RMMLite

Last night, I decided to upgrade Ubuntu to 11.4.  Long story short, that was a mistake.  An hour of back-tracking later, I had re-installed 10.4.  I plan on sticking with it for the foreseeable future.

11.4 is buggy, to put it mildly.  There's some conflict with the drivers for my Nvidia card, and the system locked hard several times.  I once enjoyed hand-configuring Slackware installations by hand, but my zeal for that faded years ago.

The Unity interface is laggy, cluttered, and counter-intuitive.  While I can understand why some might find the Gnome interface to be bland and utilitarian, the OSX-looking dock on the left side just eats valuable screen real estate.  Frankly, I can't tell what its exact purpose is.  In some ways, it acts like WindowMaker's dock, but it also serves as a redundant menu.

Speaking of menus, the original Gnome panel is also there, but most of its functionality has been removed.  It appears that it's meant to host the application bars for open windows, an approach that gets very confusing when multiple programs are running.  There appears to be no way to drag-and-drop programs to to either panel to be used as quick launchers.

Simple routines (like a "run application" dialogue) are replaced with an awkward search engine, and the whole thing feels pasted together.  I can't imagine this being easy for new users.

To make things worse, I lost my copy of RMMLite at some point during the backup process.  As it turns out, it's no longer supported.  That isn't such a surprise, considering that the Karma hasn't been manufactured for about six years.  Still, I thought it'd be easier to find a replacement copy.

I tracked a backup down on an old hard drive, and if you need it, here it is.  It's self-executing (./rmmlite.jar) under newer Java implementations.  On older ones, the syntax would be: java -jar rmmlite.jar.

Teabagging=Protected Speech

The Supreme Court has ruled [pdf] against the state of California in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, striking down AB 1179 as an unconstitutionally vague restriction on free speech.

The law at hand provides for a fine of $1000 to be levied against retailers who sell or rent violent video games to minors. Using a modified version of the Miller test, the state would determine which games contained the necessary quotient of violence to qualify.  The majority opinion of the Court states that California's law does not address a "compelling" interest, and thus does not meet strict scrutiny.

Rejecting the notion that depictions of violence in video games are more vivid or dangerous than those in literature, Justice Scalia writes:

Reading Dante is unquestionably more cultured and intellectually edifying than playing Mortal Kombat. But these cultural and intellectual differences are not constitutional ones. Crudely violent video games, tawdry TV shows, and cheap novels and magazines are no less forms of speech than The Divine Comedy, and restrictions upon them must survive strict scrutiny-a question to which we devote our attention in Part III, infra. Even if we can see in them "nothing of any possible value to society . . . , they are as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature [footnote, p. 9]

He goes on to point out that many great works of literature, such as Grimm's Fairy Tales, the Odyssey, and Dante's Inferno feature harrowing acts of violence.

Paul Helmke Retiring

There aren't many details yet, but Paul Helmke, current President of the Brady Campaign, has announced his retirement.  He served since 2006.

Bringing him on was a shrewd move for the Brady Campaign. Helmke was ostensibly a Republican. He presented himself as a moderate, and he was a master of spin who helped tailor their image accordingly.   Under Helmke, we started hearing phrases like "sensible gun laws" and "reasonable regulation" more often.

He vehemently opposed the Heller case, but immediately after the decision, he pronounced it a victory for their agenda.  He deftly turned a direct idealogical loss in the McDonald case into a set of talking points about what current and potential restrictions would or wouldn't pass constitutional muster.

Ten years ago, this guy could have been truly frightening, but his tenure came a bit too late.   The culture and the debate have changed, and even he couldn't render the Bradys' message palatable to the general public.  He was quite unique for his role, however, and it remains to be seen if they can find someone equivalent to replace him.

Bon Iver

Justin Vernon's first album under the Bon Iver moniker was the unlikely product of a ruined relationship, a battle with mononucleosis, and a self-imposed hermitage in the northern woods of Wisconsin.  It was a sparse, ramshackle record that was by turns confessional and willfully obscure.

Coming as something as a surprise, For Emma, Forever Ago was also quite successful.

The self-titled sophomore record replaces some of the intimacy with a grander cinematic sweep, but Vernon's artistic voice is still much the same.  In "Holocene," he insists that "I was not magnificent," just before the song kicks in and proves him quite wrong.  Magnificence on a humble scale is how Bon Iver operates, and the addition of a judiciously placed, and sometimes unorthodox, ensemble helps convey that.

Traver's Back in Town

Rumor has it that Kenneth Melson, acting director of the ATF, will be removed from office amid the political fallout from Project Gunrunner.  Apparently, Andrew Traver is flying to Washington for a meeting with Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole next week.

The administration tried to get Traver nominated to fill the position of Director late last year, but failed.  The office has been vacant since Truscott's resignation in 2006, and the Senate has been unwilling to confirm anyone as a replacement.

Installing Traver is a way of getting him close to the top without the pesky confirmation process, but it's also a tacit admission of guilt.  They wouldn't be throwing Melson out (and failing to promote from within) unless they felt that the information showing up in the Congressional hearings was something truly worth worrying about.

If that's the case, let's hope it doesn't end with one scapegoat.

Nationmaking in the 21st Century

The people of Iceland will be updating their constitution in the coming months.  What's interesting is how they're doing it:  by polling Facebook users.

Do let's make jokes now.

When they gained independence in 1944, Iceland pretty much copied and pasted the Danish constitution.  The name for the legislature was changed from Folketing to Althingi, and the office of the king was replaced with an elected president.  Almost everything else remained intact.

Their current constitution takes a few concepts from ours, but can be vague on certain matters of civil rights.  Section VI establishes a state church, and allowances are made for restrictions on liberty in the name of "public order," which is a bit vague.  Then there's this:

The law shall guarantee for everyone the necessary assistance in case of sickness, invalidity, infirmity by reason of old age, unemployment and similar circumstances.

Sound familiar?

Plaxico Burress and the Brady Campaign

Plaxico Burress caught the pass that won the Giants the 2007 Super Bowl.  Nine months later, he caught a bullet in the leg.  He'd been carrying a firearm in a New York nightclub, tucked into his pants with no holster.  The weapon dropped down his pants leg, and when he tried to catch it, he depressed the trigger.

He was later arrested and served two years in prison for illegally carrying a firearm.  Now he's out, and he's working for the Brady Campaign.  According to their press release,

[H]is direct, and painful, experience with a gun in a nightclub in 2008 had taught him a lot of lessons. It had taught him, ultimately, that guns make everything worse.

Of course, professional football players are experts on gun safety, just like they're experts on the humane treatment of animals.

Hoping to slow their decline into utter irrelevancy, the Brady Campaign will grab at whatever straw they can.  Adding a celebrity like Burress to the roster doesn't really help, though.  It would be one thing if he was the victim of an act of violence, but Burress is an idiot who shot himself in the leg.  He's not a tragic example; he's a buffoon and a laughingstock.

Hey, whatever works, guys.

Salt in the Wound

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled [pdf] that the NRA is eligible for reimbursement of attorneys' fees from Chicago and Oak Park.  That makes my day.

You may recall that the NRA had a case running in parallel to McDonald v. Chicago, and though they lost, they were later vindicated by Alan Gura's victory in the Supreme Court.  The ever-quotable Frank Easterbrook writes:

This litigation was over except for the entry of an injunction by the district court. Chicago and Oak Park capitulated, which made the exercise unnecessary. By the time defendants bowed to the inevitable, plaintiffs had in hand a judgment of the Supreme Court that gave them everything they needed. If a favorable decision of the Supreme Court does not count as “the necessary judicial imprimatur” on the plaintiffs’ position (Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 605), what would?

Now, if Alan Gura could start getting his fees back, we'd be somewhat square.