This is a bit more disturbing coming from a teacher but coming from anyone this strikes me as sad on a massive scale.  Ken Starks works with the Helios project to get opensource software and computers into places where kids would not otherwise have access.  He recieved a tart and affronted email from a teacher who found one of her students distributing *gasp* Linux at her school.

The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks. After confiscating the disks I called a confrence with the student and that is how I came to discover you and your organization. Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful.

His response is a little affronted as well but somewhat level headed considering the ignorance demontrated by the teacher.

Blog of helios: Linux – Stop holding our kids back.

Fran Drescher has tossed her name in the ring to be Hillary Clinton’s replacement in the Senate.  My first reaction was “Hmm, the Onion must have gotten a redesigned site.  That looks just like CNN.”  But after a moment the notion didn’t seem so odd.  What I find even more interesting is the writing style that is increasingly being employed by legitimate news outlets is beggining to mimic the freewheeling devil-may-care style of blogs and satire sites.  It makes distinguishing between the two a little tougher sometimes.

Drescher, 51, is best known for her starring role in the 1990s television comedy “The Nanny” and an adenoidal voice that could strip the rust off an engine block — a talent that might come in handy during a Senate filibuster.

But since a bout with uterine cancer, she has become an activist for better health care for women and was named a State Department public envoy on the issue in September. Drescher recently toured Eastern European countries to raise awareness of the issue on behalf of the State Department.

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive – ‘Nanny’ state: Fran Drescher seeks Clinton’s Senate seat « – Blogs from CNN.com.

The past weekend included the following random collection of events:

• Watching the trivia game at Dave and Buster’s crash and discovering it runs on Windows XP.
• Random Stranger handing us free passes to the comedy club next door to Dave and Buster’s. thereby extending the evening by two pleasant hours.
• Installed the next phase of the Ultimate Desk by adding large shelves above the current desk to accommodate all the board/card games.
• Watched my fantasy football team go down in flames for the second week in a row thus ensuring I won’t have to worry about the playoffs this year.
• Scored a cheap goal at the soccer game (goalie didn’t squeeze it well enough and it trickled in).  They all count the same though.
• Managed to somehow allow a 15″ LCD monitor to fall on my head.
• Re-discovered the joys of a well placed ice pack.

For the first time in my life, I hit another driver this morning.  Not a devastating crash.  No airbags, no emergency services.  But I did mangle the front end of my Civic a bit and crunched the rear bumper of the very nice (and very new) Eclipse in front of me. SO the next tow hours was taken up by the police officer, tow truck driver, body shop guy, insurance agent and rental car agent. All of them were very nice and I was only about 90 minutes late to work.

I’ve never had an at-fault accident before.  I have slid off the road in icy conditions and smacked a curb.  I’ve been rear-ended two or three times but I’ve never made a driving error that damaged someone else’s car.

First time for everything I guess.

The long holiday weekend has played havoc with my bio rythms.  Or something.  Whatever the reason, I am not yet feeling like a fully functional human this week.  I have plenty of things I’d like to be posting about, just can’t find the extra ergs to get it done.  No fear though.  I will be bak in the saddle by the end of the week.

Peter Schiff is really smart.  See a better write up of why he is so smart.

This is getting a little silly on a couple of levels.  First, it appears that Subway’s credit card processing problems are spread all over the metro area.  Second, apparently they couldn’t get them resolved between Friday and Sunday which is an awfully long time for such a thing to persist.  Last and certainly not least, Subway appears to be incapable of hiring anyone who can exercise proper word choice.  See earlier example.

Please, read a book this weekend instread of watching the parade.  We will all thank you for it.

If you are unplugging your KVM switch from the desktop to try and reset it, and if you plug the USB back in without looking and if you are in a hurry and not paying much attention, then it is possible to shove a USB plug into an ethernet port in such a way that it feels like a pretty good fit.

If you do this, your KVM will not work.

That is all.  Thank you

After a recent URL typo I got to thinking.  Where is Farce Book?  Well, as always it was only one Google away and viola!

farcebook is an anti-social network for people looking to keep track of their enemies, remind their enemies that they’re still out there, and to generally annoy their “friends.” It has many features that you’d expect in a modern web application. We’ve whipped up this bad boy in just a handful of hours and can’t wait until we get our share of that $15 billion!

Even better for me is the fact that you can download the source and run your own anti-social site.  This may have to go on the home server tonight. In the meantime I am now going to invite all my foes to join the site.

So after some brief conversations with my personal life coach and all around fellow nerd-ite hess I have determined that I need to jot down my wish list for enhancing my geek life this holiday season.  So without further ado, Santa would you please bring me:

• Bluetooth GPS Receiver – With the Nokia N800 filling more and more interesting roles for me its time to take the next step.  I already have a couple mapping applications.  What I am missing is a little blue dot to show me the way to Grandma’s house.  And speaking of expanding the role of the N800…
• Bluetooth OBD II Dongle – Every car made today has an OBD plug on it which gives you access to all kinds of interesting data from the engine.  Recently, I downloaded some new software for the N800 called Carman that will use bluetooth and GPS to give you a ridiculous amount of information about your journey.  Average speed, rpm, distance and (I hope) something about fuel efficiency.  This is the next step in turning the Honda into a true geek-mobile.
• 8 Port GigaBit Router/Switch – For years I have been very happy with the little 4 port D-Link or Linksys routers with built in WiFi.  But these days I need more.  More ports. More speed. More everything.  With the adition of an HP 8100 network printer and my insatiable need to add more processors to the home network, this is becoming a bottleneck.  The new router is the first step to wiring the house for home entertainment purposes. Of course this means I will also need to upgrade the NICs in all the computers to handle gigabit speeds.
• Dedicated Web/Media Server – The current Linux Franken-box sitting under my desk is doing a lot of jobs right now and perhaps it may just get this assignment while I build something new for a desktop PC.  But having my primary machine also act as an FTP/Web/Media server seems to be a recipe for disaster.  I’ve got enough hardware laying around to make a lightweight box to do server duty.  Just need to get it up and running.
• Terabyte NAS – What good is a gigabit network without some dedicated storage to hook to it?  The current backup arrangements for household data are pretty sparse.  Everything is replicated but not in a nice tight package that can be grabbed quickly as I flee a burning house.
• TV Tuner Card – I keep inching closer to all the working pieces to run MythTv for real.  I am still a little short in the hardware department.  The most notable abscence is a tuner/video capture card.  Need to find one that plays well with Ubuntu.
• Linux on the iMac – I have a first generation iMac laying around doing nothing.  I know it is a solid little machine but it lacks an OS and despite all my efforts with Yellow Dog and old versions of PPC Ubuntu I can’t get it to breathe again.  This would be a fabulous little workstation and/or media kiosk if I could just get it to boot something other than the sad Mac icon.
• New Desks for All – This project is already underway with one 8 foot section installed a few weeks ago.  By the time I’m done I expect the whole front room to be comfortably outfitted with enough deskspace to run my own temp agency.  This also includes some new shelving and some creative tricks to hide exposed wires.  The end result will be work stations for four people with good lighting, an excess of outlets and a couple of spare ethernet cables for random messing about and/or LAN wars.