Linux hardware incompatibility list. Looks rather poorly populated.
Tips and code for getting laptops (e.g. Thinkpads, HP’s etc) to recognize non-approved wireless miniPCI cards (apparently laptop manufacturers restrict the models you can use so as to meet FCC requirements for the combined internal antenna / miniPCI card / laptop assembly).
Most insightful /. post ever.
Hunter S. Thompson, great journalist, world-class consumer of recreational chemicals, and a man who was almost elected a county sherriff in 1970, shot himself today. Maybe the drugs had something to do with it. He will be survived by his books, by his columns, and by surreal accounts of his escapades. For instance, here […]
Apparently, in the 70’s and 80’s, a children’s show called Rainbow ran on British TV. A helpful individual put up the script (and a reasonably crappy flash video/audio) of one of the episodes. It is quite possibly the most suggestive piece of children’s programming I have ever heard. Choice dialogue:
Rod: “We could hear you all […]
Today I discovered Pure Pwnage — a collection of comedy videos about a pro gamer and his disfunctional relationship with reality. The acting is flawless. The dialogue is hilarious:
Y’know it might be cool when I’m like real old and stuff.. like 30 or something.. maybe I’ll like think about having little nooblets of […]
On February 4, 2005, a serial burglar called Ben Parks broke into a Cambridge (UK) apartment. Unfortunately for Ben Parks, the apartment belonged to Duncan Grisby — a programmer who had set up a webcam with a motion detector (I am pleased to say he was using Linux and the open-source project Motion), and had […]
Apparently, there exist companies that will manufacture small custom PCB’s for cheap (i.e. starting at ~$20 for ~20 square inches of single-sided PCB) and quickly (3-4 days), take orders online, and ship to American consumers. Knowing about these services would have made my life a year ago significantly easier. Random slashdot comments have recommended […]
Upgraded to WordPress 1.5; interesting process. On the one hand, all of my data transferred over to the new format perfectly. On the other hand, the default theme for 1.5 is whacked (which is to say, fixed-width-everything whacked) meaning I was forced to spend an hour hacking it into something a bit more presentable. The […]
Newsforge has an article benchmarking MySQL on Linux (2.4 and 2.6), NetBSD 2, OpenBSD 3.6, Solaris 10, and FreeBSD (4.11 and 5.3 with various threading models). Conclusion: Linux (both 2.4 and 2.6) is in first place, with Solaris 10 a close second, and various FreeBSD’s (except for 4.11 with libc_r thread model) in fairly […]
Found a couple of articles by Dru Lavigne that help introduce Linux users to the FreeBSD equivalents of their favorite tools. Quite useful, if, like me, you are a long-time Linux user who needs to use a FreeBSD box.
Found a good list of Linus’s comments on non-free Linux kernel modules. Turns out that the policy is a lot harsher than I thought. On the subject of the supposed exception that allows modules to be non-free, Linus states that
Well, there really is no exception. However, copyright law obviously
hinges on the definition of “derived […]
A few years ago (but discovered by me only recently), kerneltrap had a thread about amusing, horrifying, and humorous code in the Linux kernel. Alas, open source evolves fast, so much has changed since that time; for instance, in 2.6.x kernels, there file include/asm-ia64/sn/sn2/shub_mmr.h (which was voted as a particularly frightening piece of work) is […]
Apparently, a crazy individual has written an X server on top of OpenGL. The full gory discussion, discussing the numerous ways in which this pre-beta program isn’t quite ready for prime time, can be read here. The basic operation, as I understand it, is as follows. A normal X server is used to set up […]
And by “strange”, I mean “clinically insane”. If you have any doubts, just look at his 1978 essay. Quoth PKD:
My theory is this: In some certain important sense, time is not real. Or perhaps it is real, but not as we experience it to be or imagine it to be. I had the acute, overwhelming […]
Messrs DJ Krush and Toshinori Kondo have created an album by the name of Ku-Ino. One guy apparently is a DJ specializing in hip-hop; the other is a classical trumpeter. Together, they made 13 tracks of something resembling jazz with scratching. This odd chimera deserves to be listened to — both for the audacity of […]
Interesting discussion on /. about steganography (well, an interesting ACM article and a moronic discussion - but that’s the usual case for slashdot). Thoughts: steganography in the time domain is not mentioned. For instance, port knocking hides information in the timing between packets. How about the frequency with which one checks one’s email? Times at […]
It has been alleged that US special forces are in Iran, marking bombing sites. If the rumors are true (they are certainly believable), based on past US military actions, one would estimate an invasion in about 6-18 months. What options does one have if one were the ruler of Iran? Stop developing nukes? Of course […]
Getting Started with LaTeX by David R. Wilkins in html form. Quite useful - among other things, this is the first place where I found the \not form of negated relations — \not\subset, \not=, \not\sim and the like (as opposed to the \n form of negated relations, which are more limited — for instance, there […]
General reference: good comparison of various blog servers available here. One of my main reasons for picking WordPress.
PBS has an interesting interview with Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper (U.S. Marine Corps-Ret.) about Iraq, Rumsfeld, Bush, and the state of today’s US Army. Basically, the US armed forces seem to be entering the intellectual dark ages, and Mr. Rumsfeld’s reality distortion field isn’t helping. The situation in Abu Ghraib, according to the general, […]
Finally broke down and decided to write a blog (despite the perversion of the English language that the word “blog” exemplifies). Basically, maintaining interesting links that I encounter and remembering interesting thoughts that come into my head is proving impossible. Information is spread all over the place in bookmarks of various browsers on various machines, […]