Check out a few links about CAFTA: 1 2 3 4 5.

Disgusting. My take? Globalization in its most ruthless form is going to be seen in the next few years in each of the countries affected by CAFTA. Then there’s going to be a long track record of failure for the theories of globalization, from NAFTA and Mexico, to WTO effects on Jamaica, to CAFTA in Central America and Dominican Republic. And then what are we all going to say? We’re still supporting these theories on “faith”? Or will we wake up and smell the coffee, and realize that “globalization,” the way it is sold now by politicians and even theoreticians, is nothing more than “handing public capital over to corporations, basically for free”.

Or, perhaps more pointedly: restoring the world order of imperial powers and their subjugated colonies.

My only fear is that by the time we realize this, globalization will have so evolved that the “imperial powers” won’t be rich governments, but rich transnationals, and the subjugated colonies won’t be third-world countries, but all countries and all people who don’t have major stakes in the ruling corporations.

This is exciting news. A Trolltech developer has modified KAA, the acceleration architecture used in Keith Packard’s experimental “kdrive” Xserver, to work with the traditional Xorg tree. He announced this new development in an e-mail that makes it clear it is extremely easy to get drivers to use Exa to gain Apple/Windows-like graphics performance.

I know that the unichrome project generally doesn’t bother itself with these very desktop-oriented features (their focuses are more on MediaPCs, etc.), but I think this may be an excellent way for me to begin hacking the new modular Xorg tree I mentioned last time. If I added Exa support to the unichrome driver, would that mean transparency and full-on graphics acceleration for my X desktop, what I’ve long been waiting for? We’ll see.

I find myself studying in the Kimmel Center for my Linear Algebra final, which is this Thursday. There I am, minding my own business on the second-floor study lounge.

But then, a group of three girls shows up in the seating area right near me, and starts chatting about whatever inane topic comes to mind. They are then followed by a German foreign student whom they know, who asks them if they know words like blitzkrieg and rammstein. They respond with blank stares and Southern accents conceding they never heard the terms. The German boy responds, “Surely you must know blitzkrieg, I heard you use the term when you study German military history.” Indeed, they probably know the words, but have never heard them pronounced properly by a German, and thus cannot make the connection.

Well enough, however, slowly more and more girls file in. A few guys show up as well. They ask to have the extra chairs around the desk at which I’m working, and make a lot of noise chatting and chatting. After a few minutes, there are probably twenty people, 15 girls and five guys. And they begin their club meeting. What’s the club? Bible study.

Is there a floor dedicated to clubs at Kimmel? Yes, floor seven. Is the second floor meant for study? Yes. Could I possibly focus on Linear Algebra with talk of Leviticus and Genesis in the air? Certainly not. What the hell is wrong with these people?

It seems that Xorg, as of the 7.0 release, has been split into monolithic and modular development trees. The modular model allows you to compile individual components related to Xorg separately from the whole X server, so that you don’t need to do a two-hour compilation just to work on this or that driver or this or that library.

This is good news for me. My biggest craving lately was to put my C skills to use by diving into a big project that has effects on the Linux desktop, and Xorg is certainly the biggest in that sense. However, in the past I was always put off by the huge amount of groking one needs to do just to understand the Xorg compilation process. After class is over, I’m gonna start diving in.