saw the x-men movie. i liked it. it manages to satisfy the x-men fan in me, very faithfully conveying the tone of the comics. at times the plot seemed contrived and the fights sort of sucked. actually, the last thing sort of relates to my one big problem with the film - it's pacing. it's an hour and a half long, it flies right by and seems to be missing an act or two. on the bright side, it left me wanting more, and judging by the huge crowds, that means that there's gonna be a sequel (and if they don't screw it up, a franchise).
running this freeware program OptOut (by the writer of ASPI_ME and FIX-CIH among other things), i was able to get a list of spyware on my system. grr.
OptOut Activity Log & Report:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
OptOut Registry Analysis on: 07 / 14 / 2000 at 23:57
• Searching System Registry
• Searching all seven system root registry branches
for the "SOFTWARE\Aureate" key
• Key found under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
• Key found under HKEY_CURRENT_USER
• Key found under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
• Not found under HKEY_USERS
• Not found under HKEY_PERFORMANCE_DATA
• Not found under HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG
• Not found under HKEY_DYN_DATA
• 3 Aureate keys were found in the registry!
• Searching the Windows registry "SharedDLLs"
key for known Aureate DLLs
• Aureate references not found in "SharedDLLs"
• Searching the Windows registry for Netscape
and IE web browser Aureate Process Parasites.
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID{EBBFE288-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID{EBBFE28A-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID{EBBFE27C-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\TypeLib{EBBFE26D-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Interface{EBBFE287-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Interface{EBBFE289-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Interface{EBBFE27B-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Browser Helper Objects{EBBFE27C-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Stub.CIEStubCLSID\{EBBFE27C-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Stub.CIEStub.1CLSID\{EBBFE27C-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Stub.NetscapeStopCLSID\{EBBFE28A-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Stub.NetscapeStop.1CLSID\{EBBFE28A-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• Reference found to Aureate Parasite GUID: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Netscape StartingCLSID\{EBBFE288-BDF0-11D2-BBE5-00609419F467}
• 13 Aureate Process Parasite references found!
16 Adbot/Spyware entries were found in the registry!
yro @ /.: We keep getting submissions about bills in Congress to ban the distribution of any information on how to manufacture illegal drugs. The story of this is kind of humorous. The bill was having trouble on its own, so it's been grafted onto a bill called the "Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2000" -- this bill goes on for 50 pages about modifications to bankruptcy laws (to make it harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy, naturally), then suddenly has a whole section on illegal drugs, then goes back to bankruptcy. It's the censorship law that won't die. Even more disturbing, a tiny little rider in the bill alters the general requirements for search warrants so that you need never be informed of a search -- notification can be delayed indefinitely, which is a fundamental violation of the Fourth Amendment. In any case, it's in real danger of passing, so it's something you ought to pay attention to. We've done some grafting ourselves of some of the submissions related to this ...
ibm's super flat panel lcd's will be shipping at the end of the year (price starting at "not less than $10k". "A current prototype of the Roentgen monitor offers a resolution of 200ppi (pixels per inch), with a total of 5.2 million full-color pixels, laid out in a 2,560 by 2,048 grid."
there's something very satisfying about running top and seeing the swap reading 0k used.
from the haircut site, the short haircut style guide.
well, server is back up. 5 months without a reboot ain't bad.
also a cool karma points idea
part of the wonders of /. are the interesting tangents that (d)evolve from seemingly innocuous posts.
seven part story on the cracking of a community network on rootprompt. it boggles the mind when thinking about people who are such assholes, just the sheer thoughtlessness and malice of it all suggests pathological childishness and antipathy.
so basically, the fbi gets to put a packet sniffer on systems when they want. riiight... about those tps reports.
/ puts it this way:
When Congress enacts this sort of program, they always give it a name like "The Freedom of Infants and Children Act" or the "Prevention of Violence to Puppies Act" with a rider that slips in the big-brother grants of power.
The FBI, on the other hand, gives it a name that can't help but encourage visions of a government run-amok eating its citizens. Which, come to think of it, is not too far from the truth.
interesting, andover.net, the self proclaimed "leading linux destination" runs on solaris.
advogato's trust metric page is just the kind of documentation i'm looking for. actually, by searching for trust metric instead of web of trust, i'm finding tons more relevant info.
advogato is really interesting. been reading the future of programming comments for a while now. these people seem to know their stuff.
a lot of discussion on tux floating around. man, compare the specweb99 results for dell's 4 way tux machine to dell's 4way running iis and to ibm's rs/6000 8-way running zeus. daym, brother man.
thank you microsoft for making good times a reality. really, thanks.
article on autonomy, just an interesting tangential tie-in to my everday life. oh, and it's in the vapp. interesting quote: People often just don't understand the ramifications of that. I don't think you're going to be able to sell software in two years' time that can't make sense of information, because the amount of unstructured information in business is doubling every three months at the moment.
saltfuck.com - classic, jz
nice flazoom article on fitt's law (as it applies to flash). funny that there was also a recent msdn article on the same topic.
never paid attention to loudcloud before (ooh wee, marc anderseen startup, whoopee), but reading over their service is pretty useful. wonder how much they charge?
interesting bit on /. about bladerunner biz and deckard being a replicant according to ridley scott. of course, it should be noted that the numbering difference that the bbc author cites is really a continuity error. jabber posts his argument supporting the deckard as replicant theory.
for me, there really isn't that much controversey in the director's cut because of the unicorn dream/origami.
others on /. have pointed out that future noir reveals a disagreement between scott and the screenwriter(s?) about deckard's nature (afaik also, deckard was not a replicant in dadoes). obviously the director's cut reflects ridley scott's opinion, while the original leaves it much more ambiguous (also w/ the tacked on studio ending though...).
red hat certification. interesting. is it better than just going through the ldp guides?
the sysadmin hunt.
according to the timeline, it looks like the acs 3.4 should be out soon, laying the foundation of the db api and fixing some of the security holes. it has most certainly been interesting over the past two weeks to be looking at the acs in concrete terms, rather than in the abstract.
so i ordered a 60gb diamondmax for $242 (2 day s/h). hopefully this time i'll be able to intelligently organize my hd clutter.