Not long ago I contributed a story to Slashdot entitled, Edubuntu: Linux For Young Human Beings about a distribution of Ubuntu geared toward Elementary Schools and learning institutions. Well I have been experimenting with an application suite from the Edubuntu distro called GCompris. GCompris is a suite of educational games for Linux and let me say it is absolutely fantastic.

My kids love playing the games that develop their hand eye coordination and mouse control.

Recently, Richard Stallman & company were seen in a protest on Broadway near NYU campus. They were handing out flyers and informing New York consumers about the evils of XCP/DRM Software. Stallman, founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation accompanied by NYFairUse, and NYU students from CANYU and FreeCulture @ NYU rallied their second DRM demonstration in front of Tower Records on Broadway (NYC). The demonstration remained peaceful however, Stallman wore the "sacred-sandwich board" while shouting slogans and publicly admonishing the privacy policy supported by companies like Microsoft.

The following story was rejected by Slashdot however, some of you may be interested.

Red Hat, Inc. recently gained full control of its Indian venture. Red Hat bought the remaining 40 percent from its local partner for an undisclosed sum. As stated by Reuters, Red Hat aims to invest $20 million in India over the next several years according to Charlie Peters (Red Hat, CFO). Ironically, this announcment came the same day as Bill Gates (Microsoft, Chairman) announced plans to invest $1.7 billion in India.

Below you will find the last story submitted to Slashdot... we will find out if it is published or not, so stay tuned...

InterVideo a leading provider of DVD and multimedia software filed an USITC complaint against Dell and others. According to Business Wire, InterVideo seeks a permanent exclusion order and permanent cease and desist order against Dell, Inc. This compaint is related to a patent infringement on methods for integrating PCs and electronic devices. Also highlighted in Hexus.lifestyle were the companies InterVideo filed the complaint against which mentioned Dell, Inc. but also included Winbook Computer Corporation and Cyberlink Corporation.

I have submitted four (4) stories to slashdot so far and 1/4 have been published. I am going to have to make a few adjustments because I would like more of my submissions published. So I will step it up a notch... my news stories will be a bit more refined and written with a little more style.

In addition I will post each story to my journal so that if it is not accepted readers may still have the opportunity to peruse them.

I recently found out that one of my heroes is at Google. Rob Pike wrote the book co-authored with the K of K&R entitled, The Unix Programming Environment (still used at NYU today) and The Practice of Programming both classics in the programming world.

Rob Pike was one of the pioneers of Bell Labs at a time when Bell Labs was on top of the heap in computer science and systems development. Does this mean that Google Labs is the Bell Labs of the future?

I submitted a commentary & poll on the benefits of human milk on neurological development. Slashdot rejected it, it was a really good article and I was pretty serious about it. They probably thought I was asking Slashdot readers "How Many People Suck Titties Up In Here?".

However, the article was serious. Not to mention the poll was out of sincere interest in how many Slashdot readers were breastfed, since I do considers us the academic elite! Probably?

Oh well, I will have to save it for another day when we can freely speak about breastmilk in this country. Stay tuned...

I was talking to a friend this morning on the way to work. He's ex-military and he was saying that with my educational back ground I could find good work in the military as an officer.

Uh... I don't know, I have never thought about going to the military before. But it sounds exciting... do they make nerds shoot people in the military? I'm not sure I could shoot someone.

I mean... I am a hard-core gangsta from the street and all but, shooting people in foreign countries for reasons other than someone stealing a 1/2 million of emergency bail money! I don't know, I guess I will think about it.

I'm planning to build a home network using primarily Unix-based OSes to fullfil routing, firewall, print serving, desktop and laptop (workstation) services. This has been a plan in the conceptual stages for nearly a year. I guess I wanted to get a stronger grasp on Linux and BSD before I attempt a project like this one. I really hate failure so I didn't want to get involved in something that I could start.

• Desktops(3)
• Laptops(2)
• Tablet PC(1)
• Wireless Router(1)

Desktops: There will be three desktops for three very different purposes:

1) Will be a simple box that needs no more than 32MB RAM. This box will function only as a gateway/firewall to the private network. Still undecided whether or not to install a GUI. However, I wanted to use *BSD for this. OpenBSD I hear is best for security but I am more familiar with FreeBSD.

2) The second desktop will be the client machine that doubles as a print server and gaming machine. This machine I will build from scratch and will probably take the longest time to acquire.

3) The third desktop will include a wireless card and be in the children's bedroom. It will be a dual-boot featuring Edubuntu and Windows XP (if I can find a bootleg copy).

Laptops

1) My IBM Thinkpad R51, which is my main workstation and my baby will be my main administrative tool as I will be able to access each host to perform administrative tasks. Also must be the most secure besided the Gateway of course!

2) My wife's Mac. I have to do some shopping because I would like to get a cheap but good Mac.

Tablet PC If a tablet PC has enough processing power behind it I would like it to captain a wireless home entertainment system.

Over the next 12 months... my goal is complete this project. Stay tuned

What the hell is going on! Slashdot banned my ip address. They totally made me feel like a criminal and I didn't even do anything. I have been wrongly accused of being a script kiddy and as a result grounded from my favorite past-time... browsing "Stuff that matters".

I'm not exactly sure what happended to make them restrict the ip address however, I'm making a petition to have the restrictions removed otherwise Slashdot will lose a loyal and friendly subscriber. Stay tuned...

I have been attending NYU since the summer of 2004 and I have had very few run-ins with Linux people. NYU is such a big university, you would think that somewhere along the way somebody would show up and say, "Hey... that looks like Gnome what distro are you using?"

But it never happens. I recall a few Computer Advocacy NYU (CANYU) sessions that I went to where there were a a handful of geeks, some nerds and a couple of freaks but the damn thing couldn't survive the cold New York attitude and eventually fizzled.

I wish something would spring up for Linux/BSD users on campus. Its a shame that CANYU has become a distribution center for annoying emails from an even more annoying chick (I won't mention any names).

If anyone from NYU reads this... email me or something. Its been a while since I have been to a meeting, maybe I should go to the next one. Yeah, I will so stay tuned...

Recently, my son had an I.Q. test and received a score which places him in the "Above Superior" category. The test was the Stanford-Binet V and he scored a 98/100 for age 3 and 4.

I was wondering when I would be able to tell if his genius will be science related or rooted in the arts?

I am having so many problems installing vpnc... sheesh! I'm pretty sure I am not doing something right with the routing table however, I thought vpnc was supposed to make the routing assignments automatically.

I have been posting at gmane.network.vpnc.devel (newsgroup) and I've been getting some help. I have narrowed the problem down to 1 of 2 things: Either ipsec is causing problems allowing packets to be received from the gateway or there is a kernel issue that is not allowing packets to be received from the gateway.

I will keep you all posted... stay tuned