Domain: csuchico.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to csuchico.edu.
Comments · 120
-
Re:a late troll tuesday entry
Tastes ugly for a reason. Durian looks like a green spiked football, can weigh up to 35 pounds and smells like a backed up sewer when cracked open. Tastes like a cross between strawberry ice cream with a lot of garlic.
The native people of Indonesia and Malaysia would go to war over who controlled the largest trees.
Also reputed to be an aphrodisiac. The saying in Malaysia when the durian start to ripen and fall is:
"when the durian falls, the sarongs go up".
I think the candy maker is trying to cash in....
more here -
Duh ....
Finland, Iceland, Norway
The press are probably going to have more freedom where most state secrets involve Lutefisk. -
what version of CS am I learning.
Is what I am learning in school traditional, post-modern, modern or something else? I don't know the difference.
-
Re:Real Media
this is just funny.
-
Windows 2000There is not enough free disk space.
Delete one or more files to free disk space, and then try again
-
Re:Nothing like fun with Sodium...
Lutefisk? Is that something like this?
-
Re:Windows/Linux Socket samples/instructions?
This guide is excellent:
http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~beej/guide/net/ -
Got to love the NYT
How does the New York Times figure that Intel has spent 10 years on the Itanium? Unless they consider the "-ium" naming convention part of their research.
-
Re:A dialogue I had with Anti-Adblocker
According to Anti-adblocker guy, more and more people are using blocking software, because they don't want to see ads. Are those people suddenly going to go "Uh-oh, I better put in my whitelist," or are they just going to go to a different site that doesn't annoy them?
Clearly people don't want ads, but there's a whole industry of admen who didn't do something useful at college out there hard at work selling their very business. I don't care if they wither away and have to retrain, and I don't care if heavily commercial websites go under. Hardly anyone does.
I refer you to @Man's taunt -
US foreign aid
Just for all those who are making the US out to look like the good guy here, try some statistics The US consistantly ranks dead last among the 22 richest nations in terms of its foreign aid as a percentage of Gross National Product. The kicker is that it is behind Italy (which is in the midst of a political crisis) and Japan (which is in the middle of a decade long recession). If anything, the US should be apologizing for not having milled the corn in the first place.
More points:
a) Half of all US foreign aid is directed towards military purposes.
b) Of course, you might think this is just the democratic process at work. Americans don't want to spend that much on foreign aid. Of course, Americans also don't know how much we actually spend on foreign aid. Since they think we spend 15%, and we actually spend less than 1%, the first poll mentioned holds no water.
Look, I'm not here to demonize America. I like it here a lot. I just want to get it out there that as far as foreign policy is concerned, the American people are in the dark, and the American government does whatever is in its best interest. While I don't suddenly expect everyone to become foreign policy gurus, and the American government to be totally self-less (it shouldn't) some steps towards a nice middle ground would be a good start. -
Some I like...Here are some links I like to keep handy -
People
Richard Stallman -
Eric S. Raymond -
Larry WallLinux Programming
Linux Programming Resources -
Kernel TrafficUnix
Unix Review -
Sys Admin -
Art of Unix ProgrammingProgramming Methodologies
Extreme ProgrammingC Programming
Programming in C -
Standard C -
C Library Reference -
GNU C LibraryC++ Programming
David Beech's Introduction to C++ -
C++ for C ProgrammersPerl Programming
Perl Doc -
Perl Monks -
Perl.com -
VMS Perl -
Use PerlNetwork Programming
Beej's Guide to Network ProgrammingOpen Source
Open Projects -
Sourceforge -
Slashcode -
The Cathedral and the Bazaar -
books on that subject
Other usefull books on the subject:
Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
Designing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen
Information architecture for the world wide web by Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville
I think I got the titles and authors correct. I had to read them for a class and they were pretty good, especially for text books. -
Re:I have one issue with open officeIn fact, this is one area where open office could not only imitate Microsoft Office but advance the bar a little bit by creating a good open format, open sourced bibliographic reference database similar to EndNote or Procite. A good bibliographic reference database would help to get open office into academic and research markets.
Sorry, you've been beaten to the punch. Bibtex is already the standard. There are many databases of preentered references, such as these. A list of tools for using the bibtex system may be found here. Academic and research markets don't have much use for word processing; that's so 20th century
... so cpm[1]. Seriously, the word processing way of doing things does seem a little primitive once you get used to the idea of separating content from formatting.
[1] I believe that the first popular micro computer word processors were electric pencil and volkswriter, running on cpm.
-
Embrace? Extend?
Ok, the parent is the second one (under my threshold) who apparently tried it for the first time and fell in love with Mozilla.
He mentions mouse gestures, the one above is thrilled with tabs.
This (especially tabbing) is what made me instantly switch to from Netscape to Opera about a year ago.
I honestly don't want to start a browser war here (are there still people interested in this?), but it seems that Mozilla gains some of its appeal embracing ideas from others.
How is that for Embrace & Extend (TM)?
(Granted, the at least don't make money with it, and Opera is striking back with Ad blocking, but still...)
BTW, here is ad blocking for non-windows opera users. -
Re:I learned network programming from NetrekWow... this is turning into a class reunion.
:-)There's a little more to the history pages, most notably a timeline of events, that gives you a little more detail.
It's times like this that I'm sad I never finished the original Netrek history document. I still have a few megabytes of material archived, and actually pulled it out to help defend a patent-infringement lawsuit. (Mpath Interactive was suing another company over a multi-player gaming patent. Kevin Smith and I contributed statements and code samples that demonstrated that Netrek was doing what their patent claimed *years* before Mpath even existed.) Someday I may pull out the history stuff and finish the job.
I also learned a lot from Netrek. The UDP code in Netrek was, to the best of knowledge, the first time UDP was used for an Internet game. I didn't think it would make a difference.
:-) Everything that followed used UDP instead of TCP -- you didn't have to look very hard to see the advantages.Netrek is probably the only game that uses both UDP and TCP for game state updates. It remains the most salient example of why that approach is a bad idea.
:-)I remember using Netrek as a system diagnostic tool. If there were hiccups in the OS or network, you'd notice them almost immediately. There as a router outside KSU that was reloading its routing tables periodically, causing a small network storm, that was spotted by Netrek players who were stalling briefly at fairly precise intervals.
I learned a trememdous amount about RSA encryption and the difficulty in making a game tamper-proof. We kept trying to find ways to keep people from cheating, but there's always another approach when you don't control the target system. It's fun to watch game companies struggle with that even now.
It also taught me a lot about game balance, and how a simple change to the way score (DI) is computed can change *everything*. People want solitary goals, and will pursue them even to the detriment of others (substitute Quake "campers" for Netrek "DI scum"). Netrek had so many opportunities for tweaks that we needed a separate FAQ for Frequently Offered Clever Suggestions (FOCS) just to keep the newsgroup sane.
I miss playing Netrek almost as much as I miss writing code for it. How many games can programmers say that about?
-- Andy McFadden (ShadowSpawn)
-
KISS
GIS is a vast field even if you dont throw in web access to data. narrow down your interest or hire someone to do the GIS side and you do the web access side.
web server..
MapServer - works and is mature and stable
ESRI's GIS data server is super expensive but the new version runs on Linux
PDFMap - combine this with mapserver so that your users can download maps they make
SVG - ive seen some cools things happening with SVG
MRSID - for image compression, costs for the compressor but i have built some cool stuff with thier free server.
desktop...
ESRI has a free viewer which reads a XML file. its works ok. there is a Linux version but i havnt used it yet. all of the free (not open source) GIS viewers suck in one way or another cause the companys have some "real" version they really want you to buy (ala ESRI).
Free GIS .. if its open source and GIS its at freegis.org but frankly there isnt allot built out yet thats simple yet modular and will grow with GIS users as they begin to get specialized (image interp, business siteing, habitat annalysis, etc).theres GRASS and some others but nothing close to the commercial products (unfortuantely). furthermore all of the commercial products are over priced. you have to spend 3,000$ US (single licence) to get anything at ESRI that works. If your going to manage a GIS data collection you should get ArcView but try to find a free solution for end users on the desktop. look at combining MapServer and some of the Content Management systems that are out there for developing GIS access online.
-
What's quantum cryptography/key distrobution?
Well, I wasn't too sure, so I dug up some links to try and help myself and others understand this:
http://research.microsoft.com/~gottesma/QKD.html
http://www.qubit.org/intros/crypt.html
http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/Crypto/quantum /quantum-index.html
The last link is particularly +1 insightful about the basics of quantum cryptography.
-
Re:Linux & low spec machines
> I've got OpenBSD running on a PPro 200 with 32 megs of RAM, and it's great.
Yeap, you certainly don't need much horsepower if you're running a firewall/server. Walnut Creek used to serve *thousands* of users off a T1 with their PPro 200 back in the mid 90s. I forget which BSD they used though.
Couple of questions, if you don't mind:
- Which version of OpenBSD are you running?
- Are you running X on your PPro, or is it "just" a server?
- If you're running it as server, got any good links for setting up BSD firewalls? (TrinityOS rocks for Linux firewalling, but I haven't seen anything like it for BSD :-(
I currently have a PPro 200 w/ 64 Megs running Mandrake, but I've been looking at switching over to OpenBSD once I get some free time. -
Simple Solution using DNS
Change your hosts file to block doubleclick and everything else:
Here's a good list.
Cheers! -
Be a little wary of DocBookI've done Beej's Guide to Network Programming in DocBook (it used to be HTML). It works quite nicely for HTML output with NWalsh's stylesheets.
What was hard was getting it set up, and getting help out of the DocBook people in the know. (They can be pretty unapproachable sometimes.)
What was also hard was getting print output to work nicely. I was running fine for a while until I upgraded openjade, and then blammo--two-sided print output doesn't work anymore. Openjade simply refused to put the two-side directive in the TeX output, so I did it myself.
And what is it about my document that causes openjade to take 3 minutes to pump out TeX output, when it does the HTML in about 5 seconds?
Why is it that when I put two tables on the same page openjade/jadetex doesn't take that into account and keeps printing text off the bottom of the sheet?
The other place I've looked is Xerces/Xalan/Fop at Apache. I like the Formatted Objects idea, and it seems pretty sound. Also, the whole thing was about 827 times easier to set up than the jade stuff. Unfortunately, the code is alpha and doesn't work very well, sometimes crashing during the render.
"How does ORA do it, then?" I hear you asking. They have custom in-house tools for processing DocBook that have been in development for some time. Word on the street is that they might be releasing them soon.
Conclusion: if you want print output, you might have trouble getting what you want with DocBook at this time. At least when I code TeX it does what I say. (I don't recomment plain TeX for documentation. Maybe LaTeX since it's easier to convert to HTML. And pdf(la)tex produces nice PDFs.)
-
Re:Celerons are a better choice over PIII
I usually call the Celeron, "Celery"... but when I see Duron, I think of Durian. Don't know if it's because I eat durian or some other sub-concious thing
:) -
How to Block all Banner AdsSee this for a complete list plus instructions (you still need to add ads.musiccity.com):
-
Re:Talk about old school...
"Oubliette" on PLATO was the inspiration for the first Wizardry, in the same way that "Empire" was the inspiration for xtrek/netrek.
PLATO was pretty remarkable...
Some history of Netrek, with a discussion of Plato and a mention of Oubliette, is here.
-
use yer friggin' hosts file already!
It's been mentioned on a few other posts this go-around, but needs mentioning again. Having just run across this myself, I'm amazed this information hasn't spread further. The single easiest way to block most ads isn't with some program or extension mucking around with your system, it's just by redirecting the most common ad-servers by using your hosts file.
This page shows you how to do it for Linux/BSD/Solaris/Unix, BeOS, Windows NT, and Win '95-'98. Extremely simple, it has succeeded in blocking most banners and pop-up ads from my web browsing. The only thing this doesn' t work for is for sites that serve their own ads. I imagine this'll kill Gator as well (whew...just under the wire there in making this post relevant!) -
good deal for multiple distributionsHere is my 2 cp,
Try Redhat 7.1 and/or Mandrake 8.0 out first. Make sure to create a
/home partition during install if you just have one machine to use linux on. This will allow you to keep any work / files you have generated when you go to install a different distribution.Head over to the HOWTO Index and peruse through any HOWTO's that interest you.
Open a terminal, and type 'man man'
:)After your comfortable using linux, or on a separate "test" machine try installing Debian 2.2 r3 and/or Slackware 8.0. You will now have some experience using linux and this will give you a chance to check out the more "advanced" distributions.
Ok, to know what is really going on try out linux from scratch
Seems like there are a million "how to setup linux" guides out there now, but I found this site here, TrinityOS to be very helpful years ago, and it still is.
Oh yeah, here is a great deal from Cheapbytes where I bought my first linux cd.
- MONDO Pack Edition 28 for $17.95.
- includes all 5 Redhat 7.1 cds, Mandrake 8, Slackware 8, and StormLinux 2000.
- Debian 2.2r3 3 CD set for $9.
-
Re:C++?You might want to look at "C++ Primer Plus" by Stephen Prata (and its various translations to other languages). It's the best book I've found by far for C++, both for newbies and as a reference. Also, you should know that it's important to understand the language itself before trying to proceed with things like sockets, graphical user interfaces, etc. The best way is probably to start with text based command line applications until you are fully comfortable with the C++ language.
One of the best and most easy to understand guides to socket programming is Beej's Guide To Network Programming. Have a look at that, I think you will find it very useful.
-
And afterwards...
And after the bloom withers (side note: if it smells like a corpse while in full bloom, what must it smell like while the blossom rots?), the attendees will celebrate with a feast of durian.
Zaphod B -
Re:Modify your Winamp settingsEven better, just modify your hosts file to redirect all cddb traffic for all applications to the freedb.org servers. If you run a DNS systemse you could do the same.
C Watson has directions for the Mac, and freedb.org has some instructions for doing the same on other platforms.
http://www.cam.org/~cwatson/freedb/
http://www.freedb.org/sections.php?op=viewarticle& artid=46And if you are messing about with your hosts file already, you might want to include redirection for various web advertisers to speed up your web browsing.
http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~atman/spam/adblock.s htmlMac OS X seems to use a different mechanism than the hosts files for most setups, preferring the Netinfo tool. There are some details about it at Mac OS X Hints, but I have not figured it out completely myself.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010 328234510985
Here is another new one just posted on May 15th that I have yet to read and understand.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010 515062331512 -
California State University, Chico
CSU Chico in northern California has an online education program for distance students. We used to use satellite based tv for students that were in other areas, but we recently switched to using streaming video. The software package we use is called HorizonLive, and the actual teaching material is presented through WebCT. The sites themselves, if you want to look, are live.csuchico.edu and online.csuchico.edu. They give a quick and easy way for professors to teach (by streaming video, and the minimum speed requirements are 28.8 kbps w/Real Video), a way to interact (live chat), and that's just during the class. All classes are archived as well so students can watch the classes again and again if necessary. There are also bulletin boards, private messages, calendars, online testing, and more. In a nutshell, it gives people who would otherwise never have a chance at getting a degree a chance.
Fall of 2000 was our second test semester, and the first semester we dropped satellite testing. We offer over thirty classes now, with more coming next semester. You can go to either URL and test out the system, but hurry, the semester ends on Friday :)
What do I think of it? I think it's great, and if the classes available at this time were classes that I needed, I would take them. Many students on campus take classes that are both WebCT and in person classes, and professors just use WebCT to give tests and post notices and give students a place to interact. With private email, it also makes it very easy for the professor to email everyone in the class. What I also like about the idea is it gives people flexibility in the classes--if you don't want to go to class this morning, don't. Watch the archive. Sleep in until 3 and check your WebCT mail for information on the test. Use the bulletin board to ask someone what you missed. It not only gives people opportunity to go to college when they might not otherwise be able to, but it gives them the flexibility in doing so that many would desire. -
California State University, Chico
CSU Chico in northern California has an online education program for distance students. We used to use satellite based tv for students that were in other areas, but we recently switched to using streaming video. The software package we use is called HorizonLive, and the actual teaching material is presented through WebCT. The sites themselves, if you want to look, are live.csuchico.edu and online.csuchico.edu. They give a quick and easy way for professors to teach (by streaming video, and the minimum speed requirements are 28.8 kbps w/Real Video), a way to interact (live chat), and that's just during the class. All classes are archived as well so students can watch the classes again and again if necessary. There are also bulletin boards, private messages, calendars, online testing, and more. In a nutshell, it gives people who would otherwise never have a chance at getting a degree a chance.
Fall of 2000 was our second test semester, and the first semester we dropped satellite testing. We offer over thirty classes now, with more coming next semester. You can go to either URL and test out the system, but hurry, the semester ends on Friday :)
What do I think of it? I think it's great, and if the classes available at this time were classes that I needed, I would take them. Many students on campus take classes that are both WebCT and in person classes, and professors just use WebCT to give tests and post notices and give students a place to interact. With private email, it also makes it very easy for the professor to email everyone in the class. What I also like about the idea is it gives people flexibility in the classes--if you don't want to go to class this morning, don't. Watch the archive. Sleep in until 3 and check your WebCT mail for information on the test. Use the bulletin board to ask someone what you missed. It not only gives people opportunity to go to college when they might not otherwise be able to, but it gives them the flexibility in doing so that many would desire. -
Re:Do like I did..Those witout DNS servers to muck about with can just modify your hosts file like this example or according to the instructions for Mac OS 9 and never worry about it again. There are also a variety of mirrors that one could point to.
This also means that all of your applications that would normaly want to use CDDB will use freedb.org without having to change their settings or hack their resources.
Now does anyone want to let me know how to easily do this with Mac OS X? I can't seem to get the Netinfo utility to do it effectively.
While you are at it, you might want to play similar tricks with advertising banners and the like. Here's more information.
-
Re:Netrek had a chat interface in the '80's
Best date I could find on their web site was version 1.3 circa '95.
Looks like it has forerunners that precede its 1986 X version, with an curses version in '82. -
Banner ad blockingHey.
In a corner removed from the rest of the group, Watson and another man were huddled together discussing what annoys them the most about the modern Internet--the banner ads. They were trying to come up with a way to "solve" that problem. They talk about whether it would be possible to intercept the ads and replace them with the words "Free the Net!" Or maybe the easiest way to make them disappear would be would be just to bring down the server computers for DoubleClick, the company that manages much of the Internet's advertising.
"If we could find a way to get rid of those ads for a week we'd be the heroes of the Internet," Watson said.
Just go to your client's (or better still, proxy server's) hosts file (C:\Windows\hosts on Windows, /etc/hosts on Linux, I think).
Add entries for every server you don't want to connect to, i.e. ad1.doubleclick.com, etc. and point them to 127.0.0.1 (localhost). That'll time out extra-fast. Example here.
Alterately, you could block *doubleclick.com at a proxy server. Or you could put a proxy on your local machine (Like a content-checking porn filter), that checked all files with *.gif extension for banner proportions, then replaced them.
Blocking banner ads is easy. The question is: Would the benefit (whatever that may be) outway the problem of sites not being funded by advertising, and maybe changing to subscription, or closing. This is the real issue.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
-
Also..
Debian plus psionic.com.
Go to psionic.com and download their free tools logcheck is an official potato package but portsentry is not (it's in woody). Either way you can either download the tar file or the deb from debian and install them.
Then go to The Trinity document and do some reading.
After that you should be able to defend yourself from most attacks. -
Re:I don't care about DoubleClick.
-
HOSTS Ad Blocking
I have found HOSTS files useful for blocking banner ads. They are quite easy to setup and configure.
This one is my current baseline file and includes good directions for Windows users.
This one is more general purpose and "cross platform".
Whenever I hit a new ad site I add it to the bottom of the file. -
Re:That's a nice bill, but what we really need...If you want to get rid of the evil cookies in IE, just add the offending domains to the list of restricted sites. Long lists of known ad servers can be easily found on the interent. Cookie setting is disabled by default for the restriced sites list.
If you want to be more restrictive you can disable cookies for the internet zone and add sites you want to allow to set cookies into the trusted sites zone. Keep in mind that it is necessary to enable cookie setting on most e-tail sites to keep track of your shopping cart.
_____________ -
Re:Distance learning is hard...Cal State Chico uses Horizon Live and it supports IE5+. I have to say that the video is crap but the overall system is pretty good. They use it in conjunction with WebCT. You can find out more about it at online.csuchico.edu
--- This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine. ---
-
My toolkit against spamI use:
The Spam Bouncer, a procmail script to identify incoming spam and either tag it, move it to a different mailbox file, or bounce it.
SpamCop, to file official complaints about the spam that gets through.
Sugarplum, to stick lots of irrelevant fake email addresses (and the addresses of other spammers) up on my web pages. If spammers want to harvest addresses from MY pages, they're going to fill up their databases with useless data and end up spamming each other.
And finally, Web Ad Blocking is a site which provides a new 'hosts' file which redirects major web page ad sites to 127.0.0.1, which removes a whole lot of banner ads from web pages.
-
Let's not forgetwe are culturally still under the shadow of the massive propaganda effort started in the 1920s to convince us all that "drugs" are evil
See, for example, http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~droopy/drughist.htm
l (sample quote:)Anslinger [the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics] testified to Congress in 1937, warning, "Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug known to Mankind,"
This and other lies colored the view of two generations about drugs and explains much of the present situation. Political parties are now as bound by these attitudes as they ever were - the path of least effort is not to question the status quo.However, some countries in South America are apparently no longer prepared to go along with this facade. In fact the president of Uruguay, Jorge Batlle has recently come out in favor of widespread legalisation. See:
http://www.narconews.com/heroyear2000.html
or the original story (in spanish) athttp://www.terra.com.uy/canales/actualidad/5/5086
. html .sigs: just say no!
-- -
TrinityOS?
What does Bastille do for me that I can't get by following the rules of TrinityOS?
-
Re:Spam is the worst kind of free speech.Here are some links you might find useful in your fight against spam:
- http://www.ecst.csuchico. edu
/~atman/spam/adblock.shtml: This site provides you with a hosts file which maps dozens of web ad banner graphic sites to 127.0.0.1. The net affect is that many banner ads won't load at all, and instead will show up in your browser as broken images. This really speeds up the loading of web pages, especially if you're on a modem connection. - http://spamcop.net/: SpamCop is a great site! For free, it lets you paste a spam email into its form, and then it analyzes the spam, decides who the appropriate ISP's are to complain to, and sends those people a detailed complaint with all the info they need to find and shut down whoever violated their terms-of-service. It also keeps stats on the worst spam offenders, and makes this information available to ORBS. I swear by it, and it's immensely gratifying when I (frequently!) get email from an ISP thanking me for my help and letting me know that the offending account has been terminated.
- http://www.spambouncer.org/: I haven't used SpamBouncer myself yet, but it's a procmail-based way to screen spam out of your mailbox. I've heard it's good.
(I got one spam recently that actually ha a return receipt attached; it was a pyramid scheme and Eudora beeped and told me 'The sender has requested notification that you read this email.' What gall!)
- http://www.ecst.csuchico. edu
-
from the but-can-it-print-me-up-a-pizza? dept.
No, but this can.
-
Here's the link
here-> Trinity OS
-
Re:Security != "security_from_script_kiddies"
Me too about 5 times a day from SK's on my DSL. I got one of the SK's shutdown by pacbell for repeated subseven scans over labour day weekend.
I secured RH 6.2 with ipchains + MASQ using the
TrinityOS firewall script.
TrinityOS-security.tgz
I tested the rules from another IP using nmap and I leave only SSH and AUTH open.
Typical attacks over the past weeks have been:
netbios 137 & 139
ftp 21
telnet 23
SubSeven 27374 (pc anywhere lookalike virus! glad I use linux).
SunRpc 111
Hedley -
Firewall Info
Here's some Firewall info I've referred to many times.
Check out the Trinity OS Paper . It gives some excellent advice on Securing your Linux System. This paper also comes with various IPCHAINS Rule-Sets you can use. Don't try to print it out though. It's atleast 1,400 pages long and growing.
This Firewall Site allows you to configure an excellent firewall Script just by answering some simple questions. I know of many people who have used this site to configure their firewalls.
-
CoreWars
Everyone else is giving stuff, that while entertaining, is way out of scope for most high school classes. These guys aren't coders, much less hackers. They've got five hours a week not counting homework time. I say send 'em to play corewars and have class tournaments. Teaches about memory, low level programming concepts, encourages truly creative thought, and brings out the competitive nature. See: ht
t p://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~pizza/koth/</ a> for all the info and software you'll need. -
Re:New Idea. Spam free DNS service?you can use the
/etc/hosts method to block sites on pretty much any computer, even if you are dialled up direct with no proxies etc.There is a nice list of ad server already set up in a hosts file format here#, along with instructions to set it up on *N*X, Mac, & Windows, according to page it is even tailored to slashdot readers.
one proviso is that you may have do disable javascript occasionally, or when you load a page with an ad on sometimes it will bounce you to a 404 on you local machine. Naming no names, but you actually have to disable Javascript to get to netscape's Javascript manuals (from the front page, may be ok if you go straight there).
-
Re:Cool
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but what Im interpreting from the above statement is that you believe that prayer was removed from schools and replaced with evolution because of Sputnik?
Yes Plebe, I do. At about this time, Cold War panic had set itself firmly in our government. There was a frenzy to contrast our society against the "godless" menace of communism.
On June 14, 1954, Congress unanimously ordered the inclusion of the words "Under God" into the nation's Pledge of Allegiance. On July 11, 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Public Law 140 making it mandatory that all coinage and paper currency display the motto "In God We Trust" in some cases replacing Jefferson's beautiful 'E Pluribus Unum'. It was enacted October 1, 1957.
It's funny you should mention Madalyn Murray O'Hair as she has written on the motivating influence of these legislative acts.
These actions took a backseat after the launch of Sputnik. The Sputnik scare prompted a renaissance in American science education, during which evolution worked its way back into the mainstream. In 1961, the National Science Foundation, in conjunction with the Biological Science Curriculum Study, outlined a basic program for teaching the theory of evolution and published a series of biology books in which the organizing principle was evolution.
You will find the Executive Directive, with mention of Sputnik and the United State's emerging space program in the National Archives; Records of the National Science Foundation (Record Group 307.4.2).
Or look at this. -
Better, Free, Open-Source Alternatives to Diablo2
Instead of supporting Blizzard and their franchise, you could check out some great opensource projects that Blizzard basically repackaged, made real-time, added fancier graphics, and sold to Joe Consumer.
Rogue is the grandaddy of everything. Including Diablo. See where it all began.
Angband is my favorite Rogue-like. It has incredible depth, hundreds of monsters, and hundreds of magical items. #angband on Othernet usually has at least one developer in it.
There are also a number of Angband variants such as Zangband and Pernband. Zangband even includes a multitude of quests, for those who like a little story-line to their dungeon crawls. These can all be found at the Angband link above. Graphical Tcl versions of Angband also exist, for the graphics-needy.
Others include Nethack (a light-hearted, often humorous Rogue-like), ADOM , and Moria
So, instead of marching to your local EB, why not download one of these (I heartily recommend Angband) free games and save the 40$ that Diablo 2 would cost you? You could even contribute to the project, play with the source, or add your own monsters, items, and spells. Have fun!