Diary of a Network Geek

While I was looking for something totally unrelated, I came across the following news story:

"Marjorie Nighbert, a 76-year-old Florida woman, was hospitalized in 1996 after a stroke. Before her hospital admission, she signed an advance directive that no "heroic measures" should be employed to save her life. On the basis of that directive and at the request of her family, the hospital denied her requests for food and water ... Until her death more than 10 days later, Nighbert was restrained in her bed to prevent her raiding other patients' food trays."

The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, January 13, 1997, page 23.

This is truly the most horrific and cruel thing I have read in years. Since when were "food and water" considered heroic measures? Why didn't the family do something? At what point did denying her food and water seem like a reasonable thing to do? How could a doctor, having taken the Hippocratic Oath, allow such brutality to occur?
Is it any wonder why law makers want to protect us from ourselves? We hold ourselves as an enlightened society, superior to the rest of the world, but things like this go on here still. I'm simply stunned.

Wanna' be the next Red Hat?

Well, here's a site called Linux From Scratch that will help you do it. The whole site is dedicated to creating a Linux distribution from the ground up. And, if you have a particular application in mind, like a firewall, you can go to Beyond Linux From Scratch and get info there.
Of course, Red Hat has all the marketing and support stuff knocked out already, but still, you could have your very own distro. Hmmm, imagine that, the Official Diary of a Network Geek Linux Distro. Sounds yummy, doesn't it?

Well, enough dreaming, back to studying for my Linux+ test!

An oldie but a goodie!

Okay, so you've probably seen Airtoons by now, but I needed a laugh today, so...
Actually, a friend sent this to me the other day because I was falling asleep at lunch and he thought I needed something to wake me up. These things are hilarious! And, some of them are in bad taste, so if you're a minor, be warned! If I remember right, they were inspired by a scene from Fight Club where the "cult" members replace the regular in-flight emergency instructions with something like these. In both cases, the effect was enough to make me laugh until I hurt. Very dark humor, but very humorous anyway.

Totally cool site!

Okay, this was originally on Slashdot, but it's well worth repeating for anyone who didn't see it before. Hardware Hackers is a massively cool site that has all kinds of hardware hacks and mods.
The case mods are my favorite. They have an all wood case and a steel and glass case that look awesome! If I had any skill at that kind of manufacturing, I'd make custom cases, too. Simply amazing design work.
Some of the other stuff is cool, too, but nothing beats those case mods, for my money.
Anyway, enjoy!

There's more than 100 entries here now.

It just struck me, as I was signing in to the blog software, that I have more than 100 entries in this blog now. That's pretty amazing, to me, anyway. Of course, I'm not sure how many people really read this blog, besides me, my wife, my daughter and my mother-in-law. And, I'm not quite convinced about my mother-in-law, either. But, as always, I conduct myself as if I'm always being watched. After all, since I appled to federal service once, I could, in fact, be under surveilance. Well, in theory anyway. Hey! Work with me on this one!

Anyway, it's pretty cool, to me, that I've had that much to say. And, it's cool that blog software has come so far since I started doing all this.
To start your own blog, check out MovableType.org.

I don't normally go for this sort of thing, but...

Aw, what the heck, it's Friday!
According to the Sacred Texts website, Nostrodomos wrote, in the 18th quatrain of the First "Century":

Because of French discord and negligence
an opening shall be given to the Mohammedans.
The land and sea of Siena will be soaked in blood,
and the port of Marseilles covered with ships and sails.

Now, I don't know about the rest of it, but "French discord and negligence" sure has caused a lot of "openings" for the "Mohammedans" in Iraq. Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Blogging for the paranoid.

At least, that's how I see this new service at invisiblog. And, actually, that's how they sell it to the public, too. Of course, in the FAQ, they readily admit that they'll sell you out if anyone puts any legal pressure on them. I guess that's to be expected in today's litigious society. After all, why should they protect your privacy? What have you done for them?
Really, isn't that what this is all about? Protecting one's own posterior? I mean, really, who would go to jail for a principle these days? Not me, I can tell you that for sure. Especially not to protect some nut-case who's pissed off the government or big business. Then again, those kind of rabble-rousers are the sort that actually founded this country... Still, who needs the hassle? Right? So, that's why they recommend using MixMaster, which is an anonymous remailer. With that, one can post somewhat more anonymously. Of course, now we're starting to get into more hard core privacy, so only the most dedicated need apply.
And, that, my dear readers, begs the question... Who needs this service? What can someone possibly post to a blog that is so dangerous that the blogger needs to worry about their identity? Well, I can think of several things, some of which are actually legal, but fewer are both legal and moral. So, yeah, there's the political activists that will want this. (Read that as, "Nut-case, type A", original recipe.) And, then, there will be the "sexually oriented businesses" that will want to use it. (Read that as, "Nut-case, type B", extra crispy.) The truly sad thing is, if this runs to type, it will be the "adult" industry that pushes the technical envelope on this, just like they did with things like secure transactions and streaming video. It's a sad, sick world, isn't it?

Well, maybe the cypherpunks will prove me wrong. Either them or the Libertarians.

[ Posted by mail via mail2mt.pl ]

This is unbelievable.

A 1.5 Gigabyte drive that's less than an inch in size! It's actually a kind of older story, but, still, when I read it I was shocked. Imagine a Palm, say, that had 1.5 Gig of storage. Or, if you'd prefer, imagine a Pocket PC with 1.5 Gig of storage. And forget about things like laptops. They'll be replaced. Think "wearables". Think about a belt that has 1.5 Gig of storage and a monocular video display. This is just science-fiction coming true.

Wow.

A jazz great passes.

Nina Simone was a far more remarkable woman than I realized, until I read her obituary at MSN.com. I knew her from a movie called Point of No Return, which was an American remake of La Femme Nikita. The American film starred Bridget Fonda as a street kid trained to be an assassin. Her character in the film listens to none other than Nina Simone. In particular, there is a scene that involves her "I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl" that is quite memorable.
In any case, Jazz fans will know her better and appreciate her more fully than I did. I was, however, quite sad to hear that she'd died and thought I'd mention it.
I hope she passed peacefully.

[ Posted by mail via mail2mt.pl ]

Who has time to find these things?

Not me, that's for sure. But, the nice folks over at PalmGear.com have compiled several so called "Easter eggs" found in the Palm OS.
Here's a couple of my favorites:
Inch Worm on some Palm OS models

Go to Prefs. Make a # using Graffiti. (That is a dot, then a backwards N, kind of like a small h with a BIG hump...) Wait 10 seconds or so, because inchworms take time, you know. There he is! He is made of a bold o and bold underlines and slashes. He will stay there until you move on to another app, and he even survives a power off/on cycle!

See the Taxi!

1. Go to Preferences
2. Choose General
3. Draw a circle, counter-clockwise, above the Calculator button
If you do this correctly you should see an easter egg appear.
4. Exit Preferences and go into any other application.
5. Hold down the page down button and draw a line from the middle of the Graffiti input box to the left of the screen, right between the Applications and Menu buttons.
You should see a taxi run across the screen. To get the taxi to come across the screen again repeat step

Giraffe game

Start the Giraffe game. While you're playing, tap the Help button. Once you're in the Help screen, draw the '#' character. This is done by tapping the Graffiti text area once and drawing a backwards N(draw down on the left side, angle up from left to right, and down again on the right side). You should see a dancing palm tree appear. That's all there is to it!