The SIG isn't going to change until operations in Iraq have reached the point where Iraqis can walk down the street to the local McDonald's and buy a McLis-san el Qathi with a stable currency and everyone can surf the web at typical DSL speeds in Iraq. Or... until I can be free to voice an anti-Republican stance without getting banned for it... Just put that in your pipe and smoke it.

There are also days that will live in infamy. First and foremost, there's Pearl Harbor. ;| Then there is the start of my IP bans from the bitches at Slashdot.

Anyway... my SIG is mostly in response to the atrocious bumper sticker that says, "If you love your freedoms, thank a Republican". Anyone with that on their car needs a bitchslap. All politicians on both sides are scumbags who should be tortured painfully. Especially Bush. In my opinion.

Yes the ban is back! This is where I make my solemn vow to NEVER leave Slashdot. I was considering leaving, but I can see now that it really needs the presence of people like me to provide balance. Again, to whoever is responsible for my ban, thanks for making me very aware of how much I need to be here. :)

It appears that the powers that be at Slashdot have decided to let the ban on my subnet end. Let's see how soon my ban is re-instated after I change my sig back to:

"If you like dead soldiers, thank a Republican"

I'm starting to think that was the cause of the ban. Hehehe.. idiots.

I was raised in a fairly unusual way spiritually speaking. My mom was catholic and my dad was raised catholic but converted to the protestant faith in his 20s. I was sent to a catholic school, but my dad made sure we went to a First Assemblies of God protestant church (F.A.G. from here on out) on Sundays. My mom's sister was a Jehova's Witnesses member. She was "in the truth" unlike the rest of us "worldly" people. My aunt and my dad used to have long debates about why their chosen faith was better than the other. To my dad, his being "born again" opened his eyes and made a major change in his world view. He felt it really made him a whole person. On the other hand my aunt said that when she was in the middle of a very dark period in her life, she prayed and asked god for a sign to tell her what to do. Within minutes, there were some Jehova's Witnesses at the door and she accepted this as her answer from god. She's never looked back since. My mom, was pretty much just... catholic. She didn't need to talk about being "born again" or "in the truth" or about any greater enlightenment that she experienced. She was born into a catholic family in South America, raised catholic, and stayed catholic. However, she had some major wars with my aunt and my dad about their religious beliefs and my upbringing. All of these mixed signals sent the message to me that religion is about disagreement, strife, hurt feelings, and at some point lies.

I remember once going to my aunt's house and she decided that it would be a good idea for me to participate in "bible study" with my cousin. I was about four at the time and didn't mind since I figured the bible was "good" in any form. Plus it would also allow me to ask questions about their beliefs since my dad had told me so much about why the Jehova's Witnesses were wrong. So the first question I put to my aunt was, "why does your church use a false bible instead of the true word of god in the King James bible"? She went into an explanation about Charles Tayes Russell and his encounter with god. Then she went of on a loosely related tangent saying that Jehova's Witnesses were really just like jews. They don't believe that Jesus Christ was the son of god and they are awaiting the true savior. They regard him as a nice man but not the son of god. The next question I asked was, "why is Christmas bad for Jehova's Witnesses". To which she replied that all major Christian holidays started off as pagan holidays and that pagans are all devil worshipers. We then read some scriptures from their bible and I pondered her answers. I had my doubts about the Christmas answer and I didn't quite grasp the Charles Tayes Russell answer. I went home and asked my mom about those things and the next thing I know, she's on the phone yelling at my aunt. I didn't see my aunt and cousin for a half a year after that.

Later on I asked my dad about the Charles Tayes Russell answer and the Christmas answer. He told me that Charles Tayes Russell was a liar and a con man and that Christmas is a christian celebration of the birth of Christ. At that point in my life I looked to my dad as being the ultimate authority on all things religious and accepted those answers as complete truth.

At another phase in my spiritual development, I was at the F.A.G. for Sunday services. Since I was a pretty voracious reader at 10 and kind of a news hound, I was very interested in this "news letter" they would hand out each Sunday with "News from a Christian Perspective". It covered topics from Business to Entertainment to Politics. I would kind of tune out the service itself and read this thing every Sunday. Here are some samples of the typical "headlines":

1. Boy found nailed to bedroom ceiling after playing Dungeons and Dragons. Demonic connections suspected
2. Avowed homosexual TV producer Norman Lear wanted to have a gay character in a sitcom. Are the gays after your eyes?
3. Thank god for Ronald Reagan. Let's take America back to it's Christian heritiage!
4. 666 is the most commonly used number in computers. Are computers a tool of the devil? (Hehehe... once I got into Unix and started using chmod, I had a little laugh about this)
5. Star Wars movies push demonic power in sheep's clothing. The force or dark forces?

As you can see, the "headlines" read like Brent Metzler's wet dreams. Of course being only 10, I didn't know any better. Although I took much of what was written in these newsletters as fact, I was beginning to have strong doubts. Especially since the catholics at my school seemed to know nothing about these things.

I was puzzled at how two different religions who both claimed to be christian could be so out of touch with each other on the information front. Why weren't the catholics hunting down the D&D players and trying to save them from mortal peril? Why weren't the catholics concerned that Norman Lear was pushing gay sex on prime time television? Where was the outrage? It didn't make sense to me. To make matters even more confusing, I really liked the kids in sunday school at the F.A.G. more than my classmates at the catholic school. They were friendlier overall. So there it was... I went to mass on Wednesdays and the F.A.G. on Sundays. Two doctrines and a lot of dogma about why the other side was evil.

Then, it happened. One Sunday at the F.A.G., there was a bit of a delay in the start of the service. Eventually one of the deacons came out and announced that there was a bit of an altercation with the choir director. He was one of our strongest (in terms of faith) and most respected members. Apparently, he'd gotten pissed off at the choir and cussed them out in a pretty vile way. This was the little thread that got pulled and unwravelled a whole fabric of ugliness that had been growing at the F.A.G.

It turned out that he had a drinking problem and anger management issues. He was also carrying on an affair with one of the women in the church. Later it was revealed that several affairs had been going on there. I was disturbed by this because as much as I already disliked going to church, at least this place was a refuge from the dichotomy of my catholic experience during the week. The dichotomy where we were taught to be loving to one another yet the kids tried, literally, to murder each other. More on that later. So now I was in crisis. It was a silent crisis because my own parents were having problems of their own that seemed to be stemming from their religious differences. At this point my mom didn't want us to go to the F.A.G. anymore, but my dad would still go on his own. I kind of missed my friends there, but I was relieved to not have to sit through boring services anymore. My mom and dad had huge weekly fights about religion and I started to sour on it.

After seeing the fighting between my mom and dad, and my dad and my aunt, I began to think that this is not what a kind and decent god would want. So... all three of these religions must be the "wrong path". At this point I started to seek out other answers. I opened my mind to the possibility that other religions (even the non-Christian ones) may be the answer. Growing up in a largely Jewish community, I got a chance to find out what their views were. Of course, I foolishly assumed that I could "convert" to Judaism just as many people converted from catholicism to the protestant sects. Making this confession to a few of the jewish kids in my new (public) junior high school brought howls of cruel laughter. Nope. That wasn't the answer either. Although I respected the jewish kids for their tendency towards stong intellect, I noted that they could be as mean as the catholic kids.

Going back a bit to my catholic school experience, I have to make note that I later found out that the school I went to was where a lot of the local mobsters and cops (!) sent their kids. I didn't know it at the time, but it explained a lot later. When I said that kids literally tried to kill each other, I am completely serious. I remember one instance where a group of kids chased me up to the third floor and cornered me while their leader prepared to push me out of a third floor window. I was lucky because a nun caught them before they could finish what they were doing. We all got in trouble for being on the third floor during recess. No matter how much I attempted to explain what had happened the adults didn't care. These days, I chalk it up to possible racism since the school was mostly Irish and I had darker skin and hair and both the adults and the kids treated me like a second class citizen. There were about four black kids in the school out of about 400. I remember one of those kids being grabbed by a small mob who attempted to push him out into traffic on the main road nearby. He didn't do anything to provoke this other than being black. He was a nice kid, but if he's got issues with white people these days, I don't blame him one bit. Even I have issues with white people and for all intents and purposes I'm a "white man". Yes, it was a fucked up place and is the reason why I'm not catholic and will never send my kid to catholic school.

So... catholicism wasn't the answer. The Jehova's Witnesses wasn't the answer. The F.A.G. and basic protestant christians weren't the answer either. What did I do? I created my own personal religion. I called it "The Church of the Self". It was based on christianity, but I dropped a lot of the illogical things. Things like the requirement that you go to church. I figured, why? If I can sit down right here and speak to god, why do I need to do it in a building at a specified time? I also dropped the concept of "tithing". I figured, if Jesus threw money grubbing bastards out of the church, why should the church itself go money grubbing? Then I started to explore some of the new age concepts out there. I made new friends in public high school who then introduced me to being agnostic, or even atheist and sacreligious. I had a friend who would shake his fist at the sky and taunt god making threats to "rip off his head and shit down his neck". Oddly enough that same person is now an extremist conservative catholic (as in someone who put's pictures of aborted fetuses in his car window) who is studying Judaism. I also lost my fear of the occult and began studying satanism and demonology. Not because I believed in that crap, but because I wanted to know both sides of the story. One of the greatest disservices that most chritians do to their kids is that they DON'T let them find out about the other side for themselves.

I was facinated to find out that the word "pagan" is derived from "paisano" which roughly translates to country man or "man from the country". When the catholic church was having it's nice little holy war against anyone who didn't financially support the church, they started persecuting the people who lied their simple lives out in the country. These people had their own practices and were not interested in the catholic church. So the catholics took the best approch to defeating your enemy. Make your enemy out to be demonic. At this time the paisanos worshipped the god Pan. Pan was supposed to be a nature god along with others who helped keep the world in balance and the crops coming. Not too threatening really. But the catholics distorted Pan into this evil demon and started killing anyone who would not support the catholics. The term paisano morphed into pagan over time and connoted ties to anything that was anti-christian. It still carries that stigma to this day for most people except for the new brand of pagans out there. This happened even though the christians were the aggressors. Pretty neat, huh?

Today, I have my own feelings on religion and spirituality which I will not shre with anyone other than to say I am completely opposed to all forms of organized religion. I see them as a control measure to keep the dumber monkeys in line and something that is not healthy for the continued progress of mankind.

Anyway... I as wondering if anyone else here had similar experiences and how you resolved your dillema

This morning, while reading a comment in the Firefox hits 1,000,000 downloads thread, I was frustrated by the fact that the poster seemed to laud the concept of marketing as a tool for Firefox's success. Now I won't say that marketing doesn't play a part in moving product on a day to day basis, but marketing abuse is enormously distressing to me. From my perspective, marketing has been abused for a long time and it continues to get more and more onerous in it's approaches. With that said, I think marketing as an important business tool is wortheless to the consumer.

If Mozilla is to become majorly successful with the Firefox project, then it needs to do so by kicking IEs ass AND supporting multiple platforms with the same level of quality on each one. This is where the Mozilla project will succeed. The only reason to engage in some marketing is that most Americans in the 18-50 age group have been well programmed to respond to marketing. They are told, "You NEED this. If you don't have one already, you are a complete loser". Or... "You must buy this now. If you don't, you don't really love your loved ones and are a failure as a parent or spouse". Or... "If you are a good American, you will prove it by buying this item. Because only true patriots support American business by buying everything we tell you to". Whatever happened to the fire and gumption of older American consumers who asked the person trying to sell them something, "Why? Convince me I need your product and I'll think about it. For a LONG time."? Whatever happened to the days when a product was "moved" simply by making it the best and not resorting to dirty tricks?

Yesterday my wife and I were talking sbout how much it disgusts us that so many people (even some of the smarter ones we know who should know better) seem to fall victim to this lemming-like rush to make sure they aren't even the slightest bit different from other people. There is an ad on TV for some brand of automobile. It shows a young couple who buys a brand new car. It's in their driveway with a big bow on top. They look at it with adoring eyes and smile at each other over their wondrous new purchase. Then a stork drops a baby in a basket in front of them. They look at each other and seem confused. Then they go back to the dealer with resolve and... "upgrade" to an SUV. When my wife and I saw that, we hit the roof. To us it was a gross display of that "you MUST be like everyone else or you are a failure" brand of marketing, combined with the "if you REALLY love your child, you'll buy a big gas hogging pollutionmobile or else you have failed as a parent" brand of marketing.

We are about to become first time parents ourselves both in our late 30s. We do everything OUR WAY. Against the wishes of anyone else, we've done everything in non-traditional fashion, from our dating for nearly 8 years before getting married to the way in which we got married and celebrated with family which was non-traditional as well. We intend to do the same with the way we raise our child. There is no reason we need a bigger vehicle for a newborn baby!!! Contrary to what that ridiculous ad implies, an average sized baby will fit just fine in a child seat stuffed into the back of my 98 Nissan Sentra. Chances are that by the time my car kicks the bucket, the kid will still be small enough to fit in the back seat of yet another econo-box. There will be no need to buy some ridiculously big vehicle even though the automaker's marketing goons want us to think that we don't care about our kid unless we have one. But, many people tell us, "Oh... you'll see. You'll see how things will be different and then you'll need to get at least a minivan". Bullshit. My wife and I grew up in the 70s with small and midsized four door vehicles and we turned out just fine. We love our parents and don't feel abused because we weren't abe to watch DVDs in the backseat of a living room on wheels. These same types of people have tod us all our lives, "You'll see..." and we're still waiting.

Before we got married, people told us, "You'll see who things will be different after you get married. Everything will change". ... ... We're still waiting for that change. Hell, we still go out on dates. We've had sex throughout the pregnancy. We're still hot for each other after 12 years of being together. This mythical "change" has not happened and it's not going to because we were committed to each other long before we got married. A marriage chnages nothing about true love. It's just a fucking stupid ceremony to prove to everyone else who is not intelligent enough to percieve the love that, YES it IS REAL. When I was in highschool, I despised it so much that I dressed up in a rather silly and insulting way for my senior photo. This was to illustrate how little regard I had for my school and my classmates. I was told that I would regret that later in life. ... ... I'm still waiting for that feeling of regret to settle in. Let's see, it's 2004 and I graduated in 1988. Not bad, sixteen years and not one regret yet.

Why can't people think for themselves anymore???! Is it too much to ask the average American to really put some thought behind a new purchase? Why doesn't the average American ask himself the following:
1."Do I REALLY need this or am I buying it to make up for my feelings of inadequacy"?
2. "Is this purchase happening because I can't live without this item, or am I just trying to avoid being a little different"?
3. "How long will this item last vs. how much I'm paying for it"?
4. "Can I buy this item outright in cash? If not, do I REALLY NEED it"?
I ask myself some of these questions with every purchase except the essentials like a mortgage, groceries and gas for my car. You really should too. There's nothing wrong with this line of thinking.

Are these kinds of thinking about impending purchases lost to the brainwashing campaign of marketing? Are people REALLY that stupid? Or is it laziness? They don't want to think for themselves or be different, so they just fall in with the lemmings headed to their end.

We also hear a lot of parents complaining about all of the activities they have to shuttle their kids off to. My wife asks, "Why are the kids involved in ten different activities at once"? Most of those people reply with the same stupid, "Ohhh... you'll see. It'll be different for your kid. You'll see how important it is for your kid to be involved". To which we think, "Um... unless we get bit by one of you zombies, we think not". Whatever happened to the concept that the parents run the house rules and the kids obey? Have people really become that soft that they let their kids run their lives? When my wife and I were kids, we participated in *MAYBE* one extracircular activity per school season. Most of the time, we were actualy just being kids playing with other kids in our neighborhoods or our siblings/cousins. We didn't have to endure the insane competitive freakshow of parents vs. parents that masquerades as youth sports these days. Perhaps tht's why my wife and I HATE vicious competitiveness as a trait?

We have stated to people that we intend to let sprout indulge in one (yes that's a numeral 1) activity per semester/quarter whatever it is they call it these days. If sprout wants more... tough luck kid. You don't dictate our lives, we dictate yours. And when the time comes, you will get a chance to chart your own course. But for ages 0-18, and as long as you are under our roof, you follow our rules. Now... a lot of people out there might think this sucks. But it doesn't. I was raised in a much stricter way than that and I have great relationship with my parents. (My mom didn't want me to date until I complete a doctorate and was in my 30s, but that's another tale for another day) We figure that if we provide enough of a comfortable, happy and loving household for the kid from age 0-10 or 12, the kid will be fine with one activity. This doesn't mean we will limit them to just music, or art or whatever interests the kid. But whatever the interests, they will be pursued one at a time. We will buck the pressure from other kids, parents and the school to make sure this happens.

Come on people! Get some damned backbone and resist the urge to be like everyone else. There is nothing wrong with it. Trade in the SUV or the minivan and get something more fuel efficient and eco-friendly. DON'T buy that next brand new PC if the current one is working for you just fine. I'm sure the PC industry will survive the loss somehow. And above all, DON'T be made to feel bad by the snake oil men. Just because you can buy all the stuff they try to sell you with credit but can't do it with cash doesn't justify the debt. Resist the urge! Also keep in mind that you are NOT a failure if you haven't jumped on the bandwagon of the minute because you can't honestly afford it. Be truly honest with yourself and consider your purchases, past present and future. Ask yourself, why did I buy X when I clearly didn't really need it or could have gotten by with less?

Of course, I know this rant will fall on many deaf ears. Those people are the people we should mourn. They have been damaged by a world gone wrong. They have lost the ability to appreciate the value of being unique. These people no longer understand the necessity of working hard with their own hands to achive something instead of just buying the cookie cutter simulacra at too high a price compared to the actual value. They've accepted the "fact" that most things are better left to "professionals" for everything, instead of just a few select things. It's sad and it's frustrating, but I try to awaken these people as much as possible. If this message DOES get through to you, please help me to spread the word.

Being a loser is not caused by not owning the right materialist fetish of the day. Being a loser is not caused by being different from everyone else. Being a loser is the result of years of saying "yes" to spending your rightfully acquired money on things you don't need. Being a loser is the result of not being confident enough in your own views and opinions to be able to resist the views and opinions of those around you no matter how pervasive they may be. Sometimes the majority is wrong. For fuck's sake, look at what passes for "music" these days on the ClearChannel! (Just for Twirlip of the Mists: Fuck consensus! When the consensus isn't doing much good for the majority in terms of elevating their intellectual and financial status, it's time for them to start rethinking things.) Being a loser is the direct result of not controlling your own thoughts and opinions. Being a loser is what happens when you fear both being different and those who are different from you.

I think the time has come for reasonable, rational people who support a woman's choice to procreate (both birth control and termination) to deny loon-a-whack doctors and pharmacists with an anti-abortion stance access to our business on the grounds that we don't believe in withholding personal choice. *credit goes to wheany for first posting this story in his Journal.

If you are lucky enough to have an ssh shell account that is not in a banned subnet and the ssh server has tcp forwarding enabled, follow these simple steps to walk around the Slashdot subnet bans. This tutorial assumes that you are using openssh client on *nix:

1. Edit your /etc/hosts file and put:

127.0.0.1 slashdot.org
127.0.0.1 www.slashdot.org

in it. You may need to add other slashdot hosts like 'yro.slashdot.org' or restructure your URL to just use 'slashdot.org' to post with.

2. Become root (this is needed to use a priveleged port) and use ssh to connect to the remote shell account.

3. Once logged into the shell account, type the following. Note that you will not see the tilde when you type it once, this is good. If you see the tilde, just hit enter and start over. You DON'T want to see the tilde):

~C

4. If you did step 3 correctly, you will have an 'ssh>' prompt. Type the following at the prompt and then hit enter:

-L 80:slashdot.org:80

5. If you did step 4 correctly, you will see a message indicating that the port is being forwarded. You can hit enter to get back to your remotely connected shell prompt.

You should now be able to post to Slashdot through the remote subnet and if it isn't banned, you will get through. :) Of course it's also really handy for encrypting your traffic from snoopers on your network and making it appear to originate from somewhere else. Yes, it does have more applications than just avoiding the Slashdot bans. Enjoy.

First thought at the moment: my karma is going down, down, down... I don't think it's a coincidence that this is happening just before the election season. I have a feeling that any right-wingers or people sympathetic to the current administration on /. are using their mod points in heavily political fashion right about now. Mostly in an attempt to silence the opposition. But take heart my friends, there are many more of us than there are them both here and in the real world. Just do yourself a favor and make it to the polls in November and vote against Bush.

Good Calendaring Solution for Home Use: I've been playing around with the Mozilla Project's Sunbird. It's pretty nice. I still like Evolution's feature set a lot more, but since I'm not interested in the price tag I'd have to pay to run Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2003 at home for the family calendar, I think I will be going the Sunbird/Apache/WebDAV/SSL route. I played around with that the other day and it seems to work rather nicely. I was able to publish a calendar from work to home and from home to work using my "SSH VPN" tunnel. Hehehe... I don't get why more people don't do this kind of thing. I don't trust someone like MSN to store all that info or be able to bring it back in the event of a catastrophic failure. At the moment, I run my own mail, web, DNS, VPN, and IM services that are all used by my friends and family over encrypted tunnels. Come on... this is't THAT unusual is it? Surely some of you are doing the same things? Which leads me to...

Am I really that different: I really wish software companies would realize that more people are going to want groupware and application servers at home for their families instead of just a PC or two, local apps and wireless. Personally, I don't think I'm that unusual in running my own mail/web and DNS servers. I also don't think I'm that unusual in having all of the family apps running on a nice X application server. Where I do think I am unusual is that I'm doing it in 2004. I think this is going to be the route that everyone will go in a few years. Not necesarily X, or OSS/Free, but centralized Application appliances, personal web/mail servers behind firewalls and family VPNs. The technology is all here now. But the ease of setting it up isn't yet. Once it's just a plug and play affair with a monthly maintenance fee (ie. security and updates maintained by service providers), it will be a reality. That is unless we get 100 Gigbits from the phone pole to the home anytime soon. Then everything changes.

Frozen-Bubble: One of the best puzzle style games I've played in a long time. Being a huge fan of the Rubik's Cube, Tetris and chess, the game Frozen-Bubble really appeals to me. I made it up to level 54 today. It get VERY challenging around level 45.

He Say, She Say: Just in case Brent Metzler rips out his JE in the face of some truth, here is a link with interesting info about the documents regarding Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. Sure it's from CBS News themselves. But, then again, Brent sees fit to post his "news" from the NY Post which is about as trustworthy as... a turd from NY?

Quick Poll: Why did you get into computers?
1. I was told it was a good way to make money
2. One of my idols (Scotty on Star Trek/Your 9th grade maths or science teacher/character in a book, etc...) was into computers when I was a kid
3. I live by the D.I.Y. ethic
4. I like computers better than people
5. Power Baby! Gie me POWER!!!!
I'll start: 2, 3, 4

Daft Punk: Damn these guys rule! I've been a fan of their music since their album "Homework". When they started work on those great anime videos for the songs from their album "Discovery" I had no idea how great their vision would turn out to be. I bought the DVD earlier this year and have watched it several times now. It's just too cool to see them paired up with Leji Matsumoto. This is a masterpiece! The vocoder vocals by Romanthony just rock! Oh yeah... and it's GREAT music to screw to. Seriously. Then again so is Homework. ;P

I think someone who works at Slashdot actually has it in for me. Not that I really care that much, but yesterday, I had "Excellent" karma. I can easily rebuild this *if* I can ever post again like a normal reader. Today, I posted from a friend's subnet and found that I now have "Good" karma. It appears I've been knocked down a peg even though I haven't had any downmods today. Someone doesn't like me. I'm sure of it. Maybe some reader who has befriended one of the editors? Who knows. But, there is definitely some weirdness going on. Take a look at my posting history for yourself and you will see that nearly all of my recent posts are at +2. That combined with "Excellent" karma doesn't get you a downgraded in one day with *NO* downmods. What would you think if you were in my position? So ther real question is... why? As other readers have pointed out over time, I'm "harmless" or at worst "retarded". I'm certainly not a troll as I only play one on /. occasionally. Maybe this is a little "cracking down" from the Taco squad since the inception of the largely "fair and balanced" politics.slashdot.org? Tell me about your childhood.

As a sidenote. I DID post a silly piece in the discussion about the new Star Wars DVD Box Set today. Look it up in my posting history as I'm too lazy to link it right now. I expected this to get modded to death down to a -1 Troll, but it got nothing. I fully expected that was why my karma was at "Good". But, is it really that horrible? I don't think so.

Update: OK... I just found one of my posts today was modded down as "Overrated -1". Maybe that was the last straw? Perhaps it's my current SIG? A little too distasteful for some people?

Which stock Science Fiction Character do you relate to the most (choose all the apply):

1. The 1950s scientist hero who used his brain to outwit the enemy and seemed to know everything about everything
2. The screaming, out of control woman who loses her head and faints when confronted with a B.E.M. (Bug-Eyed Monster)
3. The screaming, out of control man who loses his head when confronted with a little tension (Think about the "Hudson" character in Aliens. "Game over man"!!)
4. The bald sexy captain
5. The bald (but toupe wearing) womanizing and forever typecast captain
6. Second in command who is always telling the captain to stay on board
7. The ball-busting female captain with a chip on her shoulder
8. The mad warrior who is obsessed with honour
9. The ship's engineer
10. Cooky (works in the galley)
11. The lone wolf who has a beater of a ship, but he can really fly/fight
12. The mercenary
13. Former military, who operates by the book but is carrying a secret burden
14. The touchy feely ship's counselor/doctor
15. The space siren who gets what she wants
16. The bounty hunter
17. The quirky, bug-eyed, renegade brain from a powerful race of people who have mastered time and space who has a penchant for soft candy
18. The devilish looking renegade brain from a powerful race of people who have mastered time and space and has a penchant for shrinking people
19. The android who yearns (in it's own programmed way) to understand what it is to be human.
20. The android who doesn't know it's an android
21. The young "chosen one" who doesn't know that he's the "chosen one" but somehow has supernatural powers as his birthright that are revealed to him by someone else
22. The young whiz kid who invents/discovers something that has escaped generations of geniuses before him. And he does it in his basement with no grant money
23. The slightly insane but lovable time/space traveller who can have a very dark side when needed
24. The unlikeable, overexcitable, puppy dog teen kid who wants to pal up with the hero
25. The guy wearing the red shirt who is doomed to die
26. The stoic female character who has been through a lot and is wise beyond her years
27. The captain who grew up on a farm as a kid and dreamed of becoming a ship's captain and succeeded
28. The purely religious/philospical character who reveres his heritage and traditions with a great deal of respect
29. The jar head with a heart of gold
30. The megalomaniacal scientist who wants to rule the universe
31. Cowboy Neal

OK, OK, so they're not all stock characters. So sue me!

I'll start: 1, 4, 9, 17, 19, 31

A lot of people don't know what labor day really is these days. Many of them see it as just a time to fire up the grill watch some sporting event and drink lots of beer. But, it's origins mean much more than that. Follow this link to read up on how labor day started. Also keep in mind that today is a day to commemorate the worker. These are the people who make civilization what it is. They are more important and more valuable than the politician, the CEO, or any business man. Without them, nothing could work properly. Remember, that in every nation whether capitlist or not, the worker should and must be remembered.

As a side note. If you are one of the unlucky workers who is being deprived of your right to at least this one day off today, take some time on your job to just relax. It is your right.

x0vncserver is a new part of the VNC package for Unix that allows you to "share" your actual console's X server display with someone else. (ie. it works just like VNC in Windows as opposed to Unix) This is hady if you want to actually access the desktop being displayed on the monitor of your remote PC. The usage is pretty simple. Here is a simple bash script I use to start up the x0vncserver on my workstation at work:

#!/bin/bash

desktop=`hostname`

/usr/local/vnc4/x0vncserver -display :0 -IdleTimeout=0 -PasswordFile=/home/Trolling4Dollars/.vnc/passwd -rfbport=5910

The -display option allows you to choose which X display to send using the VNC protocol. I chose display :0 because it's the default on the system's console.
The -PasswordFile option allows you to use the normal vnc password file that is created if you run the regular vncserver. You could also use a different password file if you want, or no password file. It's up to you.
The -rfbport option allows you to specify which vnc display will be used. I chose 5910 which means that if I try to connect to this system, I need to do it ike this: hostname.com:10

That is all for now...

I am sure people have tried in many different ways to get this point across, but it's lost on most people not involved with free software: If a program is free to download or you can get access to its source code, it is NOT necessarily "Linux". Yeah it sounds like something a "newbie" would think, but I've seen people who should know better still holding to these assumptions. I think the Linux/OSS/Free communities really need to do better PR to make the distinctions clearer.

A lot of people seem to make the mistake of using the name Linux to mean free (as in no cost) software. While this is not terribly important it is pretty essential that people who claim to know about computers understand the distinction. I've seem messages on forums and on mailing lists where someone will start talking or asking about free software no cost and will interperse the conversation with the Linux name. For some reason there appear to be a few commonly mistaken associations with the Linux name:

1. If a program doesn't cost anything, then it's "Linux".
2. If you can download the source code to a program, then it must be "Linux".
3. If the program doesn't run on Windows and it's not for Macintosh, then it's "Linux".

Unfortunately, if you hold any one of these views, you are mistaken and likely you will run into frustration because of these misunderstandings. Especially if you run into someone who is overzealous about their platform. If you want to understand what Linux is, you need to understand what "Free Software" and "Shareware/Freeware" are.

There are three kinds of software that are typically associated with the word "free":

1. Free Software (regarding freedom, not cost): This kind of software is ostensibly software that you can do anything you want with. I'm not going to argue about licenses here because there is a lot of heated disagreement within the free software community over what freedom truly is. The general gist is that if you are using "Free Software", you are guaranteed certain rights. You are typically allowed to freely copy, alter (ie. you get access to the source code), or distribute this kind of software.

2. Shareware: This is usually software that you can use with the understanding that you are on your honor to pay for it if you find it useful. You may or may not be allowed to redistribute the software in various ways depending on the wishes of the author. You may or may not be allowed to copy this software. Most of the time this kind of software requires some type of payment if you are to coniute using it and does not allow for access to the source code to modify it. There are variations, but this appears to be the standard approach. Many times, the average user mistakes this kind of software for being "free" because they didn't pay to download it. If the software has no time out mechanism, they further assume it is free because they can continue to use it without paying for it. The use of the word "free" in reference to this kind of software has nothing to do with freedom.

3. Freeware: This kind of software is usually given away. However, it may not include access to the source code. The author may also make other demands of you as they typically retain full control of the program. The use of the word "free" in this kind of software is specifically referring to the fact that it costs nothing to use. It does not address the concept of freedom.

Linux is considered to be Free Software because it is distributed with a Free Software license. (Again, there are many who dislike the choice of the GPL because they percieve limitations since there are clauses that interfere with traditional business practices in many cases.) However, Linux, if we are being very specific, is simply the software that Linus Tovalds created. This software is a kernel and nothing more. What you see sitting on the shelves or as downloadable ISOs is a "Linux distribution". This means that an operating system *based* around the Linux kernel has been assembled and packaged for distribution to the end user. If you were to replace the Linux kernel with some other kernel, most of the programs in the distribution could be made to work with this new kernel and you would have a nearly identical distribution, but it would not be Linux based. There for, you couldn't call it "Linux" even though it's 99% the same software.

Most distributions are made up of various free and non-free programs. However, in many cases, there is nothing about these programs that specifically ties them to the Linux kernel. A good example is the Firefox browser. It is Free Software. However, while it will eventually be included in most Linux distributions, it is not "Linux". This is obvious since Firefox is available for Windows and Macintosh. Even when it is distributed with most Linux distributions, it will not be "Linux".

Hopefully this clears up some confusion about what Linux is and what it's not. However, I doubt it. This is probably a headache that will always be part of the Linux community unless one particular distro winds up dominating.

So here's the problem. I moved to a new house at the beginning of August. At my old place I had network jacks in almost every room in the house except the bathroom. Everything was running at 100 Mb. It was pretty much perfection for me. But now, I am still working on finishing the electrical work as well as patching and painting various walls in different rooms. The short of it is that it's going to be a while before I have the whole house wired. Right now, my network exists in my basement on a shelf. It's wired with the exception of the laptop which is connected via an old linksys WLAN/Gateway (802.11b).

I have a system connected to my TV set that I use for recording and watching videos (MPEGs and AVIs. Just DVD-ROM for watching movies) and listening to music (Ogg Vorbis and MP3). But... with no network connection for that guy, it's pretty much just limited to DVDs. Or at least it was until the other night. :)

I run a customized version of RedHat 9 on my Compaq nx9010 laptop that work gave me. It works pretty well with the only notable feature missing being the ATI 3D accelerator chip. I did get the wireless working with the NDIS Wrapper which has worked well for me since I first set it up in March when I got the laptop. So sitting here being frustrated about my TV system and not being interested in just temporarily stringing a cable through a cold air return to the network in the basement, I did what any good computer geek would do. I "innovated". ;P

I started thinking a few weeks ago... Could I share my wireless card in the laptop with another machine? I figured it has to be possible since all wlan0 is is just another NIC device. So I looked up the info for setting up a typical "firewall/gateway" using two ethernet interfaces and made a simple change or two to the rules. I used a crossover cable to connect the laptop to the TV system. Then I istalled a DHCP server on my laptop and bound it to eth0. I set up a new subnet and then mixed it all up and voila! My laptop is now sharing it's wireless connection with the TV system and it's working out quite well.

Here's a short list of what I did to make this work:

1. Configured eth0 with a private address space IP. 10.1.20.1 worked out nicely.
2. Compiled and installed dhcpd from source
3. Configured dhcp as follows:

default-lease-time 86400;
max-lease-time 86400;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address 10.1.20.255;
option routers 10.1.20.1;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.20.2;
option domain-name "t4dnet.priv";
option netbios-node-type 8;
option netbios-name-servers 192.168.20.2;
ddns-update-style ad-hoc;

zone t4dnet.priv. {
primary 127.0.0.1;
}

zone 20.1.10.in-addr.arpa. {
primary 127.0.0.1;
}

subnet 10.1.20.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 10.1.20.40 10.1.20.254;
}

host mrbungle {
hardware ethernet 00:40:07:45:79:4C;
fixed-address 10.1.20.12;
}

host msjiggle {
hardware ethernet 00:D0:9B:41:C3:0D;
fixed-address 10.1.20.11;
}

host monkeyboy {
hardware ethernet 00:07:C9:73:5E:34;
fixed-address 10.1.20.13;
}

4. Added the following lines in /etc/rc.d/rc.local:

# Start up DHCP server on eth0 /usr/sbin/dhcpd eth0

# Set up NAT/MASQ from 10.1.20.0 to 192.168.20.0
modprobe iptable_nat
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o wlan0 -j MASQUERADE
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Then I booted up the TV system and got an IP. I tried connecting to my samba shares and... I got video! :) Keep in mind that this will only work as long as your kernel is properly configured/compiled to support iptables and nat/masq. Most distributions are shipped this way these days. For the record, I do use a custom compiled kernel on my laptop, so I didn't have the proper support since I don't use nat/masq normally. I DID have to recompile the kernel in order for this to work, but that part is trivial. However, if anyone has questions about the kernel compile, just ask and I'll respond with what I know. I'm no kernel guru, so I only did what I thought would work and it seems to have. More than likely I have a few too many modules compiled for the Net Filter support that iptables needs to do nat/masq.

This isn't a permanent solution, but it will work until I get to a point where I can wire the house up. I have a second laptop with wireless which I will do the same thing to so I can have another "wireless gateway" on the second floor. So... anyone in the know regarding other OSes. Can this be achieved in MacOS X or Windows? Just wondering. I don't ask about the BSDs because they are dea^h^h^h^h errr... where packet filtering originated. ;p (I kid! I kid!) So I know it can be done as long as there is support for the wireless NIC.

Someone with an axe to grind mod bombed me today. Probably an attempt to get me banned again. Wheeheee!!!! Keep it up whoever you are. I want to see about a two week ban. Please to be telink me why you want to shut me up? Is it my politics? Or perhaps my choice of OS? Or maybe you though I slighted you in some way? I doubt you have the courage or peace of mind to post in my journal as a non-AC. No matter. It really is satisfying to know that someone feels negatively about little old me. ;P HAND