From the Washington Post:
If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.
Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts. Read more »
Can I get someone to hum me a D sharp? Kthx.
better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus town
cat /etc/passwd >list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice >giftlist
santa claus town
who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | grep bad || good
for (goodness sake) {
be good
}
better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus town
Merry Christmas from all of us here at Guerrilla Tech Support, to all y’all wherever you are.
I installed KDE 4.2b1 yesterday. Included in this beta are updates to Kontact, piles of new Kwin effects and Plasmoids, the new and improved notification panel/system tray, and all kinds of other goodies.
A quick note: I had a bitch of a time upgrading. kde-icons-oxygen wanted to overwrite some files in koffice-data-kde4, and aptitude threw an absolute shit-fit over it and just refused to go any further. I ended up solving it by running “sudo dpkg -i –force-overwrite”on the .deb file, which went to Purgatory in /var/cache/apt/archives when apt puked it up. It was a simple fix once I wrapped my head around dpkg’s “force” options (you can get help with the “force” options by running “dpkg –force-help”), but a momentary headache.
Okay, on to the cool stuff! First, a look at Kwin’s new Desktop Cube plugin… Read more »
Wow, I got a lot of hits on that last post, which got me to wondering what others have been saying in the last 48 hours or so. So here’s a semi-random sample of some of the Linux/free software/free culture bloggers that I read and enjoy, and their reactions to the Obama victory.
Penguin Pete – I Have Never Been This Shocked
My concession is that I have been too cynical before. I had given up on my country. I had seen too many former friends in the past eight years turn to enemies because they suddenly came out Red (as in Red State) and I would not be a party to their terror-mongering. I had seen too much civilization rot back to savagery. I had seen too much racism. I had seen too much enlightenment torn down by too much ignorance.
Roy Schestowitz – Change, Hopefully?
There will be a new guy and a new political party in the House. My personal feeling, however, is that the United States administration has done nothing to rid itself of corruption, despite the depression that seems to be coming as a result of deregulation. This means that those running the country will continue to be mega-corporations which fund and contribute to decision-making figures like Obama.
Aaron Seigo – Overcoming Cynicism
Can we overcome our cynicism and believe? .. and not in a God we can not see or in people we build up to heights they can never live up to .. but in each other as we are right now, tonight?
Works With U – Now The Real Work Begins
We’ve done a lot of things right — and a lot of things wrong — as a nation. Regardless of whom you supported in the US Presidential Election, it’s time for us to capture the energy we’re witnessing this evening and move forward. We’ve all got a lot of work to do.
Hi there. You know me, I’m Pete Daniels. The guy who wrote this. Today I’m going to write something a little different.
Last night I (of all people) was in downtown St. Paul, at the Minnesota DFL election day party. Now one thing you have to understand here is that the last time I was in downtown St. Paul I was assaulted and gassed and brutalized by the police state at the Republican National Convention. That was only two months ago, and my feelings about it are still fairly raw. Going back to St. Paul was slightly weird for me.
After Obama’s victory speech last night a few of us who were there went down to the place we were attacked on Labor Day. It was… an emotional experience for me, one that I’m not even going to try to convey here. No offense, but you just wouldn’t get it.
The whole night was incredible, and needless to say it was a hell of a party. I firmly expected a Democratic victory and I didn’t think it would be close, but holy shit. As Nancy Pelosi said in her press conference early in the evening, it would be “a wave upon a wave.” Fifteen seats in the House, four or five in the Senate. The rejection of the South Dakota abortion bill. And state after state, a wave upon a wave for Barack Obama. As we were getting ready to leave for the party last night ABC called Pennsylvania for Obama, and I looked to the person I was with and said “It’s over. This is what you’re going to see for the rest of the night.” And damned if it wasn’t.
Last night in St. Paul grown men wept and people danced on Kellougg Boulevard. Strangers embraced, children stared, and everyone got totally hammered. A few blocks away, two Americans (who by the way, love each other very much) stood on a street corner and watched the lights reflecting off the river and listened to history happening above us, and in a small way took back the spirit of our city from a great darkness.
Do I sound like I drank the Kool Aid? I did not. I’ve never made any bones about the fact that I wouldn’t vote for Obama, and I did not. I said in the post I linked to above that Barack Obama was “not the change we need,” and I stand by that. We’re in deep shit. America’s on the ropes and the world’s on the brink. We have serious problems and we need serious solutions, and no one man is going to magically fix things, and to project that sort of expectation on anyone instead of taking responsibility for our own lives and our kids’ futures is childish. Grow up. No one man can be “the change we need.”
We are the change we need. We have to be, or we’re finished. But even if Barack Obama getting elected President isn’t the change we need, it may very well be the chance we get.
Let none of that diminish the fact that we saw history last night. In twenty years, you’ll remember where you were.
-p.
For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.
Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage or pay their doctors’ bills or save enough for their child’s college education. There’s new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.
There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can’t solve every problem.
But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it’s been done in America for 221 years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand…
This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.
It can’t happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other…
In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people.
…Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
Here’s a mostly unchanged flier snapshot. I think the only changes I made were rejiggering the margins and guides to even it out a little bit. Maybe I realigned an image or two. Oh yeah, I moved the pages around too, which is something I’ve been meaning to do for weeks now.
Also, this morning I posted an unbranded version of this flier to spreadlinux.com, a new site devoted to community-based Linux marketing. They’re brand-new as far as I’m aware, but they’ve got a great thing going over there and you should really check them out.
Have-a the phun!
So here’s an LJ meme.
Ten Things I Wish I Could Say To Ten Different People:
Good afternoon, friends. Let’s have a talk. It’s about Barack Obama. I’m concerned about you, America. It seems like you keep falling for the same tired shit over and over, and I’m concerned you’re getting played again. Now, I know you’re all “hope-y” and excited and everything, but please, folks. Let’s be rational about this. Let’s all take off those silly-ass rose colored Hope Glasses ™, and assess the situation like adults.
Let’s start abroad.
Okay, foreign policy thus covered, let’s move on to the home front.
So where does that really leave us, America? What does that leave us with, other than the same tired platitudes about Hope and Change that the Democrats try to feed us every four years? What exactly are we talking about changing here, Barack?
Don’t mistake me here. Barack Obama in the White House would be a “change,” and even, compared to the terrorist junta that currently occupies said space, a “positive change.” But when you cut all the bullshit out, here’s the bottom line. Barack Obama’s change means “a change in the way the empire is run.”
And deep down, America, you know that’s not the change we need.
-p.
Okay, I’ve finally gotten to the point where I think I can call this a beta. Tonight I think I’m gonna strip the Guerrilla Tech stuff out and upload it to KDE Look (is there a more appropriate, artwork-specific site for this sort of thing? I totally don’t know of one). I’ve printed a couple of hard copies, they don’t look like total shit. Outstanding issues remaining:
Have at it, heathens.
(Yes, it’s Yet Another Firefox Extension Review Post. Hey, it’s a well-established blogger tradition, and I’ve never done one of these before.)
So I’ve been using Tree Style Tabs now for about a week and a half, and I’ve gotta say, it’s phenominal. Here’s a screenshot:
So as you can see, I’ve got my tabs on the left (try it, I was uncertain at first, but it’s so much better), but you can put the tab bar on any edge, even just the plain-jane default bottom if you’re that hooked on it (although it kind of defeats the whole point of the extension and I don’t recommend it). My first thought and several other people’s when I told them was “But I don’t have a widescreen display! This is gonna suck ass!” Never fear. You can set the tab bar to auto-hide, and you can adjust both the “full” and “hidden” sizes. In this screenshot, my tab bar is expanded, and it’s big enough that you can read most long titles, but not so big that it dominates my 1200×1024 display. When it auto-hides, I’ve got the width set to about 60px; I can just see the favicons so I can still take in my tabs at a glance.
Okay, so that’s good stuff, but there’s lots more.
Enjoy!
-p.
