General

According to the Celebrity Log, Marcelo Tosatti has accepted the invitation to Linuxwochen 2004. IMHO, this is really great news, since Marcelo is a person that can tell a lot about the internals of Linux kernel development for sure (he's maintainer of the 2.4 kernel series).

Since today, I'm a proud owner of an SGI Indy. AEC threw out a few, and thx to a hint from OJ, I was able to grab one including a 20" CRT display plus keyboard and mouse for a mere EUR 100,-. I immediately installed Debian over it, with the help from this nice mini-HOWTO. Right now, the base installation is done, and I'm currently upgrading to Debian Testing, then XFree86 will be installed. Unfortunately, the disk inside the Indy has a size of only 1 GB, with 150 MB spent on swap (the machine itself has only 28 MB RAM :-/). But Debian is small enough to fit on this hard disk.



What I really like is the Indy's nifty boot monitor (graphical! you need a mouse to do anything!), and Linux's frame buffer, which currently runs at 1280x1024. This is especially nice on the 20" display. As soon as I'm finished with installing Debian, I will try to do some benchmarks, and then (for the first time) play with dietlibc on another platform than i386.

Gerald Venzl wants to see his name in this weblog. Gerald, here we go.

Windows Solitaire's random number generator is fun: start Windows Solitaire, press the F2 key and keep your finger on the key. What do you see? Yes, you will get a new deck only every second. What does this indicate? Most likely that Windows Solitaire's random number generator is initialized with the current time (with a granularity of 1 second) every time a new game is started.



Disclaimer: I am bored, because I finished my programming assignments for today, and I have absolutely nothing else to do (except for reading weblogs and playing Windows Solitaire).

This article describes how to make your applications for the Nokia Series 80 mobile phones IPv6-capable. IPv6 is supported by the new SymbianOS 8.0 network stack. Series 80 is e.g. the Nokia 9210, which of course doesn't yet support IPv6, but the newer models will. This absolutely makes sense, and I hope it will give IPv6 a higher acceptance. And, of course, mobile phone providers wouldn't have to use 10.x.y.z IPv4 address spaces for identifying mobile phones anymore.

$ echo -en 'GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n' | nc www.cisco.com 80 | head -6 | grep Server:

Server: Apache/1.0 (Unix)

$

See here: "MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE (HLN) - A Memphis woman was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after she bludgeoned her boyfriend to death with an iPod."

Also see the related news below the picture: "Get great deals on the new Apple iPod mini. Starting at under $250"

Today I got my Apple Newton MessagePad 120 via snail mail. Regarding the size, it's about 10x20 cm big, so it is indeed big compared to today's PDAs. So far, all I was playing with was the handwriting recognition, and boy, it sucks planets through straws. You need to write every word letter by letter, and wait in between it recognized the letter, then it works pretty OK, but as soon as you write faster and not as proper as before, handwriting recognition produces nothing but bullshit.



The other applications on the Newton are pretty much standard, the usual stuff like notes, contacts, calendars, etc. Unfortunately, no games. But still impressive for that time (the Newton that I own is over 9 years old). It even features a PCMCIA slot, and a 2 MB "flash storage card" and a fax modem card (9600 bps were with the Newton. It also came with some spreadsheet applications, but I didn't have time yet to try that out.

Yes, I was bored. To death, almost. So, instead of killing myself out of boredom, I decided to draw something with Windows Paint (I was forced to use Windows XP, and playing solitaire all the time makes me even more bored).

...it might be a worm: according to this article, the latest incarnation of the Netsky worm makes computers do an annoying beep sound using its internal speakers.

I just purchased by auction an Apple Newton Messagepad 120, one the first PDAs, and released almost 10 years ago, which means that it gets the status of real vintage hardware in a few months. Anyway, having a vintage PDA is nifty. I will report more on it as soon as I have it in my hand.

During the last few weeks, I was playing MacIago, an implementation of the well-known Iago (aka Reversi) game for OSX. I especially like MacIago, since the AI is pretty strong, and thus makes quite addictive. Currently, I'm so well-conditioned for the AI's strategies that I regularly beat it even in the hardest level. And I simply can't stop playing it...

To everyone who is able to receive BBC Prime and is fond of british comedy, I can recommend "Coupling" (which is currently also aired on ORF2 around 0:20 in the night, but in German) with original sound, which makes it even funnier than in German: every saturday evening/night, from 23:00 to 0:30, 3 episodes of it are aired.

In my decadence, I was shopping today. I finally bought an iPod. Other than planned, I decided on buying the 20 GB version. Originall, my plan was to buy the 15 GB version, which was announced that it would come with docking station and remote control. But today, at McShark, they told me that the 15 GB version doesn't come with all that extra stuff. Since I was very much interested in the docking, the remote control and the little protection bag, I decided to buy the 20 GB version instead, because buying all that stuff additionally would make the 15 GB iPod more expensive than the 20 GB version. What silly price politics.



And because I was happy, I decided to buy the new iLife'04, too. No, actually I'm a bit angry about Apple, because the latest iPhoto version is the first one that is not given out for free, and also the first one that is actually able to handle more than 1000 pictures (25000, according to the ads). But anyway, I'm also very much interested in GarageBand, which is installing right now. As soon as I have some time to play with it, I will bring a report about it.



And shoes... I urgently needed new "winter" shoes (my last ones were falling apart already, and I can't wear my Converse in winter), so I went to Sport Eybl and quickly decided on the Vans Fuji, a simple, robust, comfortable, casual shoe that gives me the safeness that I need in my daily life.

From: staff@synflood.at

Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2004 11:43:42 +0100

To: blog@synflood.at

Subject: Email account utilization warning.



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Dear user, the management  of Synflood.at mailing system wants  to let you know that,



Our main  mailing  server will  be temporary unavaible for  next two days,

to  continue receiving mail in these  days  you have  to configure  our  free

auto-forwarding service.



Please,  read the attach for further  details.



The Management,

   The Synflood.at  team                                http://www.synflood.at



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I am the "Synflood.at team", not you, fucking worm. Better luck next time. This is the very first email to blog@synflood.at, BTW.