I was tipped off to a disturbing piece of slander which I felt compelled to address. I can’t find the original (if you know the origin let me know), but there are posts around the internet stating that in Irish Gaelic McCain means “Son of Cain” attempting to tie McCain to that brother-murderer in the bible (1 John 3:12) through some kind of naming-destiny argument too ridiculous to believe. Although I personally dislike McCain for his dirty deals, infidelity, and constant flip-flopping on the issues, I can’t let this one stand.

McCain is an anglicized spelling of the Irish name Mac Uí Catháin (for those of you about to yell that he’s not Irish, he’s Scottish - the Scots are transplanted Irishmen). If you have never heard Gaelic spoken, it is very different from English. It sounds a lot like Hebrew with alot of sounds which English speakers sometimes find difficult to reproduce. Mac *does* mean “son of” (so does the prefix “O”) and “Mc” is just an abbreviation for Mac. The clan McCain (to use the Anglicized spelling) was allied with the O’Neills (again an anglicized spelling) in the Province of Ulster in the north of Ireland. Many of the ruling families hailed from Ulster in ancient Ireland, and these were just two. As the English became entrenched in northern Ireland, they couldn’t pronounce the Gaelic easily and ended up spelling the names in English as closely as they could to what they sounded like to them. The Uí Catháin name was derived from the word Cathan (cath, “a battle”, an, “one who”). So, if it matters at all (and I don’t think it does), McCain’s name literally means “One who battles” which would have been fitting for someone of the ruling class of ancient Ireland. This was discussed on Roots Web in 1999 here (even before the 2000 election

Things have changed a great deal since 1982. These days, having a computer is almost synonymous with having access to the internet. In truth, a computer that cannot access the internet today is almost quaint. Sure the average Linux distribution comes with enough software to run an entire office out of the box, but if you can’t communicate with your customers via email, fill in forms at online websites, or look up information on the web you’re SOL.
For the home user, instant messaging has become almost as much of a “critical app” as email, family members are sharing photos and videos online, and much of the younger set is blogging or otherwise keeping friends up to date on their activities at various social networking sites like Twitter, MySpace, or Facebook daily.

While you can certainly buy a new PC with Linux pre-installed and configured (hopefully such that all your shiny new hardware is working properly), installing Linux on a PC that shipped with Windows will invariably require downloading drivers from a manufacturer’s FTP site or scouring tech forums for some clue about how to go about getting your hardware to work well, just work, or even be recognized at all. While there are still many reasons to have a PC even without internet access, getting Linux installed on it at all may actually require it.

For laptops, and an increasing number of PCs in environments where wired ethernet isn’t possible or is just too much of a hassle to set up, folks are routinely using wireless cards to communicate with a wireless router in order to connect to the internet. This is presenting some daunting challenges for Linux adoption at least among the home user crowd who might be looking at Linux to provide some fresh life for their older hardware. When dealing with laptops or PCs the problem is generally the same except that on laptops the wireless card may already be built in, though its true that many older laptops didn’t come with wireless at all. Cheap wireless cards sold in consumer electronics stores everywhere seem to work right out of the box for Windows users on PCs and laptops alike, but almost always present some kind of problem for a Linux user. While techies know that this is just a function of the fact that the companies are churning out Windows drivers for their hardware and keeping those drivers updated regularly, the average home user may not realize this until *after* they bring their shiny new wireless card home and pop it into their machine. Once they’ve plunked down $40 to $60 on a card, they just want to pop it in and have it work. Unfortunately, since Linux is not officially supported by nearly any manufacturer, it often does not - and for whatever reason if the user does not have another method to reach the internet, either through a wired connection to the router or another machine already connected to the internet, they will be unable to access the documentation and help forums they might be able to leverage to get this new hardware functioning. I see this as a major stumbling block to broader Linux adoption.

If by now you’ve guessed that I’ve recently had some run-ins with this problem, you’re right! Futzing around with getting a Linksys PCMCIA wireless card to operate at all in a Thinkpad (eventually succeeding with bwcutter) and a Belkin F5D7000 PCI card to even be recognized at all in an old Dell PC (also eventually succeeding with ndiswrapper) both under Ubuntu 8.04 was enough to convince me that unless the average user is very lucky, getting to the internet wirelessly in Linux is likely to be a problem. My eventual success was bittersweet because the only way I got these devices to work at all was to use the proprietary Windows drivers in a way that wasn’t intended by the developers. Some users of Linux would balk at the thought of using proprietary drivers at all, preferring to be completely free of “non-open” software. My wireless devices still don’t work natively under Linux, and as long as users can get them to work in this manner, what incentive is there for manufacturers to create a native Linux driver anyway?

It wasn’t my intention to explain the reasons for this problem - the constantly changing chipsets used by wireless card manufacturers, the entrenched Windows monopoly, the relative “newness” of the technology in general (as compared to ethernet), but rather to point out a weakness in Linux folks should be aware of. Before running out to buy a wireless device, check for Linux compatibility! Some chipsets are better supported by the two methods I mentioned. Don’t plunk down good money on hardware that won’t work at all in Linux, even if you’re running Windows today. If you decide to try Linux in the future you’ll wish you had.

NonProphet posted recently about Gorbachev’s Op-Ed in the New York Times about Georgia. It’s hard to criticize a nobel peace prize winner (oh, unless you’re a Republican and you’re talking about Jimmy Carter), but look at it this way: South Ossetia was artificially severed from North Ossetia by Stalin. It used to be one nation. In fact, most of the borders in that region are the result of Stalin’s desire to *create* ethnic tensions.

He figured that as long as these peoples continued to fight each other they wouldn’t be hankering for “freedoms” or otherwise bothering him. BUT, if you sew the two Ossetias back together again, the Russians (who are more closely aligned with the Ossetians) can move military equipment right to the southern borders and easily threaten Tblisi, Georgia. Clearly Georgia (and Isreal and the west, which have interests in the pipeline through Georgia) wish to keep some geographical border between Russia and the capital. The only way to do this is to tighten the grip on South Ossetia. If, like Isreal, they can seed enough little villages of ethnic Georgians there that the tension raises to a level that gives them an excuse to invade, even better. The fact that the US may have actually pushed the Georgians to this conclusion seems to have gotten lost in the news, but it was being talked about earlier in the month, and Gorbachev suggests it too. The problem is, Russia was obviously well prepared and standing ready to invade. The amount of armor they rolled in with cannot be called up in a day or two - they were not surprised by the Georgian “raid” into South Ossetia at all. Smells like a setup to me, to make Russia look like the bad guy and create a sense of cold war again (and if it scared Poland into signing that treaty for the missle defense system, so much the better I guess, right?). I work with a lot of Polish, Ukrainians, as well as Russians. They are in constant contact with folks back home and can read all those cryptic Cyrillic websites on lunch. It’s been a very interesting couple weeks at work. The Ukrainians and Polish are scared to death that the old Soviet Union will soon be marching back into their countries, while the Russians consider the Georgians an unruly, scary mob of mafiosos who dance around with knives in their mouths that would sooner cut you down as look at you (if you cross them). While I was brought up to fear the USSR, I have grown to be slightly suspicious of any non-English speaking foreign nation with a leader that speaks perfect English.

Personally I’m not interested in owning an iPhone (I have so far successfully avoided getting a cell phone at all) even though it is the slickest thing I’ve seen anywhere, but a $200 iPod touch might lure me in (there’s talk that Sept will bring about such a thing). The capacity is still too low though. I want it to be able to hold my entire music collection which only the biggest one does right now which is currently $500! No removable battery is a big downside for me having had similar problems in the past with Palm. And no flash support? I’m not a big fan of flash, but it is everywhere on the web! Thats a serious limitation. I do like the iPod/iPhone interface a lot, it’s too much like an appliance for me (kinda like Palm pilots were), although the new ability for third party apps should bring about a much more interesting mix of abilities.

If the hardware ran something totally configurable (more like Linux than OSX) I’d be more gaa gaa over it, and I don’t like the whole ’syncing with iTunes’ garbage. I really don’t want to be tied to Apple’s advertising engine at all. (on a side note: I found a cool python program which allows me to copy files directly to my iPod shuffle, then play them in whatever order I set up and copy them off again on another computer all without iTunes. They’re working on one for the iPod, which would be a deal maker for me possibly.)

I’m also very interested in what comes out of the Android, Openmoko, and LiMo projects. Interested enough that I am willing to hold off on purchasing something in fear that my ideal device is just around the corner.

I read alot about this kind of stuff, but very rarely buy any of these shiny gadgets. I don’t ever have to have the latest and greatest of anything. In fact, I always tend to think that the older it is, the better it is even if that obviously isn’t always true - it’s a prejudice. A lot of times I will actually get hand me downs of old gizmos from the boss or other people who are upgrading, so I’m usually a few years behind in actually playing with any of it. I still use an old G4 powerbook most of the time.

You’ve seen the skit a million times, but not like this. This nifty little mashup takes the Monty Python Camelot scene from the Holy Grail movie to a whole new dimension.

“In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.” quipped the straight talking presidential hopeful John McCain referring to Russia’s recent aggressive move into Georgia. It sure sounded like stern talk coming from the guy who jokes about bombing Iran and suggests that we may be in Iraq for another hundred years but it was also pretty ridiculous given that the US is still occupying the two nations it invaded over 5 years ago. Of course we only “liberate” other nations in the 21st century (as Comedy Central pointed out). After 8 years of the current administration’s antics it’s really hard for us to take the high road on this one. I *want* to get up on my high horse about invading small economically important nations, but in the light of our own escapades I feel like maybe we owe them a pass on at least one

While many Americans still believe, against all the evidence to the contrary that the US move into Iraq was justified, I would wager that most Americans don’t have a clue why Russia felt it important to invade Georgia. Here’s what I think is going on: After the Soviet Union broke up, then president Clinton jumped on the opportunity to work with Georgia and to invest in that country to help make a pipeline possible from the oil rich Caspian Sea to the Black Sea (and thus, Europe) that would not pass through Russia. Russia (and Iran) would of course like to maintain as much of a strangle hold on the oil that reaches Europe from the east as possible, and this move into Georgia (which apparently has been planned for some time) is Russia’s way of saying to investors in the west that they had better rethink investment in this region. It puts the pipeline through Georgia in danger, and suggests that investors should take safer bets elsewhere (perhaps with Lukoil?)

You may have already seen this, but if not - Randy Pausch passed away yesterday so I thought it fitting to link to it today. Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was given only a very short time to live. Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. It’s definitely worth a listen beyond the simple draw of morbid fascination.