In Russia, Vladimir Putin inspires holiday-spirit by deploying a ballistic nuclear weapons strike-force. This strike-force system has been reported to be capable of penetrating U.S. anti-missle defense systems. On Christmas Eve, the Russian army organized a group of Topol-M missles which could carry nuclear warheads, travel up to 6,000 miles and change trajectory to shake defense efforts. The Russian army has activated a new battalion for the Topol-M missles, which has 75 times the power of the A-bomb dropped over Hiroshima in 1945.

Recently reported on Forbes.com: Microsoft's (MSFT) stock which has suffered while tech rivals Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) shares have at least doubled may be ready to "rock and roll" again. This increase in stock price is due to a series of product releases scheduled to hit the market up until the 2nd half of 2006. This strategy of began with the pre-holiday release of the Xbox 360 game console, which is on it's way to selling nearly 3 million units in the first 90 days. The product rollout due to follow the Xbox are: Windows Vista, Microsoft's newest Operating System and Office 12, the latest release of the desktop productivity suite. Microsoft's faces significant challenges from the free and fast-growing Linux operating system. Still, Windows remains by far the world's most popular computer operating system, running on 90% of desktop PCs and outselling Linux on servers by 3-to-1, says market researcher IDC.

For all you bloggers! I am trying to decide whether I should join the blogging-fold or not. Sometimes I think it is just my ego that wants to blog. Then at other times I think I really could make a significant contribution to the pundit community.

This Chrismahanakwanza has been great! I have never had such a great time during this holiday period. The past two years have been riddled with difficulties for me personally and also for my family, so it was nice to end the year on such a good note. We had a party, the first time my wife and I have really had a party at our house that wasn't for the children. It was great and I wish everyone from Slashdot a happy and cheerful holiday.

Best,

OK, so I'm going to start using GnuCash. The GNU financial application. I am a Linux user and GnuCash is probably the most popular financial software available for Linux. I have used it previously, however, I was discouraged by its interface. The interface is much different than I have used previously (M$ Money and Quicken).

I have begun to play around with ver. 1.8.11 which is the newest available release. But when I tried to import my stocks it got a bit confusing. I downloaded and printed a tutorial by Chris Lyttle so I will see if this helps me any.

This year has been a series of firsts for me, most of which have a hint of tragedy to them. This week was no different as the New York City MTA went on strike. As a result there were no buses, subway trains, ferries or shuttles running. The City was virtually paralyzed, and I was one of the many that were directly effected.

I could not get to work, no matter how hard I tried. I live in Manhattan and I work deep in Brooklyn, however the furthest I could get when trying to get to work was Penn Station (34th St., Manhattan). As a result I lost time and my company will not compensate me for the time lost.

I was a MTA strike supporter until it effected my family income. Thats when they lost my vote... I needed to get to work ASAP. The strike went from Tuesday to Thursday evening and today, Friday, I was able to make it in to work. But I lost all of my vacation time so instead of my holiday extending from December 26-30 I now have to go back to work on the 27th.

I work for New York City also, so I know how difficult it is to get what you want but c'mon. You guys screwed me over and I know I'm not the only one. Couldn't a partial strike have been just as effective. Well this just adds more support to my sentiment about us New Yorkers, that we are the "toughest Americans" out there!

Recently I added a list of the books that I have in my library to my web-page. The list consists of at least 60% of the books currently in my library. I will update the list periodically, it just takes so damn long to perform the data-entry!

The list can be found at http://uranus.dontexist.com/ please take a look and post any comments or suggestions you might have. One thing you may be annoyed by is the order. The list is in the order that I entered the ISBNs into the database, but I can't seem to figure out how to export it as a sorted file.

It turns out... all you need to do is install the source tree and move the name.so file to the /usr/lib/gaim directory. However, if you use checkinstall it should install the plugin to the apropriate directory. The reason I was not able to use Gaim-Rhythmbox was rather silly! After all I am using Yahoo! Messenger. Gaim-Rhythmbox is for AIM protocol!

Before I begin this article, please remember that I am a student. OK, with that said lets begin:

I spoke to a friend-of-a-friend today, a senior Project Manager of Infrastructure at a major insurance company in Texas. He has been very successful in IT in this country and he has advised against efforts of becoming a programmer. He says there is no money to be made as a programmer here in the US.

Instead, he suggested Infrastructure as the main focus of my career endeavors. In addition he praised me on my choice of Unix/Linux as a development platform and told me that if I continue with Unix/Linux I will be very useful in this country however, I should consider Infrastructure.

What the hell is Infrastructure for Information Technologies?

Having a problem with installing gaim-rhythmbox. I recently came across gaim-rhythmbox at sourceforge. I downloaded the application and tried to run ./configure my system was missing gaim-dev and libbobono2-dev files. I installed them and then found an application that automatically makes .deb files called checkinstall. I installed and ran checkinstall and it was successful.

However, after all of this was done I cannot see the plugin. I am not sure what is wrong, according to dpkg the package is installed but I cannot run it or see it in gaim's preferences.

What do I do now? Well I will keep searching and when I find out I will post. Stay tuned...

YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS UNTIL YOU HEAR IT! Virgin Mobile has a Season's Greetings message that is probably the funniest thing I have ever heard. Its got some "whats happening now" kinda black guy directing phone traffic by your ethno status! It is abosutely insane! If you want to hear it for yourself call 1 (888) 353-7667. Enjoy!

Advanced rootkit technologies are being found in adware and spyware programs which hide running processes and prevent uninstallation. Anti-virus vendor F-Secure, Corp. (Finland) reported that adware/spyware developer ContextPlus, Inc. is responsible for a large number of "stealth rootkit infections". F-Secure's CFO Mikko Hypponen annnounced the company's BlackLight technology found sophisticated kernel-mode rootkit technology in spyware products like ContextPlus's Apropos.

When my wife barges into the room and begins her rant about how terrible a person I am and how I need to improve myself; the crispness of my IBM Thinkpad's keys keep me grounded and alert. My Thinkpad doesn't yell at me. She just keeps things together and in order for me with a smile (well not a smile but she has a pretty wide-LCD monitor).

OK, sure she beeps from time to time when I say something stupid like, "Have you ever wanted to try M&S (a play on Microsoft and S&M)?". But she quickly changes her tune when we use cute little pet names; she likes it when I call her SUDO or SU for short. And yes I have to fsck her a few times a month before she's on the defRAG just to make her happy. But that is the least of my problems.

On the other hand my wife who resembles a beautiful actress/model that didn't have her favorite Pinot waiting for her in her dressing-room, complains about me so much I'm beginning to hate my own name. I think my wife is getting a little jealous of the time My Thinkpad and I spend together. Oh, well it sucks to be me. Stay tuned...

Graduation is steadily moving closer to becoming a reality. I am contemplating a move to Saudi. It would be a big move and I would have to brush up on my Arabic however, there are some opportunities out there for a young graduate such as myself.

Right now the Middle East is very unattractive and with good reason, so it will definately be a thought that I will go through with a fine tooth comb.

I hate to drag this issue on and on however, I just don't understand what the moderators at Slashdot are looking for. There are several comments that I have made in the past that were funny and worth moderating in my humble opinion (IMHO).

In addition, I have written and posted some well crafted stories (also IMHO). But to my dismay they were disapproved and discarded by the moderators. I am just looking for some clues as to how to get accepted in the world of Slashdot.

I took this discussion to Yahoo! chat rooms (Linux and BSD rooms) and I got alot of negative feedback about Slashdot. Granted, I have not been posting stories to Slashdot for very long and I don't have as strong feelings as one Yahoo! IM'er aliased cryptodan who said, "These days Slashdot is nothing but another RSS whore." But I do lose a little sleep over this (approx .0052 secs/day).

My guess is that there are a group of popular insiders who regularly get moderated. I also think that the primary reason they are insiders is due to either having a relationship with the moderators outside of the Slashdot environment or being a subscriber/poster for a lengthy period of time.