBSD. As you may remember, I've been looking for an industrial strength operating system to host a website and mail server. I decided to start with what my current web host, pair.com, uses. Namely, FreeBSD.

But in installing FreeBSD, I found a very barren landscape. After installing the latest version, I sat there staring at a blinking command line cursor. That was it. Nothing was mounted. No applications installed. No KDE or Gnome. Just an operating system. That's when I decided I needed something a little more user friendly if I was to ever get my own server up and running.

Thus my search for something else. PC-BSD version 1.0 is one of two efforts (the other being Desktop BSD, which I will try sometime in the future) to configure BSD with an more user friendly interface.

I downloaded the single image file and burned it to a CD. Once done, I installed it to an old 850MHz Celeron system with 256MB of RAM. The install process took about 35 minutes (your time may vary), most of which is taken up by the default install of packages. Once completed, you boot into the familiar KDE GUI.

While KDE is much better than the command line, you still have to download and install the applications you plan to run on your server. In my case, I started with the Apache web server . PC-BSD has a version (2.0.54) that you can download, double click on, and have it installed for you. While this is a very easy way to install the software, the downside is this is not the most current version. Thus, you will be missing security updates that have been made since the release of this version. Although using the pre-configured PC-BSD version certainly is user friendly, I have a nagging feeling I will end up trying to compile the latest Apache server from source code so I can keep it up-to-date.

But for now, I'll be spending my time learning how to run this version of Apache. Once I get past that, I'll move on to installing MySQL and MT. Next up after that will be a mail server.

As mentioned, I don't have a lot of time to work on this project so reports on this will come as and when I can.

UPDATE: Who knew? There is a ready made file called PAMP that includes Apache, MySQL, and PHP all in one clickable install file for PC-BSD. Now, all I have to do is uninstall Apache and then install PAMP.

Not looking your best in the morning? Switch to full screen video avatars that track your head, eye, and lip movements from Logitech.

You can check out an amateur video of what some Logitech Quickams can do and the Orbit MP, in particular. For a mere $129USD, you too can have real time video effects displayed for all to see.

Aloha!

Many people seem to have forgotten or, perhaps, are actively ignoring the fact that the public airwaves, in the US, are held in trust by the federal government. Business are allowed (i.e., licensed) to use parts of the airwaves for a public purpose.

As, perhaps, evidence of this problem, your local TV news programs may be more of an excuse for marketing products than a service to citizens. According to this report that says 77 TV stations in the US broadcasted what amounts to commercials created by companies or government agencies but aired as is they were regular news stories.

Indeed, according to the report, not only didn't the TV stations disclose that the segments were created by what may have been, in some cases, marketing companies but, in many cases, the stations actively tried to disguise this fact.

Even more distressing is that some of these stations are in major markets such as Los Angeles, New York, and Boston. In addition, the affiliates of all three major networks are included.

I don't know how many stations each of the following networks have, nor do I know how many were monitored to gather these numbers. Hence, I can't normalize or give context to this information. That said, here are the data :

Although there weren't any Hawaii stations listed, that doesn't mean they haven't used such segments. I seem to remember seeing several what would appear to be canned segments that looked suspiciously like what is being described in this article.

I've also posted before how some local stations use file footage but don't disclose this fact. Indeed, by not disclosing this, they are trying to mislead people into thinking the footage was taken specifically and recently for the story being reported.

In other cases, one local TV station used to go outside their back door to report "live" on the weather. Then they would go "live" outside their front door for traffic conditions. But in no case would they identify the fact that they were literally within feet of their station. This station still does these kinds of reports, but at least they now disclose where they are (at least the few times I watched their "news" program).

Then there are the stations that take news reports from the wire services or press releases from businesses or government agencies and literally just read it, verbatim. In no case do they make any effort whatsoever to investigate whether the report is accurate nor do they make any effort to find out if there is more to the story than the one-side account they just read to the public.

Aloha!

The recent strong earthquake near Tonga, in the South Pacific, reminds us that we need to be prepared for a tsunami.

If you are ever near a body of water including, but not limited to the ocean, sea, lake, river, or stream and you feel an earthquake you must immediately follow the advice of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration where they say to immediately get to higher ground. This may mean literally running for your life because if you are close enough to feel the earthquake, a tsunami generated by the quake could reach you in minutes. As the site says, if you can't move inland quickly enough, and there is a concrete building of at least three stories high near you, head there and go up at least three stories.

Be aware that sometimes, the leading edge of a tsunami is the trough of the first wave. Hence, it is possible that the first indication of the wave is that the water actually recedes. Do not be fooled by this because the first crest will soon follow, covering everything that was uncovered.

Also be aware that tsunami are usually not just one wave but many times a series of waves that may be as much as 20 to 30 minutes apart. And the first wave is not necessarily the largest.

The bottom line is you need to know what to do so that if the situation arises, you can act immediately to save your life.

YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

It's Friday! Sixteen-year old Hawaii golfer Michelle Wie wowed them in South Korea yesterday when she became the second female in Korea (and the first US female since 1945) to make the cut in a men's professional golf tournament. According to the local newspaper article, Michelle is in 17th place at 5-under par for two rounds. Go Michelle!

The Fisher Space Pen. The name evokes all kinds of high tech caché. I mean, if it's good enough to fly to the moon it must be some great pen.

There is even an urban myth that it cost NASA $1 million USD to develop the pen. But the truth is a bit more mundane than that as this article reveals. It seems the pen was developed by the Fisher pen company with no government funds. That's right, NASA didn't spend a dime creating the pen. Fisher did all the design and manufacturing of the pen probably more as a marketing effort than anything else (Pencils work just fine in space, although, you do have to sharpen them, thus creating a potential problem with the shavings floating free).

Maybe it's just me, but the article points out an interesting sidelight in that astronauts took various souvenir into space. Some, like a flag or good luck charm seem okay. But one astronaut took a bra. No, it was not a female (I'm not even sure a woman needs to wear a bra in space since she would be weightless and would have no need for support). So one wonders why the astronaut decided to take it. I can see the ad campaign now, "The bra worn round the world!" Or perhaps, "The bra worn to the moon!" Well, I thought it was interesting.

Disclosure: I owned a Fisher Space Pen when I was in high school. It worked quite well but, in the end, who needs to use one on Earth when you could buy cheap BIC pens for probably around 50 cents? In addition, I also owned, and still own and use, an Omega Speedmaster Professional watch ("The First Watch Worn on the Moon!" It still works quite well, although it looks a bit worse for wear (I got it as a high school graduation present in 1975).

Aloha!

Sorry, no post today. I tried installing Mepis GNU/Linux on my Dell PC at work but that failed. Mepis had multiple problems. The main problem was it wanted me to decide where to put the partitions and what size and format they should be. Unfortunately, no matter what I tried, including the defaults, Mepis either refused to move forward in the install or did attempt to move forward but then stopped responding. Sigh.

For now, I'm back in Xandros but will try SUSE 10.1(offical release date supposedly this Thursday) sometime maybe next week (after the Thundering Herds finish eating at the trough).

Aloha!

I'm still working on restoring my PC at work. I also decided to update my copy of Codeweaver's CrossOver Office and therein lies (lays?) a tale. On one hand, it seems to solve a problem I had with running Lotus Notes in that I can now install it as myself rather than root. On the other hand, in trying to install MS Office, CrossOver wants to install IE 6. The install begins, but then hangs after downloading about 1297 or 1298 KB. Although I can't be sure, I think our corporate firewall is blocking part of the install where the digital certificate is verified. So, I went home and downloaded it there.

I'm dealing with other problems but I'll survive.

Aloha!

I decided to try installing Mepis again and was successful this time. However, there were problems.

First up was the problem with partitioning the drive. Previously, Xandros and Windows were installed on the disk and I decided to install over the Xandros partitions rather than formatting first and then deleting the partitions. This may have been a mistake as Mepis didn't seem to be able to figure out which paritions to use. So, when it came time to install Mepis, the install asked if I wanted to use the 'existing swap file or none'. Since I wanted to use the existing swap parition, I chose this option. Little did I know that even though the installer was offering what appeared to me to be two options, it was actually saying I would not have a swap file and none was created.

I am no expert in what swap files do (other than I think it is used when insufficient RAM is avaialble), I can only say not having a swap file is perhaps not a GoodThing(r). In any case, the install completed without obvious problems.

Soon after, I noticed the second problem. I could not access my USB Flash drive. Mepis simply would not mount it. A review of the Mepis support site indicated that I was not alone. There is page after page of people reporting problems with flash drives. I tried three different solutions offered on the support site and, unfortunately, none worked.

Perhaps related to this problem is intermittant access to the floppy drive and CD/DVD drive of the Dell Opltiplex GX-260 that I'm using. Neither drive can be reliably mounted. I don't know why they work sometimes and other times they don't. Even when they work, the reading of the data is sometimes corrupted (I didn't try writing as that would be tempting fate).

In trying to fix these problems, I noticed that dmesg was telling me of problems with the artsd daemon. There was page after page of the same error so apparently something is causing a recurring problem. What that is I don't know.

Lastly, Mepis doesn't automatically mount my Windows partitions. Although I can manually do so, I wonder why you wouldn't want this to occur. Perhaps this is related to my other problems with mounting the floppy, CD/DVD, and flash drives. But, in this case, I can reliably mount the parititions. Go figure.

In the end, I decided I won't be using Mepis, at least not at work (I'm still experimenting with it at home). For work, as mentioned earlier, I'm may try SUSE 10.1 sometime next week and perhaps Kubuntu next month (when Dapper flies). Until then, I'm back to Xandros. Sigh.

Last night, I downloaded the first two of five ISO images for SUSE 10.1 (download page). Things went very slowly but I'll try getting the other three over the weekend.

Next week, I have all day meetings away from the office on Monday and Tuesday so I won't have the time to do any posts, much less install and play with SUSE.

But Lord willing, and the 'crick don't rise, I'll see you all here next week Wednesday.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

I'm back. Where we left off last week was I downloaded two of the five ISO images for installing SUSE 10.1. Since then, I finished getting the last three over the weekend and began the installation by checking the MD5 sums and then burning them to CDs. All appeared well.

I then began the install. As part of the install, SUSE provides a step where you can check the integrity of the five ISO disks. Being a belt and suspender kind of guy, I decided to do so even though I had already checked the MD5 sums.  According to this step, all was well with all five disks.

I moved on and took the default install except I added packages required to compile programs from source. Once the installation of these packages began, I got up from my desk and went to do other things because the installer was estimating it would take between two and four hours to complete.

About an hour later, I came back to the desk to check on how things were progressing. I immediately noticed that the screen was showing the system boot screen (the black screen that first comes up when I boot my PC). I was perplexed. Most installers don't reboot the PC unless they are done and, as far as I knew, the install was not completed.

So I completed the boot process and it came up in SUSE 10.1. But no, the install was not done and it asked for the second CD. Hmmm. I inserted the second Cd and it resumed installing packages. At least, until it hit a package that it said was corrupted and I could ignore, abort, or retry. Sigh.

As mentioned earlier, the MD5 sums matched and the SUSE installer checked the integrity of the burned CDs. Yet, the PC had rebooted and now I was being told there was a corrupt package.

That's where I left things. When I have the time to try a new install, I will monitor the progress and see if it reboots again. If so, I guess I can try downloading the first ISO again and burning a new CD. But if that fails, I have to reckon that there is something in my PC's configuration (Intel D815 motherboard, Intel P3 CPU, 512MB of Kingston RAM, Seagate HD, Antec case and power supply) that SUSE doesn't like.

More when I know more.

Aloha!

As I am sure you know, certain U.S. phone companies allegedly gave and, perhaps, continue to give, private phone records to the US government, without a court order (for which the phone companies are being being sued).

But some of the companies are denying such acts. While I don't wish to be distrustful of these companies, you need to carefully read what they are denying. Essentially, some are saying they did not turn over to the government any phone records.

However, this does not mean your private data were not monitored nor turned over to the National Security Agency (NSA). As Robert X. Cringely said earlier in several columns, and Wired News is saying now, the phone companies have installed hardware and software that monitors all traffic coming through their systems. Some of the hardware and some of the applications are allegedly from or for the NSA. Hence, the information could be gathered by these applications and transmitted directly to the NSA without the phone companies having to do anything (like turn over hard copy records).

Be clear I'm not saying this is necessarily what is happening. I have no insider information. But I have learned that is well to carefully review what is done because, well, some companies (and governments) have shown themselves to be untrustworthy. Which is an extremely sad state of affairs. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!

Diversity. Some pundits seem to use the word as if it were something dirty, to be spat out of the mouth like some disagreeable food. But is it? Let's take a look at some examples.

Nature loves diversity. Why? Because diversity improves the chances of survival. As soon as a species enters a new environment, nature begins to adapt and change the species. If the species could not or does not adapt, it becomes extinct. In addition, the more species there are, the lower the chance that a single disease will make extinct all life.

Through many years of famine and pestilence, many farmers now know this. Clear cutting the existing diverse vegetation and planting only one crop, year after year, brought a bountiful harvest. For awhile, anyway. But wise farmers found that rotating crops to something else or inter-planting other crops (i.e., increasing diversity) could reduce or prevent the probability that the land would turn fallow.  The Irish potato famine is an example of what happens when only one strain or species is planted and disease wipes out the entire crop. If multiple species were planted, some might be killed by disease, but the chances that all would be is reduced. Hence, it seems critical to our very survival to ensure diversity.

Through many years of using Microsoft Windows, many users now know this. Having only one operating system brought many benefits. One could become well versed in one system and transfer this knowledge from job to job. Developers could concentrate on one system, rather than many, when creating applications. But this lack of diversity makes it easier for viruses to wipe out huge numbers of PCs, all at once. Some even envision a coming perfect storm where entire industries or even countries could be felled in one swoop. Hospitals, air traffic control, navigation, communications, among others could come to a halt. But having multiple operating systems, some that are substantially different from Windows, can prevent problems such as this. Again, it may be  critical to our very survival to ensure diversity.

Through many years of political correctness (from both the extreme left and the extreme right), many in society now know this. A society locked into one way of thinking, acting, or being is a society ripe for disease. Whether mental, spiritual, or even physical, disease will always, in time, rip though such a culture laying waste to entire regions. Again, it may be critical to our very survival to ensure diversity.

That said, it would be just asincorrect to go to the other extreme. For example, a community that cannot communicate amongst its members, because there is no common language, cannot survive. But even then, here in Hawai'i, as the various ethnic groups came here to work, a kind of mishmash of Hawaiian, English, and Asian languages sprung up so that everyone could communicate the basics. There was no need for a law to mandate a common language, it just naturally sprang into being through pure necessity. But it was made richer by incorporating the words from these regions into one.

To me, extremism, whether for or against diversity, is not consistent with nature. Wise men do not fool with Mother Nature because bad things happen when you do.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

This time it's Ohio University that has discovered that hackers have remotely operated at least three of their servers for as much as a year or longer.

c|net news is reporting said servers held the Social Security numbers of 137,000 people and that the university was unaware of the intrusion until the FBI notified them (the article does not say how the FBI detected the intrusion but thank goodness someone was on the job).

As the university says, functionality must be balanced with security. However, this does not mean you don't have any auditing applications in place to detect intrusions (as seems to be the case here).

It's about balance. Absolute security means absolutely no remote access. This extreme doesn't work for most people because the purpose of the server is usually to allow access to information. If no one can access it, the server serves no purpose (pun not intended). But. That does not mean you go to the other extreme and have no security.

In my opinion, there is no excuse for administrators who do not institute intrusion applications because these applications, for the most part, do not impede functionality. They don't prohibit access by hackers either but they can detect such access.

It bothers me that administrators at this university (and others) don't do the minimum required to ensure the security of their servers. We have already seen the transformation of hacking from a teenager trying to get into a server just for bragging rights to organized crime making it part of their lucrative business plan.

It is long past time that administrators took this change seriously.

Aloha!

I should note that yes, SUSE does do a reboot after installing the contents of the first of five CDs. So if you start the install and come back to a black screen it's probably because SUSE rebooted while you were away. No harm done but it surprised me that the install didn't seem to say that would occur.

In any case, the package that was corrupted is not part of the default install so things went find all the way to the end.

However, that's not to say everything went well. SUSE failed to detect my plug and play monitor and also did not detect the motherboard's built in sound card.

It surprised me that when I went to configure the monitor, the particular model I have (an old Mag DX17F) wasn't on the list. Both Mepis and Xandros did have my model so I have to wonder why these distributions have it but not SUSE.

For the sound, the configuration wizard didn't detect it during installation but did fine when I ran it manually. Why that would be I don't know.

For things that did work, I like the package update application that automatically checks for security updates (of which there were two already). I like a distribution that takes security updates seriously (Xandros does maybe one security update every six months, unless it's a commercial application that does their own updates).

I recently signed up for the Debian security list and, over the last two weeks, I've received notice of at least a dozen Linux applications (including the 2.4.x kernel) that have been updated to patch critical security vulnerabilities. In a world of zero day exploits, it is important to patch your system as soon as possible. Yes, I know, some patches can close one hole while opening another (or breaking something else). But we don't live in a perfect world and I, for one, would install the patches.

Other than that, my first overall impression is that SUSE seems to run slightly slower than the Mepis or Xandros distributions. But since I have not run any benchmarks, this could be just my imagination. I haven't used SUSE for very long so I don't have anything else to report. More when I know more.

Our condolences to fellow Daynoter Rick Hellewell in the passing of his 24-year old son Jason. His untimely passing must be a heavy burden to deal with but I hope Rick knows that he is not alone and that there are many who can and will help him through this most difficult of times.

May the Lord give Rick and his family the peace and understanding that is so needed right now.

Aloha!

I will be very busy over the next few days as, among other things, our fiscal year runs down. Hence, posts may be short and far in-between.

Aloha!

This California case [link is to a PDF file] could make anyone squeamish so don't proceed if you are faint-of-heat. You have been warned.

It seems a woman was riding, on a lake, as a rear-seat passenger on a two-person water-jet powered craft when, while in motion, she fell off the back of said craft.

For one brief instant, the fast moving jet of water exiting the back of the craft was aimed directly at her buttocks. In that frozen in time moment, the water tore through her bathing suit, into her anus and then into her internal organs, causing extensive and permanent injury.

According to the case, she no longer has control over her bowls or bladder. In addition, she has lost feeling from her waist down to her knee, essentially ending her sex life.

Leaving aside who was at fault, and realizing that this type of injury, according to the case, appears to be rare, the thing to remember is that these can be dangerous vehicles and you should pause and reflect on what that means and what you can do to avoid similar injury.

No post today.

Aloha!

No post today.

Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!

There is a lot of huffing and puffing over the recent use of the Microsoft Update service to automatically download a non-critical application. Said application, called Windows Genuine Advantage, checks among other things, to see if the copy of Windows you are using is legally obtained. If it can confirm this, no problem. If not, from what I understand, it will pop-up boxes telling you to stop using it (i.e., your supposely illegaly obtained copy of Windows).

In many people's minds, the problem is that MS used the download service for something that is clearly unrelated to patching vulnerabilities. Although, I am sure, MS disagrees with this, I have to question what else MS may decide is in its best interest, but not necessarily of their customers.

I've talked before about the lack of trust that some people have when it comes to MS so I won't repeat it here. But this is an example of what I meant.

That said, I've come to the conclusion that for most people, they should continue to use the automatic setting because they won't get the truly critical patches otherwise. But for those 11 geeks tech savy readers of this site, you may want to set one of the other options so that you can wait and see what kind of reaction hits the Internet. If nothing much happens, then go ahead and manually down the patch. But if an instant uproar occurs, you may wish to wait awhile.

Better yet, switch to Linux. For all its problems with buggy opensource software, at least you don't have to worry about this kind of fubar.

Aloha!

This post is going to ramble all over the place because I don't have the time to edit it to try to bring some kind of order to this chaos. Sorry about that. But it's either this or nothing at all.

So, my experiments with SUSE 10.1 came to an end over the weekend. Although I really wanted to like this distribution, and I have used it in the past, 10.1 just doesn't seem to work with my system.

For example. using YAST to update my base system was hit or miss. Mostly miss. Updates were very sssssllllooooowwwwww. If they worked at all. YAST would lock up seemingly at random times. In fact, the system became corrupted several times, probably because of the problems with YAST.

Then there's the speed, or lack of same. On the system being used, which to be honest is an Intel P3-933 with 512MB of RAM, everything ran so slowly I had to wonder if something was wrong with the hardware. But as events would show, this was not true.

In any case, things got so bad that I decided to try something else. So I downloaded the ISO for Kubuntu 5.1 and Debian "testing" (also known as "Etch").

I decided to try Debian first. The install ran fine but I had forgotten that true blue Debian uses Gnome because, as I understand it, KDE uses some commercial utilities to create its environment. Although Gnome is okay, I'm not very familiar with it. But I decided to give it a try anyway just to see what it was about.

Unfortunately, the learning curve from KDE to Gnome was just too great. I couldn't find stuff as easily as I could in KDE. To be sure, this is not necessarily a knock on Gnome so much as I am just more experienced in KDE. YMMV. Choose the tool that works best for you. But I just didn't have the time to learn Gnome.

In any case, the default install of Debian is rather stark. That is, if you want to use Debian as a desktop as well as being able to compile programs, you will probably have to add stuff. This is not unique to Debian as other distributions also require you to add packages to create an environment that works for you. In addition, stuff like Adobe Acrobat, the Flash plug-in, MP3/ACC/DVD movies support, etc, etc also has to be added in. Again, this is not unique to Debian. But it does get tiring.

On the upside, using apt-get (or one of the front ends) really is the best that can be had in the Linux world. I have a lot less problems using deb files then RPMs. That's not to say apt-get doesn't have it's own problems. For example, if you add or delete a package using apt-get, you *MUST* check which other packages will be added or deleted. For example, removing one small package can, for example *cough*, delete almost all of KDE. So, be careful when using apt-get.

After trying Debian for awhile, I decided to switch to Kubuntu. Since Kubuntu is based on Debian, much of what I said regarding Debian applies to Kubuntu. The main difference is that Kubuntu uses KDE.

I haven't spent much time in Kubuntu so I can't say much about it right now. More when I know more.

Slate has an interesting article about phages. As you may remember from your high school biology classes, a bacteriophage is a virus that infects bacteria.

Before the age of modern antibiotics, phages were used to treat some bacterial infections. But once antibiotics became widely used, only countries like the former Soviet Union continued to use them. Now that antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria are becoming more common, interest in phage therapy is spreading. Indeed, it is said that there may now be bacteria that only phages can effectively treat. Thus leading to a growing flow of people to the former Soviet bloc countries for treatment. YMMV. Use at your own risk. This is not an endorsement. I am not a doctor nor do I play one on TV. Insert disclaimer here.

Aloha!