Pink Hello Kitty Laptop. (Thanks to Spastic Mutant for the link.)

Yesterday my Linux box crashed and I spent all evening trying to bring it back to life, with – as they say at NASA – partial success. Argh.

Later: In desperation, I tried ^C when the boot process says “/1 contains a file system with errors, check forced.” Interrupting the check of /1 (whatever that is) lets the boot proceed normally. A temporary solution, but better than nothing.

Linux: Not Ready for Prime Time.

Stephen Jay Gould is dead of cancer at sixty. Somehow he always seemed like a youngster to me (despite photographs) – perhaps because I never knew until now that he had two wives and two sons.

What Went Wrong, an article about last summer’s Intelligence failure. (Old link dead; two new links)

“If I were an average citizen, I’d be pissed at the whole American government,” says a senior official who has worked on counterterrorism.

I usually am anyway, of course, so I can’t tell the difference.

A little-appreciated advantage of the French Republican calendar: only three months have no R.

Fun with Fingerprint Readers in Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram (link from Monty Solomon)

2015: Newer link.

Accompanied my One True Ex today to see The Triumph of Love. Normally she loves pretty movies with no plot, e.g. Gosford Park, but Triumph has just enough plot to make the crap script stand out.