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“Trusted” Computing
The computing industry has lots of euphimisms, but one of the ones that gets me really miffed is “trusted computing”. It is a process by which computer companies are trying to exert THEIR control on machines WE have bought with OUR money! Trusted Computing is the way they show they don’t trust us, but not…
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Computer Geek Humor
As I was browsing around /usr/share/emacs/21.4/etc/ looking for the emacs manual in order to look for the command to launch the doctor and I found the following. It’ll be funniest if you’re used to Unix man pages. Here it is, the man page for condom. CONDOM(1) EUNUCH Programmer’s Manual CONDOM(1) NAME condom – Protection against…
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An Open Letter to nVidia
To All Responsible at nVidia for the production of device drivers, I want to thank you for producing binary drivers for Linux at a time when most other companies don’t feel that the Linux market penetration is larger enough to develop drivers. So thanks for doing that! In fact, that is why I exclusively buy…
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Graphics Cards part 2
A little bit of info to impart here with respect to using the proprietary nVidia drivers. So, first I went to livna and downloaded the nVidia kernel modules that match my kernel. Then things were running great – even a little better than before, but something seemed wrong. The people in the irc room were…
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Graphics Cards help!
I got my graphics card today. Nothing crazy – just a $30 PNY 128 MB nvidia graphics card from newegg. I haven’t installed the nvidia drivers yet, but it has already been amazing in difference. The colors are brighter and more vibrant, the cpu, bereft of its need to draw the graphics runs faster, and…
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The OTHER Free Operating System
After reading about the BSDs in Linux Format Magazine a few months ago, I started to wonder about these Linux cousins. The original Berkely Software Devision port of Unix was developed a long time ago, but the free ones developed almost simultaneously with the Linux kernel had remained hidden from me up til now. Even…
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My first project on Freshmeat!
Frustrated with the lack of an easy way to create a video DVD on Linux, I decided to write a program to do just that! I wrote a program that will generate the dvdauthor.xml file needed to create the video DVD. Then I realized that if I had been so frustrated, perhaps others were too,…
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Today’s Jargon File Entry
Acme: n. [from Greek akme highest point of perfection or achievement] The canonical supplier of bizarre, elaborate, and non-functional gadgetry — where Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson (two cartoonists who specialized in elaborate contraptions) shop. The name has been humorously expanded as A (or American) Company Making Everything. (In fact, Acme was a real brand…
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Today’s Jargon File Entry
ACK: /ak/, interj. 1. [common; from the ASCII mnemonic for 0000110] Acknowledge. Used to register one’s presence (compare mainstream Yo!). An appropriate response to ping or ENQ. 2. [from the comic strip Bloom County] An exclamation of surprised disgust, esp. in “Ack pffft!” Semi-humorous. Generally this sense is not spelled in caps (ACK) and is…
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Today’s Jargon File Entry
accumulator: n. obs. 1. Archaic term for a register. On-line use of it as a synonym for register is a fairly reliable indication that the user has been around for quite a while and/or that the architecture under discussion is quite old. The term in full is almost never used of microprocessor registers, for example,…
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Lego Difference Engine
Someone built a difference engine – the first computer ever designed by Charles Babbage – out of Legos. The difference engine is more of a calculator than a computer in that you can’t load multiple programs on it, but it was still extremely revolutionary for its time. In fact, it was only designed on paper…
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Setting up a Virtual Computer with Xen (on Fedora) Part 1
If you haven’t done so already, install xen by typing yum install xen This will install xen as well as taking care of any needed dependencies. Now you need the xen-enabled kernel so type yum install kernel-xen0 (That’s a zero there) While we’re waiting for that to install, it’s time to learn some Xen terminology.…
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Fedora Core 5: Bordeaux is out!
Fedora Core 5 is out. I’ll probably download and install it on my main computer over the next few days.
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Xen – a more enlightened look
I first read about Xen while still at Cornell. I think it may have been my Junior year. I don’t have the magazines with me at the moment, so I can’t verify. When I finished reading about the new technology in Linux Format Magazine, I racked my brain, but couldn’t find a reason to run…
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Computer Compatibility finally arriving!
In the olden days of computers, they were as good at communicating as the people on earth after the Tower of Babel incident. Not only did none of the scant networking protocols interact well, but the floppy disks were sometimes completely different sizes. That is, when there were disks; there were some systems based on…