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Minority Rights Are Not Predicated on the Readiness of the Majority
Here in the US there has been some good news on the gay rights front recently: the House of Representatives voted to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy under which openly gay service members are discharged and which has been in place for the better part of two decades. Now it’s going to the Senate, where apparently things could get tough, but if all goes well we may see real policy change within the next year or so. Here is a Houston Chronicle article about it.
It should not come as a surprise that almost across the board, Republicans oppose this policy change. From the article:
Republicans, who voted overwhelmingly against it, cited statements by some military leaders that they need more time to study how a change in the law could affect the lives and readiness of service members.
Here’s what I haven’t heard anyone say in response to this: why do we care what the brass thinks about the “readiness” of service members to have out gays serving with them? How does that take precedence over eliminating blatant discrimination in military policy? Some things are more important than appeasing some homophobic bigots in the military.
The case against repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” is usually put this way (to quote John McCain):
I think it’s really going to be very harmful to the morale and effectiveness of our military.
The interesting part is that this argument is not new. As is pointed out by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer in the article, the objection about “morale” is the same that was made by the people who opposed racial integration in the military 60 years ago. This was a cowardly and disingenuous argument then, and it remains so today.
Gmail: Please Bold the Hidden Labels Button when there are Unread Messages
I love Gmail. It does everything I could possibly want an email client (web or desktop) to do. All of my non-junk email accounts are Gmail or are forwarded to Gmail accounts. That said, occasionally something occurs to me that would make my Gmail experience a little bit better. Sometimes these crop up as Labs features, which I think is great, and is part of why I enjoy using Gmail so much.
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Ctrl-C is Back
My (indirect) host, fsckvps.com, was pretty messed up by hackers using a HyperVM exploit. Fortunately, the server I use seemed to be OK, but the DNS servers were down and due to one thing and another I wasn’t able to set up alternate nameservers until just now. I’m using free service from afraid.org. It seems kind of slow, but it’s definitely better than nothing. Anyone know of any alternatives? Is it possible to roll my own?
There is a slight improvement; http://www.ctrl-c.us/ now redirects to http://ctrl-c.us/ :-)
OK, it’s now way past my bedtime. I’m getting up in just a few hours to go on another epic hike. Pictures to follow.
Interfacing C and Python 3 using SWIG
I like Python, and I use it for almost all of my personal projects and whenever I can get away with it in school. Sometimes, however, (rarely, these days) you’re looking for raw speed. Python, alas, is not the fastest kid on the block, and at these times you might have to turn to a different language to give you the necessary speed. (Another option you might consider first is Psyco.) In these situations it is often the case that only particular operations or functions really have to be fast. Even if you want to write the whole piece of software in C, you might like to use Python to write the front end. There are a lot of different ways to do this, but my favorite is SWIG, because it’s easy and I’m lazy.
64-bit Flash Player!
Today Adobe is releasing an alpha version of a 64-bit Flash player for Linux. I cannot explain how happy this makes me. I have been dealing with shitty 32-bit Flash players running on 32-bit emulation in 64-bit browsers in Linux for about the past five years, and it has caused me nothing but endless annoyance and frustration. Half the time I have to refresh a page a few times because Flash keeps dying, and even when it manages to play it’s a complete coin toss as to whether there will be sound. With my current setup I basically have to close Amarok to play a Flash video if I want to hear sound. Adobe is years late to the party with this one, but better late than never, right?
Seven Document Formats Worse than Scribd
The other day while searching for some LaTeX information I came across this page on Scribd, and I was reminded once again how much I loathe this website. If you aren’t familiar with it, Scribd is a site which hosts various books, articles, and other documents. For reasons that are an impenetrable mystery to me, these people have decided that the way to bring together potentially many different formats of print media is to turn them all into shockwave flash. As in, this beautifully typeset LaTeX document, compiled to PDF, was turned into a scrollable flash…thing. Combine this with the rather sorry state of flash on Linux, and you get just about my least favorite website on the entire intertubes. Just getting it in a Google search makes me almost as mad as getting a link to Experts Exchange.
So, to keep my blood pressure down, I put things into perspective for myself by making a list of seven document formats Scribd could have chosen to use, but didn’t.
Why Tim Burton’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ Will Be Epic
I just finished reading this interview with Tim Burton about his upcoming film Alice in Wonderland, and I am really excited. I knew that this film was in the works, but I had somehow missed the fact that Johnny Depp is playing the Mad Hatter. With these two together, I cannot possibly imagine this film not kicking serious ass.
Howto: Dual Monitors with Ubuntu and NVidia
Pursuant to my previous post on using dual monitors in Linux, I decided to post a some information that would have definitely appreciated having a long time ago. This specifically covers how get two monitors working in a reasonable fashion in Ubuntu and Xubuntu, but I originally figured it out in Gentoo (and it applies to other distros).