Allow me to start with Politics.

Politicians have too much power. This has led to several problems:

• Lobbyists and the corporations that back them have incentive to win the favor–and vote–of representatives and senators. In a climate where this sort of thing is possible, it leads to a competitive atmosphere where it becomes necessary to have lobbyists in Washington in order to remain on equal footing with other corporations.
• Career politicians and the power of pull. Rather that being merely equals amongst Americans, congressmen have power, money, prestige, and distinction. All that political positions should entail is taking care of the minutia of government that the vast majority of the populace lacks the time to attend.

A country of entitlements. Every productive citizen in the country is pulling the weight of unproductive citizens. We–Americans!–exist in a culture of wasting the energies of our best and brightest to drag along the least and laziest. In any system where there are handouts to be had, there are bums who will put their hands out rather than put forth effort or ingenuity to produce goods or services that render them useful to the society upon which they instead feed, like parasites.

The waiting-with-hands-out parasites aren’t even the worst of us. Is it worse for there to be people who are willing to find excuses to subsist on the sweat of others, or for the ones who toil and produce useful goods and services to be the very instruments of their undoing? That is, we who work and create have instituted the very structures that feed the parasites. It is as though we were jungle travelers who actively, avidly sought leeches, ticks, fleas, and tapeworms in order to affix them to our bodies.

Of course, that is not how it began. In the beginning, it all sounded marvelous: the Great Society, eliminating hardship and poverty for all generations to come. As it turns out, there is still poverty–only now we pay must exert even greater effort in the workplace to achieve reduced output at poorer quality. A significant portion of every business and individual effort is excised from a positive productive output in order to be redirected to maintaining a ghastly overgrown government and an increasingly burdensome body of the entitled.

• ¹/₂ c whole wheat flour
• ¹/₂ c white flour
• ¹/₂ tsp baking powder
• ¹/₂ tsp cinnamon
• 1 egg
• ²/₃ c milk
• ¹/₂ tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil (I used sunflower)
• 1 tbsp molasses
• ¹/₂ c watermelon

Combine the flour, baking powder, and cinnamon together in a quart-sized mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, beat the egg, then add the milk and vanilla. Add the egg and milk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix together. Add the oil, molasses, and watermelon.

Use a ¹/₄ measure cup to add the batter to a low-medium heated and oiled (or buttered) saucepan. Flip over once the pancakes begin to bubble, and remove once they are browned.

Serve with a tiny bit of maple syrup (the real stuff, not the flavored corn syrup variety!).

Tips:

• I prefer to use solely whole wheat pastry flour, i.e., no white flour, but I am out. The taste of whole wheat is well complimented by the molasses, though, so if the heartiness is too much for you, then simply change the ratios—say, 1:2 (¹/₃-to-²/₃) or 1:3 (¹/₄-to-³/₄) whole wheat-to-white—rather than eliminate it entirely.
• Use the same tablespoon to add the molasses as you did for the oil; the oil remaining on the measuring spoon will make the molasses slide right off.
• The heat of the saucepan must be kept fairly low: the moisture in the watermelon will tend to cause the batter surrounding it to cook more slowly. Turn it up too high and you’ll end up with burnt outside and gooey inside—which is much more appropriate for chocolate candies than for pancakes.

Note: Though I do enjoy cooking, I readily acknowledge that I don’t know the correct terminology for a recipe. Corrections to my ignorance-laden mistakes will be happily incorporated.

In a thread on the jQuery discussion group that (re)announced Paul’s userscript, Karl Swedberg suggested putting the version of jQuery in the image’s title attribute so it would show as a tooltip when you hover over it. As I am curious about when each site started using jQuery and what capabilities they have available on their site, I thought that was a fantastic idea. So, I copied Paul’s detector script to my own server, and added in Karl’s suggestion (modifying my userscript to point to my modded detector script).

I had been (and am still) having some problems with the version tooltip showing on my home browser–some plug-in or configuration issue, no doubt–so I cobbled together something that would display the page’s jQuery version in a div when I clicked on the icon.

Now, on a separate track, Karl had talked about how to create a jQuery bookmarklet that would insert jQuery into pages that do not have it, in order to have jQuery’s power on the console in Firebug or Dragonfly–or slightly more painstakingly with “javascript:” statements in the address bar for Internet Exploder and Safari (does Safari have its own console?). I’ve been using and loving it ever since I found it.

Karl recently wrote about an updated jQuery bookmarklet that has things like a spiffy div that pops up and tells you what it’s doing. When I saw that and thought about the display-on-click that I’d added to my jQuery Detector, I just knew that these were two great tastes that had to, er, play golf together.

So, here is the “debug” version of the script, i.e., with line breaks and long(er) variables names:

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(function() {
  var version=0.3, //cheaply find version when compressed
    b=document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0],
    el=document.createElement('div'),
    img = document.createElement('img'),
    els = el.style, ims = img.style,
    //"jquery is present" image
    jqimg='http://jquery.com/images/favicon.png';
 
  // style info div
  els.position='fixed';
  els.bottom='2px';
  els.right='20px';
  els.width='200px';
  els.height='24px';
  els.margin='0 auto 0 auto';
  els.padding='5px 10px 5px 10px';
  els.backgroundColor='#c33';
  els.color='#fff';
  els.fontSize='8pt';
  els.textAlign='center';
  els.display='none';
 
  // style jquery detector icon
  ims.position='fixed';
  ims.bottom='2px';
  ims.right='2px';
  ims.zIndex='5';
  ims.cursor='pointer';
  ims.border='0';
 
  b.appendChild(img);
  b.appendChild(el);
 
  // function overhead in order to rebind click event after loading jQuery
  // showJq(): img.click = display version of jQuery currently loaded
  function showJq() {
    var jq=jQuery, v = jq.fn.jquery;
    //"if" protects jquery.com from needless rechecking
    if(img.src!=jqimg) img.src=jqimg;
    img.title=v;
    el.innerHTML='Using jQuery v'+v;
    jq(img).click(function(){
      els.display='block';
      window.setTimeout(function() {
        jq(el).fadeOut('slow');
      }, 1000);
    });
  }
  //jquery exists; display version on icon click
  if (typeof jQuery != 'undefined') {
    showJq();
  //no jquery; show bland icon and load jquery on click
  } else {
    img.src='http://jquery.com/images/ics.png';
    img.title='Load jQuery';
    img.onclick=function(){ //todo: rebind click event to above
      var s=document.createElement('script');
      s.setAttribute('src','http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js');
      document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(s);
      var i = 0;
      // loadJQuery(): recursive calls until jQuery finishes loading
      function loadJQuery() {
        el.innerHTML='jQuery Loading...';els.display='block';
        if (++i < 10 &#038;& typeof jQuery == 'undefined') {
          window.setTimeout(loadJQuery, 50);  //recheck every x milliseconds
        } else if (i >= 10){    //don't try rechecking more than y times
          el.innerHTML='Load jQuery failed<br/>(try again?)';
        } else {    //finished loading; show version and fade out
          img.onclick=showJq; //rebind to just show version
          el.innerHTML='jQuery loaded, v'+jQuery.fn.jquery;
          img.src=jqimg;  //reset img url to jquery icon
          window.setTimeout(function() {
            jQuery(el).fadeOut('slow');
          }, 1000);
        }
      }
      loadJQuery();   //start loading jquery
    };
  }
})();

Once that’s done, all that’s left is to churn this (much heavier than Paul’s original) script through the YUI Compressor to cut its size down a bit. I also turned on compression for my scripts directory to get even more mileage out of it.

I have not yet gotten this working in Opera 9.5x, though Paul’s original script worked fine in 9.2x.

Each of the resulting scripts are available below:

• jQuery Detector userscript (for Greasemonkey/user scripts)
• jQuery Detector Script (referenced by the userscript)
• jQuery Detector Script - debug (verbose)

Can you find problems or think of improvements—or give me tips on why I’ve broken it in Opera?

Ah, yes…that does the trick.

It is not at all surprising that the comparisons drawn by Microsoft favor Microsoft. Red Hat’s own site contains or points to anti-Microsoft articles and op-ed pieces.

The white papers on Group Policy versus SELinux and User Account Control versus sudo are both, in my opinion, ineffective at the comparisons they are attempting to draw, because they fail to make the paradigm shift between the entirely different methods of security between Windows and Linux.

The case studies are very limited in information and in all cases do not provide a complete description of the process that the municipalities went through to make their decision. For example, Lower Saxony’s Ministry of Justice migrated 15,000 users to Windows, but Lower Saxony’s tax authority migrated 12,000 workstations to SuSE Linux in the same year. In both cases, it was due primarily to the technology already in use (Windows in the MoJ, Solaris in the tax authority) rather than any qualitative differences between the two operating systems and network technologies.

In most cases, the choice to move to a new operating system and network technology must consider the existing infrastructure. Telling, then, is Munich, Germany’s decision to forgo its existing Windows infrastructure for SuSE (and later, Debian) Linux, beginning in 2003 (scheduled to complete next year).

According to the cost study carried out by the Munich administration[1], training and migration are two of the biggest costs involved in migrating to Linux and open source applications, while the personnel, hardware, licences and operating costs were relatively low.[2]

So, TCO (total cost of ownership) was a pivotal consideration—a point often repeated by Microsoft in its marketing campaign against Linux—in spite of the migration effort, time, and cost necessary:

…the arduous process that led to the decision to migrate to Linux was actually based on Microsoft’s policies on Windows NT, and a subsequent study to determine the best course of action pursuant to the unexpectedly short life support cycle for NT.
Microsoft announced an end-of-life support plan for NT that would prevent the operating system from surviving through the life cycle than the IT officials in Munich had anticipated.[3]

For the country of Germany as recently as 2006:

The German public sector has embraced open source enthusiastically. Nine out of every 10 German local authorities are using open source software, according to the MERIT survey, and OpenOffice.org is being run on more than 50,000 PCs in the German public sector, according to Erwin Tenhumberg, a product marketing manager at Sun.

A number of German cities are using, or planning to use, open source software, including Schwäbisch Hall, Mannheim, Treuchtlingen, Leonberg and Isernhagen. Schwäbisch Hall switched to Linux on more than 400 workstations and Mannheim plans to deploy Linux on 110 servers and 3,700 desktops.[4]

Also, Microsoft downplays Linux’s effectiveness when that Linux sold by Red Hat, but explicitly endorses it when it is sold by another vendor (Novell/SuSE)[5]. (For the record, I’m not a big fan of Red Hat, either. Haven’t been for many years.)

In closing, I am a huge fan of Linux. I enjoy its longevity for any given installation, its licensing, and the culture of innovation and camaraderie that permeates its user base. I feel like I can get more work done in Linux, because I’m more comfortable with it. I also see great benefit in mixed environments that include both Windows and Linux servers and desktops.

[1] http://www.muenchen.de/vip8/prod2/mde/_de/rubriken/Rathaus/40_dir/limux/publikationen/clientstudie_kurz.pdf (in German)
[2] http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39171380,00.htm
[3] http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id%3B2120885092%3Bfp%3B4%3Bfpid%3B4
[4] http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39274196,00.htm
[5] http://www.moreinterop.com/

var rfc2822 =
/^[\w!#$%&'*+/=?^`{|}~-]+(?:\.[\w!#$%&'*+/=?^`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])*)+\.(?:[a-z]{2,4}|museum|travel)$/i;

That’s a JavaScript variable declaration, but the RegExp is valid for Perl and can be quickly translated for other languages.

I read somewhere–was it V?–who said something to the effect that bad writers create a blog so that they can pretend that they’re working on their writing. Good for them.

By the way, I’m a bad writer. Pleased to meet you.

So why am I here? Well, because I have something to say. Not right now, mind you, but in general, I do. I think the world is a messed up place, and not for (all of) the same reasons that everyone else seems to think it is.

More importantly, I need a place to collect my thoughts because I keep losing the slips of paper. No, that’s only partially true. I don’t usually lose the scraps: I either forget about them or find them while sifting through old junk but the pencil lines are difficult to read. This way, at least, I have a semi-permanent place to keep all my stuff so I can search it without getting dust up my nose.

Okay, seal’s broken. Next post might be more meaningful.