The Economic Crisis and the Presidential Race

I don’t have a lot to say about the economic crisis since it largely doesn’t affect me or my family. But I though I would devote a blog post to it anyway.  The numbers on  wall street are astounding right now. When you hear on the radio that the Dow had dropped 1000 points, you are momentarily stunned. My worry if for those without fixed rate mortgages, the ones who are losing homes or jobs. For me at least, the real shocker was the closing  of the Janesville GM plant, which is very close to where a live. Many people will shortly be out of work and the town might even be doomed. You can see the problem in the shoddy storefronts. Businesses and individuals are pressed for money. I consider myslelf lucky (knock on wood) to be, so far at least, out of the way of the madness.

Now moving on to politics. I agree with Barack Obama on almost all major issues. I am not a party slave and reviewed my facts before making my decision, and Barack is deffinately the way to go.  The ideas of middle class tax relief and national infastructure invesment are relieving to say the least. I must point out that I disagree with the idea of Wall Street bailouts as they are obviously not working. And the idea that these CEOs can drive their companies to the ground then escape with tons of money is not exactly reasuring. My only idea for solving the economic crisis is vote on Nov 4. Vote for whoever you think will make the right choice for the United States.

response to G David Lewis

I agree that the OS in itself has greatly changed over the years as is the goal of open source. I was simply stating that one can achieve powerful results using all of the utilities that existed in the linux systems of old. Linux has been improved and it has become easier to use over the years, but the original linux and GNU utilities are still powerful and useful. For instance, many people I know still use the vi text editor and find it both useful and flexible. The core of the system, and its basic utilities, has been, and will probably always be, static. Thank you for your interest. I did not intend to mislead anyone and would like to remind you all that this blog is mostly for me to spout my opinions, which I admit are usually not thoroughly researched or proven.

Linux is Timeless

As many of my readers know, I am a huge advocate of the Linux operating system. I recently found a book on linux that was written in the early 1990’s. I was astonished to find that it was very, very simalar to a book on linux that i had read the other day which was written in 2005. I had stumbled onto another great advantage of linux: Linux is timeless. The operating system you can find today is almost exactly the same as the one from many years ago. Sure, a few utilities have been added and updated, but otherwise, no actual difference in the operating system is revalent. The GUI (Graphical User Interface p. goo-ee) is a different story. Many linux distro’s today are decked out in fanciful GUI’s, especially ubuntu and fedora. This provides ease of use for beginners but can be annoying to the Linux/UNIX wizard.

Next: About the GUI. The good, the bad and the ugly.

BULLETIN

My posts will be suspended for about a week. Sorry for the short notice. I will not be contactable in any way

Windows “Mojave”

Recently, Microsoft launched an ad campaign christened “Windows Mojave.” The idea was to dispel any “misconceptions” about their unpopular operating system, Windows Vista. It depicted people on a hidden camera bashing vista, trying vista, then praising vista. I myself am an open source buff and all around Microsoft hater and it wasn’t hard for me to find the problem with this ad campaign.

When the people on camera tried vista, they were trying a demo of vista that was being administered by a vista expert. This means that they tried out the obvious and advertised features of vista. Coincidentally, most of the problems that people experience with vista are driver issues, which would not be apparent on the Microsoft laptop that was used for the demo, and bugs that are deep within the system in basic tasks. Things will slow down randomly, not function and crash.

I am not just one of those random people on the web who has read that vista sucks and believed it with out trying it. I have tried vista, for about five minutes, and liked it because of its obvious interface glitz and snazzy features. But then I asked the computers owners if they had any problems with vista and boy was the list big.

Finally, lets congratulate Microsoft on producing a completely functional demo to advertise a non functioning product.

Welcome

The purpose of this blog is to post the political, technological, scientific and economical viewpoints of whats happening around the world, reflected by just some guy in madtown (Madison, WI). Once and awhile you will hear about things going on here, but I will generally stick to global issues.

So enjoy the blog.

-Seth Lesondak, Author