The Captain’s (B)log

WKOW 27: Madison, WI Breaking News, Weather and Sports -27 News Troubleshooter: Woman says Dell computer kept her from taking online classes.

This has seriously got to be a joke. I can’t figure out any other explanation for it. I’m going to try and not get too upset about, because I’m almost 75% sure this is a joke, because there’s so much of this article that is either grossly exaggerated, or just downright untrue.

Let me show you some quotes (after you read the article up above — don’t worry it’s not long):

But something stopped her: Ubuntu.

That’s an operating system for your computer similar to Windows that runs off the Linux system.

I love it when a journalist can’t even get the first farking thing right. No, Ubuntu is not “similiar” to Windows. It doesn’t even try to be. And it doesn’t “run off the Linux system” — I don’t even know what that means. It is Linux.

She didn’t realize until the next morning her laptop defaulted to the Ubuntu operating system.

Once again, I don’t even know what this line is trying to say. A computer no more “defaults” to a certain operating system than a car “defaults” to a certain engine. If it has Ubuntu installed, it has it installed — there is no “defaulting” going on. It’s not like anyone’s being tricked into running Ubuntu, which is what I think the author here was implying.

Schubert says she never heard of Ubuntu before learning that’s when [sic] she accidentally bought.

And here’s my biggest problem with the story — there’s no way to “accidentally” buy a computer with Ubuntu on Dell.com.  I challenge you to try.  Go ahead — load up a new browser window and go to Dell.com and just try to even find a computer they sell with Ubuntu on it. (Doesn’t count if you search for the word “ubuntu” on the site — you’re not “stumbling” onto something you’re looking for intentionally. )

Let me save you the trouble — you won’t be able to.  Dell did that on purpose, specifically to avoid this kind of thing happening (i.e., the novice computer user buying a computer with Ubuntu as its operating system, and then complaining when it’s unfamiliar to them).  When you’re buying computers on the “normal” section of their site, Ubuntu isn’t even listed as an option (you usually have a choice of either Windows Vista crap edition, Windows Vista poop edition, or Windows XP, which for some reason usually costs $100 extra).

I really can’t critique the rest of the article because of this.  Either this is a joke story , or someone else — conveniently not mentioned in the story — bought this computer and gave it to her, which isn’t either Ubuntu’s or Dell’s fault.

Just a few more points, though, because I honestly can’t resist:

Later, she discovered Ubuntu might look like Windows, but it doesn’t always act like it.

I love it when journalists don’t even try to make it look like they did any research.

Ubuntu doesn’t look anything like Microsoft Windows, other than the fact that they both exist on a computer screen. It doesn’t take more than a cursory glance to become aware of this. This is like saying your Ford Taurus “looks like a Ferrari, but sure doesn’t drive like one.” I mean, come on — they both have tires, right?

Her Verizon High-Speed Internet CD won’t load, so she can’t access the internet.

Oh boy — here’s another little tip, O novice computer users — those little CD’s you usually get upon buying high-speed access when you move into a new house or change internet providers or whatever? You don’t need them. Throw them away. Any modern high-speed internet network is completely system agnostic — it doesn’t care what it’s hooking up to. Just hook your modem up to your wall, and plug it into your computer. That’s it. Doesn’t matter if you’re running MacOS, Linux, or Windows.

Your high-speed service provider will tell you that you need to run a CD, but trust me, you don’t.  This is proved later on in the article, when we’re told that “Verizon says it will dispatch a technician to try to assist her accessing the internet without using the Windows-only installation disk.”  Well, that’s nice of them to make an entire trip out there to do something that’ll take all of, oh, five minutes.

She also can’t install Microsoft Word, which she says is a requirement for MATC’s online classes.

This is a much larger problem, and one that I really don’t have the time to get into here, but you don’t ever really need specific programs to do school work.

You don’t need Microsoft Word to do word processing.

You don’t need Microsoft Excel to do spreadsheet tasks.

You don’t need Adobe Acrobat to use and create PDF files.

And for the love of G-d, YOU DON’T need Internet Explorer to browse the web.

It’s a sad, sad phenomenom in our society that an entire generation of computer users has grown up thinking that the “Microsoft way” is the only way to do things.  (And they’re definitely not doing anything to help that problem.)

Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t a time and a place for Microsoft products — Windows is a tool, and it’s a tool with a specific purpose, but just like you don’t need to buy one particular brand of hammer to build a house, you don’t always need Microsoft products to do things with a computer.

You can see this kind of thinking all throughout this article — Ubuntu “looks like Windows, but sure doesn’t ‘act’ like it. “  (As if anything that doesn’t act like Windows isn’t a “real” operating system.)  Ubuntu just won’t let her install Microsoft Word!  (As if this is the only way to get word processing done.)

Tsk tsk tsk, WKOW 27 News Station.  Either this is a joke (and if it is, I’ve got to admit it’s actually pretty good), or you’re seriously, seriously uninformed when it comes to computers and the Internet.

(Yes, I used “uninformed” to be nice.  A less polite person than me would’ve said “fucking retarded,” but I’m not going to go down that path.)

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Spent a lot of time here, between the years of 1998-2000. Shutdown when the city increased the rent to the point where the proprietor could no longer operate.

Roger Ebert talks about political-correctness and “history revision” gone insane in his latest article: Thank you for smoking

This stamp honoring Bette Davis was issued by the U. S. Postal Service on Sept. 18. The portrait by Michael Deas was inspired by a still photo from “All About Eve.” Notice anything missing? Before you even read this far, you were thinking, Where’s her cigarette? Yes reader, the cigarette in the original photo has been eliminated. We are all familiar, I am sure, with the countless children and teenagers who have been lured into the clutches of tobacco by stamp collecting, which seems so innocent, yet can have such tragic outcomes. But isn’t this is carrying the anti-smoking campaign one step over the line?

And a New York Times article that still makes me sad, even if I know what it talks about is inevitable: A Power That May Not Stay So Super

AT the turn of the 20th century, toward the end of a brutal and surprisingly difficult victory in the Second Boer War, the people of Britain began to contemplate the possibility that theirs was a nation in decline. They worried that London’s big financial sector was draining resources from the industrial economy and wondered whether Britain’s schools were inadequate. In 1905, a new book — a fictional history, set in the year 2005 — appeared under the title, “The Decline and Fall of the British Empire.”

The crisis of confidence led to a sharp political reaction. In the 1906 election, the Liberals ousted the Conservatives in a landslide and ushered in an era of reform. But it did not stave off a slide from economic or political prominence. Within four decades, a much larger country, across an ocean to the west, would clearly supplant Britain as the world’s dominant power.

The United States of today and Britain of 1905 are certainly more different than they are similar. Yet the financial shocks of the past several weeks — coming on top of an already weak economy and an unpopular war — have created their own crisis of national confidence.

Every now and then, I peruse FreeRepublic’s boards, just to take a look at what the “enemy” is thinking — what I see sometimes scares me.

Pray for President Bush – Day 2753

And it shall be mine eventually. Seriously, you could ping away like Annie Oakley with this thing, considering the fact that you’re firing shotgun shells.

If you haven’t visited “Rifftrax”:http://rifftrax.com before, check it out!

It’s the guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 doing their thing again — they’re not in space, and the two guys who did the voices of Crow and Tom Servo are just playing as themselves, now (trademarks and all that), but let me tell ya; they’re just as funny now as they ever were. They were obviously the writers and well as the actors back on MST3K, and it shows.

How their stuff works now: you get set up at Rifftrax.com, and you buy an MP3 audio track directly from them (they’re usually about 3-4 bucks). Then, you sync it up and play it along while you’re watching the movie (don’t worry, it’s easy) — just play it on anything you want: an MP3 player, your stereo system (Nina and I played it on her laptop).

And, let me tell you… they haven’t lost it, not one bit. I swear to God, I thought my sides were going to split open at times.

I don’t mind paying them the three or four bucks to download it, either — this is the world of “new” media I’ve been telling people about, and I don’t mind helping it out.

“Neanderthals ‘were flame-haired’ – BBC News”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7062415.stm

Anti-Ginger Propaganda! Bah! I expect no less from the BBC. Finally they’ve shown themselves for the racists they are!

“JK Rowling outs Dumbledore as gay”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7053982.stm

Seriously, this is the most transparent publicity-increasing move I’ve ever seen.

At first, I was upset: “Common sense — meet JK Rowling. She and you have apparently never met.” As if fundamentalist religious-types need _another_ fucking reason to get outraged over one of their favorite targets!

Then, I realized that the _Harry Potter_ series is over and done with, all kids that have read its stuff have _already_ done so, and there’s probably very little accusations of “GLAAD”:http://glaad.org type interference that could go on here. She’s more than likely just trying to increase sales as much as she can for this dying series.

(In case you didn’t know, GLAAD-type interference is where GLAAD pays certain people or authors to publicly state that previously non-sexual characters in books or stories are actually _secretly_ gay, just to… well, just to do whatever the hell it is that GLAAD actually wants to do. I sometimes wonder, myself.

I do know that to GLAAD, there are only two types of people; those that are gay, and those that are secretly gay and waiting to come out. Make up your own mind about what that means.)

It was this one and the one from Consumer Reports (Mean Failure Time — 100 Watt Challenge!) that had me laughing out loud.