Author: Bobby Rockers

Tyranny of the Lethargic

One of the concerns I have about the state of democracy and the direction of democratic reform throughout the world is the sudden rise of sudo-democratic organizations (organizations created by democracies that are not democratic themselves.) Organizations like the EU, UN, WTO, and World Bank have huge influence over the state of world affairs, going so far as to try and set policy for individual nations, and yet have no democratic influence on their direction.

In that vein, author John Fonte has written an article discussing the proliferation of these groups, as well as the dramatic influence non-governmental organizations are having on shaping their policies. Democracy may not be the evolutionary end of history; but it is vital that we remember than any organization which creates laws without the representation by those whom the law governs, is a form of tyranny. Ultimately, failure to pay attention to the state of our liberties will result in the slow erosion of our freedoms. If we are not awake at the wheel of our own destiny, we will eventually discover that someone else is driving.

The Apex of Evolution

In preparation for a policy paper I am reading, I found this article. The paper, titled “The End of History?”, is a fairly well known article by Francis Fukuyama for The National Interest in 1989. In it he basically describes western style liberal democracy as the final cumulative result of the evolution of the political process; going so far as to declare the modern democratic state as the “end of political history.” Something approaching the god-state of politics.

While I don’t necessarily subscribe to the overall tenants of Mr. Fukuyama’s work; it is an interesting political discussion in the time immediately preceding the fall of the USSR. The question that Mr. Fukuyama brings up is simply, does democracy basically answer all of the contradictions brought about by previous socio-political systems in a way that changes future “improvement” from exponential to linear in their scope?

FYI, I grabbed the web page from a Google search for reference purposes.

Democracy Spreading

Those of you who did get a chance to read my commentary on the justification, with respect to terrorism, for the invasion of Iraq; I thought I would take this opportunity to say it looks like I was right. Now I am not trying to say that it was a particularly good election (i.e. males only, municipal authority only, only half the positions are elected, and its only happening in one area) but the simple fact that Saudi Arabia felt the pressure to actually have these elections is a huge step.

Who Reads What

Newspaper Readership:

  • The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
  • The Washington Post is read by people who are elected to run the country. 
  • The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country. 
  • USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand the Washington Post. They do, however, like their statistics shown in colorful pie charts. 
  • The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn’t have to leave L.A. to do it. 
  • The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and they did a far superior job of it, thank you very much. 
  • The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country, and don’t really care as long as they ca n get a seat on the train. 
  • The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated. 
  • The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from ANY country or galaxy as long as they are Democrats. 
  • The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores. 
  • The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.

No New Backgrounds

A common questions from system administrators concerns the ability to turn off functionality on computers systems installed in a group usage environment.  Something like an internee cafe or a library.  Kiosk Admin Tool is a KDE management tool for exactly such needs.  Kiosk Admin Tool gives system administrators the ability to lock down a desktop by say, removing command line functionality or disabling the file manager.

The Joy of Hobbits

The Lord of the Rings books have always been my favorite recreational reading material.  I have no idea how many times I have read these books but each and every one has been a wonderful experience.  There is nothing I can say about The Fellowship of the Ring that has not been said before, by someone more articulate than me.  I suppose the best review I can make, and the greatest statement of the quality of this book, is the joy I get in its reading and how that joy has not diminished with the number of times I have read it.  I may not know how many more times I will experienced the The Fellowship of the Ring, but I know it will be, at least, one more.

Wizards and Data

DataKiosk is a KDE database tool that lets you (through an series of Kdevlop style wizards) create custom database query API styles for data access.  Anyone familiar with Juk will understand how well this kind of functionality works on generic table structures.  Here is a flash demo to help convey the concept.  Currently it in KDE CVS (kdeextragear-1)and available for testing.

Learning to Share

Another site claiming to be “The Vault” has a quick how to on setting up KDE Public File Server (aka kpf.)  Kpf lets you share files with other users across a network using http.  Its basically a personal web server that doesn’t require administrator rights to use and is fully manageable from your KDE desktop.   The tutorial is light on information but has screen shots.  Oh, and FYI yes those Max OSX looking dialogs are KDE dialogs.  KDE/Kwin can be made to look like almost any desktop; OSX, Solaris, CDE, or even one from a company in the northwest United States (who shall remain unnamed.)