Jon's Notes
That wacky dictator
Just when you think that Fidel Castro, dictator of Cuba, could not become
any more evil he does something amazingly good.
By appealing to Castro a
mother was
reunited with her
children (
kidnaped by their moslem father to Egypt and eventually to Cuba).
This shows very clearly the sad state of affairs in our government when a U.S. citizen appealing to the leader of a enemy country gets better results the she would have by going through “proper channels.”
It seems that she did try to go through channels but they were ineffective.
When will the State Department start putting pressure on the islamic regimes to return children kidnaped by their citizens?
Back to Castro, could this be a ploy to offset negative media coverage resulting from their
arrest of some permanent U.S. residents for spying? Kids saved trumps spy story?
Conservative Federalist Revisionism on FOX
The T.V. at the chiropractor's office is tuned to FOX news.
The news anchor was talking with a political sci prof about Strom Thurmond’s legacy.
Why is everyone so focused on how a politician is remembered, instead of on what they actually accomplished?
They were talking about his campaign for states rights and how the phrase “states rights” was simply a code phrase for the idea that states have the right to impose segregation.
Since when is supporting states rights the same as being a racist? States rights is the opposite of federalism, the all encompassing power of federal government.
To support states rights is to oppose big federal government and to favor states having increased power.
Laptop going in for repairs, a chance for reflection
My laptop is going in for repairs as soon as I have a chance to back it up.
Since the only other computer I have that is suitable for interactive use is going to the Denler’s for use as a DSL server this will leave me without a GUI capable computer.
This will provide me with several weeks of relatively computer free time in which to read and reflect.
Perhaps this is God’s way of getting my attention and forcing me to stop evading the important questions of life by escaping into netspace.
Software maintainer status notification system
It would be helpful for projects involving many people working on many mostly unrelated projectlets such as *BSD porters if there was a way for a maintainer to leave a “away” message in a semi-public place where someone could check if they were unable to contact the maintainer of a port to see if they dropped off the net or were simply on vacation.
It does not make sense for every maintainer to tell the committers / people-in-charge every time they take a trip or go on vacation.
Perhaps some sort of system where someone could check a maintainer's email address against a list of maintainers to see if they left a reason for not answering email.
Such a list could be generated by checking the email addresses in the maintainer tag of a port.
Only a person with a email address on the maintainer list would be able to set a vacation message, and then only for himself.