Who's Rumsfeld?

The day after the Democrats win congress back from the Republicans as a result of the democratic process in America, Marines serving in Iraq learn of the change in their chain of command, not through their own chain of command, but from the Iraqi citizens. From today's New York Times comes one of the best stories to come out of the war to date, by C. J. Chivers, "Marines Get the News from an Iraqi Host: Rumsfeld's Out. 'Who's Rumsfeld?'" This is a must read for insight into the lives of our soldiers serving in Iraq.

Today's Hot Topic:

The news is all about Britain's MI5 Website and Tony Blair's warning that the UK has become the training ground for Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. This seems a peculiar time for Cousin Tony to hit the airwaves preaching this fear laden message, coming as it does right on the heels of the American electorate demanding swift change in policy. Does Tony see a sinking ship in the offing?

"You can gain a lot of mileage off fear mongering, but eventually you wear your constituency out." — Anon.

Let's see, Tony Blair — cost the Brits billions in treasury, preached kill the enemy. John Lennon — bought his own guitar, along with his mates helped make the British treasury solvent (for which he was knighted), preached "give peace a chance." Hmmm …? Curiouser and curiouser, monsieur cat.

Technology:

Remember when the world held it's collective breath, waiting for the release of the latest Microsoft operating system? It's been over five years now since Redmund shipped WindowsXP, and now the buzz in the techie communittee is all about the latest operating system, Vista, which Microsoft insists it is about to release on the world.

Who cares?

The computer manufacturers have been taking some big hits of late. They need something to jump start sales of new hardware. As far as we can tell, there is little that would compel anyone to rush out and buy a new system just to have the latest version of the OS on it. Most of the talk in the bloggosphere has focused on the beta testers' reports that the OS does work, and nothing, so far as we can tell, about how it is superior to either XP or even 2000 for that matter. Sure, it has an improved built in firewall, but the average user is only interested in the firewall if it prevents him or her from installing a favorite game or downloading music or a movie or visiting YouTube.

We are told that the networking stack has been rebuilt, with support for IPv6, but you'd better be an IT pro to have any idea what that means. It'll come with IE7 pre-installed, but 90 percent of users haven't a clue what their Web browser is called. (The other 10 percent use FireFox anyway.)

Probably the most important function to the new OS for the average user will be the new backup tools, which includes the ability to recover previous versions of a file. But wait a minute, what's "back up"?

Polls on college campuses over the past few years indicate that if you ask the average college student which office program he or she is using the student is most likely to say, "Windows." If you ask which word processing program he is using, he will say, "Windows." If you ask what Web browser he is using, he will say, "Windows." If you ask which version of Windows he is using, he will say, "Huh?"

"Frankly, I've decided if it ain't broken that I should probably stop fiddling with it or I probably will break it." — Anon. computer user.