See Have Bruce Perens Keynote Your Confference at perens.com

http://perens.com/blog/2013/01/16/1/

It's 2010 and I thought I'd delete all the old retarded stuff on here and say hi, I'm still alive, and I'm feeling much better now. ;)

Unfortunately, this refers to the tornadoes that struck the U.S. South over the night of 2/6/08, but of course my techie side took one look at this headline on CNN.com today and said...

"Ummm...yeah....and this is surprising how? Windows has been exploding on us since day 1, and Windows Vista is no better...."

Then of course I glanced up and saw what it really referred to...

(Sad, sad panda...)

So, I laid my hands on a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a few days before its release.

All I can say is this - it's awesome! It's a coming of age story, and I loved every bit of it.

I was very disappointed when I had reached the end of the book and re-read the last few pages a couple of times. It's been a great run, and thank you Rowling, for giving us these fantastic stories!

Chaplains from various faiths and religions are sometimes invited to provide the opening prayer for the US Senate. While traditionally this has been done by a Christian Chaplain, this Thursday was unique in that it was the first time a Hindu Chaplain was invited to say the opening prayer in front of the US Senate. Unfortunately, this was marked by protests by some religious Christian folks who shouted down the prayer and kept interrupting it periodically. A video of the incident can also be viewed.

And as a side note, it is interesting how the right seems to want more religion, but only if it were their own. It is rather unfortunate that for a religion that is supposed to teach tolerance, its most fervent followers seem to be showing very little of it.

Slashdotters need to realize just how few people actually understand technology. There is a great propensity of people here to assume that everyone knows what they're talking about and would share the same opinions of technology or related topics -- that assumption is completely faulty. In fact, I would venture that only 1 in 1000 people actually understand or care about technology to any significant degree.

For example, the requisite knowledge required to understand an Intel errata statement for a CPU buglist can likely only be gained either by taking a university-level course, such as Ohio State's CSE 675 Intro to Computer Architecture [ohio-state.edu] class, or by doing some very highly directed self-study. Given that the class is offered 4x/year with an average class size of 25 students, then roughly 100 students/year gain that knowledge. Let's also assume that 50% forget that knowledge within 5 years, so over the course of those 5 years, 250 people become capable of reading those errata.

OSU's Columbus campus enrollment is roughly 51,000/yr and yearly turnover is about 10,000/yr due to graduation and withdrawal. Therefore, over 5 years, approximately 100,000 students will have had the opportunity at taking that class and retaining the knowledge.

So, simple math tells us that only 0.25% of a college-level population will obtain and retain the requisite skills. Now extrapolate that figure across the the general population that doesn't attend college, which is roughly 60% in the US, and you get a final percentage of about 0.1% overall that can read and understand the Intel errata, and even that may be a stretch, IMHO.

Bottom line -- Slashdotters need to realize that very few people overall understand technology, and even fewer care. We need to keep this in mind when making broad, generalistic statements about topics such as Linux adoption, security concerns, and so forth. Average Joe doesn't care about computers and probably never will -- he simply wants it to work. Please don't fall subject to thinking that just because you want something to work correctly, that everyone else will follow suit.

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Jr beqrerq qevaxf, naq jvgu gur qevaxf, fur unq n tynff fyvccre jenccrq va n ancxva qryvirerq gb ure. Jvgu gur nccrgvmref naq fnynq, fur unq n gvnen oebhtug gb ure ba n cyngr. Jvgu gur ragerrf, fur unq n pebja-funcrq yncyry cva oebhtug bhg ba n cyngr. Naq svanyyl, jvgu gur qrffreg, fur unq n fnfu gung ernq Cevaprff jvgu ure anzr ba vg.

Ol guvf gvzr, fur jnf dhvgr fhfcvpvbhf. Nsgre nyy guvf qenzn, V tnir ure n pneq gung nfxrq ure gb tebj byq jvgu zr, naq tnir ure n Angvir Nzrevpna cbhpu (fur vf cneg Angvir Nzrevpna) gung unq n abgr gung fnvq gung V pbzr jvgu fgevatf nggnpurq (na vafvqr wbxr orgjrra hf).

V svanyyl oebhtug bhg gur evat (juvpu unq n fgevat nggnpurq gb zr) naq nfxrq ure gb zneel zr.

Fur fnvq LRF!

Naq fur ybirq gur evat (naq gur ebpx). Lnl! Guvf unf tbggn or gur orfg Inyragvar'f Qnl bs zl yvsr lrg.

Today, I just received an email that Flickr has given a deadline for us "Old Skool" members to merge our accounts with a Yahoo! account.

Not only has the Yahoo!/Flickr crowd squarely ignored user and customer needs, they have gone ahead and done something that the users were explicitly against. Already, a lot of the users on the Flickr forum have asked if they could cancel their membership.

And here are the reasons that I think this was a big mistake on Yahoo! and Flickr's part.

Doesn't anybody take lessons in basic business practices anymore?

Given all the tags that have are being used on Slashdot, I wonder what a Slashdot Tag Cloud would look like.

Then again, the Slashdot word cloud is rather boring.

The tag cloud would probably be full of dupe, fud, riaa, linux, msft sucks etc.

Yoohoo! Had my graduate commencement ceremony, was the first in my major.

I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech,
and a hell of an Engineer

A Helluva, helluva, helluva, helluva, helluva
Engineer

Like all the jolly good fellows,
I drink my whiskey clear.

I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech
and a hell of an Engineer

Oh, if I had a daughter, sir,
I'd dress her in white and gold,
And put her on the campus
To cheer the brave and bold.
But if I had a son, sir,
I'll tell you what he'd do--
He'd yell: 'TO HELL WITH GEORGIA!'
Like his daddy used to do.

Oh, I wish I had a barrel of rum,
and Sugar three thousand pounds
A college bell to put it in,
And a clapper to stir it round.
I'd drink to all the good fellows,
who come from far and near.
I'm a Ramblin', Gamblin',
HELL OF AN ENGINEER!

The alert provides a web form to write to your congress person. Please do that. And please put the alert up elsewhere, so that other people can help too.

I'm in Washington DC working on this today, and your support will help.

Thanks

Bruce

Bruce

GNU grub sucks. It can't boot drives over 2 TB because drives over 2 TB require a GPT partition table.

But lilo works.