Maybe this will help someone -- it was one of the few Ubuntu installation issues I had to figure our for myself. In order to get Forte Agent 3.3 (and possibly other versions) running under Ubuntu 6:
1) Install Wine from Wine HQ -- see here
2) Download Agent, put it someplace easy to reach, open a console
3) Issue console command: wine agentenu330-846 to install Agent. You can install it to the default location, but don't let it run the app at the end. It will have installed itself to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Agent by default.
4) In order to run it, issue console command: wine agent.exe (with the proper path to the exe)
5) If it runs okay, you can try to get a list of newsgroups, but this didn't work for me. For some reason it wanted to use port 563 by default, and that didn't work. I assume it's because my news server (giganews) doesn't listen on that port. Changing the port to 119 from
Tools/Servers and Accounts/Advanced Settings
didn't work either, which is the weird part. I had to do the following:
5a) Stop Agent
5b) Open the Agent.ini file (in the home directory) and edit the NewsServers--Server section
5c) Set to false
5d) Set to false
5e) Set to 119
5f) Start Agent
It's been working fine since making that change. You might want to make a shortcut to the exe: Right-click on desktop, click Create Launcher, set command to be: wine /home/[username]/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Agent/agent.exe.

For two days I've been annoyed with Nautilus, the Gnome file manager, for not allowing me to open a terminal window from any given directory. It's one of the first registry hacks I apply to any of my Windows PCs, and -- even better -- I can set KDE's Konqueror to keep a context-aware terminal panel open at all times. So where's this tiny bit of functionality in Nautilus? Turns out you can extend Nautilus with nautilus-scripts (check out a collection of them). So now I have the terminal available via right-click as well as some other handy tools (encrypt, wipe, archive, etc). It's happier here now. The bunnies are back.

Check out Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company reviving the DC-X spacecraft! This could be the way to cheap reusable SSTO vehicles, which is the way to Luna City. I can't wait until my ashes are scattered on the moon as my will stipulates.

Check the relative sizes of various planets and stars. It's entertaining how Earth starts out seeming pretty big compared to its neighbors... until you scroll down... and down some more....

The Movie Blog posted some speculation about a Batman vs Superman film in the distant future -- ala The Dark Knight Returns , only it seems they wouldn't be using the graphic novel for the story, which would just about kill its chances for a film adaptation. Which would suck, because The Dark Knight Returns kicks ass. In the blog they wonder who the bad guy would be, but if I remember correctly Superman and Batman are both sort of bad guys in Frank Miller's story: Superman more or less a shill for the government, and Batman having wandered far off the reservation to the point where he's just killing the criminals instead of tying them up for the police. (But that scene with the Joker is sofa king cool!)

I'm always a little stunned whenever Congress passes another prohibition. It is after all a bunch of strangers who have nothing to do with me telling me what I have to do or suffer the consequences. Who do these people think they are? What makes them so sure they own me? Now they want to make sure I don't spend my money on internet gambling; it's addictive, they tell me; I might lose my savings, they say. And I hear them, I do. But they don't seem to be listening when I yell back at them to fuck off, to blow me, to eat shit like the swine they are. I'm really loud when I yell it too; my neighbors are all offended and everything. But Congress doesn't seem to listen. They don't care until I disobey them. Then they send big ugly goons to my home and force me into the back of a car.

Now they also want to force ISPs to block Internet gambling sites (just so I won't be tempted to hurt myself at them). I'm sure China approves. And me -- crazy old-fashioned bastard that I am -- keep waving my worn-out sheets of Constitution around, vainly trying to invoke their faded magic, chanting the arcane runes found in Amendments I, IX and X. But still the Congress does not heed. Here, perhaps my voice is a bit louder this way; pay attention Congressional Swine:

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Is anybody listening? Anyone?

There I was, lonely loser in a bathrobe calling all bets with my limited savings, when suddenly the door burst down. Goons had arrived! A scuffle ensued, harsh language erupted, threats were employed. They were so outraged about me spending all my savings on Internet poker that they insisted I pay them a fine. I refused! I don't have that much money, and what little I do have goes to Internet poker. They gave me a month to come up with the money. I couldn't do it! The cards were rigged or something; I couldn't raise the money. The door burst down again (actually I never paid to have it replaced after the first time), and the goons were back! They were waving around firearms! I started waving around a firearm! I dove behind my desk as a hail of bullets thudded into it. Lamps exploded, furniture fragmented. They were really angry about my Internet gambling! One of their bullets hit my television. It exploded! I leaped out the window and got away from them. And now I'm on the run. I have no place to sleep, no place to hide. Those goons are still after me. No home, no possessions, and my Congressman wants me dead. Internet Gambling has ruined my life!

An airline catering to smokers? This should be banned immediately! Smoking is bad for you.

Call me peculiar, but when the birth country of Josef Stalin is considered for NATO I have to question the point of NATO. Formed to bulwark Europe against the spread of Soviet influence, the goal of NATO -- as far as I can figure out -- was never to consume the Soviet states. Right? Huh?

It seems the rumor is trending toward true: Hollywood is making Atlas Shrugged. Possibly as a three-part trilogy! And if that's not flabbergasting enough, it seems Angelina Jolie really wants to play Dagny Taggart. And that she actually wants it to remain failthful to the novel. (One wonders if she's read it. Or understood it.) And just now I looked at IMDB and saw -- I saw it for real with my own eyes -- that Brad Pitt may take the role of John Galt! Which would shove Jennifer Anniston into the role of Hank Rearden I guess (heh, a little Atlas Shrugged qua Hollywood humor).

I always suspect stuff like this is mostly nonsense, especially when it comes from some university nobody ever heard of, but here it is: The World Map of Happiness. I'm happy to be considered so damned happy.

Recently our community was attacked by a renegade thunderstorm. Power was out for ninety-eight hours! Temperature and humidity raced each other into the nineties! It was intolerable, frustrating, sticky. I marched to the movie theater and watched every terrible film in that place. I will never be the same.

Imagine me, grumpy misanthrope, waiting in the ticket line -- part of the absurdly writhing tail of it so far from the air-conditioned lobby bursting with primary colors and perspiring soft drinks -- stuck listening to the chatter of idiots for however long it takes to suffer interminably. The grains of concrete in the sidewalk were tiny mountains too small to afford me any shade. How I hated them!

Then! Visiting the loan officer in order to finance tickets, cramming into another line for $4 bottles of water, cramming into a smelly sticky theater all bursting with people (mostly the same from the line outside). People with no self-control. They just can't keep their lips from flapping; they can't keep their hands from flipping open their cellphones every two minutes -- the theater is like midnight Manhattan on approach to JFK, all the glowing phones in there winking on and off. Those people are so important they can't be out of contact for two hours. How I raged and seethed toward them!

Then! Forced to endure twenty minutes of advertising, trailers for movies of no interest to anyone sane, admonishments to power down cell phones (yeah!), encouragements to go march out to the lobby for juju fruits, popped corn, and sugar water. A barrage of banality! How I suffered!

And finally! The horror of it! All those actors all dressed up in silly costumes, pretending to be ridiculous things for ridiculous reasons. My brain exploded! It shed shrapnel onto everyone in there. They all complained to the manger about the mess and got refunds. Except for me. Left alone in that dark smelly theater, condemned by tree branches falling onto power lines. I would have pruned them myself if I had known of the danger. I would have stripped the world of trees rather than endure it!

What a ridiculous movie! Terrible! What's worse than spending $225 million for a movie somebody dug out of the trash bin out back? No respect.

Superman in this movie is a crybaby wussy boy so traumatized by his unrequited love for Lois Lane that he stalks her house with x-ray peep-vision, eavesdrops on her conversations, tears up over a photograph of her son, and generally mopes about -- as if the pale forbidden flesh of a single human female is enough to castrate the Man of Supposed Steel. Why didn't he worry about this while he was out goofing off for the past five years?

But Superman isn't just dour and mopey, he's a complete smeghead too. He dutifully marches right up to Lex Luthor, bends over, and accepts the kryptonite dagger. Who would have expected Lex Luthor to bring kryptonite to a Superman-fight? Certainly not Superman, who daily seems to forget about the only thing that can hurt him. Dumbass! And then it takes Lois and her airplane-flying schmuck of a boyfriend to fish his ass out of the ocean. That boyfriend is the real hero, the poor bastard.

Meanwhile Lex Luthor's project, after bilking some old widow of her fortune, is nothing short of inane. Of all the super-villain schemes hatched by Luthor over the years, ranging from brilliant to stupid, this one is almost certainly the stupidest. He uses Superman's magic crystals in order to grow a new continent off the coast of New Jersey; a continent that will eventually collide with and annihilate North America. He plans to destroy all the material, mineral, and vegetable wealth of the most valuable continent in the world, and replace it with a giant lifeless mass of ugly green crystal. Why? To sell it as real estate. That's right! Not that Lex would actually *own* it, or that anyone would actually *buy* any of it. That's of no concern -- because Luthor, like Superman, in this movie is a total *moron*. The only weapon Luthor has with which to oppose the god-like Superman -- his brain -- has been removed by the writers of this tripe. There's just no respect for honest super-villains anymore. Or for honest audiences.