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  • Linux: No You Don’t Need The Command-Line, But It Isn’t That Scary

    Having used Linux for well over 20 years (yes it is that old), and Unix before that, I’m often puzzled by how scary some people seem to find Linux. Why should it be scary? It’s just a computer – you’re the human in charge of it.

    Yes There Are Gooeys

    (graphical user interfaces – GUIs – gooeys)

    Yes there is plenty of software with a graphical user interface – I use plenty on a daily basis including a standard web browser, an email client, a password manager, an office package.

    On a slightly less frequent basis there are many more that I use. Indeed providing that you accept the use of alternatives, you can find Linux software to do just about anything.

    But Don’t Ignore The Command-Line

    Yes, Linux has a command-line, and for those of us familiar with it, it can be very powerful. And there is no harm in learning how to use the command-line just to the point where you can follow instructions on how to “get something done” there.

    Because if I have a fix for some niggle that you are having, it is easier and less error-prone to pass instructions for a command-line incantation than instructions for a gooey (and yes I have done both).

    The Birds

  • The Problematic PC Case

    I recently put together a new PC (or mostly) and had occasion to look at what PC cases are like these days. In the end I kept my existing case, but did spend enough time looking to have certain opinions.

    And they suck.

    All about the glass windows to let the silly lights show through, but how about useful features?

    • Tool-less case panels? Or at least the top panel (to access the expansion cards).
    • Built-in cable runs so things (fans, SATA drives, etc) can be plugged in next to where they are installed.
    • On the subject of fans, servers often have easily removable fan trays; fans are mounted to a plastic frame which in turn slots into position together with power and control signals. A doddle to clean, which would be handy for a desktop workstation.
    • A front panel display to show fault messages during startup – firmware fault codes (some motherboards have a two-digit display but they’re optional and usually not visible when the case is closed). Post-boot it could be used for other things. If it breaks the clean lines of the case, put it behind a sliding panel or something.
    • Handles. And wheels. 
    Signs Of The Sea

    There are probably a whole bunch more that could usefully be considered, and some of these are inherited from cases known to me (the old Mac Pro case is a good place to start from).

  • London Zoo Part 2

    London Zoo Part 2

    Not A Penguin

    In the penguin enclosure yet not a penguin!

    Inspecting The Humans
    Prickly Fish
    Feeling Blue
    Stripes
    Fish Eye

  • London Zoo

    Giraffe Checking It’s Height
    Ring-Tailed Lemur In The Shade
    Ring-Tailed Lemur Ignoring The Humans

  • Anti-Catholicism in the Atheist Community

    Within the atheist community, the attitude towards the catholic church can sometimes verge on the old-fashioned protestant style anti-catholic bigotry. That isn’t to say that the RCC doesn’t deserve its fair share of criticism – in particular women’s rights and reproductive rights.

    But some of the anti-catholicism can be a little extreme.

    The Crusades

    But that was centuries ago! Were the crusades evil? Of course they were.

    But take a look at what other organisations were up to at the same time – secular rulers were doing pretty much the same thing (usually at a smaller scale).

    If you look at secular rulers of the early mediæval era, a good proportion of them qualify under modern standards of behaviour as psychopaths. Most “noble” families started off as successful raiders and war bands whose winning strategy at accumulating wealth was to find those with some wealth and extract it from them with force.

    And the church leaders? Many of them were from those families and so it is not surprising that the mediæval church had its own psychopaths.

    Take the Cathar Crusade in southern France as an example. It was the source of the phrase “Kill them all; God will know his own”. The catholic church spent nearly 100 years trying to convert them peacefully, and it was only after a papal legate was killed that the crusade began.

    And this is all ancient history – when was the last catholic crusade?

    “Pædophile” Priests

    So every priest is a pædophile? Not even close – the proportion of child abusers within the church is probably much the same as the proportion of child abusers within any other organisation with power over children. See https://www.newsweek.com/priests-commit-no-more-abuse-other-males-70625; one interesting datum from that article is that the insurance industry rates for sex abuse insurance are the same for catholic churches as for any other denomination. 

    And insurance companies hold no truck with religious morals; they deal with hard statistics and probabilities. 

    Institutional Secrecy

    The RCC can be quite reasonably criticised for past crimes in concealing child abusers, and suspicion over how they will treat future crimes is not unreasonable.

    But I don’t see them reacting differently to every kind of organisation which reacts to protect the name of the organisation. Protecting child sex abuse is an extreme example of this, but has still occurred in many different kinds of organisations.

    The RCC is also a bit of a special case in that it predates nation states in existence today (the oldest state is Iceland which was formed in the 9th century) and has a long tradition of managing itself independent of secular authorities. 

    In a sense, the RCC thinks of itself as the authority in charge of the hierarchy and wouldn’t think of informing secular authorities of issues. This may be changing, and needs to change.

    The Catholics and The Nazis

    There are those out there who seem to be under the impression that the RCC was in cahoots with Hitler and the Nazis; such people are woefully and abysmally ignorant of the history of the times.

    There were some catholics who supported the Nazis, but overall the RCC was very strongly against the Nazis. For a quick overview of the history see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_Nazi_Germany

    Final Word

    This might come across as a bit of a white-wash of the RCC, but it is not intended as such. It is merely intended to point out that the RCC is no more culpable to child sex abuse cases than many other organisations which have had similar incidents.

    One thing that may be commonly overlooked is just how large the RCC is. There are approximately 2.4 billion christians around the world; of whom nearly 1.3 billion are catholic. You can take every single baptist out there (up to 100 million) and they will amount to no more than the error bars on the estimate of the number of catholics. No wonder that nearly every other week there is a new catholic scandal.