Karmic is not turning out to be a very successful ubuntu release for me. I am hitting far more bugs than usual that are also not being fixed within the updates. The bugs have been reported but do not seem a priority. One is for example that udev/kernel do something weird and then keep eating cpu/memory. This leads to the computer having swapped everything useful out at some point. So after a while, the computer is slow as hell (unusably slow, especially coming out of screen lock). Restarting udev solves the problem but 1) I always forgot to do that and 2) it makes removable media not work. So I moved to current lucid on my main machine which seems to be working fine with me hitting no bugs yet (that’s rather odd, I generally hit many a landmine going with a development release).

The other bug I’m hitting on my netbook. The standard netbook interface is flashy but 1) slow 2) unusable with the keyboard (there is keyboard navigation, but it is so incredibly buggy it is useless). Standard GNOME is also too much for the small screen and low memory with no swap. So I am using fluxbox on it (actually I almost started using fluxbox on my main machine …) it is spartan, but after you set things up, it is really fast. Though the issue that took me the longest was the long time after login before the desktop would appear. It seems that someone had the bright idea of making the xsplash thing the default for everything with a timeout of 15s. There is no configuration, no way I could find to easily kill the splash save for removing the xsplash binary. It is a hardcoded hack that gets automatically run for EVERY session, regardless of whether the session supports it or not.

Who’s brainless idea was that? That’s why I had gdm sessions have a .desktop file, so that I can put easily readable properties there about what the session can do. So add something like X-GDM-Supports-xsplash=true godddamn it! How hard is it to implement? Far easier than a flashy pointless splashscreen which should not exist in the first place.

And that’s the other thing. What’s wrong with people who add splashscreen to anything. Splashscreen are generally annoying and make startup slower. Especially if they are moving. You are competing for very scarse resources to simply move useless pixels around. Problem is that even if you time things to make sure that resources are not being taken up, you can’t test every configuration (i.e. someone not using GNOME, obviously that configuration was not tested). The boot looks just fine with xsplash removed. I have not done timings with GNOME, but using fluxbox the boot to desktop time goes down by about 10 seconds.

I’m just mad since I wasted so much time trying to solve this mess.

Now that spending money is considered free speech (extreme interpretation of the phrase “money talks”), I am wondering when shooting people will also be considered free speech. I mean shooting people (and before that, poking others with very sharp objects) is a longstanding tradition in political discourse. As the saying goes: “You get a lot further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.” Obviously, using guns in speech is instrumental.

Another consequence of the recent decision: If corporations are now considered people for political speech, shouldn’t they also acquire all the other rights guaranteed by the constitution? I think they should be able to vote. I’m starting 100 new corporations just for that purpose right now …

Well apparently according to a new law in Ireland blasphemy is now illegal. Blasphemy is defined as: publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defenses permitted.

To me, that law satisfies blasphemy by its own definition. While not strictly an atheist myself, I would conjecture that simply the fact of making blasphemy illegal, is “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by atheism. Atheism is a religion; an atheist believes in the nonexistence of something, which is just as much an unsupported proposition as other religions. To be religious means that you believe in a fixed number of gods. Atheists believe that this number is 0, Christians believe this number is 1, etc…. Actually Christians also believe 3=1, meaning that Christianity is a mod 2 religion. The only non-religion is agnosticism, which simply doesn’t specify the number of gods in existence. I suppose as an agnostic you also can’t specify, which domain the number of gods exists in. Common sense would suggest that the number of gods is a number in , but as we have seen it is also possible that this number is in . I personally think the number of gods is .

I am sure now I can’t go to Ireland.

So apparently the TSA has gone totally nuts after the christmas bomb incident.

One of the voices of reason is Nate Silver. Nate calculated the (astronomically low) odds of being on one of those flights affected by those 3 attempted terrorist acts over the past 8 years. Do note the word “attempted.” There has not be a single successful one since 2001. So over 8 years, 0 people died. Each year, approximately 45000 Americans die from lack of health insurance. Let me make that bold: Approximately 45000 Americans die from lack of health insurance. Hmm, that’s not enough, let’s make that red and bold and larger: Approximately 45000 Americans die from lack of health insurance.

That’s better. Now notice the difference. Even if we include 2001 in our statistics (and we can include all of recorded terrorism history in the US if we want to), that’s still less than one tenth of the deaths in 10 years (or a hundered years) by terrorism, than in one year by health insurance.

Now for the crosswalks. When my wife interviewed at one company in San Diego, she asked why there wasn’t a crosswalk across the busy street that was between the two buildings the company was renting. Apparently the city refused to put in a crosswalk if there wasn’t a deadly accident on the street.

And now thanks to someone who didn’t manage to blow up his crotch (or actually that’s the only thing he managed to blow up). We won’t be able to use blankets for the last hour of the flight? They will frisk babies (and take their blankets?). They are endangering the health of millions of passengers to protect us from 0 deaths in the past 8 years. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the lack of blankets would have prevented a single terrorism attempt in the entire history of terrorism. I think that’s bordering on criminal on the part of TSA.

But let’s reiterate the main numbers: 45,000 each year die from lack of health insurance, in the past 8 years, nobody died from airplane terror.

Reading some fun Olympia Snowe quotes. So apparently bringing up the fact that republicans voted for a hugely deficit raising Medicare expansion prompted our Olympia to note that “Dredging up history is not the way to move forward.”

Well, true if you want to work together with someone, it is generally not good to bring up their past, especially if it contradicts their position now. People generally hate be reminded of such things. On the other hand, if the other side is not working with you and is calling you tax-and-spender, then it is just fine. In fact, when somebody accuses you of raising the deficit, that’s what you do: you tell them “WTF, you raised it WAAAAY more on a similar (health) issue just 6 years ago.” “Dredging up history” is talking about republican votes in the 60s.

Of course republicans are not currently in control and hence you can’t point to any legislation they are passing now. So you look at the nearest time that they were in control and you look at that. That’s the best prediction of what the republicans would be doing now. It’s like a baseball player says during the game that the other team sucks at the bat, and then when he is reminded that he sucked even worse in the previous inning, then saying something about “dredging up history” and unfair criticism.

The defense that the economy is now in the shitter and therefore we can’t spend on healthcare is also crap. I mean, in 2003 it was in the shitter just as well. We were looking at two wars (starting one of them), we were barely recovering from 2001 …