Tread lightly on the things of earth : Tue, Nov 5, 2002

Tuesday, November 5, 2002

The begrudging acceptance of Apple. And now from the "It's about damn time" department: O'Reilly's Derrick Story writes on The begrudging acceptance of Apple by PCWorld, PCMag, Fortune, and Dell.

Although that obnoxious Dell dude hawking iPods would drive me crazy . . .
3:51:36 PM | See also apple

Stand Down: The left-right blog opposing an invasion of Iraq. I'm excited about adding Stand Down (RSS) to my news aggregator. [Body and Soul (November 1, 2002) via Lean Left]
3:16:24 PM | See also war iraq

Linux is even bigger phenomenon than it appears. Doc Searls returned from a Linux Lunacy Geek Cruise optimistic about Linux' future: What I Learned on Linux Lunacy: "The short of it is Linux is an even bigger phenomenon than it appears to be, and so is the open-source development model that produced it."

A key point:

The market wants generic $200 workstations that run generic operating systems and generic productivity applications. They don't want to pay more for the applications than they do for the workstations. In fact, they don't want to pay for anything other than expertise. And they don't want that expertise tied up in stuff that nobody else is in a position to understand.

Yes, yes, yes. And where appropriate, premium workstations can run Mac OS X, which in its Unix-ness meshes seamlessly with all the $200 Linux boxes. It's an IT world I could thrive in.
3:03:14 PM | See also linux open-source

QuickTime 6.0.2 installer glitch and fix. I tried installing QuickTime 6.0.2 for Mac OS X when it came out, but the install mysteriously failed and I never followed through as to why.

John Gruber over at Daring Fireball has the solution. (It's a boo-boo in the installer that affects systems upgraded to Perl 5.8.0.) Thanks, John.
2:49:57 PM | See also quicktime perl

Hmm, I'm a Zaahn. I barely have more hair. I love Farscape (recently [foolishly] canceled by the SciFi Channel). Seeing that Matt is a Bialar Chrais, I tried. What do you know, I'm my favorite character.

What Farscape Character are you?

1:46:13 PM | See also farscape

What to do if approached by a homeless person. And now for something completely non-angry: What should I do if I'm approached by a homeless person?

In contrast to much of what I prattle on about, this is the kind of thing that really matters.
12:59:03 PM | See also homeless charity

On the liability of being a Republican candidate.
I voted. Did you?

For the first time in my voting life today, I voted for people on the basis of their not being Republican. I usually consider party affiliation as much too black-and-white a way to identify my preferred candidates; I prefer to study the gradations among them. But I am so angry at the Republican party's hypocrisy and sellout to corrupt corporate interests that I wouldn't vote for a Republican today even if hell froze over.

(Graphic borrowed from Body and Soul.)
12:10:09 PM | See also vote