- Dvorak discovers Linux – John Dvorak, the legendary compu-journalist notorious for acerbic views and wry wit, has found a soft spot in his heart for Tux. The veteran essayist and cable TV star says he will "install [Ubuntu 8.10] permanently on my latest machines."
- World's greenest PC? – CompuLabs is a month from shipping what may be the smallest, most energy-efficient PC ever. The Fit-PC2 is based on an Atom processor up to 1.6GHz, and can be ordered with Ubuntu 8.04 pre-installed on a 160GB SATA drive or SSD.
- Living Free With Linux, Round 2 – bsk_cw writes "About a month ago, in Living free with Linux: 2 weeks without Windows, Preston Gralla wrote about what life was like for a long-time Windows user trying to live with Linux. His main problems came when he tried to install or update software. Loads of people responded with advice — so he went back and tried again. Here's what he learned, and what did and didn't work for him."
- Navigate the Linux Kernel Like Google Maps – MakeLinux writes with a link to a cool interactive map of the kernel: "A picture is worth a thousand words. Just try it, and navigate the Linux kernel like Google Maps."
- How You Inherit Genes That Make You Smarter [Evolution] – [A twin study based on a small sample size and no(?) mention of environmental factors supposedly reveals the genetic influence on intelligence. O-kay. --Lee.]
- how 2 blog if u suk at writin’ – 1. Stop Trying to Do What You Can’t
2. Craft a Superior Experience
3. Choose the Medium Where You’re the Most Interesting - WordPress Plugin Releases for 03/18 – New Plugins
Query Posts – This widget gives average users the ability to show off their posts in any way they’d like. Nearly 40 options are available to show posts from the widget controls. The widget can also be used an unlimited number of times.
Related Websites – Think of it as a related posts for the blogosphere.
To Do List – Maintains a to do list in the admin area.
WordPress Reset – Resets the WordPress database back to it’s defaults. Deletes all customizations and content.
Index Tag Page – display an index with all your tags, sort alphabetically. The shortcode is [indextag nb=XX ul=YY li=ZZ letter=LL menu=1/0]. Page in French
Updated Plugins – GoCodes let’s you create shortcut URLs to anywhere on the internet, right from your Wordpress Admin.
GD Press Tools – a collection of various additional administration tools. This tools can be integrated into the various WordPress admin panels, can perform maintenance operations, chanage some aspects of WordPress.
Shadowbox JS – A javascript media viewer similar to Lightbox and Thickbox only better. Supports all types of media, not just images. This plugin uses Shadowbox.js written my Michael J. I. Jackson.
Web Invoice – Invoicing and billing for WordPress – Web-Invoice lets you create and send web invoices and setup recurring billing for your clients.
Clean Options – Finds orphaned options and allows for their removal from the wp_options table
- Scientists Uncover Previously Unknown Terror Of The Deep [Predator X] –
- The Night Battlestar Galactica Took Over The U.N. [BSG's United Nations Summit] – The panel launched into a moving discourse, prompted by a collection of retrospective clips from BSG about human rights in both the science-fictional and modern day worlds. United Nations workers sat next to the Admiral, and spoke from the heart about extreme human rights abuses around the world, after viewing a scene from the first season, with Starbuck torturing Cylon Leoben with a water bucket and a smirk, and the brutal abuse of Pegasus Six. For every clip, the "real world" speaker shared how these shameful and violating acts continue across the globe, and sadly aren't limited to dark space operas.
- Number of the Day – $611,000. The amount mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae reportedly plans to dole out to each of four key executives in retention bonuses "as part of a plan to keep hundreds of employees from leaving the government-controlled company."
[...] In the interim, Fannie Mae has requested $15 billion in federal aid.
Am I living in a totally different country than these people? Because my question about these "retention bonuses" is: Where the fuck are they expecting these employees to go?
It's not exactly what one might call a hot job market, and every financial employee I know is scared shitless of losing hir job and not being able to find another one because no one is hiring.
- Punctuation Fail. Narrative Fail. Total Fail. – In the best case scenario, the quotes are intended to imply that the rape has been alleged but the accused teacher has not been found guilty. But it doesn't read that way; it reads like they're implying an 11-year-old is capable of consent and/or a liar, in either case making the alleged incident somehow not a real rape.
All of which is a huge stinking problem because there are so many people who actually think and say things like "that 11-year-old was asking for it."
- Greatest Thing on American Idol Evah – "Good evening, you cheesy, self-important, homophobic talent show. Fuck you."
I didn't see this until the two-hour voting window was almost closed, but I swear to Maude as soon as I saw it I picked up the phone and called and voted for this kid 100 times.
- Weighing in on a mega-controversy and then taking off – [I will address] the direct scientific controversy, why feminists have been traditionally reluctant to subject breast-feeding to analysis, and why Rosin’s not wrong on the social aspects.
[...] Calling women who use formula a “public health menace”, or suggesting that it’s child abuse if you give up and use formula is exactly the sort of sexism of setting impossible standards on women that feminists see fit to criticize elsewhere.
[...] It strikes me as a remarkable coincidence that the enthusiasm for breast-feeding, with its immense time demands, exploded right after it really became difficult for middle class men to demand that their wives stay at home to avoid emasculating them.
"We were raised to expect that co-parenting was an attainable goal. But who were we kidding? Even in the best of marriages, the domestic burden shifts, in incremental, mostly unacknowledged ways, onto the woman. Breast-feeding plays a central role in the shift. [...]"What’s also being recreated is a sense that women’s morality is class-based. In the past, the Good Woman was definitely the middle class woman who could afford to be a housewife, and working class women, especially women of color, were subject to all sorts of judgments and assumptions that they were sexually promiscuous, bad wives and mothers, etc. [...] somehow the same unfair judgment of immorality is being leveled against women who can’t afford to quit their jobs to breast feed full time.
- Digby: Letting Them Fail (Hullabaloo) – Dean Baker makes the case for nationalization in terms I think everyone can understand, by framing it in the context of a post-Lehman world. The moral hazard of letting these institutions, and more importantly, these executives, continue to believe that they are beyond the reach of failure or sanction get greater by the day. (I'm not sure that "shame" is something that actually means much among the ruling class, so there has to be something more.)
[...If the fiscal conservatives] were really worried about fiscal responsibility they would be using some of their credibility to weigh in on this crisis. They are clearly using disaster capitalist tactics to destroy the safety net, period.
- Digby: Wrecking Crew (Hullabaloo) – In every conversation I've had about this (and it's come up spontaneously over and over again over the last 24 hours) people have been gobsmackede that the AIG executives wouldn't have voluntarily given up their bonuses, if only for PR sake. It's such an in-your-face defiant act that it's enraged the public. (I am not surprised, however. John Galt would never give up any compensation — it would be immoral.)
People instinctively know that these assholes are taking the taxpayers for a ride. And if Marcy is correct they may be holding a big gun to the taxpayers heads as well. It's not going to end well.
- Digby: Felonious Derivatives (Hullabaloo) – These AIG bonuses certainly are causing a furor and for good reason. It is just such a clear demonstration of the indefatigable chutzpah of these Big Money Boyz. But the AIG story is very, very bad on many levels. For those of you who may not be as conversant with the dark arts of the world of derivatives , this article by James Lieber in the Village Voice may help explain it [...]
If you read the VV article and then this in the same sitting you will come to understand that we may be dealing with something far more nefarious than greedy executives insisting that taxpayers pay their bonuses. [...]
Lieber calls it a criminal conspiracy and throws down the gauntlet at Eric Holder's feet. From the administration's actions, it appears that we are a long way from them seeing it in those terms. But maybe we need to start thinking about it that way. It tends to clarify things quite a bit.
- Digby: Granny Bashers Are Fibbers (Hullabaloo) – It's long been obvious that the right wing's economic arguments are bogus since no matter what the issue, the answer is always tax cuts. Similarly, the fiscal scolds' varied arguments about "entitlements" always ends up with scare stories that the system is going broke and the kids are going to be left with nothing — no matter what the evidence says.
- I have a bridge to sell you – Mark my words, I shall watch our future progress with considerable interest. If the banks really are allowed to decide the value of their own assets, expect the markets to do a nice recovery followed by another panic a year or two down the road.
[...] If the bankers' only objection is that market fluctuations are masking the real worth of things, then smooth out the fluctuations. There are time-honored ways of doing that. You use what's called a moving average. The market price over some span of time, such as 30 days or 30 years, is averaged. The span of time included in the average would vary for different asset classes, maybe a decade for real estate, maybe five years for stocks, and so on. The market still sets the price, the fluctuations are no longer a factor, and the banks don't get to lead anyone down the garden path.
Oh, wait, that last item means the banks might still have a problem. Okay. Forget it.
- How to Build Your Blog Using Good Old-Fashioned E-mail –
- 10 Principles For Readable Web Typography –
The Links for March 18th through March 19th by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.