The date for the Norwegian general election is closing up fast, and I would like to urge my readers to vote for the Socialist Left Party (SV). The last chance to vote before the actual election day is, in many municipalities, tomorrow, the 11th of September. The actual election day is the 14th of September. Remember that every single vote counts!

We don’t need any dark blue experiment with our economy, healthcare or our children. We need a fairer government that works for equality, that takes the climate changes seriously and are prepared to act now rather than later, when it’s too late. We need a country where women earns the same as men, not merely 85% (avg.) of what a man makes and we need to treat everyone with the same amount of respect.

The economic crisis has shown us how bad it can get when we allow as much market freedom as we do. There are a few select people that gamble away at the stock market, keeping any earnings for themselves while socializing the problem if they experience losses. Norway has, largely thanks to SV’s socialist finance minister, managed the financial crisis very well. We need a market that is more controlled, not less! We can not allow capitalists to gamble away our jobs, nor can we allow the parties on the right to privatize our healthcare system, and by doing so throwing that into the same chaos that has caused the crisis we are now in.

If you want more information about SV’s politics, visit http://www.sv.no/ (http://sv.no/Language/English for English), or contact me directly and I will try to answer any questions you have.

For these reasons, and more (see the website), vote SV the 14th of September.

Oh well, add me to the growing list of people boycotting you (and don’t think for a second that this is an empty statement).

Some articles on the subject: http://michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=251, http://michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=259, http://consumerist.com/382824/emi-says-you-cant-store-your-music-files-online and http://www.exchangemagazine.com/morningpost/2008/week13/Tuesday/032501.html. (note that I do not agree with, nor endorse all of the statements on these websites, they are provided as a source of information on the subject only).

Then one day I thought about this and well, using a proprietary website to produce and manage a free software project makes…well…no sense. So then I started looking at the alternatives. I landed on Savannah. My first Savannah project was GoldenPod. Followed by the (mostly dead) GoldenBackup (no link due to no website nor release, it does have a CVS though). Then followed by the common configuration parser. Then I had my disagreements with Savannah (as some of you might remember).

Then I started looking at GNA! which I am now using for my most active project, Day planner. Now what does GNA! have to offer that Savannah doesn’t?
Well, it offers easier access to the downloads directory, I can simply rsync/scp stuff from my box to the GNA! download directory. It also has SVN which is imho MUCH better than CVS (I’ve never used Arch, so I won’t say anything about that). They also offer download/website statistics, something Savannah doesn’t. The only plus of Savannah I can find is some of their admins. I’ve spoken with a few of them and they where very nice, savannah also has an IRC channel (#savannah on freenode) which is rather nice. Though currently, I’ll take my GNA! without my Savannah if that is possible thank you very much.

[0 zerodogg@drizzt html]$ HEAD mandrivastore.com.br
...junk...
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
...junk...
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

Someone tell me I’m dreaming! *cries*

I like GNOME, but I don’t use it. I use XFce. But the reason I don’t use gnome is because of a personal preference – not because I’m a TROLL! In my opinion KDE is full of bloat (NO! Do not reply to this post yet), but that is a personal opinion. I can see why people want to use it, and I encourage people to use it – but I would not want to use it. Gnome’s policy of clean interfaces with as little junk as possible is excellent if you ask me. Something that shows gnome’s interface policy versus kde’s interface policy very well is a blog post by Adam Williamson (I think it was him). It was about kat versus beagle iirc – will try to find the link later. He makes a few good points in it. I would use a gnome app over a KDE app any day, and merely telling everyone to go use KDE over Gnome is madness! Because I don’t use or like KDE the entire world should switch to XFce? Ofcourse not! Different people like different interfaces – duh. Why not just butt out of what people use and let them use the programs that they like best? That’s part of the joy of GNU/Linux, you can use what you want – not what someone else wants you to use. Why do people always think that “because I like it this way – the whole world should?”, why do people STILL seem to think we’re all identical? I’m at a loss here. It just goes on to confirm what I’ve been saying for ages, people are stupid and the whole world is mad (overgeneralization ofcourse).

My advice for you today is to use the software YOU want to use, and tell other people to shut up if they don’t have anything productive to say to you about it.

My thanks go out to all the people in SV, AP and SP that have worked hard to make this happen. You’re all appreciated!

Thank you

So if you’re uncertain, please think about someone other than only yourself like the right hand side wants you to.
There are more important things than cheap gasoline and lower taxes!
Think about those that need healthcare, think about the children attending schools, think freedom and think peace.

Do you want to see children shut into a religious school where all they get is that there is nothing but one religion?
Don’t you want children to see, to think and make their own opinions? Allow them to THINK for themselves, allow them to get better public schools that are not falling apart! Care about our elderly, we need more people nursing and helping them. They deserve a good offer for free public healthcare so that they can have the life they deserve. We need to support peace, not war. We must stop supporting the USA in their random wars, we need to support peace. Let’s get our troops out of Iraq and show them that we don’t support the murder of many people. One murder is a tragedy, and those responsible need to be put to trial so that we can have justice, right? Then why is not the murder of houndreds of innocents by american troops a tragedy?! Why don’t we put them to justice? Why do we support them? Would you give a weapon to a murderer? Ofcourse not! So let’s stop giving the murderer people to help him kill!

Norway needs to be independant of the EU, we need our own voice! Let’s not join this horror that is the european union, this that is turning into a second USA. We don’t need the united states of europe. We don’t need a european army! We don’t need a more free market! The world is not about money, it is about people and it is about life. This life may be human life, it may be animals. Whatever the life is we need to protect them. We need the nature, and we need animals. Let’s protect them! Because these days animals need protection, from what? FROM US. We are their enemies, we are the ones cutting down their home, burning it, killing them and using them as coats! We’re the ones that go into the forrest with a gun to kill a few animals for fun. Killing is a sport! When a human kills ten animals it’s sport. When one animal kills one human as self-defence it is slaughter and the animal must be killed immedietly. We need to protect the animals, and we need to live in peace with the world, ourselves and mother nature.

If these arguments did not catch your fancy, or you just plainly skipped them then I’m saving one more thing. Since you’re reading my blog you likely care about software freedom right?
SV is going in for creating the worlds first government funded program for authors of open source software. They want to use more free software in the government and they want to take care of our privacy. We don’t need big brother, he doesn’t need to see us! They want to make it obligatory for the government to use open standards. You can find more information here.

If you’re still uncertain you can find more information on Sosialistisk Venstreparti’s website. For those of you interested but don’t know Norwegian, you can find some information on wikipedia and SV’s English information website.

Good luck, good election!