odom got lucky

Phoenix Suns forward Amar'e Stoudemire, after Lakers forward Lamar Odom scored 19 points and grabbed 19 rebounds in L.A.'s 128-107 Game 1 win: "I'm not giving him no hype right now; he had a lucky game in Game 1."

Tonight, the Lakers finished off the Suns in six games. Odom's luck held up throughout the series. He averaged 14.0 points and 11.8 rebounds for the series.

Stoudemire averaged 25 points a game for the series, but he was a huge disappointment on the glass. He only managed double figures in rebounds in one game, finishing with 11 in Game 3. He finished with only 3 rebounds in Game 1, and 4 rebounds each in Games 5 and 6.

He averaged 6 rebounds for the series.

This from a guy who's supposed to be one of the premier power forwards in the game. As I've been saying for a few years now, Stoudemire ain't no Charles Barkley. The guy nearly got doubled up in rebounds by a Lakers forward who doesn't even start! Stoudemire had the nerve to call him "lucky" and then got badly outrebounded by him in every game but one! And in the two biggest games, both games that the Suns had to have, both games that turned out to be Suns losses, Stoudemire could only manage 4 rebounds in each game! Meanwhile, "Lucky" pulled down 13 rebounds in Game 5 and 12 in Game 6.

Stoudemire's 25 points per game in the series were meaningless. The Lakers exposed Stoudemire as the one-dimensional player that he is. He is not among the elite players in the league, at least not yet. Miserable performance.

Meanwhile, Odom once again showed that he is a big-time player, and one of the most important non-starters in league history.

that talk doesn't belong here

At the MepisLovers forums, you won't encounter any religious or political discussions. The administrators and moderators won't stand for it. And that's fine by me. It's one of the things that makes MepisLovers possibly the best Linux forums out there.

It's nothing but a zoo at other forums where those types of discussions are allowed to take place. They don't contribute anything to the forums. They just lead to arguments and bad feelings.

Please, please, please: Let's keep religion and politics out of Linux forums. There are other places, other forums to talk about that stuff. We don't need any of it at the Linux forums.

trinity, the kde 3.5 fork

ComputerBob tipped me off about the KDE 3.5 fork codenamed "Trinity." The project "aims to keep the KDE3.5 computing style alive, as well as polish off any rough edges that were present as of KDE 3.5.10."

http://trinity.pearsoncomputing.net/

Some other comments and screenshots:

http://www.itlure.com/2010/05/trinity-project-picks-up-where-kde-3510.html

where's vince?

The Orlando Magic managed to break through last night at Boston and avoid being swept out of the playoffs, escaping with a 96-92 overtime win.

But, I was shocked when I saw Vince Carter's line. In almost 31 minutes, he tallied:

3 points, 2 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal, 0 blocks, 3 turnovers, 1-9 FGs, 0-3 3PT, 1-1 FTs.

What makes it look even worse, if that's possible, is that everyone's talking about how Carter disappears at crunch time. In Game 2, with the Magic down by three, 31.9 seconds left, Carter, an 84% shooter from the line during the regular season, bricked two free throws. Orlando went on to lose, 95-92.

Fortunately, despite Carter's dismal performance in Game 4, Orlando survived. Carter will have a chance to redeem himself. For his sake, I hope he comes through with a big game and helps push the series to a sixth game.

facebook privacy and "opt-in"

Back on May 7th, I wrote "kill your facebook account," talking about how to permanently delete your Facebook account instead of "deactivating" it.

I stopped using Facebook for a couple of reasons.

One, I was getting bored with it. Too many boring posts that I wasn't the least bit interested in were showing up on my wall. I simply didn't care about what games people were playing. I didn't care about receiving Facebook gifts. I certainly didn't care to read about certain folks' political views.

Two, I felt like it was a waste of my time to even go to Facebook and check on things. I already belong to several Linux forums, and I follow news and sports and other things on the internet. And, I have plenty of non-computer things that I like to do. Facebook was just taking time away from things that I love.

If you've followed recent computer-related news at all, you know that there seems to be a backlash against Facebook and other social networking sites because of privacy concerns. Facebook is promising to make some changes in their privacy settings, making things simpler for users.

Some people don't feel that this will be enough. Check out Jacqueline Emigh's PCWorld article, "Note to Facebook on Privacy: How About Opt-In, Not Opt Out?," where she writes:

To give Facebook members more real control over how their personal data is used, Facebook ought to be simplifying its privacy tools in the direction of “opting in”– where users need to actively volunteer to share information – instead of the opposite “opt out” approach. In essence, Facebook should be giving users an easy way of turning on third-party services – if these are desired – rather than an easy way of turning them off.

I agree with this, 100%. But I don't know if Facebook would ever take that route. Also, I don't think it will ever make a difference to me. I can't see myself ever going back to Facebook; my reasons for quitting haven't changed. And it might not make a difference to any of the people who have left Facebook over privacy concerns; when you lose someone's trust, it's difficult to win it back.

imagination

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein

divisions

At the Debian User Forums, folks rarely let pass an opportunity to bash Ubuntu.

Ubuntu users like to criticize Linux Mint.

It goes on and on. The "best distro" is "the one I am using." The biting comments never seem to end. The crap extends to arguments over which desktop environments to use, as well. An Xfce user must despise KDE and GNOME.

One of my goals when I was getting started with Linux was to become "a Linux user." I wanted to know enough about Linux to be able to sit down and find my way around any type of Linux system.

I feel confident that I've accomplished that.

I don't think it matters much which Linux distro I use. It doesn't matter which desktop environment or window manager I use. I've reached a point where, for the most part, Linux is Linux.

There's a reason that so many people love to use any given Linux distribution or desktop environment or whatever. Very often, if you give it some time, you'll find out that there are reasons for you to like it, too.

But a lot of Linux folks don't like to think that way. They'd rather stick to one thing, be on one "team." It's like there's this tribal way of thinking that comes out. You can't be a Linux user, you've got to be a Debian user, an Ubuntu user, a Mepis or a Mint user. You can't possibly "cross over" to the other side and be a traitor. You can't have both KDE and GNOME installed on one system and Xfce and Fluxbox on another. You have to pick one, and only one. Every chance you get, you have to let everyone know why the distro or DE or WM that you use is the greatest and why some other one is not.

This infighting is silly. It's a complete waste of time. Grow up, people.