Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Oracle is a relentless devourer of technology companies -- especially competitors. One of their more recent victims has been Sun, the floundering purveyor of Java and the sponsor of OpenOffice.org, a popular open source alternative to Microsoft Office. There is apparently little love lost between Oracle and the OpenOffice.org community. No doubt observing the unhappy fate of the OpenSolaris project, the OpenOffice.org folks have jumped ship , taking the project with them and setting up a new umbrella organization: the Document Foundation , and rechristening their application suite LibreOffice . They did publicly ask Oracle to donate the "OpenOffice" name to the fledgling group, but I suspect no one is holding their breath waiting for that to happen. Much is made in some circles about how "evil" Microsoft supposedly is. Compared to Oracle, they're a bunch of freaking panty-waists. Founder Larry Ellison makes no bones about being a bad-ass. To steal a line,...

Who the hell are you calling a Dummy, you son of a bitch? Answer me, before I kick the shit out of you!

Here's a philosophical question for you with real world implications. Given a choice between ONLY one of the following two options, which would you choose? Governed by criminals Governed by lunatics  Speaking for myself, I'd choose the criminal element: they are at least predictable and on many occasions, their ruthless self-interest will align with mine. If, on the other hand, you'd prefer to be governed by lunatics...well, you had your chance this weekend to show your support for the local members of the Flat Earth Society .  The choice is yours. PS - Had enough of these whack jobs?  There's hope for reasonable people again courtesy of the most trusted newscaster on television .

In a finding that will surprise no one, a recent Gallop poll finds compelling evidence to support the theory there are a lot of stupid people out there. If it's any consolation, Americans appear to be slightly less stupid than the English or Germans. Need more evidence?

I'd sort of been wanting a netbook for a while. These dinky little toys will leave some disappointed who are looking for a cheap general purpose laptop. Understanding the design focus is on portability and battery life is key. After shopping around, I finally took the plunge and got an Acer Aspire. It had a new-ish processor (the Atom N450), a 6-cell battery, 1 GB RAM (expandable to 2 GB by swapping the chip) and a 160 GB hard drive. As with many netbooks, it came equipped with Windows 7 Starter Edition , a stripped down version for the modestly powered machines. 1 GB occasionally leaves it gasping for air. I'd made up my mind to dual boot to Linux before I'd even decided on a machine. Enter Wubi . Wubi (Windows UBuntu Installer) lets you install Ubuntu Linux using a Windows-based installer. No repartitioning, no finding an external CD/DVD drive, no blowing away Windows. Download the installer in Windows, run it, choose the edition you want to install and sit back...

Two days after getting his iPhone 3GS, my youngest (the reigning alpha geek in the household) had it jailbroken. Why? Because he could. Ever since he's been ragging on me to jailbreak mine. I resisted the urge -- primarily because it seemed more hassle than I was willing to invest time in. Unlike some Apple Fanboys, I had no philosophical or aesthetic objections. And I didn't give a shit that Apple argued it was illegal (a specious argument the courts have now throw out ). The process to perform jailbreaking can be somewhat convoluted, and frankly, I didn't feel like screwing with it. Enter jailbreakme.com . Web-based jailbreaking. Just go there in Safari on your iPhone, and follow the extremely simple instructions: slide the control that says "Slide to jailbreak," and wait. The site cautions you to backup your phone before proceeding: always a good idea. The first time I tried, I was not successful (it happens). Not to worry -- just return to jailbreakme.com ...

The US Courts have declared that "jailbreaking" your iPhone is a perfectly legal activity. Apple has been waving its corporate arms and screaming that jailbreaking is illegal -- citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- and making apocalyptic predictions of "potentially catastrophic" cyberattacks by hordes of iPhone-wielding cyber terrorists. The courts said, "Uh, no." While Apple is free to declare that jailbreaking voids warranties, it's not against the law. I guess all those Android-toting desperados are now free to switch carriers once their contracts run out, since the iPhone is obviously a much better platform for their nefarious deeds. You can thank the Electronic Frontier Foundation for this latest bit of sanity in the world of corporate nonsense.