The Book of Screed

It seems like political terms are getting thrown about the news all the time these days. Primary! Superdelegate! Electability! But what does it all mean? To help with understanding, over the last three weeks I've been writing a comprehensive glossary for the 2008 election season, which I hope will help clear away some of the fog surrounding our politics.

Adolf Hitler – German dictator cited in a simile or a metaphor just before the climax of any political argument.

Ageism – Discriminating against people on the basis of age, which the media tells us is wrong, unless you are talking about John McCain.

Al-Qaeda – A loosely organized group of serial killers who, by use terror tactics, try to slaughter as many unarmed men, women, and children as possible to further their apocalyptic goals. Reviled across the world for their brutality and ruthlessness. Unless you are a professor on an American university campus, in which case they are “freedom fighters”.

Anonymous Sources – The reporter needed to make some stuff up so the facts would support his/her conclusion.

Apology – Nonsensical statement (admitting no guilt) designed to make an inconvenient issue go away. Only works if The Media happens to personally like the giver of the apology.

Atheist – A person who believes there is no God, and tends to be a total prick about it.

Blue State – Insipid generalization made by the Media in order to fill the space between ads. Taking this concept seriously is generally regarded as a sign of mental problems. (See “Red State”.)

Campaigning – Lying to the voters. It's like telling a woman she looks good in an ugly dress; everyone involved is lying, but civil bloodshed is kept to a sensible minimum.

Christianity – The religion dominating theocratic America, which explains why abortion, homosexuality, divorce, adultery, alcohol, violent video games, and pornography have been punishable by death since 2000.

Congressman – A unit of measurement. 1 Congressman equals approximately $125,000 in bribe money, depending on inflation.

Conservative – A political philosophy defending the right of people to make money without capricious government interference. Usually acquired right after making money.

David Vitter – Punchline.

Democrat -  A rich person concerned with the plight of the poor while strenuously trying to avoid even accidental contact with poor people. Also known for a remarkable tendency towards political impotence, even when holding the majority.

Electability – Whatever a journalist happens to be thinking about at the time (see “Talking Head”.)

Eliot Spitzer – Punchline.

Endorsement –  A statement made by an irrelevant person in affirmation of his own ego (especially true with writers and actors).
 
Environmentalist – A person who recites five times daily the Green Creed; “There is no goddess but Gaia and Al Gore is Her prophet.” Also tends to say “But you guuuuuyyys, it's good for the planet” a lot.

Europe –  A good reason to buy stock in any business manufacturing hijabs.

Fascist – 1.) A follower of the political party established by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini after World War I. 2.) The other guy's candidate.

Flag Pin – 1.) The most vital, earth-shaking, all-important issue of the 2008 campaign. 2.) Filler for spaces between paid advertisements (see “The Media”).

Feminist Blogger – 1.) A woman who champions the rights of women everywhere, usually by engaging in monotonously shrill arguments with other women across the Internet. Cat pictures are usually involved. 2.) The downfall of John Edwards. 

Fox News – A hateful, biased, and propagandistic news channel, due to their refusal to agree with everything the Democratic Party says.

George W. Bush – The source of all evil in the world. Once out of office, rainbows will fill the sky, lollipops will grow from trees, and unicorns will frolic on the White House lawn, according to official DNC literature.

Global Warming – A convenient excuse to raise taxes and impose fees, because, like, the world will end or something if we don't. (See also “Journalistic Integrity”.)

Green Movement – An massive international movement, spanning all colors and creeds, providing a venue for people to come together and be smugly self-righteous.

Hate Speech – Any criticism of a Democrat.

Iraq War – Nobody voted for it, nobody approved of it, and everyone opposed it from the start. Yet, somehow, there it is.

Islam – The religion of peace. Or else!

Latte-Liberal – A hateful insult. Also kinda true. (See “Democrat”.)

Larry Craig – Punchline.

Liberal – Passive-aggressive tendencies.

Libertarian – College student, usually one just exposed to the works of Robert Heinlein.

John Kerry – Thrown under a bus by the Clintons in 2004 so Hill could run in 2008. Also, a punchline.

Journalistic Integrity – Myth.

Marxist – 1.) Embittered Sixties holdout, usually on poor terms with personal hygiene. 2.) College student who, typically, has just read the first twenty pages of “The Communist Manifesto”. 3.) College student who really wants to impress that hot Literary Deconstruction grad student chick he met at Starbucks.

The Media – The people who provide the nonsensical filler between the paid advertisements in the newspaper and the commercials on TV. For TV, must have good hair, good teeth, and gender-appropriate firm bodies. For newspapers, must have a scruffy beard (if male) or a bad haircut (if female) and a willingness to adjust the facts to fit the narrative (see 'Anonymous Sources' above).

Nancy Pelosi – A pioneer for women's rights, since she proved that women, like men, can become utterly impotent.

New York Times – The Paper of Record, if the record happens to be for the number of times one paper can become a laughingstock.

OPEC – Is truly saddened by the rise in oil prices. (See “Campaigning”.)

Oprah – The person who chose our next President. You think I'm joking.

Osama bin Laden – Uncaught.

Our Troops – Supported by all. Some disagreements about the particular details of said support.

Political Blog – The nonsensical rantings of an unemployed crazy person. Serves much the same function as an asylum in 19th century society.

Primary – Elaborate political theater designed to obscure the fact that the superdelegates are the ones actually choosing the candidate. Because your vote counts.

Racist – Any criticism of Barack Obama.

Ralph Nader – Don Quixote without the charm.

Red State - Insipid generalization made by the Media in order to fill the space between ads. Taking this concept seriously is generally regarded as a sign of mental problems. (See “Blue State”.)

Registered Independent – A person who has voted a straight-party ticket since 1982 or so, but enjoys looking down on registered party members. Cites vote for Dukakis or Ford (or, in extreme cases, Perot) as proof of independent status.

Republican – A member of 2009's minority party.

Senator – A person afflicted with two disorders: 1.) A lust for the Presidency, and 2.) a lust for interns, subordinates, prostitutes, and occasionally random persons in airport bathrooms.

Sexist – Any criticism of Hillary Clinton.

Small government - Myth.

Starbucks – The mating grounds of the latte liberal.

Superdelegate – Faceless party functionaries who have acquired temporary importance. Will probably turn to drink, drugs, and suicide after the Democratic convention, once no one cares what they think any more.

Supreme Court – Heroic defenders of the Constitution and individual liberties, or soulless black-robed tyrants legislating brutalities from the bench. Depends on which way they happen to rule. (See “Fascist”.)

Taking Offense – How insignificant people gain political power.

Talking Head – A person who regards himself/herself as a serious journalist, all evidence to the contrary.

-JM

I know indeed what evil I intend to do,
but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury,
fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.

-Euripides, Medea

Chapter I, Part 1: Wolves Among Sheep

This installment's blurb line:

In his younger days, he had embraced a raging joy at the prospect of battle, a ferocious and delighted bloodlust.  Since Romaria had died, he had felt nothing of the sort.  Now he felt only disgust and a vague weariness.  This was necessary, and nothing more.

But if he had to fight, he would fight well.

#

This week I'll post on Wednesday and Friday, and after that we'll settle on Tuesday and Thursday.

-JM

...but just retribution is ever sweet. Especially when the villain's downfall comes about via his own ineptitude.

-JM

Specifically, my bad idea is this. In 2005, I published a novel called “Demonsouled” that sold rather poorly and is now out of print. For what seemed like sound reasons at the time, later that year I wrote a sequel called “Soul of Tyrants”, a sequel that, due to various circumstances, I will never be able to sell.

So I'm going to post it on my website as an online serial. Details are below, in handy Q&A format.

Q: Why can't you sell “Soul of Tyrants?”

A: Because “Demonsouled” did so poorly. The publisher made it clear that they're not interested in any other books from me, which means that “Soul of Tyrants” is out of the question. Naturally, that means no other publisher would take a look at it. In short, the book is radioactive. I would have a better chance of selling a 1500 page Hitler/Goring slashfic epic with furries than this book. Ron Paul has a better chance of becoming President of the United States than I do of selling “Soul of Tyrants”.

Q: So why bother posting “Soul of Tyrants” online at all?

A: Hubris, mostly, or sheer stubbornness. I may or may not be a competent writer, but I do think “Soul of Tyrants” is perhaps the closest I have ever come to writing a good book. I have millions of words that will languish forever unread and unseen in the Stygian dungeons of my hard drives, and that troubles me not in the least. But “Soul of Tyrants”...I like that book just enough that I don't want to abandon it entirely, even though there's no viable way of getting it published.

Q: Won't posting “Soul of Tyrants” online render it forever unpublishable?

A: Well, probably. But as I explained above, in the case of this book that's a bit like refusing to go jogging because you're afraid the Martians will finally attack. It might happen, but you really shouldn't worry about it. Putting something on the Internet technically gives up what's called first electronic rights, and some publishers insist that the first electronic rights remain unsullied, and refuse to buy stuff that's already been on the Internet. Since there's not exactly a huge demand for sequels to low-selling, out of print fantasy novels, my sleep will remain untroubled by this prospect.

Q: Why don't you release “Soul of Tyrants” under the GNU General Public License?

A: Because while the GPL is great for software, a book is not software. I haven't quite reached that level of nihilistic fatalism required for me to give up all rights to the book. It's the same reason I keep four or five cases of bottled water on hand at all times. You know. Just in case I need them.

Q: You do realize this is probably futile, right? Who on Earth is going to read “Soul of Tyrants”?

A: Nobody, in all likelihood. So far only two people have actually read it, and I expect that number will stay about the same. But think of it as bonus material for the elite few who actually read Demonsouled.

Besides. Mitte panem tuum super transeuntes aquas quia post multa tempora invenies illum. And all that.

Q: So how's this online serial thing going to work?

A: I think I'm going to post sections either twice a week (Tues and Thurs), or three times a week (Mon, Wed, Fri). I wrote the book with twelve chapters, each chapter divided into parts, so there's enough material to post short sections regularly for several weeks. The actual posts will be static pages on my WordPress site, with only links here on the LiveJournal. (I suspect spamming the LiveJournal f-list with one's unpublished novel is probably the height of poor etiquette.) I'll have permalinks and an index page as well to make navigation easier once the chapters start accumulating.

Watch this space for updates.

-JM

I've decided that I'm going to do something potentially foolish in public. And I'm going to blog about it, too, so you'll be able to see it in all its gloriously excruciating detail.

Tune in tomorrow for the details.

-JM

I thought that this book was going to begin with one of my least favorite literary devices ever, the Irrelevant Tertiary Characters Who Get Slaughtered Mysteriously And Then Are Never Heard From Again, but I was wrong.

The gist: the city of Aruldusk is having a problem with mass-murder. And since Aruldusk has problems with what the experts call "ethno-sectarian competition" nowadays, blame quickly affixes on the local despised minority, a group called the shifters. The shifters appear to be standard-model humans with minor animalistic traits such as claws, fangs, fur, etc.* Unfortunately, popular imagination tends to equate the shifters with lycanthropes (viz, werewolves), who are immune to conventional weaponry and go on rampaging murder-fests every full moon or so. (Since the world of Eberron apparently has twelve freaking moons, this rather quickly becomes a problem.)

So this leads to Irulan, a truculent, tactless shifter woman desperately trying to free her brother Javi, now rotting in prison under suspicion for the murders. The murky currents of Eberron politics force her to team up with Andri, a knight of the Church of the Silver Flame who has some serious psychological baggage of his own**, and a dwarf named Greddark who serves as an "Inquisitive", which seems to be Eberron-speak for a private investigator.

It starts off sluggishly, but the book develops into quite a satisfying murder mystery. I thought to myself several times "Self, I see where this book is going" only to be proven wrong, and the red herrings don't look red from a distance. Eberron is also a sorcerer's psychedelic steampunk hallucination of a world, and Rockwell manages to unreel that world, and the characters' places therein, without resorting to chapters of infodump.

So, good book. If Rockwell writes something else I'll read it.

-JM

*I almost thought of furries, but I nobly restrained myself.

**Think Oedipus meets The Wolfman.

My story "Knight of Sorrows: Poisoned Thorns"  is now available at MindFlights.

“I am sorry to cause you such pain. But perhaps it is merciful. A little pain now, and you will be spared far greater pain in the future. You will not feel the magic devour you from the inside out, nor will you see everyone you love die. Yes. A mercy, I think.”

Read it here.

It is a continuation of the original Knight of Sorrows story that appeared in MindFlights earlier this year, which can still be read here.

-JM

(more technobabble follows, I'm afraid)



I tried to use dist-upgrade to upgrade one of my machines from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 today, which proved to be a a bit of mistake. For one thing, it nuked my X11 settings, throwing me back to a default 800x600 resolution (which looks a little ridiculous on a 19-inch monitor). But I had expected that, since this machine uses an old NVIDIA GeForce2 MX card, so I planned to spend a little time fiddling with the xorg.conf file.

I did not expect it to nuke Samba file-sharing so thoroughly. Y'see, I use this particular machine for file storage, and had a fairly elaborate Samba setup going. At first Samba wouldn't start, and then when I manually started it using sudo, the file-sharing started to work, albeit entirely too well. No authentication, guest access enabled, and full read/write control on all shared folders, which was most definitely not what I wanted. So this machine's going to back to 7.10.

I'm not entirely surprised; I've found that the .0* releases of Ubuntu always seem to be a little flakier than the *.10 releases. So I think I'm going to hold off on any permanent upgrades until 8.10.

UPDATE: For those who ask, yes, I did back up my X11 and Samba conf files before doing the upgrade, and tried using them in lieu of the new ones. Alas, no luck.

-JM

After yesterday's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, quite a few people are saying that Senator Clinton is finished, and she ought to drop out of the race. It's all over, and attention is shifting to the final smackdown between Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain.

Fools, all! She is the Lich Queen! Counting her out out now is a bit like that scene that inevitably occurs about two-thirds of the way through a slasher movie:

"Wow! The evil serial killer just fell over a cliff. No one could POSSIBLY survive that! I'm so certain of the evil serial killer's demise that I'm not even going to go look for a body. Instead, I'm going to go find my Primary Love Interest, and we're going to go make out at night in a public park with lots of bushes to provide ample cover for any evil serial killers who miraculously survived falling off a cliff, but that's not going to be a problem, because the evil serial killer is definitely dead, even though the movie still has 42 minutes or so to go."

So the next time Obama gives a speech, don't be surprised if a hockey-masked Clinton springs from the shadows, chainsaw in hand. Metaphorically speaking. Probably.

-JM

(I'm still having writer's block, so today's post is another long techie thing dealing with computer games. Feel free to skip, if that sort of thing bores you.)

The LucasArts computer game TIE Fighter is a classic, and fourteen years after it was released, it still retains its playability. Unfortunately, the game was written for DOS, and tends not to run under modern Windows systems. Fortunately, the marvelous DOSBox emulator provides a way to run old DOS games, and I will show you the steps it took to get the CD-ROM version of TIE Fighter running in DOSBox on both Windows XP and Windows Vista.

1.) First, you'll need a USB joystick. I frankly suggest that you obtain the cheapest joystick possible, since it seems the simpler the joystick, the more likely it is that it will work. I've been using a Logitech Attack 3 USB joystick, and it seems to work just fine. Before running DOSBox, make sure that your joystick is connected and functional.

2.) Next, create a directory to serve as a virtual C drive during your DOSBox session. I usually just create a directory named 'dos' and stick it in the root folder of my hard drive. You can stash the folder in your user profile, of course, but typing C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Desktop\Dos every time you want to play TIE Fighter rapidly gets tiresome.

3.) Download and install DOSBox.

(Note that if you're running Vista, you will want to set DOSBox to run as an administrator.)

4.) Put your TIE Fighter CD-ROM in your drive, and start DOSBox.



5.) Use the following command to mount your dos directory (assuming you followed the example above) as your hard drive:

mount c c:\dos

6.) Mount your computer's CD/DVD drive in DOSBox with this command:

mount d D:\ -t cdrom

Obviously, if your CD/DVD drive has a different letter than D:\, you'll need to change it (mount d E:\ -t cdrom, for instance). It's possible to use an ISO image in lieu of the actual cdrom, but I've had the best luck with the actual disc.

7.) To install TIE Fighter, first change to the D drive:

d:

And then type:

install

This will bring you to the TIE Fighter installation program.



8.) The full install of TIE Fighter only takes 90 megs of space, a negligible amount nowadays, so I'd go ahead and do the Maximum install. Follow the default prompts until you get to the Sound Setup screen.



9.) Your specific audio configuration may require custom settings, of course, but I've had the most success with the following settings:

-Sound Blaster, Port 220, IRQ 7, DMA 1

The install program helpfully includes a built-in test, so I'd suggest that you test your sound settings before you exit the installation program. Once your settings are correct, save your settings and exit the installer.

10.) Start up TIE Fighter by changing to the game directory (assuming you used the default install settings):

c:

cd tiecd

Then start the game by typing:

tie

The game will ask you to calibrate your joystick. Follow the prompts, and soon you should have TIE Fighter functioning just right in DOSBox.



-JM

I seem to get a lot of web searches that are some combination of “WordPress”, “Ubuntu”, and “MySQL”. So I thought I'd write out a brief guide explaining how to install and create a MySQL database for use with WordPress on a local Ubuntu 8.04 installation. It is fairly simple to do, requiring only a few properly-typed Terminal commands, and can be done on either the Desktop or the Server editions of Ubuntu.

To begin, make your way to a Terminal window, and type the following command to download the MySQL server files and begin installation (always remember that commands are case-sensitive):

sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.0

You'll need to enter your password. Follow the default prompts, and apt-get will download and begin installing MySQL. It's a big set of files, so the download might take a bit. Not far into the installation process, you'll be asked to provide a root password for MySQL. Just like the root user in Linux, the root user in MySQL has absolute control over all databases, tables, permissions, and users. For obvious security reasons, you'll want to create an extremely strong password (a mixture of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and punctuation, the longer the better) for your MySQL root user.

Shortly thereafter, the installer will finish. You'll then need to activate MySQL with the following command:

sudo mysql_install_db

(Note: If you plan on using this installation in a production server, you'll probably want to run the mysql_secure_installation script.)

Once this command finishes, you'll need to log into the MySQL command-line client as the root user:

mysql -u root -p

Enter your MySQL root password. Once logged into the MySQL command line client, you will create a database for WordPress to use, a database user for WordPress, and grant all permissions on the database to the WordPress user.

First, create the database:

CREATE DATABASE wordpress;

(Note that all commands in MySQL must end with a semicolon to denote the end of the SQL statement.)

Create a user so that WordPress can access the database:

CREATE USER wordpressuser;

Next, set a password for the new user:

SET PASSWORD FOR wordpressuser = PASSWORD(“password”);

Just as with the root user, you'll want to choose a strong password. Note that your password will actually go within the quotation marks, and that the password is case-sensitive. For instance, if you were to choose 1234 as your password (an extraordinarily bad idea, incidentally), the command would look like this:

SET PASSWORD FOR wordpressuser = PASSWORD(“1234”);

The final step is to grant all privileges on your new database to the WordPress user by the following command. The password you just assigned the new user will go within the single-quote marks (and, yes, MySQL's internal syntax isn't always consistent):

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO wordpressuser IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;

Type exit to close the MySQL client.

You have just set up a MySQL database for use with WordPress. Of course, in order to run WordPress off Ubuntu, you'll also need the Apache web server, PHP, the PHP module for MySQL, and the WordPress software itself. To continue, you can see my guide to installing WordPress on Ubuntu 7.10 here, or you can view the official WordPress documentation here.

-JM

I find myself absolutely barren of ideas for paid writing work. So, while I wait for my subconscious to finish defragging or whatever, I'm going to try a little experiment.

You see, thanks to both Google Analytics and the wp-stats WordPress plugin, I have a fairly clear picture of what searches bring people to my website. Alas, "Jonathan Moeller, Author of Demonsouled and Writer of Stunning Genius" is not one of them.  Instead, I'm getting an ever-increasing amount of traffic based off web searches for the following items:

-Anything involving Ubuntu Linux.

-Anything involving WordPress or MySQL.

-Computer Chess.

-Anything computer game related, especially with DOSBox.

I'm also getting a few searches for "realms of war review", which of course leads to my review of the Realms of War anthology. I strongly suspect these searches are coming from the anthology authors vanity-Googling themselves. Not that I ever do this myself, of course.

But I digress. Over the next week or so, I think I'm going to write various "How To" posts off these topics and see how much traffic they draw down. Is this shameless pandering to the public? Yes, of course it is; I believe that's what they call "writing".

-JM

Iron Man:

Made of awesome.

That is all.

-JM

Remember Thursday's post on how to fix a disappearing CD/DVD drive in Windows? To judge from the search terms that brought people to my blog today, apparently I'm not the only one who's wrestled with this little conundrum:



-JM

This is sad but oh-so-true:

Health Statistics

-JM

I have noticed in Windows Vista (mostly Vista, but also older NT versions) that sometimes the CD/DVD drive will disappear entirely from My Computer. If you check Device Manager, the drive will still show up, but with an error message of Failed To Start or Error Code 10, and neither Windows nor your applications will be able to access the drive.

Barring an actual physical failure of the drive itself, this problem can often (but not always) be solved with a quick Registry edit:

-Go to the Start Menu, and then select Run. (In Vista, hit the Windows Key+R on your keyboard, or type regedit in the Start Menu's search line.)

-When the Run dialog box appears, type regedit and click OK.

-This will bring up the Registry Editor. Take extreme care when using the Registry Editor, as it's quite possible to render your computer inoperable by deleting the wrong Registry key. Note you can only edit the Registry at your own risk.

-Navigate to the following Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

-Once you select {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}, look in the right-hand pane. Any values that say either UpperFilters or LowerFilters must be deleted:



In the screenshot above, you'd need to delete the value named LowerFilters.

-Once you have deleted the values, close Registry Editor, and reboot your computer. After the reboot, your CD/DVD drive should reappear in My Computer

I am not entirely certain yet what causes this error; I suspect several CD/DVD burning applications add bad values to the Registry key, thereby creating the problem. Good ol' iTunes, in particular, seems to do this a lot.

UPDATE: Further research has revealed that you also need to alter the following Registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE103}

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet003\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Remove any values that say "UpperFilters" or "LowerFilters".

For further detail about this problem, here is an excellent post at the Open Source Journal and the official Microsoft KB article about the problem.

-JM

I have to tell you, friends and neighbors, that I really, reallyreallyreally dislike the HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium. That particular model has been giving me no end of grief. Specifically, the following problems:

-Frequent optical drive failures, both physical and software-based.

-Frequent wireless failures, usually software based.

-Extremely sluggish performance, due partially the enormous pile of crapware HP shovels onto its consumer laptops. These things can take upwards of five minutes to boot up and reach a responsive state.

-The AMD Turion X2 chip is underpowered, especially compared to the Core 2 Duo, which no doubt exacerbates the speed problems.

Last year, my personal title for Worst Laptop went to the Dell Inspiron B130, which came with a Celeron processor, 256 megabytes of RAM, and all the speed of a drunken tortoise. This year, I am proud to award the title of Worst Laptop to the HP Pavilion dv6000. May your reign be short and come to a Nero-esque end!

Next post, I'll explain how to solve one of the frequent problems I saw with the dv6000.

-JM

You might recall that a while back I did an interview with Jim C. Hines about his new book “Goblin War”. Well, it’s been two months, and I finally had a chance to read “Goblin War” for myself.

Find out what I thought after the jump.

-JM

 

Here is a fascinating post on the use of magic in fantasy fiction. I suspect that many of you (at least those of you who take an interest in the topic) will not agree with most of it, but it is nonetheless a thoughtful read.

-JM

So I just installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 for the first time.

Despite the reports of last-minute bugs, it was pretty tame. Not as drastic as XP Service Pack 2 (has it really been four years already?), not as nail-biting as Server 2003 Service Pack 2, and not nearly as restart-intensive as Vista Service Pack 1. Just double-click to run, wait a while, restart, wait a little while longer, and then you're done. Still, there's no major, desperately needed fixes in this one (like in Service Pack 2), so if you're running XP, I'd wait until Microsoft gets around to pushing it out as an Automatic Update.

And after nearly seven years, XP has reached its more or less final form, since I rather doubt Microsoft's going to do a Service Pack 4, given how desperate they are to move people to Vista. XP Service Pack 3 is worlds different from the original circa-2001 version of XP, and Microsoft has vastly improved XP over the last seven years. Despite Vista, the Mac, and the growing Linux population, XP is still the lingua franca of the home and enterprise computing world, and XP Service Pack 3 is going to around for a long time yet.

-JM