Seems my Karma has become so terrible I can only post twice a day. This is a test to see if I still write in the journal

Kind of lost in the shuffle over the health care ruling (my opinion, FWIW, is that it's a lousy law, but clearly the best we're going to get in the current political climate, so all in all I'm glad it was upheld; perhaps in another couple of decades, we'll be ready to try again) is this piece of news about another Supreme Court ruling: the court voted 6-3 to strike down the Stolen Valor Act.

I admit to mixed feelings about this. It was clearly the right decision -- any law that limits free speech is prima facie a bad law, and the government's argument that it only restricts "false statements (that) have no value and hence no 1st Amendment protection," to quote the LA Times story, is chilling. We cannot outlaw people telling lies. OTOH, there are a hell of a lot of people using lies about their claimed service for personal advantage (up to and including a certain former President) and this is not only disgusting, it's often outright fraud. The SVA was an exceedingly blunt instrument for a problem that called for a scalpel. I guess the solution I'd like to see is the use of existing criminal fraud statutes for cases where it could be shown that the liar is not just telling stories to impress his buddies at the bar, but actually deriving financial or other measurable gain. Oh yeah, also court-martial for deserters (preceded, where necessary, by other measures such as, oh, say, impeachment, for those whose position places them beyond the usual corrective measures.)

I blame Hollywood, really. At this point they've probably given out more Medals of Honor than have actually been awarded in the entire history of the US military. Lesser decorations have been relegated, in this mindset, to something you get just for showing up. It's not just lazy storytelling; it has a real effect on real people who earn real medals. And no, I'm not saying this should be illegal either, but it should certainly be mocked at every opportunity.

More proof, as if any were needed, that modern conservatism is completely insane.

At this point in the conversation, we're usually treated to a chorus of, "Hey, liberals say crazy things too!" And the answer to that is ... well, yeah, kind of. Which is to say, there are plenty of left-wing lunatics out there, and many of them put their lunacy on display at every opportunity.

The difference is that these left-wing lunatics do not have anywhere near the power or prominence of their right-wing counterparts. They're not hosting nationally syndicated talk shows. They're not parlaying famous last names into political careers. And they are sure as hell not running the Democratic Party, as the right-wing lunatics are clearly running the GOP.

Here's the thing, conservatives. We marginalize and trivialize our extremists. Maybe we shouldn't do that; sometimes the extremists have legitimate grievances. But it's better than what you do with yours. You celebrate and lionize them. It's not just Reagan; it's Limbaugh and Coulter and Savage and Hannity -- and yes, Boehner and Cantor and McConnell, and the current version of Romney (which may of course change next week, or an hour from now, but for now ...) We keep our lunatics locked up. You put yours in charge of the asylum.

So here's my challenge. If you are tired of liberals making hay of every crazy thing some conservative pundit or politician says, do something about it. Point and laugh at your own side's lunatics, as we do. Make us believe that common ground is possible, that you have the same ends for the country that we do even if we disagree about the means. Put your racists and fascists in the same room where we keep our communists and anarchists, and keep them decently out of public view.

Or if you're not willing to do this, understand that we have no choice but to consider you just as bad as the worst of your number, and act accordingly.

What a dream boat. His name was Xavier, and I was high. When I'm high, I tend to forget that I'm supposed to be a guy. Female instincts take over, and I'm putty in the hands of a man named Xavier who has a sexy Brazillian accent and an aura of strong, confident yet quiet and peaceful machismo.

I don't know why, but my whole life I've had crush after crush on people who are Latino or Hispanic or both. There have even been a few Hispanic girls I've liked, if I can admit to being a little naughty.

It was a bad day today, and I slipped into a parallel universe. It's your universe, where I'm just another female, a female who was interested in computer programming from a young age. I remember his modestness, Xavier's. He showed me his beautiful baby girl and his proud son. I am sure that in his heart he does not love me, but he loves his wife, the mother of those children.

She is a good woman. In that parallel universe I sometimes slip into by accident, there are good women just as there are good men.

A man is wild, though, and a man from your world can tell when a stranger from my bleak world slips through the dimensional membrane, just a half a mllimetre in the W direction and jump to the left. Let's do the time warp again. In my world, they shame people like me with the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

In your world, I become a young woman of about 29, and Xavier was a young man of about 32. His accent enthralled me and hypnotized me. His eyes were so strong, and the way he held me was irresistable.

It turned out that some of the network problems we were having were due to a badly configured Cisco switch. If he hadn't pulled my petite hacker waist, still a virgin's, up to his strong abdomen, we might not have found the problem. He put things together I was saying, and then we kissed passonitely.

I suppose no matter what side of the dimensional divide I'm on, I need a man, a strong man. Xavier was my strong man earlier today. He was so gentle and so strong. If he had wanted, and his fingers at least wanted as they found their way to the button on my slacks, I would have been his.

I am so weak, so weak in the hands of strong men who speak Portugese or Spanish as a first language and English as a second. It's my linguist instinct. I want to learn. I want, I want, I want more than learning. I yearn, and I desire.

Then my phone rang, and I was pulled, dragged across the dimensional membrane. Xavier was sitting on the other side of the room, but this was a different Xavier. I had a different body, back in the transgendered body again, I was. I answered the phone. A pregnant woman had slammed the side of my car with her SUV door.

I despaired. Xavier, don't you remember me, the cute girl you called Gwen when you held me in your arms and kissed me so passionently? Please, Xavier, save me from this hell.

Xavier was engrossed in an explanation of a VMWare environment to Alex, my co-worker in the other universe.

Will I ever meet the Xavier who kissed me so intensely, pulled me to him and kissed me?

Note to copywriters working for the DoD, or trying to appeal to a military audience: "soldier," "sailor," and "airman" are not proper nouns. "Marine" is a proper noun, because it happens to be part of the name of the service, United States Marine Corps. (Or, for that matter, the Royal Marine Corps on which the US version was modeled.) This does not mean that Marines are any more special or heroic or elite than members of the other services. (Marines, of course, will disagree, but that's part of their shtick. The rest of us just smile and nod.) It's an accident of language, no more.

Also not proper nouns: "military" and "veteran." Capitalizing any of these words, when they do not appear at the beginning of a sentence, does not emphasize how Special and Heroic and Elite our Brave Fighting Men And Women are for Making Sacrifices to Defend Our Freedom. It just makes you look illiterate. Now, you may not particularly care about literacy -- you're in the advertising business, after all -- but by God and the Constitution, I fought specially and heroically and elitely to defend your right to speak freely, not to sound like a moron doing so!

Thank You, and Have A Nice Day.

I think the submit thingy of Slashdot is broken

After filling in every necessary item inside the submit pop-up screen, I clicked the "Preview" button, and then ... nothing happen

At first I used google chrome, then I switched to FF, and encountered the same thing. I switched to IE, again the same thing

Can someone please fix this asap ??

Most people have read "1066 and all that: a memorable history of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 good things, 5 bad kings and 2 genuine dates" (one of the longest book titles I have ever encountered) and some may have encountered "The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody", but these are the exceptions and not the rule. What interesting - but accurateish - takes on history have other Slashdotters encountered?

I knew I did the right thing when i decided not to disable ad on slashdot

I just got the "is there a God?" ad !!

And they even entice me with "Six Reasons that God Exists" if I only click on the ad

Should I click on it?

I am tempted to know why they have only six reasons, and not seven, or eight, or nine hundred gazzillion reasons

*shakes fist*

I have dealt with Linux since the beginning

Even before Linux, I've gotten my finger wetted with many flavors of Unixes

Lately, however, I got the feeling that Linux itself might be getting bloated

Case in point --- http://lwn.net/Articles/498135/

In the lwn article, it talks about Linux distros that are getting ready to ditch the Compact Discs (CDs) because their distribution has grown much larger than the 680MB real estate of a typical CD

We used to complain that Microsoft Windows are bloatware

We used to congratulate ourselves on the simplicity, the usefulness and the compactness of the Unix/Linux daemons, that we can do so much with so little

Sadly, those times seem to be over

I'm afraid Linux has enter the bloatware arena

When I first signed up to Slashdot, it was so brand new, there were no ad anywhere

I do appreciate Slashdot's generous offer to allow me to disable ad when I'm visiting, but I think I'll continue to allow ad, and, from time to time, I can even click on some of the interesting ones

Not that I'm crazy for online ad, no, I'm not that crazy yet

It just that, throughout these years, my many visits to Slashdot has exposed me a lot of interesting ideas and insights.

Not disabling ad on Slashdot reflects my own appreciation of Slashdot, and what Slashdot stands for

Thanks, Slashdot !

May you have a great number of fruitful years ahead ! :)

Something is wrong. Apparently I'm in a different parallel universe from the rest of you.

None of you would like women from my universe. Not men, not lesbians, not even heterosexual cisgendered women. Well, we have lesbians here, but I hate to disappoint you guys who fantasize about 3-ways, but like the rest of the women here, they're obese.

One time I was in your universe briefly. I was on the bus. That was before I owned a car. There were two females with a healthy body weight making out for most of the ride.

I also slipped into your universe a few times when I was a trucker, not unlike that priest that that good writer in Maine wrote about a few times, sai Callahan. Once I slipped into your universe along I-5 up the west coast. I took a small break at a rest area in Washington state, and I was amazed that there was also a busload of nearly teenage girls there. They weren't obese, and they got along with each other and showed such intelligence. It reminded me of myself when I was that age. Except the next year, something horrible happened to me, and my transformation into a monster started.

I don't know what went wrong. There was some big kerfuffle about classical music and Newton's Principia Mathematica being like rape. In this universe, that resonated with a lot of women. They said, "Hey, this is hard. But look, all I have to do is proposition a guy for sex and he'll do anything for me, including hard stuff like math." It was as if Malibu Stacey (or I suppose in your universe they call those dolls Barbie) gained 300 lbs and came to life.

They even have this show over here called the Andy Griffith Show. In one of the episodes, the women of the town had an issue they were concerned about, and instead of making rational arguments, they just refused to put out. And that was good enough to win the men over to their cause. Nobody had any higher ideological thoughts than sex.

I have never understood it.

Am I already dead? Is this purgatory, some kind of purely psychological version of Silent Hill without the special effects every first Sunday of the month when the city tests their civil defence sirens? If I had died already and were in purgatory, I'd hope that purgatory would at least have a special effects budget. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe with the economic downturn, they had to scrap the idea of a "dark side" purgatory and maybe they told Pyramid Head that he'd have to make due with a kitchen knife.

I'm supposed to be like Pyramid Head, and in this purgatory, all the ladies love Pyramid Head. And I suppose Pyramid Head loves those bloated, obese monstrosities.

I didn't want to be a monster. I just kind of turned into one. I watched it happen, but I was powerless to stop it. At times, I even thought that becoming a monster like Pyramid Head would be fun. Maybe some day I'd see what Pyramid Head sees in ladies that weigh 2-3 times as much as he does. That day never came.

I'm supposed to have AIDS, but I can't even do that right. Most women get a disease called "diabetes," which they view as a venerable sign of old age and wisdom. Sometimes I wish I could get AIDS. It's supposed to be a holy edict from on high purging monsters like me from the world.

A perpetual problem with scientific software is that much of it starts out as one-time scripts written to analyze a specific piece of data, and then it gets released into the wild as The Way To Analyze This Type Of Data. A closely related problem, which affects repositories of scientific software, is that a kind of informal API develops among the developers and users (who are initially the same people) of packages within the repository, without ever being really documented in a way that makes sense to people who have not been involved in the development. What documentation there is tends be rather ... self-referential, shall we say, and assume a whole lot of background knowledge about how the software works which new users will, in almost all cases, not have.

Not to break my arm patting myself on the back, but I have to say that my years of industry experience in writing end-user applications, and managing a development team made up of people who had all joined the team at different times and had to understand what was going on, taught me a lot about how to write good documentation. Industry programmers could learn a lot from academia about how to make software run better, because scientific users have to squeeze every possible bit of performance out of every processor cycle. Academic programmers could learn a lot from industry about how to write documentation that allows people to use that performance without wanting to tear their hair out.

... I have to admire the Republicans for their ability to stick to their predefined narrative, even when it's the exact opposite of reality. The purpose of CISPA is "creating this monster here in Washington to control what we would see and not see on the Internet." Obama's veto threat is aimed at preventing the creation of such a monster. But that doesn't fit with Boehner's definition of The Way Things Are, so ...

Boehner rebukes W. H. on CISPA veto threat

... because you know, James Lovelock. And somebody lost his temper in an e-mail once. And haha, Al Gore is fat.

Antarctic ice melting from below, reveals satellite