Daily Archives: December 29, 2007

Michigan State U: Look out for this

The Michigan State University (MSU) chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) has announced that it will be hosting a lecture by Jared Taylor in March. Taylor, who is not particularly well-known in the mainstream, is a prominent racist who’s New Century Foundation and American Renaissance publication are devoted to pursuing “scientific” justifications for racism.

Details here, and here.

Linux Rules

From Slashot:“Computers and handheld devices running default GNU Linux or Unix OSes have swept Amazon’s ‘best of’ list for 2007, according BusinessWire.com for 28 December 2007. Best selling computer? The Nokia Internet Tablet PC, running Linux. Best reviewed computer? The Apple MacBook Pro notebook PC. Most wished for computer? Asus Eee 4G-Galaxy 7-inch PC mobile Internet device, which comes with Xandros Linux pre-installed. And last, but not least, the most frequently gifted computer: The Apple MacBook notebook PC.”wOOt!!!

I told you so … open source is better.

You can’t use closed source proprietary software such as Mathematica for research because that would cause there to be a Black Box in your Research Methodology?But you didn’t listen.Now, Miquel Pais (via the Quantum Pontiff) reports a bug in Mathematica that can’t be understood because you can’t look under the hood.This is a disaster. But not an unexpected disaster.You must now all switch to Open Source software for your research purposes. I’m not kidding. Get on that right away.That is all.

Netscape is dead. Long live Netscape.

i-037fa43af020a2260e00ee2ff73f0fc0-netscape.jpgNetscape was the first browser. Then came along Internet Explorer, and Microsoft did all sorts of evil things to Netscape to run it out of existence. But it didn’t work. Netscape continued to exist, and along the way, AOL acquired Netscape as a commercial product, and Mozilla branched off of Netscape as an Open Source product. Mozilla gave birth to Firefox and Swiftfox, and today, Firefox or some form of it rules. Open Source Wins.Today, AOL has announced that it will no longer develop Netscape.We can get all weepy and worried about this event, but is is actually incredibly good news. Netscape ushered in, facilitated, caused, whatever adjective you like, both Internet Browsing (which is still there) and the Mozilla Open Source project, which is still there. The fact that the commercial fork of this long and intense effort is the part that is being retired is the best possible outcome.The browser is dead. Long live the browser.