Monthly Archives: April 2006

The Ultimate Meta-Thread

Posted on April 11, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

The ultimate meta-comment thread is at Unqualified Offerings.

I hope Jim Henley will forgive me for quoting the entire post. It consists of one word:

Blog

Hilarity ensues. Yes, really.

Posted in Blogs | Comments Off on The Ultimate Meta-Thread

The Joys (ahem) of Linux

Posted on April 11, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

I finally got around to putting SuSE on the blank partition on the family computer, the fastest machine in the house. Now Junior Junior has Ubuntu in his room, Junior Senior has SuSE (both on old PII/400s) in his room, the router turns off their Internet access at hours when we don’t want them online, and the family machine is dual-booting SuSE and XP. My desktop is next, but that will require repartitioning, which means some backing up first.

The basic SuSE install was painless, and while it’s a close call so far I think I like KDE better than Gnome.

Setting up printers was not anything close to painless. I have a Laserjet printer running off a network print server, and I took the default printer type SuSE offers, which was CUPS when (thank you Google and linux.org) what I should have done was specify it as an LPR printer. In my defense, I was fooled: As part of its default CUPS printer install SuSE tests to see if it can see a printer, and by giving it the IP number and the (non-standard) port I passed that test. It just flunked the actual printing thing. But it’s finally all sorted, and now Junior Senior’s machine can print to the LaserJet too. (In contrast, printing to the LaserJet from Ubuntu had been seamless and painless: it took about three minutes to set up.)

Getting 3D to run on the ATI Radeon x800 has been a different sort of adventure. Having carefully followed the directions I found online, I find that my own user has 3D, but the kids’ users do not. I can more or less overcome this by manually changing a 660 to a 666 in an obscure file, but often it changes itself back. I suppose I’ll have to figure out how to program SuSE to modify the file every time a user logs in. That will require the program to have superuser rights, which requires a password I am not giving my kids, so I have to find a way to do that which doesn’t expose the password either. It not that I don’t trust them, I just want my kids to hack into the guts of this machine rather than waltz into it. Why deny them the pleasures I had as a teenager?

We do have a second network printer, a very nice color printer, a handsome housewarming gift from my parents, one which has proved invaluable for homework projects. It seems, however, that SuSE isn’t going to be printing to the Canon iP5000 any time soon:

Dear Mr. Froomkin:

Thank you for contacting Canon product support regarding Linux drivers
for the iP5000. We value you as a Canon customer and appreciate the
opportunity to assist you.

While considering the desire to provide the best possible support for
Canon’s products, Canon must make decisions on which products to support
when new operating systems are introduced. Currently, Canon has decided
to support only the Microsoft Windows and the Macintosh operating
systems. We understand, and sincerely apologize for any frustration you
have experienced if your operating system falls outside of these
categories, but we hope that you understand our rationale.

Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance with your
iP5000.

Sincerely,

Raymond

Somehow, I bet it prints just fine from Ubuntu…

Posted in Software | 7 Comments

Dean Baker Wants Numerate Reporting

Posted on April 10, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Economist and one-man economic truth squad Dean Baker has a new blog, Beat the Press, dedicated to “commentary on economic reporting.”

The inaugural posting asks, reasonably enough, why most economic journalism fails to put raw numbers in context, choosing to report the big exciting number of “$285 billion over the next six years” for the new transportation bill, rather then the more informative, contextualized number of “approximately 1.7 percent of projected federal spending over this period.”

In this case, though, it seems to me that this question actually answers itself: $285 billion sounds like a front-page headline; “approximately 1.7% of federal spending over the next six years” sounds like what William Safire used to call a “nine-point MEGO” where the MEGO stood for “my eyes glaze over” and the scale was logarithmic like the Richter scale.

And while I’m carping at my betters, let me point out that telling people that the new transportation bill will be 1.7% of federal spending or even “approximately 4.6 percent of projected discretionary spending” won’t tell most readers all that much either…unless you tell them how it compares to transportation spending last decade, whether it covers deferred maintenance, current expenditures or new capital projects, and what it does to the deficit… And your economic journalist has, what, fourteen column inches on a good day?

Posted in Econ & Money, The Media | Comments Off on Dean Baker Wants Numerate Reporting

Sun-Sentinel Is Against The War

Posted on April 10, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

The Sun-Sentinel is a quality newspaper a bit north of here. It has a justly deserved reputation as being pretty conservative editorially, and even in some of its political coverage. (A long-time state political reporter just got reassigned for being too overtly Republican, showing both that there’s a tilt, and that the place has some standards.)

So it’s interesting that the Sun-Sentinel editorial page, which I gather has been a big cheerleader for the Iraq war, is now not only vehemently against the Iraq war, but trying to suggest it was always against it. That’s right: the war is now so unpopular that former backers are obfuscating their prior support.

Incidentally, the paper’s April 7 editorial is real strong stuff. Here’s how it starts:

Three years, 19 days. And counting.

More than 2,300 Americans killed. More than 16,000 wounded, many of them maimed for life. And then there are the tens of thousands of Iraqi victims.

Almost $400 billion spent so far, followed by another $330 million every day.

These are the tangible costs of the Iraq war. There are other costs that are harder to measure precisely, but they are many and they are mounting. It can be strongly argued that they are largely the fault of a president who is stubborn, intractable, dogmatic, exclusionary and intellectually dishonest, and who appears reluctant to operate outside his inner circle.

Democrats (and Republicans) take note.

Posted in Florida, Iraq, The Media | 2 Comments

Experimental Philosophy Blog

Posted on April 10, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

There’s late to the party, and then there’s learning about something more than a month after Slate runs an article on it, but shameful as it may be I have only just stumbled upon the Experimental Philosophy Blog. Among its virtues are an announcement of the first annual Online Philosophy Conference, and a (rather small?) section devoted to Philosophy of Law.

Incidentally, the blog denizens are not very happy with the Slate article. (Further discussion chez Leiter)

Posted in Blogs, Legal Philosophy | 1 Comment

We Are Not Alone

Posted on April 9, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

It seems that other people have domestic debates a lot like ours.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on We Are Not Alone