I guess the accusations of a 13-year-long affair on Monday, which Cain didn't deny, were the final straw that broke the camel's back.

Cain has dropped out of the race.

Cain said he would soon endorse a candidate.

And every candidate still running is probably thinking "Oh My Gawd No, please, NOT ME!"

This is quite a change from earlier in the week, when Cain bought the Adword search results for Ginger White with a sponsored result encouraging people to "Get past the allegations and lies" by visiting caintruth.com.

Of course, now with Cain's own cellphone records pointing the finger at him over his 13-year-long affair, it makes this quote from his wife (on caintruth.com) about another womans accusations particularly apropos:

"I looked at especially this last lady and the things that she said, and Iâ(TM)m thinking, 'He would have to have a split personality to do the things that she said,'" Gloria Cain said of Bialek.

Split personality? Or just someone who thought they were glib enough to fool enough of the people, enough of the time?

One thing is for sure - Cain does not, contrary to his wife's protestations, "Totally respect women" - least of all her. Hopefully she'll find enough strength and self-respect to kick the bum to the curb.

It's one thing to forgive a one-time betrayal. Being cheated on cuts to the quick; being able to rise above the hurt and anger (and fear) to try to rebuild, all the while knowing that you're probably going to fail in the long run, because it's how you would want to be treated if YOU were the one who messed it all up, reflects a certain inner strength and moral compass.

This situation is far, far beyond that, and we've already been treated to too many politically opportunistic "stand by your (dirty lying cheating scumbag) man" scenes, from both parties.

In preparing to migrate from linux to freebsd after the failed in-place update from opensuse 11.4 to 12.1, and the subsequent fugly clean install, one thing I noticed was that /etc/X11/xorg.conf has been replaced with 10 different files under /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/.

What this means is that all your utilities for configuring your dual monitors, such as nvidia-settings, don't have a clue as to how to save this new format. Sure, you can run it each time you log in, but that's a real PITA, requires root, and it might not be something you want if you share a computer with others.

Quick fix:

1. log in as root
2. mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d /etc/X11/WTF.xorg.conf.d
3. run nvidia-settings and have it save a conventional xorg.conf file as /etc/X11/xorg.conf

This should also work, mutatis mutandis, if you have a backup copy of xorg.conf for an ATI or other card.

When you have less than 1% market share, you either don't pull s*** like this, or you provide tools to bridge the difference. Video is not like a web server - the migration of the apache config file to a bunch of sub-directories, while it was messy, was safe to assume a certain level of user technical acumen - and if in the meantime the server didn't start, it's not as frustrating for the average desktop user as a dud graphics sub-system.

Update: The latest linux update has also rendered the Windows drive unbootable. Way to go, hero!

After more than a decade of 4 of my 5 sisters games, lies, and stupidities, I let them know a couple of days ago that if anyone asks, we're not related, I don't know them, have a nice life. My daughters feel the same way - we're just tired of it all.

It's the same with linux. I've been increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of a coherent strategy, the bugginess of every single desktop, the constant breakage on updates, so when the latest update left my laptop unable to boot linux, and I had to boot into Windows to download and burn an install dvd, I guess I was primed.

After a fresh install, my email is gone (good thing I have a backup), my dvd is gone, my linux printer is STILL not supported, dual-monitor support is AWOL (not even an option to configure it), wireless is still MIA, just like it has been for most of the last 2 years after an update killed it, and the "we'll pause for 10-20 seconds every few minutes for no reason just to do nothing" while top shows minimal cpu use bug is still there.

I *was* going to migrate to FreeBSD, but why bother? If I need a *nix in the future, I'll run it off a thumb drive.

After more than 15 years, linux is still, in so many ways, behind even Win95 on the desktop. That's just messed up.

I'm just cleaning off my 16-gig thumb drive so that I can reformat it so that Windows can see it, then I'm going to do the "copy files to thumb drive, reboot into windows, copy files, reboot into linux" thing a half-dozen times, then delete all the partitions and "embrace the dark side".

This last 24 hours is just full of disappointments, but I guess that's the reality of it. Whether it's my sisters or linux, I don't feel as bad about it as I thought I would. I'm in a sense relieved - it's over!

Every single desktop in opensuse 12.1 is broken. Even LXDE is messed up. So, that's it for me. I'm copying all my data to the windows drive, then deleting linux and installing bsd.

It's not just the desktops - I'm looking at ps ax, and version 3 of the kernel is already just too "busy". By version 4 in 10 years, it's going to be a totally unmaintainable mess. Thanks for the fish, but 15 years, and I want out.

I put up with the quirks of kmail over the years because it was what I was using (in other words, inertia). However, with the death of the desktop that I was going to convert to BSD, I decided to update my laptop to the latest opensuse.

The first attempt (an in-place upgrade) left me with a machine that wouldn't even boot linux ... soooooo ... did a clean install (/home was a separate partition) of opensuse 12.1. First impression is NOT good.

Suffice it to say that importing emails is a mess - tons of errors, and of course, all the various accounts information is lost. Worse, WT* are all these new processes? Just for a stupid PIM???? Are you people INSANE??????? Have you never heard that the more separate parts to something, the more likely it is to break? Not all of us want to be required to run "a desktop cpu-sucking indexer", and over a dozen different daemons just to be able to read our email.

And of course neither pine nor elm included "just in case" ...

... because once one does it, like American Airlines did yesterday, the rest pretty much have to follow suit or be stuck with uncompetitive costs.

Trivia question - is there a major airline that hasn't gone bankrupt at least once? (Hint: Don't bother looking in North America).

I haven't posted a journal here in almost three years, because I couldn't find the button to start a new entry. ...yeah, it turns out that it's at the bottom of the page.

So... hi, Slashdot. I used to be really active here, but now I mostly lurk and read. I've missed you.

U7 died earlier today. It was running fine when I left, but when I got back, there was a tell-tale smell of burnt capacitor, and power cycling a few times did nothing. Sure enough, when I removed the power supply, the strong smell at the exit fan, much less at the intake holes, was enough. Cause of death was, once again, a blown power supply.

6 years ago U7 blew it's original power supply at the 1-year mark, taking the original motherboard with it. Since replacing the motherboard and power supply, it's had ram upgrades, hard drive upgrades, video card upgrades, and a couple more NICs thrown in.

It was worth reviving the machine 6 years ago when it was almost new. Today? Not so much. I'll probably grab the power supply from U5 next time I'm in the garage, just to see if the thing boots or if the motherboard is also toast, but it's more for curiosity than anything else.

Good thing I had backed up my current work files to U8 (my laptop) Thursday, and hadn't done anything all that important since, what with the hospital yesterday and just not being in the mood (or feeling particularly creative) today.

Oh well, so much for installing BSD on it. And I had cleaned off one of the drives last week just for that. That makes 2 things less to worry about today - now down to 998 left :-)

The good news? Yesterday's hospital visit to examine my retinas ...

In the past, the bleeding in my left eye would stop for a bit, then resume. A few weeks ago, it stopped again, and so far, so good ... to the point where I can do things that don't require 100% vision in both eyes, such as watching TV, without much of a problem (or this could be testimony to "you can get used to anything given enough time").

The big red/black twisty blotch in the middle of my left eyes' field of view is fading, and their exam yesterday confirmed that the fibrous "stalk" of the remains of the blood vessels that attaches it to the nerve is now clear, so the blood in the rest should gradually be absorbed, and hopefully everything else will also break down over time and be absorbed.

The right eye, which continues to function fine even though it was also showing signs of advanced disease, they think they caught in time. There were still a few vascular growths which might have been new, so we played one more round of "sharks with frikking lasers" yesterday to burn a few hundred more holes in the retina (this lowers the level of oxygen permeating the retinal wall to retard vascular growth) and we'll see how it looks in a few months, but we're all optimistic as all heck :-)

Which brings me to some observations on gender-specific waiting room behaviour.

You have a bunch of men and women, all with a common reason for being there, who might benefit from comparing notes and experiences (plus avoiding being bored to death). I'm chatting away with the woman next to me (okay, she's complaining for an hour and I'm listening for an hour - she's a good complainer and I'm a sympathetic listener, so it works out good, and we sort of know each other from the previous visit), and I'm picking up a few pointers on what to expect from when/if they have to inject stuff directly into my eyeballs, and she learned something new about how you don't have to see the dosage on the insulin pens - just count the clicks - for when she injects her younger brother (who apparently can't bring himself to stick a needle into himself, so she has to do it 4x a day ... and she really needs to help find him a wife, and she'd make sure that woman ended up rich ... )

The men? They're all sitting beside each other just looking at their feet, their hands, the wall, us (when they think we won't notice) - anything and anywhere but each other.

No wonder they all looked so glum. Come on guys, lighten up a bit. You're only hurting yourselves. It's a waiting room, not the urinal test.

3 of my sisters live ~350 miles from here. They were in town recently and spent the a couple of days at a 4th sister, about 5 miles from where I live. I got to hear about it second-hand earlier this week, since I wasn't invited.

The occasion - our aunts' funeral - which they also "forgot" to tell me about, and I only found out about after the fact this morning. (This aunt was special - while several of my sisters have made it a life-long hobby of criticizing me and everything I do, she never did. This is not the way I want to remember her)/

I don't know why at least 2 of them have spent the last 2 decades spreading lies about me behind my back to everyone else. As to why it took me decades to find out that they were doing so ... I never even considered they were doing as much. The stuff I did see, for the longest time I just shrugged it off as some sort of one-sided sibling rivalry thing due to me being the oldest.

Our parents were far from perfect, but we certainly weren't raised that way, so "picking better parents" isn't any sort of answer, even in jest. It highlights how, as parents, you do your best and just hope for the rest.

The gab-fest at my sisters degenerated into some really ugly stuff. One of them, who I'll label the "chief instigator", and who has been particularly vicious towards me the last few years, walked into the room where another one was talking, and said "I heard what you said about me!" To which the other one said "No you didn't. If you did, you'd be throwing us out."

To which she replied "See the iPod I left in here? I've been recording everything you've been saying."

This is just toxic. This is the sort of stunt I expect from some sort of reality tv show about trailer trash wrapped up in a divorce and determined to shred each other no matter what the cost - not family gathered for a funeral.

I can't go back in time and pick better parents - and besides, it wasn't their fault. Some things just are. About all I *can* do is to try to ascertain how far this cancer has spread, see who else is equally disgusted, and figure out where to go from there.

And of course, when I go visit a certain brother-in-law, make sure my sister isn't in the next room recording everything. And warn him to be careful about what he says, because this sort of behaviour doesn't happen in a vacuum. And he's still family, even if she isn't.

And now for some great news - Groupon stock is tanking - gee, who would have predicted THAT :-p .

Okay, for the sarcasm-impaired, who would NOT have predicted that? This is a GOOD THING (TM) because now maybe it'll force some sanity into the marketplace. (Then again, given how obvious it was that Groupon was a Ponzi scheme, insolvent, and the founders have been milking it, probably not). It's hard to compete against Ponzi schemes like Groupon, and they suck attention, resources, and revenue away from other potentially viable projects and other economic sectors.

So, how long before Groupon folds?

Negatives: Losing money like crazy, still insolvent even after the cash infusion from the stock sale, high sales costs, low repeat business, unlikely to attract other investors who have seen shares drop like a stone ...

Positives: When you have that sort of cash flow, you can hire lawyers to keep reality away ...

My "WAG" - they'll be EOL around the same date as XP.

From another site:

Q. how can you protect your job from being outsourced?
A. Do something that's not in an O'Reilly book.

Jobs involving knowledge skills are transferable. A pair of hands is not.

The real question is how to create your own job today, because businesses won't do it for you. And the government won't - they're too busy bailing out the 1%'ers.

One of the things people have failed to notice is the trend away from making everything browser-based. Jobs originally wanted people to develop apps using HTML5+Javascript+CSS, with only a few select developers using objective-c ... but now it's the exact opposite - because one of Apple's VPs talked him out of it. In other words, web apps sucked too much to be acceptable to Apple.

Then there's the market failure of Cromebooks. "Everything in the browser" doesn't sell, because it doesn't scale to the real world.

Android? Java source to java classes to dex classes.

And then there's the 800-pound gorilla - Microsoft - who is going to be using HTML5+Javascript+CSS in MetroUI directly - no browser required - for those who want to develop using that. This is the trojan horse to quickly get an app store up, but we can see where this is going if we think a bit ... after all, once you're developing for MetroUI, why not get something that works better, in both Metro and the conventional desktop, by using Microsoft tools? Embrace and extend ... but this time, by extending the market reach, instead of standards. Microsoft has learned a new trick or two.

When every web site has its' own app, and when there are apps for things like website discovery, who's going to want a crummy bandwidth-and-memory-hogging browser? Nobody.

Welcome to 2020. When we can finally declare the browser wars over, because they're all dead.

46 out of 50 states are in financial trouble (maybe more ...). However, there is no apparent provision for a state to declare bankruptcy, unlike Chapter 9, which enables cities and government institutions to go bankrupt.

However, there is a loophole (the more laws you pass, the more loopholes you create, same as the more lines of code you have, the more places for bugs to get into. Lawyers, of course, would call this a "feature").

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/usc_sec_11_00000101----000-.html

(40) The term âoemunicipalityâ means political subdivision or public agency or instrumentality of a State.

So
1. The state declares that the entire legal and financial operations of the state is an instrumentality of the state (which it already is in fact, so might as well make it in law as well, right?).
2. The resulting entity files for Chapter 9
3. PROFIT!

In the case of, for example, California, the state can then legally do things like impose an "offset" to Prop 13, so that all properties are taxed at their market value, change pension plans, hiring contracts, etc.