Vault

I have a fairly extensive list of quotes that I have collected over the years. I may try to setup a way to post them other than simply putting out another post, but till that time happens let me share one:

“…peace is the highest aspiration of the American People. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it, we will never surrender for it, now or ever.”
-Ronald Reagan

Hope you enjoy.

This article from the British Telegraph reports on a story of a British Oxford Professor who rejected an application for internship from a prospective student based on him being an Israeli.  This kind of story brings to light a problem that I saw existing in the higher education system of the U.S. also.  Namely that many professors who claim to have a monopoly on being “open minded” are often just as close minded as non-academics when opinions that are opposition to theirs are expressed.

The point of my statement is not to imply that all professors exercise such a double standards.  The point is that no one is capable of being totally unbiased.  We need to stop treating academics as if they have some super power (not available to us mere mortals) that somehow allow them to look at all situations with logic, clear thought, and consistency.  Doing so will help move society into a better position to evaluate itself with honesty and integrity.  Its not wrong to have bias (we all have biases in one way or another); the secret is to admit our bias and to  try and  keep it from being the  sole influence on our decision making process.

Things like this webpage are the reason the Internet was created.  Its a Homer Simpson Random Quote Generator.  In other weekend humor, anyone who has had to do more than two minutes of tech support will empathize with these stories.

For weekend fun try doing a Google (be sure to click the I’m Feeling Lucky button) search on “French military victories” (without the quotes.) This is the resulting page. Even the best search engine in the world cannot help you out THAT search.

I am sure that everyone but me has already seen this page but I found it a wonderfully useful link.  Check out http://www.feedster.com/ Its an RSS based search engine.

In totally unrelated information.. Mozilla totally rocks (ok, anyone who doesn’t use AOL already knows this but…) and I have been using a new add-on to Mozilla called mozblog If you do bloggin (don’t touch the stuff myself) be sure to check it out.  BTW if you use Movable Type as your blog server be sure to check out a patch to make it work (the bug was submitted my yours truly.)

Finally, because I need a place to link it… there is Mozilla Bluecurve for use RedHat bluecurve lovers who just want mozilla to get along.

I am sure that everyone but me has already seen this page but I found it a wonderfully useful link.  Check out http://www.feedster.com/ Its an RSS based search engine.

In totally unrelated information.. Mozilla totally rocks (ok, anyone who doesn’t use AOL already knows this but…) and I have been using a new add-on to Mozilla called mozblog If you do bloggin (don’t touch the stuff myself) be sure to check it out.  BTW if you use Movable Type as your blog server be sure to check out a patch to make it work (the bug was submitted my yours truly.)

Finally, because I need a place to link it… there is Mozilla Bluecurve for use RedHat bluecurve lovers who just want mozilla to get along.

With all f the apt4rpm repositories out there I figured it would be easer to post  a list of them then it would be to keep mailing them to my friends.

• rockerssoft
  
• atrpms
• The Fedora Project
• orca
• cachalot
• newrpms
• freshrpms
• kde-redhat
• dag

Great rpms for Redhat 8/9.  I also recommend you check out http://www.rpmseek.com/index.html It has an absolutely incredible search engine for finding rpms.  I was able to locate rpms for packages that I have not seen rpms for ANYWHERE. 

The Liberal Magic Infinity Ball is a very entertaining (yet surprisingly accurate) political answer generator for the Left. It honestly mirrors half the discussions I ever had in College.

Other entertaining links for the day include Bubble Wrap on-line. Great for working out stress and waisting time and Beer glasses and people wonder why we drink beer.

Realtime alerting with Snort (Part I), (Part II), (Part III) is an article on a Real-Time IDS (intrusion detection system) using Snort. Snort is possible one of the most useful security tools available and this article show you how to make Snort work even harder for your system security.

Write Your Own OS is a short tutorial on how to write a “toy” operating system from scratch. Pretty cool way to get an understanding of how an OS does what it does. The article is designed for Windows environments.

If you are running a Unix variant then checkout Writing Your Own Toy OS (Part I), (Part II), (Part III) from Linux Gazette. Great stuff!

Native Half Life for Linux Project is a on-line petition to get Half LIfe 2 ported to Linux. The Linux OS platform is more than capable in most areas of software with the only glaring weakness being that of the gaming genre. Who know, maybe if we get enough signatures we can actually convince Value to make HL for Linux.

Ya know the funny part is that almost ALL games have server engines for Linux, just not clients.

Not to give Lasse Christiansen a hard time (this article
is just the most recent in a barrage within the same genre) but her “I have a Linux dream” artile is really fusterating. I am starting to get pretty sick of this kind of Linux commentary.

The vast majority of the “The Problem with Linux” articles fall into the same group as Lasse Christiansen’s. Namely that Linux

or

(and don’t even get me started on what a worthless piece of resource hungry crap the OSX bar is) type statements.

Ya, every so often a good point is made. Thinks like

and

have some relevance to a useful suggestion. But where do things like

have to do with Linux usability/functionality/simplicity… if Mr. Christiansen ever had to try and debug a pcmcia driver in Windows he would BEG for the “two beeps.”

The ultimate point of this admittedly bad rant is that Linux is not Windows. I didn’t switch to Linux because I was looking for a Windows replacement, or a free version of Windows. I switched to Linux because it is a superior computer platform with better all-around applications. Linux will not ever be windows (thank GOD!) or OSX (praise the LORD!) Improving Linux does not mean making it act more like some other OS. The day Linux get taken seriously as a desktop OS is the day that people want to use Linux for Linux sake… not, in spite of, some other os.

Spend alot of time on #linux channel of irc.arstechnica.com. Todays random quote of the day from #linux is:

If you come to visit my nick is Strider.

Found some Linux links that I thought I would pass on.Mozilla Bluecurve theme is probably useful to any Redhat fans out there.

Speaking of Redhat I found an interesting article for anyone who wants to more “technical” aspects of Redhat 9. Not for the faint of heart.

The Table of Equivalents ia a great resource to find applications in Linux based on their windows counter-parts.

The DVD Revolution OS is the story of Linus Torvaldsm Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens and other OS adocates. Its based on the book by the same name.

Have fun…

bsd hurts oss progress is a great article that I intend to write a summary of my opinions on later. There is gonna be a general change to how I use VAULT. I will be posting more links, random quotes, and short thoughts as I go through the day. I am guessing this will turn VAULT into more of a scrapbook than a weblog, but its really more useful to me this way soo…