Cogs can think.

Important notice

2005-09-13T08:50:00.000+02:00

Okay, everything went a bit quicker than I had anticipated. I'm hosting my blog somwhere else now-- with the use of Wordpress.

MY NEW BLOG

So there you have it. It ain't done yet; I need to familiarize myself with Wordpress, and then I'll personalize it further.

Cogs can think.

2005-09-12T18:49:00.000+02:00

As you surely've seen by now, I have changed a few things on my blog.

I renamed my blog to "Cogs can think." It stems from this post, and I really like the analogy of the world being a huge clockwork of stupidity, in which we are nothing but mere cogs, without a true free will, all connected to one another. Every action has an equal reaction.

I thought of this analogy myself (ahey), but I'm pretty sure on what it's based: "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland", and part II, "Through The Looking Glass" (previous entry about dear Alice).

So, what is the goal of my ramblings and rants here? Well, a lot has happened in my personal life this year-- my mother's illness, me quitting psychology, taking on a new study-- and it's really miraculous to see how I've changed in that period; from a kid, to more of a, dare I say it, grown-up. Well, sort of. The real Thom is still there-- I'll never really grow up. What were you thinking.

I'm trying to understand what makes the clockwork of stupidity tick. The world, politics, music, film, social life, computing, automotive, all from my very own paradigm. And on this blog, screw everybody else's.

That's it, basically. Oh, and in the future I might buy me a nice domain name, put Wordpress on it, and stop leaching off of Google.

Explanation

2005-09-11T21:51:00.000+02:00

This is going to be a very boring blog post. You can stop reading this now if you're not interested in OSNews. In this post I will explain everything about the "dispute" between me and Kelly McNeill, managing editor of osViews.com.

OSNews is anti-Mac

All this started with an email (in forwarded nature due to me forwarding it from my iBook to my Linux box) from Kelly to the osnews-crew mailinglist, in which he claimed that OSNews was deliberately having an anti-Apple stance, and he listed the last four Apple newsitems in a big and bold font. He then listed a few newsitems in that email that should've been posted on OSNews.

I kindly replied, explaining why the newsitems he listed in that email weren't posted. The 'Amazon top seller's list'-item was deemed inappropriate because a top seller's list doesn't mean anything, especially if it's from a site that is mostly US-only. The item on Apple's 64bit breakage *was* posted on OSNews, just first as an item they broke 64bit support, and shortly after in another item that they had fixed it. The iPod patent thing has little to do with operating systems; other than that, Andrew submitted a similar item the day before (I wouldn't have posted that item either, but hey, Andrew has the right ti post whatever he wants, I'm not responsible for that. It's called diversity and that's a good thing). Finally, I didn't post his last suggestion because I've grown weary of analysts; they usually say a lot of fantastic stuff, but it rarely turns out. Other than that, th eitem was about hardware, not about OSs.

So, a decent justification of why I dismissed those items. Yet, the tone was set. OSNews "goes out of [its] way to only report negative things about [Apple]". Right. That's probably why me, David, Andrew and Eugenia all use Macs.

Then, Kelly started submitting the exact same newsitems he posts on osV to OSN. Now, I turned almost all of them down. While I for each item obviously had specific reasons to put them down, the general reason was that osV is a very biased site. Almost all content on osV is anti-MS and pro-Apple. Also, most of the items aren't newsworthy anyway, pro-Apple/anti-MS or not. A few examples:

Example I
Example II
Example II
Example IV

Now, obviously, not all items on osV suck; that might be because some of the items I post on OSN, gets posted a few hours later on osV. It's just that the items that Kelly submits to OSN, suck. I cannot help it.

He then got another crazy idea in his head. I'll get to that shortly.

Original content

During this, another thing played. osV, just like OSN, sometimes publishes original content. Now, that's a thing I applaud. However, the original content on osV is, well, quite often very low. Two times in a row, osV published very bad articles, full of factual errors and mistakes. The most notable one was about BeOS-- this article got submitted by Kelly to OSN-- and Andrew, not very knowledgeable about BeOS, put it up on OSN's frontpage. A few hours later, when I read the article, I was shocked. It was so full of errors, it just wasn;t funny anymore. Anyway, I wasn't the only one who saw that, as many people in OSN's comment's section thought the same. As a consequence, the article was removed from osV. I let the item on OSN stay up, and asked the people to simply start a discussion on BeOS and Zeta. This happened.

Another article from osV with a lot of factual errors made it into OSNews (about QNX, I believe). This was the drop for me. I imposed a direct ban on any original content from osV; I did not want any more of that crap on OSN. I think you guys can agree with me that that is the wisest thing to do, hmm? It's better to prevent than to heal, as we Dutch say.

Another crazy idea

Now, let's get to that crazy idea I just mentioned. As I said, Kelly started submitting dozens of items (he even counted (!) them, ~100!), and almost all of them were turned down by me, because of mostly similar reasons as I mentioned in my paragraph on that first email he sent me.

This gave him a crazy idea. He IMd me, saying that I was turning down his items because they came from him. As tempting as that may sound, that obviously wasn't true. I turned his items down, like I turned down a gazillion other items, because I simply didn't found them important enough to be published on a *general* newssite about operating systems. It's like someone in Cupertino letting one rip constitutes as news, according to Kelly.

So, a few days ago, when he again submitted a whole batch of items, I decided to email him, carefully explaining why each of them was turned down. Obviously, to no avail. He had already made up his mind: I turn down newsitems just because they come from him. A large email discussion followed, in which he accused me of being biased, he accused me of purposefully turning down items because they came from him. As "proof", he stated that some items I had turned down, a few days later got published when they were submitted by someone else. Naturally I asked him to present me with examples; up until now he has failed to do so.

Kelly's views

In that large email discussion, he explained why osV is per definition less biased than OSN, because osV publishes newsitems as soon as they get submitted a few times by readers. And since OSN does not do that, OSN is biased. So, I asked him if there is any form of control over what get's submitted to osV's front page; suprisingly, he said that he decides what goes up and what doesn't. Most sane people will already see that this makes osV exactly the same as OSNews; with the only difference that OSNews has 140 000 readers, and 5 times as many editors than osV.

So, I presented him with an example. I know out of experience that Kelly is very active in fighting the opinion that Macs are expensive. So, I said to him "So, if I were to submit under 5 different names a piece that confirms that Apple stuff is more expensive, you'd agree with it and post it." Not surprisingly, he responded: "If Macs were indeed more expensive and it was submitted 5 times then yes, that would be a newsworthy news item."

So, there I nailed him. If Macs are expensive or not is a completely subjective matter; to some, they are, to other, they aren't. As with anything that costs money, something's 'expensive-ness' is dependent on a multitude of factors, including income, perceived value of the goods, and much, much more.

Yet, his bias that Macs are not expensive stops him from posting any articles claiming otherwise. You get how completely fcuked up that is, don't you?

The aftermath

The aftermath is the email I posted on my blog here. I sincerely felt insulted by all his accusations. However, the reply to this email literally is completely out-of-this-world. A few quotes:

When did I insult or make any false accusations toward you?

You DID in fact choose to not publish many of the links I submitted because they came from me. If it bruises your ego too much to admit that, don't bother. It's pretty obvious to the both of us, and now since you've decided to include the rest of OS News editors in our conversation, I'm sure it has become glaringly obvious to them as well.

Somehow our friend decided that I admitted to not posting his items due to the items coming from his hand... I could post all the emails on this blog, but you can take my word for it. I obviously did not admit to anything, as there is nothing to admit to. I did, however, without any form of secrecy, explained why I put a ban on osV's original content (he even tried to lie about the articles that were removed from his site due to their factual errors).

I simply pointed out 4 links on OS News that showed a trend in the style of publishing links of which I had a problem with and you took it personally. I even apologized if you took it the wrong way. However, you took it personal and decided that you weren't going to publish any of the links I sent in.

Again, he promotes his own sick ideas as facts. Very, very disturbing.

I could go on for another ten pages about this, but I think most of you have seen enough.

---

Now, as that email I published on my blog already explained, I feel truly offended by this guy's sick ideas. I put so much effort into making OSN a balanced, fair, fun place to visit-- and then, when some guy comes along, promoting his own sick assumptions as fact, putting words in my mouth I never said, playing the supreme being and innocent victim, it just hurts.

I can take criticism-- when it's founded. I surely will admit any mistakes I make. I am arrogant sometimes, and I can be very stubborn-- but anyone who's involved with me for a longer time knows that I *will* swallow my pride if someone truly points out errors or mistakes on my part.

I'm trying to put this issue to rest now. OSN is bigger, badder, and more fun than it has ever been nowadays. There are five honest people working on making OSN the best place for news on the alternative computing scene-- and many people can attest that we're doing a good job. Of course we have our deficiencies, but we're not afraid to admit them.

As long as your critique is founded.

Sky rocks

2005-09-11T12:16:00.000+02:00

I've had enough

2005-09-11T11:11:00.000+02:00

Kelly,

Have you ever stopped and thought about how your accusations towards me, and in the past Eugenia, might be very rude and offensive? How your slightly paranoial ideas hurt us?

I have no hidden agenda. I'm not out to annoy you. I'm not out to on purpose publish biased news (you still haven't explained what I'm biased against or for). I just have slightly higher standards when it comes to what I publish and don't publish.

Now, you can go ahead and say whatever you want, accuse me of whatever you want. I'm just getting really tired of it. I put a lot of effort into OSNews, and it just feels really bad if someone goes to the great lengths to undermine my work, such as yourself, with the only goal of making OSNews look bad so you can attract more readers towards your site. This is a very low and childish way of doing that. Maybe you should focus on making osV less biased, and produce better original content than we do.

This will be the last time I will mail or IM you. I can handle quite some insults and false accusations, but even I have my limit. You have grossly crossed that limit. Now, you go ahead and continue your smear campaign against me and OSNews, like you have been doing for quite some time. The amount of readers we have already tells us that we're doin a good job, and that very few people in the tech world agree with you.

Take care.

Thom Holwerda
---
Managing editor at http://www.osnews.com, exploring the future of computing
---
Read my blog: http://thom-holwerda.blogspot.com
---
Google Talk: ThomHolwerda@gmail.com

Stupid nazis

2005-09-11T01:53:00.000+02:00

Bwahahahahahhahahahhhahahaaaahahaha! I just saw the funniest thing on TV!

On a newsshow they had an item about the growing numbers of neo-nazis in my country. This of course is a very bad thing, and it pisses the fcuk out of me. Anyway, they were talking to this guy, next to his tuned car, and he was explaining he didn't like foreigners and all that. Music was blasting thru his car stereo system. What music...?

50 Cent! 50 Cent is black!

Hahaa, what a complete bunch of morons!

Podcast yet again

2005-09-11T00:50:00.000+02:00

Just got IMd on AIM-- the guys from a Dutch podcast about Apple and related matters, Kmac, want me for an interview on their next podcast. Remembering the fun I had with Martin over at TipMonkies when we recorded a podcast there, I immediatly said yes. Then, I actually listened to their latest podcast (all in Dutch), and my god, they sure do have a lot of fun...! So yeah, I'm happy to work with them.

I'll keep y'all posted on this. It will get recorded next friday eve.

Clockwork of stupidity

2005-09-10T23:35:00.000+02:00

I once called myself "the flagship in the armada of stupidity".

I just realized I'm nothing more than a mere, tiny, insignificant cog in a whole clockwork of stupidity. Guess who powers that clock.

I've got faith...

2005-09-10T19:37:00.000+02:00

Strak Trek: Enterprise is back on TV! Woohoo 8).

I'M A NIGERIAN AND WANT TO DONATE $300 000 000 TO YOUR ACCOUNT

2005-09-09T22:34:00.000+02:00

Coffee-to-go

2005-09-08T12:02:00.000+02:00

And here I am again, at university, being kinda bored. I'm meeting up with Guinievre in 45 minutes-- my schoolday ended at 10:45. I entertained myself by working on OSNews, do some blog-reading, and all that. Now, I'm bored.

Also, a girl from the first year of Psychology will buy some of my books I have left from my previous study. I've been carrying them around all morning, and they're heavy.

I do have my coffee-to-go standing next to me though, so it ain't all bad.

Support the Free Tree Foundation and General Tree License

2005-09-07T21:15:00.000+02:00

(21:07:20) Youlle: meh, dont give 2 monkeys lol
(21:08:01) Thom: do those monkeys use Open Trees?
(21:08:03) Thom: else i dont want m
(21:08:28) Youlle: no they're Closed Tree Only, they dont trust open trees, they get chopped down more often
(21:08:56) Youlle: also the Grapevine has faster connection speed over Close Tree Networks
(21:09:32) Thom: yeah but can you modify the roots of closed trees? you CAN do that with open trees
(21:09:37) Thom: make them grow faster
(21:09:46) Thom: find weaknesses inside the roots and fix them
(21:09:47) Thom: etc.
(21:10:16) Youlle: my Fertiliser provider supplies root upgrades every 2mnths or so... so really no need for access to the root system
(21:10:22) Thom: however, it does take some googling before you fully grasp climbing an Open Tree, let alone swinging from it
(21:10:46) Youlle: yeah i hear the branch drivers arent as advanced on Treenux
(21:11:15) Thom: then again, closed trees only allow you to climb them from the west side, and swinging can only be done forward/backwards, not sideways, that would break the license
(21:11:50) Youlle: yeah but our branch drivers support all branch types and have Branch-leaf acceleration
(21:12:19) Thom: yeah but that acceleration requires a closed add-in that costs a lot of $$$
(21:12:34) Thom: open trees have experimental branch-leaf acceleration-- for free
(21:12:43) Thom: requires some root modifying though
(21:13:04) Youlle: its included for free in this months Root upgrade, okay you need an OAK-225 or an ASH-543e to use it for free, but other systems arent that common
(21:13:28) Thom: ok
(21:13:32) Thom: lol blog time

[Indian Accent] I am from India [/Indian accent]

2005-09-07T10:32:00.000+02:00

At university again, I'm really liking living wirelessly. It's very handy :).

Anyway, just finished reading Lizet and Erik Jan's first report from India. EJ is there for his study; he observes a commune there, and does research. At the same time, he is part of the commune and helps out and all that. Lizet (his girlfriend) came along with him; she's also going to work inside the commune. They will stay there for five months, with the last month being a sort of vacation.

The report is obviously in Dutch, so I'll give a short recap. First of all, people from India smell. Badly. They sat in a plane from Heathrow, London, to Chennai, India, filled with smelly people. Arrived in India, they noticed the horrible traffic, the animals everywhere, and lots of bums.

They were surprised by the poor condition of the commune itself. They saw pictures of it before they left, and those pictures gave them a far more positive view of the whole. It dissapointed them-- then again, they are in the poorer part of the country (the south), so this was to be expected. Also, they noted how dirty and unclean everything is. Well, that's what you get when you're from one of the richest countries in the world :).

Anyway, I want to whish them a fantastic 5 months together!

Live wirelessly

2005-09-06T11:39:00.000+02:00

Testing the wireless around campus-- works pretty damn good! Had to configure a lot of technical stuff to get it to connect, but it's working all fine now. My university is becoming modern!

Anyway, I'm just now testing the speed by downloading the latest Breezy release-- I'm pulling 1.3MB per second! :o Compare that to the lousy 400KB per second at home...

Update: I just bought me a wireless router too, for at home. Eugenia recommended a LinkSYS to me, but hell, those things don't come cheaper than €129,-! I like spending money, but fcuk that. So, I bought a Sweex, as it said 'Mac Compatible' on the box. It's working mighty fine, got everything encrypted, passwords, the whole nine yards. Really cool, and only €49,99!

Update II: I'm sitting in our backyard now! I can internet while sitting in my backyard! And still a strong signal! And that damn thing is in my room, in the attic! :o

Airport Extreme

2005-09-05T19:22:00.000+02:00

Just bought me an Airport Extreme card for my iBook (a hefty €79,-), and so I'm making this post wirelessly... Which is quite awesome seeing we don't have a wireless router! I'm assuming the network I'm connected to now is from accross the street; I'll check it out when I'm there tonight (I take care of their cats and house while they're on vacation). If it is indeed their network, I could easily make use of it, as they are very friendly people and I assume would be happy to let me browse the internet using their wireless router.

Cool stuff!

First day

2005-09-05T15:56:00.000+02:00

I had my first day of my new study today, Information and Communication Sciences (a study that has to do with what the name implies, but a large part of it is a modern foreign language, Spanish, French, German or English-- I chose the last). I was quite nervous, seeing I have to start all over again. Also, it still feels very weird not being part of the Psychology faculty anymore. After two years, it really felt as if I was part of that faculty, even though the study itself wasn't really my thing.

I've had a wonderful time the past two years with Psychology, all due to the friends I have there. In the first year, I had so much fun with Sascha, Dagmar, Renate and to a lesser extent Zdena-- the 2nd year I had a lot of fun with Renate (Sascha, Dagmar and Zdena stopped), Mascha, Henriëtte and Malou. There were a lot of other nice people too, but I can't name all of you.

Anyway, this first day went pretty fine. I had a sort of introductory course first; all easy stuff that I already knew from the past two years. After that, I had my first real course: English Grammar! Woohoo! I'm finally learning Real English! My English might look pretty decent, it's still all street knowledge. The English I studied at high school added little to no extra value to my language skills.

Oh, and there's a really cute looking girl in my class! :).

It's alive

2005-09-04T00:15:00.000+02:00

My Mighty Mouse squeals. I'm not kidding. This E59,- mouse makes high-pitched noises when clicking.

I should've known better. For mice, cheaper is usually better.

Eugenia, about the EU...

2005-09-03T18:14:00.000+02:00

Okay, this post is somewhat directly addressed to Eugenia.

Eugenia, even though you're an outsider (living in the US and all), you have always profiled yourself as a sort of proponent of the European Union. Now, as is no surprise, I'm not a proponent. In the recent referendum about the European Constitution, I voted 'no', and so did 64% of my fellow countrymen and women.

I have always found it hard to exactly explain why I'm against the EU in its current form. Now, today, I got a really good and simple example of how the EU is influencing far too many things in its member states. It has to do with housing.

In the Netherlands, we have a system of 'Housing Corporations' (*not* in the evil MS/Google/etc. sense). These housing corporations, 500 of them, each control the renting of most houses in specific areas; ie. the Housing Corporation Schagen takes care of most of the rental homes in the area of Schagen, Harenkarspel (where I live), etc. Now, together, all 500 of them, they have 2.4 million rental homes. These corporations are semi-state owned. They assign houses to people/families, using a point system (details vary per corp.), which comes down to the longer you're on their list AND the more active you search, the sooner you'll get a house. Other factors, like age, family size, income, etc. also weigh in.

So basically, these corp. are an instrument of the government to make sure that everyone stands an equal chance of getting a rental home. That is very nescesary here, as housing is extremely expensive, and space is very, very limited (being on of the most densily populated countries in the world and all). Being partially state-owned, the state can make sure they don't drastically raise prices and stuff.

As you can see, this is a very decent system, aimed at providing each citizen with an equal shot at getting a rental house. This way we Dutch also ensure we don't get ghettos, like you see a lot in other countries. There is now way of telling if a street only is inhabited by poor or rich people (streets with rental homes that is, my parents for instance own their own house). The corporations can spread their houses equally among wealthy and less wealthy people, putting a stop to segregation.

And now the EU comes in. Today, a leaked official letter from Brussels (where the EU is seated) to The Hague (governmnental capitol of the Netherlands) was published, written by Neelie Kroes, the woman responsible for Competition. This letter was a threat from the EU, about our housing system. What's the problem? Well, as I said, these corp. are supported by the state, financially. This is needed so that the housing corp. do not have to strive for profit; very important if you want to rent out less expensive houses too. This is what the EU does not like. This, according to the EU, creates unfair competition. Unfair competition with private home owners who rent out their houses (real-estate brokers, in English, right?). So, the EU wants us to overhaul our system and stop any form of state influence.

That's not right, as you can easily see: private home owners have no interest in keeping prices low, and/or building/renting out cheaper homes. The state corp. do! Other than that, housing has been a hot issue in my country for over 60 years, and it also falls under the category of things in which the EU is supposed to have no say.

And this is where a little local politics come into play. The woman repsonsible for Competition, Neelie Kroes, is of the Dutch political party VVD. And those real-estate owners, which party do they for 95% belong to? Exactly, the VVD.

There you have it. That's how the EU works. This is just an example out of a dozens of these sorts of issues each year. You now get a little bit why we Dutch voted 'no'?

Superpower but can't feed its own people?

2005-09-02T12:21:00.000+02:00

And that country calls itself a superpower.

Bwahahahahaha.

Shoes & DVDs

2005-09-01T20:32:00.000+02:00

My yesterday's eve and today were pretty good. Yesterday eve I went to Big City Alkmaar with Renaatje, had a few drinks, some sandwiches, and then we went to her place. There she taught me a very cool and addictive boardgame (Tricktrack). Very nice evening, warm weather, just perfect.

Today me and Renate again hooked up to go to the lakeside, but it was far too cold and windy to stay there. So we hade some icecream, and she bought a pair of shoes (women...) and I bought "The Very Best Of Prince", really nice album. I brought her home, then went to another shop by myself and bought two DVDs (Forrest Gump and A Clockwork Orange).

A nice day :).

Hot chicks and broccoli

2005-08-31T18:52:00.000+02:00

The beach was awesome :). Lots of pretty girls, lots of sun, lots of sand, lots of water. Just how I like my beach. Before I went to the beach, I had to fill my car with some petrol, and as a gift they gave me a... Strand of broccoli. I had absolutely no idea what to do with it, so me and Oscar took it with us to the beach, and planted it in front of our towels. We made jokes about it all day-- at one point we took the broccoli (wrapped in plastic) with us into the water, and played catch with it. I was amazed by how few people actually seemed to care that two grown-up guys were throwing a broccoli around!

Anyway, a short moment of peace now, and after that I'm heading over to Renate, and with her I'll watch Friends tonight. After that, we're gonna go get a drink at a terrace somewhere in Alkmaar. Looking forward to it!

Beach

2005-08-31T11:16:00.000+02:00

Sunny outside, don't have to go to work, and best of all: I'll be lying on the beach in a few hours! Have fun at work, everyone else!

Now playing: Van Dik Hout, "Stil In Mij"

Idiots

2005-08-29T22:05:00.000+02:00

How on earth can you deny global warming? HOW ON EARTH???

I'm getting so SICK of all those FCUKING STUPID WHITE-SUBURBIAN PIECE OF SHIT AMERICANS. They should line 'm all up and take 'm between the eyes.

Bunch of bitches. I hope they all die a painful, very slow, agonizing death.

I'm so pissed off right now. Do not take my words literally. I get really evil when I'm really pissed off. These people who deny global warming shouldn't be within the range of my fists.

Het regent zonnestralen

2005-08-29T19:29:00.000+02:00

Last week, tuesday, my mum got her fifth and last chemotherapy. All in all this last one was less straining than the 4th one. I was listening to Dutch music just yet, and came accross a Dutch classic, "Het Regent Zonnestralen" (It's Raining Sunrays), a song about a man who sees his own obituary in the newspaper (the car he just sold was still registred on his name), and suddenly realizes he is now free to go and do whatever he wants. The chorus goes like this:

O, o, o,
Even rustig ademhalen
Want het lijkt alsof het regent als altijd
Maar het regent zonnestralen

(O, o, o,
Chill down and breath
'Cause it seems as if it's raining like always
But it's raining sunrays)

The treatment is over.

For someone

2005-08-29T13:10:00.000+02:00

A long story, but this is for a certain someone... Don't ask questions, these are very complicated matters.

My name is Joe Roberts I work for the state
I'm a sergeant out of Perrineville barracks number 8
I always done an honest job as honest as I could
I got a brother named Franky and Franky ain't no good

Now ever since we was young kids it's been the same come down
I get a call over the radio Franky's in trouble downtown
Well if it was any other man, I'd put him straight away
But when it's your brother sometimes you look the other way

Me and Franky laughin' and drinkin' nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"

I catch him when he's strayin' like any brother would
Man turns his back on his family well he just ain't no good

Well Franky went in the army back in 1965 I got a farm deferment, settled down, took Maria for my wife
But them wheat prices kept on droppin' till it was like we were gettin' robbed
Franky came home in '68, and me, I took this job

Yea we're laughin' and drinkin' nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"
I catch him when he's strayin', teach him how to walk that line
Man turns his back on his family he ain't no friend of mine

Well the night was like any other, I got a call 'bout quarter to nine
There was trouble in a roadhouse out on the Michigan line
There was a kid lyin' on the floor lookin' bad bleedin' hard from his head there was a girl cryin' at a table and it was Frank, they said
Well I went out and I jumped in my car and I hit the lights
Well I must of done one hundred and ten through Michigan county that night

It was out at the crossroads, down round Willow bank
Seen a Buick with Ohio plates behind the wheel was Frank
Well I chased him through them county roads till a sign said Canadian border five miles from here
I pulled over the side of the highway and watched his taillights disappear

Me and Franky laughin' and drinkin'
Nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"
I catch him when he's strayin' like any brother would
Man turns his back on his family well he just ain't no good

Bruce Springsteen, "Highway Patrolman"

Now playing: De Poema's, "Mijn Houten Hart"

Perspective

2005-08-29T11:31:00.000+02:00

Okay, so hurricane Katrina is now threatening the state of Louisiana, and New Orleans in particular. I just read this post, on how sad this is, and how extra bad it is because New Orleans is a city of 1.4 million people below sealevel.

Do Americans even know there's a world beyond their own borders?

So, okay, this hurricane might kill a few dozen people. It might make a few thousand people homeless. That's a bad thing, and I feel really sorry for those people.

However, for the ones not directly affected by Katrina, get some perspective! Do you realize how many people die each day in Darfur? Do you realize a huge famine is about to break out in Niger? Do you know how many innocent Iraqis die each day because the US fcuked that country up even more? Those things are way more important than a hurricane that might kill a few dozen people.

What's even worse, is the below sealevel part. Okay, so you Americans have a city that's a few feet below sealevel. Big fcuking deal. Half of my country is below sealevel! Ten million people, including myself! We're not talking about a 200 year old city-- we're talking about thousands of years of history, unique cities such as Rotterdam, Amsterdam, The Hague, Alkmaar, etc, etc. If the Americans continue to keep denying global warming, we Dutch (together with Bangladesh) will be the first to drown. And I am not kidding here. *Your* government ignoring global warming could cause the death of hundreds of thousands of Dutchmen and women. The part of my country that's below sealevel is one of the most densily populated areas in the world.

However, Bangladesh is even worse. That actually *is* the most densily populated country in the world, also below sealevel.

Get some perspective on this shit, please.

Damn Gnome-pilot

2005-08-25T22:54:00.000+02:00

This is so frustrating. No matter WHAT I do, there is NO FCUKING WAY to get my PalmOne Tungsten E2 to sync in Linux/Gnome. All proper modules are loaded, all HOWTOs have been followed to the letter, and still it refuses to work.

Funny thing is, it's not only the E2 that has problems; there are a lot of people who are unable to connect *any* PDA to Linux/Gnome via USB. Kpilot does its job much better (I got the thing to sync there, but only by help from Eugenia a few weeks back). What good is it to include Gnome-pilot in any distribution IF IT DOESN'T FCUKING WORK?? Jesus, you Linux folks should really learn to "do it right or don't do it" instead of "do it any possible way, no matter if it works".

This is really annoying the shit out of me. It are these little things that make you really HATE Linux. Like that TV card I bought, that happened to be of a series which uses a different decoder chip than other series of the same model. That's why it didn't work... I'm really not getting this; how many USB-enabled Palm models are actually there to create support for??

T.H.O.M.

2005-08-25T20:36:00.000+02:00

Google Talk

2005-08-24T20:43:00.000+02:00

Okay, I'm on Google Talk too now, ThomHolwerda AT gmail DOT com (using the good instructions for how to use Talk with Gaim). Feel free to add me, but take note that whoever bothers me will be on my block list real soon.

This also means I now have a Gmail account (ThomHolwerda AT gmail DOT com).

Delivery girl

2005-08-24T17:21:00.000+02:00

I got lots of cool new stuff the last few days. Firstly, I bought a new leather deskchair. I used to sit on a wooden piece of shit, and now I'm on this heaven among seating. A huge improvement.

Secondly, I also bought a new case for my x86. It's an Asus TA-120, and it looks really good. When I built my dad's computer, I also gave him an Asus case (a small-footprint one), and I was really satisfied with the quality and all that. Here are some pics:

Such an improvement over my 4-year-old beige no-name box.

The biggest new thing: a brand new monitor! After more than 15 yeas of computing behind a CRT screen, I now finally left the stone age to join the rest of the free world in using flat-screen monitors. All this thanks to David! The monitor is a 17" Dell flatscreen 1280x1024pix, has a 4-port USB hub, and is adjustable in every possible direction. Pictures:

Looks good huh? Oh and by the way: I should really stop flirting with the delivery girl. She's at least 5 years older than me... But hey, her smile is irresistable!

Me? Participating?

2005-08-23T23:10:00.000+02:00

Since when am I involved in Ubuntu laptop-testing? ;).

I'm odd

2005-08-23T21:42:00.000+02:00

Quote from an OSNews comment of mine:

It doesn't. Noboday is saying otherwise. The issue is whether or not people are inclined to find an alternative if there is already a competant piece of software already included?

Exactly! You hit the nail on the head, finally, Kelly! People are *happy* with the apps MS includes! Why should the law be involved to force people into thinking about alternatives? Care to elaborate? Why would you take away a baby's favourite pacifier, and then line it up with 9 other pacifiers, letting the baby cry until he in the end finds his favourite pacifier again?

How on earth do I come up with these analogies??? :s

Slashdot got slashdotted...

2005-08-22T14:52:00.000+02:00

Always nice to see overrated sites go down :).

Sticky phone

2005-08-22T11:43:00.000+02:00

Okay, that post I made last night is just screaming for an expanation, isn't it? Here it is!

It's a true thing of Noord-Holland, more specifically of West-Friesland (the region of Noord-Holland where I live). Once a year, usually on a course of three days, each tiny fcuking settlement in these lowlands gets completely drunk, wasted, and shameless. It's called Kermis (not to be mistaken for the Dutch word for Christmas, Kerstmis), and to any outsider it just looks like harmless fun; a ferris wheel, bumper cars, merry-go-rounds, the whole lot. However, I urge you to take a closer look.

Kermis is nothing more than an excuse for everyone to consume lots and lots of alcohol. It's truly a magical experience, not seen anywhere else in the world. All fights are forgotton, age means nothing, everyone likes everyone, everyone buys everyone beer, everyone tries to score on the opposite sex, and all this starts at 8 in the morning (I only go at evenings though).

So, that's my excuse. I have no idea how much I drank, I do know talking to lots of people, going on the ferris wheel with Renée (she made the usual joke: "I can see my house form here!"), shooting for points (I performed like ass this year), phoning Renaatje (she even sent back a txt msg), phoning Marcel ("in the army noooow"), phoning Bianc (okay, EJ did that and I don't think Bianc was all that amused), taking lots of pisses everywhere, doing some folkloristic dancing at one of the pubs, sending a txt msg to Mascha why on earth she wasn't at the kermis (turns out she was, in the same pub actually), loosing my phone (thanks Lizet, for finding it in a pile of empty beer glasses, now how to explain why it's so sticky?), and at the end talking nonsense to some 16-year-old girls outside one of our pubs, who were from a place a few villages up north. And suddenly everyone else of my group was gone, and if there's one thing I hate, it's not having my friends around to fall back on when I'm not having any luck with women (or girls in this case).

Before I knew it, I was at home making that blog post. Just so you know. I'll scan the photos for y'all enjoyment in a few days.

drunk and proudf

2005-08-22T02:49:00.000+02:00

Ik making his posr while beging comloetely drunk. Harf to decipher. shhoooowwww me the way toamarollow, beeen weeeepin like a willow... yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Update: It's now the next morning, and as usual, I have no hangover or whatsoever. My body is made for alcohol! But dear god, was I drunk last night...

The record back

2005-08-21T16:09:00.000+02:00

Had a fun evening yesterday. Bianca celebrated her birthday, and I had a lot of laughs with some of the people there. Somehow, an empty beer can turned into baby Jesus, and we ressurected the Jesus story with the use of empty beer cans, hay, the people around us (I was the donkey) and patatoe chips. Really, we were far from drunk. Imagine what would've happened if we were...

Anyway, yesterday night I got the record back!

3 993 100! I so totally rock!

Nuking Zeta

2005-08-19T23:02:00.000+02:00

Okay, this is really pushing me to nuke my Zeta R1 installation. I do not wish to support a company that treats external developers this way. This doesn't fit the Be spirit.

Sorry YellowTAB, but this behaviour is unacceptable.

Extraordinary machine indeed

2005-08-17T21:12:00.000+02:00

Okay, sometimes things happen that make you doubt your agnosticism.

EPIC/Sony will finally release Fiona Apple's third album, Extraordinary Machine!! They didn't want to release it when it was done *years* ago, because it wasn't commercially viable enough (no hits on the album), but, some smartass leaked the album onto the web, and it became such a big hit, that they now decided to release it October 4th (in the US, not sure on European launch date).

About fcuking time.

Lowlands

2005-08-17T00:28:00.000+02:00

I just got back from driving Renaatje home. We had a fun evening, we watched "Hide & Seek", with Robert DeNiro and our own Famke Janssen. Nice movie, allbeit a bit predictable.

Anyway, driving Renate home was... Spooky. There were strands of fog creaping across the road, and it really felt as if we were stuck in our own little world. Especially when I was driving home, the fog had gotten worse, it was as if I was driving towards the end of the world, here in the Dutch lowlands.

There is nothing as calming as doing 120 down a four-way street at night. Really, there isn't.

With Toto's "Pamela" on the radio.

I hope they bring back Elvis

2005-08-16T12:08:00.000+02:00

Today, 28 years ago, the world lost one of the most famous and influential people in musical history. His death came as a shock, fans crying, girls fainting. For us true music fans, he is the one who made it possible for us to love music in the first place-- "an American music giant of the 20th century who singlehandedly changed the course of music and culture in the mid-1950s."

Today, 28 years ago, Elvis Presley passed away.

But, Elvis lives. Not in the physical world, but in our hearts and minds. The Hillbilly Cat lives.

Now playing: Elvis Presley, "Hound Dog"

Ubuntu's weakness strikes again...

2005-08-15T18:56:00.000+02:00

And again I run into Ubuntu's main weakness...

I bought a TV/Radio tuner card today, a very basic Hauppauge WinTV PCI-FM, and of course it wouldn't work in Ubuntu... The driver loaded perfectly fine, but because Ubuntu has no decent system management tools, there was no other way for me to configure this bitch other than by doing lots of grep's, dmesg's, manual editing and what not. Screw that, I'm not 15 anymore, I nor have the time, nor the will to configure a simple TV card this way.

Really, I wonder where people got the idea that Ubuntu is a "user-friendly" Linux distribution. It's good, don't get me wrong, but user friendly? Without providing sysman tools? Forget it.

So, I'm now installing SuSE again. At least SuSE has YaST.

Update: Okay, this piece of shit is going back to the store. The supplied software (WinTV2000) is so fucking awful... The worst UI I have *ever* seen. I cannot finetune channels as that somehow deletes them. I cannot alter presets. Etc. etc.

What a piece of shit. No wonder Ubuntu didn't want to work with it. UGH.

Isreal started retreat

2005-08-15T09:01:00.000+02:00

So, Israel finally started to retreat from the Gaza strip, the land they stole from the Palestinians. This is finally a step in the right direction. The Jewish settlements on the Gaza strip are illegal, and therefor they must be destroyed and the land returned to the rightful owners.

Obviously, the Jewish settlers aren't happy. One girl said, and it sums up the idiocracy of Israel:

We only have a small country. Oh right the Arabs have 27 countries to go to, they can go live somewhere else, they're all terrorists. We have a right to this land according to the bible.

Right sweetie, and that justifies banning people from their homes, people who've lived there for centuries? Oh, and your country small? Honey, Israel has a population of 5.2 million people on an area roughly the same size as The Netherlands. And we have 16 million people! Does that mean we can expel all French-speaking Belgians to France or any of the other 20 countries where French is spoken, and then occupy Belgium (how tempting that may sound) ?

Get a grip, girl.

The bible's just a book, nothing more, nothing less (the Greek biblios even means book).

Updated my site

2005-08-14T17:41:00.000+02:00

Just spent a few minutes updating my website. Changed the font to Trebuchet (best font ever, my entire Gnome desktop uses it), added some text info, and added an all-new just-made picture of myself (let that be a warning).

Mmm, might as well add a link to the thing in the sidebar, and while I'm at it I also increased the font-size on my blog, those small letters were a real pain in the ass. And, changed the font of my blog to Trebuchet MS :).

PS: Also a thank you to Eugenia, who helped me add a seperator between my posts, and removing the border that surrounded my entire blog.

Andrew on KDE

2005-08-14T15:52:00.000+02:00

Had a good laugh over IM today with Andrew. Background: where I have a slight preference towards Gnome, Andrew has a slight preference towards KDE. Resulting in this:

Andrew: yeah, KDE is getting leaner and faster, where as GNOME Developers ignore complaints about a slow inferior toolkit, and then to top it off choose a slow rendering system... MUWAHAHAHAHAHA... [end troll]

Andrew: we might stick widgets everywhere, but atleast our toolkit is fast enough to draw them lol

Thom: lol

Yeah, you can have honest fun over one's preferences without trolling and smashing one's head in :D.

Bills...

2005-08-13T19:33:00.000+02:00

I fcuking hate bills >:(.

Coffee, black, please

2005-08-12T19:27:00.000+02:00

You are a Black Coffee

At your best, you are: low maintenance, friendly, and adaptable

At your worst, you are: cheap and angsty

You drink coffee when: you can get your hands on it

Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

Yup, sounds like me :). Oh, and PS: I'll redo the 'review' of the Mighty Mouse soon as a new post (with photos), so don't bother commenting on my previous item.

Mighty mouse

2005-08-12T16:41:00.000+02:00

Okay, I bought the Mighty Mouse today (a staggering €59,-), and here is a list of things that annoyed my up to this point:

The squeeze buttons suck. You have to squeeze way to hard in order for it to do anything.

The scroll ball is really usefull, but positioned just a few millimeters too much south

You indeed have to lift your index finger in order to use the right 'button'. However, this doesn't really seem to be a problem, as I already lifted my index finger on other mice too (never knew that)

Biggest of them all: APPLE, GIVE US BETTER MOUSE MOVEMENT IN OS X. This has been bothering me from the first day I got a Mac; and it's a problem quite well known. There's something wrong with the way OS X handles movement, because when you want to go from ie. one menu item to the other, the acceleration is way too slow, and you end up clicking the item where you left. Okay, so you try to move a little longer, but then the acceleration kicks in and you end up clicking another wrong item! It is freaking me out! Tried MouseZoom, iMouseFix, nothing helps. Advice, anyone?

Please?

Update: Got it fixed, thanks to USB Overdrive, a handy little application that lets you alter many, many USB related settings, inlcuding mouse acceleration. Why Apple doesn't hire the developer to program this into OS X... Apple is gonna scare a lot of Windows users away with their crappy mouse support.

Now that I can finally use the Mighty Mouse normally, I can say that it is a good mouse overall, but there are quirks, hence the above, that they really need to fix. I hope they can fix the right-click issue software-wise, else I'm afraid a lot of people aren't gonna like this mouse...

Worth the €59,-? Only if you have no other mouse, the cost is justified. If you already have a decent mouse, don't bother buying the Mighty Mouse. Nice for Apple fans, but not better than other mice available. Now, my iBook is nagging me that I haven't sync'd my Palm in over seven days, so I'd better do that.

Quite the bumpy ride

2005-08-11T19:12:00.000+02:00

You live, you learn
You love, you learn
You cry, you learn
You lose, you learn
You bleed, you learn
You scream, you learn

I'm normally not using introspective semi-intellectual quotes to start a post, but there's a first for everything, and the above just fits so fcuking well. Tomorrow is a very special day for me and my family, especially for my mother. Tomorrow is my mother's last (in a series of 25) radiation treatment. Next week is her last chemotherapy (in a series of 5).

The last 6 months have been quite the bumpy ride. I must say.

At the end of January, this year, we recieved a letter from the hospital stating that they discovered "something odd" in my mother's left breast. Obviously, we panicked. Cancer is abound in my mother's side of the family (one sister died of breast cancer, another sister has had cancer, her father, my grandpa, had cancer too). However, we still had the hope that this would just prove to be a snapped vein or something, or some scar tissue of some sort.

It wasn't.

My mother got examined more thoroughly a few days after we recieved the letter. That day, I had an exam at university. After that, I phoned my dad, and crying, he told me she had cancer. I dropped my schoolbag, hung up, and I felt as if my cosy little world was falling apart. On the way back, on the subway, on the train, I felt sick, nausea, all my limbs hurt, and the world was spinning.

When I got home, my parents weren't there yet. I... I cried (quite rare for me) for 30 minutes straight, until they got home. Then, we all cried some more. My dad explained that the tumor was very small, and that the docters were very positive. My mother did not need a breast removal, they had to take only a part away. So they did. But that wasn't the end of it. My mother's tumor still had to be examined.

The result wasn't what we'd hoped for. They found "strands" that *could* and *might* grow tumors at their ends. So, my mother had to undergo even more surgery: they removed her entire breast. The day she was operated on, I had to go to university once again. When I was done with uni, I picked up my dad who spent the surgery's hours at work, and on our way to my mum's ward, I broke. Literally. The strain was simply too much to take for me. The world was again spinning, and again crying, I fell into my mum's arms. Ugh. I've cried more the past six months than the 20 years before that.

Anyway, the operation went fine. They also took out all the lymphglands in my mum's left shoulder-- if the cancer had spread, that would be the first place it'd go to, so if they found anything there, it would have spread. The good news came, again, when I got home from university: she was clean! Fcuking clean, I tell you! I don' think I've ever felt any more happy than that exact moment. Screw sex, screw being in love, it means fcuk all when you compare it to the feeling y'get when y'get news like that.

But the story wasn't over.

To be sure no cancer cell would live to see the light of day anywhere in my mum's body, she got chemotherapy. 5 times. It would prove to be a though period for all of us, but of course especially for my mum. Chemotherapy is the worst, thoughest, most devastating medicinal treatment a human body can handle. It wears you down, it breaks you, it tears you apart, like a giddy schoolgirl tearing the wrapping off of a chocolate bar. But. We knew the outlook was positive and good. Factually, my mother did not have cancer anymore at that point. Those strands even turned out to be completely harmless after all, and the tumor itself was of type 2, with 9 being the most aggressive. So, the outlook was good.

Or was it?

A few weeks into the first chemotherapy, we *again* got bad news. A researcher, without our consent, had again looked at my mother's lymphglands, and found very, very , very tiny cells, cells that were so small, that right up untill that moment in time, they were undetectable. They found them using a new technique. These tiny cells did not alter the outlook. But, better safe than sorry, the radialogist decided it was best to give my mum radiation therapy.

And tomorrow is her last time.

As I said, 2005 has been a very bumpy ride up untill now. And somewhere in between all this, I also stopped my Psychology study.

Before this year started, I was young, I was practially a kid with a driver's license-- with barely any notion of how precious (listening to Alanis too often isn't healthy, sonny, it does things to you) everything around you actually is. I know it's a cliche, but really, these sorts of 'life-changing events' make you look at the world differently.

I have quite an obsessive-compulsive character. In normal English, it means I'm kind of a control-freak. I want to keep everything around me under control, I hate it when I can't influence the happenings around me. And of course, there was no way in hell I could control or influence what was happening to my mother. This made me feel so hopeless.

Now, I try to be more loose. I don't want to have a million things on my mind anymore; I want to take things as they come, I'm trying to learn to give fcuk all about what's going on. Life's too much fun, and sometimes too short to worry about everything.

So I'm trying not to. And, I'm step by step, closer to succeeding. And, I'm fcuking proud of that. But not half as proud as I am of my mother. She's the strongest, most beautiful and most extraordinary woman ever to have set foot on this planet.

My parents mean more than the world to me. I respect them so much for raising three boys, looking after them, taking care of them, helping them whenever needed, always there for us when we need them. Even now, with my mum being so ill, she is *still* there for us, together with my dad. I was very scared about my mother dying due to this disease. I still am.

Very.

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

Verse I: "You Learn", Alanis Morissette;
Verse II: "Into The Fire", Bruce Springsteen.

Oh, forgot:

Now playing: "Lonesome Day", Bruce Springsteen

Few blogs nearby

2005-08-10T20:27:00.000+02:00

Just a few minutes ago, I was rearranging the sidebar on this blog, to accomodate all the blogs and planets I (occasionally) read. I came to the conclusion that only four people I know in "real-life", actually blog! And, two of them not even regurlarly... Quite odd. I know blogging isn't half as popular (yet) here in The Netherlands as it is in the USA, but still. I guess it has to do with the fact that we Dutch hook up and call eachother, and since this is a small country, hooking up and calling is easy and cheap.

I hope more of my friends take a blog in the near future. It sucks being the only one.

My room

2005-08-10T17:38:00.000+02:00

I figured I'd let y'all in on my living conditions-- here are some pics I just took from my room:

Pie hole

2005-08-10T13:57:00.000+02:00

These guys are heroes. That must be the best form of protest I've ever seen; so fitting, so simple in setup, yet so effective and making a statement that everyone can understand. No matter where you're from.

Simply amazing. We gotta show that Nazi government (yes, Jews can be Nazis too!) in Israel what bitches they are! I wish I could do something besides opening my pie hole...

Eight things that suck about living in 2005

2005-08-10T00:55:00.000+02:00

All good music has already been made. The Eagles, Frank Sinatra, Dire Straits, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley... I missed it all. I was not around when the really cool stuff was happening in music. These days the charts are riddled with cheap hiphop, catchy rock-nonsense, and bands trying really hard to be individual, but in that struggle become hopelessly dull (Keane, Coldplay, etc).

My country is now actually a target by terrorists. Thank you very much, prime-minster Balkenende and George W. Bush, you made trips to Amsterdam something to think about. Really, I shouldn't run into either of you in a dark alley at night. I might do something stupid.

Normal (so don't count in Ferraris and Aston Martins and such) cars don't look as cool as they did in the 60s.

Speed-traps. They are getting more clever every minute. Ugh.

Men aren't walking on the moon anymore. Presidents aren't getting shot. Why can't we have worldwide important events that don't involve mass-murder?

Football has become a money-centric industry. I want Cruyff! I want Pele! I want Lenstra!

Getting a house is impossible. No wait, scrap that-- getting a house has always been a bitch in this country-- it was in 1945, in 1955, in 1965... And it still is in 2005.

Flight-attendants aren't as cute anymore as they used to be. Really, get those women back on my plane! Where's the fun in flying without immensly beautiful women serving me my Martinis?

Perfect

2005-08-09T19:11:00.000+02:00

Listening to that re-release of "Jagged Little Pill" made me all worked up over the song "Perfect" again. In this song, Alanis describes the fact that some parents (including her own, the album isn't autobiographical for nothing) push their children to their limits to be, well, you know, perfect. The last bridge and final verse:

I'll live for you
I'll make you what I never was
If you're the best, then maybe so am I
Compared to him compared to her
I'm doing this for your own damn good
You'll make up for what I blew
What's the problem ...... why are you crying

Be a good boy
Push a little farther now
That wasn't fast enough
To make us happy
We'll love you just the way you are
if you're perfect

Now, this song touches me not because my parents are like that (hell no :D), but because a lot of parents at my high school were. As you may or may not know, I've completed the Gymnasium (Dutch equivelant of Latin/Greek school), and even though my Gymnasium (Murmellius Gymnasium in Alkmaar) is one of the most relaxed and down-to-earth schools in the world (loose rules, lots of booze, all-in-all, the time of my life), some parents weren't. The Murmellius is a pretty exclusive school, and I still feel the pitty for all those kids that did not get to enjoy their time there, and were always studying their asses off, afraid of getting anything lower than a 9 (we work on a scale from 1 to 10 here, 10 being best).

So sad.

Luckily I don't give a shit about my grades at all. As long as it's 6 or higher (the mininum) I'm more than happy. :D Anyway, back to working on OSNews again, just finished another cup of them Indonesian coffee, finest coffee ever, really.

Gallery play

2005-08-08T11:25:00.000+02:00

I bought the acoustic re-release of "Jagged Little Pill" yesterday (Alanis re-released it as an acoustic version to celebrate the ten-year anniversery of the best selling debut* album of all time (30 million copies)-- and dear lord, I never knew an artist could be so much better than all her competition. This is insane!

In football, we call this gallery play. One team is so superior to the other, that it can do whatever it wants on the pitch, including fancy tricks with the ball and all that. That's exactly what this acoustic re-release of Alanis' breakthrough is: gallery play.

Recommended to anyone who can appreciate real music.

* Jagged Little Pill wasn't her real debut album; it actually was her third album. However, you can see this as her international debut.

Now playing: Alanis Morissette, "Perfect" (acoustic)

PS: Just came across this quote on the web about Alanis' supersmash "Ironic":

"Irony is the disparity between what you expect will happen, and what does happen. So raining on your wedding day isn't ironic, it's just crappy. It would have been ironic if she had lived in a place like Seattle, and traveled to the desert of Mexico for a wedding and it ended up raining there, but not in Seattle. Alanis always gets the last laugh though. We all sit here, saying her song isn't ironic, but in fact, that's pretty ironic that she wrote a song called 'Ironic' that wasn't really ironic. Those Canadians are pretty crafty."

Priceless!!

Sensible discussion

2005-08-08T00:26:00.000+02:00

I must say that I'm pretty satisfied with the discussion about EULAs and the such in this Apple story's comment section. Overall, this was a fairly civilized discussion, with both sides making reasonable posts and points, without resorting to the usual flamewars. Really a good thing, and I hope this thread will set a trend.

Really.

Update: And of course after making this post the discussion did degrade... Oh well.

GPL, revisited...

2005-08-07T15:31:00.000+02:00

Mr. Test,

And forcing a license up someone's ass is different how, exactly?

Thom Holwerda.

Vista

2005-08-07T12:35:00.000+02:00

A thought just crossed my mind while replying to comments about Windows Vista's hardware requirements. You know, all sorts of features have been pulled from Vista (ie. WinFS), and a lot of people were quick to point out that this was done due to time constraints.

However, while I was explaining that Vista can't be too demanding on hardware (else noo one will buy it), it dawned on me: might it be possible that Microsoft pulled certain features from Vista to make the system less heavy & demanding? So that the potential market for Vista is now larger? I remember clearly that turning off WinFS in early Longhorn builds would improve the performance greatly.

While I'm obviously not sure, this does sound like a very reasonable explanation.

SkyOS needs core programmer

2005-08-07T00:35:00.000+02:00

Just tested the new SkyOS beta, and it's still a no-go for me.

Okay, I hate to be the bringer of bad news, but that's almost all I've got for you today... Tested this beta, and I'm 80% negative.

- Weird problems with ps/2 mice. I had to use a USB mouse. I did not need to use safemode anymore to get that mouse working, though.

- Installation went fine. Was a lot quicker. GRUB installed flawlessly (on SkyOS part.)

- After install, a familiar problem: a dark screen. Seems like the problems in the previous betas still exists. Had to use the /disable_radeon.dld parameter.

- *Still* DNS problems. DHCP server + info found, yet a no-go with with "ping www.osnews.com".

Esp. the Radeon problem + networking need fixing badly. It's been this way for months and months... Despite debug logs... But then again, I guess there's more important things to fix. Forward to a new beta, I guess.

SkyOS is in bad need of more than one core programmer.

Weekend

2005-08-06T18:44:00.000+02:00

The ultimate setting for complete relaxation: cold outside, a belly full of delicious foods, lying on my bed, Marie Fredriksson's best vocal perfomance ever blasting through my speakers, iBook in front of me, and best of all, a magnificent cup of coffee made from best-of-breads beans from Sumatra, Indonesia.

What a way to celebrate weekend :).

Now playing: Roxette, "Dressed For Success"

Update: Now playing is Roxette's best song ever, and also my one favourite song of all time, of ever, since eternity: "Joyride"! Roxette is... I've been listening to Roxette since 1991 (I was 7!), I still remember me and my brother going to the Library to rent the "Joyride" album tape (they rented those there). Just... So much good memories in one song and one album... Roxette is a band not to be underestimated; the press does that continiously, but everyone always is astounded to hear that Roxette is one of the best-selling duos in musical history. Roxette basically invented two completely new music genres: that of the 'power-ballad' (ie. "It must have been love" from the "Pretty Woman" movie), and that of the 'bubblegum and balloonfarm rock' (Roxette came up with that name themselves). There still isn't anyone that ever came close to Roxette.

To me, they mean a lot. Also the fact that Marie Fredriksson recently survived a heavy case of cancer makes it all the more real to me. Lots of respect to this duo; after Abba, Sweden's most succesfull export product.

Oh shit...

2005-08-06T17:47:00.000+02:00

...where's my Palm?

Show some Ubuntu

2005-08-03T17:30:00.000+02:00

Why are so many people so hostile towards Ubuntu? As far as I'm concerned, it's just another distribution, and I don't at all find it more special than others. I'll try to explain some of the critique that I've been hearing on OSNews.

I. Ubuntu is just a hype

Yes, Ubuntu is a hype. But, it's not 'just' a hype. The past 10 months, since the release of 4.10, have proved that Ubunu might have risen to stardom in a few weeks, but also that it is here to stay. A lot of people say that the counter on Distrowatch doesn't say anything; it just shows that there's a general interest in Ubuntu, nothing more. Well, then how are you going to explain the fact that that interest has been rising since the release of 4.10, and doesn't seem to be shrinking at all? It has taken that Distrowatch list by storm, and even after ten months, it ain't dropping. Go figure.

II. Ubuntu is killing Debian

If Ubuntu kills Debian (which will never happen), then it says more about Debian than it says anything about Ubuntu.

III. Ubuntu leeches off of Debian and therefor it sucks ass

In that sense, most distro's suck ass:

- Mandriva: a fork of Red Hat;
- Xandros: a Debian;
- Linspire: a Debian;
- MEPIS: a Debian;
- Knoppix: a Debian;
- Distro X: based on distro Y.

The list is endless.

So, in short, Ubuntu isn't special and doesn't deserve all the crap anymore than other distributions.

Gnome vs. KDE...

2005-08-03T12:15:00.000+02:00

AMEN!

im_kit + live queries = best IM client ever

2005-08-01T21:54:00.000+02:00

The live query model in BeOS enables you to create custom contacts lists in any possible way. Really, the possiblities are endless.

OS X' spotlight might be more advanced, but it is nowhere near as flexible (and still easy to use!) as BeFS.

I told you so...

2005-08-01T18:49:00.000+02:00

Now this is *exactly* why I find republics retarded, and why I never hope my country will become one.

To summarize: the American senate couldn't agree on whether or not to send Bolton to the UN as the US ambassador. So, the president of the US of A, calmly waited until the senate was in recess so that he could use his absolute power to force Bolton into the post.

This should *never*, NEVER EVER be possible in a true democracy. This is president Bush using powers only dictators have. Now it's Bolton, next time he'll do something else?

I'm so happy to be living in The Netherlands.

Anyway, this quote by Bush is priceless:

This post is too important to leave vacant any longer, especially during a war and a vital debate about U.N. reform.

If you find the UN so important, mr. American president, then why don't you pay the stellar debt you have at the UN, hmmm?

Ugh, politicians are snakes.

A grand don't come for free

2005-07-31T13:22:00.000+02:00

Lars sent "A Grand Don't Come For Free", which I left in Königs Wusterhausen when I was there on vcation a few weeks ago :). I declared this album by The Streets as the best album of 2004. Thanks Lars!

Now playing: The Streets, "Not Addicted"

Insane Americans

2005-07-30T21:47:00.000+02:00

Okay, I've officially lost faith in the USA ever becoming a sane country. Really, the US is so selfish, egocentric, power-hungry, it's just mind-blowing.

Read this.

Done?

Insane, isn't it? Especially the following contradiction pissed me off. First, the creator of the proposal says:

"Safety of life is an issue," said William Klepczynski, a senior analyst at the State Department in favor of the U.S. proposal, who asserts that programmers who ignore the need to add leap seconds present a "risk to air travel in the future" because a glitch might shut down traffic-control systems.

Then he goes on and says:

Eliminating leap seconds will make sextants and sundials slowly become inaccurate, but supporters say that's OK now that the satellite-supported GPS can give exact longitude and latitude bearings to anyone with a receiver. Sailors "don't navigate with the stars any longer," said Dr. McCarthy.

There is so much wrong here that I don't know where to begin. First off, the contradiction: he says that leap seconds *could* lead to deaths in the future but *only* if programmers of life-important systems don't account for leap seconds. So, discarding those seconds is a matter of life and death. Then, he says that sailors don't navigate by the use of the stars anymore, due to GPS. What, mr. scientist, if those GPS systems fail? What if the US shuts GPS down once again because of another war for oil? How are the sailors gonna get their asses back to dry land then? What about shipwrecking? What then? Can't the old-fashioned wway of navigating using the stars save those men's lives?

This contradiction also shows the utter ignorance and complete lack of reality of this American, as he assumes that everybody in the world is rich enough to buy GPS equipment. What about poor fishermen in Africa? Transport ships off of the coast of India? People that live near or in the Sahara desert? NOT EVERYONE LIVES IN WHITE FCUKING SUBURBIA AND HAS LOADS AND LOADS OF CASH, MR AMERICAN. Jesus fcuking Christ. The arrogance, the egoism, goddamnit it can make me so damn pissed off.

The system fo using leap seconds we have now *works*. There is absolutely no sane reasoning behind eliminating it other than passing on the control over time to the US.

Thank you very much

2005-07-30T18:40:00.000+02:00

I feel ultima relaxed right now. Just completed a very hectic workweek, I'm dead tired lying on bed with my iBook in my lap, browsing the web, with The King rumbling thru my HiFi set... :).

Now playing: Elvis Presley, "Hard Headed Woman"

Stallman's a hypocrite

2005-07-29T22:59:00.000+02:00

Richard Stallman is such a hypocrite:

A Unix-like operating system is so large that there must surely be parts of Solaris that are better than their counterparts in GNU/Linux. However, the peculiar incompatible licence used to release Solaris as free software mostly prevents us from incorporating those parts. Thus, our community stays with GNU/Linux, and gains little or nothing from this contribution. Now that Solaris is free software, there's nothing unethical about it, but it is not much as a contribution.

Mr. Stallman, your GPL is doing the exact same thing! You cannot incorporate GPL code into other projects without forcing the end product to be GPL too; how is this different from Sun's CDDL? Explain, Mr. Stallman!

How is GPL software open and free if for instance BSD or Haiku (MIT) developers cannot use it? As far as I'm concerned, your GPL isn't true free and open software at all, Mr. Stallman. How does forcing people to use your license fit in with 'free' and 'open' and 'choice'? Vendor lock-in? License lock-in!

BSD and MIT code is truly open, because *anyone* can use it, whether the end-product is open or not. *That* is true freedom, Mr. Stallman. Your GPL is NOT.

Religion sucks ass

2005-07-27T22:14:00.000+02:00

What the fcuk is wrong with this world? Today, a bunch of extreme-right Jews (yes, Jews can be extreme-right too) placed the Jewish equivelant of a Fatwa on Ariel Sharon. It basically means that they're asking God to kill Sharon within 30 days, because he is forcing the Jewish settlers in the Gaza strip to move.

They're a bunch of sick, sick, VERY SICK people. I mean, I think Sharon's a fat pig and deserves to die, but by justice, not by extremist God crap. The scary thing is, the same happened with Yitzack Rabin-- and we all know what happened to him in 1995.

What is wrong with all these people? They're all believing in the same god (Jahweh, Allah and God are one and the same person), so why in the fcuk are they trying to kill one another and eachother? The basic principles of these three faiths are all the same, they have the same archfather (Abraham), so what's up?

The world would be a better place if religion did not exist.

If I were to allowed to select 5 cars for free... updated

2005-07-25T19:24:00.000+02:00

Aston Martin DB9 (dark-green) (the closest a machine can come to Perfection)

Ferrari F430 (red) (best ass ever)

Corvette C6 Convertible (black) (awful build quality, questionable design, but fcuking raw)

Lamborghini Diablo (yellow) (no words to describe this monster. No wait, I got two. From hell).

Nissan Murano (orange) (extravagant design, Nissan endurance and quality, and kids friendly)

And on a related note, I bought a new car stereo system today. My car still sported the radio-only standard Nissan radio from 1995. While it worked fine, I wanted CD in my car. Of course I bought a JVC, my favourite brand when it comes to A/V electronics. Heck, this entire house uses JVC equipments. It can be a pricey brand, but they combine one-of-a-kind exclusive design (check my set, from the award-winning VS series; the display moves up when it's on (picture is false), and you can put the main unit horizontally and verticaly) with superb quality (my parents' previous HiFi-system was a JVC; it served us from 1986/87 (not sure) all the way up to 1998... It still works, but my parents have already bought a new one (also JVC).

Respect

2005-07-24T17:51:00.000+02:00

Lance Armstrong has won the Tour De France 2005. It is his seventh win. Also his last; he quits. I hereby want to say that I have the deepest of respect for this man, one of the greatest athletes in the history of mankind.

He won the battle with cancer, and that puts all his perfomances in a very personal light for me.

I bow deep, very deep, very, very deep, in honour of this man.

My red suede shoes

2005-07-24T14:24:00.000+02:00

Had a good weekend so far. Friday evening me and my friends had a few drinks at the local tennis club (neither of us play tennis (anymore) but hey a beer is only 1 E). Saturday evening we went to Big City Alkmaar, again to the Notaris. Had a few drinks, made a lot of silly jokes, and had fun overall. My red suede shoes survived the pub.

It was the first time ever that someone else was driviing my car. I didn't feel like being the designated driver so I let Tom drive my car... And I know I'm never going to do that again. It's just wrong to see someone else drive my car, it's just wrong. He drove fine, that isn't the problem. It's just... Not right. Oh, and we were pulled over by some coppers for a breath test :). Tom hadn't been drinkingn obviously, so all was fine. We almost ran over one of the officers, he was standing on the middle of the road in dark-colored non-reflective clothing-- and only when we almost hit him he turned on his flare. Idiot.

We also discussed the possibility of us going on a skiing vacation this christmas. Financially I could go on three of those by that time, so that's not the problem. Marcel's going to discuss this with Jorien (Marcel's really cool and very talkative girlfriend). I hope it works out.

Anyway, msg'd Sascha and Renate who came home from Rhodos friday eve, and Renate msg'd back saying: "Hey did you know I'm coming over tomorrow? Means you gotta be home!" Okay. Rosa's a chick magnet :P.

PS: I completely forgot to tell that we've been drinking Courvoisier yesterday eve! Marcel bought a bottle tax-free, and it was really cool to be drinking the Cognac that all those famous people drink too :).

Rosa's first visit to the vet

2005-07-21T15:21:00.000+02:00

Had to take Rosa to the vet for the first time today. She took it quite well in the beginning, but on the way home she got quite frantic and started clutching on to my arm through the cat-carriage, quite an odd experience when doing 90 down a two-lane street :).

She got her ID chip injected (bionic little kitten, my other two cats are old-fashioned and have ID tattoos). We also got anti-worm/flee medications for all our cats. In three and six weeks she'll get more medicine injections, like all kittens. In 5-6 months she'll have to become (*ssssshhh*) steralized.

PS: She likes to sleep on my lap while I'm working on OSNews :).

PS2: I'm reading here that subway stations in London have been evacuated... Time to turn on the NOS.

PS3: Got a greeting card from Rhodos (Greece) from Renate and Sascha. Thanks girls :).

Summertime...

2005-07-21T11:22:00.000+02:00

Great... :/

Raw power

2005-07-20T21:56:00.000+02:00

Sexy.

Sexier.

Sexiest.

However, why would I go for sexy... When I can get raw American power for only 1/4 of the price?

Beats me.

>From top to bottom: Aston Martin DBR1, Aston Martin V12 Vanquish, Aston Martin DB9, Corvette C6 Convertible.

Support Haiku AND yT

2005-07-18T13:03:00.000+02:00

As I already wrote in my review, I'm really impressed by Zeta R1. This thing is, to me at least, stable as a rock, fast, and responsive. The pref app is stable, doesn't crash or hang regurlarly anymore.

I was really surprised by the amount of BeOS r5 zealots in the comments section. They are so hell-bent on r5, that anything yT does, will be shot down by them. yT is currently the only entitiy trying to keep BeOS alive AND has a usable product *NOW*, and all those zealots do is complain. Complain, complain, complain. Tabs arent r5-ish enough. Scrollbars aren't r5-ish. Preference app isn't BeOS-y enough. Icons aren't old and jagg-edged enough. I already knew that the BeOS community had some serious problems concerning legacy, but this is just amazing. It's like a bunch of people holding on desperatly to a piece of technology that's 6 years old.

Let me do an 'if'. If Be did not do a focus shift, if they did not go under, what would BeOS look like now? I'm quite sure that it wouldn't be far away from where Zeta is now, only a bit more advanced probably. Would those zealots still have complained? I highly doubt it.

These people should learn to deal with the fact that Be, Inc. is tits up. They're not coming back. It's over. yellowTAB stood up to take over the stick. And as far as I'm concerned, they're doing a really good job trying to please one of the hardest-to-please communities in the computing scene. If you truly love BeOS, you support Haiku AND yT. It's as simple as that.

Introducing: Rosa

2005-07-17T14:50:00.000+02:00

Yesterday eve, I picked up our new kitten! She's 6 weeks old, and of course cuteness abound... Damn, this makes me so happy! I made two videos with my digital camera, here and here. We wanted to name her Jade (then we'd have Jari, Jobje and Jade, three J's), but when I picked her up, the 15 year old girl, the daughter of the owners, told me she named her Rosa (Rose), and well, we decided to keep that name. So, her name's Rosa (which we already turn into Roosje, 'Little Rose').

My two other two big cats reacted as to be expected: a little scared, insecure and sometimes hissing. All normal behaviour. It's already getting better. Jari, my biggest cat, already hit Rosa on the back twice, to make clear that he's the boss around here. Just so she knows.

Zeta

2005-07-15T18:36:00.000+02:00

Zeta R1 came in via the mail today! Woohoo!

Cool reviews coming up

2005-07-14T16:33:00.000+02:00

In the coming months, you can expect a whole set of interesting reviews on OSNews.

First of all, Genesi has made clear that I'm on their waiting list, so in the coming months you can expect a review of their Open Desktop Workstation, a Pegasos G4 machine, running all sorts of Linuxes, MorphOS and more. It has a 1Ghz Freescale G4 processor, 512 MB RAM and an ATI Radeon 9250 videocard.

Secondly, three OSNews staff members will be getting review copies of Zeta R1, including me. I hope we can push out three reviews, from three different perspectives. People are screaming for Zeta R1 reviews, and I hope we can provide them with those.

Thirdly, I'm in talks with Sun NL to provide me with a Sun Ultra 20, for review purposes, of course on a loan basis. This will be really interesting, as I've been contemplating buying one of those babies for personal use. It's very affordable at only 800E (where's the friggin' character map in SuSE 9.3?).

Now playing: Garbage, "Run Baby Run"

Productive day

2005-07-13T17:20:00.000+02:00

Went to Big City Alkmaar today, and bought me a whole shitload of new stuff. I'm most excited about my new neck-collar thing that I bought, from Fossil (my all time favourite Watch brand). I already own two Fossil watches (this one being my newest and most-worn), and they're the best-designed watches *ever*. I already owned a Big Tic before they even came to The Netherlands-- and still, today, people stare at my watch in amazement :). Anyway, the collar-necklace-thing (how do I name it without making it sound so female?):

Cool huh? Other than that, I bought some new clothes (and probably one of the few rugby shirts sold in size M :P), and some stuff for my computers (a decent 4-port USB 2.0 hub for my iBook, and a cool Apple-like mouse for one of my x86 machines, it glows all blue). A very productive day. Spent well over 100 Euros...

10.4.2

2005-07-13T10:57:00.000+02:00

Just updated Tiger to 10.4.2 on my iBook, and everything seems to still run smoothly. It seems that the time-out bug that prevented me from using Safari on the OSNews backend has been fixed-- however, Image Capture still chrashes each time you drag/drop a picture out of the main window, even though I've been sending in bug reports on that for *months*. The amount of free memory seems to be a bit better too, not sure though (might just be the fresh reboot, the machine had been running for almost a month straight).

Now playing: Marylin Manson, "New Model"

From the "Mechanical Animals" album-- an extraordinary good album, completely different from the usual crap that he makes. "Mechanical Animals" has its very own feel, unlike any other piece of music I've ever heard. Definitely recommended to *anyone*, even people who normally don't like Manson's music (like me). "Mechanical" indeed summarizes the sound of this album. The cover of this album created much controversy in the US (where else??), which went as far as people raiding music stores and burning the copies of the album. Sick people, that country really needs a bucket of reality.

Scanner hell

2005-07-10T15:37:00.000+02:00

I'm appaled by the poor support for Canon scanners in OS X. I have a CanoScan LIDE 30 (one of those really flat ones), and on the box and product pages it is said that it works in OSX. Right. If you're a friggin' OS X die-hard uber-geek maybe, but not for normal people.

Let me explain the process of driver installation, as devised by Canon:

Download CanoScan Toolbox for OS X (Tiger supported);

Install it (at this step I hung, as it complained about me not having enough privilidges to write a certain file; yet it didn't ask for admin privilidges);

Download the actual driver;

Install it, which requires you to somehow magically know that there's a plug-in directory where you're supposed to put it.

Now, that's what I call an installation process not worthy of OS X. It uses old VISE installers and what not; I expect more from such a big firm, especially taking into account that Canon is a company who's expertise lies in *imaging*, and the Mac obviously has a strong presence in that market.

But anyway, I had no luck when using those 'drivers', as the ToolBox app wouldn't install. So, in a move that would please the OSS zealots reading this, I tried installing and using SANE. No good. Everything (4 packages) installed fine, but yet nothing would work as told. Damnit. And as SANE uses Apple's installer, I can only remove those files manually. Damnit.

So, I *had* to resort to VueScan. 3rd Party software in order for my scanner to work. Right. This scanner even worked fine on Linux! Plugging it in was all I needed to do on SuSE 9.3. This is not what I come to expect from Apple and Canon. Canon scanner should work out of the box on OS X. There is no excuse for this mess.

Minislack Update

2005-07-08T15:46:00.000+02:00

Out to test Minislack on my PII-400. It's my 'BeBox86' (I'm really bad with originality), I know, but hey I'm waiting for enough cash-flow to order Zeta R1. Been hearing some really good stuff about Minislack, and I hope it flies at least a bit on that computer, as it 'only' has 192 MBRAM (sad that Linux fails to improve on memory usage).

And I forgot to tell, sent out a mail to Sun NL whether they know when or if the Ultra 20 (and for what price) comes to The Netherlands. Went all honest on how I'm planning on using it as a desktop. Also made sure that they know I have a Ultra 5, can't hamr to show I got Sun stuff :).

Update: Dumped Minislack, it used Lilo and Lilo didn't completely remove the older GRUB, so the machine gave a GRUB error. In 1999 I might have accepted that, but it's 2005 goddamnit. So, I went with Hoary, which I'm installing as we speak.

Now playing: The Eagles - (the amazing saxophone solo in) "Sad Café"

Kitty

2005-07-08T10:17:00.000+02:00

We're gonna get a new kitty! We're gonna get a new kitty! We're gonna get a new kitty! Yes, these are things that make me as happy as a 6 year old schoolchild.

Anyway, me and my parents jointly decided that we're gonna get a third cat as an addition to the two amazing tomcats we already have (two black & white, beautiful big cats, 10 and 11 years old). It's to lighten up the mood around the house a bit. Also, simply because we like cats. It's gonna be a young one, and obviously we're gonna get one from the asylum, just as where Jobje came from.

Can't wait!

Now playing: The Eagles, "Peaceful Easy Feeling"

Inevitable

2005-07-07T13:40:00.000+02:00

Update III: Great post by Gnome hacker Dom Lachowicz. As long as Americans like him are born, the US still has a future. Updated death counter (under update I).

Update II: *Before* the attack on Madrid in March 2004, the joint security agencies of NATO/Europe had a list of three locations that were on the hit list for a possible terrorist attack in Europe. 1) Madrid. That one happened. 2) London. That one happened. The third one? Guess what: The Netherlands. Remember, this list dates from *before* Madrid. Fcuking great. As soon as uni starts again in September, I'll travel through Amsterdam (including Central Station) twice a day...

Update: Current official death count: 36. Injured: 700. Jesus Christ.

It had to come to this, after all.

This is the price innocent citizens have to pay for their governments going to war. I wish to give my sincere condoleances to the family of the victims.

This just makes me think how long it is going to take before bombs will be hitting my capital city of Amsterdam. My country is extremely vulnerable to terror, as we have a very open society, and my government openly supported and contributed to the unlawful war in Iraq. Also, my government is almost kissing Bush' feet.

New York. Madrid. Istanbul. London. Amsterdam? I hope with all my heart that these barbarians who dare to kill innocent people will keep their filthy stinking paws off of my nation. Go kill the people who started the war (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld), you sick fcuks.

Bejeweled2 record

2005-07-07T11:48:00.000+02:00

I got the record back from Eugenia!

2 021 250

Dear god

2005-07-06T23:21:00.000+02:00

Really. KDE has too many features.

25 Years ago

2005-07-06T16:22:00.000+02:00

It's 2005, this means that 25 years ago, The Eagles broke up. Odd, I never realized that until today. Let's hope that one day, they are gonna set their differences aside even more, so that besides doing Farewell Tours, they will also be able to make a new album, that will undoubtly blow away the present-day musicians. After all, Don Henley did one of his best songs after The Eagles had broken up ("Boys Of Summer").

Now playing: The Eagles - "After The Thrill Is Gone"

The flame rises but it soon descends
Empty pages and a frozen pen
You're not quite lovers and you're not quite friends
After the thrill is gone

Firefox

2005-07-06T13:35:00.000+02:00

Firefox is an idiotic browser.

Can somebody please explain this to me:

My bookmarks toolbar folder doesn't work! This is what I must do in order to get my bookmarks to appear in the toolbar: 1) Open Firefox (defaults to www.novell.com); 2) Browse to another page; 3) open a new window with ctrl+n. *Only then* will my bookmarks appear.

And to make matters worse, Blogger's image upload refuses to work correctly with anything else than Safari. Konqueror doesn't work, Firefox doesn't work. Fcuking GREAT. Still stuck with Imageshack.

Armada of stupidity

2005-07-05T19:18:00.000+02:00

Sometimes things happen that make you question your own capabilities as a computer user. I have those moments quite regularly, but the one I just had really is the crown on top of my long list of stupidity.

There has always been one thing that bothered me more than anything about computers: the fact that bootloaders were always incapable of using my USB keyboard. This resulted in me having two keyboards connected to my PC (my special ultra-thin blue backlit USB keyboard and a ps/2 one). But, I needed the ps/2 one today, in order to start setting up my other x86. I was in doubt. Removing that keyboard would confine me to SuSE 9.3 (my default entry in GRUB at the moment), and I'm not yet ready for that kind of a commitment with SuSE (I like Ubuntu, still). I started looking on the internet, and all I could find was someone saying that I should change my BIOS settings. Something I've heard before, but I never assumed it was meant for me as my keyboard works great everywhere except in GRUB. However, I thought, I might as well look.

And there it was. 'USB keyboard support -- DISABLED'.

Jesus Christ.

Especially since the item below said: 'USB mouse support -- ENABLED'. Where's the sense in that?

After enabling the former, everything worked, and an annoyance that has lasted for three years has been solved.

Ugh. Sometimes I really am the flagship in the armada of stupidity.

I'm Dutch

2005-07-05T15:41:00.000+02:00

I received a weird email from an OSNews reader today-- something about politically incorrect posts being removed and how that isn't good, and on how my music collection probably contains Arabic belly-dancing music. As a reply, I sent the best email I have ever sent, and I don't think I'll ever be able to outdo myself after this one:

> I've checked your pages, you seem
> to be young. But where the fuck, did
> you get that polite and straight thinking
> from? You're not christian nor
> democrate, your not licking someone's ass,
> so what is it?

I'm Dutch.

--
Thom Holwerda
---
Managing editor at http://www.osnews.com, exploring the future of computing
---
Read my blog: http://thom-holwerda.blogspot.com

Beeeeh

2005-07-04T11:21:00.000+02:00

Before I start this blog post, let me state for the record that I'm agnostic; meaning that I nor believe in a god, nor *not* believe in a god. Take note that I'm referring to the philosophical meaning of the word agnostic, as today most English people will think it means atheistic. Which it doesn't. The term was first used by Thomas Huxly, for those of you who want to know. More triviality: it comes from the Greek a gnoosis (alfa gamma; nu; omega; sigma; iota; sigma), which literally means 'without knowledge'. Agnostics believe that some truths, especially theological ones, are inherently unknownable.

---

Why do people piss on Tom Cruise and his Scientology so much? I really don't get that. They ridicule him, laugh at him, and what not. I really don't get that.

Why is he promoting Scientology any different from Bush saying "And God bless America"? Why is it different from my Queen being 'Queen by the grace of God'? Why is it different from an actor in his acceptance speech saying "I'd like to thank God"?

You know, Scientology is just as legitimate as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or whatever. They are all in essence, sects and cults. There is no more legitimate proof for the existance of God as there is for the existance of the Cosmic Goat. However, there's neither any more legitimate proof for the non-existance of God as there is for the non-existance of the Cosmic Goat. It's a complicated matter; but what I'm trying to say is, is that Christianity is not somehow magically more 'real' or 'true' because it's written in a book somewhere (a book of which the new testament was written 300 years after the accounts happened).

I also saw that Eugenia was complaining about Scientology a few weeks ago. She speaks about the fact that Katie Holmes first had to convert to Scientology before she could marry Tom Cruise. That's not odd. Until not too long ago, say until the 70s/80s, it was highly uncommon for a Protestant to marry a Catholic, let alone a Catholic marrying a Muslim. Even to this day, people in my country still complain if someone from our Protestant Royal Family marries a Catholic. So, the fact that Katie first had to become a Scientologist is not something out-of-the-ordinary nor is it strictly related to Scientology.

I'm not trying to diss anyone, I'm just trying to put things in perspective. A cult is a cult, whether it has 3 billion followers or only 1. The word of God says "Fiat lux", the book of the Cosmic Goat says "Beeeeh".

Sunshine

2005-07-03T17:50:00.000+02:00

Bought Super Mario Sunshine for my GameCube today. It's an awesome game! Looks good, and has that magical Nintendo-feel all over it. Good purchase, and deffo recommended to GameCube owners.

Dumb

2005-07-03T10:18:00.000+02:00

OSNews readers can be really dumb.

SuSE 9.3 Update

2005-07-01T15:50:00.000+02:00

FTP install finished late last night, and today did the whole setting up thing and all. It's actually kind of good, even though it's KDE! Not bad!

Hats off to the SuSE team!

Update: I'm *really* liking this. Screenshot:

Weird hobby

2005-07-01T14:41:00.000+02:00

While I was sitting here waiting for YaST Online Update to finish the massive update I planned for SuSE 9.3, I figured I might as well clean out my 'shoeboxes'. My shoeboxes are a collection of shoeboxes (ahey) that contain three things: my collection of photo's, my collection of computer hardware and cables, and most importantly, my collection of manuals.

Those are four shoeboxes packed To The Maxx™ with all sorts of manuals, leaflets, guarantee certificates and the likes that date back to 1990 (and some are even older). Ranging from games, to TV sets, to Hifi systems, to mice, to kitchen apparatus, and much, much more. For some strange reason I decided a few years ago that I was going to bring all the manuals etc. in this house together and hold on to them for eternity. Well, the above picture shows where I'm at now.

My most precious manuals are the original manuals that came with my parents' 286 computer back in 1991. I have all the paperwork that came with it; from the dot-matrix printer, to the monitor, to the computer itself. But the ones I am the most fond of are these:

Yes, that's the complete G2 Computer Systems branded Microsoft Windows 3 manual and original diskettes *and* the complete G2 system manual (for the computer itself), from 1991. It's truly something that geeks will appreciate. I still run that version of Windows somewhere on an old Pentium 200 Mhz, but the machine lacks a videocard.

So, if you have manuals that you don't need anymore, preferably of old stuff, please contact me at my email address (slakje AT quicknet DOT nl), so you can get my contact details.

OSNews

2005-06-28T13:21:00.000+02:00

It's all settled now. I have access to the backend, and all that. I'm now really ready to go as the Managing Editor of OSNews.com :).

As Al Bundy would put it: "Let's rock."

And the name of our new Princess is known! Alexia Juliana Marcela Laurentien. Beautiful name.

Natalee Holloway: A Farce

2005-06-27T23:54:00.000+02:00

Ugh, I'm getting sick of the hippocracy surrounding the Natalee Holloway case. The girl disappeared on Aruba, a colony, so to speak, of the Netherlands in the Carribean. The complete US media have fallen over this case, giving enormous amounts of attention to this case. The US are applying massive amounts of pressure on the authoraties, leading to random arrests. The US deems our justice system weak. Well, I'm sorry Uncle Sam, in this country people are innocent until proven otherwise. We don't randomly arrest people and then let them go on bail. We don't have that system.

There are lots of American reporters all over the island, bringing live updates and all that.

Why are the US media and authorities so concerned all of a sudden? Why are they so interested in this story? That's easy. Look at a picture of this poor girl:

White female. 18 years old. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. No wonder the US care so much all of a sudden.

Would they have given a shit if she was black and from South Central? I don't think so.

A lot of mainly black people struggle to make ends meet in the ghettos in the US, lots of people die and vanish on US soil. I don't see the big networks reporting on that, now do I? It sickens me. So much hippocracy. Fix the problems in your own damn country first, before criticising others.

---

PS: Of course this doesn't defute the fact that I feel much empathy for the family and friends.

Sun introduces Ultra 20

2005-06-27T18:29:00.000+02:00

Sun introduced the new Sun Ultra 20! An Opteron one-way workstation for only $895,-! A perfect future replacement for my Sun Ultra V.

This machine is definitely on my wish-list. I was waiting for a more affordable machine from Sun, so I wouldn't have to resort to 2nd hand anymore. I'm just afraid on how the pricing for us Europeans will turn out. If I'm to rely on experience, it will be close to €1000,- here... Following conversion rates it should be closer to €800,- but oh well.

Awesome :).

Switched to Xfce

2005-06-26T16:39:00.000+02:00

And a small additional post to my previous very long one: today I completed the transition from Gnome 2.10 to Xfce 4.2.1. This transition has been in the making for a while now; not because Gnome sucks or anything, it's more because Xfce is a little faster and overall cleaner.

The obligatory screenshot:

Cogs can think.

Important notice

Cogs can think.

Explanation

Sky rocks

I've had enough

Stupid nazis

Podcast yet again

Clockwork of stupidity

I've got faith...

I'M A NIGERIAN AND WANT TO DONATE $300 000 000 TO YOUR ACCOUNT

Coffee-to-go

Support the Free Tree Foundation and General Tree License

[Indian Accent] I am from India [/Indian accent]

Live wirelessly

Airport Extreme

First day

It's alive

Eugenia, about the EU...

Superpower but can't feed its own people?

Shoes & DVDs

Hot chicks and broccoli

Beach

Idiots

Het regent zonnestralen

For someone

Perspective

Damn Gnome-pilot

T.H.O.M.

Google Talk

Delivery girl

Me? Participating?

I'm odd

Slashdot got slashdotted...

Sticky phone

drunk and proudf

The record back

Nuking Zeta

Extraordinary machine indeed

Lowlands

I hope they bring back Elvis

Ubuntu's weakness strikes again...

Isreal started retreat

Updated my site

Andrew on KDE

Bills...

Coffee, black, please

Mighty mouse

Quite the bumpy ride

Few blogs nearby

My room

Pie hole

Eight things that suck about living in 2005

Perfect

Gallery play

Sensible discussion

GPL, revisited...

Vista

SkyOS needs core programmer

Weekend

Oh shit...

Show some Ubuntu

Gnome vs. KDE...

im_kit + live queries = best IM client ever

I told you so...

A grand don't come for free

Insane Americans

Thank you very much

Stallman's a hypocrite

Religion sucks ass

If I were to allowed to select 5 cars for free... *updated*

Respect

My red suede shoes

Rosa's first visit to the vet

Summertime...

Raw power

Support Haiku AND yT

Introducing: Rosa

Zeta

Cool reviews coming up

If I were to allowed to select 5 cars for free... updated

Minislack Update

SuSE 9.3 Update