A Conservative Techie

It’s nice to be able to plan ahead for something like UDS.  Jono recently announced the next developers conference for Ubuntu the week of Monday the 8th of December.

The last UDS Mountain View I was just starting a new job, my current job,  and didn’t have any vacation time or the ability to take time off.  The last summit, UDS Prague I missed due to my wife’s pregnancy and the fact it was so close to her due date.

Now I’m looking forward to attending and have already marked my calendar.

One of the blogs I read every day and find great information out of is Patterico’s Pontifications.  Today he posts about one of the greatest of all flip flops by a politician.

We all remember John Kerry voting for the war and then voting against it.  Mrs. Clinton was for the war before she was against it and now Mr. Obama is no longer planning on pulling out troops from Iraq

And just look at all the posts on Memeorandum:

“New and Not Improved — New York Times”

“Obama May Consider Slowing Iraq Withdrawal” –  Washington Post

“Obama Strives to Retain Some Flexibility on His Iraq Policy” — New York Times

“Obama’s Iraq Quagmire” — Political Punch

“Obama to ‘refine’ Iraq Plan” — The Politico

But back to Patterico’s Pontifications who walks us through all Mr. Obama’s previous positions and statements going back as far as January 31, 2007.

Is ths the change everyone hoped for?  Changing back to what our current President is doing?  If so would it seem to make sense that what President Bush is doing is correct?  That the surge is working?  That we need to keep our troops in Iraq longer then the 16 months Mr. Obama promised when he was seeking the nomination?

If you are a Democrat and your candidate is once again “restating” his position, how do you feel today?

There is an interesting review I stumbled across due to the Google News Alerts I receive daily.  The author reviews different Software Virtualization Solutions in a multi-part article.  Today’s article covers SVS from Altiris, now a part of Symantec.

One of the things he noticed that I forgot about was the confusion on excatly what product to download to get started.  Remember you want Software Virtualization 2.1 SP1.  There are other great things covered in this review, check it out.

Remember you can download and use SVS for free for personal use.  Get it here

It’s amazing the whole let’s fork KDE discussion and keep the 3.5.X series but port to KDE and the hate people have towards the new desktop.

I have been using KDE 4 since the first packages came out for Kubuntu, Gutsy I think.  At first I found there were things I couldn’t get done it, but guess what, it was Alpha at that stage and since then I have grown to love and work better with KDE4. 

I am amazed at the personal attacks that I am seeing levied against some of the developers for the KDE 4 project.  I think it is a great change and is the next step forward.

During my day job I use Vista on my main machine.  I’ve been using Vista since it RTM’d and have grown to enjoy some of the way things are  organized.  Two examples of these are per application sound settings and the way the Start Menu and Search operates.  When I play music, I can keep the sound of the music up loudly while decreasing the sound of the other applications.   On the Start Menu, I simply start typing the name of the application or the name of the file and through the Windows Search, simply hit enter on the file or application I want to use.  I use the start menu, shortcuts on the desktop, and navigate a lot less using Windows Explorer.  These are the two biggest things I miss when I have to work on an XP computer.  To me XP feels outdated and old…. No longer “new” technology, but something I’ve been using for a long time.

Going back to KDE 3.5.X feels the same way.  How long has KDE 3 been in development?  New things come out, technology changes and KDE 4 proves that times have changed.  And for the better…. Going from KDE 4 to KDE 3.5.X is like going back to the past and no longer using the best that’s available

Disagree with what would you like to, but I would like to offer a word of encouragement to the developers and to those that have poured their time, money, and love into the new product.  Keep up the great work.

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Update:  My arguement got lost in translation from my head to the keyboard… I’m not arguing we should KDE 4 cause it’s like Vista… I guess what I was trying to argue was that like Vista, KDE 4 takes some while to get used to and that I don’t want to use KDE 4 jus tlike I don’t want to use XP.  I feel less productive in both.

Here is a chart by FareCompare.com that lists all of the fees charged by every single airline.

Great job and very interesting.

John McCain has announced a goal of having 45 New nuclear reactors.  This is good news.  We need more nuclear power plants, these plants are the greenest, cleanest producers of power currently out there. 

“China, Russia and India are all planning to build more than a hundred new power plants among them in the coming decades,” Mr. McCain said in this pocket of Missouri that is reliably Republican. “Across Europe there are 197 reactors in operation, and nations including France and Belgium derive more than half their electricity from nuclear power. And if all of these nations can find a way to carry out great goals in energy policy, then I assure you that the United States is more than equal to the challenge.”

This is another area we are failing behind….  We currently have 104 reactors with no new reactors since 1970. 

It is nice to see people supporting nuclear power, but I think people are getting behind this for the wrong reason.  Nuclear power will not reduce how much oil, it will reduce the greenhouse gases we are emitting.  The more and more we produce clean and cheap power, the more and more we can do without having to refine natural gas and the damage that does.

Something I can agree with that McCain supports

I’m looking to figure out the best way to manage my music library and be able to use the files on all of my machines.

My setup:  Windows Vista Business Edition Laptop, Windows Vista Business Edition Desktop, with a 500 gig NTSF formatted USB drive, a Mac OS X laptop, and Kubuntu 8.04 workstation.

I am currently using iTunes to manage things, but have contemplated using some other program to control everything.  Also I have shared out my Music folder and so far have mapped drives, but is there a better way to manage my Music so I can play things on all devices?

Thanks in advance

In a post on Portfolio.com there is an article titled “Countrywide’s Many ‘Friends’” that touches on the friends of Barak Obama and those who are currently helping to look into his Vice President choice.

Two U.S. senators, two former Cabinet members, and a former ambassador to the United Nations received loans from Countrywide Financial through a little-known program that waived points, lender fees, and company borrowing rules for prominent people.

Senators Christopher Dodd and Senator Kent Conrad refinanced properties through a VIP program that waived fees, waived points and changed company rules. 

This comes on the heels of James Johnson resigning from the VIP search.  Just holding my breath to see how much of this makes the news.

Remember you know more about someone based on who their friends are then you know about what they say.

From the Powerline blog

A chart presented by Republican whip Roy blunt.  Its great to finally see Republican policies on something for a change.  This is what we need to see more.  Republicans propose X law to save money, while the Democrats have done or proposed Y law to save money.  Which one saves us more money?  That’s who should be in power.

Oh one thing they are forgetting… Nuclear Power

I blogged previously about this global warming fiasco bill that Senators were debating.  A bill that would greatly increase the cost of gas and pretty much every type of energy out there.

Just want to let you all know the bill was pulled, however it seems there is another energy bill that will be debated in the coming weeks.  Please continue to contact your senators in regards to these types of bill.s  We want Nuclear Power, not an increase in the cost of energy.

The legislation collapsed for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the poor timing of debating a bill predicted to increase energy costs while much of the country is focused on $4-a-gallon gas