Sysloggin' one day at a time.
GooOS has me a little apprehensive, but this is just scary…
Ballmer: Cheaper PCs will stop piracy (and boost profits)
Ballmer outlines Microsoft’s plan to curb piracy in the developing world by working with governments to offer inexpensive systems bundled with Windows.
Great, something else to be paranoid about.
Bluetooth a Mile Away – Popular Science
With a simple modification to a USB Bluetooth adapter, you can extend your wireless range to record-setting distances.
The Engadget Interview: Mike Ramsay, CEO of TiVo – Engadget – www.engadget.com…
Veteran journalist and Engadget correspondent J.D. Lasica cornered TiVO CEO Mike Ramsay in a hallway at the Web 2.0 conference, where the head of the pioneering digital video recorder company talked about TiVo DVD recorders, government meddling in new technologies, and what the future of television holds:
Good article on how to prevent race conditions in programming.
If you haven’t heard, Red Hat’s Michael Tiemann has responded to Sun exec Jonathan Schwartz’s blog entries that more or less talk trash toward Red Hat in a big way. It’s all pretty amusing, particularly because a response such as Tiemann’s likely plays right into Schwartz’s hands, and makes Red Hat look pretty childish, too. Schwartz is a smart guy; I’m guessing nothing goes into his blog without prior careful consideration. El Reg has an article/tribute/review of the whole thing here. Oh, and how the heck did we get on the topic of Java when JS’s original, er, flame was about Open Source vs. Open Standards?
I should’ve expected as much, really. Post a blog entry in the old blog-place saying I’ve migrated to other software and, the next day, the only other person who uses the site can’t login any more. What’s more, none — and I do mean none — of the password reset techniques works. Well, except one: upgrade to the latest development code.
The latest code allows the admin user to reset any user’s password without the need to know their existing password, which is stored as a one-way MD5 hash; something the previous versions couldn’t do, at least not so directly or easily. There was one trick in the old version that worked once before: use a “hidden” URL and a specially-crafted “old password”, and voila! Too bad it didn’t work this time.
I guess if the development code is good enough for the public TikiWiki site (tikiwiki.org…) it should do well enough for me.
Then again, maybe tomorrow the admin account won’t work any more…
Made my first contribution to the Wikipedia last night/today by correcting, enhancing and adding to a couple of the pages: one about Yosemite, the other about National Parks which references Yosemite.
Yosemite National Park
National Park
Lots of stuff going around the blogosphere lately about the Wikipedia and how reliable it is (or isn’t, depending on your viewpoint). Probably in a year or two it’ll be at least as accurate as any recent treeware version for non-active entries, assuming publishers of said treeware don’t sue the Wiki out of existence because some people are copying verbatim from the text of their dead-tree version(s).
Personally, I’m not too worried about the Wiki’s authority because no one should rely on a single Internet-based source for accurate information; two or three sources, at least, should be considered good practice, just like with non-Internet-based resources. The people that do rely on Wikipedia for 100% authoritative info are probably the same people who rely on television or print media, both of which tend to get their info from the same one or two sources these days, for accurate information.
This is basically correct, although I’d argue (as those who know me would expect) that a geek is “a nerd with social skills”; what’s described in this article is essentially your average nerd, or something in-between. Nonetheless, the more insight women — that is, potential mates — have about the Geek Species, the better.
Link: www.com…
So, your crush on the bass player from Vibrating Sandbox has finally died a whimpering death and you’re wondering where to go from here. All the sinister dudes are either dating a series of interchangeable high-school riot girls in baby doll dresses and an overdose of manic panic, or permanently shacked up with some bitter old lady who pays all the bills. Which will it be, a wifely prison or a humiliating one night stand? Into this void of potential mates comes a man you may not have considered before, a man of substance, quietude and stability, a cerebral creature with a culture all his own. In short, a geek.
Link: Browser Security Test
Test your web browser for common security issues. It can run tests for all known problems or only those specific to the browser you’re using at the time.
And stop using IE! There are plenty of other, far superior browsers available: Mozilla/Firefox and Opera to name two.
In Article 2b4asr$b7r@syzygy.socs.uts.edu.au, mjcherka@socs.uts.EDU.AU
(Mark J Cherkas) wrote:
-
- I am new to this group so bear with this beginners question:
- Why is the answer 42 ?
- Has Douglas Adams ever explained this ?
-
-The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought ’42 will do’ I typed it out. End of story.
Best,
Douglas Adams London, UK | dna@dadams.demon.co.uk (dormant) Currently in Santa Fe, NM | adamsd@nic.cerf.net (current)
Link: www.codesandciphers.org…
Link: www.codesandciphers.org…
Despite what the history books say, the ENIAC was not the first digital computer in the world; the COLOSSUS was, but since it was developed secretly during World War II, the British (those that knew about it) have had to suck it up whenever we Yanks touted our (false) superiority. Until the 1970s, when details of the machine’s existence were made public. Of course, none of the textbooks used to teach American students has been changed to reflect reality, at least when I was going to school.
Unfortunately, all the hard-copy schematics of the machine were destroyed in 1960, except for a few drawings, kept illegally by engineers, which were divulged during the rebuild project in the 1990s. The rebuild was started based on eight! photographs of the machine and a handful of grey-matter recollections. In 1995, the NSA in the US was forced by a Freedom of Information Act request to declassify 5,000 documents pertaining to the Colossus. Several of these documents were helpful in rebuilding the machine; one in particular, written by Albert Small, thoroughly described how Colossus worked and enabled a significant amount of progress in replicating many of the mechanisms of the machine. Colossus is estimated to be about 90% rebuilt now and there’s work begun to rebuild the Colossus Mk II and the Tunny machine.
If you’ve read Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and enjoyed it, you have to read about this. I’m personally fascinated with the early days of cryptanalysis and how it helped to birth the digital computer age. It’s absolutely amazing what was engineered and built before the advent of the transistor (which is to say, before I was born). I’m sure some will be loathe to read it, but this is one example of something non-violent that Hitler caused to happen, by his clever use of large-scale machine-based encryption, which undoubtedly precipitated the computerized world we now live in — or maybe that’s just my naïveté showing.
World War II Codes and Ciphers info:
Link: www.codesandciphers.org…
Oh yeah, I’m there… :)
MSRP $1499 (10D was $1999; street price was $1499)
Startup time reduced from 2.3 seconds to 0.2 seconds. W00t!
…and that’s just the beginning of the improvements.
Details in the press release (and lots of them!):
Link: www.imaging-resource.com…
Sample pictures (details unknown):
Link: www.canon.co.jp/Imaging/eos20d/eos20d_sample-e.html…
Blatantly ripped without permission from anyone but it is entirely intact…
Last time I checked we’re on the “IN-TER-NET”. You know that place that is practially a blackhole of all things immature.
If you were to map the internet like a galaxy, Slashdot would be tucked over in the corner next to the obscene jokes and well stuff involving well hung midgets and horny lonely housewives.
Microsoft could release a patch that just by installing would cure world hunger and shrink maligant tumors and the headline on Slashdot would be “Microsoft distrupts food distribution and healthcare systems worldwide!”
So, in short, if your looking for unbiased punctunal and definitative coverage of the every evolving internet, this is not the place.
If however, your looking for the diatribes of cynical, world weary geeks, who know the whole world is basically built on match sticks and is gleefully waiting for the day the whole place comes tumbling down, you’ve found it.
–
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Link: linuxgazette.net…
The first really good explanation of symbolic links and hard links I’ve seen. One of the most basic Unixisms — if you don’t understand this, you can’t call yourself even a Jr-Jr Unix admin. :)
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