Revisit

On the occasion of Peter Diamandis winning the Heinlein Prize, I thought some of my readers might want to reacquaint (or introduce, if they haven’t had the pleasure) themselves with some of the great man’s books.

And yes, if you’re wondering, I do get a cut (assuming that enough people purchase some to get me to the minimum). Think of it as an alternative means of tipping me, while getting in some good SF.

Missing Dependencies

Latest update on the Fedora upgrade saga:

Error: missing dep: libebook.so.8 for pkg openoffice.org
Error: missing dep: libedataserver.so.3 for pkg openoffice.org
Error: missing dep: libdb_cxx-4.2.so for pkg openoffice.org-libs
Error: missing dep: /lib/security/pam_loginuid.so for pkg openssh-server
Error: missing dep: gcc for pkg gcc-g77

Why is yum telling me this? Why doesn’t it just go out get the packages and fix it?

[Update about 11:15 AM EDT]

Continue reading Missing Dependencies

What Is Wrong With These People?

Anyone who would want to do this just seems like an alien being to me. Of course, I never understood mosh pits, either.

But then, maybe the wikipedia entry explains it:

In many Western cultures, there are very few outlets for a youth’s natural inclination toward violence…

That’s why it is alien to me. I have never in my life, not as a kid, not as an adolescent, not now, had a “natural inclination toward violence.” I don’t even like to squish bugs (except the computer kinds). Perhaps I’m “unnatural.”

And in rereading the article, it makes me wonder about the perspicacity of the people involved:

“You get to be a superhero for a night,” Klimanis said. “We have to go to work every day. We’re constantly told to buy things we don’t need, and just for a couple hours we have the freedom to do what we want to do.”

He’s “told every day to buy things he doesn’t need.” Really? If so, so what? Is someone holding a gun to his head? Has he no willpower? Is his house filled with things that he bought via this mindwashing? Is his only recourse to advertising and having to make a living to go out and beat people up?

What a maroon.

Still Slogging Through Fedora Issues

OK, I’ve copied /var, but I can’t kill X so that I can unmount it–I’ve knocked off all the other processes, but gdmgreeter, etc. keep coming back like zombies.

How do I put a stake through its heart (at least long enough to umount /var), without a reboot at a lower sysinit level (because I’m still afraid to reboot given the partial update of yum)?

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!