Administrative

So Much For That Theory

It’s not the power supply. I just swapped it with another computer’s (a fairly new, 450W one) and the same thing happened.

Next is a memory diagnostic.

[Update at 12:50 PM EDT]

Memtest86 found five errors in the first pass, on tests 6 and 7. The problems with the Athlon supposedly show up on test 5 or 8, so it’s probably not a speed problem. I’ll let it run another pass and see if it sees the same thing the second time through.

[Update at 1:17 PM]

Only one of the errors repeated, on test 6, but it did repeat.

[Update at 2 PM]

I let the machine reboot into Windows after the memory test, and it’s now been up for over half an hour, which is a record for the last couple days. I don’t know why running a memory test would have that effect, but the problem seems to have been (at least) mitigated, at least temporarily.

[Update at 8:40 PM EDT]

OK, the machines is now up for over six hours, with no glitches. I’m posting from it. Go figure.

No, thanks, I know this isn’t the end of the story.

[Friday morning update]

The machine is still alive and healthy this morning.

Science And Society

Save The Skeletons

John McCain is at it again. I’m frankly mystified at why he’s in such a rush to close off scientific inquiry. Unless perhaps he’s on the take from Indian casino money…

Maybe next year he’ll sponsor a new law making it illegal to criticize sanctimonious Senators. Given their track record with his other anti-speech legislation, the Supreme Court would probably have no problem with it.

[Update at 12:20 PM EDT]

For those who, like the commenter, are wondering what this is all about, here’s a good article describing the situation. And yes, a Google on “NAGPRA McCain” would provide many helpful links.

Media Criticism

Well Deserved

Congratulations to Claudia Rossett. In a just world she’d win a Pulitzer, but I guess that’s reserved for the Walter Durantys of the world.

It’s too bad that more journalists don’t go after stories like this, but I guess massive corruption at the UN so that a brutal tyrant can continue to starve children and bribe countries to keep him in power isn’t as important as Tom Delay’s travel expenses, or Hootie Johnson’s golf memberships.

Political Commentary

Second Advent On Hold?

What effect does the French and Dutch voting down the European constitution have on Hal Lindsey’s predictions?

The United States will not hold its present position of leadership in the western world; financially, the future leader will be Western Europe. Internal political chaos caused by student rebellion and Communist subversion will begin to erode the economy of our nation. Lack of moral principle by citizens and leaders will so weaken law and order that a state of anarchy will finally result. The military capability of the United States, though it is at present the most powerful in the world, has already been neutralized because no one has the courage to use it decisively. When the economy collapses so will the military.19

Something else that few have noted–while Chirac certainly lost big, another big loser is Valery Giscard D’estaing, who wrote the socialistic, micromanaging monstrosity that was voted down. I guess that’s what he gets for having a girl’s name.

Administrative

Now What?

Firefox has let me down. I haven’t previously used it that much in Linux, but I was forced to today with my current computer problems. I notice that on my Fedora box (Core 3), it’s started crashing with regularity. I had several instances of it running, some with multiple tabs, and they suddenly all disappeared. Now when I try to reopen it, sometimes it will open, and after I open up a couple tabs, and switch to another one, it gets blown away. The last time, it died even before it finished loading the first page.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem is? (If anyone’s wondering, I’m posting this from another Windows machine.)

[Update a few minutes later]

I decided to upgrade from 1.0 (which was a preview version that came with the Fedora install) to 1.04, which is the latest version. We’ll see if it’s more stable. So far, so good…

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!