tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-366916302011-04-21T20:45:29.740-04:00computing bits, history and commentary for geeksedobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.comBlogger411100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-37865730013578653442009-04-15T08:01:00.002-04:002009-04-15T09:02:40.348-04:00

My Mom just set up a Facebook profile! So I was looking through my profile, since I knew I had some pictures of the kids up there, and saw that my "Political Views" were listed as Liberal. Hunh. Not really accurate. But then, I have no idea how to classify my political views, since I am simultaneously:Strongly pro-first amendment - I support the ACLU, EFF, EPIC and other free-speech

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-62467533751952326252009-01-20T10:11:00.000-05:002009-01-20T10:12:27.434-05:00

This is my screenrc.# xabbott /.screenrc# this is messy as i just took random things from others. -.-# from http://dotfiles.org/~xabbott/.screenrcactivity "%c activity -> %n%f %t"autodetach onaltscreen onbell "%c bell -> %n%f %t^G"defflow autodefscrollback 10000defutf8 onmsgwait 2 # 1 second messagesstartup_message off # disable the startup splash messageshell -

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-73109565457956149672009-01-12T08:47:00.002-05:002009-01-12T09:08:11.761-05:00

Got a message on Facebook from my brother-in-law, who is diligently installing Office 2007 in a virtual machine on his MacBook for his online class this semester at NoVA:ANYWAYS, i was wondering if you suggested any good (and free) antivirus/spyware/firewall software since i will now be plagued by windows. thanks for the help! hopefully this will give you something to do at work, instead of

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-65213305440170017042008-11-06T10:50:00.002-05:002008-11-06T11:22:41.484-05:00

Since I've been setting up Firefox and associated apps on my new work laptop, I thought I'd list my current set of favorite add-ons for Firefox 3.I've used Firefox and some of these add-ons for years, and they help to make Firefox that much more useful and safe for day-to-day browsing. There are literally thousands of add-ons to choose from, so these represent the best and most useful of the

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-26218108450538319762008-11-04T09:53:00.001-05:002008-11-04T10:10:30.114-05:00

"Politicians and diapers should be changed often, and for the same reason." - Mark TwainVoted this morning at 7:06am at our polling station, and there were around 10 people ahead of me in line. I was impressed at the number of staffers on site, it looked like about twice the number that were there in 2006 and 2007. This isn't a huge district: there's 6 voting districts and 19 polling precincts

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-24964528218137713042008-08-21T08:45:00.004-04:002008-08-21T09:28:03.285-04:00

It's been quite a week, what with the cease-fire, a supposed Russian withdrawal, sacking of Georgian military bases, warships steaming to and fro, bridges blowing up, SS-21 launchers hitting the highway, threats against Poland, Abkhazian diplomatic maneuvering, pissing matches with NATO, Russian grandstanding and so forth. And despite the energy cards that Russia still holds in its hands, other

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-82254529873048593552008-08-14T10:39:00.003-04:002008-08-14T10:57:47.944-04:00

Washington Post: Russian Troops Hold Key Georgian CityThe Russians aren't going back, and they aren't letting go.Following the events of the past week, "One can forget about any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the Associated Press reported from Moscow. "It is impossible to persuade South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree with the logic that

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-40978714554243737082008-08-11T12:20:00.001-04:002008-08-11T12:20:49.038-04:00

http://georgiamfa.blogspot.com/The Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has set up shop on Blogspot.com following Russian hijacking of official Georgian websites, and is issuing press releases, official timelines of events, and schedules for conference calls and telephone briefings w/ Mikhail Saakashvili and the Georgian National Security Commission.http://rbnexploit.blogspot.com/Blog that tracks

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-74617669327966786992008-07-09T21:51:00.001-04:002008-07-09T21:53:37.272-04:00

My Uncle Steve found a blog post from the Denver pedicabbing community on Ben. It's a touching read, and an insight into a part of his life he cared about deeply.Other links:Obituary: http://www.legacy.com/DenverPost/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=112400149Online memorial and photo gallery: http://www.mem.com/Story.aspx?ID=2511802

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-19989104909388382582008-06-26T07:44:00.001-04:002008-06-26T07:46:13.845-04:00

I just heard from my dad last night that my brother had passed away unexpectedly.Rest in peace, Ben.

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-60314931584606167472008-03-11T08:46:00.002-04:002008-03-11T09:11:24.883-04:00

So my dad emailed me about the New York Times article (They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know.) on Microsoft Windows Vista, and I had to write back:There were some fascinating bits covered by Slashdot about the "Windows Vista Capable" labeling, and how Intel pushed for its i915 graphics chipset to be labeled by Microsoft as "Vista Capable" even though it obviously couldn't run the Aero

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-61354865892336490002008-01-16T11:55:00.000-05:002008-01-16T13:30:22.266-05:00

As part of a semi-annual graphics card roundup, I'm going to analyze the state of the PC gaming market for current-generation nVidia PC video cards.IntroductionIf you want an nVidia card for PC gaming (as opposed to an ATI card), then you really need one of the new 8x00 series cards. They offer DirectX 10 support and a unified stream processing architecture which integrates previously separate

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-13006752060579046752008-01-15T08:38:00.000-05:002008-01-15T08:47:23.511-05:00

So yesterday I was in the Sheetz off of Route 50 near the Loudoun - Fairfax county line, the one on Poland Road, stopping to fill up on gas like I normally do. I get out of the car, and while I'm swiping my credit card on the pump, I hear what sounds like a Dirty Vegas track. Huh, interesting. I must have got that album about 5 years ago, listened to it for a couple months, then completely

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-52190565820898878822007-11-30T10:00:00.000-05:002007-11-30T10:03:31.630-05:00

so I stopped being lazy and upgraded the blog to use the new "layouts" instead of the old "templates" system on blogger.com. looks purty, or something.

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-19653806687703520382007-11-30T08:55:00.000-05:002007-11-30T09:55:23.088-05:00

After reading Lifehacker for a while, I started thinking about the software I use every day. I've been trying to better organize my files, downloads and apps, and it'd be handy to have a list of what I actually use and where to download it. I primarily use free or open-source software on Windows XP, both because it works well, and because it's freely available and I can download the apps

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-77675650833019057542007-11-30T07:25:00.000-05:002007-11-30T07:27:32.315-05:00

ies4osx is a convenient way to run Internet Explorer natively on Mac OS X, without having to pull up Parallels or reboot into Windows with Boot Camp. Lifehacker (which is now one of my favorite sites) posted it this morning at Run Internet Explorer on Your Mac with ies4osx.I haven't used this package on the Mac, but it's derived from the latest version of the IEs4Linux package which lets you run

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-7115695906768461012007-11-29T11:47:00.000-05:002007-11-29T11:49:56.046-05:00

"The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." -

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-36842008122883632822007-11-29T08:05:00.000-05:002007-11-29T10:18:30.110-05:00

Jessica has been reading through The Poisonwood Bible, which touches upon Patrice Lumumba and the Congo Crisis at the end, so I tracked down these Wikipedia articles on the Congo and Leopold II and Congolese independence for her:Leopold II of Belgium: 1835-1909, son of Leopold I of Belgium, who married Princess Charlotte and arranged then-Princess Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert.Congo Free

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-45038562086121856532007-11-28T10:21:00.000-05:002007-11-28T10:24:58.891-05:00

You know the nice things I wrote yesterday about ZoHo? I take most of them back.Their word processing app is fairly decent, but their wiki and creator products really aren't that good. The wiki support page is full of unanswered questions dating back nearly a year, the database creator is agonizingly frustrating to use if you trying to do anything non-drool-inducing (like add a formula to

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-11541457927541909572007-11-27T10:22:00.000-05:002007-11-27T10:22:20.059-05:00

Lifehacker has an interesting bit about Zoho Writer adding full offline access with Google Gears. I hadn't looked at Zoho before, but they have an excellent suite of web apps, and if you take the minute or so required to install Gears, then you can take your word processing docs offline, edit them (can't add images offline, but text + formatting works fine) and then sync up the changes once you

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-27850280189607294602007-10-15T11:25:00.000-04:002007-10-15T11:25:42.513-04:00

I was reading through the October 15 2007 CRYPTO-GRAMnewsletter and saw a mention of "fast flux" DNS used by the Storm worm from earlier this year. Not knowing what it was, I went to Wikipedia and ... nothing! Not a single solitary mention of what it is.Being a research and security geek meant I could not let this stand. So about an hour later, after some googling and scanning and reading,

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-41968176248904330102007-08-23T13:13:00.000-04:002007-08-23T13:32:18.261-04:00

So I'm leaving the military-industrial complex tomorrow to go work back in the private sector for Blackboard.com (BBBB) doing storage engineering. I'll be off for a week on vacation, then start at the new job on Tuesday September 4th.I lucked into this position thanks to LinkedIn, which I only bothered with because of an invite from a former co-worker. I highly recommend it, it's worked well

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-68978223049523599272007-08-02T19:29:00.000-04:002007-08-02T19:29:07.869-04:00

Proposed IPv6 Cutover By 2011-01-01After hearing folks at work talk about messing around with IPv6 over the past half a year, this made me laugh out loud. Hah!

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-36574236509912086042007-07-31T08:14:00.000-04:002007-07-31T08:20:04.517-04:00

5 US Senate terms7.5 US Presidential terms15 US Congresses20 cycles of Moore's Law30 years120 seasons360 months1,560 weeks10,950 days262,800 hours15,768,000 minutes946,080,000 seconds old today

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-6738528899774518722007-06-19T16:38:00.000-04:002007-06-19T16:39:28.999-04:00

Slashdot post + commentary: Say Nothing About the Failing SatelliteArticle from the Miami Herald: Candid storm chief gets a lashingThere's some informative discussion on Slashdot between former NOAA folks and JPL folks regarding the design, launch and technical details on the QuikSCAT satellite, in addition to political commentary.

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-50959416951694482372007-06-01T10:11:00.000-04:002007-06-01T10:15:42.293-04:00

Dell is (finally) shipping PCs, specifically Dimension E520 N + XPS 410 N desktops and Inspiron E1505 N laptops with Ubuntu Linux installed as an alternative to Microsoft Windows. Cool.While it may be hard to find the links to the Ubuntu systems from their front page, you can go to http://www.dell.com/open to order their non-Windows systems.

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-21493829270835539972007-05-21T09:06:00.001-04:002007-05-21T09:07:00.841-04:00

or Ancient Dead Persians Can Have Enormous Influence on Information TechnologyDid somebody order a server wrong? Blame Xerxes. Blame Xerxes.Did somebody fat-finger a config again? Blame Xerxes. Blame Xerxes.Machine room overheat on the weekend? Blame Xerxes. Blame Xerxes.It's just not fair, it's just not right.We tried so hard and he put up a fight.He's two thousand years old and covered with

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-44365772295118136202007-04-26T16:33:00.000-04:002007-04-26T16:45:35.189-04:00

So it's not really a mashup. I'm not using the Google Maps API, but the new My Maps functionality within Google Maps. Very easy to use, even with cut-and-paste data.The data comes from a BusinessWeek article on The Biggest Metro Areas with the Lowest Rents. Kinda neat, gives a nice at-a-glance representation of the cheaper bigger areas to live in the United States. Minus one outlier (Salt

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-84625447319493516982007-02-28T12:37:00.000-05:002007-02-28T12:48:29.490-05:00

Was trying to install the Cisco VPN client for Linux on a Fedora Core 6 (kernel 2.6.19) system and ran into some errors. First it complained about linux/config.h not being present and accounted for. Did some googling, turns out that you should be using linux/autoconf.h instead of ye olde linux/config.h. That's cool. But even after doing ased -i 's/\/config\.h/\/autoconf\.h/' *.cI still got a

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-55110931395239792772007-01-16T08:15:00.000-05:002007-01-16T08:22:34.121-05:00

Got an email from a friend asking about buying a new graphics card for a PC, thought I'd post my reply up here in case other folks get a "what the heck do I buy?" reaction when they look at the universe of PC graphics cards on the market.a coworker of mine wants to buy a new video card for his PC but is a tad overwhelmed by the array of choices (and price ranges.) He's into Call of Duty and

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-1165930056177193172006-12-12T08:14:00.000-05:002006-12-12T08:27:36.183-05:00

Microsoft announced the release of their XNA Game Studio Express developer tools, which allow developers to use C# and target both Windows and the XBOX 360.Slashdot is all over this, with some folks debating the usefulness of tools that require a $100 subscription to publish your games (in some cases), but this seems like an awesome tool release for small-scale game developers.

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-1165929134840204392006-12-12T08:12:00.000-05:002006-12-12T08:13:17.650-05:00

Wowsers. $900 (after rebate) at Circuit City for all this:Dual-core AMD Turion 64 @ 1.6GhzWindows XP MCE 1024MB DDR2 SDRAM (expandable to 2GB) Nvidia GeForce Go 6150 UMA w/ up to 128MB shared memory 100GB 5400RPM SATA hard disk DVD+/-RW w/ DualLayer + LightScribe support 17" WXGA+ HD BrightView widescreen display @ 1440x900 802.11b/g wireless5-in-1 media reader 4 USB ports, standard audio ports

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-1165413546701210432006-12-06T08:57:00.000-05:002006-12-06T10:01:07.386-05:00

from the advisory:Microsoft is investigating a new report of limited “zero-day” attacks using a vulnerability in Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Word Viewer 2003, Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac, and Microsoft Word 2004 v. X for Mac, as well as Microsoft Works 2004, 2005, and 2006....Recommendation: Do not open or save Word files that you receive from

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-1164207016833364622006-11-22T09:50:00.000-05:002006-12-03T09:10:47.116-05:00

So Mr O'Reilly has a new target for his disassociated reactionary rants - GAMING. Yup, it's the new Communism, this year's War on Christmas, worse than heroin or alcohol or tobacco:Bill O’Reilly Slams PS3 Launch, Gamers, iPods, Digital Tech (not in that order)There's a good discussion on Slashdot on the article at http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/21/1648247I like this quote in

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-1163435711358749182006-11-13T11:35:00.000-05:002006-11-13T11:35:11.396-05:00

So I was looking for a decent alternative to Symantec Ghost, and stumbled across DriveImage XML which is a nice drive-image utility for Windows.I'm still testing it out, but it can use volume shadow copy on WinXP (= copy your HD while you're running Windows), split and compress your backups, browse saved images... looks pretty nice.

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-1163429174010467342006-11-13T09:45:00.000-05:002006-11-13T09:46:14.020-05:00

Since I've switched to my new Dell XPS M1710 laptop, I've been trying to find good Windows-style ways of doing what I'm used to doing with Ubuntu. One of my favorite *nix one-liners is `du -k | sort -r -n | less` to list the contents of the current directory by size - it's an easy way to figure out what's taking up space in a given directory or filesystem.There's tons of software in the Windows

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-1162908431497971762006-11-07T09:07:00.000-05:002006-11-07T09:08:44.476-05:00

General Dynamics GoBook XR-1 Rugged Notebook - USApparently GD makes laptops, in addition to Stryker combat vehicles and nuclear submarines. This machine is MIL-STD 810F compliant, works from -23 to 60 degrees Celsius, is sealed against dust and water, and can be completely immersed in a bleach solution for decontamination. And features an Intel Core Duo 1.83Ghz CPU, ATI graphics card, up to

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-1162907472062746752006-11-07T08:51:00.000-05:002006-11-07T08:51:12.123-05:00

Remember, remember, the 0-days of November!Or, um, instead of being like Guy Fawkes and trying to blow up Parliament, you can set the kill bit on the XMLHTTP CLSID: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/927892.mspxThis seems like a particularly nasty Internet Explorer bug, since it affects all versions of Windows except Windows Server 2003, and the workaround kills XMLHTTP

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-1162215712857089622006-10-30T08:27:00.000-05:002006-10-30T08:45:35.490-05:00

Since FasterFox doesn't work with Firefox 2.0, here's a brief recap of common performance tweaks to use on the latest greatest Firefox:network.http.pipelining = trueoptionally set network.http.proxy.pipelining = true, if you use a proxy and it supports HTTP/1.1 pipelining. More details are in the HTTP/1.1 Pipelining FAQ.network.http.pipelining.maxrequests = 88 is a good start, bumping this

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-1161976240131237732006-10-27T15:07:00.000-04:002006-10-27T15:10:40.140-04:00

One of my friends from college just went back to Iraq. He had served one tour previously in the Army, was wounded after being attacked while on guard duty, came back to the States for a while, and now he's back in the Sunni Triangle, embedded with an Iraqi battalion, providing training.The one thing he's asking for in care packages is Strawberry Pop Tarts (frosted or non-frosted).

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36691630.post-1161954148975532402006-10-27T08:56:00.000-04:002006-10-30T07:56:26.593-05:00

So I upgraded from Ubuntu DapperDrake (6.06) to EdgyEft (6.10) on my Dell Latitude D810 yesterday. It wasn't too bad - I followed the instructions on the release notes:gksu "update-manager -c" That failed after running into the immutable flags I had set on the /etc/rcS.d directory and the /etc/init.d/cryptdisks script (chattr +i /etc/rcS.d, chattr +i /etc/init.d/cryptdisks). Whoops. Turned

edobbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11504341054087645657noreply@blogger.com0