From: Swiger Donald <ddds_usa@yahoo.com>
Subj: Donald Swiger

YOU

iam the diplomat with your consignment,iam in new york call me on 716 810 4314

Ooh, a consignment! Does it make a noise when you shake it?

To: Swiger Donald <ddds_usa@yahoo.com>
Subj: RE: Donald Swiger

Donald,

It seems that I’ve lost my cell phone whilst artificially inseminating a cow.  Is there any chance that we can deal with my consignment via email?

thanks,
ME

I found the phone, but I’m sure as hell not going to use it now.

From: Swiger Donald <ddds_usa@yahoo.com>
Subj: RE: RE: Donald Swiger

i have cleared the consignment ,i have to proceed to ur address.it will cost $850 to transport your  consignment to you,waiting for your response urgently

Address.it, huh? Well, I’ll see your TLD and raise you a couple of my own.

To: Swiger Donald <ddds_usa@yahoo.com>
Subj: RE: RE: RE: Donald Swiger

Donald,

If I understand you correctly and you have proceeded to my address.it, can’t you just simply ring my doorbell.gr and hand me the consignment once I open the door.us?  I only ask because I’m not sure how I’m supposed to get the $850 to you.

Please respond quickly as I had saved this money to pay for my mother’s much needed life-saving heart surgery, and I’m afraid that if I don’t hear from you soon, I’ll choose the surgery and miss out on what I can only assume is a fantastic specimen of a consignment.

Hoping to hear from you soon,
ME

Hurry Don. Mom’s looking a little gray.

From: Swiger Donald <ddds_usa@yahoo.com>
Subj: RE: RE: RE: RE: Donald Swiger

THE $850 REQUIRED IS TO TRANSPORT YOUR CONSIGNMENT TO YOU.I WILL PROCEED BACK IF YOU DID NOT COMPLY

Oh shit, it’s caps. The Don’s getting pissed.

To: Swiger Donald <ddds_usa@yahoo.com>
Subj: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Donald Swiger

I SEE THAT WE HAVE NOW PROGRESSED TO USING ONLY CAPITAL LETTERS IN OUR EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE.  UNTIL INSTRUCTED TO DO OTHERWISE BY YOU, I WILL DRAFT MY MESSAGES WITH NO LOWER CASE LETTERS, SO AS NOT TO ANGER YOU ANY FURTHER.

AS STATED IN MY PREVIOUS EMAIL, I UNDERSTAND THAT I NEED TO GIVE YOU $850.  I JUST DON’T KNOW HOW TO GET IT TO YOU.  I HAVE A FRIEND THAT RAISES CARRIER PIGEONS, BUT I DON’T THINK THAT IT CAN CARRY THAT MANY SINGLES(MY SAVINGS ARE GENERATED FROM MY OCCUPATION AS A MALE STRIPPER AT A LOCAL REST HOME, HENCE THE SMALL DENOMINATION OF THE BILLS.  THAT IS, OF COURSE, THE ONLY THING THAT’S SMALL, IF YOU GET MY DRIFT(WINK, WINK)).  IF YOU WILL SIMPLY INSTRUCT ME ON HOW TO PAY YOU, WE CAN BE DONE WITH THIS BUSINESS, AND YOU CAN TRAVEL BACK TO YOUR HOMELAND, WHERE I’M SURE YOU’RE WELL RESPECTED AND EVEN FEARED.

I HAVE ALREADY TOLD MY MOM THAT I LOST MY MONEY IN A COCK-FIGHTING MATCH.  I FIGURED IT’S BEST THAT I COME UP WITH A COVER STORY IN CASE I’M ABLE TO WORK SOMETHING OUT WITH YOU AND SHE HAS TO DIE.

I EAGERLY AWAIT YOUR RESPONSE,
me

The cockfighting thing wasn’t really a lie. I made some money at it though but I’m not going to tell Don that. He’ll hike up the price.

From: Swiger Donald <ddds_usa@yahoo.com>
Subj: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Donald Swiger

i have cleared the consignment ,i have to proceed to ur address.it will cost $850 to transport your  consignment to you,waiting for your response urgently.send $850 to approve the delivery ticket to the head qrauter in Atlanta G via western union to mrs RITA WALTER,they will send the ticket to me in new york

Urgent is my middle name, Don.

To: Swiger Donald <ddds_usa@yahoo.com>
Subj: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Donald Swiger

I APOLOGIZE FOR THE DELAY IN RESPONDING.  WHILE ON THE WAY TO THE WESTERN UNION, I HIT A HOOKER CROSSING THE STREET AND TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT, IT KILLED HER, SO I HAD TO FIND A PLACE TO BURY THE BODY AND IT’S VERY TOUGH TO FIND SOFT SOIL AS MOST OF IT AROUND HERE IS THAT TENACIOUS CLAY THAT YOU SIMPLY CAN’T DIG INTO.  I ENDED UP FINDING SOME DIRT I COULD WORK WITH IN A GARDEN IN FRONT OF A HOUSE IN TOWN, SO EVERYTHING WORKED OUT VERY WELL.  FOR ME, I MEAN.  NOT SO MUCH FOR THE HOOKER.

BACK TO THE MATTER AT HAND, I MANAGED TO GET TO THE WESTERN UNION AND SENT THE FUNDS($849) TO RITA WALTER IN ATLANTIC CITY, NJ, AS REQUESTED.

BE SAFE WHILE TRAVELING. AND DON’T WEAR DARK CLOTHING AT NIGHT. OR FISHNETS.
me

It seems that this is where I lost Don. Although he was ok with cellphones lodged in cow’s vaginas, killing off my mother and being a stripper at a rest home, killing off the hooker and burying her in someone’s garden seems to have been my undoing.

Kudos to you Don, for being observant and knowing when I wasn’t what I appeared to be.

I have used it for a couple hours and no matter how much I explored, I can only find one change between the old and new.  This change, however, will alter the landscape of linux computing.  Years from now, after every distribution, in all OS camps have followed in Ubuntu’s steps, the four of you that read this will remember my heralding of a new era.

So what’s the change?  What incredible insight did Mark Shuttleworth have that is sure to forever change the way we compute?

Good Lord in heaven, can you believe what you see?  I couldn’t at first and I still have moments where I feel the need to pinch…  What?  You don’t see it?  Ok, just a second.

Now, don’t you feel stupid?  Now that you can see the sheer genius that is Ubuntu, you’re probably feeling pretty stupid now, aren’t you…  What?  You still can’t see the change that is going to forever change the way you compute?  Christ, do I have to hold your hand?

There you go.  The only noticeable difference I was able to distinguish was the fact that they moved the action buttons for your windows to the left.  Which is fucking genius.  Now, when you want to choose something under the file menu, you have over a 50% chance of accidentally choosing to close your application, and if you’re lucky, losing all of your work in that application.

I can just picture Mark Shuttleworth as he looks in the mirror, comparing himself to Steve Jobs, the master of huge changes that on the surface seem absolutely asinine only to become globally emulated within the next year.

Well, he got half of it down pat.

From Datamation: Google Chrome OS: Desktop linux’ last chance

A dichotomy, you presume? Well, not really.  What can be gained by combining the two posts is very simple:  Before linux becomes extinct, it will trounce Windows 7.

I guess there’s some comfort to be had in that.

I wouldn’t contemplate running anything but Windows on it. Although I sometimes find games that I want to play that will run on linux, I have never found a game that I wanted to play that wouldn’t run on Windows. Windows does gaming better.

Some have suggested Wine and you can see what I think of wine in this thread. In short, I feel that Wine is a great way to stifle development in linux. “No, there’s currently no port for this to linux, but you can try running it in Wine.”  As long as this sentence exists, developers feel less of a need to properly support the OS.

Well, I was catching up on gaming news a couple days ago and ran across an article touting the greatness that is “PlayonLinux“. What is PlayonLinux?

PlayonLinux uses custom Wine scripts to set up an independent environment for each application you install. This allows you to have independent Wine settings for each game, rather than trying to make a single prefix work for every application. There are many built in scripts that are geared toward specific applications, however you can also use this tool to customize your own.

That’s fantastic! Now we can have multiple Windows environments on our linux install!

Because we all know that you have to install Windows differently for each application you have.

Want to game in linux?  Buy a game designed to run on linux. Penumbra is more on an environment immersion project, but I have to say that it’s pretty fascinating and a great way to spend an hour or two.  Added bonus?  All three episodes are currently on sale for $5.

If you wanted, you could create a mock Windows environment and run the Windows version of the game on your linux machine.  I hear that’s the bee’s knees.

I forgot about it until reading Wired’s “Top 5 Audio Atrocities to Throw Down a Sonic Black Hole”, in which Chris Cornell came in at number 1.

I know our tastes are supposed to mature over time, but I’m pretty sure there will never come a time that I can tolerate the music he released on that album. With music by Timbaland and produced backing vocals(see comments) by Justin Timberlake, it’s almost as if he systematically and methodically did everything he could think of to disgust and ostracize his fans.

There’s hope though. I hear we’re going to hear something amazing from him and Lady GaGa.

It seems that Sugarlabs brought along some of the huge resources of FAIL at OLPC. It’s the only way I can explain how they missed the most obvious fact of obsolete hardware; If a decrepit computer even has a USB port, chances are huge that it’s bios is not going to allow you to boot from it.

At least they forked the development. You know how I love that.

The Chinese have purchased the Hummer brand from the dying hands of GM.  For a country that considers itself superior to us, they sure have a funny way of showing it.  The article also notes that GM will be closing the Pontiac, Saturn and Saab brands as well as 1/3 of their entire dealer network.

I have more to say about this, but it will have to wait.  Mr. Obama has assigned me to the afternoon detail on the local road crew and I can’t find my God damned orange vest.

I saw it all go down.

Well, I tried linux Mint over the last few days.  Argueably the most easy to use and feature-rich distro currently available.  How could I go wrong?

Well, let me just say this.  I’m getting much quicker at reaching critical failure, which in and of itself is very useful.  I used to waste weeks in the hope that someone could help me end up with an install that I could use at work before I gave up and became productive again on my Windows box.  I’ve now been able to reach the same conclusion in the span of days.  Add to this the fact that I now know not to install it on the box that I make a living on, and you’ve got yourself what may be the first stress-free linux install ever.  I simply threw my old work box on the test bench, installed, found it to be lacking,  waited 3 days for useful assistance and retired the attempt.

I got so excited when I saw the clean fonts and snappy response of linux.  It made me realize how much I missed it.  Then I began working on dualhead and network printing, which made me remember how much I loathed it.

The biggest warm-fuzzy generator I saw is that Samba worked with my networked folders out of the box.  I was able to retrieve and save files with no issue during my limited use of the machine, which is amazing when you take into account that I fought with the issue during my previous 5 years as a linux user.

The most asinine thing I saw during my use is a 3 year old(at the minimum) Ubuntu bug where the machine shuts down the network before attempting to unmount the networked drives.  I found threads dating back to 2006 where users were creating dirty workarounds to try to stop the 60 second pause during shutdown.

In the end, I realized that linux still wasn’t able to meet my needs which is unfortunate, as my needs are quite simple.  As well, the linux community is still a hit-or-miss affair in regards to assistance.  I’ve got threads 3 days old that were never responded to.  In the real world, that can get quite expensive, depending on the issue at hand.  Depending on my mood, I can argue that the same can be said of non-paid Windows support.  The only difference is that I don’t need support for the same features in Windows.  I plugged in two monitors for dualhead support and I did a network search for the printer I needed.  It just worked.

There used to be a time when I would doggedly and systematically begin scouring the web to squash the various problems I encountered with any given distro.  I realize now that although I could, I have no desire to.  I don’t want to become the most knowledgeable person in regards to X11.  I just want it to fucking work. To add to the skill required, let’s muddy the waters by having to filter our searches to issues that only apply to your chosen DE.  “Ooh, I found a guy with the same problem!  Oh shit, he’s running XFCE and the resolution doesn’t work with Gnome.”

Those fonts sure are pretty, though.

I understand that some of you may be under the mistaken assumption that I enjoy these FOSS failures, which would be untrue.  I’m the largest proponent of open source that you will find.  However, I don’t feel that you should get bonus points for developing open source apps if you’re incompetent.  From the complaints rolling in concerning the Openmoko platform, it’s indeed being handled by idiots.  Most complaints concern the fact that the devs concentrate on  bells and whistles while users can not actually successfully make a phone call on the phone.  During the development process it remained a fact that they couldn’t make a phone call, but the interface looks prettier than it did when they couldn’t make a phone call a year ago.

I bet you couldn’t guess that I’m blogging this from my OLPC while I call my publisher on my Neo Freerunner.

Well, you can now officially consider it another open source attempt that is being buried and forgotten.  I know, shocker.

Who would have thought that an open source endeavor such as this would have failed, what with the incredible success rate that these types of efforts enjoy?

I would be blogging this from my linux OLPC laptop, but, well, you know.