Yes to Tariffs

I do support the idea of tariffs to protect American jobs. Too much is made in China, which seeks to conquer the world, beginning with its backyard. China will soon eclipse the U.S. in economic might, and then the military will follow. We need to add twenty to fifty per cent to the cost of goods manufactured overseas, to encourage companies to manufacture goods in the U.S. If this results in a trade war, then the U.S. will win that war, because it is the largest consumer economy in the world at this time. Another idea would be to include all of North and South America in a development zone that is free trade, and then place a tariff on goods outside of the New World. Just about everything can be produced in the New World. We need to take an interest in our neighbors and friends, rather than enriching future military adversaries like Russia, Iran and China.

The idea that one day, America will be able to compete with China on jobs is ludicrous. China has zero protections for workers and the environment. They will always be cheaper. Either you want an America where your child will grow up to flip burgers at the Waffle Goon, or else you want an America where future generations can get decent jobs that pay well enough to enjoy a good quality of life. It seems pretty simple to me. The only people that benefit from so-called "free trade" are the stockholders in the big corporations. Workers don't see any benefits.

I do realize that slapping tariffs on China would result in a drastic increase in prices for all computer parts and all kinds of other goods. My purchasing power would go down, in the short term. There would be a long period of pain, maybe even a whole lifetime. That would be a price I am willing to pay. One has to think, not just about today, but about fifty years from now. What will America be like? People just don't think about anything other than themselves and today. That is why America is in the situation it is in, where good jobs are hard to find.

Hadrian

This prediction concerns not the future, but what remains unknown in the past. After watching a BBC documentary of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, I have the uneasy feeling that he slew his beloved Antinuous. The Emperor Hadrian's ego was out-sized and improper, smacking of hubris. His innumerable statues and monuments give testimony that their patron valued himself too highly. Towards life's end, he became increasingly paranoid. And he was terrible toward the Jews, making their rebellion inevitable. I believe he certainly had to have been capable of fratricide. Perhaps he was one of the so-called good emperors, if "good" means nothing more than effective. He was not a very good man, though. What emperor was?

Calling the 2016 Election

It is obvious Hillary Clinton will be the next President. I find it so obvious that I don't even feel the need to explain. I'm far from alone in seeing this. Probably everyone with a functioning brain sees the same outcome.

I prefer Bernie Sanders, but perhaps he is too old and obscure. He does not enjoy name recognition, unlike Clinton. I don't think Bernie can beat Clinton at this time. Young voters prefer Bernie, but young people are apathetic and don't tend to vote. I see grayhairs when I go to the polls. Young people stay at home playing video games or whatever. That is why the country is in the jam it is in.

I will vote for Hillary Clinton, because the alternative, Trump, would be unpleasant. I think Trump may even win some televised debates, because he's a seasoned TV personality, and what seems to matter is style rather than substance. Trump has a more flamboyant style than Hillary Clinton. Even if Trump wins all the debates, he will not win the election. I will be surprised if he carries the white vote.

Guns WIll Be Obsolete

By 2100, guns will be obsolete, because the purpose of guns, slaying humans, will no longer serve a purpose.

Humans will cease to inhabit their corporeal forms. They will, instead, exist in data. We are just a series of numbers, like anything else. By digitizing our personalities, we can exist eternally and endlessly replicate through cloning. Thus, slaying a single clone will not have quite the effect that gun violence does today. Not only will guns be obsolete, but all forms of violence, which will be diminished in status from a great evil to an annoying rudeness. Once one body dies, another takes its place.

The great question is who will be cloned, and what sorts of people will they be? If history is any guide, they will probably be a better sort of people.

The physical body is such an obvious horror in so many ways that people will eagerly embrace their liberation from its cruel tyranny. In virtual reality, one can exist in a perfect heaven of one's own construction. This may indeed offer the solution to overpopulation. Given a choice, most people would choose to die immediately, if guaranteed eternal life in virtual reality, because millions of years in virtual Heaven is better than a short span of years in a form subject to pain and suffering. There only need be a few physical avatars tending to the needs of the computer system, ensuring continuous power and smooth operation.

America's Unlikely Defenders

The most devout guardians of our homeland are North Korea and Iran, or had better be, regardless of their bellicose rhetoric to the contrary, because were we ever attacked by nuclear arms, then there is no question but that N. Korea and Iran would cease to be inhabited by human beings within twenty-four hours, and that would be right, and the American public would approve of that response. The idiots heading those incompetent dictatorships may delude themselves all they want, but the instinct for self-preservation may yet stay their hand, as anyone can guess what lies in store for them in the final analysis.

When dealing with such regimes, they are guilty until proven innocent beyond any shadow of a doubt. And even if they are not guilty of a particular crime, they are already proven guilty of other crimes and deserve what they get.

Sucks To Be Poor

I was not too pleased to read about Microsoft replacing security guards with robots. They probably spent a princely sum on the robots, all for the sake of giving some poor guys making $15 an hour the pink slip.

At least the idle aristocrats of Downton Abbey had enough of a conscience to employ the lower classes and think about their welfare. There is something to be said for sharing the wealth and bringing employment to a community, and yes, Microsoft does "owe" the community in which it does business.

It has always sucked to be poor, perhaps more so before the advent of Obamacare, but in the future, all bets are off. Computers and robots keep getting smarter, whereas our pace of evolution is at a standstill according to most authorities. It's not our fault that we can't replace the "chip" inside our brains with a newer and faster "chip". Biological science has not yet advanced to the stage where we can design our offspring or ourselves.

I think that as more people become unemployed and unemployable due to the replacement of humans with computers, there will be a larger group of hungry, poor, discontented people, eager for any type of change, including war. Of course nothing will be done to stop global warming, and the coming scarcity of resources such as drinking water, food and electricity will be a huge pressure upon the lower classes.

 The writing on the wall is evident in the U.S. Our vast army of law enforcement officers, already unprecedented in its numbers and resources, will expand and transform, under Republican leadership and guidance, into a kind of Schutzstaffel, eliminating "undesirables," that is, the lower class, and protecting the property of the rich, more or less as it does now. The rich today murder and go free, whereas the poor are jailed and occasionally killed for the slightest infraction. Ferguson could be a harbinger of things to come. Perhaps in the final analysis, it is a good thing that the U.S. has such liberal gun laws, because the Schutzstaffel of the future will not hold all the cards.

I really hope that sanity prevails. I also hope that our scientists develop a way to improve the human animal. Throughout history, science has proven more of a beneficial influence on the human condition and especially on the lower classes than any politicians. Just learning how to prevent the spread of common diseases by washing hands on a regular basis was a huge step forward in medical science and of greater value than anything any politician ever did. The nurses and doctors that insisted upon hand-washing were great heroes of civilization.

I hope that the right-wingers that America elected into office don't drag the country down into war, famine, disease and misery. Just because there is something that makes people happy and more productive does not mean that you have to destroy it. Republicans want to end Obamacare, immigration liberalization and even the minimum wage, and they don't seem to care about Social Security either. What is so bad about paying a worker $11 an hour instead of $7.25 an hour? It seems to me that right-wingers want to pull the wings off butterflies just for the sake of doing it. And then there are some people that would rather pay $1 million for a damn robot than $30,000 a year for a human being to work a job. What is the human supposed to do? Join Islamic jihad?

The Daily Show is Righteous

The Daily Show is probably the most moral television that has ever existed. Today I watched an episode where the show actually took one of its own advertisers to task. I thought to myself, "Only the Daily Show would do that. In a hundred years, only the Daily Show." It really is the one television show that is worth watching above all others. That single show is better than all the content of all the other channels, combined, that is, if one has a sense of humor, morality, and cares about this country at all. I always get the sense that the Daily Show will be one of the very few television shows still watched a thousand years from now. There will be, as there is now, great interest in it.

Climate Change

Now that gay marriage is all but certain to be the law of the land, climate change will be the next huge political issue in the U.S., and as usual, Republicans are on the wrong side of it. The cost to reduce carbon emissions is miniscule, laughable really, but Republicans act like doing anything will destroy the economy. Just like gay marriage destroyed marriage, huh? D'oh! And I suppose legalized marijuana will end the civilized world as we know it. The hysteria just goes on and on. Why do people find it so difficult to think?

More News from Putridity

Putin's Putridity, Russia, having invaded and conquered a neighboring country without any cause but greed, is increasingly flying bombers near Western cities. I think there is an increased potential that the West may have to nuke Russia at some point, with Putin or his cohorts in charge. The world would not much miss a region that brought us only communist dictatorship, war, vodka, Russian Orthodoxy, bad manners, bad art, and bad music.

I Credit the Pope for Brains

The Catholic Church certainly seems to be acting in its own self-interest to stem the bleeding of numbers. Yes, Pope Francis, play nice with the gays and quit the quibbles over contraception. Then the Church might, might just, be able to stem the tide a little bit.

Once a soul has been disenchanted with the Church, pretty much they are free forever, shod of religion altogether, in my experience. There was a long, long horrific period when many churches pretty much declared themselves the enemies of gays, for no scriptural, moral or rational reason, but for pure prejudice and ignorance, which was stupid. Result? A considerable percentage of gays are atheists, agnostics or at least non-traditional in their spiritual beliefs. Thank you for that. That was a gift, the liberation of many minds, including my own. Who knows, I might be tithing otherwise. Now that the Church is getting intelligent for a change, the atheists are going to have to step up their game. It used to be that atheists had to do nothing to make converts. The Church made converts to atheism on its own.

In the future, we will see, but my money is still on the atheists and the spiritualists. The Church always seems a generation behind the times, doing the right thing only when it doesn't matter anymore and their position has already become irrelevant.

The Goddess just laughs at all of this drama.

China's Hired Thugs

More news from Hong Kong. I really don't see how anyone can defend China. Whatever it was before, a communist dictatorship evolving into a capitalist dictatorship, right now it's a kleptocracy, with crooks holding the power and unwilling to share any with the people.

A country with no morality at all and no legitimate legal system and no free press and no uncensored Internet is not the country I want to download software from. For that matter, I don't think our Western business leaders are wise to send all our jobs over to China. They may make a little money in the short-term but in the long-term they or their descendents will regret that fateful decision.

Lesson of Hong Kong

China is reneging on its promise to let Hong Kong be free for fifty years only because its leaders have calculated with cold political calculus that they can defy and break their promise to the West and get away with it due to the economic interdependency between the West and China and the new strength of China. This is worth noting. In the future, expect China to break all promises, whenever and wherever it can, because it is absolute evil aligned with the darkness. If annihilating all Americans would produce a profit and no consequences, then the Chinese would do so. They do not know the concept of morality and misinterpret it as weakness, as evil-doers always do. I foresee that China will take Taiwan, and risk the next world war when they also muscle into neighboring countries, such as Japan and the two Koreas. First will come demands for concession, which will only increase, and then will come land grabs, because the leadership thirsts for power, for domination. Perhaps America will be diminished then and incapable of being the white knight any longer, because our strength is every year squandered stomping ants and anthills to no purpose, squandered on pointless exercises in pride and vanity to remind our greying population of past glories in WW2. But the glory days are gone, and debts accumulate, and not much is made in the U.S.A. anymore, and the U.S. is dumbing down and wallowing in corruption and chronic mismanagement that only gets worse year after year with no end in sight. There must some day arise a new champion in the West, a land with better governance--where will that be?

Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart is the funniest man alive. . . and his Daily Show will be watched even a thousand years from now for insight into our time. Of course, he is backed up by a phenomenal team, brilliant writers who furnish him with killer material by research, insight and wit. It is a mistake to overlook these silent partners, but I do not know their names. Yet if I did, then we would overlook the people who support and nourish those people, such as their families and friends, and so on in a neverending chain that eventually encompasses the whole world. Jon is golden product of our age, and we are proud to have produced him. He is creating classic television that will never die.

No More Passwords

In the not-so-distant future, people will wear rings containing a universal password--in a matter of speaking--for all their personal online services and data. This ring will transmit via direct physical contact to a computer or other device that has been granted access to that individual ring. Devices that have not been granted access will not be able to access the ring. The ring will allow browsing sites without logging in and with near-perfect security. Mobile phones and computers owned by the user will be inoperable and in lockdown mode, broadcasting their GPS location to their owner, should anyone other than the owner attempt to access them.

I say the ring contains only a password "in a matter of speaking," because passwords are insecure by their very nature, subject to brute-force attacks. People of the future will look at passwords as a primitive stepping stone to the next generation, which is algorithm-based. An algorithm encoded within a ring can decrypt any encrypted data owned by the user and log in to any web site instantly. This method of encryption cannot be defeated, because the encrypted data is not sequential and is not key-based, but deciphered using a complicated matrix-based algorithm which varies for each individual and which also varies depending upon the time of day and time of year, body temperature, and perhaps some other environmental factors as yet to be determined. To decode such data is impossible, regardless of available resources. . .

The ring functions as a unique key that can be stolen or copied, perhaps, but needs physical possession. Thus, hackers without access to the ring are without any luck at all. Theft will consist of old-fashioned robbery or burglary to obtain the ring. But a ring is relatively easy to secure, certainly easier than many alternatives such as passwords. If one's person is safe, then one's data is safe. This is both a natural and very simple method of safeguarding data, requiring little more vigilance than people ordinarily exercise in safeguarding precious gold and platinum rings. However, there will have to be a way for law enforcement to inactivate stolen rings following a complaint of theft and DNA confirmation that the real owner is who he says he is.

Talking Cat

I used to wonder why my cat made odd, uncatlike utterances sometimes. When pressed by boredom, aggravated by the overwhelming desire to go outside, which is a constant craving, he will make a long, strange howling sound. I used to worry he was suffering from a physical ailment or temporary insanity. Today, I had the inspiration that he is trying to talk. It would be only natural to imitate a human practice that he has observed every day of his life and which brings us humans so many obvious benefits. We are able to communicate and cooperate effectively due to talking, and the cat is intelligent enough to grasp that and to desire this ability for himself. If he could talk, he could express his desires and perhaps even persuade us to do his bidding. He has not enough brain development to manage any words. I have never recognized any syllables.

I wish that such a cat could be bred through successive generations for hundreds of years in a nurturing environment that encouraged the development of intellectual gifts. It would be interesting to observe the end result. Maybe Heinlein's talking cat is not such a far-fetched notion after all.

Where is the U.S. Going?

The problem with America is that too many people place money before country. They sell out. In order to save money, they send jobs overseas or import workers from other countries to do jobs Americans could do. Everywhere one reads that tech companies need to hire skilled immigrants, but this is a lie. There is more than enough indigenous talent to go around. Companies just don't want to pay living wages. They want to pay $1 an hour for tech support.

The reality is that the rich are only concerned about getting richer. The politicians do not care about any of the problems impacting workers. All they care about is assisting their cronies to sell bullets and bombs. That is the only real reason we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, in order to enrich the cronies of politicians. All of the other reasons given are transparent lies. I read recently that the U.S. spends $4 billion a month to protect Afghanistan, where the economy generates $1 billion a month. That is clear and obvious stupidity, unless one's cronies are getting rich from the protection racket. The whole situation regarding foreign policy just seems stupid and designed to benefit a few rich cronies at the top at the expense of the rest of the country.

The politicians work tirelessly to make the country worse off than it was before, creating new problems rather than solving old ones. They start new wars, continue old ones, waste money, and create new problems for the workers.

At least Obama did something. He won health care for the workers, but in order to pass something through the stodgy, right-wing Congress, a Congress of millionaires, many compromises had to made. The result is still better than the old system, but it's not perfect. I give Obama credit for actually doing something positive to help working-class people, whereas his predecessor Bush did nothing except make the country poorer. There are a lot of things Obama could have done, had the Congress worked with him instead of against him. Any perceived shortcomings are the fault of the Republicans, who sabotage anything that might help workers.

I have come to believe that Republicans hate workers even more than they hate gays and racial minorities. Any issue that touches on the lives of working people, the Republicans are predictable. They don't even need to think about it. Anything that might harm, impoverish, hinder, or complicate the lives of workers, Republicans support 100%. All the changes made by Republicans tend to make workers poorer and sicker. I cannot think of a single thing the Republicans have ever done to help workers, but I can think of about a dozen things the Republicans have done to harm workers.

Foreign policy and national security are issues where President Obama has proven naive and unaware. He does not seem to grasp the long-term ramifications of his foreign policy decisions. I think it is really horrible to bribe the hostile state of Pakistan with billions of dollars so that we can bomb their country. I think it is such a bad decision that it may in fact be a symptom of collective insanity, of schizophrenia.

Obama is just as bad as Bush was with his national security dementia. But perhaps the problem is systemic. Obama inherited a massive national security complex, and it wants to be used. The machines want to be used, and all the people who think like machines also want to be used. To not use them has political costs. Newspaper editors characterize Obama as "ineffective" and "vacillating" because he does not bomb Syria into the Stone Age. But Obama has cooperated with the machine in most respects. Perhaps Obama is not courageous enough to challenge long-held assumptions and existing political dogma, such as the war against marijuana. I do not think we have had a really courageous, dynamic and interesting President in my lifetime. We have had men who follow. They just go along with whatever is going on when they inherit the office. They are not thinkers.

I foresee the swift decline of this country's economic, educational, democratic and social measures. Already we see that the rights we once held dear are being eliminated one by one. This country is less free with every passing year. The state is getting more paranoid and more effective at using technology to spy on citizens.  Anyone can be put in prison for life at the touch of a button. If someone is inconvenient, they can be quite easily framed for any number of sex or drug offences. The apparatus to make this happen is already in place. It may even have been used already. No one knows, because there aren't many investigative journalists around anymore. Very few changes would be required to change the U.S. into a country resembling, say, Russia or China.

There will be a massive lower class, people entrenched in poverty, and a tiny upper class. Crime, drug use, and political instability will become much more common. Education will decline as people realize that it has little or no economic value. A college degree means nothing in the U.S. It is just a piece of paper that represents debt.

DoomsDay Project

I concur with many others that there needs to be a backup made of all the world's knowledge, for the potential event, which is well within the realm of possibility, that civilization as we know it is destroyed. The backup must be in imperishable format, which excludes magnetic copies. Perhaps a certain hardy breed of optical discs could be used, but the knowledge regarding how to build machines that will read and power these discs must obviously be stored in a different format, perhaps paper, parchment or papyrus. We must include a Rosetta Stone consisting of images and their verbal equivalents, because it is not certain that language will remain unchanged. The security of this backup is the most important aspect, because if it is discovered by primitive people of no understanding, it will all be wasted upon them. The archive must be sealed using a method that is impenetrable except by technological means that reflect a Renaissance-era civilization, and it must also be hidden, yet detectable by advanced deduction, for instance, recognizing artificial (man-made) features in an environment. Redundancy is essential too, because some backup locations may be compromised by primitives or obscured by the shifting landmasses of the planet. A thousand airtight and waterproof capsules should be dispersed over the globe, some underwater, some in the desert, some in the tundra, and everywhere in between.

A further refinement to this idea would be to lock and entrap the capsule, requiring the answer to a riddle for access. If an incorrect answer is attempted, the contents of the capsule can be destroyed using acid or perhaps a different kind of chemical reaction. The riddle will require empathy in order to solve. This would offer the capsule some protection against being discovered and misused by evil-doers. Unfortunately, history has a way of repeating itself, and a capsule with a lot of technological knowledge in it is not necessarily a good idea. What the human race needs more than technology is philosophy. Technology brings many horrors into the world and empowers the dark, powerful, tyrannical souls to dominate others. Perhaps the capsule should indeed contain nothing of technology and only philosophy, to point out the ways to obtain learning merely, without giving explicit instructions on how to build this and that. The great frailty in the human race is that a human mind can be very apt at technology and care nothing at all for philosophy. It is better that philosophers hold the keys to technology rather than tyrants and would-be tyrants, as is the case in many countries today.

The NSA Spying Scandal

Each new revelation of NSA spying on people all over the world is a reminder of the type of people who have power in Washington, D.C. The warlords have great power of technology at their disposal, due to plundering the taxpayers and buying enormous amounts of hardware and hiring brilliant technology workers. But the warlords lack morality. They only care about their narrow, selfish interests. The ones that wrap themselves in the cloth of Jesus employ the ancient ruse of piety that deceives many people into thinking that they do have a moral compass, when they don't. At least one of their brilliant technology workers demonstrated that he possessed what they lack, and they hate him for it. Their wickedness exposed, they are wrathful, because they realize that their pretences have less power to persuade.

Great technology paired with low morality is the dilemma of the modern age. The moral aspect of the human species has not really evolved much since the bad old days. I think that the greatest surprise for people of my generation is that nuclear weapons were not used since the end of WW2. I would not rule out nuclear war, however. Nations do not always intend to go to war. War just happens. It is indeed possible to have a nuclear war by accident. I think that over time, if the nations of the world do not become moral, but remain as they are, then one day the world will win the lottery ticket for nuclear war.

In regard to spying, the United States has set a bad moral example for the other world powers. American power fades due to our leaders, the mighty warlords, who think constant warfare is the only necessity and that everything else can be ignored, delayed or mishandled. They have botched everything but a handful of overseas conflicts that benefited America very little or not at all. Out of arrogance, American leaders refused to draw any lesson from the Viet Nam conflict. They refused to learn from history. They believe that knowledge is unimportant, suitable only for academics, except where technology is concerned, because technology has direct military applications, and through the military, they think they can force their will on others.

While American power wanes, the power of China increases. A day will arrive, and I think it is not far away, when China, not America, calls the shots, both figurative and literal. Will China be moral? No, China will play "follow the leader" and do as we did and much, much worse. I do not look for China to set itself above us and be a shining example of morality, because China opts for whatever is expedient, never what is right, and their leaders are outright thieves, tyrants and hypocrites. So China will do much worse. Only fear holds China in check for now, but fear is on the wane in direct correlation with U.S. power. And Russia will do what it has always done, proving that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Fear

I occasionally worry about potentialities like heart disease and stroke. I think fear is something that comes and goes as life progresses. I remember when I was going to school, there was much fear, because of schoolyard bullies. In the last two years of high school, there was no fear. In college, I was fearless. The only thing to fear were things that were relatively easy to prevent, such as car accidents or AIDS. I didn't drink and drive, and appreciated the virtues of condoms and abstinence, the two methods to prevent the spread of AIDS. As one gets older, one contracts various medical conditions like obesity or arthritis or lower back pain that, while minor, are a reminder of the greater problems that lie ahead. Looking ahead, there is certainly a lot to be afraid of, such as senility, stroke, heart disease, loss of brain function, incontinence, and the list goes on.

I think what I fear most is an undignified end. The best death is instantaneous, without long, lingering pain and suffering, and planned, rather than abrupt. The problem with untimely death is that things may be left undone that should have been done, like setting a will in order or doing things for people. I remember helping others care for an elderly, very ill lady about a year ago. She expressed great fear. I think she was afraid of losing control, either of body or of mind or both, and of death, which represents loss of control and loss of identity. I think that she had been strong once. It is difficult to maintain a philosophical pose when death is so near, in the room so to speak, hovering over one's shoulder. I think it is only natural to feel fear. And there is nothing wrong with fear either. Fear has a purpose, too. Fear often keeps us alive by restraining our actions.

Reading biographies of people can be a comfort, because there is the observation that others, even the great and the powerful, and geniuses with fantastic powers of intellect, have passed through the same transitions brought on by age. I have often thought that Shakespeare was shortchanged in the longevity department. Add Chopin and Mozart to that list. It seems that in our rapidly progressing technological world, each generation is luckier than the previous one, because advances in medicine continue to expand and improve the human condition. I wonder, though, whether society will be able to maintain this progress in the face of daunting challenges, such as climate change and economic instability. I don't feel like the Republicans in Congress have any answers. They seem to create new problems rather than solving old ones. It seems to me that there are not enough jobs anymore, due to the automation of so many tasks that used to provide employment to millions. Of course the Republicans don't care about that and wouldn't know what to do about it even if they did care. Education will decline, crime will increase, and politics should turn nastier. The idle and impoverished millions around the world will become fodder for revolutionary sentiment at some point or another, if history offers any guidance in the matter. Whether social unrest takes on a right-wing or left-wing banner is hardly important. I hope for continued stability at least during my lifetime and in my region of the world.

First Impressions of SolydK, Manjaro, and PCLinuxOS

Canonical's decision to embrace Mir and abandon X and Wayland has consequences for Ubuntu derivatives such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Linux Mint. Also, I've noticed that Canonical's development has been focused on features that mean nothing to me, such as the Unity desktop. I feel that Shuttleworth has a vision for my desktop that differs dramatically from my own. This means Ubuntu and I must part ways at some point in the future. For that reason, I've been exploring other distros in the hopes of finding one that can replace the various Ubuntu derivatives I have been using.

I evaluated Open Suse 12.3 several months ago, but Open Suse still hasn't figured out intuitive printing and a lot of other basics, which is curious. I have the impression that Open Suse doesn't really want new users. Open Suse seems to be the beta-testing sandbox for Suse Enterprise, just like Fedora is the beta-testing sandbox for Red Hat.

I tried SolydK (version "201309," released 9/23/2013) out the other day. I was impressed that it offered to install the ATI proprietary driver for me. A most auspicious beginning! Not every distro offers that kind of service, for sure. I was very pleased seeing it download ATI's fglrx.

But then when I rebooted (as recommended), I got the black screen with nothing visible. Nothing to be done there. Pressed the power button. Second time around, I chose Recovery Mode and got the command line. I typed in "StartX" to see what happens and got the "Solyd blacK" screen again with nothing visible. I can't work without seeing what I'm doing, sorry, I'm not a Jedi Knight yet, only in training. Hit the power button. I then rebooted again in Recovery Mode and uninstalled Plymouth via "sudo apt-get remove plymouth", based on suggestions in the SolydK forum for someone who also used ATI and had a similar problem. No dice. I've now rebooted four times to a "Solyd blacK" screen. I am guessing this is a problem that only affects users with ATI graphics who choose the recommended options of installing the proprietary driver and using Plymouth.

One more thing I'll note is that early in the install process, Solyd identified my hard drives as sda and sdb, and the description for both was "Model". That would deter any Windows user right away, because it is unclear which drive the system will be installed on, and clicking "Forward" might very well begin the install process for all the user knows. As a Linux veteran, I knew to boot up Partition Editor to find out what sda was, but not every user will know to do that. Yet I noticed on several SolydK reviews, there were screenshots where the drives were clearly identified during the install process, so maybe this too is a problem that just impacts my rig.

My next experiment was Manjaro Xfce 0.87.1. With dismay I noted that it was using the same installer as Solyd. Sure enough, I got the same problem with my hard drives being identified only as sda and sdb. This time around, I opted to disable Plymouth, but install the proprietary driver. Manjaro installed, and I rebooted, but Grub spat out an error and went into recovery mode. That was the end of my experiment with Manjaro.

Next, I tried PCLinuxOS, 64-bit KDE version. I first heard of PCLinuxOS and indeed about Linux in general through Piers Anthony's excellent and entertaining blog. The fact he used Linux was a big factor in persuading me to give Linux a try, especially after Microsoft dumped Vista and then Windows 8 on an unsuspecting public. I have been pleased with Linux and glad I learned about it, and I wish with all my heart that more people used Linux.

PCLinuxOS installed without any problems. As one reviewer noted, the installer could use additional refinement, such as a Back button in addition to the Forward button, and maybe a few other little things, but it worked out well for me in the end. "Unrefined" is perfectly okay, when set in contrast with "not working at all." Possibly the most important aspect about a distro is ease of installation, because without the initial install, nothing else happens, and installation forms a strong first impression.

For me, PCLinuxOS's main charm that sets it above the Ubuntu family of distros is the premise I won't have to reinstall later, a major headache for Ubuntu users. I also like how easy it was to update and to install my network printer. Setting up the printer was a trial with OpenSuse 12.3 and influenced me to abandon Open Suse. I've been pleased with PCLinuxOS so far and appreciate some of its features, such as installing everything including the kitchen sink, which annoys some reviewers but pleases me. I can easily uninstall what I don't like, and I think it is helpful to have the apps there to play with, because otherwise I might never find them on my own. I thought the option for changing the wallpaper could have been more intuitive--I had to google for the solution--but that's a minor demerit.

The update procedure for PCLinuxOS is a bit cumbersome, although in my brief experience, it has worked without error. The user is notified about updates by an exclamation mark in the taskbar. Contrary to expectations, clicking on this does nothing. However, by right-clicking on the icon, a menu pops up with several options, none of which read "Install Updates." I gave up at this point and researched online in order to learn how to update PCLinuxOS. The procedure is as follows. After right-clicking the red exclamation mark icon, one selects the option, "Run Synaptic," and enters the administrative password for root access. Once in Synaptic, one clicks the "Refresh" button to refresh the data. After that, one clicks the "Mark Available Updates" button, followed by "Apply." In total, several clicks are needed, with delays following each one. I wish the update process were as seamless as that of Linux Mint's wonderful Update Manager. Every Linux distro tends to reinvent the wheel, but not all of their wheels roll equally well. Of greater concern, I did not notice any descriptions of the updates. Usually, Ubuntu derivatives offer at least a sentence or two of description about the packages being updated and their function, which can help the user troubleshoot any future problems. However, I weigh this inconvenience against the much larger inconvenience posed by new releases in Ubuntu and Ubuntu-derivatives such as Linux Mint, which require the user to completely reinstall the operating system and reconfigure everything at the cost of several hours' work.

Uninstalling applications in PCLinuxOS has been unintuitive as well. When I tried to uninstall KFloppy, Synaptic informed me that I would also be uninstalling an important kde library used by many other applications, which surprised me. This is not behavior that one might find in Linux Mint. I clicked OK anyway, just to see what would happen. I expected various applications to break. What actually happened was nothing at all. After uninstalling KFloppy, Kfloppy was still there in the menu. I clicked on it, and it loaded just like before. My conclusion is that uninstalling is buggy in PCLinuxOS. There is a possibility that it works sometimes, but it certainly does not work all of the time.

I was disappointed to find that all of the energy-saving features activate during video playback in VLC, an annoying bug that was also present in several versions of Linux Mint. I suppose distro developers never watch videos and only read books, which is commendable, I suppose, depending upon the nature of the books they read. My solution to this bug has been to disable all of the energy-saving features, which means that PCLinuxOS costs more to run than any other operating system, including Windows. I have read that Caffeine is one potential solution to the problem, but if this is the only solution, then I think it should be installed by default.

In conclusion, I think that PCLinuxOS deserves to be higher on the DistroWatch list than it is at present. In general, it is a solid, easy-to-use distribution, which is what I want and expect from a distro. As Canonical's strategic decisions continue to impact Ubuntu-based derivatives, I think more and more people are going to migrate over to other distros in the years to come.