bonglonglong

Some of you may be aware that I have been learning letterpress printing for the past year or so. I thought it might be time I start corrupting letterpress virgins. A quick definition from Wikipedia: Letterpress printing is a term for printing text with movable type, in which the raised surface of the type is inked and then pressed against a smooth substance to obtain an image in reverse. In addition to the direct impression of inked movable type onto paper or another receptive surface, the term letterpress can also refer to the direct impression of inked media such as zinc "cuts" (plates) or linoleum blocks onto a receptive surface.

Here's a video of letterpress printing in action.

I really hate YUM, the crappy-ass apt wanna-be that all the non-Debian distros wet themselves over. Yes, it's better than what they had before, which was NOTHING. But it is absolutely inexcusable that, when apt was already available, powerful and quick, that they wrote YUM. Not because I think everyone has to use my favorite toy, but because it's a worse tool. It's it's slower, it's stupid and it gives terrible feedback.


Let's start with today's beef. I tried to do this:

yum install libselinux-devel

on a just-installed Fedora 7. What I got was this:

Transaction Check Error:
   file /usr/share/man/man8/matchpathcon.8.gz from install of libselinux-2.0.14-4.fc7 
     conflicts with file from package libselinux-2.0.13-1.fc7
   file /usr/share/man/man8/selinux.8.gz from install of libselinux-2.0.14-4.fc7 
     conflicts with file from package libselinux-2.0.13-1.fc7

Tell anybody what the problem is? First of all, has anyone ever tried installing this package?

It turns out, what it's trying to do is install the x86_64 and the i386 version of this package, and each one of those packages want to install those manpages. It seems fairly common to me that people might want to install this package on a 64-bit server. Why does it install the 32-bit lib? Why do the packages conflict? And why does the error message suck so bad?

Speaking of terrible error messages. Try this:

yum install kernel-dev

Wait, you might exclaim, being a RedHat person, this isn't a Debian system, we name our packages -devel. Quite true, my bad. Except what does YUM tell me?

Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Nothing to do

Hm. Does that mean the package is already installed? Is it up to date? Or do we not even have a package named kernel-dev? Here's another way to do the same thing:

mtaylor@qualinost:~$ sudo apt-get install kernel-dev
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package kernel-dev

Look at that! E for error, and then it shock tells me what the problem was.

The work has already been done! If you don't want to use APT, that's fine, you could at least look and see what it gets right and then improve on it! I mean, that's the way this whole Free Software thing is supposed to work, isn't it? Granted, maybe having to specify YUM repositories in chunks of XML is an improvement, and maybe I'm not seeing all the wonderful ways in which this is better than the crappy old APT from Debian.

But I don't think so.

Reptile-filled suitcases confiscated at airport departure gate - USATODAY.com

Security officers at Cairo airport were horrified when the search of a Saudi passenger's carry-on luggage revealed a mass of live snakes, baby crocodiles and chameleons, police said.

According to this, the candidate that is the lesser of evils for me Kucinich. I find that sort of odd, but whatever.

Pick Your Candidate

Here's how it works, if you want to know. If you agree with a candidate, he gets point(s). If you disagree, take point(s) away. Unkown/other results in no points. The number of points given or taken depends on the weight you set. "Meh" is worth 1 point, "important" 2, and "key" is worth 5. The items you disagree about will be listed directly underneath each candidate (if they score greater than zero).

Because I wouldn't be a good citizen without pointing out faults while solving none of them, here are flaws that I see... Even with the weighting thing, there are certain areas which still are unfairly weighted. There are three Iraq War choices and three Gay Marriage choices, but only one for Abortion and none for Intellectual Property reform. (Please don't read in to this list any perceived importance or lack there of on any of these. The fact that I think Abortion shouldn't even be discussed and that IP reform is the most important thing on the list does not blind me to the fact that the various bits and bobs about Abortion are more important to some people than anything else.)

I'd also like to point out my horror about two of these. One is that we are considering banning assault weapons, in clear and vibrant violation of the second amendment, without passing a further amendment to revoke the second. If that's what you believe, then fine, but the constitution is pretty clear, and even if you don't think the constitution is clear, maybe that's a thing that should be clarified - by an amendment.

The second is that there is a line item for torture, that I don't have to ask what they are talking about, and that there is anyone, anywhere in this country who might click "support" for this. TORTURE. I think that anyone who supports TORTURE should have to stand up in front of a room full of school children and say the phrase "I support TORTURE." I actually think that they should have to do that for anything. No flowery language. Just "I support TORTURE" or "I support building the Berlin Wall... I mean a FENCE around our BORDER.

Have I mentioned that almost all of the candidates support building a fence around the country.

Seriously.

A fence.

It's been done twice already. The Great Wall of China and the Berlin Wall. Do we really need to protect ourselves from Mogol Hordes? Or, more likely, do we really need to keep our citizens on this side of the Iron Fence.

But I digress.

Could someone PLEASE give me a candidate who makes any kind of sense? Anyone?

There's a comment on an article at Boing Boing:

Boing Boing: DefCon 15: video of NBC "Dateline" mole fleeing premises

I have to question if there is much difference had they been at a NAMBLA meeting or somesuch? Sure, she should have gotten press credentials, but in my view the reaction of the attendees reflects worse on them than on her. Kind of funny how a group of people that generally don't follow rules got so upset that someone didn't follow their rules. She kind of "hacked them in real life" and they got mad that they got pwned by a girl.

Now, I'm afraid I just have to flat out disagree. She didn't pwn anybody. She tried to hack the conference, but was outed quite quickly. Then they offered her press credentials - I mean, it's all good natured hacking, and she'd been caught. But that's where she showed her n00b-ness. She was pretty much "no, I'm not press!" So they did what they do to anyone who proves to be a n00b. They ridiculed her and kicked her out. I'd say that they were pretty.

Come on now, if you want to break the rules and try to outflank the folks at DefCon, you're probably going to have to be just a little smarter than that.