I’m continuing to poke around linux.

I’m not finding the Gnome desktop I’m using to be very predictable, so I thought I’d install the Ximian version (free, of course, although they sell a pro version for $99) just to see what it’s like. It’s a multi-hundred megabyte download that’s occurring even as I write this.

I’m getting more comfortable with mounting Windows files. Tonight I almost painlessly mounted the My Documents directory of my XP laptop and moved some files over to the linux machine. (Important lesson: Linux expects the name you gave the Windows directory when you first marked it as shared in Windows, not the actual filename. D’oh!)

Meanwhile, linux is still running like a dog on Valium. While looking around the Web for info on how to list processes (PS: it’s “ps” and it likes a nice “-ae” as a parameter), I saw a reference to “top” which dynamically shows the percentage of CPU and memory consuemd by each process. It says that I’ve got nothing very intense going on, yet the system lags even when typing. So, something funny is up. And not funny ha ha.

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There are at least two types of arrogance. One is rooted in a belief in one’s own moral superiority. The other is rooted in an inability to recognize ambiguity as a fact of the world rather than as a failure of the intellect.

If I had to guess, I’d say George W. Bush’s arrogance is of the second kind while his administration’s arrogance generally is of the first kind.

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Howard Dean’s blogs at Lessig’s site have been straightforward and — from my point of view — right. I’m thrilled to hear a candidate addressing Net issues on the Net in a Netty way.

And so, whether he expected it or not, he’s now been dropped into the middle of the fray. The comments on the discussion board are all over the place from considered disagreements and thoughtful questions, to outright trolling and name calling. Has any presidential candidate ever in history been dropped into a free-for-all quite like this? Could it be any more different than Bush’s scripted press conferences and tailored, crotch-enhancing photo opps? Democracy just got a little real-er.

If I were Dean, I’d read the comment board as slashdot without the structure: ignore the thoughtless messages as if they had simply been trapped by the filter. People have a right to their opinions but conversational triage is in order. There’s a lot to learn from some of the messages. There are some great questions. I’d be happy to see some members of his campaign staff replying if not Dean his own self.

It’d be easy to read the bluster and invective as a failure of the system. Nah. It is the system. Welcome to the Internet, Governor Dean! You’re making history not just with the Lessig guest blogging but with the wild conversation it’s ignited. And lots of people are going to love you for it.

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Dewayne Hendricks (according to an article from Motorola) is heading up a project partially funded by the state of California to bring 1 gigabit broadband access to every person in the state by the end of the decade. The article says:

Hendricks believes that unless the FCC loosens its spectrum restrictions, other less-regulated countries quickly will exceed U.S. technological innovations.

?You?ll see technologies move to countries where there aren?t incumbency issues,? he says. ?Places like Tonga will deploy technology that makes us look like cave people.?

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Eric Umansky argues in today’s “Today’s Papers,” Slate’s daily news roundup, that headline writers are forsaking accuracy in order to soft pedal the Bush administration’s problems with the truth. He cites an article in the Washington Post that document’s the administrations contradictory statements about how Bush came to lie in his State of the Union. The latest statement from Bush is that the CIA didn’t doubt the evidence until after the speech, which is false and inconsistent with the rest of what his administration has said. The headline of the article is: “PRESIDENT DEFENDS ALLEGATION ON IRAQ; Bush Says CIA’s Doubts Followed Jan. 28 Address.” Umansky suggests a more accurate headline would have been: “WHITE HOUSE OFFERS CONTRADICTORY EXPLANATIONS FOR INTEL CLAIMS.”

He continues:

Another example of why the papers should consider sending their headline scribes to journalism reeducation camp: The NYT’s David Sanger…reconstructs the path the bogus intel took and details how the White House’s various stated defenses don’t hold up: “Many are still asking how a White House aware of the doubts could have shown such caution in October, and thrown it to the winds in January.” The mushy headline, “A SHIFTING SPOTLIGHT ON URANIUM SALES.” Headline writers—typically copy-editors—have an obligation to give readers the most accurate sense possible of an article’s conclusions, regardless of how poorly those conclusions reflect on our nation’s leaders. They’re frequently failing.

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The latest Denouncement continues the proud Net tradition of mocking AOLers:

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-WA, announced today that the “Blogosphere Purity Act” would in effect ban America Online “from encouraging, facilitating, or otherwise supporting the creation of web logs, or blogs, among its users.”

More here.

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Hossein Derakhshan lists all the English language Iranian blogs he knows of, providing a good place to dive in.

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I’ve actually written about this before, but I find it so annoying…

I like Dreamweaver. I generally like the improvements made in the new version (MX). I hate how they changed the smallest nit of the preferences dialog.

It used to be that there was a place to choose whether you want the default extension for the Web pages you create to be “.html” or “.htm”. Now if you want to change it, the preferences dialog says “You can change the default extension in the document type XML file.” This is linked to a help page that lists 20 xml pages you can visit. Even if you pick the right one, you are confronted with an uncommented XML file that nowhere has a line that says “default extension.” Instead you have to figure out that you have to change the list of “winfileextension” so that “html” precedes “htm.” Then you have to save, exit and restart Dreamweaver to find out if you guessed right or if you just screwed up your config file.

I would have loved to hear the discussion between Engineering and Product Marketing on this one! I’m no Jakob Nielsen, but I feel a low-graphics confidence when I say: Your users manual should never contain a line that begins, “Simply edit the XML file…”

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Rageboy tells us this bad news about Ann Craig better than I could.

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Republicans for Sharpton is a pretty funny site.

And the video in the upper right of this page is somewhat satisfying to the likes of me. (Thanks to Jean Camp for this link.)

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