Housekeeping, and the place is looking much cleaner

Weblogs

Note the addition of New York Times contributing writer (to the Jersey section), Debra Galant‘s very readable personal weblog, to your right under Weblogs / United States. Ms. Galant has set for herself the task of explaining the universe to her many avid readers. No small task that.
And congratulations, too, to Ms. Galant on the birth of her 319-page, 81,668-word novel, which she is …

“almost ready to send it out into the world. I feel like doing one of those end-zone victory dances to a roaring crowd. And in a writerly sort of way, I am doing a victory dance. That is, I’m calling up friends with the news. My friend Brooke just dropped off a bottle of champagne. In a way, I feel lighter than air. Like I’ve caught up. I’ve crossed something huge off my to-do list. Now I can spend my Saturdays any way I like.”

Meanwhile, as you’ve probably already noticed: on the left-hand side set of links to various sites, under Radio, there are a whole bunch of CBC sites to which you can surf and hear the latest radio newscast; or, should you choose, to listen to the latest (or an archived) edition of As It Happens or The House, or the latest The Inside Track or Quirks and Quarks show.

Walkin’ Pneumonia and The Boogie Woogie Blues

VanRamblings

Three weeks and counting, this damn “Walking Pneumonia” (at least that’s what my doctor calls it) has had me in its grip. Five days go by, I feel terrible. Then I start to feel better for a couple of days, and back it comes for another five days, at which point I once again to begin to feel better, and then …
Of course the resolution to the illness is easy: for it not to have happened in the first place (antibiotics, which I’ve avoided for three weeks, commenced yesterday, so that’s a partial solution for the moment). And how might I have achieved this “not have happened at all” state of grace? Regular exercise (walking five miles a day, since I like to power walk), and maintenance of my South Beach diet, from which I slipped just before Christmas, and have yet to resume.
No secret this: a healthy diet and regular exercise = good health. When will I ever learn my lesson?

Suffer the Little Children

Politics

HAITICHILDREN
There’s been much written on this site, and across the Web, as well as being broadcast on radio and television, and published in newspapers and magazines, about the recent coup in Haiti. But for many, none of what has been written or broadcast has much “value”, because there is no “human face” to put on the changes that the coup has wrought.
Jay Currie comments on this site and chides me for seeming to defend the deposed Haiti President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, when such is not the argument that has consistently been put forward on VanRamblings. Rather, my concern is for the people of Haiti, and of what the recent actions of the U.S. (and, by extension, Canada) in fomenting insurrectionary change, means for the people of Haiti (not much good, I would suggest).
Tonight, the human face of the coup, the story of an 18-year-old boy. Tell me, after reading Johnny’s story that Aristide being deposed is, in itself and wholly, a good thing, and that the world community could not have found a more workable and humane solution to the problems in Haiti, and engaged in a process which would have preserved the dignity of the Haitian people.

Microsoft pulling SCO strings? It’s business as usual

Web & Tech

LINUX Much has been written about the MyDoom Trojan which, over the course of the past couple of months, has managed to shut down entire computer networks, destroy tens of thousands of personal computers, and just generally wreak unprecedented digital age havoc.
The SCO Group, a multi-national software developer, was the first putative target of the hackers who created and released the MyDoom Trojan in early January of this year. SCO currently has a suit before the courts seeking royalties from users of the Linux operating system. To date, Linux has been considered an open source (which is to say, freely available) operating system, and as such has been designated by many in the IT field as the operating system of the (near) future, the OS which will replace Microsoft’s Windows, and the OS which we will all come to use.
If SCO’s suit is successful and the company prevails in the courts, the availability of ALL open source software will, to say the least, be very much compromised. Hackers, programmers and anyone with an interest in allowing more ready access to the new digital democracy, are livid over SCOs efforts. Maintaining a capitalist model for the new digital democracy, limiting access only to users who can afford expensive computers loaded with an expensive operating system, not only effectively destroys the open source (operating system, browser, productive software) movement, it proclaims that control of the Internet will remain in the hands of profit-oriented multi-national corporations long into the future.
In a report on ZDNet, editor-in-chief Dan Farber publishes information confirming that Microsoft is the key player behind the SCO suit.
“Over the last several years, Microsoft has made known its fear and loathing of Linux and other open source initiatives. Why wouldn’t Microsoft find ways directly and indirectly to deter the open source movement? It’s in Microsoft’s nature to use whatever means necessary to maintain its market position.”
Update, March 24: At the Open Source Business Conference held on March 16th in San Francisco, Novell Vice-Chairman Chris Stone scoffs at the SCO Group’s legal battle against Novell and other Linux users over Unix copyright claims. He also discusses why companies are embracing open source and moving away from a business model with strictly proprietary software.
And the struggle continues.