Red Hat Linux 8.0 now available! Time to start hogging bandwidth, thrash those mirrors!

Many people may talk about Seven Samurai or Rashomon when they discuss Akira Kurosawa, but I have to say that we just saw Red Beard this weekend, and it was one of the most moving pieces of cinema I’ve ever seen, regardless of national origin. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is not opposed to subtitles. From what I can see, it was basically a tribute to goodness in mankind… a very nakedly emotional work, which explores the hope of which we only catch a glimpse in Rashomon.

Blowhard and wannabe “cultural commentator” Jan Herman is at it again at MSNBC. Err, Jan, isn’t Sin City actually Las Vegas? And a very nice suck-up job to Yoko Ono as well. Sure she’s in the right, but she doesn’t need you to tell her that, now does she?

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p>So maybe it’s my blogging mission to simply dog this guy around, I dunno. I do know that sycophants and pretentious faux aesthetes really bug me, and therefore I will gleefully deride this guy, who’s a perfect example of everything wrong with online news columnists. The way I see it, he’s one step up from The Onion’s “cultural commentator,” Jean Teasdale.

Time to get excited, Red Hat Linux 8.0 is almost here!

Looking for information on training opportunities? You should visit Red Hat’s training area for more information. I took my RHCE fast-track course (RH300) through Red Hat HQ in Durham, NC, and it was a fantastic course. They offer a more reasonable three-week curriculum (RH033, RH133, RH253) that will help anyone prepare their skills for the brutal RHCE exam. One word of caution: the RHCE exam is very difficult, and it is unlikely you will pass unless you have both classroom training (or book learning) and very significant, real-world, hands-on experience installing, configuring, trouble-shooting, and administering Linux systems.

I’ll have a new spec file for the mpich package up shortly. I’ve fixed a few problems with release 2. If you have an inkling on how to reference a variable area like /etc, please let me know. It seems that there are slight differences in how these share areas are used when you compile. I will try to fix that too for release 4.

Would someone please tell that blowhard idiot Jan Herman over at MSNBC to go find himself a real job? It seems like every other day brings a new retraction as he scrambles to recover from his failure to do any research — even given that he is supposed to be an Arts Journalist, which is about as meaningful as being an Architect Dancer, to paraphrase. Now he’s taking on the Beastie Boys, with an underwhelming and underinformed article about their trying to generously settle a frivolous lawsuit which has cost them a staggering amount of money, despite the fact that they are in the right, having followed all the legal requirements to use a sample for a song they released in 1992.

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p>Now, I’m not a huge Beastie Boys fan, but it’s obvious from anyone who’s actually read anything about this case that the lawsuit brought by James Newton is frivolous and without legal merit. He may be unhappy not being able to cash in on the untold millions in which he believes the B-Boys are rolling, but that doesn’t mean he has any legal standing to sue them. And the fact that Herman can’t do the requisite reading before posting some half-witted, knee-jerk criticism makes him twice as bad. And picking a fight with noted critic and nice guy Roger Ebert? Puh-LEEZE. Maybe Ted Casablanca can use a second chair over at E!, that seems more ol’ Jan’s speed.

This seems rather trivial compared to the last post, but life has to return to normal at some point. Today we finally got our MIA Sopranos S3 Disc 1 from Netflix. So tonight we’re a famiglia again! On Sunday night Eleya and I watched Blade II which I just bought on DVD… not because I thought it would be good, but because we had bought the first one since we missed it in the theater and thought it would be worth keeping. The new film actually had more action than its predecessor, but was less encumbered by plot. Or character development. Or significant story twists.

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p>Guillermo del Toro (who is off the mark he set in Cronos) did a barely satisfactory job, but needs to develop his shooting style if he intends to make less cerebral action films. I expected better camera work, and at times the action seems to lack punch (pun not intended) because the camera does not place us close enough to allow sympathy. For the price (under $20) I would call it somewhat worthwhile, simply to complement the first film we already own, and given the plentiful extras in the two-disc set. Two commentaries are included, one with del Toro and the other with writer David S. Goyer (who also wrote the first film) and lead Wesley Snipes, who I think is one of the coolest actors around (and why isn’t he in more and better films than this?). However, if you don’t like kung-fu superhero vampire flicks, I would say skip it.

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p>Mixed news today, the first piece being that my wife’s father died yesterday of a heart attack at 56. I expect the next few days will be full of phone calls and tears. In other, better news, my mother came home from the hospital tonight after some grueling neck surgery which appears to have been a complete success.

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p>I didn’t bother posting yesterday because I didn’t use the computer long enough; wanted time to go do other more important things. I hope everyone reading this took a moment yesterday to appreciate their lives, and the family and friends that populate them, and to let them know in some way how much you care for them. It’s only the human connections we have that make a difference in the world, make it better, so keep those connections strong and full of love.

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p>If you haven’t done it because of what yesterday means to this country, then you should do it because of what yesterday now means to my family. Life is short, spend it wisely.

Made a couple of changes to that spec file, to clean it up and properly link libmpi.so. Try another build with this if you had problems with the last one. (The previous link is fixed too.)