Articles by Dennis E. Powell

Dennis E. Powell is crackpot-at-large at Open for Business. Powell was a reporter in New York and elsewhere before moving to Ohio, where he has (mostly) recovered. You can reach him at dep@drippingwithirony.com.

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Oct 10, 2024

The Recipe for Private TV

By Dennis E. Powell | Posted at 11:30 PM

So it’s been, what, six months since I concocted my homemade television sets. Since then I’ve missed nothing that I would have liked to watch, and have watched much that was not available via the usual, um, channels. And I have maintained my privacy.

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Oct 02, 2024

The Power of Clack

By Dennis E. Powell | Posted at 10:52 PM

Every muscle was tight and trembling, like a thoroughbred in the starting gate, steaming and snorting and eager to unleash its immense pent-up power.

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Sep 25, 2024

No Need to Buy a New Computer

By Dennis E. Powell | Posted at 10:20 PM

A few weeks ago I mentioned my intention to switch from the now-sketchy Ubuntu distribution of Linux, which I’ve used for 20 years, to the uber-reliable Debian. This was in lieu of buying a new machine. Well, actually, the parts to build a new machine; the last time I ran a store-bought computer was in the previous millennium.

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Sep 18, 2024

Blame Bill!

By Dennis E. Powell | Posted at 11:35 PM

There was a time, children, when a presidential election involved a choice between serious people who offered plans, policy proposals, and philosophies.

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Weapons of War

By Dennis E. Powell | Posted at 9:00 PM

There is good cause for me to eye outdoor power tools with suspicion and fear. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, my first battle with a lawnmower ended in my defeat. (No, that’s not a pun — my left foot was sewn back together and remains an important part of me to this day.)

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Sep 04, 2024

Getting Debianized

By Dennis E. Powell | Posted at 9:28 PM

The time has come. The inevitable can be postponed no more. I’m switching my desktop computer to Debian Linux. I should have embraced Debian from the beginning. Please allow me to offer my excuse for not having done so 26 years ago.

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Aug 28, 2024

Where Is Naomi Wu?

By Dennis E. Powell | Posted at 11:54 PM

It was such a cute gadget. A tiny computer, brushed aluminum on the outside, with a decent keyboard (albeit with chicklet keys), a Thinkpad-ish pointing stick that would even take a grippy Thinkpad “cat’s tongue” insert. A fairly fast X86 Intel processor, enough storage, and 8 gigs of memory. And now it was on sale at a low price.

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Aug 21, 2024

It's Worse Than Alvin Predicted

By Dennis E. Powell | Posted at 10:47 PM

Alvin Lee was a rock-and-roll singer, guitarist, and songwriter of some note. Anyone who has seen the “Woodstock” movie surely remembers him and his band, Ten Years After, performing “I’m Going Home.” It didn’t impart the sense that Lee was high in the intellectual hit parade. But he was at least a talented predictor of future events, as I was reminded this week.

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Aug 14, 2024

Another Institution Bites the Dust

By Dennis E. Powell | Posted at 9:30 PM

WCBS Radio in New York, the originator of all-news broadcasting, will cease to exist before the month is out. Its famous call letters will disappear, replaced by something else. Rather than 24-hour live news, it will become round-the-clock sports discussion of interest primarily to gamblers. Also, there will be many ads for places where gamblers can lose their money. And other vices as well.

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Aug 07, 2024

A Stark Contrast

By Dennis E. Powell | Posted at 9:53 PM

“America needs a full-time president, and a full-time Congress,” Nixon said. He also admitted errors in the events that led to his decision. “If some of my judgments were wrong — and some were wrong — they were made in what I believed at the time to be in the best interests of the nation.” The need for a full-time president no longer seems to exist, and the less time Congress spends on the job, as a general rule, the better.

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