From Pine View Farm

Phillybits did a little digging and foung the the Rightwing’s views on the Fourth Amendment, as represented by those who frequent the Free Republic blog, seem to have changed.

G-Nashing of Teeth and Great OutRage greeted reports that Mr. Clinton may have tried warrantless searches.

Where is the outrage now?

. . . have become pretty much a waste of time. They have become so stylized as to resemble nothing more than a minuet in a grade B movie about the prelude to the French Revolution, while, outside the doors of the palace, the ruffians riot freely.

Now, I’m not much of a Newt Gingrich fan, but he says something worthwhile here:

For 2008, we should honor the example of Lincoln and Douglas with a rich presidential dialogue that respects Americans in their role as citizens of a republic. We can start down this path with three changes to the presidential debates format.

First, the morass of rules and restrictions that have governed presidential debates should be eliminated. They are the product of campaign consultants determined to mask the weaknesses of their candidates. Campaign professionals prefer more controlled communication, such as campaign advertising, to exert the maximum possible influence on the voter rather than truly letting voters see the candidate in action. The result is a canned, formulaic charade in which the candidates are trained to use these rules as crutches to steer their responses to poll-tested phrases that appeal to certain core demographics.

He goes on to recommend

I find the first two recommendations extremely sensible. I’m not sure about the third, but it is certain worthy of, well, you know, debate.

At this point, the candidates’ debates are not debates–they are a series of mini-speeches (by the way, what was the bulge?). We would be better served if we could observe canditates actually taking to, with, and even against each other, rather than right past each other, as they do today.

And, frankly, I think the candidates would be better served by a chance to get out of their handlers’ straightjackets and into some straight talk.

Saturday:

I had to go to the store today to get some ingredients for my chili.

What a zoo. The checkout lines were reaching back into the aisles. I’m convinced that you can predict how people drive based on how they push grocery carts. I just relaxed and watched the floorshow.

We got the first flurry at 1:15 p. Then nothing for an hour. It started again about 2:15 p. (temperature 37 degrees F) and is going good now (4:00 p.); even though the current temperature is still above freezing, it’s starting to stick to bare earth and lawns.

6:15 p.–Still coming down, some slight cover on lawns and bare earth, but melting on the roads and sidewalks. 33 degrees F.

(Whoops! Where’s my blog. It’s gone. Go to the server. Reboot. Hmmmm, can’t get to the internet. First rule of trouble-shooting: make sure it’s plugged in. Change out the network cable. Everything’s back. Whew! I was in no mood to spend hours doing detective work on a snowy Sunday, but I’m going to back the darn thing up tomorrow and burn the back-ups to CD.)

8:00 p.–About 3/4 inch accumulation, temperature just dropping below freezing. Starting to stick to the street and the sidewalk.

Sunday Morning:

7:00 a.–There’s clearly been some wind overnight and mild drifting. Plus snow is sticking to the screen of the porch.

It’s high enough that, when I opened the door, snow was about 1 1/2 inches higher than the sill. The best place I could think of for an accurate measurement of accumulation was the bed cover of my truck: 5 1/2 inches of moderately heavy snow.

Ed has already ploughed the street at least once and is just back for a second go.

The good news: Somehow my Inquirer delivery person, who lives about 2 miles up the road, managed to get the paper to me on time. He did good. I think I’ll write a letter.

24 degrees F.

9:00 a.: Eight inches on the truck now. Because the snow started when the temperature was above freezing, there’s an icy layer under the snow. I shovelled out the truck for the first time. I’m old; I believe in shovelling early and often–a series of small jobs, rather than one huge one.

According to the radio, New Jersey Transit is suspending bus service for now.

10:20 a.: It seems to have pretty much stopped with 8 1/2 inches on the truck. I dug out. I’ll be posting some pictures later.

Here.

Mr. Barr was the Congressman who presented the case for removing Mr. Clinton before the Senate (disclaimer: a case which I considered to be a silly and stupid pretext for a political action). Mr. Barr, though, was sincere in his beliefs.

He is still consistently sincere. But now he’s on the outside. He spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference this week:

“Are we losing our lodestar, which is the Bill of Rights?” Barr beseeched the several hundred conservatives at the Omni Shoreham in Woodley Park. “Are we in danger of putting allegiance to party ahead of allegiance to principle?”

Barr answered in the affirmative. “Do we truly remain a society that believes that . . . every president must abide by the law of this country?” he posed. “I, as a conservative, say yes. I hope you as conservatives say yes.”

But nobody said anything in the deathly quiet audience. Barr merited only polite applause when he finished, and one man, Richard Sorcinelli, booed him loudly. “I can’t believe I’m in a conservative hall listening to him say [Bush] is off course trying to defend the United States,” Sorcinelli fumed.

At least Mr. Barr’s principles are not just principles of convenience.

(This makes a lot. What’s left over can be cooled in the refrigerator, then put into resealable plastic bags and frozen.)

1 pkg. black or red beans, soaked overnight or 2 cans canned beans (red and black can be mixed).

1 can diced tomatoes.

1 sm. can tomato sauce.

1 lb. ground beef (variations: steak, cut into 1/2 inch cubes; venison, prepared similarly).

1 med. onion, chopped.

1/2 doz. med. mushrooms, sliced and quartered.

1 bell pepper (I used 1/2 bell pepper and 1 Italian pepper today).

2 cloves garlic, minced, or equivalent dried garlic.

1/4 cp. olive oil.

2 tbs. chili powder or more to taste.

1/4 tsp. rosemary.

1/2 tsp. basil or more to taste.

1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper (all together now) or more to taste.

1 dry, crushed habanero pepper if available or hot pepper flakes to taste.

2 cps. water, approximately.

dash of salt.

Parsley.

Bay leaf.

Saute vegetables and garlic in oil. When onions are translucent, add beef and brown over medium heat until thoroughly browned.

Add chili powder.

Add tomato and sauce.

Add beans and enough water to cover and remaining spices.

Cover pot and bring to boil over medium heat.

Simmer approximately two hours. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

Serve with freshly chopped onion, grated cheese, pickled halapeno pepper slices for garnishes.

(Aside) I’m planning to serve it with these hushpuppies.

The current Federal Administration is willing to subvert anything to political ends:

“The President has cheapened the entire intelligence community by dragging us into his fantasy world,” says a longtime field operative of the Central Intelligence Agency. “He is basing this absurd claim on the same discredited informant who told us Al Qaeda would attack selected financial institutions in New York and Washington.”

Within hours of the President’s speech Thursday claiming his administration had prevented a major attack, sources who said they were current and retired intelligence pros from the CIA, NSA, FBI and military contacted Capitol Hill Blue with angry comments disputing the President’s remarks.

(snip)

Intelligence pros say much of the information used by Bush in an attempt to justify his increased spying on Americans by the National Security Agency, trampling of civil rights under the USA Patriot Act, and massive buildup of the Department of Homeland Security, now the nation’s largest federal bureaucracy, was “worthless intel that was discarded long ago.”

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of “cherry-picking” intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

You can read the entire article here.

Once again, the Iraq War is a war based on lies. Our sons and daughters are in harm’s way for lies. (My son in reality. Others’ sons and daughters, some in reality, some metaphorically.)

And this is compassionate? This is conservatism?

I don’t know about you, Gentle Reader, but I am tired of the lies and of the liars.

Tomorrow’s forecast, from weather dot com.

Cloudy with snow showers developing during the afternoon. High 38F. Winds ENE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 60%.

Tomorrow night’s forecast, from the same place:

Periods of snow. Low 29F. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 80%. Snow accumulating 4 to 6 inches.

And Sunday’s forecast calls for snow up through about 3 p. m.

Meanwhile, the best forecaster in the area predicts the following:

Metroweather Meterologist Pat Pagano is calling for five to ten inches in New Castle County. Meanwhile, the National Weather Service says northern Delaware could be in-line for up to one foot of snow this weekend. The National Weather Service says Kent and Sussex Counties could get three to eight inches, with the heavier amounts expected well inland. The storm system is developing down south, in the Mississippi River Valley, then is expected to start tracking north, with the snow expected to start falling on Delaware around midday Saturday. A Winter Storm Watch is already up, and will be in effect from Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning.

I predict that there is no bread and milk left in any of the grocery stores. After all, this is North Wilmington. The nearest grocery store for anyone is a three-day wagon ride over bad roads, so, whenever snow is predicted, all residents must stop at the local General Store and buy all the bread and milk in sight.

Who knows, if we get the maximum predicted ten inches of snow, we might be marooned in our log cabins and prairie sod huts for almost two or three hours. Except for those brave enough to don their mukluks and strap on snow shoes for the grueling hike to the local general store or equivalent.

Gosh, with ten whole inches of snow on the ground, it make take almost 10 or 15 minutes to get there.

Can’t do without that Wonder Bread and Sweet Milk.

Follow the link for useful information to determine whether your version of Java is vulnerable and to see how to get the fixes. And the author is right: The Sun website is somewhat confusing indecipherable.

Sun Microsystems issued updates to fix seven serious security problems with its Java software that nasty Web sites and online attackers could use to take over machines running the software.

Here:

Thanks to The Register.

From Security Focus, something to chew on:

The Google subpoena fight isn’t really about the anonymous data at issue here today. It is really about the way the government can “deputize” unwilling private companies who collect and maintain massive databases to act as their agents in the future. Want someone’s credit report? Don’t subscribe to Experian and subject yourself to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, just whip out a subpoena. Want to engage in massive warrantless domestic surveillance of e-mail communications? Don’t mess with FISA, Title III, ECPA, or even any Presidential inherent authority. Just pass a law (like the ones just passed in Europe) mandating that ISPs and phone companies retain such data, and then subpoena not just one person’s emails, but everyone’s – as long as it is relevant to some issue in some litigation somewhere. Let’s just create a single massive database of what everyone is doing all the time, and let anyone “dip” into it whenever it is deemed to be relevant to settling some dispute.

TOKYO (Reuters) – “Welcome home, Master,” says the maid as she bows deeply, hands clasped in front of a starched pinafore worn over a short pink dress.

This maid serves not some aristocrat but a string of pop-culture-mad customers at a “Maid Cafe” in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, long known as a Mecca for electronics buffs but now also the center of the capital’s “nerd culture.”

“When they address you as ‘Master’, the feeling you get is like a high,” says Koji Abei, a 20-year-old student having coffee with a friend at the Royal Milk Cafe and Aromacare.

(As you can see, I’m catching up on my Guardian reading tonight.)

Well worth thinking about:

“We can’t leave Iraq. We simply can’t,” says Colonel Wilkerson. “We’re there, we’ve done it, and we cannot leave.” Kerry’s position is similar. A Pew research survey in December showed that 48% of Americans believe that invading Iraq was wrong. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll last week revealed that 57% of Americans support military intervention if Iran builds itself a nuclear capability.

With each exposé of torture, subjugation, blunder and plunder you keep hearing that Americans have lost their innocence. Somehow they always find it again just in time to buy into the next bad idea.

Isn’t it time to start thinking critically?

My brother once requested a birthday cake with Milky Way icing.

The recipe for the icing: Take seven Milky Way bars. Melt them. Spread over cake.

It was pretty good, actually, but it dried harder than regular icing. The resulting cake had sort of a Milky Way shell around it.

But this is the first time I’ve heard of Snickers Pie:

It is, they say, the unhealthiest recipe ever published: Antony Worrall Thompson’s Snickers pie contains no less than five Snickers bars and boasts an incredible 1,250 calories per serving. When they gave the pudding Death By Chocolate its name, they were clearly envisaging a comparatively slow suicide. Calling Snickers pie a dessert is like describing a precipitous leap into the lion’s enclosure as a day at the zoo.

From The Guardian, 1865:

From that evening Beethoven would not give another concert. The deaf master could no longer hear his own music. This was particularly remarkable in the first allegro [of Fidelio]. Without knowing it, he was already from 10 to 12 bars in advance of the orchestra when it began the pianissimo. Beethoven, to signify this in his own way, had crept under the desk.

From the New York Times (registration required):

Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers.

America Online and Yahoo, two of the world’s largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely.

And the internet falls into the hands of the corporations.

Sheesh.

A number of folks think that the current Federal Administration’s aversion to legitimatizing its eavesdropping with warrants is that it is not doing targeted eavesdropping, but that it is “data mining.”

This post gives an extremely clear description of data mining:

Most Americans don’t understand what is meant by “data mining,” a digital “fishing expedition.” To clarify what’s happening, I’ve created a hypothetical scenario: Suppose that my daughter is in India visiting her in laws. I call her to wish her a happy birthday. Instead of dialing the country code for India, 91, I dial the country code for Pakistan, 92; and instead of dialing the city code for Bombay, 22, I dial the city code for Karachi, 21. I make a transposition error. As a result, instead of getting my daughter’s extended family, I reach the office of the “Jihad R Us” madrasah. When I am greeted in Urdu, I realize my mistake and hang up. Meanwhile, the National Security Agency computers monitoring international calls note that I have contacted “an organization that is affiliated with al-Qaida.”

In addition to phone traffic, the NSA computers have access to all my personal and financial data. Alerted by my call, their software scans my digital records and finds that I recently made a contribution, by means of my Visa card, to an organization in Pakistan – they don’t care that it was for humanitarian assistance to earthquake refugees. At this point, the NSA computers flag me as a “possible terrorist sympathizer;” their software decision logic, their algorithm looks at my data and computes my “threat score” – much like the FICO score assigned to determine credit worthiness. Because I have a threat score above a certain threshold, the NSA software makes an algorithmic decision to monitor my phone calls, read my email, and check my financial transactions. The NSA computer system goes “fishing” in my personal data. This is “data mining;” looking for patterns in massive amounts of data. In this case the NSA software is looking for actions – phone calls, money transfers – that indicate an al-Qaida supporter.

In other words, they are looking for anything.

And they haven’t found it.

As we say in the computer biz, it’s led to a flood of data, but no infomation. But it gives the current Federal Administration the masturbatory idea that it’s doing something useful.

Face it, these are folks who don’t read.

They sacrifice our privacy to their incompetence.

And the sad truth is that, when they take our privacy, it does not reduce their incompetence.

The Onion’s prediction was wrong.

The Sprint “crime deterrent” ad is the best so far. GoDaddy is number two.

(See the ads here.)

I hope I’m as spry as Mick Jagger when I’m his age. Damn, I must not have had enough sex, drugs, and rock and roll when I was younger.

All the ad agencies in the world can’t make Pepsi taste better than Coke.

The true Mission Impossible: “Earth to Tom Cruise. Earth to Tom Cruise . . .”

Anheuser-Busch has lost its touch (except for any ad involving the Clydesdales). It’s time to bring back the Bud Bowl. Or the frogs, or something.

Ameriquest is under investigation. Their ad agency should be, too.

The Hummer ad had it right. They are monsters. Reminds me of this great old movie.

A razor with five blades? This is getting really silly. One blade was enough for my Granddaddy.

Watching the game reminds me of one of the things that disguishes the Baseball Yankees. The pinstripe jerseys show only numbers, not names.

No football game can live up to the Super Bowl hype, unless the 1958 Giants-Colts game could come again. I have grainy black-and-white snapshot memories of that game from my father’s watching it. Including Alam Ameche’s game-winning touchdown.

This has been a damn good game. Even though no game could live up to the hype.

If Unitas had been quarterbacking Seattle, down 11 with a minute to go, Seattle would have had realistic expectations of actually pulling this one out. Johnny U. could do things like that.

3 cps. flour.

1 pkg. yeast.

1 cp. lukewarm water.

5 tbs. olive oil, approximately.

2 cloves garlic, minced, or equivalent dried minced garlic or garlic powder. Or more if you like.

Salt to taste.

2 tbs. dried oregano, or to taste.

1/2 med. onion, chopped.

4 med. or 2 large mushrooms, sliced.

Sliced pepperoni.

1 reg. can peeled tomatoes (cut up) or one reg. can diced tomatoes.

1 sm. can tomato sauce.

1 cp. or more shredded mossarella cheese.

Freshly ground black pepper.

Proof yeast in water.

Make a mound of the flour on a board and make a depression in the top.

Put 1 tbs. oil and a pinch of salt in the depression.

Add the water/yeast mixture a little at a time, working it into the flour by hand.

Knead the dough until it is smooth. When done, it should be smooth, firm, pliable, and not sticky. Add more water or flour if needed.

Lightly oil a bowl, place the dough in the bowl, brush oil on the surface of the dough, cover, and place in a warm place to rise until doubled in size (about 1 1/2 hrs.).

Meanwhile, put about 3 tbs. oil in a sauce pan and heat slowly over low heat. Add the garlic and saute briefly. Add the tomatoes, sauce, and 1 tbs. oregano, and bring to a simmer. Taste and add oregano, black pepper, and garlic as needed. (It’s the oregano that disguishes pizza sauce.)

After sauce is simmering slowly, add onions and mushrooms. Simmer until flavors are well-blended. Remove from heat.

When dough is ready, grease cookie sheet or similar surface with remaining oil and sprinkle with salt. Place dough on the surface and work till it is smooth and thin (yes, it’s okay to use a rolling pin or a glass to stretch it out).

Spread sauce on dough.

Spread pepperoni slices on sauce.

Sprinkle with cheese.

Cook in oven pre-heated to 500 degrees until done (15-20 mins.).

(My son and I were full after eating half of this.)

Variations:

Basil and parsley are good in the sauce.

Use fresh tomatoes: blanch tomatoes, peel, chop, and use instead of the canned tomatoes.

Just about anything for toppings. If using sausage or meatballs, cook first, then slice and put on the pizza.

Sorry, pineapple or broccoli on pizza are crimes against nature.

Factcheck.org is an arm of the “Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in 1994 to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state, and federal levels.”

Their analysis of what Mr. Bush left unsaid last Tuesday is most interesting:

The President left out a few things when surveying the State of the Union:

He proudly spoke of “writing a new chapter in the story of self-government” in Iraq and Afghanistan and said the number of democracies in the world is growing. He failed to mention that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan yet qualify as democracies according to the very group whose statistics he cited.

Bush called for Congress to pass a line-item veto, failing to mention that the Supreme Court struck down a line-item veto as unconstitutional in 1998. Bills now in Congress would propose a Constitutional amendment, but none have shown signs of life.

The President said the economy gained 4.6 million jobs in the past two-and-a-half years, failing to note that it had lost 2.6 million jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office. The net gain since Bush took office is just a little more than 2 million.

He talked of cutting spending, but only “non-security discretionary spending.” Actually, total federal spending has increased 42 percent since Bush took office.

He spoke of being “on track” to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009. But the deficit is increasing this year, and according to the Congressional Budget Office it will decline by considerably less than half even if Bush’s tax cuts are allowed to lapse.

Bush spoke of a “goal” of cutting dependence on Middle Eastern oil, failing to mention that US dependence on imported oil and petroleum products increased substantially during his first five years in office, reaching 60 per cent of consumption last year.

Smoke and mirrors.

NEW YORK (Billboard) – A Louisiana man has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple Computer for allegedly putting consumers at risk of suffering noise-induced hearing loss.

The complaint, filed January 31 in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif. by John Kiel Patterson, alleges that iPods fail to contain adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of hearing loss. Patterson claims that the iPods and the accompanying “ear bud” earphones are defectively designed.

So there should be a product insert saying, “If you’re too stupid to turn the damn thing down, it may affect your hearing”?

Sheesh.

In a story quoting Donald Rumsfeld as saying we aren’t doing well in Iraq because troops are afraid of media criticism:

“This is an area that we don’t do well — we know we don’t do well,” Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing, referring to information operations and psychological warfare aimed at foreign peoples and enemies.

“How do we compete in this struggle in a way that can counter the ability of the enemy to lie, which we can’t do, (and) the ability of the enemy to not have a free media criticizing them? You don’t see much criticizing of them.”

“Which we can’t do”?

They’ve been doing it all along. Why stop now?

My two or three regular readers know I have strong feelings on Intelligent Des Creationism.

The local rag had an interesting story today on String Theory, which some Creationists are attempting to characterize as an issue of faith, rather than of science.

The theory of intelligent design is not only not falsifiable; there is simply no way to test it. But that is not the main reason it is not science. The main reason is, that ID does not actually explain anything. When we ask, “Why is the world the way it is?” it answers, “Because it was designed that way.” The world is the way it is because it is that way. That might be the furthest from a useful, satisfactory explanation you can get.

String theory has problems, too. But while intelligent design is untestable in principle, string theory is just really hard. It is quite possible some clever scientist will devise a way to test it. Physicists have some ideas, but it is not going to be easy. In his new book The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design, string theory’s inventor Leonard Susskind writes: “To divine the fundamental laws of nature that govern a world 16 orders of magnitude smaller than any microscope will ever see is a very tall order. It will take not only cleverness and perseverance, but it will also require tremendous quantities of chutzpah.”

Coincidently, in a post on Hullabaloo, the poster tristero takes on Creationism and other pseudo phony sciences. The tone of the post if someone more aggressive and derisive than I like, but the research and reasoning are solid.

Those stories that surface from time-to-time that the auto or oil industry bought up the rights to some great invention that would drastically increase gas mileage, thereby cutting into their sales, are pretty much uniformly bunk.

Nevetheless, this little project at the Philadelphia Auto Show this week is not bunk:

One of the most impressive cars at this week’s Philadelphia Auto Show doesn’t come from Japan, Germany or Detroit.

It came from the auto shop at West Philadelphia High School.

The car – designed and built by students in the school’s Academy for Automotive and Mechanical Engineering – delivers more horsepower than some Porsches and gets gas mileage comparable to a Toyota Prius. It runs on fuel made from soybeans.

(snip)

“This is off-the-shelf technology, and we’re not 180 I.Q. people around here,” said Simon Hauger, a physics teacher who is the West Philadelphia automotive program’s administrator.

“We’re super low-budget,” he said, so automakers “should be cranking them out.

“Who wouldn’t want a cool sports car hybrid?”

You can see a flash presentation on the car here.

I mentioned earlier Mr. Bush’s tendency to say whatever he thinks persons like to hear, then go and do whatever the heck he wants to do, regardless of his word.

Mr. Bush said this Tuesday:

Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. Here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.

The best way to break this addiction is through technology. Since 2001, we have spent nearly $10 billion to develop cleaner, cheaper, more reliable alternative energy sources — and we are on the threshold of incredible advances.

And he did this:

The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.

A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation’s oil imports.

With a tip of the Hat to Suburban Guerrilla.

Afterthought.

From Blinq:

Why did you give away the franchise?

Always a tough question to answer, why old media have allowed the Young Turks such as Yahoo! and Google to take our news headlines and summaries, package them with ads and personalizable add-ons, and make Wall Street shout while we sing the blues.

An effort emerges to stop the freebies.

The Paris-based World Association of Newspapers has launched a global campaign to oppose the aggregators. It says it is exploring ways to “challenge the exploitation of content by search engines without fair compensation to copyright owners,” according to this Reuters article.

Read the full Reuters article here.

According to The Register, Google is working on a Linux distro:

Google is preparing its own distribution of Linux for the desktop, in a possible bid to take on Microsoft in its core business – desktop software.

A version of the increasingly popular Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution, based on Debian and the Gnome desktop, it is known internally as ‘Goobuntu’.

Google has confirmed it is working on a desktop linux project called Goobuntu, but declined to supply further details, including what the project is for.

This could be interesting. With Google’s weight behind it, this might be the first serious challenge to Microsoft’s monopo dominance since it crushed OS/2.

I used to run OS/2 when I ran a Bulletin Board. It was a rock-solid operating system–never crashed, never heard of the BSOD or the GPF.

I ran it on a 486 computer with 16 MB of RAM, a real screamer for its day. One day I set out to lock up the computer. I had 16 programs open before it started to complain.

Once I brought the BBS live and treated the computer nice, it never crashed.

Kind of like a Linux box.

.

Courtesy the Slackware 10.2 login screen:

Jerseywocky
Paul Kieffer

‘Twas Bergen and the Erie road
Did Mahwah into Paterson;
All Jersey were the Ocean Groves
And the Red Bank Bayonne.

“Beware the Hopatcong, my son!
The teeth that bite! The nails that claw!
Beware the Bound Brook bird, and shun
The Kearney Communipaw!”

He took his Belmar blade in hand,
Long time the Folsom foe he sought,
Till rested he by a Bayway tree
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in Nutley thought he stood,
The Hopatcong, with eyes of flame,
Came Whippany through the Englewood
And Garfield as it came.

One two! one two! and through and through
The Belmar blade went Hackensack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went Weehawken back.

“And hast though slain the Hopatcong?
Come to my arms, my Perth Amboy!
Hohokus day! Soho! Rahway!”
He Caldwell in his joy.

‘Twas Bergen and the Erie road
Did Mahwah into Paterson;
All Jersey were the Ocean Groves
And the Red Bank Bayonne.