Archive for January, 2006

What’s Wrong With Google Aiding Chinese Censorship? Plenty.

Tuesday, January 31st, 2006

Doug Tygar has pointed out that Google’s efforts to assist the Chinese government censor the web are not yet perfected. Tygar points to an example of a technological glitch that, to me, also illustrates why one should have moral qualms about Google’s actions to aid the Chinese government.

When using Google.cn’s Image search for ‘Tiananmen’ (capitalized) […]

Compare Two Directories from the Command Line

Sunday, January 29th, 2006

UNIX apparently has a dircmp program that will compare two directories and tell you where they differ. This is useful if you want to ensure that two directories are identical or nearly so. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places, but I can’t find dircmp for Debian. Instead, I think this works:
diff -r –brief dir1 […]

Our Omnipotent President

Thursday, January 26th, 2006

Oh my, this post from Fafblog on our omnipotent president is too funny.
A. Well if you want, the president can stop the illegal wiretapping just for you.
Q. Really? Well thanks, that’d be great!
A. And then the terrorists can come and eat you.
Q. Wait! What?
A. Cause without the wiretaps there’s nothin to stop the terrorists from […]

Record 11 shows at once?

Friday, January 20th, 2006

I am thoroughly enjoying my MythTV setup now that I have it recording over-the-air HDTV, but I have to admit that these folks at snapstream have me beat with their Godzilla PVR that is capable of simultaneously recording 4 HDTV broadcasts and 7 standard broadcasts, i.e., 11 shows at once. Of course, their setup costs […]

Firefox Add-on Engines A-plenty

Thursday, January 19th, 2006

1. You should be using Firefox to browse the web.
2. One reason is how many add-on search engines you can add to the top right corner so that searching Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster, eBay, Amazon, Flickr Tags, etc is just a click away and built right into the browser. It’s stunningly useful. Begin with Mozilla’s 23 popular […]

Remember Zork?

Wednesday, January 18th, 2006

For those who recall text-based adventure games, check out defective yeti’s Iraqi Invasion: A Text Misadventure. Hilarious. An excerpt:

> STAY COURSE
The situation in Iraq deteriorates.
Some insurgents arrive. There is a large number of insurgents here.
> STAY COURSE
[…]

The Even More Perfect Debian Sarge Setup

Monday, January 9th, 2006

Falko Timme at howtoforge.com has a number of excellent howtos on setting up GNU/Linux servers. I have learned much from using his Perfect Setup for Debian Sarge 3.1.
However, when I finish his perfect setup, there remain a few things that I think essential to do, particularly regarding security. There are an increasing number of dictionary […]