Dan G

I'm going to do a little series of posts on using digital music on Windows PCs and portable MP3 players - mainly, a simple guide to getting the music you want playing when and where you want.

But first I'm going to mention what I feel is without doubt the best music player for Windows - musikCube. It's all about getting to the music - no skins, no graphic equalizers, no annoying non-standard GUI quirks. It simply scans your system and arranges your library into three panes in it's display - by artist, by album, then the playlist window. Very simple, very effective, and it also uses the least system resources of any music player - which is nice.

I strongly recommend trying it out. musikCube plays mp3, ogg, ape, flac "out of the box", but support for AAC and WMA can be added - not that you'll need it, when I've finished my series of posts :-).

I had a quick look and noticed several problems:

1. Masses of unfinished articles in Developing stories, some of them weeks old
2. Some pages moved to "Portal:" and some not, creating horrid inconsistencies
3. Red links (ie links to non-existent pages) on the Section menu.

Ah well, it's not my problem any more :-)

Yes, the Opera web browser is now available with no advertising at all. So there's really very little reason to stay with Firefox - unless you enjoy frequent crashes, slow browsing and having all your memory used up.

Ironically, Mozilla also this week released the seventh version of Firefox 1.0, to fix another round of security flaws. Any claim that Firefox is a secure browser is now clearly laughable.

Everyone is leaving !

In fact, even I'm probably not going to be editing any more. Due to Dcabrilo and CraigSpurrier's efforts (inspired by Matthew Miller) we now have a fully automatic RSS feed - so I no-longer have to visit the site every day! Yay! I've posted just over 2,000 articles to the feed over eight months, so I'm glad that's finally done with.

I think Katrina has a lot to do with why I'm "leaving". The media has, in fact, done a fairly good job covering the disaster - certainly better than Wikinews. AP and Reuters, in particular, are pretty sound - you can tell I think that, as my articles are almost always based on those two!

But that then begs the question - why bother with Wikinews? Well, my stock answer of "Wikinews combines information from a range of sources, meaning we can present a fuller picture (no two sources ever contain all the same information). We can also have less bias and potentially more accuracy (we can do our own fact-checking)" still holds true.

But I don't think that is what Wikinews articles always turn out to be. And it's quite tiring to do. I really don't feel like writing anything at the moment - so I won't. I might be back in a couple of days... but I might not.

The media is also a free market - people choose to read whatever they want. The bottom line is that "serious" media - the broadsheet newspapers, the likes of BBC Radio 4 - are not being read or listened to as much. People want to read tabloids, even though they're usually heavily biased and frequently fiction (or at the very least, highly speculative).

(Although, Wikinews is still growing quite steadily, as is the RSS feed - now some 2,900 readers.)

Anyway that's a lot of why I'm taking an indefinite break. I wonder why the others are? I don't think we have the same reasons. But it is quite suprising that so many have come to feel this way at the same time. Maybe there is some underlying reason, something I can't identify.

Footnote: NGerda was back after just three and a half hours. LOL!

Katrina seems to be a storm of two halves - before, with the authorities doing all the right things, and after, with anarchy. How'd that happen?

First, a few knowns:

1. 80% of New Orleans is below sea level
2. New Orlean's flood defences were designed to withstand only a Category 3 hurricane
3. That the defences were going to fail was a certainty.

So, when NOAA forecast the storm, everyone knew what was going to happen. FEMA told people to prepare, on top of the standard advice for those who live in areas that affected by hurricanes

So, with warnings becoming more dire, the mayor of New Orleans ordered the evacuation of his city, stressing that people should not use shelters such as the Superdome, but should actually leave. Free transport out was provided for everyone, departing from twelve points across the compact city. Everyone who stayed behind made a concious choice to do so. (Surrounding areas also ordered evacuations.)

Then, on Monday, Katrina struck with high winds and heavy rain. The wind, in New Orleans at least, wasn't a problem - on the west side of the storm, where the forward motion of the system effectively slowed the winds, conditions were never that bad. It was the storm surge that did the damage. The flood walls were soon over-topped, and the rushing water undermined the floodwalls, leading to a total of over 1,000 feet of breaches. Water poured into New Orleans, until the levels inside the city equalized with those outside.

The problem is that, despite the warnings, tens of thousands chose to remain in the city - a city that no longer has any infrastructure, and which, for the most part, is under water. Not suprisingly, looting broke out - some for greed, but some because people needed supplies.

It seems that this is where the US's preparations fell short. It seems that it was not anticipated that so many people would ignore the warnings and stay in the city below the sea, and that there was little or no plans to deal with the situation. We are now seeing the results. Only a few thousand troops were in the area - that is, the whole region hit by Katrina, not just New Orleans - after the storm, with 30% of the National Guard and many helicopters and vehicles tied up in the Middle East. They didn't even have enough radios.

Now, days later, the sort of response that is required is beginning to happen - but far too late for so many people.

Footnote: Bush says "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." No wonder New Orleans is so screwed with him and his "advisors" in charge.

Footnote 2: In fact, considering the complete screwing FEMA got at the hands of Bush, it's amazing America isn't demanding his resignation.
Katrina