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djotaku's twitter feed
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- http://www.gnu.org/fry/
- Clinton Supporters: Are you really such sore losers that you're prepared to screw us all over for four years just because you lost?
- More Christian Tech Goodness: http://tinyurl.com/6c8587
- When I was a kid, I played some corny Biblical video games. Now this comes out: http://tinyurl.com/5mxczl Will it sell?
- From now on all LPGA players must pass an oral english test. Who cares if you speak english if you can swing a stick at a small white ball?
- I thought my blog looked a little weird and then I remembered that I had ad blocker turned on and my google ad was therefore missing.
- Foobar2000 the strangely named audio player with the neat features
- I'm annoyed that my Civ 4 BTS hasn't been auto-updating. Just had to download over 300 MB of patches just to play Fall from Heaven 2.
- @ASPwizer: Nothing wrong with you, Honda Elements are the cars that winners drive. q;o)
- Also, sharing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericsbinaryworld/sets/72157606917571613/
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Jun
26
As I have often claimed, Creative Commons is of most benefit to unknown artists. Bands, photographers, and painters (to name a few) will remain unknown if they charge for their work. Why? Because human nature is not to purchase something if you are unsure if you will like it. When an artist places their work under the CC license, they allow others to experience and use their work and share with others without financial risk. Later, the happy customers will very likely donate money or pay for that which they receieved and enjoyed. (Just ask Magnatunes)
Now take myself. I am a photographer and, like most hackers, I get the most joy out of peer appreciation and use. I don’t care so much about money, although I wouldn’t object being paid for my photographs (and I have already sold one of them) However, what magazine (online or otherwise) is going to pay for my material when they don’t know me? On the other hand, let’s say a certain NY online radio station needs a photograph of young adults in line for a concert. They look under the creative commons licensed photos and find this one. Well, now both our purposes have been served! I gain fame because they honored my license and get me attribution! They gain a picture without having to dig out of their bottom line.
This is what the RIAA and MPAA don’t understand! The world is changing and so are the ways of thinking about revenue and exposure. I am so happy to see this! (and it was a while ago - I only found out now!)
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Jun
25
Latest Quotes
Category: Quotes | 
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Here is the latest batch of quotes I have gathered up:
Found in the winehq irc room
1. Knowledge is Power
2. Power Corrupts
therefore
Study hard and become evil
“How many kamikaze missions have you flown?” “Fourteen Sir!” “Shouldn’t it be just one?” -Early work of Douglas Adams
Apple for style, Linux for security, Windows for Solitaire
['a', 'b', 'new', 'mpilgrim', 'z', 'example', 'new', 'False']
>>> “False” in li
True
“Humans are the only animals that have the pet relationship. You don’t see giraffes with pet gazelles. Go Gazelle! Run around and…” - Eddie Izzard
“The game of Musical Chairs involves a catastrophic off-by-one error where N people try to sit in N-1 chairs.” -The Jargon File
“Black Holes are the Universe’s /dev/null” - Eric Mesa
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Jun
24
Last.fm
Category: Internet, Music | Leave a Comment
Thanks to Danny, I am now a member of the yet another addictive internet site. Last.fm, which works with the Linux music player amaroK will collect all the songs you listen to. It will then display it on a webpage such as this one. If this was all it did, it would be mildly fun, but it combines the best of the social web phenomenon involved in web 2.0. Clicking on a song will tell you how many users listened to that song from that artist. It also has a “neighbors” feature where it lists other users that have the same musical taste as you. This should be interesting given the variety of music I listen to. Also, I have added a plugin to the sidebar here so that you can see the latest songs I’ve listend to on my Linux computer. These are the invasions of privacy I don’t mind since I’m volunteering this information. It’s when programs, websites, and ISPs take this information without asking me that I get annoyed.
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Jun
13
Alright! Google Earth 4 has been released. This time around Google has not let us Linux users high and dry! In fact, they have released Windows, Linux AND Macintosh versions of Google Earth! I think I will finally download it - I had been waiting for the rumored Linux version. Read the exciting announcement here and look for me to be blogging about it in a few days.
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Jun
11
“Trusted” Computing
Category: Computers, DRM, Geek Love | Leave a Comment
The computing industry has lots of euphimisms, but one of the ones that gets me really miffed is “trusted computing”. It is a process by which computer companies are trying to exert THEIR control on machines WE have bought with OUR money! Trusted Computing is the way they show they don’t trust us, but not allowing us to do whatever we want on our machines. This goes against the very love of tinkering that drives so many of us. It’s why more and more people are turning to the BSDs and Linux distros in order to be able to have the FREEDOM to tinker with THEIR OWN software as they wish. Instead, the industry wants to tell us how we should experience their items! I don’t want to hear it! If I want to buy a CD or DVD and rip it to my computer and put it on my iPod, then that’s my own business! Especially if I have PURCHASED IT! There have always been and always will be pirates. If you embed these systems into our hardware, you think it will stop us from experiencing our media the way we want to, but it won’t! There’s not a thing you can do to stop the resourcefulness of computer geeks, CS, and ECE majors. You can push congress to make it illegal, but that just means another DVD Jon in Scandanavia will figure it out. Just let us do what we wish. There has always been piracy and somehow you’ve still managed to make money anyway.
For a wonderful animated video explaining Trusted Computing (from our side) visit http://www.lafkon.net/tc/
For another blogger’s ideas on what we should do about this, go to DRM -Is it worth going to jail for?
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Jun
8
Al Zarquawi is dead
Category: News, War in Iraq | Leave a Comment
Others have probably covered it to death. I am just mentioning it because it is that important.
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Jun
4
Computer Geek Humor
Category: BSD, Geek Love, Linux, jokes | Leave a Comment
As I was browsing around /usr/share/emacs/21.4/etc/ looking for the emacs manual in order to look for the command to launch the doctor and I found the following. It’ll be funniest if you’re used to Unix man pages. Here it is, the man page for condom.
CONDOM(1) EUNUCH Programmer’s Manual CONDOM(1)
NAME
condom - Protection against viruses and prevention of child
processes
SYNOPSIS
condom [options] [processid]
DESCRIPTION
_condom_ provides protection against System Transmitted
Viruses (STVs) that may invade your system. Although the spread of
such viruses across a network can only be abated by aware and cautious
users, _condom_ is the only highly-effective means of preventing
viruses from entering your system (see celibacy(1)). Any data passed
to _condom_ by the protected process will be blocked, as specified by
the value of the -s option (see OPTIONS below). _condom_ is known to
defend against the following viruses and other malicious
afflictions…
o AIDS
o Herpes Simplex (genital varieties)
o Syphilis
o Crabs
o Genital warts
o Gonorrhea
o Chlamydia
o Michelangelo
o Jerusalem
When used alone or in conjunction with pill(1), sponge(1),
foam(1), and/or setiud(3), _condom_ also prevents the conception of a
child process. If invoked from within a synchronous process, _condom_
has, by default, an 80% chance of preventing the external processes
from becoming parent processes (see the -s option below). When other
process contraceptives are used, the chance of preventing a child
process from being forked becomes much greater. See pill(1),
sponge(1), foam(1), and setiud(3) for more information.
If no options are given, the current user’s login process (as
determined by the environment variable USER) is protected with a
Trojan rough-cut latex condom without a reservoir tip. The optional
‘processid’ argument is an integer specifying the process to protect.
NOTE: _condom_ may only be used with a hard disk. _condom_
will terminate abnormally with exit code -1 if used with a floppy
disk (see DIAGNOSTICS below).
OPTIONS
The following options may be given to _condom_…
-b BRAND BRANDs are as follows…
trojan (default)
ramses
sheik
goldcoin
fourex
-m MATERIAL The valid MATERIALs are…
latex (default)
saranwrap
membrane — WARNING! The membrane option is _not_
endorsed by the System Administrator General as an
effective barrier against certain viruses. It is
supported only for the sake of tradition.
-f FLAVOR The following FLAVORs are currently supported…
plain (default)
apple
banana
cherry
cinnamon
licorice
orange
peppermint
raspberry
spearmint
strawberry
-r Toggle reservoir tip (default is no reservoir tip)
-s STRENGTH STRENGTH is an integer between 20 and 100 specifying
the resilience of _condom_ against data passed to
_condom_ by the protected process. Using a larger
value of STRENGTH increases _condom_’s protective
abilities, but also reduces interprocess communication.
A smaller value of STRENGTH increases interprocess
communication, but also increases the likelihood of a
security breach. An extremely vigorous process or
one passing an enormous amount of data to _condom_
will increase the chance of _condom_’s failure. The
default STRENGTH is 80%.
-t TEXTURE Valid TEXTUREs are…
rough (default)
ribbed
bumps
lubricated (provides smoother interaction between
processes)
WARNING: The use of an external application to _condom_ in
order to reduce friction between processes has been proven in
benchmark tests to decrease _condom_’s strength factor! If execution
speed is important to your process, use the ‘-t lubricated’ option.
DIAGNOSTICS
_condom_ terminates with one of the following exit codes…
-1 An attempt was made to use _condom_ on a floppy disk.
0 _condom_ exited successfully (no data was passed to
the synchronous process).
1 _condom_ failed and data was allowed through. The
danger of transmission of an STV or the forking of a child
process is inversely proportional to the number of other
protections employed and is directly proportional to
the ages of the processes involved.
BUGS
_condom_ is NOT 100% effective at preventing a child process
from being forked or at deterring the invasion of a virus (although
the System Administrator General has deemed that _condom_ is the most
effective means of preventing the spread of system transmitted
viruses). See celibacy(1) for information on a 100% effective program
for preventing these problems.
Remember… the use of sex(1) and other related routines
should only occur between mature, consenting processes. If you must
use sex(1), please employ _condom_ to protect your process and your
synchronous process. If we are all responsible, we can stop the
spread of STVs.
AUTHORS and HISTORY
The original version of _condom_ was released in Roman times
and was only marginally effective. With the advent of modern
technology, _condom_ now supports many more options and is much more
effective.
The current release of _condom_ was written by Ken Maupin at
the University of Washington (maupin@cs.washington.edu) and was last
updated on 10/7/92.
SEE ALSO
celibacy(1), sex(1), pill(1), sponge(1), foam(1), and
setiud(3)
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