Is not having flash a good thing?
If recent reports about malicious flash files being distributed as ads are to be believed, then yes! In this case, Linux users, who typically have trouble installing flash, are far less vulnerable to the attack because flash doesn’t work well (if at all) on many systems (Ubuntu being the exception).
Should we observe holidays?
Paul wrote to the Galatians that he feared that he had wasted his efforts on them because they were “observing special days and months and seasons and years!” Should we then follow his example and ignore holidays? Or should we observe these ’special days’ like the Galatians? We should not ignore that the holidays exist, but maybe we shouldn’t celebrate them either.
Reaching for Enlightenment
Enlightenment is without a doubt the nicest looking Window Manager available. It’s leagues ahead of KDE, GNOME, Aqua, or Aero even though it’s only been in development for a couple of years. Be careful though, when you get it, make sure you get the DR17 version, and not the DR16 one. Why? The DR17 one is nice, sleek, and powerful. The DR16 one is uglier than Al Gore. I personally use it on an Ubuntu Hardy system. I use a combination of the Carbon14, Fireball, and Zerg themes on it. Too bad GNOME doesn’t integrate into it well. Here is a screen of my desktop:
And here are some videos of it:
On the Matter of Dreams…
Last night I had the most frightening dream of my life. I won’t go into details. One thing I will tell, though is that dreams reveal aspects of ourselves we may not like to see. I ran. Despite the fact that those I know and love were in trouble (in my dream) I ran. Humiliating isn’t it? Because our dreams are subconscious, we see the truth about ourselves in them. Often this truth is not what we want to believe. We want to believe that we are, at our cores, noble beings. Unfortunately this is not true. At our cores we are evil, malicious creatures bent on obtaining power at any cost. Many of the greatest men and women of our time only did what they did to dissuade themselves of this fact. Of course I will get lots of flames for this one.
‘Til Death
Recently a friend of mine had two of his friends die in a matter of days. His comment to me was “How do I know I’m not next?”. It wasn’t that they died suspiciously or anything, both were killed by accidents. But it does make you think about death. We never really like to think about it, let alone talk about it. But what happens to us when we die? Is there just nothing? Or is there something after we die? Do we get reincarnated like Buddhism and Hinduism say? Or do we only have one life?
I believe that there is something after death, and depending on the person, it may or may not be good. For Christians like myself, I believe heaven is there. For everyone else, hell. I am not sure about the Jews. Those who keep the Judaic faith will probably go to heaven, but I am not sure about Jewish atheists.
Feel free to flame me. But this is what I believe. If you ask a Muslim the same question, he we say a Muslim who keeps the five pillars of Islam will go to heaven, and everyone else to hell. So it is not just me or people who are Christians who believe this way, it is most of the world’s population.
Tags: death, heaven, hell, christianity, islam
Commonplace
It’s amazing how some companies have so overtaken the market that we automatically associate things with them and only them. This evening I was going to have soup for dinner. When I looked for a different brand of soup (an organic kind, my Mom and Sister are like that) she said we didn’t have any, just the “normal kind.” The same thing has happened everywhere. Microsoft is associated with computers, Apple with Portable Music, and Disney with movies to name a few. Often the underdogs get no attention unless they utterly fail, or, as Apple and Linux are coming close to doing, topple the leader. Maybe sometime we will become less dominated by one company (or person)
