Then you try doing a search for Firefox using Live Search. The first non-sponsored link is for firefox dot org dot uk (no, I’m not even linking to it) which bizarrely has no download link for Firefox and has the tiny disclaimer that it has nothing to do with Mozilla or Google. Instead it offers the Google Pack for download.

The second link is ie7.com which at least has a large firefox icon which then links directly to the proper firefox download site.

In fact, nowhere on the list of results do you get what would be considered a “good” result. Is this just the usual Live Search naffness or is it just another case for the European Competition Commission?

I’m not sure how this happened but she now has the keys to the house, my car and - most crucially - the bike shed. How do they do that? Anyway, suffice to say there’s a few boxes about the place. I’m writing this from the Peterborough services on the A1. I’m not going home until I can swing a cat again.

Notice something about this page:

Slow hand claps all round. I’m probably taking it a bit far but if I was a tabloid journalist I would type:

“NHS treats Internet Explorer users only”

Time to get my clue-stick.

Update: I have to come clean. It turns out the online booking service is “not yet in service”. I don’t agree with web design based towards browsers rather than standards however.

Lastly, I don’t see any black helicopters but the NHS must have got a BIG discount for all those Windows licenses.

Dear Chris,

Re: 5 Days RYA Dayskipper Practical Course

24 August 2008 - 29 August 2008

Booking No. ##/#####

Thank you for your payment of £???.?? in respect of the above mentioned course. I confirm that a place has been reserved for you. Your balance of account now shows that you have paid in full. I note that you have not taken out our standard travel insurance policy. May I remind you that all deposits are non-refundable and we reserve the right to retain the total fee if you cancel within six weeks of the date your course commences.

Please report to our reception at Hamble Point Marina by 18.30 hours on 24 August 2008. A member of our staff will be waiting there to introduce you to your skipper and the other crew members. Joining instructions containing a list of what to bring and how to find us and a booking form; which should be completed and returned, can be downloaded from our website.

May I take this opportunity of thanking you for booking with the British Offshore Sailing School and to wish you an enjoyable course. I look forward to meeting you. In the meantime, if you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact us.

Bring it.

http://jwboyer.fedorapeople.org/pub/
Let the kernel installs begin.
Hopefully I didn’t fsck something up horridly. If I did, then I’ll fix
it for -rc2.
josh.

That’s right folks. Courtesy of Josh and the Fedora kernel team, you can now run the Linux kernel “sans patches”. This has benefits a-plenty but basically means that when kernel developers ask you to “run linus’s tree” or “test with mainline” - you can soon do just that with:

# yum install kernel-vanilla

Well, you’ll soon be able to hopefully. It’s not in the repo’s quite yet.
For the moment you’ll have to grab it from Josh’s fedorapeople space.

It also means you’re following upstream more closely and we all know why that is a good thing.

Max Spevack declared about a year ago that he wanted to make sure that Fedora was never again accused of being a beta for Red Hat. Unfortunately I’m not sure that it will ever entirely shake off this moniker. I’ve read various blog posts regarding poor Fedora 9 install experience (mine has been nothing but exemplary) however these tend towards the “My $PROPRIETARY_APP/DRIVER failed” which I really couldn’t care less about. Fedora quite rightly sticks to its guns on not kow-towing to these vendors.

I think Fedora still has an identity crisis - one that started when Fedora Legacy closed its doors. It does what I want but what does it want to be?

Anyway, I digress. I’ve read a lot of upgrade woes, relating to current distributions and their ability to complete and upgrade from a previous version. For anyone not understanding the process of upgrading an operating system I’ll say it once and only once.

It’s not simple, may well break and if you don’t feel confident doing it then don’t.

One reviewer even bemoaned the fact that a system once running FC5 didn’t handle the upgrade from F8 to F9 well. So here’s a clue to those who just want to use a computer and not struggle with post-upgrade installation issues.

Backup /home, /etc, & /var and do a fresh install. The time reconfiguring your O.S. will be greatly less than fixing broken dependencies, repositories, packages and other issues. You will then never need to post about how you don’t understand why a new distribution with new toolchain, kernel, package management system and desktop environment doesnt work out of the box.

I don’t like rap or hip-hop. Really. I especially don’t like the tendency of rap and hip-hop artists to talk about women as “bitches” and glorify gun use. A case in point being Jay-Z’s first Glastonbury song “99 Problems”, which contains the main refrain “99 problems but a bitch aint one.” In the video he dies at the end of the song in a hail of bullets, gets hassled by the police (yawn, yawn) and apparently also features taking part in dog-fighting. Classy stuff. What I really dislike more than anything else however is the way other music gets sampled and ripped-off. Rap and hip-hop lack originality and I stopped listening way back in the early 90’s when the recordings of Snoop Dogg breaking into the White House and shooting the president stopped being funny.

The festival itself was outstanding. The music was even more varied than in the past, highlights being Elbow, Crowded House, Eddie Grant & The Raconteurs. Practically zero waiting to leave at the end and none to get in. Weather was pretty much perfect as well. Great food, great company, great times. As the blog has been lacking a bit in photos recently, here is one to colour things up - two glasto legends.