existence trainer

Only two things really: More bug fixing and more hardware regression testing. I think the Ubuntu community at large would take very kindly to pushing the release back to 10.06 so that there would be a couple of solid months of doing nothing else besides testing and fixing. I really want Ubuntu to succeed. 9.10 was way to buggy to be a proper release, and I'm afraid that Canonicals commitment to a regular schedule will trump making it as solid and bug-free as possible. Consider that Windows 7 had what seemed like almost a full year of beta testing, a couple of extra months to make Lucid the best Linux distro release to date would be a refreshing and appreciated change. Consider it, please.

From Merriam-Webster : demagogue : a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power There is probably no better description for what it is that Rush Limbaugh does.

I don't know what Obama has decided, but I'm very very worried. Its a terrible decision to have to make, and it will haunt his presidency either way. War is a horrific thing, and I can never really truly support a war, even if I think it is necessary. But I don't know if what is about to happen is necessary. I don't believe its largely about combat missions (though I'm sure its implied), but more about patrolling, providing security, and building a strong army/police force to combat the Taliban. Nonetheless if he increases troop levels, it will become a defining moment of his presidency. Not only he is going to have a very hard time with the base of his party, but it might taint all the good that he is trying to do (and prevent much of it if - and when - we get mired in a long, violent struggle). The Republicans will continue to lie about him - relying on the stupidly inane memes that Democrats don't support our troops, that he's cutting the military budget,...

Karmic Koala is out! I've been using it though the beta release, and overall I'm really impressed. There are a LOT of changes under the hood, which has given rise to some unfortunate instability, but the direction the distribution is going in seems to be good. There are the beginnings of a visual refresh going on as well - I hope for more in the future! The main annoyance I have is the large number of serious bugs that came in Karmic. For example, I couldn't burn a CD from Rhythmbox (it has subsequently been fixed, but for a couple of weeks was an annoying regression). There are also reports of data loss do to the switch to the new ext4 filesystem (bug report here ) - this makes me very worried about switching to ext4. For the rest of this post, though, I want to discuss what I hope for in the next version of Ubuntu, codenamed Lucid Lynx. Given that this is an LTS release, I think that, along with the normal package/application updates, the main foci of this release should ...

I'm so pissed at myself. My computer totally crashed (because I was using a development version that wasn't very stable), and I forgot to backup my fucking pictures. I'm super pissed. For future reference, here is what I need to backup on a crash or before big updates: Photos folder Music folder dev folder .purple folder .tomboy folder .tmp2 folder scribefire.sqlite file

check out mp3splt . Its not in the Jaunty repos, but it is in Karmic!

Here are some tools that Ubuntu, or Linux generally, seems to lack: A good WYSIWYG html editor. Up until about a year ago, I was pretty satisfied with quanta plus. Since then I have become increasingly disappointed with it, mainly because no one seems to be porting it to Qt4, or developing it substantially. What had such great potential seems to be languishing. KompoZer crashes a lot - I'm waiting for the new version to come out (still in alpha), but I'm less than certain it will be better (and NVU is dead). Bluefish - although its not a WYSIWYG editor, I still think it could be good if they'd ever release a new version that updates a lot of antiquated crap in there (like not knowing how to open a browser easily) Decent blogging software Mainly I use scribefire (I'm using it now) - its ok - but it only offers the simplest options for blogging. If I want any type of formating that goes beyond a bullet point, I've got to know my html (which it visually formats in a ve...

I'm beginning to get frustrated with certain aspects of the Ubuntu development cycle, and in this post I'm going to try my best to spell out my complaint and what I think should be done about it. My Complaint First, let me say that I'm a huge Ubuntu fan. Since Gutsy (when I first started using Ubuntu) each of the iterations of Ubuntu has made large, important strides to becoming a preeminent OS. Many of the things that annoyed me about the desktop experience have been have been fixed or minimized, and with the release of Jaunty I've had very few complaints about things not doing what I want/expect them to, very few crashes, and less annoyances than at any other time using a linux based OS. As I've written before, Jaunty is the first time a Linux vendor has released a distribution that I'd pretty much recommend to anyone. As you can see, I'm a very happy user. So my complaint then isn't about the great work being done on Ubuntu, its rather an end-user com...

I hope he does sue the US government - and I hope to hell he wins. This is so outrageously unacceptable. 7½ Years For Being Muslim ~ The Story Of Lakhdar Boumediene

Jaunty is very good. Its the first version of a linux distribution that I'd pretty much recommend to anyone to try (with only a few minor caveats about possible hardware issues and the fact that Linux users still can't watch netflix). It has made vast improvements over Hardy from a year ago. Its stable, snappy, and quite a number of annoyances that I onced experienced have been fixed or minimized. Below I go through these in more detail. Now, though I want to focus on what I hope for the next version of Ubuntu (codenamed "Karmic Koala"). Cloud computing is the wave of the future, so I'm very happy this development cycle is making this a focus. But I'm doubtful they will go far enough to really make a lot of difference for most people. What people want now is to be able to sync up there data with various computers they possess and with online services they rely on. To this effect: Evolution needs to sync seamlessly with Google calander, email, and contacts. Evo...

# /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'vol_id --uuid' to print the universally unique identifier for a # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 # / was on /dev/sda1 during installation UUID=7132a62f-0906-4831-bdc3-f8ba0427ca88 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1 # none was on /dev/sda5 during installation UUID=c903185e-8b77-49cd-bdcb-f2e8bc4228bd none swap sw 0 0 /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0 /dev/sda6 /media/storage1 ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 2 /dev/sdb1 /media/storage2 ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 2

Here are the posts where I've provided tutorials on how to get things working on either Linux in general or Ubuntu in particular: Accessing your Ubuntu Box from Anywhere My fstab Here are some quick troubleshooting tips I've encountered when using Ubuntu or the software on it: Import Openoffice Spreadsheet into a Writer Table Download Streaming Media on Linux Useful Intrepid Repos TOR Configuration in Ubuntu and Firefox Restore and Backup Virtualbox VDI files

Donnie Davis. Remember him? Well, in 2007 he made quite the splash with his video "The Bible Says" (you can see it here ). Well I just noticed that he's out with a new video. And wow!! The innuendo is much stronger than the last one, but I love it! Donnie Davies - Take My Hand - watch more funny videos Here are the lyrics (as best as I can make them out): Homosexuality . Homosexuality. Homosexuality is a heartbreaking and crippling disease. But there is something you can do about it:.   Will you come ? When you feel almighty power When I reach out to touch you will you come? Will you come inside the gates of heaven? Into eternal glory will you come? Are you bruised and broken Poisoned with deceit Do you stand for nothing Shattered by defeat Are you barely human All but dead inside Just a rotten soul By your own design Even though you're lusting for another man Swallow all your pride Reach up and take my hand And in the face of evil In the face of sin In the f...

Over the past couple of weeks, I have experience a larger number of stubborn problems on my Ubuntu Intrepid machine. Here are just a couple of the problems I've been experiencing: A number of annoying Firefox problems. Two in particular: (1) When I'm downloading files, sometimes firefox will tell me that its got just a few more seconds to download when in fact it has finished downloading. This is annoying because it leaves *.part files all over the place. (2) When I shut down firefox, it has become more frequent that it doesn't fully shut down, and instead I have to go into the system monitor to kill it manually. VLC stopped working for me on *.mp4 and *.wmv files. In fact the only sorts of videos it seems to play consistently are *.mpeg files. And yes, I have all the codecs installed (so fuck off). I have to use mplayer instead. When I insert my flash drive into the USB port, it no longer automatically mounts it. Instead I have to go to Places->Computer and double click...

The tip can be found here . Basically, here is what you do: Create a new Writer Table with the number of columns and rows you need In Calc, select and copy the range of cells you want to import into Writer In Writer, use Paste Special below or above the Writer table (not in the table, yet). For 'Selection', choose either "Formatted text [RTF]" or "HTML (HyperText Markup Language)". This creates a temporary table. Select and copy the contents of the newly created (but badly formatted) temporary table. Paste the contents of the temporary table into the original table you created in the first step. Delete the temporary table.

Back in April, when I was using Hardy, I wrote this about what I'd like to see in future versions of Ubuntu. Now that Intrepid is out, its time to re-evalute the list to see what made it and what didn't A GUI wrapper for utf: YES. Its called gutf. That said, I still haven't figured out how to set up internet connection sharing with it :( Until then, I'll stick with Firestareter Two-way synchronization between evolution and Google calander: YES (at least partial). In Hardy there was one-way synchronization. In Intrepid, although its somewhat hidden, its there. My Impression - not ready for prime time. For better or worse, cloud computing is going to be a big part of the way we do things. Google, of all companies, will be front and center in this. Advanced Desktop settings already pre-installed (or some simplified version of it). NO. This still confuses me - if you are going to make compiz a default part of the Desktop out of the box, then why not have a configuration to...

If you are interested in Debian (esp. because Lenny was just released - yay), but don't want to install it on your system, let me introduce you to the Debian Live website. Here you can download live cds of this most venerable of distributions.