Looks like we’re getting some new neighbors here in south Florida. From France:

There are no official U.S. government figures on the number of French Jews here, but officials in U.S. Jewish organizations said it could be anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 in South Florida — mostly Miami-Dade.

”I would say they’re in the thousands now,” said Mendy Levy, a rabbi at The Shul synagogue in Surfside.

”There is no question of an increase in the number of French Jews in South Florida, and there’s an expectation that that rate of increase will accelerate,” said Jacob Solomon, executive vice president of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. ‘French Jews see the handwriting on the wall and say, `We’re not going to wait until it’s too late.’ ”

They’re sending in the Sioux. I wonder if they’ll count coup? I assume that taking scalps is against the Geneva Convention, though.

In light of growing evidence that “the surge” is working, that even Brian Williams couldn’t ignore, Robert Kagan asks an interesting question.

Looks like a major capture in Iraq:

Al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, has been identified in statements posted on Islamic extremist Web sites as the head of the Islamic State, which was proclaimed last year after the death of the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraqi, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Al-Baghdadi was said to have headed the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an alliance of Al Qaeda and other jihadist organizations, which was set up last year to downplay the role of foreigners in the Iraqi insurgency.

Hard to see how this is bad news. For either us or Iraq.

Looks like a major capture in Iraq:

Al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, has been identified in statements posted on Islamic extremist Web sites as the head of the Islamic State, which was proclaimed last year after the death of the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraqi, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Al-Baghdadi was said to have headed the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an alliance of Al Qaeda and other jihadist organizations, which was set up last year to downplay the role of foreigners in the Iraqi insurgency.

Hard to see how this is bad news. For either us or Iraq.

Looks like a major capture in Iraq:

Al-Baghdadi, also known as Abu Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, has been identified in statements posted on Islamic extremist Web sites as the head of the Islamic State, which was proclaimed last year after the death of the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraqi, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Al-Baghdadi was said to have headed the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an alliance of Al Qaeda and other jihadist organizations, which was set up last year to downplay the role of foreigners in the Iraqi insurgency.

Hard to see how this is bad news. For either us or Iraq.

I see that this is the new Democrat mantra:

“bring our involvement in that civil war to a conclusion.”

Is there a civil war in Iraq? Sure.

Is that all that is going on there? Really?

There will be no negative consequences to either the region, or our own security, to allow the “civil” war to get worse, or for the Sunni countries in the region (most of whom are at best indifferent to Al Qaeda and their goals, and often supportive) to continue to reinforce their agents of chaos there, and allow Anbar and other areas to become uninhibited breeding and training grounds for terrorism, as Afghanistan was under the Taliban?

It would be nice if we could have a real debate over this war, instead of disingenuousness from appeasers.

The Navy is deploying Swift Boats to Iraq. They’d better stay out of Cambodia, though.

What Democrats were saying in Iraq before everything became George Bush’s fault and he “lied us into war.”

For the desktop OS?

“We are involved in a number of massive deals for Linux desktops, and those are the kinds of things that are indicators of critical mass. So we are really looking at it very hard,” said Doug Small, worldwide director of open source and Linux marketing at HP. “We are in a massive deal right now for … multi-thousands of units of a desktop opportunity for Linux. That’s an indicator.” He declined to give details about the Linux deals.

This, combined with the fact that Dell is now shipping Linux laptops, is an ominous omen for Redmond.

I think that Vista may have been a bridge too far for Microsoft. Windows has been an entrenched technology for well over a decade now (and MS operating systems in general for well over two). As long as the cost of switching over remains high in terms of user retraining, it’s hard for a newcomer to make much headway. But if the cost of continued use grows as well, and the benefits of the new technology start to become overwhelming, even the most entrenched technology can still lose out, when the curves cross over.

I’ve been fortunate enough not to have had to try Vista yet, but here’s an amusing parable.

Of course, it’s still an uphill battle until a standard GUI can be established, but I think that the Gnome/KDE wars continue.