...actual distinct voices speaking in my mind? Or is it just the weblog of James Lindenschmidt? Here you can see me wrestle with this and other questions, while spewing forth my writings, opinions, and hallucinations.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

 

Debian gives way to Mandrake

Well, I finally did it. I wiped my Linux partitions and installed Linux Mandrake. I had been using Debian, but for several reasons I decided to switch.

The install was effortless. Linux has come A Long Way. Everything worked right off the bat, except for my soundcard. I have an M-Audio card designed for pro (24-bit) recording, and I have to use an alternative sound system for Linux called ALSA. I haven't yet been able to get it to work, although Mandrake did recognize my card and ALSA was installed. It's probably a minor tweak; I'm sure I"ll find it in the next day or two.

This version of Linux, and especially KDE 3.0.3 looks absolutely gorgeous, particularly after I downloaded and installed the Keramik, Liquid, and Acqua themes. I think I will like this. Everything seems to Just Work.

I'm sure I'll talk more about this soon; I'm still thinking of giving Red Hat 8.0 a try when it is released, supposedly on Monday. The Mandrake install is easy enough to replicate.

^ posted at 2:08 AM

 

Flaming Lips, and recording music

I haven't written in a while. I've been distracted by my music. Matt and I are working on recording some of our songs. We're putting our full attention into our music project. We have a good start. More soon.

I've been listening to the new album by The Flaming Lips called Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. The last album that hit me like this was Radiohead's OK Computer. It's fabulous. At the Flaming Lips website listed above, they have the entire album available for preview as a Flash presentation. First off, I applaud them for making their music available in this way. I'm sure it will increase album sales. Secondly, go listen to it. Now.

^ posted at 12:35 AM

 

a reading was sighted

My daughter read aloud for the first time today. It was really cool. She was so excited.

"I'm reading! I'm reading!"

It was a few words, but she clearly grokked the concept of putting letters together, creating words. Like her third circuit opened. We practiced some more today, and she wants to do more tomorrow. I'm following her lead.

^ posted at 9:46 PM

 

NYTimes: 'Linux .. may finally be taking off'

This article makes that claim. I agree. I think Red Hat 8 is going to be huge on the desktop. It's a gut feeling, but also, consider. For the first time, mature applications are available for virtually every need. KDE 3 is as solid as they come. GNOME 2 is quite nice. OpenOffice is the real deal. Evolution is better than Outlook. Mozilla rules. There are CD burners, mp3 rippers and players, and more. Yay, Linux.

^ posted at 11:13 PM

 

Need to fight pirates? Get some glue . . .

OK, it's time to follow up on my previous post about recent Intellectual Property stuff. There are a few articles that have come out in the past few days that are worth a comment or three.

First is the most, um, well I just don't know how to describe it. According to this story at the NYTimes (free reg. required, blah blah), Epic Records has come up with the stupidest solution ever to combat the Evil Music Pirates™. Apparently for the new Tori Amos and Pearl Jam CDs, they were worried about sending pre-release copies of the CD out to reviewers, because in the past the music has shown up on P2P networks so that people could download mp3s of the album before the release date. And, of course, they automatically assume that such practices Damage Album Sales, hurting the artists.

So their solution was, at least, creative. They decided to ship out the prerelease CDs inside Sony Discman players, with the lid glued shut. This is not a joke. And to further circumvent the more imaginative Evil Music Pirates™, they glued the headphone plug into the jack, so that a reviewer couldn't plug the player's output into some recording device (should I mention that an even more imaginative Evil Music Pirate™ would simply have to cut the cable and re-attach a new plug on the end? Nahh . . .) .

Now, there are at least several things wrong with this (do I even need to say anything? Really?). Number one, they are attempting to control the listening experience of the reviewers. Most reviewers have their own sound systems and probably like to listen to their new music on those systems. I know I'd rather listen to music on my own modest speakers in my system than almost anywhere else. I know the system well, I know how music sounds on it, and it is the space for my most intimate contact with the music. So if I were a reviewer forced to listen to an album through crappy 99-cent in-ear headphones, I probably wouldn't have as good of a listening experience. This position is reiterated by a music reviewer that the NYT interviewed in the article. But the bottom line is that I can't possibly see how this practice will help generate better album reviews, which in turn will generate better album sales. Epic is spending more money to make less money.

However, this decision seems even stupider from another perspective. Why does Epic believe that a Vicious Criminal Freedom-hating Terrorist Music Pirate™ would stop short of smashing the unwanted Sony Discman to retrieve the precious pearl-like CD contained within? Epic are assuming that just because they spent $50 each to send out the discmans, that their customers will see these glued-shut, electronic, Intellectual-Property-protecting CD cases as being valuable and will not damage them. But what good is a CD player that won't play CDs? These CD players only play one particular Pearl Jam CD. That does me no good whatsoever. Me? I'd smash the fucking thing and throw it in the trash.

Which brings us to the next question: who is paying for this debacle? 1000 Discmans for the review CDs at (about) $50 a pop -- is this $50 grand a recoupable expense for the artist? Will Tori and/or Pearl Jam be charged for this silliness?

The lesson here that the record companies need to learn is that they cannot control the actions of their customers. By attempting to assert control over what their customers do, they are alienating them. As a result, album sales are down, and CDs are more expensive than ever. It's getting to be almost comical at how shortsighted and desperate the record industry is. They are doomed. It's like the rich kid who had the really nice soccer ball and controlled the playground as a result, getting paranoid that his soccer ball is getting a bit dingy and dirty. Plus, there are now other kids on the block with soccer balls, and the rich kid is nervous, because he doesn't have something no one else has anymore, and he has no friends because he's pissed everyone off by being a selfish prick.

^ posted at 8:51 AM

 

Interesting things in my inbox

This article showed up in my inbox the other day. I have no idea who "Rusticus" is (apart from an ancient Roman philosopher), nor can I find this anywhere after a quick Google search. Regardless, it's worth reading, and is very very interesting. I think the author is right on the money. The parallels are scary.

When Democracy Failed
By "Rusticus"
Published free of copyright for 9/11/02 - pass it along

It started when the leaders of the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The government intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed.

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world.

His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory rhetoric offended the aristocrats and the well-educated elite in the government and media.

But he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck, and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference. (1)

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.

Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built, (2) holding the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed in newspapers suitable for display.

Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.

To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 5-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people and the police agencies would be re-restrained. (3)

Immediately after passage of the act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings.

Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. Instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as The Fatherland. As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands.

Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, including those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist sympathizers. He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the fatherland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.

He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office for the Fatherland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments. His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at our disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's recollection.

To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against terrorists and prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.

But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.

With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was threatening them, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar.

It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but finally a consensus was achieved, England approved, and Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The local government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany.

In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators." (4)

Once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Fatherland. The regular release of news bulletins about the discovery of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent in the Parliament. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.

A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of national security. It was the beginning of the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.

As we conclude this lesson in history, there are a few milestones worth remembering.

February 27, 2003, is the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marius van der Lubbe's successful torching of the German Parliament building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of Hitler's successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, he was one of the most beloved and popular leaders in the history of his nation.

Most Americans remember his Office of Fatherland Security, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and Schutzstaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.

Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the Germany democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the German military and industrial complex:

"fas-cism (f�sh'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Today, as we face international financial and domestic political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity. Germany's response was to enrich corporations and the wealthy, privatize much of the commons, and create an illusion of prosperity through war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs like the WPA.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.

Footnotes:

1) Historians still debate whether the Dutch communist Marius van der Lubbe, who set fire to the Reichstag, acted alone or was encouraged by the Nazis. The most recent research indicates he acted alone, as he had tried unsuccessfully to set fire to several other German buildings in the previous week, was arrested, and then released because the Berlin police decided he was mentally retarded.

2) The first German detention center was built at Oranianberg, within a month of the attack on the Reichstag.

3) This law was also known as "The Enabling Act," and most of the legislators who voted on it didn't have time to carefully read or debate it.

4) Adolf Hitler, speech at Koenigsberg (25th March, 1938)

^ posted at 5:56 PM

 

More music and Intellectual Property stuff . . .

Here are some links, and only links, for now. Commentary later when I have more time. This is all just ridiculous:

USA Today: Rights issue rocks the music world
New York Times: Epic Records Takes Steps to Seal Its Newest Music
Linux Journal: Broadcasters Oppose Net Radio Fees

Boy, that second one is seriously stupid. I can't believe it. More soon.

^ posted at 2:48 PM

 

The Evidence Mounts . . .

It's no secret. I don't like Micro$oft. Yet, here is another reason why. Microsoft Word has a flaw that allows crackers to steal your files. OK, fine. All software has bugs. The question is, what happens to those bugs? Here are some excerpts from the article that show what Micro$oft plans to do about the bugs:

• "The company said it will definitely repair the problem only for owners of the most recent versions of the software. That decision -- still left largely up in the air by Microsoft engineers -- may leave millions of users of Word 97 without a fix. All versions of Word are susceptible to the flaw, but the problem is most severe in Word 97. 'It's incredible to me that Microsoft would turn its back on Word 97 users,' said Woody Leonhard, who has written books on Microsoft's Word and Office software. They bought the package with full faith in Microsoft and its ability to protect them from this kind of exploit.' "
• "Microsoft said it is its policy to no longer repair Word 97."
• "A research firm reported in May that about 32 percent of offices have copies of Word 97 running."

Looks like Micro$oft has its customers best interest in mind, along with an unrelenting dedication to quality software. Not. Their solution? Upgrade your version of Word, at a cost of hundreds of dollars.

Better yet, switch word processors. Try OpenOffice.org, which is available for Windows and Linux, with Mac OSX in development, and is a free download (a few dozen megabytes, so make sure you have the bandwidth). Most likely, it does everything you need it to do, including opening Word documents. There are even cases where damaged Word files can be repaired by OpenOffice; just open your damaged .doc file in OpenOffice, save it again as a .doc, and in some cases the file will work again in MS Word. Sheesh.

^ posted at 12:50 PM

 

Nine-Eleven(tm), 2002

My mother sent me an email today asking what I was doing in memory of Nine-Eleven(tm). An interesting question, to be sure; today millions of people are ritualizing their mourning for that horrible day. Hopefully it will bring a sense of closure to them, particularly those who were directly affected by the attacks.

Unfortunately, however, I personally have no such sense of closure. I do not view the attacks of Nine-Eleven(tm) as a single, isolated incident. Though it is arguably the most dramatic bloody nose in history, I view it as yet another chapter in a very long, very tragic, and very unfinished story. It was neither the beginning nor the end of the story, though in retrospect we may view it as a crucial turning point.

So to return to the question at hand, here are some of the things I did today in memory of Nine-Eleven(tm).

I listened to some of the media coverage on NPR. I was most taken by the reading of the names, in alphabetical order, of all the victims. It of course took 2 1/2 hours to read; curiously this reminded me of commencement exercises at graduations.

I tried to imagine what a 16-acre, 6-story deep hole in the ground, covered with a fine grey concrete dust, would look like.

I tried to imagine what a 45-minute walk down 80 flights of stairs in the smoky darkness would be like.

I thought about how organized religion has severely damaged the collective human psyche. Organized religion inevitably leads to fundamentalism and fanaticism, and after all, the crimes of Nine-Eleven(tm) were committed by "religious fanatics." And perhaps even more alarming, our leaders are using rhetoric derived from fundamentalism, speaking in moral absolutes such as "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" and "this is a battle of Good against Evil" and other such nonsense.

I thought about how money has become the ultimate idol; and about how capitalism is now the worst fetishistic organized religion of them all.

I thought about Ani DiFranco's new song, Self-Evident. and about how much shit she's going to get from ignorant people.

I thought about how "America's New War" looks an awful lot like America's Old War.

I thought about how I as an American am on the beneficiary side of the global economic imbalance, despite the fact that I exist all-too-near the federal poverty levels.

I thought about what it would be like to be so downtrodden, so depressed, so oppressed, and so ignored that flying a 767 into a skyscraper -- dying to make a point -- would seem like a good idea.

I thought about how no one talks about how George W. Bush stole the presidency, and about how his "leadership" is even more fake than that of our other presidents.

I thought about how a blowjob and a disappearing cigar in the Oval Office seems so comically unimportant now, compared to the evil that takes place there these days.

I thought about the uncanny similarities between the USA PATRIOT Act and some laws passed in Germany in the 1930s.

I wondered if humanity would ever evolve beyond 2nd circuit primate territorial power politics.

I explained to my 5-year-old daughter that habitual argumentativeness is counterproductive and can only lead to anger and unhappiness, the very roots of violence.

I thought about how I am almost continuously conflicted between, on one hand, wanting to create my own reality, living my life as I wish in happiness, and on the other hand, of having to worry about the ridiculous political climate in the world. Do I ignore politics, be happier, and live in my world with my community? If so, how long will my community last if I don't stand up and do something about the insanity in global politics these days? Can I afford not to be an activist, put my head in the sand, and be steamrolled at time t in the future? Or am I just overly paranoid?

Either way, I personally feel more endangered by our government than by Evil Terrorists(tm).

^ posted at 4:43 PM

 

Iraq my brains, trying to figure out why . . .

So now the warmongers in Washington are trying to sell the idea of attacking Iraq to, well, to basically everyone outside the Oval Office.

Needless to say, many people think this is a bad idea. I tend to agree with that assessment. Why is Iraq such a threat now, when we've supported Saddam in the past, at the time when he was committing his atrocities? Why now, 15 years later, is he such a threat?

And perhaps most importantly, what does it say about our regard for the Iraqi people? We bomb the hell out of their country a decade ago in the Gulf War, then we impose serious sanctions which have virtually no effect on Saddam but starves the people of Iraq for 10 years. Now, a decade later, George W. wants to go back and finish what his daddy started.

Fuck the Iraqi people, in other words. The US Government could care less about them. They suffer for years, a decade of starvation will apparently be bookended by the most horrific bombings technology is capable of, all at the whim of power mongering, greedy bastards in the Oval Office.

There, I'm done. I got it out of my system. For now.

^ posted at 10:31 AM

 

Oh, Canada!

I applaud this story that says a Canadian Senate panel has urged the legalization of cannabis. Their conclusions are spot on; the report notes the following:

• The government should give amnesty to anyone convicted of marijuana possession under current or past legislation and erase their records;
• Evidence indicates that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol, and undermines the idea that smoking pot leads to harder drugs;
• Whether or not an individual uses marijuana should be a personal choice that is not subject to criminal penalties;
• Legalization would ultimately result in less recreational use of marijuana, the panel believes. It also would take a load off the criminal justice system and hurt organized crime;

People in Canada seem to be thinking clearly, their thought unencumbered by the ridiculous alpha-male posturing that we have to put up with here in the states. To make matters worse, the flow of accurate information about drugs is impeded by their actions. Sigh. It's issues like this that make me worry about the state of humanity.

^ posted at 11:39 PM