Random links of the hour
A humorous but accurate (warning: pdf) explanation of why apache’s config files are not everyone’s cup of tea. (Not that I have a problem with them — but that is purely thanks to Gentoo and Debian providing sensible and self-documented default config files for their users to build on.)
One of deviantArt’s founders has been forced out, and lost his Board of Directors position and admin privileges. For legal reasons, no details are provided, but evil commercial interests are strongly hinted at. One hopes that deviantART won’t decay too much under the new leadership.
Some guy timed (warning: Geocities) the boot process on a number of Linux distros. Arch won (23 seconds on his hardware). Gentoo performed pretty well (38 seconds). Ubuntu performed poorly (55 seconds). And FC4 boots twice as fast as FC3, i.e. all the boot-time optimizations really did pay off.
And on a serious and pessimistic ending note: according to Snopes (warning: evil popups), Goering really did say that
Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.
(the quote was transcribed by his psychiatrist during the Nuremberg trials in 1946). The observation, although probably originally intended to alleviate the Reichmarshall’s guilt, is entirely too accurate for comfort.