And yes, I believe GNOME looks and works infinitely better than Vista (especially with XGL enabled) for common, everyday tasks. — Chris Pirillo

That’s Chris Pirillo (From TechTV), one of the most die-hard Windows guys ever. He’s leaning hard toward OS X now. And if he is thinking this way then you can be sure that there are other Windows elites doing the same. Let’s review:

Apple OS X > Gnome/Linux > Windows Vista

Yes, prepare for big changes in 2007.

This is a great piece, though I think I may disagree. I’m starting to actually get scared about people in the future using my beliefs against me. It’s quite scary.

This is kind of scary, yet it makes sense as well…

People who use the word “hacker” when they’re referring to computer criminals are not wrong. One can argue that they don’t know the whole story, or that they lack an appreciation for the “real” meaning of the word, but they aren’t wrong.

We in the geek community know what the word really means, and we can continue to use it that way. We haven’t lost the true definition, and we hopefully never will. But we need to stop pretending that words have only one meaning.

Words actually mean what people think they mean, not what they’re “supposed” to mean. In fact, the very concept of “supposed to mean” is a silly one. A dictionary is little more than a time-sensitive collection of the way words are currently being used.

Just because there exists a romantic, “pure” meaning of the word hacker doesn’t mean that the other, more accepted definition is any less real. Language evolves. Many words in today’s dictionary quite simply used to mean something else, and we shouldn’t get militant about it; it’s just reality.

So the next time you hear someone say a “hacker” broke into this, or a hacker stole that, just let it go. They are using one definition of the word correctly. Remember that there’s a big difference between someone calling a computer criminal a hacker (ok), and them calling Wietse Venema a computer criminal (not ok).

Our geek blood demands that we stand against the latter, but maturity demands that we accept the legitimacy of the the former. The trick is knowing the difference.:

It’s time to upgrade my DAS file server capabilities. I’ve had my current 240GB RAID5 setup for 3-4 years now and it’s time to make the big move to 1TB.

I have an ATA controller that holds 4 disks, so one option is to just upgrade to 3 or 4 500GB drives and be done with it. The other option is to go a completely different route — maybe a collection of newer SATA drives and having the OS do software RAID. Yet another option would be to just get some sort of NAS solution, thus freeing up a server.

At this point I can’t do much with the box that’s serving as my file server, though, so I’m inclined to let it continue in that role. I am leaning heavily toward just upgrading my drives and waiting until next time to do a complete technology upgrade (100TB?).

What do you you guys think? Upgrade the drives, or go another route?

I hope this guy doesn’t get killed (or bought off).

[Edit: I'm starting to get that perpetual motion machine feeling about this...]

One of the best ways to learn to speak with a proper accent in a given language is to study the accent those people have when speaking your language.

You’ll find that the mistakes nuances you hear in the way they speak English are precisely those that you’ll need to emulate to sound authentic in theirs.

Not sure if this is widely known or not (I don’t see the feature noted on the Google site anywhere), but if you put “time $somecity” into Google you’ll get back the current local time for that city — including international ones.

Being a big fan of Firefox Quicksearches, I created and modified one so that you can perform this query using a single letter (I use “t”) right from the address bar like so:

Here are the steps for making your own:

1. Go to Google and right-click the search field within Firefox.
2. Select “Add a Keyword For This Search”.
3. Name it whatever you want, and give it a keyword (or keyletter like “t”, “ti”, or “time”).
4. Save the bookmark and then go back in and edit its properties.
5. Modify the properties string by adding “time%20″ before where you see “%s”.

   http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=time%20%s

VIDEO

An awesome list. If you vote Republican, take some time with this list and do a gut check:

Link: List Of Things You Must Believe To Be Republican