dr.Negru

Linux Desktop

"Provided you are lucky and don't have to rebuild the grub to make the boot options menu appear like i did (in case you want dual boot), there is a 99% percent chance that you will install it in about 15 minutes in total likeness of Windows installation. Then you can do too a bit of desktop customization."



We all have to thank the webmaster or the succession of webmasters at infoworld.com for the continuity of their database. After all, it has now proven its usefulness. I found what i was looking for. The prophetic words of Torvalds that never became reality. Except for some. I never knew until today what Torvalds said 8-9 years ago, that "he thinks Linux on the desktop is at least five years, maybe 10 years, away".

But since last year's spring i had it with Windows. It couldn't be contained anymore in a gigantic 22 GB partition. It wanted to download SP1 after it already had all the updates overfilling the partition that still had some 2 GB free space. I lost a long email i was writing for a couple of hours because i didn't hit in time the postpone updates button or whatever it's called for the 5th time in a raw while i was writing it.

Don't get me wrong. I have enough space on my hard drive, in fact close to TB. But as somebody who wrote his first programs in 64 KB total memory for Z80 processors, this is in the area of insanely big.

I read so many times in zdnet.com comparison articles between Windows and many flavors on Linux that i thought i was already familiar with and it's going to be piece of cake, i will install it in no time and go with it and some day i'll even have the opportunity to start learning scripting languages for Linux. So i ordered an Ubuntu CD from an online store and installed it as a second boot while keeping Windows. For non IT professionals that means there is a menu at boot time that lets you choose between the two.

But i ran into first trouble right away, the menu wasn't showing at the beginning the same as it does now with Fedora because the video mode on the monitor was not compatible with what grub was doing at boot time, in absentia of a video driver. (A minor bug that was preventing for showing the dual boot menu. And i lost, i don't know, a half day or more trying to fix it with help from the forums, i had to learn the different Linux directories, can't remember exactly what i've done but in Fedora now i go to etc/default/grub and add a line GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=console, then rebuild the grub with the command $ grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg then the menu shows on the screen).

But even if the menu is not showing on the screen, in 5 seconds it picks the default option which is booting Linux. So you don't have dual boot anymore and loose 5 seconds boot time but your computer will still boot.)

Why multiple boot? I once said in a different post on this blog about the advantages of partitioning and multiple boot. You can even have dual Windows boot with the same version of Windows, provided you keep your data like email and documents on different partitions separate from Windows. You can mess up Windows how much you want and you will after installing and uninstalling a number of applications no matter what. Then you can move all your data on a different data partition and go and install a fresh Windows of the same version and all your applications on the other specially reserved partition and point all your apps's storing options to the data on the data partition, like by example the store folder in Live Mail and voila! In no time you're back in business... Windows at the second installation on a different partition will even build automatically a menu for you like Linux does at install letting you choose between the two so you can have a smooth transition... No time meaning a busy afternoon or two... And having to learn the very basics of partitioning and using the option at installation which is half hour learning time for the daring non IT professional...

With dual Linux-Windows you cannot share your email but you can everything else. I will write about later when writing about the plethora of free, verified applications on Linux.

Then the partitioning on Linux. I will pass over it because partitioning as i came to realize lately it's more an art then an exact science. There are so many types and possible combinations that you will never finish optimizing your computer for not so much gain.

Right now i'm using 128 MB for boot, 1024 for swap, 1024 for tmp, 4086 var, 8092 root and the rest untill 18 GB (I had at the beginning of the hard drive two partitions for operating systems, one of 22 with Windows now and one of 18 for the second OS, at first they were 20/20 but i gave it more room for Windows thinking i will get away before if overfilled again) for home.

So i ended up with about 4 GB free out of the 18 for the home partition for data and the other partitions are 1/10 to half occupied and lots of room for years of updates and applications as opposed to Windows that overfilled a 22 GB partition in one year and a half with the automatic updates option always on and with most basic applications.

But Fedora and Ubuntu give you the option of automatically installing themselves alongside Windows or alone with nothing much to do except choosing the locales, a root password, and create a (few) user profile(s), very much like Windows.

(I forgot to tell why i ended up with Fedora over Ubuntu. Out of paranoia. And because i couldn't learn to profile a new application with AppArmor, the security application that comes with Ubuntu. Cause this is what you have to do. In Fedora, my current understanding is that Selinux that is enabled here by default, takes care of newly installed applications automatically. And then out of paranoia too i learned a bit of IP tables. But there is a firewall program in Fedora which is enabled by default.)

Provided you are lucky and don't have to rebuild the grub to make the boot options menu appear like i did (in case you want dual boot), there is a 99% percent chance that you will install it in about 15 minutes in total likeness of Windows installation. Then you can do too a bit of desktop customization.

Then again out of paranoia, i chose to go withe the XFCE spin of Fedora because gnome3 has some social networking built in and inseparable from its windows manager. After, i furtherly downgraded it by uninstalling a list of softwares mostly social networking that have minds of their own and want to connect by themselves to the internet. I don't understand why or maybe i do but now i do everything i need with the browser (Firefox) and this way i have only one security nightmare that i chose not to think about anymore. They might be still others i'm not aware of. After all most applications nowadays jump on the internet without asking permission or even notifying you.

A major problem with Linux in the past was the video drivers. On a 7 years old computer with no graphics card like mine, if i choose to go with the built in quasi universal Nouveau driver (built by reverse engineering of the nVidia drivers as nVidia doesn't give away the source code for them), i loose about 30 percent of performance over downloading and installing manually the nVidia driver. Because it's proprietary and cannot be distributed by Red Hat Linux. With Ubuntu things are smoother because it automatically installs the appropriate driver that chooses itself from its enabled repositories, i think. So with Fedora you can choose again to do nothing about it if you are not into gaming or other heavy graphics. But then if you are, things can get a bit complicated but there's help on forums.

Now let's talk a bit about the benefits. A much leaner OS. Overall it feels about twice faster as i can say after the last few year of heavy using for storing photographs and blogging and social networking. (Never had problems with security but i have two custom firewalls, one on the DSL gateway and one on Linux and Selinux enabled by default on Linux. But never had any known ones on a Windows XP computer with no other security than the the gateway's firewall for years (now i have Security Essentials on that one too)).

Free Office-like application - LibreOffice.

Free Photoshop-like application - Gimp (not that i use it, don't have it installed).

Free AutoCad-like application (currently don't use it, don't have it installed).

And every major application for Windows you can think of. And more. Available from Fedora repositories and installable with a click or a command after a secure download.

And you can share your data with Windows since all above apps can import/export data from and to Windows partitions and formats if you choose so.

So  you still think Torvalds was wrong?

http://fedoraproject.org

http://www.ubuntu.com

http://www.debian.org

Parallel Reality Media Shows

It is a current practice to manifest media events with huge emotional value, often fabricated or created as needed, that semantically mimic real current events with no causal relationship whatsoever among them, the parallel and real events, and ultimately creating strong thinking patterns based on emotions that will influence the subjects' decisions regarding the evaluation of the targeted real events, without even mentioning them.

By example, you can increase, diminish or even ruin a political figure's reputation just by projecting some causally unrelated news that are very closely semantically related to what the subject is or was doing in his life without even mentioning that person.

Sometimes it is enough just to mention keywords built from past news that will trigger a whole mental process of acceptance or rejection or reloading of a certain political symbol or focus point of then current political paradigm.

It is impossible for any law enforcement institution to prosecute or sometime even to detect such activities.

And by the still legal means of the polls, or "other, more modern feedback tools"  they will know if the public is starting to realize what's going on and will gradually retract those news and replace them with ever more subtle ones.

Endless Hole With Smoke

For a week now i'm re-caulking a ~5-10 mm 1/2" thick 6-12" long space between the bathroom wall and floor next to the bedroom using GE Silicone II of about $6.50 a tube. One day a redo a portion the next day it hardens just fine and 2 days later becomes soft like the 1.25 dollar cheap one made of milled limestone and an adhesive. Two days ago i completely removed all the material and put a new one. Yesterday it was hard and completed today now is just disintegrating. But every time i touch the stuff that's already in the wall the rest of the day my hands become stingy and skin slightly paralyzed all over after taking a shower. I just went to Lowes and gave the tall blond guy who says he's one of the managers a tiny sample in a plastic bag and asked him to send it to the manufacturer. But he didn't even ask what brand i bought, he showed total lack of interest. Last time i bought two tubes i discovered at the check-stand that one of the tubes was cracked and took it back. Then another manager of the store, an older guy to whom i gave the cracked tube told me the expiration month on the tube was September 2012. (There was this Lowes bearded guy standing behind me so close i felt uncomfortable and couldn't talk more with the manager. I remember that the bearded guy one recent time i went there he was standing there band with his  but right in front next to the paint department. That made uncomfortable as well.) Then they opened a new box with the expiration date 04/13.

Before caulking i discovered the corner with the missing wallpaper was cracked to pieces, i had to pour gypsum and redo the corner, using some transparent plastic molds, but you cannot pour gypsum all over you have to keep the edges clear of touching anything because if it touches the floor or a beam it's gone crack later due to vibration.

I did the whole thing because of the unidentified smoke coming out of it, i remember the first day i did the gypsum my face was stingy because of the smoke. The cracked parts of drywall i took out of there were brown inside because of the years of smoke. The rest if it probably still is. The apartment below is vacant for more than one year, i don't know exactly where the smoke is coming from. After i re-caulk there is no smoke for one day or so then it becomes soft in different areas not all of it and tiny holes appear together with the smoke.

47 Eagle Crest dr, Lake Oswego, OR

47 Eagle Crest dr, Lake Oswego, OR

47 Eagle Crest dr, Lake Oswego, OR

Change Is The Only Constant

I've just been reviewing - briefly - this article

And it seems they are many that bought Kuhn's ideas. And perfected them. And here's the exploit: Statistically, we all see only one slice of the social reality or the paradigm shift, as they call it at a certain time. For reasons that we are busy with our such perceived comfort. Or by reason of learned behavior. Or by reason of artificially created focus points. Or simply because we are not sociologists but only live in the society... Our bad luck is that many of us choose to look in the expected direction at the expected time and sometimes even applauding collectively and approving the whole shift without knowing it as a whole. Never-mind some are changing facts and rules on the fly or tearing holes in the fabric of reality or current paradigm shift in those unobserved gray areas and creating new shifts as long as we're not looking. To us the casual observers it remains the same shift as long as we didn't know it as a whole. And in the case somebody after a great deal of effort is pointing a few of us to look into those gray areas, they can adjust or insert other previously nonexistent gray areas and still make the shift appear whole. (Here, as an example and proof they are following this theory, the on demand fabricated news often with adjacent but not directly related events, for creating confusion). It is not the same shift anymore. But to us it seems as actually it is as long as we didn't know the whole from the beginning and accepting the new additions. As long as we are buying it.

Or simply eliminate or move the few or the some. For our comfort.

They can even create the appearance of two completely different shifts out of the same one to different individuals or groups of different cultures or embraces or simply of any difference including of space or time or if they look into different areas or if they think and act on cultural or biased assumptions instead of learning the rules and the facts of the paradigm shift.

We should never forget, for the shifters change is the only constant.

02/01/2013 1:56 PM PDT

It just occurred to me that in order to successfully deal with reality especially in unknown surroundings one should continuously build dynamic models, adding and subtracting information from the current model. Sometimes he/she even has to switch models in a blink of an eye due to sudden change of scenery, the entering of another entity, etc.

Obviously we have to forget classical sociology when we try do add the concept of scene in reality modeling. Physics, physiology, statistics, perhaps geometry and sociology together are at place here. Can we apply the idea of paradigm when we describe an instantaneous, ever-changing model of the surrounding reality? By definition, is the opposite. However, is the same concept, only applied dynamically. Or maybe it only looks dynamically as we slice reality, or the bigger picture, in order to deal with it one scene at the time?

The ideea that some people got into the habit of entering one's current paradigm through the back door, totally artificially, intentionally, usually pretending legitimacy but introducing some obvious, apparently benign, weird events in order to distract him/her and change his/her final decision on how to deal with it or if he/she is going to deal at all is intriguing to me right now and actually motivates me to write these. I'm convinced that some occult practitioners or even entire social groups have learned to do things by manipulating one's paradigm especially when the subject cannot react and creating all kind of effects, some possibly at distance.

Let's take an example here. Crossing one's path when unexpected and usually the subject is overlapping current monotonous activities like walking or driving with other activity like distant thoughts. When done obviously intentionally and while the subject knowing that statistically that event shouldn't happen at that moment, it violates one's privacy and current reality model forcing him to try to resort at a larger model in which the described action would fit. And while he is trying to do this, the intruder can escalate it even more, by introducing more elements and information like an unexpected gesture, reveal more clothes' color, facial expressions usually justifiable later but never at the present to the subject's mind, or noises or language, escalation that would end in crushing one's ability to deal with in that moment and become totally distracted, disoriented and in a trance like state of mind. This collapse of one's ability to understand what's happening and puts his mind in a sort of slave-like status, in that moment accepting any input as suggestion (if not giving in to uncontrollable emotional bursts that can pull the subject out of this type of cognitive trap but usually risky as the intruder is ready to interpret it as aggression towards him.) Thus unprovable reprogramming of the mind can occur. However, i believe next to every model acquired in ones collection of models known as education this way there is a flag that says "learned on distress" and could be accessed in a process similar to psychoanalysis or clearing of engrams.

Such intrusions sometimes can be used during the waiting time before a meeting or a conversation, when the subject might even try to prepare him/she-self, with carefully arranged, avoidable in the last second accident-like situations usually in the last intersection before the meeting place, or simply two or three people acting weird together in front of the subject in the waiting lounge before the meeting, putting in him in a distracted state of mind and making him more suggestible, depending of what their intentions are.

It may very well that the person that intrudes this way in one's privacy apparently don't even needs to go much out of his/her way to do this, along or close with his normal routine, this way being almost impossible to prove anything. This of course if there is a distribution of such tasks within the members of a group. Or could this be an instance of actions of individuals guided by a "collective subconscious"?

Although this always seem to happen unexpectedly, when analyzed, even carefully, these events are always justifiable down to a certain level, giving for the distracted mind, in that moment even more frightening experiences, looking like a never ending string on coincidences that target him. Only when carefully, objectively analyzed, sometimes the trick can be revealed, but usually with addition of more information and time and effort, sometimes with the entering of more characters pretending helping analyzing and often being covered up with similar events, creating a similar type of effect, so the instance cannot be easily turned as a complaint to the outsiders. Usually one easily discredits him/her-self if he tries to do this in a hurry, because of confusion of elements from two different but very similar instances.

Other examples can go all the way to introduction in the ever changing, continuous local news show of shocking elements, carefully chosen from the otherwise statistically normally distributed local events, matching some groups or even individual's state of mind, although in a twisted and toxic way in order to change minds and creating some sort of virtual, parallel, mocked reality.

(One particularly other  good example of reality recognition manipulation is parallel talking. You can talk to a person who for some chosen reason prefer not to talk to you directly about a subject, but starts talking using phrases composed in such way that they contain for the much part the information they want you to catch, without even touching the subject. Usually in the last part of the phrase you realize they are talking about something else. It also gives them the advantage of seeing you reacting at those informations without much risk, other than an "unjustified emotional burst" that he/she might even be prepared to take advantage of by claiming agression. Parallel talking next to intentional mistakes that pretty much do the same job as describe above has become lately very widely used in media. However they cannot impact you on a subconscient level as privacy cognitive intrusion through unsuspected action as described before because they come pretty much when you are expecting some sort of input from that source, whatever it may be. Or even people talking in front of you on a phone, conversation that you don't usually pay attention to and then asking you a question that might be influenced but what you just heard)

(Sometimes the newcomers are "embraced" at first invoking some moral principle they presumably abide by and let him get used to. Then unconsciously, suddenly or constantly they introduce some unrecognizable elements into his/her already learned paradigm forcing him/her to get assimilated or enter in a state or permanent confusion, discomfort or even distress and desire to leave, for no definable reason. But this is the more common, happier case.)

Sometimes the subject him/her-self is active participant or made to look so, by synchronization of intruders with his/her activities, and creating a false sensation of causality, feeling of embarrassment or even guilt, which is furtherly exploited in creating distraction, disruption, trance and reprogramming, or psychosis and/or emotional bursts. Or even more troubling, something like erasing one's thoughts with overlapping, or entrainement with very similar ones, but belonging to others, making one forgetting or bowing his own self?

Could this influence others' mind at a distance through some unknown bio-transmission mechanism, like emitting a distress or even a surrender call? I don't know, but statistically, by the number of these practitioners and instances encountered, it is an indication that it is done so.

But if there are some religions that include these kind of practices in their un/declared rituals, could they still use them in the larger society on basis of the principle of the freedom of religion, since it is obvious that they could significantly interfere with the whole?

Could this kind of experiments prove indeed the existence of a collective mind or a social integration on an unconscious level? Maybe temporary. Maybe on subconscious level on lower educated individuals. Or maybe between close relatives or larger DNA alike ethnic groups. Or maybe the existence of an unknown or unrecognized bio-communication system that can work best when one is in a very acute state of mind or total relaxation.