Entries Tagged 'Science and Technology' ↓

…so we’re sitting there, having just installed “Joost”:http://joost.com on our main Windows computer, and we’re watching “Strangers with Candy” on the MTV channel, and then all of a sudden…

All the other computers on my network start going apeshit and telling me they’re having their ports scanned, and the originating address is the computer I’ve just installed Joost on.

Uh… Yeah. No. Nuh-uh. Fuck that shit. I uninstalled it and now I’m having to do full scans just to make sure that I’ve gotten rid of all its little processes.

Now, look — I know about Joost’s “relevant advertiser information” that it sends to companies like Viacom, Warner, and the like; I expect that shit. Companies like DirectTV already do that (it’s how you can see features like “what are other people watching” on the DirectTV service), and you _pay_ them to let them do it to you.

But the port scanning of other computers on my network? Nope — you leave the other fucking computers on my network alone. If I want you looking at them, I’ll install your fucking software _on_ them.

Port scanning is spyware-like activity, and if I wanted spyware on my computer, I’d turn off my firewalls and browse with “Internet Explorer”:http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx, okay?

God, the default behavior drives me nuts! In case you’re not “in the know,” pressing the “Home” key on your keyboard if you’re using a Mac will scroll whatever window you’re in to the top — on a Windows computer, if just sends the cursor to whatever line you’re currently typing on.

Well, “to each technology its own and all,” but I’m used to Windows’ behavior, so I’m going to have to change that if I’m going to type on a Mac.

So, I set out to look for a way to change it, and found “this site on the web”:http://evansweb.info/articles/2005/03/24/mac-os-x-and-home-end-keys — pretty straight forward, if you ask me!

Just add the following lines to your “~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict.” file (if it doesn’t exist, create it):

{
/* Remap Home / End to be correct */
“\UF729″ = “moveToBeginningOfLine:”; /* Home */
“\UF72B” = “moveToEndOfLine:”; /* End */
“$\UF729″ = “moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:”; /* Shift + Home */
“$\UF72B” = “moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:”; /* Shift + End */
}

And that’s it! Just restart any application that you want to reflect this behavior and you’re good to go!

Well, “Movable Type 4″:http://movabletype.org has been released, and the makers have finally decided to release a free version again.

I’ll probably be moving back to MT, of course. I’ll still keep doing stuff in Textpattern, too — I still think it’s the best, with it’s combination of tag-based templates (vs. “Wordpress”:http://wordpress.org) and no-reload-necessary publishing (vs. “MT”:http://movabletype.org).

I’ve got a testblog up at “threshold-zero.com”:http://threshold-zero.com that I’m working around with — take a look if you have the time!

“Dell.com/Open”:http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/linux_3x?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

If you can do without a monitor, you can get the E520 model for only 400 bucks. Great if you’re needing another computer right now!

For what you’re getting at that price (1.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, 1 Gb RAM, 250 Gb of hard drive space), it’s a farking steal. Plus, you’re supporting the open source community with your purchase.

Now, don’t go out and buy one if you can’t afford it (duh), but if you’re in the market for a new computer, check it out.

Doing several things all at once, now:

I’ve got a permanent solution set up for the Ventrilo server for the GUILD — one that won’t change addresses, even if mine does.

I’m working on helping everyone with their respective computers:

I’m getting a “new case”:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811147010 this week… My brother and I are speeding up our respective computers a bit, too… I’m trying to help my brother-in-law sell his nice (but highly proprietary) Dell computer for some new, nicely upgradeable stuff… I’m trying to help my sister out with a new gaming PC, too… “Nina”:http://sophisticat.org’s already got a super-fast computer, so blegh! blegh!! :p

And I’m trying to do all of this without spending hardly any money at all! Yay!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I’m also working on the site here a bit — I started messing with the commenting system, but haven’t finished it, though it still works.

I’m working on fully integrating the “jQuery”:http://jquery.com JavaScript library (I’m liking it a LOT more than the old moo.fx stuff).

Been busy lately!

Between moving to a new place, and trying to get the internet set up at it, and getting all of my computers set up (which I still haven’t done), and finishing up a major project at work, I’ve been busy as hell!

I’m also trying to set up a new Ventrilo server for everyone, but I’m having a LOT of trouble with that as of right now, mostly because Charter Internet (my ISP) doesn’t give our static IP’s to residential customers. Assholes!

Take a look:

!http://threshold-zero.tmanime.com/images/4t.png!:http://threshold-zero.tmanime.com/images/4.png

Notice that? Wow, support for Linux! Now, on your Dell Laptop when you go for support, you can actually choose Linux from the list of available operating systems to get help with! Yay!

But look more closely at the results that it’s given you as available downloads… notice the BIOS updater program? Guess what form you get that in?

A windows executable.

Yeah, Dell is pulling a lot of this “oh look by the way we support linux now too hurr hurr” stuff just to piss of Microsoft. The word “on the street” is that OEM manufacturers do this stuff every few years in order to make sure Microsoft doesn’t try and charge too much for the versions of Windows that companies like Dell pre-install on computers for you.

Take a look at this:

“Even Michael S. Dell uses Ubuntu Linux at home!”:http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/corp/biographies/en/msd_computers?c=us&l=en&s=corp

See what I mean? Oh noes! Even the leader of Dell uses Linux! Watch out, Microsoft!

While I would love to see Dell adopting big time support for Linux, it just ain’t gonna happen. They’ve pulled this stuff before, and then when they’re pressured by Microsoft, they back down.

<BEGIN-TECH-SECTION>
Well, I updated to ATI’s latest drivers, and then went through several days of wondering why the hell my goddamn video was so _slow_ until I eventually noticed that, for some damn reason, 2x anti-aliasing was on by default… -_-’

In the course of trying to figure everything out, I eventually uninstalled ATI’s drivers and installed “Omega’s Drivers”:http://omegadrivers.net, and just decided to keep them at the end of everything, since they seem to work just fine.
<END-TECH-SECTION/>

In other news, Nina and I have a new place to live in and we will be in there by the end of the month, no matter what!

And next week, we’re off to see “My Chemical Romance”:http://mychemicalromance.com prance around the stage like a bunch of pixies! Yay!

…maybe he’ll look me right in my eyes… surely, time would stop, and the moment would drag on for what seems like forever.

After months of trying to learn out how, I’ve finally mastered the cpulimit library for linux! I learned about it many months ago while looking at add-ons for the “http://boinc.berkeley.edu/”:BOINC distributed computing project. You see, I needed a way to limit the amount of CPU power that BOINC used when it ran its computations — this is mainly so I can run it at work!

My computer at work is a fairly modern Intel system, so it has all sorts of fans and magic-step-up temperature controls and whatnot, and everytime I start doing anything even _remotely_ CPU-intensive, this case fan at the front of my desktop starts spinning faster, and faster, and faster, until it sounds like there’s a jet engine inside my cubicle!

Well, this just certainly won’t do. I’d love to use the idle computing power of my work PC (which is just being absolutely _wasted_ by me doing nothing but programming on it), but I can’t have somebody eventually getting suspicious because of the racket coming from my PC.

In steps the cpulimiter library. This handy dandy little _whatever_ (”process,” I guess) will only allow a process to use a limited amount of CPU power from within linux (did I mention I’m doing all of this inside of a virtual machine?). It wasn’t included with the “http://www.ubuntu.com”:Ubuntu 6.06 virtual machine I use at work, so I actually had to download the source and compile it myself! Yay! You betcha — it didn’t work at all!

The virtual machine version of Ubuntu was missing the _make_ compiler, not to mention the necessary C and C++ libraries necessary to do the compiliation. I managed to get the stuff I needed after just randomly downloading important looking libraries from the Synaptic Package Manager, and eventually got it compiled!

Now, I’m free to run BOINC on my work PC (which is actually pretty damn fast) whenever I choose. The Intel chip in my PC runs pretty damn hot no matter what (idle temperature is around 55° C!), but at least it’s not noisy.

[_Transcribed from my work blog_]

For the past few months on my work computer (and even longer on my home computer) I’ve noticed that my web browsing via Firefox has slowed to an absolute crawl. Firefox would take almost 45 seconds just to load up, and each page loaded with the horrifying speed of glass (which is actually an extremely viscous liquid — ha ha, science! *thrusts finger in air*).

I realized right away that this wasn’t Firefox’s fault. Why? Because I’d use other peoples’ computers with Firefox, and their copies loaded quickly, browsed quickly, and rendered quickly…

That left only one thing, right? It was an extension slowing me down. But which one?

I figured it was one of two — either NoScript or Adblock.

Now, Adblock used to slow me down until I figured out my tried-and-true-two-entries-only-blocking-list:

/[^A-Za-z0-9]ad[s]?[^A-Za-z0-9]/

/(2o7|a\d\.yimg|ad(brite|click|farm|revolver|server|tech|vert)|
at(dmt|wola)|banner|bizrate|blogads|bluestreak|burstnet|casalemedia|
coremetrics|(double|fast)click|falkag|(feedster|right)media|
googlesyndication|hitbox|httpads|imiclk|intellitxt|js\.overture|kanoodle|
mediaplex|nextag|pointroll|qksrv|speedera|statcounter|tribalfusion|
webtrends)(\d+[x]\d+)?/

These two lines stop almost all banner ads of any sort, and it’s easy for the Adblock engine to parse. The problem of a huge Adblock-list plagued me some time ago, but after replacing my enormous block list with these two lines, the problem went away.

Now about a year or so later, the problem has arisen once again, and this left only one possible answer: NoScript.

You would think so, eh? Turns out it wasn’t that easy. I’ve installed Firefox on new computers and added NoScript, and it ran with no problems — fast as can be. Then what was wrong with my installation, specifically?

Well, what was the difference between a NoScript installation on a new computer and my main NoScript installation?

My banned/allowed scripts list, of course. My *five-thousand-line-long banned/allowed scripts list.*

If you’re picky like me, you don’t like having ad farms deliver content to you. You don’t like being the target of “customer-orientated advertising campaigns,” you don’t like having “relevant marketing content” delivered to you, and you definitely don’t like being the source of “valid consumer visitation information” for companies. You like buying the things that you want to buy, not things that you’ve been subtly prodded into buying. (Trust me — just go to Tacoda.net and look at some of their “consumer profiles.” You’re not a person to these organizations — you’re not even a group of people. You’re just a line in a database somewhere.)

I stop almost every single bit of JavaScript that runs in my browser when I’m web-surfing, except for whatever’s coming from the main site that I’m visiting. (Trust me, I program JavaScript as a career. I know what it can do, and I don’t want it doing it!) Well, over time, my “blocked/allowed domains” list in NoScript had become very, very, very large. And everytime I started up Firefox or tried to load a new page, NoScript was having to check each and every bit of JavaScript against that enormous list… even clicking on the NoScript context menu to bring it up was starting to take a full *three seconds.*

So, what do you do? Well, it seems the makers of NoScript must have come across this problem, because they’ve included a feature to always allow JavaScript from whatever domain you’re currently visiting — this is something I always allow anyway, since the main culprits of JavaScript-delivered ad-farming are almost always off-site domains (tacoda.net, doubleclick.net, etc.). You’re pretty safe in always allowing the domain you’re visiting to run JavaScript on your computer.

I turned on this option, but I still had to get rid of that giant permissions list, now didn’t I? You can do that from within the NoScript control panel, but my list was so large that every time I tried to remove the entire thing, Firefox would lock up. Poor thing…
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the extension… to no avail. Unfortunately, Firefox keeps the settings of whatever extensions you’ve installed. (There really should be an option to stop that!)

I wasn’t going to re-install Firefox, so what now? Well, on NoScript’s site, they talk about this exact thing:

_If you want to erase your whitelist you can either use the NoScript Options user interface (recommended option) or remove from the aforementioned prefs.js all the preference entries whose name starts with ‘capability.policy.maonoscript’._

The prefs.js file seems to be a collection of items in some sort of array, and the particular entry for NoScript was disgusting huge. So, I uninstalled NoScript first (just to make sure I wasn’t editing its prefs.js section while it was installed), took out the relevant lines from prefs.js, and turned on the “allow top-level sites” option.

Ah… browsing revisited. Running NoScript in this fashion — allowing all top-level JavaScript and only banning off-site scripts — is so much more efficient.