Things that make you say “Well I’ll be jiggered”…

Typing this message on a new box, running Red Hat 9 on a generic Pentium III system. This is going to be my test bed for porting Onyx to Linux.

Got it installed and working on the fifth try–yay me! God bless Linux…whern it takes someone who’s been using and programming computers for over twenty years, who’s familiar with everything from mainframe operating systems (TOPS-20, VM/370) to Solaris and SunOS, who’s been known to ressurect a PDP-11 from a Salvation Army, *five freaking tries* to install Linux on a desktop system…

…Linux ain’t gonna be a serious threat to Windows in the desktop consumer market any time soon.

Get over it, kids. Open source programmers like working on sexy projects, and installers ain’t sexy, and a point-and-drool installer for a crap OS wins out over a complicated installer for a rubust OS in the home market seven falls out of ten.

And in completely unrelated, non-tech stuff…

Last week, Shelly found an old magazine ad in a book on the history of advertising that used the Hindenberg disaster to sell razor blades.

I. Shit. You. Not.

The ad featured a half-page picture of the Hindenberg blowing up, with copy that ran along the lines of “The survivors of the Hindenberg use Shick razors–even on their charred and burned flesh, Shick razors are gentle!”

So anyone who wants to say that modern advertising is more tasteless and offensive than it was in the “good old days” now has zero credibility with me.