Okay, I am pissed off. I am pissed off by the blinkered way in which many, many Linux users behave. How they fucking complain about issues they know nothing of. How they fucking diss their own fucking Operating System. How they steal my air by continuing to breath. Oh I am so pissed off. Where do I fucking begin?

Okay, firstly, you hear a common thread amonst many Linux idiots out there that the big problem with Linux (the "reason it isn't palatable to most computer users") is in installation of new software. They fucking bitch and they fucking moan because application X they want isn't packaged for distribution Y they use. "Oh, *sob*, mplayer isn't packaged for Debian!" .... "Oh, *sob*, the XMMS RPM for Mandrake wont install on my Fedora Core 2 install!" ....

They then bemoan the different packaging formats. Everyone should be using RPM! Everyone should be using DEB! Everyone should be emerging, slack-getting, sucking cock! "Oh, if there was only one package format, *sob*, everything would be so much easier!"

Around this point in their whine-fest these dipshits usually turn to the same tired old mantra of the idiotic:

.... wait for it ....

"Windows is soooo much better than Linux at this"

It is at this point that a vein in my head bursts.

Alright, morons, listen up! I'm only gonna state this once....

BULL-FUCKING-SHIT!

"B-but!", I hear you sputter, "it's so much easier to install programs in Windows... I just click on the icon and it installs!" To which I answer, SO? This means what, dandiprat? Sit your blouse-wearing ass back down and let me enlighten you.

When you download a Windows application from the web, it often comes as some sort of executable. You click on that executable, and through some magic that is beyond your feeble mind to comprehend, something gets installed! You get a shiny new icon on your desktop and can continue to rot your brain with Internet porn!

Well, the secret is that there is no Windows package or installer standard! There is no predefined anything that makes a Windows installer a fucking Windows installer! The Windows installer was something that someone had to create! Chances are they either created something custom on their own or used one of the more common Windows installers (like the one formerly from Nullsoft).

Furthermore, beyond some rudimentary garbage in the registry, the installer doesn't even need to do any sorts of checking for what else may be on the system. This means, the installer often has to be completely and totally self-fucking-contained!

Now for the benefit of those of you reading this that don't understand the implications of what that means, let me explain it to you in terms your cheese brain can understand. Let's imagine you have a roommate named "Stinky Pete":

"Good ol' Pete"

Now lets suppose that you had no bed in your domicile, and you charged Pete to run out and buy one. Pete dutifully runs to the local furniture store and buys one. He places it in your bedroom.

"Well, whadya know, Pete," you say one day, "I have no sheets for the bed. Could you go and get me some?"

Well, Pete, he can't remember too good, and, well, he is living with you, so he has to be a few canaries shy of a mine-disaster, so he can't remember that he already bought you a bed. In fact, he doesn't even think to check if you have a bed!

Instead, he runs out and buys sheets. He realizes that the sheets do you no good without a bed. So he buys another bed. He brings these things home, and places them in the guest bedroom.

"Drat, Pete," you say another day, "now it's all cold, so I need a blanket!"

So, Pete runs out and buys you one. Except now he realizes you need sheets too, and he can't remember buying you sheets, so he buys more sheets. Of course, those sheets require a bed, so he buys another bed. He brings these things back and places them in the laundry room.

You see what was happenning there? Pete never checks if you already have the basic prerequisites for whatever you ask him to get for you, so he just assumes he needs to bring everything. That is exactly what installing software under Windows is like. The application you need may have rather large library dependencies, but because there is no real mechanism to check if they are there or not, the installer just assumes the worse and installs them itself. Before you know it, your hard drive is full of redundant and duplicate libraries of different versions, legacies, and timelines.

The more astute readers in the bunch will immediately see the problems this causes. Those that can't see the problem of having the same thing duplicated over and over again in a fixed space should probably just go and shoot themselves in the head. If you can't keep up, you're of no use.

Okay, so what's the solution to this problem? Anyone? Anyone? That's fucking right, package management. Some package manager that sits there lording over all the applications on the operating system that checks for dependencies, checks for conflicts, and generally keeps things nice and neat without a fucking-hell lot of redundancy. This is something that Windows lacks, and this is something that the major Linux distributions have. So, to those of you who think that Windows is somehow doing something better than Linux here, vasoline your ass up and go present yourself to a 600-pound Western Lowland Gorilla of East Africa, because you need a good tear across the rectal muscles.

"B-but," I hear you begin to squeak out another stammer/whine, "What about all the package managers! It's so confusing! And when I want an application on my distro, and it's packaged for another distro, *sob* I just can't use it! We should have a universal format!"

We have a universal format, you ratbastard. It's fucking called "source code". Yes, that's right, all those little tar-balls that have silly and uncomprehensible strings of numbers and letters in them. That is the only true universal package.

"B-But, we can't expect my mother to install from source?"

Did I ever mention your mama, you honyoker? No, your fucking dimwitted mother isn't intended to have to install from source. If it isn't packaged for her by someone with a less blunt-skull, then she can't fucking use the software! She has to fucking just lump it. The rare occasion I am using a Windows machine I am dying for the "dd" command so I can fix the braindead OS from the partition level, but has anyone made a Windows port of it for me? NO!

The average newdiot Linux user expects the world from his fucking Operating System. He demands magic icons that will install everything under the sun whether it can be built on his platform or not. He wants every Open Source developer out there to be intimately aware of every possible OS and distribution so that they can blanket the world in its entirety! What? There's still five people using the AmigaOS? Well, if you don't make a native port and package then you must be some sort of bigot! Some jackasses in Kiwi just forked another RPM-based distro? Well you better fucking support it, or else!

"B-But, what about RPM installation problems?"

What about them? RPM has plenty of problems. Mr. Red Hat forked their own RPM years ago and the RPM.org guys blindly went trundling along as if nothing happened. Now we have like 4 or 5 RPM-based distros that are binary and package hierarchy incompatible with eachother. Why? All because RPM-folk are idiots, and no one stood up and said "HEY! FUCK YOU RED HAT! FORK RPM AND WE WILL JUST MAKE THE REST OF THE RPM DISTROS ALL THE MORE COMPATIBLE!"

Are RPM-folks Linux folks? Well, maybe. But are Linux folks necessarily RPM-folks? Hell no. Problems in the RPM community are highly irritating (believe me, I fucking know) but these aren't problems across the rest of the Linux, Free-Software, or Open Source bunch. This is an isolated little corner of people effectively still paying for the sins of the father, so to speak. Chances are they will work things out eventually, but they ain't there yet.

So, all you little whining wusses out there moaning and complaining about this or that in Linux, how about you do some more fucking research before opening your big mouths? Either know what the hell you are talking about, or sit the fuck down and let the big boys debate the real issues (like the hiddeous RPM forking, and the frightening fact that LSB made RPM its defacto standard).

In years past I have had a secret passion. I have, in spite of my better judgement, been someone who watched the Fox TV series "24". The concept behind the show appealed to me how it was always going to be 24 episodes, taking place in "real time" (with commercial breaks, after all, even terrorists need to raid the fridge), and dealing with Mr. Sutherland constantly in pain or screaming or some such nonesense. So, I was slightly looking forward to this season's 24. Tonight is its debut, and I started watching it. Big fucking mistake.

First of all, is anyone else getting a little tired of the whole "evil middle-eastern villan" bit yet? It seems that Hollywood is more than willing to play into the "We-Like-To-Fuck-Puppies-In-The-Ass" Party's, I mean Republican Party's hate-mongering stance on the Middle East, because every fucking thing I see these days has some evil "Middle Eastern Terrorist" plot. Just about the only thing good I can see coming from this is that at least Hollywood can give the "Criminal Black Man" plots a reprieve.

I mean, I don't know what White America's fear of all things non-White is about. Personally, all the Black, Yellow, Brown, Olive persons I've met have been no worse than all the Pasty, Doughy, White jackasses I've met in my life. As near as I can tell, the only difference between me and them is that when I get put on a Terror-watch list people actually care.

Okay, so racial hate-mongering aside, what else pissed me off about this new "24"? How about that whole fucking shit with the code in the Internet ready to take the whole Internet down. Oooo! Chaos! Without the Internet I wont be able to have my IQ sapped by Slashdot. Without the Internet I'll have to go outside for my porn. Without the Internet I'll have to go back to yelling my rants in the street instead of on this site. The horror!

But wait a minute? This nebulous "code" they speak of with the power to destroy the Internet... this must be some fucking magic code, I mean, it obviously runs on every fucking platform that powers the Internet. All those Linux boxen, BSD servers, Windows shit-cakes, Solaris ass-licks, SCO Unix salad-tossers, and Mac OS X dandiprats are at risk! This is one brilliant fucking code. Must be written in fucking Java.... DAMN YOU JONATHAN SCHWARTZ!! YOU AND YOUR CURSED CROSS-PLATFORM SOLUTIONS!

Wait a minute! If the entire Internet is at risk, then this code must even affect Contiki and VMS is at risk! Endian-independent! Diabolical!

Or maybe not so diabolical.... Maybe it's fucking bullshit and the producers of "24" decided to fire their technical advisors and say a resounding "Fuck You!" to those in their audience who might actually have a thought beyond just how fucking cute Elisha Cuthbert is.

Well fuck you to, producers of "24". I didn't make it 10 minutes into your shit-fest before I was throwing things at my TV. If I ever meet Kiefer in real life I'm going to punch that dipshit in his pudgy washup actor face. And every week to celebrate the airing of another episode of "24" I am going to turn off my TV and go do something productive like write death threats to the producers of "24". I would encourage you to do the same.