Tannishblog

Aside from my usual fare of left-handed political leftovers, todays postings come to you courtesy of Ubuntu linux. Being the geekiest person in my immediate surroundings has the benefit of my acruing old computer hardware from the family. Bits an pieces have accumulated over the years to where I can upgrade a box handed down from my mother in-law into a fairly useful workhorse. WIN98 is passe, so I investigated “the OTHER operating system,” you know, the one that is based on democratic ideals and not on capitalism.

As a newbie choosing the endless variants of linux (like the supermarket and its 100 brands of chocolate chip cookies), I leaned upon an article from my favorite geek publication - aside from the cyberguys catalog - MaximumPC, which featured an article about “making the switch” to linux. Ubuntu was their choice of distributions, so I took their recommendation.

Tonight, as I got home, I didn’t bother to turn on my WINXP rig. I started the new/old linux box and started doing my thing. As for first impressions - outside of gaming (which I love), there’s no reason not to give linux a try except for one caveat: some tinkering is still needed by the user. This is not an OPsys for my mother in-law quite yet. Due to resistance from the capitalistic software community, ready integration on such offerings as Real Player and other tools has yet to be smoothed out. Soon, though.

Meanwhile I bask in geekish glory while forgetting that I am yet a newbie. Great Fun!

A lot of talk in my political emails today about torture. Dahr Jamail’s Iraqi Dispatches points to TomDispatch refering to our great nation’s policy on un-torturing “detainees” and are not actually prisoners, but are held offshore in areas, delineated by chain link and barbed wire, that are not prisons. The NY Times joins the fray with a long article detailing images of the not-conflict of the un-prisoners at Gitmo.

All this denial make my head hurt, given that we speak in context of a war (its OK to use that word: its macho) that is not a police action or (gasp) nation-building. Our administration is so busy masking its actions, spinning its tales, that it cannot and has not functioned as a govorning body. Name one piece of new legislation in the last three years that didn’t cut taxes, fund the war, or take away money from long-standing government programs designed to aid people. At this writing I can’t think of any…

But I can recall a dozen time our un-leaders have passed the buck, stood “reso-loot,” or lied to the press and to the POTUS. I can recall a score of issues that our leaders have acted upon without due process, underhanded and secretive, that we learn about after the fact. And I can clearly see the billions of dollars of taxpayers money wasted in uncoordinated and unmanaged attempts to “rebuild Iraq.”

It makes my un-happy!