The Caffeinated Penguin

Posted By matt on October 31, 2003

Been a busy couple of days.

So, let's see. is apparently involved in a new student group that I'm going to be an associate member in. It's called “QRI for the straight guy” or something akin to that. Basically, it's a bunch of eclectic sex stuff without being full of drama queens. For example, there will be roundtable discussions on legalizing homosexual marriages and such. Of course, I may have to play the “straight man” (pun intended) and argue against them, since a group of people who all agree is kind of boring.

And Simon scored some digits tonight. He was happy. I got to do a little matchmakerish stuff.

Then we went back to his dorm and laughed at the drunken freshmen on his floor.

And I had ginger beer for the first time. I liked it.

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In the news:

Apple is not my favorite group of people, considering that when they released the new version of their OS, they basically said “yeah, there were some major security holes in the old one, but we're not going to fix them, buy the new one”. Not even MS does that. (link) Note that the “major hole” is major in the Unix sense of “if you enable this thing that's enabled by default, and do this other thing, you might be able to exploit this bug which allows you to become the user that the thing runs as, which is usually someone with no permissions on your computer”, as opposed to the standard Windows flaws of “don't open any email or surf the web because people can destroy your computer”.

Oh, and iDVD is crippled to only let you record 1.5 hour DVD's. To record more, you need to buy their $400 pro tools thing. Or, just download some free software tools that work properly.

Vietnam says: stop piracy, eliminate Microsoft and are moving their whole government and (and this is the kicker) all PC's made in Vietnam, to Free/Open Source Software.

SCO is more nuts than we all thought. Best quote: “From the outside, it appears so bizarre and so ridiculous that I fear their argument is being misstated”. The sad thing is, I don't think it has. I think they really are serious, at least serious enough to drive stock prices up.

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In the blogging is dangerous dept:
MS Fires temp for what he said in his blog
and
Blogger threatened with a libel suit”.

I can see the second one, maybe, but the first one? He basically said “look, MS buys G5's too”. People KNOW THIS. They make Office for OS X. Doesn't it make sense that they have Macs to test it on?

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And, it looks like I'm going to give Debian a shot again, as a candidate for the file server. I've always preferred the Debian layout to RedHat's, as it's more classic Unix, like Solaris. However, 3.0r0 had nasty installer issues. Liz used 3.0r1 at work and had no problems, so I guess they must have fixed it. So, I'm going to grab her cd's and give it a whirl.

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At URI, 2 students have been kicked out of the dorms for anti-semitic graffiti under the school's “hate crime” rules (they're not called that. They have a nicer name, I forget what).

This brings up the whole idea of hate crimes again. I think hate crime laws are stupid. What's the difference if I spray paint “die whitey” on your door vs. if I splay paint “die fatty” on your door? Oh, the first is a hate crime because it's racial in nature, but the second isn't? Come on, they should both be equally serious. Race/sexual orientation/religion/etc. are all arbitrary conditions that should have as little effect on penalties for crimes as hair color/eye color/weight/etc. They are all equally serious crimes.

The above said, I have no problem with them being kicked out for graffiti, I have a problem that it was because of what they wrote, not that they wrote it.

But, what do you expect, it's URI. They're a bunch of touchey-feelies, make you feel good, enforce diversity, etc. anyway.

I need to repost my criticism of the College of Engineering's Acceptable Use Policy. It was great. I basically objected to the wording because it said “don't do anything that might offend anyone”. Well, I have no idea what might offend anyone, so I asked. I basically got told “You're a white male. You therefore cannot be offended, your opinions of decency don't matter.” Malcom J. Spaulding, who was representing the COE's diversity committee. (And don't even think about suing me for libel- I have witnesses who were in that meeting.)

And just remember folks, we have the Society of Women Engineers, the National Society of Black Engineers, and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, but is there a Society of White Engineers? Of course not; that would be racist and you would get called a Nazi.

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