random neuron misfires

No really, think about it.

Terrorism has but one objective, a political one.

The “Muslim” terrorists broadly want to establish Muslim governments (or governments that are more fundamentalist) in the countries where they live or operate. They target Westerners purely as a means to that end; to deter Western governments from propping up non-Muslim governments.

If you’re inconvenienced, killed, afraid, paranoid, lose civil liberties; they really don’t care. Its not their goal or objective.

If the US withdrew from the Middle East you would probably see the domestic threat of attacks decrease or stop entirely.

But now because of this threat they’ve “disrupted“, we can no longer carry some useful and standard items on a plane, especially a long, 8+ hour flight from the Uk to the US.

“Passengers in Britain faced delays as tighter security was hastily enforced at the country’s airports and additional measures were put in place for all flights. Laptop computers, mobile phones, iPods, and remote controls were among the items banned from being carried on board.”

No audio, no video, no laptops, no phones, no music, no toothpaste, no breath mints, no hairspray and many other things.

The terrorists have already won.

If you’ve tried installing VMware on a recent Linux distribution (such as Ubuntu Edgy Eft), you’ve probably seen the following:

Using 2.6.x kernel build system.
make: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.17-5-686/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-5-686'
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.h:20,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:49:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/compat_wait.h:37:5: warning: "VMW_HAVE_EPOLL" is not defined
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/compat_wait.h:43:5: warning: "VMW_HAVE_EPOLL" is not defined
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.h:20,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:49:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/compat_wait.h:60: error: conflicting types for â
include/linux/poll.h:62: error: previous declaration of â was here
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:145: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:149: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.17-5-686'
make: *** [vmmon.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only'
Unable to build the vmmon module.

To fix it, follow this procedure (or grab the script I wrote to make it easier, here)..

Uncompress vmnet.tar and edit vmnet-only/Makefile.kernel as follows:

vm_check_build = $(shell if $(CC) $(CPPFLAGS) $(CFLAGS) $(CFLAGS_KERNEL) \
        $(EXTRA_CFLAGS) -Iinclude2/asm/mach-default \
        -DKBUILD_BASENAME=\"$(DRIVER)\" \ # add this line
        -Werror -S -o /dev/null -xc $(1) \
        > /dev/null 2>&1; then echo "$(2)"; else echo "$(3)"; fi)

Do the same for vmmon.tar in vmmon-only. mv the existing tar files out of the way and tar these two directories back up and re-run vmware-install.pl from the top-level directory.

It should complete cleanly and without any errors.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t just supply the 1-line fixes as a diff, its because Ubuntu Edgy Eft broke patch(1), and it doesn’t patch back in cleanly… so I used the Swiss Army Chainsaw; perl!