User Rating: 5 / 5
VirtualBox is a rather nice open source virtual machine platform. I use it to run test boxes on my Toshiba A300D. This guide (correct at the time of writing) is posted here so that next time I rebuild the trusty Tosh I have a set of instructions on getting my virtual environment back up and running.
You know what it's like when you install a virgin operating system, you need to spend a good hour tailoring it to your tastes. I've just installed Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) onto a Toshiba Satellite Pro A300D which means there is a lot of brown and a default desktop background that looks like a coffee stain. Here is my list of things to configure to get the look just right for my tastes....
...to change a light bulb?
Well, two would appear to be the count at the Daily Mail.
I like to keep an eye on current events although not from newspapers which are yesterdays technology bringing you yesterday's news. That's assuming they have any news at all with the likes of the Daily Mail printing constant crusades on modern life every time they can't think up a Princess Diana story.
Whether its computer games, the metric system or youth culture, you can bet the Daily Mail has a hysterical front page screaming headlines to their ageing and increasing senile religious right readership.
User Rating: 1 / 5
I'm of the opinion that we humans are tiny cogs in a big machine. We're born, we die and somewhere in between we make our contribution however big or small that may be.
I'm not going to pretend to know why we are here or if there is some higher power directing us. I don't have the answer and neither does any other mortal human being so when I say I don't do religion it's not that I *don't* believe in there being some kind of supreme being, I just don't believe in taking anyone else's word for it. After all, there are so many people with differing opinions who claim to have the full facts and yet none of them can prove anything so they forever fight ferociously amongst themselves about who is right.
It annoys me that a lot of these people think they have some kind of personal relationship with an 'almighty' when actually they're no more special than anyone else and are just as likely to be struck by lightning as me.
Now I don't deny the possibility of a 'creator' but I don't see why you have to fall into a camp of Creation vs. Evolution. While there is no direct evidence of the former, evolution can be seen in action throughout the natural world and pretending it's not happening is simply ignorant, but whose to say we weren't created by something in the beginning? Maybe my view is simplistic, but then so is taking the word of an ancient book literally. Use it as a moral compass and a guide to living if you wish, but not as a weapon of hatred against those who have different opinions.
Personally I think the Humanists may have the right idea. The British Humanist Association has launched an advertising campaign on London buses to try to get people to focus on their actual lifetime rather than some fabled afterlife. The BHA's slogan is:
"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life".
| Flippin' eck. The news said something about this being the coldest spell of weather since 2001. This may not be the coldest temperature on Earth and I'm sure conditions here are viewed as positively tropical for those who live further north, but having to de-ice my car TWICE this morning between 6:00 and 6:45AM and drive off with a -5 reading on the display did not put me in a good mood! |
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