David Both

My KDE 4.0 desktop died early this morning.

First, everything locked up so tight I could not switch to another virtual terminal session and I could not ssh into my primary workstation from another host. So I hit the reset button. After rebooting and logging in, none of the launchers on the KDE Panel would work. Oh, they did highlight when the mouse pointer rolled over them, and they even looked like the were being depressed when I clicked on them. But no applications would launch.

I have now switched to GNOME which is still quite usable as a desktop. I will try using KDE again when the dot-one version comes out.

I have had some very bad experiences with Fedora 9, which includes KDE 4.0. I strongly recommend that you stay away from it unless you are a guru and enjoy self-flagellation.

Read my complete review.

Here is a web site for Zero Pollution Motors which hopes to have a car that runs on compressed air available for sale in 2010. These cars will run on compressed air and will seat six. They are supposed to have a design range of over 800 miles on a single tank of compressed air and a top speed of about 90MPH. Pretty impressive.

Air fill-ups? An on board air pump. Just plug it in to a 110 or 220 Volt outlet to fill up. Pretty cool. It should work with the same infrastructure as any you could put together for plug-in hybrids or all-electric vehicles.

Memorial Day weekend 2008 is here. And by coincidence Alice and I have been watching a very appropriate program on DVD.

I say coincidence because back in November I bought a copy of Band of Brothers and had been going to watch it then. Other projects intervened and forced us to postpone viewing this mini-series. We started watching last weekend and have managed to view several of the episodes. We will probably finish up this weekend.

If you want to know why we celebrate Memorial Day, watch Band of Brothers. I read the book several years ago and, although it was very powerful, Tom hanks and the other directors and producers have done a fantastic job of bringing this story to the screen in a way that tells the unglamorous story of these heroes and depicts the horrors of war. And I think these men and their story stand in for all who served in WWII and all of our other wars.

I was born about a year after my father returned from the Pacific in WWII and service on the aircraft carrier Bunker Hill and a destroyer tender. My uncle, his brother served with the 69th Infantry Division in Europe. Another uncle was a high ranking officer in the Pacific, two aunts served in the WAVES, and my mother worked in a war plant. They were all heroes.

Thanks to all of you! We remember what you did.

High-tech hybrid cars are now competing directly with 100% gasoline powered cars in 24-hour endurance races. The latest is the Gumpert Apollo Supercar which will race the 24-hour Nurburgring this year from 22 to 25 May.

Wired has a great story at http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/05/800-horsepower.html

A hybrid Toyota Supra won the Tokachi 24-hour race last year by 19 laps, well ahead of any other cars in the field. The Tokachi race is less well known than the Nurburgring so this race may change the face of the auto industry.

I remember the year that the Chrysler turbine car nearly won the Indy 500, but broke down two or three laps from the finish line due to a broken bearing in the gear shift box. But it was one of a kind from a third rate auto company and hybrids are already here to stay. What this could do is convince the bozos in Detroit that any and all vehicles can and should be hybrids. And it could convince the American auto buying public that hybrids can save fuel and provide performance at the same time.

I ran across these links today. I found them very interesting and perhaps you will too. The first, Running a business on desktop Linux, discusses how one single-person consulting business uses Linux successfully and how you can too.

The second link I found on the first link and it does not really deal with Linux directly. It is a white paper in PDF format about how to make your Windows computer more secure, and why it is not secure. Read “How to Secure Your Windows Computer and Protect Your Privacy” to be more secure even if you don’t use Linux. This stuff is really scary. Did you know that Windows records everything you do and sends a great deal of information about your computing and web activities back to Microsoft without even asking if that is what you want!? This document shows you how to use free software to disable all of the Microsoft intrusions upon your privacy.

After reading this document you may decide you want to switch to Linux.

Both the web page and the PDF document were written by Howard Fosdick of Fosdick Consulting Inc.

The TRIAC electric car is finally supposed to be here in July. It has a 100 mile range  and can go 80MPH. And it is cute.

Link to Triac Electric Car.

I have changed the look of this site. One of the neat things about WordPress is that it is very easy to configure so changing the look, or theme, of the site is very easy.

I will probably make more changes to the look of this site as I decide what I do and don’t like. So don’t be surprised. The content is the same whether you like it or not.

I have found some new virtualization software that I really like much better than VMWare. VirtualBox is not only open source, but it is also free of charge.

Read my “review.”