Under a Gibbous Moon

I commute a bit over two hundred miles a week to work. While I know that is not a lot compared to some people, it does put me on the highway for five or six hours each week.

In that time I have noticed a that how rude or reckless a driver’s behavior is is roughly correlated to the car that they drive. While this listing is unscientific and based solely upon my own personal experiences, I believe that these observations can be borne out upon whatever highway you happen to frequent.

In approximate order of offensiveness:

1. BMW
2. Audi
3. Honda
4. Volkswagen
5. Toyota
6. Chevy
7. Jeep
8. Dodge
9. Cadillac
10. Ford

There is some wiggle room as to placement, particularly near the bottom of the list. The top of the list is pretty set with BMW being ahead by a mile. While most vehicle makes, the model makes a huge difference but almost every BMW driver I have interacted with on the road can be classified as a dick.

I think Ford hits the bottom of the list simply because there are not many of them sold out here and so there are fewer opportunities to be dicks.

Honda, Volkswagen, and Toyota are split evenly between their large SUVs (or only in Volkswagen’s case) and their compact cars (with all the teenagers who drive them thinking they are Vin Deisel from The Fast and the Furious).

Of course, within any given make, the more expensive the vehicle, the more likely they are to be a dick, i.e. the driver’s of the Corvette are more apt to being dicks than driver’s of the Malibu.

And finally, it seems that in order to qualify for purchasing an Escalade, you must be a dick.

This interesting graphic, by Megan Jaegerman, sums up techniques that New York City police officers use to justify probable cause for a weapons search (concealed carry being generally illegal in New York and permits nigh impossible to obtain).

Most of these are avoidable. Behavior modification, and of course knowing that you aren’t breaking the law, can help you resist the urge to keep your hand from drifting to the pistol. A properly fitting holster can help reduce the need to reposition the pistol, particularly if it is small. Of course, the part about the clothes is just common sense, don’t wear a winter coat in the blistering summer heat.

Click for full size image

Hat Tip: Boing Boing

I'll see you in your nightmares tonight, ta ta!

Hat Tip: Animals with Lightsabers

I have been using Ubuntu for a couple of years now and whenever a new version comes out (every six months) I take the plunge and get the latest beta version. I figure the least that I can do is help out by finding bugs and making sure everything gets ironed out by the time the final release date rolls around.

The impending (April 29th) release of Ubuntu 10.4 (codenamed Lucid Lynx) is no exception. For those interested, you can download a fresh iso here or you can upgrade your current install via:

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

Beta Disclaimer: as a beta, this version is not as stable as a full release and will have more bugs. I spent the first half hour or so after install just filling out bug reports.

It’ll open the upgrade manager and notify you of the new release and give you the option to install. It will take quite a while depending upon your connection and computer speed so be warned. Also, because of some semi-major component changes there is a bit of babysitting required for the package swap outs.

After this is all accomplished, Ubuntu will boot up. The first thing that I noticed is that my computer is now fabulous!

The picture came out terrible, but it is something like this. I have no idea why, but it is what it is. Boot time is supposed to have been reduced, but I didn’t really notice it so it must not have been too dramatic.

The desktop has changed and in some pretty dramatic ways. Aside from the new icon scheme the window dressing has changed in a very confusing manner.

Why they would suddenly decide to switch the window buttons to the opposite side is beyond me. It makes things difficult for people who already use Ubuntu and creates another hurdle for people who are trying to switch from Windows.

After Ubuntu’s jump to the cloud in Karmic with Ubuntu One, Lucid is going social with Ubuntu’s broadcast feature. Iti s kind of like an integrated Tweet Deck

It allows you to manage your instant messaging (via Empathy) as well as link into Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. Seems like an interesting idea but I’m not sure how well it will hold out in functionality against, say, Tweet Deck.

As you can see from the menu, Ubuntu One is now integrated into the OS and is no longer a separate program. This is nice because it streamlines the synchronizing of individual folders to the service as it is now an option in the context menu.

On the subjet of Ubuntu One, this is the first time I have gotten it to work since it was introduced. Which I’m rather happy about. I have it set to automatically back up my Documents and Pictures folder to the cloud. Should make catastrophic hard drive failure a little easier to stomach.

Graphics performance so far seems to be a little below Karmic. Of course I’m running the shitty Intel 940 chipset but the number of GPU crashes is disturbing.

So far it seems to be a very uninteresting update to Ubuntu. This is not surprising with it being a LTS (Long Term Support) release. They’re trying to avoid breaking anything but because of that they aren’t pushing the envelope either.

That being said, I am looking forward to the future beta releases and the final release on April 29th. If you’re using Ubuntu might as well give it a spin and if you’re not you should test drive a live CD, it’ll be worth your while.