Ah, the analogue cassette tape. Those little plastic beasties were the medium for countless adolescent epiphanies, and they were an endless source of frustration in my adult years in the music business. Holding one of these in my hand now, I see a fragile, tempermental and inefficient medium that's better off dead. My teenage years were a different story.

In high school, everyone traded tapes. Sure, vinyl was nice, but the tape had two distinct advantages: it was portable, and you could record on it. Both these factors lent it great power. I grew up in the Walkman generation, and though it's commonplace to see middle-aged types walking down the street with those white Apple buds in their ears these days, shutting out the world with headphones was something rebellious in my day.

I've had my eye on the Beryl project for some time now. Problem is, I'm a loyal Slackware user, and it's a royal pain in the rear getting it to work on the platform. Beryl isn't the only problem child, either. I've never been able to get Gcdmaster working, and the less said about DVD authoring, the better.

Not that I have any illusions; Slackware isn't designed to be easy, per se. Rather, it's meant to be robust, stable and above all, fast. In those respects, it soars. It's about the only distro I'd use to run a server, and if I need to run something that eats serious CPU cycles, it's the way to go. It's the closest distribution to actual Unix, and for an old-school geek like me, it fits like a glove.

The downside is that it takes alot of hacking and hand-editing to get certain things to work. For the most part, I'm fine with that. I like compiling programs from scratch, since it gives me a finely-grained element of control of the process, and that's what Slackware is all about.

Now for the finger-pointing that always follows tragedy.  Within hours after the Virginia Tech shootings, before anybody knew the shooter's identity, motives or methods, I was receiving emails from both sides of the political fence.

Of course, the Brady Group blames the "widespread availability and increased power" of modern arms for the massacre.  Never mind that the weapons used were 9mm and .22lr handguns, both of which have been in existence for a century, and neither of which would generally be the choice of someone intent on mass murder.  It's easier to blame an inanimate object than it is a system that saw Hui's mental problems and failed to act.  The senseless deaths of 33 people are just another political springboard for these people, and it's disgusting.

I fall on the side that believes the opposite view: had anyone on the scene been armed, this would have been prevented, or at least ameliorated.  Of course, Virginia state law bans firearms on university campuses, a measure that simply ensures a zone of unarmed victims for would-be shooters like Hui.

gud god, ppl. Isnt it jst EZer & faster 2 pik ^ d fone & caL ME, rather thN typing aL DIS n, & getin it wrng? It's certanlE EZer 4 d prsn on d rec'vN nd. DIS iz harder thN deciphering Morse code n Yiddish, & 2ice az anoyN.

DIS iz jst mo proof dat d avg prsn shud not b allowD 2 hav contak w modern teknoloG.

From now on, I'm telling people my phone can't get text messages.

Here's a translation tool for the gibberish above, if you need it (and I do).

This is the …

I started hearing about the Virginia Tech shooting at work today, almost immediately after it happened. A friend attended the school a few days later, and he was shell-shocked for most of the afternoon.

As it turns out, the campus is actually in a sleepy little town where "nothing interesting ever happened." So far, there's no word as to the identity of the shooter or his motive. What we do know is that he killed three people, then left and returned a few hours later to finish his rampage. Somebody want to tell me why they didn't shut down campus after the first round or killings?

In any case, political shrapnel is already flying. If you've read around this site, you know my opinions on gun control (I find it to be morally wrong, dangerous, and unconstitutional). The response from most folks on my side of the fence is to point out that guns are banned from university campuses, which resulted in a crowd of disarmed victims, while the gunman chose to ignore the law and hunt at will.

But let's stop for a second and take a breath. At least 33 innocent people are dead. This isn't the time for polemics or grandstanding. This is a time for grieving. Those are 33 fathers, mothers, husbands, wives and children.

Some people say ignorance is bliss. I think those people deserve to be killed with garden tools.

Ignorance is a cancer on our society, and it needs to be stamped out, not celebrated. There are those of us who think and act above the 5th-grade level, and we'd appreciate not feeling that we're a rare breed on the verge of extinction.