Category: The Undefined Remainder

Geeky stuff. Internet, Games, Free Software, Sci-fi etc.

Nothing is safe anymore

Db01 Comment

Holy shit. Disk Encryption is cracked, and cracked nastily it is. You are not safe if you are using Windows, Mac or linux as all of them basically use the RAM to store the encryption key.

So currently the only way to fix this is to either use a new memory technology where the RAM is instantly lost on boot or use another place, rather than the RAM. Perhaps we could use an external key? Can DM-Crypt be modified to store the key in a usb-stick? Will that help? Techdirt also mentions that this does not work on disks that decrypt on boot but this is not said in the article…

In any case…ouch!

FSDaily Sidebar

Db01 Comment

It was proposed to me by a member of FSDaily to add their new sidebar to my site. Apparently a few of my posts have hit their front page and that drew their attention 🙂

In case you don’t know what FSDaily is, it’s a nice digg-clone which focuses on free software issues. A good alternative since now that digg is heavily sponsored by Microsoft there are fears of conflict of interests (and also digg has become way-way to popular imho).

So I said, why the hell not and dived in. I didn’t want to put it in my horizontal sidebars above and below but thought that this might be the perfect candidate to fill up my empty sidebar on single posts. Unfortunately the way the theme is formatted, it means that when I write something long, there is nothing to see on the left other than the initial information above. I was thinking of a way to fill this and as luck would have it, I got this proposal.

I think I will create special page template that I will use for short posts and in there I will not put anything in the sidebar. However on longer posts it would be worth filling that lonely and empty part with something. Perhaps I should diversify even more and create different page templates for different content. For example, on pages where I talk about religion, I could put the atheist blogroll, and on the ones I talk about Free Software, I can have the FSD along with other related stuff.

Still, I will need to ponder on this. The best thing to do would be to widgetize my single-post sidebar and have it easily updated. I just need to figure out how to widgetize.

Oh, well. Tell me what you think 😉

PS: It is ironic that, had I left this post in the original version, you would not not able to see the sidebar on this page. This is because I’ve recently modified my theme (I’ll write about it later) to dynamically expand the sidebar items depending on the word count of the current post. Unfortunately since this was a really short post and in order to see the FSD item you need at least 400 words, it stayed invisible. My solution? Write this post script 😉 . As a matter of fact, I needed a post script with at least a 100 extra words which easily makes this the largest one I’ve ever written 😀

Source what?

Db0

Just a question. Has anyone else seen this

I honestly do not know if I should laugh or cry…

Windows Vista Sensei comes from a long family line of warriors, the ” Windows” family.

He is highly thought of as one of the most powerful warriors alive. Although he is still young, Windows Vista Sensei is said to possess different strengths and confidence not known to anyone. He is already beginning to gain such world fame at his young age that folks are writing stories about him.

No scratch that, I LOLed!

I still don’t know where the “source” fits in. Are they trying to imply something? And who are these evil people they are fighting. I could hazard a guess…

Found in the Wesnoth Fora

Comments and stuff

Db0

So I’ve put a two new tricks on my comment forms.

The first one is that you can now see a preview of what you are going to post. Just write your text and press the preview button and you should see it below. No more orthographical or html errors ;). This was done via the AJAX Comment Preview plugin. It needed me a little css tweaking in order to get it to display as I need it but fortunately I was able to find how to wrap the preview so that it fits with the normal comments.

The second one is the threaded comments option which is done through the plugin with the same name. Although at the moment you can have only one thread per comment, this might make it easier to follow the discussion in case it starts to derail (although I will admit that I don’t have so many commenters). The nifty addition to that is that the author of the comment will now receive an email notification when someone replies to his comment. The bad thing is that you can’t unsubscibe from that but given the low number of comments I get, I do not think that would be a big issue. You can still use the subscribe feature as well, but since this will inform you of every subsequent comment in the thread (even if you do not follow it anymore) most people don’t use it.

This plugin needed me even more time to get right as I needed to format the thread correctly and also test if more than one thread is viable. It is but currently the comment box is screwed on the second comment so I need to work on the css part of it. Until then I’ve enabled only a single thread replies.

One last update is that I expanded the comment field in order to give you a bigger view of what you are writing. I always found the one I had before a bit too small.

I think I’m now going to enable these on my two other blogs as well 😉

To aggregate!

Db0

Google Reader screenieΤο παρακάτω κείμενο παρολίγο να ήταν σχόλιο στο ιστολόγιο του Ale3andro αλλά μιας και γινόταν αρκετά μεγάλο, είπα να το βγάλω σαν trackback

Ο Αλέξανδρος λοιπόν έγραψε αυτό το κείμενο περι των aggregators και πως ο online aggregator google reader του φάνηκε πιο χρήσιμος. Μετά απο τα θετικά σχόλια που βρήκε περι αυτό έκανε ορισμένα αρνητικά, το οποία είπα να σχολιάσω:

Το βασικό αρνητικό των aggregators είναι ότι σε απομακρύνουν από τα αγαπημένα σου sites/blogs.

Δεν καταλαβαίνω πως σε ένας aggregator σε απομακρύνει. Μέσω του G-Reader μπορώ να διαβάσω πολύ περισσότερα απο τα αγαπημένα μου ιστολόγια χωρίς κόπο και με λιγότερο χρόνο. Επίσης αποφεύγω έξτα φόρτωμα απο αχρείαστες εικόνες και διαφημίσεις που (ειδικά το δευτερο) που 95% του χρόνου δεν κοιτάω καν.

Επισκεπτόμενος ένα site βλέπεις πολλά περισσότερα απ’ ότι διαβάζοντας απλά ενα post στον aggregator. Το design, blogroll, άλλα άρθρα,

Όσον αφορά το να βλέπεις τον σχεδιασμό του blog κλπ, όπως και να έχει, αυτο θα σε ενδιαφέρει μόνο 2-3 φορές πρίν αρχίσεις να το αγνοείς. Στην δικιά μου περιπτωση, σχεδόν πάντα θα τύχει να δω το design όταν θα γράψεις κάτι το οποίο θα με κάνει να θέλω να σχολιάσω. Εαν θέλω να εξερευνήσω το ιστολόγιο, αυτό θα το κάνω μόνο μια φορά, και όχι κάθε φορά.

σχόλια (τα comment feeds είναι υπερβολή),

Τα comment feeds δεν είναι καθόλου υπερβολή. Πες οτι πήγες σε ένα blog στο οποίο έχεις γράψει ένα σχόλιο και περιμένεις απάντηση. Έχεις 2 επιλογές. 1. Κάνεις bookmark το post και το επισκεπτεσαί σχετικά συχνά για να δεις εαν απάντησε κανείς ή 2. Παίρνεις το feed του και το αποθηκέυεις σε ένα φάκελο (πχ comments) που τον κρατάς κλειστό ώστε να μην παίρνει χώρο. Όταν κάποιος απαντήσει, απλά βλέπεις οτι ήρθε καινούργιο μήνυμα και απαντάς. Υπάρχει και η επιλογή 3. όπου το blog έχει επιλογή να σε ειδοποιεί με email για καινούργια comments αλλά κατά την ταπεινή μου γνώμη, ένα feed είναι καλύτερο.

Αρνητικό είναι επίσης και το ότι με το που τον ανοίγεις σου εμφανίζει ένα αριθμό καινούργιων posts και κατά κάποιο τρόπο σε αναγκάζει να τα δεις όλα, σαν να είναι υποχρέωση.

Μπορείς να τροποποιήσεις το bookmark που ανοίγεις στον reader (ή τις ρυθμίσεις του reader) ώστε να σε φέρνει στο “All Items” αντί για το “Home” οπότε απλά βλέπεις τι καινούργιο έχει γραφτεί.

Να αναφέρω και μερικά ακόμα θετικά σημεία:

  • Shared Items: Αυτά είναι τα posts που μαρκάρεις κατάλληλα απο το reader με τα οποία οι “φίλοι” σου μπορούν να δουν τι βρήκες ενδιαφέρον στο δίκτυο ακόμα και εαν δεν παρακολοθούν το συγκεκριμένο site. Μπορείς να μαρκάρεις οτιδήποτε λαμβάνεις ώς feed σαν share, ακόμα και σχόλια, όπως πρόσφατα έκανε ένας “φίλος” μου στον reader. To feed απο τα shared απο την άλλη μπορείς να το κοτσάρεις σε διάφορα σημεία, όπως για παράδειγμα έχω κάνει εγώ στο facebook και στο navigation στο πάνω μέρος της σελίδας μου.
  • Στατιστικα:Είναι ένα χαριτωμένο feature μέσω του οποίου μπορείς να δεις τι διαβάζεις περισσότερο (και πόσο) και ποιοί είναι οι πιο γρήγοροι bloggers (Πχ ο πλανήτης ΕΛ/ΛΑΚ βγάζει περίπου 3.5 κείμενα την ημέρα)
  • Για να μην μιλήσω για την ευκολία με την οποία μπορείς να βρείς κάτι που διάβασες στο παρελθόν. Μιάς και μιλάμε για google, η πιθανότητες εύρεσης είναι αρκετά δυνατες. Αυτή είναι μια δυνατότητα που έχω χρησιμοποιήσει παραπάνω απο μία φορές όταν ήθελα να βρώ “εκείνο το ωραίο κείμενο περι ταδε που είχα διαβάσει κάποτε”. Εαν χρησιμποιείς και tags δε, ακόμα καλύτερα.
  • Δυνατότητα να παρακολουθείς ένα μεγάλο αριθμό ιστολογίων χωρίς να πλυμηρίζεις. Πχ, αυτή τη στιγμή έχω ένα φάκελο με όλα τα rss feeds του Atheist Blogroll που αυτή τη στιγμή έχουν ξεπεράσει τα 500. Αυτό μου δίνει την δυνατότητα να διαβάσω πολύ περισσότερες φωνές και με μεγάλη διαφοροποίηση απόψεων.

Ryzom extinction

Db01 Comment

Do you remember approximately one year ago when the Ryzom MMORPG was going bankrupt and a group of fans started a movement to buy the Ryzom assets that were being liquidized, and subsequently release them under the GPL (I even blogged about it here)? There was quite a number of donation promises coming in as well, with the FSF also promising (if I remember correctly) 50.000€  if the Free Ryzom movement was granted the assets. In the end there were about €200k promised in donations which is quite impressive if you think about it.

Well, even if you didn’t see it or don’t remember it, the end result was that a third company, Gameforge, bought the assets instead (after convincing the judge that they would be more capable on keeping a larger number of the workforce employed no less) and the Free Ryzom movement was put on hold (they did try to keep it going but it didn’t take off it seems).

To tell the truth, I was very curious on how a company could buy Ryzom which had already proved to have failed commercially and what they were planning to do with it. More importantly, how were they going to use this failing business to keep the previous employees working.

Well, it seems that they couldn’t. I just received a message from the Ryzom.org mailing list that they informed me that not only had the Gameforge France (the subsidiary that took over) had closed down 7 short months after taking over, but has also left their employees unpaid for quite some time and hasn’t even payed the first liquidator what they owed them.

Now, If you remember, the whole reason why Gameforge was granted the assets over the Free Ryzom movement was that the judge assumed that a corporate entity would be better suited to take care for the well being of the game and its supporting personnel than a rag tag bunch of hippies (or at least, that’s what I assume he thought). Does anyone else see the irony here? You can be damn certain that if Ryzom had gone free, not only would have the developers probably be better off, but the whole world would have benefited from the buyout. You can also be certain that the liquidator would have received a larger amount of money than they did now.

Currently, Gameforge Germany (the original company that has taken over, now that Gameforge France has liquidated) has shut down the game servers and many fear they will shut down the forums as well, leaving the remaining players no venue for information. This is actually the main reason why the announcement was sent to everyone who has registered in the past, so that the remaining player might be informed.

The actual time line of the situation is this:

  • January 2007 : Gameforge takes over Ryzom, creating Gameforge France.
  • August  2007  : Gameforge France stops paying its creditors, starting
    the shutdown procedure. The employees haven’t been paid since June.
  • October 2007  : Gameforge France enters the liquidation procedure
    (public announcement). Unlike the first liquidation, the judge
    immediately shuts down the company and fires all the employees.
  • Nov-Dec 2007  : Issues in the procedure (see below) arise and add
    further delay to an already lengthy process.
  • January 2008  : Gameforge Germany announces it will soon shutdown the
    game servers.
  • February 2008 : The game servers are shutdown.

Now it seems that the previous free Ryzom movement is still waiting for the second liquidation to complete before they take any further actions. This might take a while as the situation has become even more complex by the gross mishandling of the situation by Gameforge. Nevertheless, once that is complete, hopefully, there will be another chance the acquire Ryzom and release it under the GPL and hopefully with a lower price tag as well.

However this whole situation irks me to no end.I just hope that no other “suitor” comes in and tries to take over Ryzom only to park it somewhere never to be seen again. I hope the judge will understand this time that giving the game to its own players who actually want to see it succeed instead of a random corporate entity with the only worry being it’s bottom line, is the better choice.

Let’s wait and see what happens. You check out the original announcement here

FF 3

Db02 Comments

I’ve been using the latest Firefox 3 Beta 3 release and I must say that I am seriously impressed. Not only because I didn’t have to compile it in order to run it in Linux but because the speed difference is incredible. I’m serious, where before my ff would be laggy in switching some tabs or when clicking, this version is lightning fast.

Also the bookmarks and Location bar functions got a major overhaul and became very very useful now.

Seriously, give it a look. It’s quick and painless

Improving snippits to handle the clipboard

Db01 Comment

So I’ve spend a little time from my life to get snippits to work. Initially I discovered this little gem through a lifehacker article (which also alerted me to texter for windows) but unfortunately I couldn’t get it to work with the guide included there or on the snippits readme. It just would not load on login.

Fortunately for me, a quick search revealed a guide in the ubuntu fora in which my question was answered. I needed to modify my path variable to include the location of the script. For some reason however this did not work whatever I did. This was even more annoying since my “exit” function of Ubuntu currently locks up my X-Session and the only thing I can do once I press it is to Ctrl-Backspace and restart it. Anyway, I tried various things (even the all classic windows trick, reboot) but nothing seemed to make my path export be accepted. Eventually, I was told that I should try to put it in my ~/.bash_profile file, and fortunately that worked.

Then I set to the task of making useful macros. Inserting a text string is pretty straightforward, you just have to create a file in your ~/.snippits directory which has a name equal to the text you want replaced, so for example you create a simple text file called “fyi” in there (no .txt extension) and inside you write “for your information“. Then if you write in any copy enabled program “fyi” and press your shortcut key, this will be transformed into the “for your information” text. Simple

Unfortunately, I discovered that because snippits eats your current clipboard, I could not use it to wrap links I copied from the address bar in my clipboard in bbcode or html. After asking around the forum however, I did manage to convince the thread author (by challenging him no less) to find out a way to do it. Specifically he used the xclip program to copy the current clipboard into a secondary clipboard and paste from there.

All you need to do to manage that is to install xclip sudo apt-get install xclip and then replace your normal “do” text file with a this:

<%`xclip -o -selection clipboard | xclip -i -selection secondary`%>{shift}{control}{left}{shift}c{control}{paste}

Then on the action you want to paste from the clipboard, you need to use this part:

<%= `xclip -o -selection secondary` %>

at the point that you want the clipboard pasted.

Here’s a little screencast I made as well. It might be a bit blurry but I’ll try to make a better version soon

[youtube]3hThXfzyKvE[/youtube]

I don't know why I bother…

Db021 Comments

Oh Gawd! It is like Objectivism takes otherwise decent blokes and slowly distorts them into horrible discussion monsters. This is like, the second blog I’ve now been banned from. Amazing! I’ve never been banned from anywhere in my life before and within 3 short months I’ve been banned from two Objectivist lairs, and with the same argument no less: I’m bringing the quality of the blog down. (Just try and say that with a straight face and imagine talking to another person.)

…

This is me being speechless.

Seriously though, what’s up with that. Is this cult that is called Objectivism, so mind distorting that once you are sucked into it you stop debating like any other person? Does an Objectivist’s body eventually get as corrupted as their mind, so that in the end they end up slithering in the night, like a Lovecraftian nightmate, whispering “Man qua man qua man qua man qua man…”? Scary…

In any case, it’s honestly a shame to see Evanescent end up like this. I honestly thought that he would be better than that but it seems that he has become pretty much like his mentor (Hell, he even copied the same WordPress theme for fuck’s sake…) His previous comments gave me hope that, even with this horrible ideology, he would still remain conversational but I was wrong.

I read somewhere that Objectivism is like a way to have the same certainty as a religion but without the God aspect and this strikes me as true every time I talk to them. They have their prophet, Ayn Rand, and all her words are gold. They have the infallible philosophy and perfect moral system. They have their cult like group and bask in the groupthink (Why do you see so few Objectivists in the Atheosphere? It’s because they don’t really hang out outside of their kind). And so it goes

Oh well, what can you do. In any case it’s for the best as this kind of conversation is starting to get on my nerves. I can handle only so much condescension in one place and the Objectivists seem to have that in spades. it practically oozes from every sentence they make that is directed at any non-Objectivist. Of course I’m certain it all stems from them having discovered the ultimate Objective truth and everyone being too stupid not to see it. Pretty much like a theist really…

Man qua man qua man qua man qua man Cthulu ftagn!