Have not decided which CMS to replace Movable Type with. I have found a couple others (all PHP based) and figured I would post them. Here are b2evolution, blog:cms, and pLog. All of these CMSes (content management systems, i.e. blogging software) have support for mutliple blogs and plugins.
A useful location to demo CMS software (PHP and MySQL based) is Open Source CMS. They have a couple dozen working sites for you to test out; both as a blogger and as an admin. The sites are reset every hour.
linuxquestions.org is running their annual Users Choice Awards for various Linux related categories. If you have not done so already, pick up a user account (must be a registered user to actually vote) and make your voice… errr… click heard. Some of the more important categories (and the obvious, aka. my, picks) are Desktop Environment of the Year (KDE), IDE of the Year (KDevelop), Messaging App of the Year (Kopete), File Manager of the Year, (Konqueror), Web Development Editor of the Year (Quanta), and Distribution of the Year (Anything bug Fedora, because they really pissed me off.)
Linux developers have argued the benefits of any given language/toolkit sense the beginning of time. One of the oldest debates is between Gnome/KDE. As anyone who knows me (or reads this blog) can tell you I have a strong attraction to KDE because of its design strength and flexibility. However I was not always a KDE fan. I started as a Gnome user/developer when I first began on Linux. At the time I thought Linux’s development tools (through my Gnome/Gtk experience) were pretty bad; but were getting better.
Then, one day, I discovered KDE/QT and have never regretted the decision. I went from thinking that Linux development was harder/worse than Win32 development to realizing that Linux/KDE/QT development was better than ANYTHING else out there. Think that C#/.NET is nice? .NET is a giant leap forward in Win32 development, but still way behind QT/KDE development! Any who, I found a couple articles that I read, back in “the day”, that helped me decided to give KDE/QT a try and I wanted to pass them along.
Front Page Mag is running a article titled “How the Left Betrayed My Country – Iraq.” Its written by an Iraqi National by the name of Naseer Flayih Hasan and should probably be required reading for anyone who opposes our presence in Iraq. Now, keeping in mind that frontpagemag.com is a strongly conservative on-line publication; I don’t think that invalidates the point made by Mr. Hasan.
Edge.org is running their annual question of the year. This years question, asked and answered by notable intelligencia from around the country, is “WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?”
Its an amazing question to ask of that particular group of people. What is also amazing is the number of contradictory “beliefs” that people have. Topping the list are: there is a God vs. no-god, reality is in the mind vs. reality exists apart from us, life on other planets vs. no intelligent life on other planets, and we will create conscienceness vs. conscienceness can only exist in living things.
I believe in, errr.. know, there is a God. What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?
Werner Puschitz has published an article on securing Linux on production environments. It talks about simple things like stopping unneeded services and also covers more advanced subjects like configuring specialized PAM authentication techniques like locking down a users account during certain times of the day or number of failed logins. Pretty useful article for anyone configuring Linux machines and making sure they are safe.
The New Criterion has a wonderful article discussing Julien Benda’s work, “La Trahison des clercs” (The treason of the intellectuals), and an extension of Benda’s work by Alain Finkielkraut titled, “La Défaite de la pensée” (The Undoing of Thought.) I had heard of the term La Trahison des clercs, a kind of yuppie insult to post modern leaning college professors, but I was not actually familiar with the contents of the work.
I found the article incredible interesting and will probably comment more on it at some other time, but what is most interesting to me is how this concept ties in with the idea of natural law (for example the destruction of diversity without a fundamental concept of the “universality of humanity”) and the effect that these concepts have on the implementation of free will. I many ways this article acts like a philosophical discussion of the ideas presented in C.S. Lewis’s “The Abolition of Man.”
I Cringely has a spectacular article about the benefits of combining the benefits of Open Source Software, Wireless Internet access, PVR and VoIP. This is the kind of technological innovation that changes the way the world works! The last line explains it all:
UGO has released their top 50 DVD’s of all time. The list is probably one of the better “geek” movie lists I have seen, and is a lot of fun to go through. And, of course, Lord of the Rings extended edition comes in first (as it should!) What really blew me away was that I have not seen a few of the movies on the list. I am listing the ones I have not seen to prompt me to fix that situation:
Passed out pictures and Google hacks. Sounds like I had a good weekend.