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I have learned much of what I know about computing and other technological-related subjects from web sites, usually personal ones.

To repay this benefit, I think it's important that I provide information where:

1. I am able to provide high-quality information, far above the average SNR of the web
2. there isn't already a decent resource of this information

My cases in point are my HTML tutorial and my guitar chord tutorial, both of which address their subject matter in a way not found on (many) other sites. These tutorials have (from my logs) proved to be very popular.

We all bandy about this term zealot without looking at its origin. The zealots were anti-Roman Jewish "activists" in Jesus' time. Being a smaller force than the powerful Romans they engaged in asymmetrical warfare, whose tactics usually include terrorism.

A certain Steve Wright has an interesting article about the Jewish religious scene at around Jesus' time. He says: The Zealots, who conducted an insurrectionary war against Roman occupation forces, had objectives that were religious and political: the attainment of a Jewish theocracy, the rule of the Messiah, and the annihilation of the heathen. I don't know how appropriate the use of zealot is for Linux enthusiasts, but certainly many of them do want "annihilation of the heathen".

Simon (renamed Peter) was a zealot who became a follower of Jesus and part of his inner circle of twelve disciples. He was brash, outspoken, tended to take matters into his own hands. When the Roman authorities and certain Jewish religious leaders came to arrest Jesus before his crucifixion, Peter slashed off someone's ear. Jesus had to reattach it. Look at the section "The Whole Truth: An Example" of this article. It's also an interesting look at how different biblical writers wrote their own eyewitness or second-hand accounts and emphasized different kinds of information.

If anybody needed a "Queer Eye for the Geek Guy" make over, it Doc Who!

Any technology that is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.

Petition for Half-Life

But paying $129 for what ammounts to a system upgrade in the firstplace is ridiculous

If you want a HL2 Client for Linux then sign this petition, the more signatures the better the odds, there are already 4500 signatures. Add you name to it.

Playing Darius' "unique" version of Baby One More Time would make the trip to the courthouse worthwhile. (warning, earplugs advised for anyone who didn't watch Pop Idol...)

Although it seems very unlikely to happen, a petition to get Half-Life2 ported to linux has been started. Please sign it!

The creator wants to reach 5000 signatures before he sends it off to Valve.

There is a petition to port Half Life 2 to Linux on
riblet that would be given to Valve. They have about 3000 confirmed entries by now. This is a good way to show how much interest there is to port games to Linux.

So why use either of them? That copy you downloaded and spread all over your organisation is illegal. Go on, read the licences, I dare you to ;-) Then uninstall both of them and install either 7-zip or IZArc instead. You know you should!

In the simplest case, with the prey not moving, all the knowledge the dragonfly needs is the position of the prey. The solution is to fly straight at the prey. It never seems to move from its position on the background but appears larger and larger as it moves in for the kill.

Cases with the prey moving are more difficult to visualize. You can simplify it by assuming that they are confined to a 2D plane and then drawing their positions on a sheet of paper (or a computer screen). Imagine two diifferent scenarios:

Case #1. The dragonfly is on a straight line and about half way between the prey and a bush. The dragonfly is superimposed on the bush, from the prey's point of view. The prey is flying perpendicular to this straight line. In order to stay on a straight line between prey and bush, the dragonfly must also move.

Case #2. Same situation, except that now the dragonfly is practically touching the bush. The prey moves but the dragonfly hardly needs to move at all to appear to remain at the same spot on the bush.

It should thus be obvious that the distance of the dragonfly to the background object is an important variable. Perhaps it somehow memorizes what object is exactly 180 degrees away from the prey, and then it keeps an eye on both at the same time and flies so as to maintain their positions 180 degrees apart on its retinae (both objects might drift across the retinae, so long as they are exactly opposite each other).

here or Get IZarc here.

The people who designed this hard disk are confused about how DES works. First of all, DES has a 56-bit, not a 64-bit key. Second of all, the days of being forced to use 40-bit encryption are, thankfully, over.

If one is going to all of the effort to encrypt a hard disk, why will they encrypt it using only Single DES? It is possible to build a single-DES cracker for under $10,000 US; the 56-bit key which single DES has to offer is just not long enough.

They would have been much better off encrypting this unit with AES, which uses Rijndael to encrypt files. Rijndael has a key size between 128 and 256 bits long, which can not be brute forced with current technology. Rijndael is also more efficient than DES when implemented in software.

Also, security is only as strong as its weakest link. If the hard disk is always readable when the key card is attached, then great care must be taken to detatch and hide the key card. Far better security can be obtained by a system which asks for a passphrase. Ideally, have a system which needs both the key card and the passphrase.

While I think this is a good idea, I think one is better off with the kernel patches which allow one to encrypt filesystems in Linux.

(For windows and Mac users, sorry, I use neither so can not help you)

- Sam

I just cracked it...

the terrible conditions at diamond mines, I would say synthetic diamonds are indeed a much better option.

If you don't have the treasured ring of an older relative, how about buying a vintage ring. Other correspondents have said that diamond rings have a very low resale value. So, buying a vintage ring this should be in your favour. Buying one from a pawnbroker is probably going to seem like bad luck. How about doing a google search for estate jewelry?

On the other hand some fraction of the gold jewelry made prior to 1960 is contaminated with recycled gold that was radioactive because it had been used to enclose Radon seeds implanted as a cancer therapy. As the Radon decayed radioactive decay products got plated onto the gold

If you don't have the treasured ring of an older relative, how about buying a vintage ring. Other correspondents have said that diamond rings have a very low resale value. So, buying a vintage ring this should be in your favour. Buying one from a pawnbroker is probably going to seem like bad luck. How about doing a google search for estate jewelry?

On the other hand some fraction of the gold jewelry made prior to 1960 is contaminated with recycled gold that was radioactive because it had been used to enclose Radon seeds implanted as a cancer therapy. As the Radon decayed radioactive decay products got plated onto the gold

Exactly, while they're at it they might as well crack down on the Bellary Zilla Panchayat. Or, beyond that, get rid of the book A Friend Like Zilla. Better yet, wipe out the Zilla Dioda spider.

True. The naming "zilla" is present in different plants as well as spiders.

This place says that there is a company trying to make kits for cars to produce industrial diamonds in their exhaust with the addition of microwaves that would "zap" exhaust fumes. But how do you collect the diamonds? Let them run into the gutters. Hey, that would clean the shit out of the streets and the gutters. Interesting idea. No really, that has some appeal if you're working with cement. Well, if you wanted the streets to be polished like glass it would be cool. I"d be into it, but I can see some practical issues that could stand in the way of widespread adoption. Think of the lighting possibilities of glass smooth streets though!

And here's a whole different twist on it. Have your dearly departed loved ones turned into industrial diamonds?




an advertisement in 1988 in a Phoenix, Arizona, newspaper, the Sun City Daily News, exhorting customers to: turn the ashes of your beloved into a diamond'! It seemed we can reduce a dead husband or wife to an ornament in order to reproduce the sparkle in their eyes. ..

For those people (myself included) who are too lazy to interpret the specification and enter the code in yourself, you can find a C & C++ implementation here. Note a link to this and other useful information is provided from the original link.