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You can find some good background reading here: What You Need to Know about Peak Oil.

There seems to be a lot of dispute over when world-wide peak oil will occur (or if it has already). On the other hand, there is consensus that US peak oil has already happened (and that's accounting for shale, Alaska, etc).

It's not FUD if it's true.

One small problem there, bud. It's not true. You see, security is one of those things you can never prove, since it's not really possible to prove a negative. You can just do the best you can and look at results. and hope that nobody proves you wrong. HOWEVER, if you're going to make vague rhetorical remarks about the potential for proving security to be lacking, well that's FUD. You're catering to fears that you have not demonstrated have any basis in reality. You're attempting to sow uncertainty and doubts where you simply haven't made your case.

In order to MAKE it true and not just be another FUD spreader, you need to do just one simple thing...prove a compelling positive. I would like to hear you make a case for a virus, in the wild, that affects Linux. Just one. I took the bait once. Back atcha kid, it's your turn to demonstrate how your statements have any basis in reality.

I'll just point out that this article was about XP being infected, Yes, it's stale and 8 years old, but whether you appreciate this fact or not, it's still the face of Microsoft Windows as far as the computing public are concerned. Security flaws and all. The vulnerability/severity/patching-delay stats that are published all over the web tell the tale of which OSes are the most secure (for whatever reasons) and are patched the fastest when a vulnerability does come to light. And for fun, here's an interesting little research project some folks did to see how all the then-current OSes fared, including popular Linux & Unix flavors, Windows Vista Ultimate, and Mac OS X. If the results surprise you, you probably have more to learn about what elements of design make an OS secure...or not. http://www.omninerd.com/articles/2006_Operating_System_Vulnerability_Summary

Oh, I know, it is a blog, not a reputed tech journalist, so you need a grain of salt

That is only the beginning of the problems:

* It's 2 years out of date.
* It's making some apples-to-oranges comparisons (eg: using XP Gold without similar era versions of Fedora/RH, etc)
* There are at least two outright lies in the table - neither of the Vista "vulnerabilities" are remotely exploitable, and for them to even be present the default configuration must be changed so the firewall is disabled. (Refer to the source material.)

All Linux default installs show zero vulns as well.

As do up to date versions of Windows XP and Vista (or would, if the goalposts weren't moved).

When some services are activated, they tend to show less vulnerabilities.

Even a cursory glance at the table shows they're running fewer services. Hardly evidence from which one can draw a reliable conclusion.

In short, it does little to support the assertion "it is simply true that flaws are more common and less efficiently patched in Microsoft products than in any other".

Was it just me, or did anyone else find the process of getting Window 7 Beta to be a pain? I was amazed at just how difficult it was to obtain their software using a non-Windows OS.

All of your concerns are addressed in Improve MPG: The Factors Affecting Fuel Efficiency which was Slashdotted more than two years ago.

In a nutshell, yes, the horsepower requirements increase with added speed as your engine must fight with increased drag. So driving slower mitigates the energy required to overcome the additional force.

HOWEVER, going too slow and you don't cover enough distance for the amount of gas you use. In an extreme example, idling at 0mph is an asymptotic point on the mpg graph. All cars have different "sweet spots" where they are optimal. Those "sweet spots" are typically dictated by particular RPM ranges and the corresponding speeds by which a chosen gear will drive the car within those RPM ranges.

Some people will say that simply driving in the highest gear at the lowest speed will always produce the best mpg. Not necessarily so (though generally so). As an example, a 2006 Jeep Wrangler turning 35" tires gets exactly the same mpg in 6th gear as it does in 5th gear at 75mph. This is counter-intuitive but one must remember there are more factors at play within the engine computer than simply RPMs. Looking deeper at the situation reveals that while 5th gear requires more RPMs, the ignition timing is advanced nearly 20 degrees on 6th gear plus the higher RPMs are actually in the engine's torque zone meaning it requires less air (and hence less gas based on the stoichiometric ratio) to produce the same amount of power.

i remember in one of the mythbusters episodes they tested drafting(wind resistance) on a car and how it affected fuel efficiency. wind resistance does make a big difference. "Going beyond the speculative mathematics of fluid dynamics equations, the Mythbusters demonstrated the principle scientifically in episode #80, confirming the improvements to fuel economy. Using a NASA wind tunnel, the Mythbusters used scale models to demonstrate wind resistance was reduced up to 93% (with a dangerously close simulation of a ten foot following distance). Following the wind tunnel experiment, the Mythbusters hooked a computer directly to the fuel injectors and tailed a truck in a controlled environment, demonstrating gains of 20-40% in fuel efficiency" http://www.omninerd.com/news/Mythbusters_Confirm_Drafting_Improves_Fuel_Economy

More than likely, his subconcious need for the device to work led to a more conservative driving style - resulting in the increase. Things you may do to the fuel far back in the fuel line will be completely negated once it gets spurted through the injectors. http://www.omninerd.com/articles/Improve_MPG_The_Factors_Affecting_Fuel_Efficiency

I was part of the West Point team back in 2001's CDX when we won the first Director's Trophy. Unfortunately, I have the disappointing duty of letting you know that the Army will completely squander your skills and abilities once Human Resources Command (HRC) starts blindly filling roster vacancies with bodies. The NSA was even trying to transfer service obligations for key participants from the '01 CDX ... but the Army put a stop to that by stamping the effort out with an old boot of lockstep tradition and red tape.

HRC Continues to Fail

OmniNerd.com, a site I do hobby development for, is running on Rails 2.0. We switched over from PHP this fall and site maintenance has been a dream since. Our site has even survived a few Slashdottings and Diggs since the switch, which used to murder it before. (Granted, the PHP code wasn't the best.) I've heard the "doesn't scale" debate a million times, but I'm curious if there is anyone out there who has recently moved a project from one language/framework to Ruby/Rails and whether you're glad you did or if it's been a nightmare. We're a medium-to-low traffic site with big surges every few weeks and it's worked well for us.

... a writer at OmniNerd put together a good article on Auction 73 outlining why the FCC is auctioning the 700Mhz spectrum as well as how they're doing it in a competitive and fair fashion. He even walks a fictitious company through the auction process to detail what is involved for bidders.

As far as "straight-out-of-box" conditions go, both Microsoft's Windows and Apple's OS X are ripe with remotely accessible vulnerabilities. Even before enabling the servers, Windows based machines contain numerous exploitable holes allowing attackers to not only access the system but also execute arbitrary code. Both OS X and Windows were susceptible to additional vulnerabilities after enabling the built-in services. Once patched, however, both companies support a product that is secure, at least from the outside. The UNIX and Linux variants present a much more robust exterior to the outside.

I actually find it quite amusing that some people feel like they're getting "great mileage" on their hybrid Priuses when they break the 40mpg barrier. I was able to do 44mpg on the highway and just shy of 40mpg city pretty regularly in my '98 Camry (regular 4 cylinder version). It really boils down to how driving habits affect fuel efficiency. The only reason I lost that performance was putting the roof rack on which drastically impaired my coefficient of drag. All you hybrid owners had better be breaking 60mpg ... otherwise it tells me you just mash your accelerator and hope the technology saves you the gas. Gas savings comes from both ends - both the engineered technology AND efficient driving. Just as everyone likes to deride those who offset their living with "Carbon Credits", so do the rest of us when we see someone driving a hybrid like a moron.

So more or less, this technology is simply a forced adaptation of improved driving habits for people too lazy to do it themselves. It's just proof positive of the old axiom stated time and time again - changing your driving habits can improve mpg.

Various rules of that sort have existed for a long time. I recall while I was there in 2005, there was a big push for to make every soldier reveal if they had a blog or personal website. Evidently, somebody had been posting more detailed accounts of the action as it happened on his blog than he was recording in the official duty log. So there are obvious cases where, yes, this is a problem. But before discounting the average discussion forum as immaterial to foreign intelligence, you never really know who is reading your site. Our site had a fellow who began posting insurgent propaganda (our filters worked) which served as a wake-up to us that our own news/discussions had garnered attention we weren't aware of. But we made our own users aware of it with an OPSEC Awareness post to serve as a reminder.

FWIW, I ran the article's data through SPSS using a chi-square/McNemar+Risk Estimate test (appropriate for dichotomous treatment+dichotomous outcome variable models) and got an alpha=.744. So, no statistically significant treatment effect from the seeding, but in exactly the same way that the author thought. (Shame on him for using a standard regression model.)
http://www.omninerd.com/2007/04/20/news/1234/comme nts/9917

How about this link: http://www.omninerd.com/2007/03/26/articles/74

Signs of an Alien Invasion http://www.omninerd.com/2007/02/25/articles/71

Any real 4x4 like a Jeep Wrangler or the Hummer H1 are greener than everything else on the road for one very obvious reason: neither vehicle requires the world be covered in asphalt. A Prius or any other eco-friendly, high MPG vehicle on the other hand isn't going to get very far without chopping down forests, blasting through mountain ranges and otherwise laying waste to the environment for a "road".

http://www.omninerd.com/

I wonder if that thing can figure out what was flying around over the desert in New Mexico: http://www.omninerd.com/2007/02/25/articles/71

Regardless of the author's Borat style choice of words, that's a damn near stroke of brilliance with many different combinations of implementation. Using the BIOS extensions from expansion card ROMs would allow more than simply hooking into a booting Windows system. It's a near perfect delivery mechanism for a Blue Pill style of rootkit.

The best implementation, though, would be to use a variety of stages. Custom craft a bootable USB key to target flash ROMs. There's plenty of storage available on today's flash drives which would allow a variety of "alternate" ROMs to be stored. The attacker could seed the flash drive with customized ROMs for the most frequently purchased cards and then simply have the key detect the present hardware and flash. This of course, would require physical access but there are plenty of systems to be had at an office by simply sticking in the key and rebooting them after hours.

But I mentioned multi-stage and Blue Pill. The fastest way to make it a reality would be for the "rootkit key" to do more than just flash some ROMs. Perhaps integrate re-partitioning schemes from products like iPartition or PartitionMagic to make oneself a happy hacker partition. This would normally be quite detectable ... unless you had control of the BIOS. These ROM extensions could be used not as an attack vector, but as a cloaking measure - by commandeering the BIOS 10h functions and "hiding" calls to the new partition unless an appropriate "register knock" took place.

With the partition hidden appropriately, the rootkit code no longer has to be excessively tight and lean because there is almost no exposure (because it will be cloaked during the BIOS boot process). Now, if the processor incorporates the appropriate virtualization features, the ROM extension could pervert the boot process one more time, by redirecting the bootcode search from the REAL bootsector to the hidden partition. The rootkit partition then has all the room it needs to establish the appropriate virtualization environment, boot the operating system like normal and then stroll through its library of OS tools to integrate itself post-boot into any number of target OS's.

bootup code procedures http://www.omninerd.com/2005/11/05/articles/40
rootkit fundamentals http://www.omninerd.com/2005/11/22/articles/43

Regardless of the author's Borat style choice of words, that's a damn near stroke of brilliance with many different combinations of implementation. Using the BIOS extensions from expansion card ROMs would allow more than simply hooking into a booting Windows system. It's a near perfect delivery mechanism for a Blue Pill style of rootkit.

The best implementation, though, would be to use a variety of stages. Custom craft a bootable USB key to target flash ROMs. There's plenty of storage available on today's flash drives which would allow a variety of "alternate" ROMs to be stored. The attacker could seed the flash drive with customized ROMs for the most frequently purchased cards and then simply have the key detect the present hardware and flash. This of course, would require physical access but there are plenty of systems to be had at an office by simply sticking in the key and rebooting them after hours.

But I mentioned multi-stage and Blue Pill. The fastest way to make it a reality would be for the "rootkit key" to do more than just flash some ROMs. Perhaps integrate re-partitioning schemes from products like iPartition or PartitionMagic to make oneself a happy hacker partition. This would normally be quite detectable ... unless you had control of the BIOS. These ROM extensions could be used not as an attack vector, but as a cloaking measure - by commandeering the BIOS 10h functions and "hiding" calls to the new partition unless an appropriate "register knock" took place.

With the partition hidden appropriately, the rootkit code no longer has to be excessively tight and lean because there is almost no exposure (because it will be cloaked during the BIOS boot process). Now, if the processor incorporates the appropriate virtualization features, the ROM extension could pervert the boot process one more time, by redirecting the bootcode search from the REAL bootsector to the hidden partition. The rootkit partition then has all the room it needs to establish the appropriate virtualization environment, boot the operating system like normal and then stroll through its library of OS tools to integrate itself post-boot into any number of target OS's.

bootup code procedures http://www.omninerd.com/2005/11/05/articles/40
rootkit fundamentals http://www.omninerd.com/2005/11/22/articles/43

Once you're finished scratching your head over the quantum physics, you can really twist your noodle with the philosophy of time travel at http://www.omninerd.com/2006/11/14/coffeeshop/14 where we question if the very notion of time travel requires FATE and negates FREE WILL.

and that prechristian holiday was called samhain (mentioned in the omninerd story above)

I think that is taking a somewhat simplistic perspective. It doesn't really matter whether the major OS products make use of virtualization. The entire point of a successful rootkitting is leaving no visible trace of your presence. A well crafted rootkit would take hold from the bootprocess, virtualize the environment and then load the operating system. Thus - who cares if Microsoft, Linux or Apple makes use of virtualization, if the rootkit detects an appropriate target loaded into its context ... BAM, ownership.

The only way true way to detect a rootkit is to shut down a system and reboot from a separate, read-only instance of an OS dedicated for rootkit scans. No business, however, wants to hear that answer given to them as a course of action. They'll question their IT staff why they let the system get infected in the first place. They'll ask how such an action will impact on their financials. And if the scan comes up clean - IT looks like paranoid idiots. If it comes up infected - IT looks incompetent.

~ Matthew Vea
Rootkit Theory @ http://www.omninerd.com/2005/11/22/articles/43

In case you aren't up to speed on your r00tkit knowledge, check out Rootkits: The "r00t" of Digital Evil.

...the OmniNerd article: http://www.omninerd.com/2005/08/25/articles/34

Something related to iTunes - a study of the randomness of party shuffle in iTunes. This article does a bit of research and comes up with a function! http://www.omninerd.com/2005/08/25/articles/34

The funniest thing about this article is how much effort the author has made to reach obvious conclusions but still won't benefit. Where effort should be placed is obvious from the household spending graph he cites. There we see that vehicle purchase is twice as important as gasoline and that household purchases (combine food, operations, shelter and apparel) are more important than transportation. While gasoline is the one commodity purchased more than any other on the chart, it should be obvious that savings in all of the hundreds of other commodities will outweigh gasoline savings. (not mentioned is that the best gasoline strategies are long term: living close to work, having a modest priced and fuel efficient vehicle, carpooling the kids etc.) The kicker is hinted at by his opening statements. He can't win unless he remembers the approximate price of all the hundreds of commodities he purchases. If you don't remember that bell peppers should not cost three dollars and purchase a jar of banana peppers instead, all your hard won savings go away quickly. A general perception of value a misleading. You have to have memory, imagination and flexibility to live well.

Technologically superior? Highest ethics? Holy cow! :)

First, we're actually talking about dumbing the system down to use paper ballots. Second, India does not rank high on ethics - class systems, leaving babies in the dumpster, withholding food for hundreds of thousands of people. The only reason India has advanced is because they have a large fraction of the population that is English speaking!

And Deibold having the voting machines *is* an example of the government not suffering from NIH! First, the government didn't manufacture these machines. Second, you can bet your ass the hardware wasn't manufactured in the US.

Nice patriotic trumpeting - Any mindless US flag waver would be proud if they could abstract themselves from the fact that you are insulting (albeit poorly) their country.

I mean, India can't even get rid of the monkeys!.

What information could Google release/lose/etc if the data was not protected? According to their privacy policy Google records the following information in their server logs:

Here is an example of a typical log entry where the search is for "cars", followed by a breakdown of its parts:

* 123.45.67.89 - 25/Mar/2003 10:15:32 - http://www.google.com/search?q=cars - Firefox 1.0.7; Windows NT 5.1 - 740674ce2123e969
* 123.45.67.89 is the Internet Protocol address assigned to the user by the user's ISP; depending on the user's service, a different address may be assigned to the user by their service provider each time they connect to the Internet;
* 25/Mar/2003 10:15:32 is the date and time of the query;
* http://www.google.com/search?q=cars is the requested URL, including the search query;
Firefox 1.0.7; Windows NT 5.1 is the browser and operating system being used; and
* 740674ce2123a969 is the unique cookie ID assigned to this particular computer the first time it visited Google. (Cookies can be deleted by users. If the user has deleted the cookie from the computer since the last time s/he visited Google, then it will be the unique cookie ID assigned to the user the next time s/he visits Google from that particular computer).

See http://www.omninerd.com/2006/01/25/news/489?highli ght=c4171#c4171

According to a January Pew/Internet Study, online activity enhances social contact rather than promoting isolation. According to the report, email and the Internet supplements rather than replaces offline communication. 'The larger, the more far-flung, and the more diverse a person's network, the more important email is,' reports Jeffrey Boase, co-author of the study. For example, people who e-mail their friends and family at least once a week are 25% more likely to have phone contact. Internet users, on average, have 37 close friends instead of an average of 30 for non-Internet users. In addition to enhancing social networks, the researchers also discovered that 45% of people turn to their online network to help make major life decisions such as dealing with a major illness, choosing a school, making investment decisions, changing jobs or finding a new place to live. Blog Post: http://www.omninerd.com/news/news.php?nid=509 Study: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/172/report_displa y.asp

Just in case people do not know what Peak Oil is you can read about it.

OmniNerd has an article describing how rootkits function. Most of you are already familiar with them, but the underpinnings as to why software solutions will always fail are quite clear.

I, too, would be wary of a government hardware device installed in my own computer. It's all too evident the NSA has its hand in all communications already. Would anybody really trust a device that can intercept all data traffic? It's the master backdoor they've always wanted. Then again, who would you trust to manufacture such a card?

OmniNerd has an article describing how rootkits function. Most of you are already familiar with them, but the underpinnings as to why software solutions will always fail are quite clear.

I, too, would be wary of a government hardware device installed in my own computer. It's all too evident the NSA has its hand in all communications already. Would anybody really trust a device that can intercept all data traffic? It's the master backdoor they've always wanted. Then again, who would you trust to manufacture such a card?

Unfortunately this article doesn't seem to be as applicable as one might hope: for those of us not living in Huston or traveling different routes it's hard to get more out of it than "don't drive during rush-hour," which most people could figure out on their own anyway.

I think that one mistake we make, as occidentals, is judgind them by our own rules. but since we live in a different world than them, since we live in a different culture, with different values...different moralities we can't really be objective about right or wrong regarding how they live. Of course, I think hanging a rape victim because it dishonors the family is a crime, but in a country were honor as actually less value than money, who am i to judge what honor is worth.

How does one know that what they're doing is fundamentaly wrong? You can't judge a man if you havent walked a mile in his shoes.

The sharia was created after muhammad the same way that here, religious documents were created after the christ's death and yet hold no less value than the bible itself.

This is something I read from omninerd lately and I find it very informative, it really helps taking a step back and *trying* to be objective about it.

http://www.omninerd.com/2005/12/30/articles/45

Also, human rights is a very subjective thing. it varies from country to country. and yes, in some country, by our standards there are little to no human rights, but again, who are we to judge whether this is good or bad. They've lived this way for centuries and accept it. Here, we fought back for our rights and look where its brought us: increased violence, corruption and jerry springer. So again, who are we to judge. How do we know our way is the right way ?

I don't approve all things done in the muslim world but I certainly cannot go and tell them what they do is wrong because i have absolutely no clue what brought them into living this way in the first place.

That's my 2c about it.

I authored the site OmniNerd. When I first started writing code, I made a point of storing data either in a database or XML, translating data to XHTML with XSLT, using CSS for all style issues, and controlling everything with PHP. What I struggled with for over a year was the XML/XSLT portion of the site. I was constantly having to jump through all sorts of hoops to get things done that could easily be handled with just PHP and a database.

This isn't intended to be me bashing XML/XSLT, but more of a warning. If you plan to use these two, ensure you fully understand them and how they will tie into your site. I've found with OmniNerd that XML/XSLT solutions are very nice for the more static or semi-static content and that using PHP to generate XHTML directly from the database is better suited for dynamic content.

Whatever you choose to use though, good luck!

If you are looking for a good reference to understand a rootkit I recommend Matt Vea's article "Rootkits: The 'r00t' of Digital Evil." He wrote it back in Novemeber when the Sony fiasco was first revealed. Link: http://www.omninerd.com/2005/11/22/articles/43

Brandon answered the question in the article comments, "Assuming no time between tracks, the test ran for about 15.41 minutes (924.81 seconds)." (See http://www.omninerd.com/2006/02/11/news/530)

Here's the Slashdot post to OmniNerd's first iTunes article: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/28/ 0616225 Direct link to the first article: http://www.omninerd.com/2005/08/25/articles/34

One minor thing that irritated me when I had my first Slashdot story accepted was the fact that it was edited. It may have very well been posted somewhere that my submission would be edited, but it was not clear to me. Now, the edits were good ones, but I had no idea they were going to be made. It seems like if the front page is going to say "markmcb writes," then I should have written it or at least consented to any edits.

I tried to implement a solution to this when I coded OmniNerd. When a user submits a story on OmniNerd there is a box they can check to allow the moderators to edit freely. If they uncheck the box, we do not have the freedom to edit their text ... at all. Though this may increase the chance of their submission getting rejected should they submit a poorly written post, it does give them some freedom and ownership rights. I think this is an important part of our news submission page and one that Slashdot should consider.

One minor thing that irritated me when I had my first Slashdot story accepted was the fact that it was edited. It may have very well been posted somewhere that my submission would be edited, but it was not clear to me. Now, the edits were good ones, but I had no idea they were going to be made. It seems like if the front page is going to say "markmcb writes," then I should have written it or at least consented to any edits.

I tried to implement a solution to this when I coded OmniNerd. When a user submits a story on OmniNerd there is a box they can check to allow the moderators to edit freely. If they uncheck the box, we do not have the freedom to edit their text ... at all. Though this may increase the chance of their submission getting rejected should they submit a poorly written post, it does give them some freedom and ownership rights. I think this is an important part of our news submission page and one that Slashdot should consider.

If Sony really believes they can settle a rootkit installation snafu with offering downloads, then they must be smoking something good. Although, I can't blame them for trying - the more they downplay the actual impact of an exploitable rootkit, the less it will cost them in the end. The price of a few downloads is far less than financial damages per computer as would be necessary. What goads me the most is that if the legal system accepts this as legitimate. Would that set an established precedent that hackers can use in court? IE, the crime was the installation of a rootkit without authorization so Joe Hacker can now refer to Sony vs. The People and settle for about $20 flat. The decision makers need to understand WHAT a rootkit is and the effects of having one on a computer mean for a user - OmniNerd: Rootkit Analysis.

This article explains how to write your own boot sector. The tutorial includes assembly language code to demonstrate loading and executing a binary image from a FAT filesystem. It's also an interesting read if you want to understand the fundamentals of the X86 boot process.

Matt Vea wrote an interesting article about the security vulnerabilities you have with an OS out of the box. He covers just about all the OS's out there and incrementally patches them. Although the article is over a year old I think you will be suprised with how many holes there are on a system that hasn't been patched in awhile. http://www.omninerd.com/2004/08/30/articles/11

OmniNerd is carrying a decent article on the nature of rootkits (Rootkit: The "r00t" of Digital Evil) that isn't watered down like everything else the media has been using to describe rootkits. I think the principle problem with the legal system, the general public and Sony is that most people just don't understand what a rootkit really is and the capabilities they present to hackers. The media has been lumping them into the malware category as nothing more than the latest virus going around - a misconception that is costly to consumers because the threat has been greatly downplayed.

Perhaps once people really fathom just what a rootkit can do to them and how a properly written rootkit will not be detected by their anti-virus software, they'll take the threat more seriously. And in doing so, demand rightful compensation from Sony in lieu of a new audio CD. Are you comfortable with rootkits installed on the computers of your local financial institution? College records? Law enforcement? Wall Street? The military?

While the /. community is an exception, it seems to me that most people just don't understand what exactly rootkits do. At best, they're given cursory nods in the news [now] as just another form of malware. The media asks why can't our anti-virus software just detect them? OmniNerd has an article about how rootkits work that is technical enough for /. but without the reliance on source code found so often on Phrack resources, which our non-tech brethren can't understand.
URL: http://www.omninerd.com/2005/11/22/articles/43

While the /. community is an exception, it seems to me that most people just don't understand what exactly rootkits do. At best, they're given cursory nods in the news [now] as just another form of malware. The media asks why can't our anti-virus software just detect them? OmniNerd has an article about how rootkits work that is technical enough for /. but without the reliance on source code found so often on Phrack resources, which our non-tech brethren can't understand.
URL: http://www.omninerd.com/2005/11/22/articles/43