Applied Indifference

I was having an issue with up2date in FC4. Every package was greeted with the “is not signed with a GPG signature” message. Stumped, I turned to the trusty google.

Here’s what I found after aggregating information from about a dozen sites, none of which I remember. Attributions to those who already know they deserve it. I’m only putting this here as a public service.

Chances are that the keyring is hosed. Mine was apparently incomplete. Here’s how I fixed it:

as root:

gpg –no-default-keyring –keyring /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date-keyring.gpg –import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY
gpg –no-default-keyring –keyring /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date-keyring.gpg –import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora
gpg –no-default-keyring –keyring /etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date-keyring.gpg –import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-test

That worked for me. Don’t be a putz and delete the up2date-uuid file from /etc/sysconfig/rhn. I did that, and had to manually rebuild it.

Once I rebuilt the keyring, I was able to download all the updates, which are signed, and my system was happily able to process them.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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The birth of the surveillance state in America.

Bombs go off half a planet away, and what do we do? Toss privacy into the East River. Bloomberg thinks that this is “a little” intrusive. The policy will last “as long as necessary”, which is bureaucrat for “until Hell freezes over or the sun goes supernova, whichever comes first.”

Police Commissioner Kelly says that the searches will be done in “a reasonable way”. What, pray, is a reasonable way to violate the civil liberties of citizens?

They randomly stop cars to check for drunks, for seatbelt usage, even to search for bombs. Now they want to do the same to pedestrians in the subway. How long till they stop people on the streets?

There is, of course, only one correct answer. I do not consent to being searched.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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Congratulations, linguini-spined liberals! Thanks to your complete lack of responsiblity, you have allowed Hillary Clinton to decide for you (and me) what we can and cannot view in our own homes for our own entertainment.

I speak, of course, of none other than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Rockstar games was successfully bullied by Hillary and her minions into changing the rating from “M”, meaning “intended for mature audiences over the age of 17″ to “AO”, meaning “Adults Only, over the age of 18″. Effectively, AO means that no retailer will stock it, no on-line seller will sell it, and the game is, for all intents and purposes, banned from sale in the United States.

A hearty thank-you goes out to all those weenie parents that have effectively ceded responsibility for the raising of their children to the government. Your laziness and inability to control your offspring have cut another wide swath through freedom of expression in the name of easy parenting.

And before you go getting all pissy with me about the content of the game, remember this: your child could not have walked into any reputable retailer and purchased this game on their own, but they can view content at least as explicit as the “hot coffee” scenes on your television every afternoon over broadcast TV — watching the daily soap operas.

Your cowardice and willingess to cede power to the likes of Hillary has guaranteed that all artists are now subject to the approval of government for their works to be seen by the public. I expect that you’ll not complain when that new Jay-Z album isn’t available any more because of the graphical and explicit lyrical content, or when Usher finds his albums pulled off of shelves because his next video is a little too sexually risqué.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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CNN covers the latest anti-videogame hysteria.

Can I just get this over with?

LEAVE MY VIDEO GAMES THE FUCK ALONE!

What’s that you say? What about the children? Y’know what? I don’t GIVE A FUCKING FUCK ABOUT YOUR CHILDREN. If you cannot control what your children consume, then maybe you should consider giving them to a more responsible adult who will. If you have a 12 year old, and you bought them Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, then you ought to have your head checked to see if it’s still on straight. If your 15 year-old doesn’t understand that it’s not socially acceptable to pull someone out of their car, beat the shit out of them, run them over, and then go pick up a hooker and kill her, then I’ve got news for you: you are a miserable fucking failure as a parent.

My parents didn’t have to compete with Mortal Kombat when I was a kid, but I knew when I encountered it that you weren’t supposed to throw a spear on a rope at someone’s throat, shout “Come here!”, pull them back, and uppercut them into the ceiling. There are some things that good parenting instills in a child, a sense of right and wrong is one of them, and the ability to discern fantasy from reality is another.

Have I made myself clear enough yet? Keep your child-fetishist hands off my First Amendment. Or I just might have to go Tekken on your happy ass.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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For the life of me, I’ve never been able to understand the argument that somehow the U.S. support of Israel is to blame for Islamist anti-Americanism. Equally confusing is that most of the anti-Israel arguing comes from the U.S. (and indeed, international) left — the very same who champion “the little guy”.

Then it hit me - We are being told that we should choose our friends based upon who their enemies are, lest we annoy those enemies. This is the same logic that the pacifist sheep bleated during WWII. We shouldn’t support England because we might piss off Hitler. We shouldn’t help Europe, because it might provoke the USSR.

Fuck that. We choose our friends based on who they are and what they stand for. We can not, should not, and for the time DO not pick our friends (or indeed abandon them) based upon who hates them. Nor should we.

And so I shall continue to call anyone who calls for our abandonment of Israel a weakling. But at least I now know why I have always felt that way.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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It’s official. I hate computers. Really, I mean it.

Case in point: Pentium II box, Windows 98. Someone plugs a USB pen-drive into the USB port on the back (not knowing that it won’t work anyhow, because 98 needs drivers for such things), the machine freaks out, crashes, and won’t come up. Complains that it cannot load HIMEM.SYS because of something with the A20 line.

After 30 minutes of attempting to get a boot floppy, and trying to boot the machine, we notice that the keyboard isn’t working. It had come unplugged. Plugged it in, rebooted, machine comes up.

I know what you’re saying - “What the hell does the keyboard have to do with HIMEM.SYS?”

I’ll tell you a little story about Backward Compatibility…
[Read more →]

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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There’s at least one reason to love the Northeast. There are so many roads that are absolutely great for riding. Left at around 10 on Sunday morning (late, as usual because of me.)

Headed North through the northwest hills, the Berkshires (in MA), and the southernmost portion of the Green Mountains. The view from a motorcycle is quite different than from a car - you see EVERYTHING. I can tell you, those mountains are GREEN! Just an amazing wall of green.

Lunch in Bennington at a little diner. Good clam strips. Gassed up and headed west on Route 9.

VT 9 is a great ride. Twisty, generous hills, not a whole lot of traffic (but good passing zones for when you get a twit that insists on going too slow). Stopped at the lookout point. More bikes than cars there. It was a perfect day for riding, so there’s no surprise there. Onward to Brattleboro.

Brattleboro - hippies and construction. We walked around for a bit, decided to hit the road a little early. Route 5 South. Joe’s GPS kept insisting that we needed to take I-91. We saw signs for 5, and folllowed those. Never did touch 91. Lesson: don’t always trust the computer. In Mass, Route 5 and MA 10 run together for a while, then split off. MA 10 runs with 202 until you get to Connecticut, and then you run right into CT 10. Took 10 all the way back into Bristol.

Round trip, about 260 miles. Averaged 58 mpg.

Do that in your Prius.

Tags: Motorcycle by Brian Corbino
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These photos are from the West Haven fireworks display on 7/3/2005.

The whole album can be seen here. What, you thought I was gonna use my limited bandwidth for ALL THOSE?

I’ve cropped them to convenient desktop wallpaper sizes for your enjoyment.

(Yes, I realize that was last week. I’m lazy, so sue me!)

Tags: Cool Stuff by Brian Corbino
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I am sick to death of seeing and hearing this stupid statement. It may well be the stupidest grouping of three words in the English language. Think about what it says, for a minute:

violence begets violence

The base implication here is that absent violence, there is no violence. Circular reasoning, to say the least.

But in the land of the lefty peacenik, for whom all problems can be magically talked away, it means that if you resort to violence, then those that are against you will be violent right back.

But what do you do when the opening strike from your enemy is violence? Do you try to talk them out of it? We have seen throughout history what happens to those sort of people: they die, often badly (although I’m not certain there’s a good way to die, being shot in the face is probably not among the preferred ways to go).

I’ll tell you what you do: You respond with more violence. Of course, the argument that the lefties who so love this phrase will tell you that if you do that, you’ll only make them madder, and they’ll hit you harder, and it never ends until everyone is dead.

Bullshit.

Japan hit us on December 7, 1941. Was there an escalation of violence? Certainly. Until we reached a point where we had had enough. August 6, 1945. We hit Japan with a single strike so powerful that they finally realized that they could not prevail, and they capitulated.

There is one, and only one answer to the problem of Islamic Jihadism. We must hit them with such force that they are no longer willing to follow their twisted belief system into battle with us. Absent that, we must annihilate them and prevent their ideology from ever gaining power again. There is no non-violent way to resolve this issue.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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I just thought of something. I was particularly irked when I read Nancy Pelosi’s comments late last week regarding Kelo. I just figured out why I’m irked.

She has embraced the doctrine of judicial infallibility. The idea that there is such a thing as “settled law”, in as much as no judicial decision can or should ever be revisited. I find the premise abhorrent on its face.

If judicial infallibility were fact, then there would still be separate water fountains marked “Coloreds only”.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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