Friday, December 21, 2007

Way to funny not to poswt

BE AMUSED by some different Feminine & Masculine Archetypes at work and play
within these 2 American English Students:

THE WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Remember the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"? Here's an
interesting example offered by an English professor from the University
of Phoenix Arizona:
PROFESSOR: "Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem
story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting
to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will
write the first paragraph of a short story.
You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me.
The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another
paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to
me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on
back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep
the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of
the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the
e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."
The following was actually turned in by two of my English students:
Rebecca (last name deleted), and Gary (last name deleted).

THE STORY:

(first paragraph by Rebecca)

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The
chamomile, which used to be her favourite for lazy evenings at home,
now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times,
that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep
her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she
thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So
chamomile was out of the question.

(second paragraph by Gary)

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron
now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about
than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with
whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to
Geostation 17," he said into his trans galactic communicator. "Polar
orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he
could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and
blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct
hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

(Rebecca)

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt
one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who
had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its
pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4.
"Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,"
Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously
excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her
youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no
newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of
innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one
lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

(Gary)

Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live.
Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched
the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy
peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty
through the congress had left Earth a defenceless target for the
hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race.
Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships
were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the
entire planet.
With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical
plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The
President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the
ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive
explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 85 million other
Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We
can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty!
Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"

(Rebecca)

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My
writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.



(Gary)

Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at
writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh, shall I have
chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of FUCKING TEA??? Oh
no, I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads; too many Danielle Steele
novels!"

(Rebecca)
Asshole.

(Gary)
Bitch.

(Rebecca)

FUCK YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!-!!

(Gary)

Go drink some tea - whore.



(PROFESSOR)

A+ I really liked this one!

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Cross Development Adoption in KDE 4

Kickoff Menu Style- Developed by SuSE, will be the standard menu in KDE 4. It replaces the old 2nd generation menu in KDE 3. This is not the same Kickoff that we have available in KDE 3.5.5 and up. Its a port and is instead a plasmoid. I consider Kickoff the best of the 3rd generation menus but Raptor is in development and it will be a 4th generation menu system totally unique to anything else out there. To get an idea of what Raptor will be like go here to see it. Once Raptor is fully developed as a plasmoid it will be an exciting replacement menu.

System Configuration - Developed by Kubuntu, will be standard in KDE 4. This is good idea as the Kcontrol center is a bit confusing. However, the current Kubuntu version does not give access to all KCMs and if we are going to have this as the new means to utilize them then access to them must be allowed. I am not in the mood to use kcmshell setups.

Dolphin will replace Konquerer as the file manager - Don't get me wrong I can see the idea and even the need behind this. However, Dolphin is not KIO capable which means in some ways its a step backwards. If Dolphin is going to be the new File Manager then it needs to be made plugin capable and the KIO plugins will need to be ported over to Dolphin (as plasmoids of course.) Otherwise what's the point?

Plasmoids finally end the issue of kicker applets not being available to all KDE based distros. Plasmoids set and use a standard that makes them plug and play in KDE 4 that does require packaging for specific distros to be used. In other words plasmoids make KDE 4 standards that allow people to use as they see fit, regardless of the specific distro they use. So when Raptor does get released for general use all you have to do is get the plasmoid package and install it into the plugins of KDE 4 and you will have it. That's cool. No more waiting for your distro (or someone else) to package it so you can use it.

Lastly Moodin will become the default splash screen engine, though no surprise there.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

(K)Ubuntu strikes again

Okay my disdain for what Canonical is doinf to Linux is getting to be over the top and I'm just plain sick. With all the over rides, lockouts and plain bad attitude they are giving to 3rd party repositories which they DO NOT WANT YOU TO USE I am just getting sick and tired of it. The use od sudo is bad enough but to lock out KDM and to make it use the GDM config files just plain PISSES ME OFF.

Linux is supposed to be fun and configurable, not locked down with schemes and over rides. What Canonical is doing, in my opinion, is taking the fun out of Linux. Yes I use Kubuntu but that just may well change soon. I am looking at other options now. I will not support a Linux Distro that both destroys the overall Linux philosophy and locks out developers because they only want people using their approved repositories.

From DesktopLinux

"Woodford said, for MEPIS users this means that Ubuntu does not provide a foundation for long term incremental upgrades. "Ubuntu is almost a whole new distro each time it's released," he said. "By using the EXPERIMENTAL code, each and every time, the Ubuntu code tree is inherently less stable than the Debian code tree, which contains additional levels of testing and vetting and fixing of code."

Woodford said that sometimes the Ubuntu tree contains desirable newer versions of major user applications, and the major user applications, such as Firefox and OpenOffice, come from upstream sources where the code was already stable.

So it is that Woodford has decided to go back to Debian for MEPIS' Linux heard. In particular, he will be using Debian GNU/Linux version 4.0 -- code-named Etch. - Woodford has also found that although Ubuntu is source compatible with Debian, it is becoming less and less binary compatible with Debian. "This was not obvious over a year ago, but it is very obvious now," he said."

Monday, December 3, 2007

Gutsy Gibbon Webcam Woes

If you use Gutsy Gibbon (Edubuntu, Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Xubuntu) then you have noticed a neat little issue. Webcams that previously worked in Feisty aren't working in Gutsy.

Though I was surprised to find my reliable and old VGA cam didn't work I was even more surprised to learn that I couldn't get it to work in Gutsy even using the correct driver.

Apparently there was a major overhaul of the webcam modules to alleviate them of outdated drivers which means support for older webcams is gone.

So I went looking for a list of webcams known to work with Gutsy. All I could find is a list for Skype but its a start. Since the cams listed here are known to work in the Linux version of Skype for Gutsy they will also work with Gutsy sans Skype.

EZonics
EZ CAM II

Logitech
Communicate STX
Quickcam 9000 Pro
Quickcam Chat for Skype
Quickcam Express II
Quickcam Notebook Deluxe
Quickcam Pro 4000
Quickcam Pro for Notebooks
Quickcam Ultra Vision
Quickcam Zoom

Phillips
SPC 900NC

These are the models I wrote down when i went to get another webcam that would work. I ended with the Quickcam Notebook Deluxe which worked right out of the box on my laptop.

Camorama was of no help for camera testing and Kopete and aMSN were the apps I had to use to see if it was working.

PLEASE if you are reading this and know of any webcams that work in Gutsy out of the box or with minor tweaking email me at shaun.marolf@gmail.com so I can add them to this list.