General

Iraq is going to be America's second Vietnam, at least I predict it. US forces is getting into more and more heavy clashes with guerilla-like groups, and all the fights are getting heavier and heavier. They even need Apache helicopters for air support, in a fight inside of Baghdad. The Iraqi guerilla forces aren't necessarily well-equipped (nor was the Viet-Cong), but they are in their ten-thousands, everyone with a gun, and extremely motivated to drive the Americans out of their country.



That is the connection to Vietnam, IMHO. The enemy is highly motivated, and the (thought to be superior) US-Americans aren't really able to smash them down. The moral is getting lower and lower every day, and I predict that the point is not too far where the war against the Iraqi guerilla forces will be basically unwinnable (just like after the Tet offensive). Even Ted Kennedy shares a similar opinion, as he today called Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam".

John Hargrave was annoyed by all the Viagra spam, so he decided to try ordering Viagra online. For the complete article, see here. One part of the article that I really enjoyed reading was about banners showing people who look like doctors trying to make some guarantee about the medicament's quality:

Here's Dr. Alec Broers from the renowned medical journal s95forcheapmeds.nepzzz.com, who claims "This product is 100% SAFE medically tested in labs, and by myself personally." Which means that Dr. Broers is impotent. Ha ha! "I happen to know this drug will work," went the second (and more revealing) part of Dr. Broers' endorsement, "because I myself have a limp, sagging penis." You'll notice they don't mention what kind of doctor he is. That's because he is a doctor of love.

See here. Some quotes from the comic:

"You are huge. That means you have huge guts!"

"Berserker pack - gone. Feelings of invincibility - over."

"Aaah! Chainsaw! The great communicator!"

I just came back from watching "Gothika". First of all, its genre is both horror and, well, thriller. But every (good) horror movie has its very own style on how to be frightening. Just like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining uses the sinister music and The Exorcist tries to be frightening by letting the obsessed girl use a lot of swearwords (which makes it no frightening at all, but more like boring, or at the best, funny, or are you frightened by "your mother sucks cocks in hell"? )), Gothika uses the element of surprise, and that makes it extremely frightening and gray. In fact, this is the very first time in a horror movie that I actually heard people (not just women, but also men) scream out loud because they were so frightened.



I'm not going to tell anything about the movie's content, I can only recommend to watch it for yourself and be frightened by yourself.



Besides the horror part, Gothika also tells an important lessons on how repressive asylums are, and that it's virtually impossible to escape from system as soon as you are marked as "lunatic". The following quote from the movie expresses this really well: "You can't trust a person who thinks you are insane." (rough translation, I saw the movie in German).

ORF ON reports about the first Iraqi soap opera that is currently produced: this first TV series that is not being censored is about the daily life of two middle-class families in Baghdad. The series plays in the Sunnite areas of Baghdad, which are the areas where most attacks on US soldiers occur. And so, the series includes all the stuff that happen there on a daily basis, including raids done by US soldiers, kidnapping, and suicide attacks.

I saw the following code on the OpenBSD misc@ mailinglist. Don't ask.

/

  Copies string of infinite length pointed-to by src to

  buffer pointed-to by dst.  Assumes buffer of infinite

  length.  Does not return.

 */

void

strinfcpy (char *dst, const char *src)

{

        for (;;)

                *dst++ = src++;

}





/

  Concatenates string of infinite length pointed-to by src

  to the end of the string pointed-to by dst.  Assumes buffer

  of infinite length.  Does not return.

 /

void

strinfcat (char *dst, const char *src)

{

        for (; *dst; ++dst);

        for (;;)

                *dst++ = *src++;

}

Here I will collect all the April 1st jokes that are crossing my way on the net:

• Google Gets the Message, Launches Gmail


• The OpenBSD Journal stops publishing new content


• Arbeiten am Glasfaserprojekt: Verdunkelung des NIG


• RFC 3751: Omniscience Protocol Requirements


• Bogon Accelerator


• Kimono Project Nets KDE

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.