Welcome to TiddlyWiki created by Jeremy Ruston, Copyright © 2007 UnaMesa Association
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I can't find the right-click in Linux on Mac.
I tried Ctrl, Alt/Option, Shift, and a Command key. Ctrl click works in Mac OS X. Option click works in Citrix. Two fingers on trackpad plus click of one button works in Apple Boot Camp since Leopard.
I found no right click with any of my one-button mice:
# touchpad of Knoppix Linux ~DVD-R boot of an Intel ~MacBook Pro laptop
# wired USB mouse of Knoppix Linux ~CD-R boot of an Intel iMac desktop
Google search keys that could help include:
# Mac Linux button emulation
# two fingers on the touchpad
# reconfigure X to see right click more often
Using the Linux GUI is a struggle without right click, e.g., how do I empty the Trash?
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Touch a globe to see it go dark, dim, normal, or bright.
Snapshots:
* [[3WayTouchGlobe.jpeg|indexed/secondlife/3WayTouchGlobe.jpeg]]
Scripts:
* [[3WayTouchGlobe-lsl.txt|indexed/secondlife/3WayTouchGlobe-lsl.txt]]
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''~1H08 spec''
"Super speed" ~4.8 ~GHz clocks = ~320X "Full speed" USB 1.0 = ''~10X "High Speed" USB 2.0''
-- paraphrase of 2007-09-21 fetch of http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20070918comp.htm
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I switched to America Online (AOL) as my Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the early days of home internet, switching away from ~CompuServe the sake of the politely human AOL interface.
I built much of my Google weight at Members.aol.com, in places like [[PLScsi|http://members.aol.com/plscsi/]] for Apple Mac OS X, Apple PPC Open Firmware Boot Forth, Linux, Microsoft DOS, Microsoft Windows, Sun Solaris, etc.
At home we paid the annual dues while AOL connected us to the internet by dialup, and stopped paying when we switched to Comcast broadband. We had switched to broadband mainly to ease the search for my next job. I dropped out of Members.aol.com when I lost my create/ update/ destroy (write) authority/ ownership because of my unpaid dues. Eventually AOL dropped the requirement for dues so then I got back into Members.aol.com.
To create/ update web pages, I have to log in via the AOL client. Once I'm logged in, then a couple of Mac Terminal command lines suffice to let my host create/ update/ destroy web pages:
{{{
ftp -n members.aol.com
user anonymous ppaatt@aol.com
}}}
This technique is observably unreliable, I forget the details why. A symptom is that the FTP pwd command reports beginning at "/" rather than at "/ppaatt" if I have no write authority when I log in. The clunky old AOL FTP GUI client always has write authority. Since this whole ~TiddlyWiki goes up as a single file, that clunky old client works in a pinch.
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Second Life sometimes tells you to use the AWSD keys.
Some people who don't play video games have no idea what this means.
The AWSD keys are the keys that you use to type the A, W, S, and D letters. These keys appear in a Left, Up, Down, Right pattern on a a US QWERTY keyboard, which lets a typist familiar with that keyboard easily substitute A, W, S, or D to mean Left, Up, Down, or Right.
Someone should create [[En.wiktionary.org AWSD|http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/AWSD]] by analogy with [[En.wiktionary.org QWERTY|http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/QWERTY]].
[[Google define AWSD|http://www.google.com/search?q=define+AWSD]] didn't always know this. [[Google define AWSD keys|http://www.google.com/search?q=define+AWSD+keys]] learned this first.
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Management almost never approves accelerating broadband downloads of gigabytes of ~DVD-R and ~DVD+R DL images with peer-to-peer download tools.
Management sometimes approves quick downloads via peer-to-peer tools on external networks. Approval may depend on a digital signature showing that the image you lugged in from an external network arrived intact in house. Management sometimes requires checking a PKI signature, sometimes approves checking a crypto hash such as ~SHA-1, and sometimes approves checking a more easily fooled hash, such as ~MD5.
For management approved use to peer-to-peer downloads on external networks, looks like ~BitTorrent has gotten past the distasteful geeky early-adopter phase.
[[BitTorrent.com Get BitTorrent|http://www.bittorrent.com/download]] now just plain works when downloaded into Mac OS X from ~BitTorrent.com, no root privilege required. Note: ~BitTorrent does now quote file byte length and thruput in Gi Mi Ki units.
~BitTorrent might tell you that you have to leave ~BitTorrent running for ~44 days to give back the peer-to-peer bandwidth you took to fetch one ~4 ~GiB image (such as a Knoppix Linux ~DVD-R boot disc image, signed with a ~SHA-1 crypto hash). Management may ask you to leave ~BitTorrent running or not. Personally, I haven't yet figured out how to leave ~BitTorrent running in a way that plainly does give back bandwidth to the peer-to-peer download community.
Management almost never approves running ~BitTorrent on internal networks, much less the idea of leaving ~BitTorrent running for days inside.
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Acronis True Image is an add-on for Windows ~PCs to backup/ restore/ snapshots of your boot disk, like the Mac OS X Disk Utility does. Acronis True Image 10 (Home) is the version we managed to acquire officially in 2007.
The dozens of default choices pretty much do repartition your boot drive to contain snapshots of the boot drive. However, fresh after a Vista install, before assigning user names, you cannot activate the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager, you must boot from ~CD-R.
Hints from our history of pain:
<<<
Exiting Acronis reboots your PC.
"Information" "Backup archive creation has been completed successfully" is the usual message that means you did back up a disk.
"Information" "Data was successfully restored" is the usual message that means you did restore a disk includes its partition table, etc.
<<<
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Eight ways for software to surprise you:
# Security: Potential security issues.
# Crash/Hang/Data Loss: Bugs which cause a machine to crash, resulting in an irrecoverable hang, or loss of data.
# Performance: Issues that reduce the performance or responsiveness of an application.
# UI/Usability: A cosmetic issue, or an issue with the usability of an application.
# Serious bug: Functionality is greatly affected, and has no workaround.
# Other bug: A bug that has a workaround.
# Feature (new): Request for a new feature.
# Enhancement: Request for an enhancement to an existing feature.
Seen 2007-11-06 at Apple.com http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/bugbestpractices.html
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Apple's "Cocoa" is the native way to speak a GUI into Mac OS X.
Apple publishes [[Cocoa Fundamentals|http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/CocoaFundamentals/]] including the [[Cocoa Application Tutorial|http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ObjCTutorial/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40000863]].
The tutorial presents the "Currency Converter" starter project for Mac OS X + Xcode.
Once upon a time, I did rapidly walk thru these fundamentals and tutorial. To grow more literate in GUI, I should return.
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Q:
Press Alt ~PrintScreen to take a snapshot in Windows, press Command Shift 4 to take a snapshot in Mac OS X, ...
But press what Apple keys to take a snapshot in Windows running by way of Apple Boot Camp?
A:
http://www.google.com/search?q=apple+windows+print+screen yields
<<<
Ctrl Alt Minus, Ctrl Alt Plus
Microsoft.com http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B301583&x=15&y=9
Apple.com http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304270
<<<
A:
Ctrl Alt Minus/ Plus doesn't work for me.
What does work for me is Vista > All Programs > Accessories > Snipping Tool (new since Vista). Analogous to Mac OS X > Utilities > Grab.
////
Here's a template for new articles on Apple bugs.
Apple Confidential, disclosed under NDA with Company
Company Confidential
TITLE = ''//fixme//''
ID = __//TBDMDDN//__ from the [[Bugreport.apple.com|https://bugreport.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/RadarWeb.woa]] form per their [[Best Practices|http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/bugbestpractices.html]]
CLASSIFICATION = //fixme//
IS IT REPRODUCIBLE? = //fixme//
PRODUCT = //fixme//
VERSION / BUILD NUMBER = //fixme//
SUMMARY:
STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
EXPECTED RESULTS:
ACTUAL RESULTS:
WORKAROUND:
REGRESSION/ ISOLATION:
NOTES:
////
My first little while working in Python as a computer engineer carried my attention thru:
[[import array|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-array.html]]
[[import binascii|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-binascii.html]]
[[import cmd|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-cmd.html]]
[[import cStringIO|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-cStringIO.html]]
[[import ctypes|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-ctypes.html]]
[[import doctest|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-doctest.html]]
[[import glob|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-glob.html]]
[[import hashlib|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-hashlib.html]]
[[import msvcrt|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-msvcrt.html]]
[[import os|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-os.html]]
[[import platform|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-platform.html]]
[[import random|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-random.html]]
[[import re|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-re.html]]
[[import shlex|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-shlex.html]]
[[import stat|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-stat.html]]
[[import struct|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-struct.html]]
[[import sys|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-sys.html]]
[[import time|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-time.html]]
[[import zipfile|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-zipfile.html]]
See also: [[Random Python]]
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Some tips for bending the reality of your [[Second Life]]:
#The Home key toggle switch lets you fly.
# The Edit > Position X Y Z sliders let you move the things you "wear" to float anywhere nearby you.
#The World > Force Sun menu choice lets you choose the time of day that you see.
#The Ctrl Alt Shift D toggle switch shows or hides the Client/ Server debug menus.
#The Ctrl Alt C = Client > Disable Camera Constraints toggle switch lets you look far away.
#The Ctrl Alt Shift 7 = Client > Rendering > Types > Water toggle switch lets you look beneath the waves.
See also: Homefries.org [[Torley's tips toned down|http://otenth.homefries.org/archives/195]]
////
I only have Mac at home, of course.
[[Secondlife.com Chatbot|http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Chatbot]] presents the astonishing claim that Linden Scripting Language (LSL) syntax varies by platform - different in Windows than in Mac OS X.
So now I'm on a quest to get Windows & Linux running on my Apple Mac hardware ... Boot Camp since Leopard got Windows running. Linux boots from DVD/ CD but at first networks only when wired.
See: [[1 Button Right Click]], [[Networking Despite Linux]], [[Second Life Linux]], etc.
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Seeing what bugs I notice tells you something of who I am.
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Blogger.com and Blogspot.com should know ...
"1 comments" is an unconventional way to spell "1 comment".
Blogger profiles do not visually distinguish established groups of two or more from nascent groups of one. Yet groups of two or more interest anyone walking the graph of people linked, whereas groups of one interest only people looking to form the first link to another person.
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Google should know ...
http://briefly.google.com/en.wikipedia.org/2gayh3 could/ should mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimization_(computer_science)#When_to_optimize just as http://preview.tinyurl.com/2gayh3 does after enough clicks.
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http://www.google.com/search?btnI=5&q=Google should reach the fifth hit for Google, not the first.
----
People tell me Google Talk behaves unreasonably when Apple iChat moves frequently from one status message to the next while chatting, for example when Apple iChat is disclosing minute by minute which songs iTunes is playing for me.
////
Python should more prominently doc how to click thru to the source of a statement like {{{import doctest}}} ...
//e.g.//, in Windows:
{{{
> dir /b/s C:\Python25\doctest.py
C:\Python25\Lib\doctest.py
>
}}}
//e.g.//, in Mac OS X:
{{{
$ ls -l `which python`
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 72 30 Oct 11:24 /usr/bin/python -> ../../System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/bin/python
$ cd /usr/bin/../../System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/bin/
$ find ../lib -name doctest.py
../lib/python2.5/doctest.py
$
}}}
----
Sent to Bugs.python.org from me:
1082 - [[Platform system may be Windows or Microsoft since Vista|http://bugs.python.org/issue1082]]
See also: [[Python Across Platforms]]
TITLE: checkers/ draughts by chat
Given one grandchild running Tiger Mac OS X, one grandparent running XP Windows, both wanting to share a game of Checkers/ Draughts in real time while chatting thru Google Jabber, ...
Is there already some easy answer out there?
Without installing some new chat client, paying money, watching ads, etc.?
For both people to see the same game board they have to write moves to a shared store. Java can read and append game moves to the ls info of anonymous incoming ftp, but Windows doesn't bundle Java and Google thinks ~JavaScript can't put anonymous Ftp files ...?
Is there already some easy answer out there?
P.S. Second Life hosts Parcheesi, Backgammon, and Chess ... but Second Life isn't bundled and requires more oomph than many client ~PCs can deliver, the game rules are often write-protected, and I haven't found a Checkers/ Draughts in Second Life with a reasonable user interface, yet.
////
Sent to Bugs.sun.com from me:
[[4324508 - UTF8 output is sometimes non-canonical|http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4324508]]
[[4614120 - UTF-8 vmspec not verified by java -Xfuture|http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4614120]]
Etc.
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We think the ~TiddlyWiki ~JavaScript that powers this wiki works well enough for us to get by. After all, we downloaded it free of charge.
Please tell us if you find a bug that matters. Sorting roughly from most to least vital, we think the bugs of the ~TiddlyWiki engine include the following:
Sixteen:
''1. Unsigned editing software runs outside of sandbox''
You can't edit this page until your management approves authorizing the ~TiddlyWiki.com scripts take over your PC, while trusting that those scripts won't do that.
''2. No menu choice for Save Changes As''
We don't know how to save changes as a new filename.
To change the name to Index.html from Empty.html we patched to the string "index.html" from the string "empty.html" exactly three times in the raw ~JavaScript by hand with a raw text editor. If you try this at home, don't confuse the ~JavaScript uses of the string "index.html" with other uses of the string "index", such as the "index.xml" filename, the ~indexOf call, etc.
''3. Save Changes does not always permit Refresh''
You have to click thru the Done button to complete every open Edit of an article (tiddler), before clicking thru Save Changes will permit you to Refresh the page.
''4. The Edit button still appears when you don't have permission to edit.''
Articles (tiddlers) should offer the "Close, Close Others, View, and More" buttons by default, and then substitute an Edit button for the View button only when the browser has authority to Save Changes edited into the wiki markup.
Articles correctly offer the View button when fetched from a read-only HTTP web server.
Articles erroneously offer the Edit button when fetched from a volume over which the user has the authority to Save Changes. The configuration of the browser or the configuration of the file may deny the browser the authority to Save Changes. In those test cases, the articles should offer the View button in place of the Edit button, but in fact offer the Edit button in place of the View button.
People do see this test case frequently. The default configuration of most browsers denies the browser the authority to Save Changes, in particular the default configuration of the massively distributed Windows Internet Explorer browser. Even Mozilla Firefox denies the browser the authority to Save Changes until after the user agrees to trust the unsigned ~JavaScript of the wiki to edit files.
''5. Minor edits appear as loudly in the Timeline as major edits''
The Timeline tab does not hide minor edits.
This inability keeps the Timeline from working well as a "What's New" article for frequent visitors.
When we add a tag to an article, we lose the history of the date and time when we first published the essence of the article. Also when we correct something inessential, like the unconventional spelling of a word, again we lose the history. And then when we learn something new about this wiki technology, such as why tags should be styled like article titles, we suffer a storm of minor edits that swamp our major edits.
To partly clean out our Timeline here, we patch the raw HTML to backdate our minor changes (and all our metadiscussion) to ten years ago. Confusing to newcomers, costly in time, manual, error prone, ick ... yet still the least awful workaround known to us.
''6. Search box misses tags that have no articles.''
Searching for the text of a tag wrongly reports no articles (tiddlers) found when the text of the tag exists only as a tag, not also as an article explaining the tag.
''7. Wiki words found inside monospace tags and inside nowiki tags''
The list of articles (tiddlers) "that have links to them but are not defined" wrongly includes wiki words found inside monospace tags or inside nowiki tags.
As a workaround, we spread the characters of the words across multiple tags, which renders the characters correctly but then makes them not found in any search of markup.
Examples include the nowiki markup shown here for <nowiki>Missing</nowiki><nowiki>No</nowiki><nowiki>Wiki</nowiki><nowiki>Word</nowiki> and the monospace markup shown here for {{{Missing}}}{{{Monospace}}}{{{Word}}}.
''8. Clicking the tiddler link again rudely does nothing''
Clicking again thru the same tiddler link quietly has no effect, as if you understood this new browser interface before you learned it.
''9. Bold markup misleadingly resembles double quotes''
Pairs of single quotes look like double quotes in the default font, as if you knew what was going on before you learned. The wiki markup for bold text is in fact a pair of single quotes, not a double quote alone.
''10. No comments in markup source.''
We don't know how to include comments in the ~TiddlyWiki markup itself, for example a comment explaining something bizarre like why we ever choose to start an article with four slashes.
''11. No distinct style for external links vs. internal links''
The rendering of markup doesn't loudly distinguish external links from internal links, for example by inserting the domain name of the external link when that name is not already retyped in the markup.
''12. No paragraph break between article heading and first paragraph''
We don't know how to set the style to begin each article (tiddler) with a line of white space. For now, we begin most articles with an //italicised// empty string, which has this effect. Except we place any additional copyright/ confidentiality notices for an article before the first blank line.
''13. Not much squelch in the default style''
We don't yet know how to reduce the assault of useless visual noise on the new reader who doesn't already have experience with the browsing and editing tools. We think the assault is tolerable, as is.
Marking the file as read-only helps hide some of the editing tools.
Printing the file helps hide some of the browsing tools.
''14. The Permaview link points to the ~DefaultTiddlers after Close All.''
If you Close All and open an article and ask for the Permaview, you get a link to that article (tiddle) alone, all good.
If you Close All and ask for the Permaview, you don't get a link to the page shown with all articles closed. Instead you get a link to the page with a '#' hash mark suffixed to the end that has no effect, thus a pointlessly distinct respelling of the canonical link to the wiki with all the articles of the ~DefaultTiddlers list visible.
''15. Edited and not saved looks like edited and saved.''
No visual cue tells you that you need to save changes.
To know that you have saved your changes requires skill & attention. You have to click thru the Refresh button. If that completes normally, then you have saved your changes. If that doesn't complete normally, then you have to figure out how to escape the dialog without losing your changes. Fun fun fun, not.
''16. You have to take turns to edit our wiki blogs.''
A true wiki lets anyone edit any time.
The ~TiddlyWiki engine requires the authors to take turns, which discourages people from contributing edits, which violates the spirit of wiki.
All the same, better one author than zero. We can at least launch a network of interconnected blogs this way.
Thus, as yet, ~TiddlyWiki is a delightful Firefox plugin for creating & growing blogs, available in open source free of charge -- but not yet a cross-platform tool for creating a collaborative wiki built in parallel by a team of editors.
////
http://briefly.tinyurl.com/en.wikipedia.org/2gayh3 could/ should mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimization_(computer_science)#When_to_optimize just as http://preview.tinyurl.com/2gayh3 does after enough clicks.
----
An abbreviation of http://preview.tinyurl.com/io01-example-2 is both of:
<<<
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yq2751
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yq275l
<<<
Good on ~TinyUrl.com for tolerating likely human transcription errors.
Next [[TinyUrl.com|http://tinyurl.com]] should also print the digit 1 as its suggestion, rather than the lower case L, since most fonts used in e-mail and blogs and such visually distinguish i o 1 0 best out of I O 1 0 i o.
////
Wikipedia.org should know ...
Everyone should have write authority to supply the first summary of a change, until the author of the change blesses a version of the summary by saving it.
People should vote anonymously to identify which changes in history are spam. I trip over spam frequently now (2007-11), like maybe once every dozen articles. I fear to act, less I provoke attack ...
////
I enjoy the web services that I get for free after I pay for something else:
<<<
[[Apple Mac OS X Dashboard|http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/dashboard/]] -- calendar, flight tracker, stocks, transliterator, unit converter, weather, etc.
[[The Atlantic Magazine|http://www.theatlantic.com/]] -- electronic copies of the articles included in the monthly subscription
Encyclopaedia Brittanica Online -- included in tuition at some schools
Oxford English Dictionary -- included at some UK libraries
<<<
////
These articles talk of the C programming language.
////
These articles try to make Hippy Wikis safe for you to create and read and modify.
See also the [[Welcoming]] articles.
////
Please don't do anything stupid here, just because you can.
Six ways to keep out of trouble:
''1. If you'd be embarassed to see your words on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, please don't type them here.''
See [[Wiki Common Sense]]
''2. Please sign your contributions with your employee name, as spelled by our e-mail software.''
See [[Your Wiki Name]].
''3. Please don't copy this material outside.''
See [[Company Confidential]].
''4. Please distinguish external links from internal links.''
See [[External Links Markup]].
''5. Please tolerate the bugs in this ~TiddlyWiki technology.''
See [[Bugs.tiddlywiki.com]].
''6. Take care to back up your work, by saving a copy somewhere safe outside of this wiki.''
////
Chat to see yourself as others do:
* name
* date of birth
* has/ uses/ does not have credit card
* online/ offline
* //etc.//
Snapshots:
* [[chatMirror.jpeg|indexed/secondlife/chatMirror.jpeg]]
Scripts:
* [[chatMirror-lsl.txt|indexed/secondlife/chatMirror-lsl.txt]]
See also: Wiki.~SecondLife.com [[Describe Chatter|http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Describe_Chatter]]
////
Please don't copy this material outside.
Our labeling should be perfect: we should have labeled all our company confidential material as company confidential.
If you don't know if an article is or is not company confidential, ask management for approval to copy.
////
13 insanely great things we've found in Apple's public 2007-10-26 9A581 10.5 Leopard Mac OS X client release:
# The Boot Camp Assistant arrives integrated, no longer sold separately.
# The Calculator accepts reverse Polish notation as input.
# The Dictionary includes Wikipedia, just two clicks away from any phrase you select.
# The Dock divides moves out in front of the Desktop and divides into two lanes.
# The Documents and Downloads folders appear in the right lane of the Dock and at Home.
# The Finder offers cover flow like iTunes.
# The Finder zip of a folder of folders now works with Windows, obviating Terminal zip -r -r folder.zip folder/.
# The Folder icons show their contents, even for all the folders of integrated Applications.
# The iChats logged spread out across ~/Documents/$yyyy-$mm-$dd/.
# The iChats minimized into the Dock often show the face of the person with whom you were chatting.
# The install disc can verify its own integrity (unlike a traditional Unix fsck refusing to verify the boot disk).
# The HTML icons show how big the HTML file is by filling with ink. Ditto partitions how full in Disk Utility.
# The Preview app lets you crop and scale images.
# The ~TextEdit Save saves your changes even if you renamed the file while typing the changes.
See also [[Mac OS Bugs]]
////
Beware! A friend recently reminded me of code miswritten to be lil-endian on purpose, by spelling out the bytes of a multibyte int as characters, //e.g.//:
{{{
#include <stddef.h>
#include <stdio.h>
void printIntBytes(int native)
{
unsigned char * bytes = (unsigned char *) &native;
printf("x %02X %02X %02X %02X\n",
bytes[0], bytes[1], bytes[2], bytes[3]);
}
int main(void)
{
printIntBytes('CBSU');
printIntBytes('SBSU');
return 0;
}
}}}
Know any compilers that swallow an abomination like this without warning?
////
E-mail mailto:p.lavarre@ieee.org?Subject=Wikiblog
Apple iChat aim:goim?screenname=pelavarre&message=Wikiblog
Blog RSS feed://pelavarre.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Google http://www.google.com/search?q=Pat+LaVarre
Google Talk gtalk:chat?jid=pelavarre@gmail.com
Linked In Resume http://www.linkedin.com/in/pelavarre
Second Life http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Ppaatt_Lynagh
Wikiblog http://members.aol.com/ppaatt/
INTP P P P and ISFJ J J J are us in Myers Briggs.
Programming Languages: C, HTML, ~JavaScript, [[Second Life]] Linden Scripting Language, [[Python]], [[TiddlyWiki]] ...
See also: [[Pages Stored Elsewhere]]
////
//If we pick the best tool for each job, then maybe we see://
Chat creates a space to share.
E-mail answers questions.
Blogs share a stream of consciousness built from the news of an RSS client like Safari or Firefox.
Wikiblogs share interests -- lists and exemplars and tutorials -- when indexed by a web service like Google (and blog essays like this shouldn't appear in a Wikiblog.)
~LinkedIn builds a resume.
Del.icio.us, Digg, and Slashdot do something else. Also tumbleblogs, anachaia, reddit.
...
//See also:// [[Deconstructing Innovation]]
////
The ~McLuhan model for deconstructing innovation appears taught as slang & structured
thinking in places like the recent "~McLuhan for Testers" article by M. Bolton at
~StickyMinds.com:
[[http://tinyurl.com/345fh5|http://www.stickyminds.com/sitewide.asp?Function=edetail&ObjectType=ART&ObjectId=12900]]
That slang & thinking might say:
a) Cell phones delightfully "extend" our presence -- connecting us with other people far way.
b) Cell phones thankfully "obsolesce" pay phones and extortionate hotel phone charges -- people with cell phones don't need those.
c) Cell phones regrettably may "reverse" that presence they extend into an evil -- ringing you awake in the night to tell you of a dead battery, distracting you from proper attention while driving.
d) Cell phones evocatively "retrieve" the idea of a buddy that travels with you -- you can feel safer exploring farther with help just a phone call away.
So next likewise we can speak of ... what? Your choice.
////
Create a copy offline of the text of this wiki or its attachments:
<<<
[[index.html|index.html]] -- all of this large wiki blog (~0.5 MB)
[[indexed/|indexed/]] -- the large attachments to this wiki blog (many MB)
<<<
Or click thru to visit a slice of this wiki:
<<<
[[the "How To Wiki" slice|index.html#%5B%5BHippy%20Wikis%5D%5D%20TiddlyWiki]] - how to create and modify [[Hippy Wiki|Hippy Wikis]] Blogs
[[the Index slice|index.html#Bugs%20Cautionary%20Games%20%5B%5BHow%20To%20Wiki%5D%5D%20%5B%5BLab%20Hardware%5D%5D%20%5B%5BLab%20Software%5D%5D%20Linux%20Mac%20Mysterious%20NDA%20%5B%5BPat%20LaVarre%5D%5D%20Python%20%5B%5BSecond%20Living%5D%5D%20Slang%20%5B%5BStandard%20Interfaces%5D%5D%20%5B%5BTemplate%20Articles%5D%5D%20%5B%5BWas%20Public%5D%5D%20Welcoming%20%5B%5BWiki%20Rollout%5D%5D%20Windows]] - all the index tags expanded, in one page
[[the "Mac" slice|index.html#%5B%5BBesides%20Mac%20OS%20X%5D%5D%20%5B%5BMac%20OS%20X%20Setup%5D%5D%20%5B%5BMac%20OS%20X%20Tweaks%5D%5D]] -- the delight of things designed more carefully than you have yet noticed
[[the "Second Living" slice|index.html#%5B%5BSecond%20Life%5D%5D%20%5B%5BBending%20Second%20Reality%5D%5D%20%5B%5BSecond%20Life%20History%5D%5D%20%5B%5BPpaatt%20Lynagh%5D%5D%20%5B%5B3%20Way%20Touch%20Globe%5D%5D]] - snippets blogged from my [[Second Life]]
<<<
////
////
Drag to install and trash to uninstall is how life should be, obviously.
Some tools can be taught to accept drag as install, even if the tool ordinarily forces a less usable install process on you, provided that you work to capture the results of the install:
# Snapshot your Windows (via some add-on tool like Linux)
# Compromise your Windows as needed to install.
# Zip the results (found in the root and elsewhere).
# Rollback your Windows.
# Unzip the results.
Vista security compromises that may be forced on you by installers include:
# Turn UAC off
# Login as admin
# Choose a compatibility mode
# Grant admin privilege
# Run the installer Exe binary without having rebuilt it from source
# Connect to the Internet
Windows tools which can install in this draggable way include:
# Mingw/bin/ - Unix verbs such as gcc, strings, ...<br/><br/>
# ~MSys/1.0/bin/ - Unix verbs such as cat, cmp, cut, diff, find, grep, gunzip, gzip, make, md5sum, less, sed, tail, tee, uniq, vim, wc, ...<br/><br/>
# Python.exe + Python25.dll + Msvcr71.dll - Python Scripting<br/><br/>
////
Now that spam has made e-mail transport palpably unreliable ...
E-mail clients that connect people should share a sequence number. If under the covers the client said this is my first e-mail sent to you, this is my second e-mail sent to you, etc., then the clients could themselves discover when some spam filter somewhere erroneously lost an e-mail.
Also every new e-mail would help correctly classify spam sent before then as spam.
////
{{{"""}}} "Good Soldiers ..."
... contends that in crucial respects effective soldiers are ethical
soldiers,... for quite traditional reasons ... resolving basic paradoxes
regarding what soldiers must be trained to do or be, e.g.: be trained to
kill but also not to be brutal; be trained to react in combat situations
almost automatically but also to deliberate and decide if a command is
unlawful; as peacekeepers, be trained to be impartial but also to know
right from wrong and be firmly committed to upholding the former and
opposing the latter ... contradictory things are not really thus being
called for ...
{{{"""}}} 2007-09-27 fetch of http://preview.tinyurl.com/2wzjfb
////
''Explorable things ...''
All the things [[Mysterious]] ...
An audience interested in explanations of the [[Work In Progress]]
[[Apple Cocoa]] -- both the ~CurrencyConverter Apple tutorial and the copyrighted Paintbrush among the [[Mac Editors]]
[[Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Features - 300+ New Features|http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html]] - Automator Watch Me Do, etc.
Blog of life with Aspies -- fun stories of innocent culture clash, such as interviewing disasters.
Escher Inglañol Espinglés Spanglish in two columns, //e.g.//, John 1:1-5
Feed the [[Quotables]] out as RSS, maybe even the [[Grokkables]].
Get shadow & sync working across Ftp auth-n'ed by password.
Haiku.html (3 x 5 7 5) that distills index.html.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Jef+Raskin+The+Humane+Interface
Narcissistic Google.com [[Alerts|http://www.google.com/alerts]]:
<<<
~BusTrace
"Bus Trace"
Pat ~LaVarre
Windows Bus Trace
(TiddlyWiki search "Google Alerts should find that but doesn't.)
<<<
Open source workalikes for Windows accessories -- fix their bugs, //e.g.//, run them across platforms
Python cmd shell superclass workalike http://swapoff.org/wiki/cly claims tab completion of verbs, //etc.//
Python of http://www.pygame.org/wiki/about
[[Python]] such as 09-25 http://www.py2exe.org/ and 10-09 [[Google py2app|http://www.google.com/search?q=py2app]]
Save Terminal passwords for ftp, ssh, etc. via an adaptation of my Members.aol.com Plscsi [[1sh|http://members.aol.com/plscsi/tools/1sh/]].
[[Second Living]] esp. events
The [[Intriguing Web Services]] and the [[Bundled Web Services]] found but not yet explored, such as the Encyclopaedia Brittanica Online of our child's school.
The Mupromo bundle I bought for Mac OS, also Apple's dot Mac that we once bought.
[[x86 Assembly Language]]
x86 Solaris
[[Win Editors]]
Windows Live Spaces per 2007-09-29 invitation that led me to create http://cid-cf3ba9ef827d7f37.home.services.spaces.live.com
~WxPython -- rumoured to exceed the min reasonable std for GUI lib: collect garbage, run hi/lo resolution, resize, native File > Open, all plain text to clipboard, run across Mac/ Linux/ Windows, build from a plain-text makefile
////
Please don't fool your colleagues into thinking they are typing into confidential pages inside while they are actually typing into pages stored outside.
The practice we follow is to preface any external link with the external website name.
For example, we always speak of the Wikipedia.org [[Home Page|http://en.wikipedia.org]], we never speak more loosely of the [[Wikipedia|http://en.wikipedia.org]] page that might be inside or outside.
////
http://news.google.com/news?q=ssd hit of Dec 2 adds Micron as a supplier of SSD ...
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Apcworld.com+ssd+micron gives more coverage ...
http://nand.com finds ...
http://www.micron.com/nandcom/
upper right
NAND Flash Presentations
NAND Flash Reliability Presentation
Download.micron.com http://preview.tinyurl.com/2yrfqe
slide 21 of 23
http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/source.html
News to me that Linux has block and char and mtd devices.
////
You can restart your Windows or Mac OS X when you need more Unix verbs.
Restart lets you run Linux temporarily to get some job done. You don't have to smash a partition of your hard drive, you can run from disc or from USB Flash Drive (~UFD). Caution: Booting Linux may feed loud sounds thru your speakers.
See also: [[Accelerated Downloads]], [[Linux Setup]]
''~4 GB ~DVD-R images''
<<<
[[Uni-kl.de Knoppix DVD ~BitTorrent Tracker|http://torrent.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/]]
<<<
''~1 GB ~CD-R images'':
<<<
[[Ftp.kernel.org Knoppix CD|ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/dist/knoppix/]]
[[Ubuntu.com Feisty Ubuntu Linux|http://releases.ubuntu.com/feisty/]]
[[Ubuntu.com Dapper Ubuntu Linux|http://releases.ubuntu.com/dapper/]]
<<<
''~1 GB UFD images'':
<<<
(tbd)
<<<
////
I enjoy web services offered without charge:
<<<
[[Apple.com iTunes|http://www.apple.com/itunes/]] - rip ~CD-A without copy restrictions, hear ~NPR podcasts free of charge, etc.
[[Altavista.com BabelFish Transliterator|http://babelfish.altavista.com/]] - transliterate a web page, etc.
[[BibleGateway.com Google Search|http://www.google.com/search?q=site:biblegateway.com+]] - search the Bible
[[BitTorrent.com BitTorrent|http://www.bittorrent.com/download]] - faster "peer-to-peer" downloads (was an install nightmare years ago, just works when you click thru now)
[[Gnu.org Words To Avoid|http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html]] - how to talk of copy restrictions, etc., from a neutral point of view
[[Google Pdos.csail.mit.edu Shl Shr etc.|http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Apdos.csail.mit.edu+shl+shr]] - reference for Intel x86 _asm Cli Popf Shl Shr etc.
[[Google.com Web Search|http://google.com]] - the web search you likely know and love already: books, images, groups, and maps -- also ISBN codes and UPC codes
[[Nlzero.com hardware/drives|https://www.nlzero.com/cgi-bin/browse.cgi?conference=hardware&topic=drives]] and other slowly changing [[Nlzero.com Previews|https://www.nlzero.com/cgi-bin/confs.cgi]]
[[Preview.TinyUrl.com|http://preview.tinyurl.com/]] - abbreviate the web addresses (~URLs) that you share
[[Web.archive.org|http://web.archive.org]] - archive of pages found on the web since 1996, available for Archive.org [[Fair Uses|http://www.archive.org/about/terms.php]]
[[Wikipedia|http://en.wikipedia.org]] - the amateur encyclopaedia you likely know and love already
<<<
Note: Some network security administrators sneer at ~BitTorrent in particular, and peer-to-peer downloads in general, as if those tools existed only to defeat DVD movie copy restrictions in support of unfair uses, rather than existing to share ~4 ~GiB DVD images that boot Linux, for example.
////
I guess the games I play tell you something of who I am.
////
''Geek RSS'':
feed://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/rss.xml
feed://www.news.com/2547-1_3-0-20.xml
feed://www.craftzine.com/blog/index.xml
feed://digg.com/rss/containertechnology.xml
feed://www.gn15.info/feed/
feed://www.makezine.com/blog/index.xml
feed://blog.ruhlman.com/ruhlmancom/index.rdf
feed://carendt.us/feed.xml
feed://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/rss.php
http://www.technn.com/
''Mac Geek RSS''
feed://www.apple.com/main/rss/hotnews/hotnews.rss
feed://arstechnica.com/apple.rssx
feed://www.macfixit.com/backend/macfixit.rss
feed://www.macintouch.com/rss.xml
feed://www.macosxhints.com/backend/osxhints.rss
feed://macslash.org/rss/macslash.xml
http://www.macsurfer.com/
''Technically Speaking'':
1. Few to zero RSS views can handle the HTML feeds reasonably. Likely you'll see only the FEED feeds work.
2. The sorts above don't visually make sense because you can't see the labels on the links. Safari sorts folders of links by the label on the link, not the address of the link, whenever you drag a folder of links out of Safari and then back into Safari.
''Why Bother With RSS'':
RSS exists. I haven't yet understood why. Two friends and counting tell me I should learn.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/safari/ pushes some form of RSS, citing "standards-based support for RSS 0.9, RSS 1, RSS 2 and Atom".
One friend suggests specifically that I try setting up RSS to watch some of the feeds above ...
////
26 nearly ineffable thoughts that you may enjoy grokking:
# "A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a 'permission culture' - a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past." -- L. Lessig<br/><br/>
# "A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?" -- Ecclesiastes 2:24-26 (NIV) -- "One possible meaning for the difficult Hebrew text." (CEV)<br/><br/>
# A "simple modification to the compiler ... will deliberately miscompile source whenever a particular pattern is matched ... The moral is obvious. You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me.)" -- K. Thompson<br/><br/>
# "An efficiency expert whose plans depend[...] on simultaneous changes on multiple fronts and levels, [who sees] entire systems whole, from their smallest details to their global architecture [is] ill-suited to Washington [D.C., USA], where progress is serial and incremental" -- J. Rauch<br/><br/>
# "Anti-contact behaviour enables us to keep our number of acquaintances down to the correct level for our species ... with remarkable consistency and uniformity[:] ... small tribal groups ... numbering well under a hundred individuals." -- D. Morris<br/><br/>
# "Apple delivered, again."<br/><br/>
# "At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced." -- F. Douglass<br/><br/>
# "Before a man could practice any trade then, he had to prove to his peers that he could do it. Very few people now have any pride in what they do -- they are slip-shod in a piece of labour because they cannot see that good workmanship in the day of the machine means anything more than poor workmanship ... This extends on now from the work itself -- there is a wave of bad manners, of outright discourtesy in stores and businesses -- no worker identifies with his job enough to actually want to produce something better -- he feels part of a machine, vast, impersonal, not the master of it. And the more we deal so with machines -- for example the more computers are brought in to rule our lives -- with their horrible mistakes and no one to appeal to to correct them -- then the more alienated man will become ...." -- A. Norton<br/><br/>
# Consider programs to be works of literature, written to explain to human beings what we want a computer to do. -- D. Knuth, re Literate Programming, distilled<br/><br/>
# "He saw through their duplicity and said to them, 'Show me a denarius. Whose portrait and inscription are on it?' 'Caesar's,' they replied. He said to them, 'Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.'" -- Luke 20:23-25 NIV<br/><br/>
# "I believe in the powers of redemption and I simply cannot believe, in the God I worship, that He would permit us to sit on this Earth for four hundred years or rather in this country for four hundred years, and suffer the indignities which we have suffered, piled time after time high after high and so heavy as almost broken the backs of one of the most powerful people in this world. I can't believe there is no redemption. But that redemption is not going to come out in hatred. It's going to come out in positive attitudes towards our fellow man. We've come into the 1980's with an understanding that we have not just a right but a responsibility to give the best that we have to our society. We want to give it. And we're going to give it if we have to beat 'em across the head and knock 'em down and make 'em take it. We're going to give it to 'em." -- H. Washington<br/><br/>
# "I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel." -- J. R .R. Tolkien<br/><br/>
# "In a change of masters the poor change nothing except their master's name." -- Phaedrus<br/><br/>
# "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it." -- John 1:1-3 (NIV)<br/><br/>
# "It is not possible that anyone should be safe who sincerely opposes either you, or any other multitude but it is necessary that s/he who in earnest contends for justice, if s/he will be safe for but a short time, should live privately, and take no part in public affairs." -- Socrates<br/><br/>
# "kernel, n.: A part of the operating system that preserves the medieval traditions of sorcery and black art."<br/><br/>
# "[Marriage] is the merciless revealer, the great white searchlight turned on the darkest places of human nature." -- K. A. Porter<br/><br/>
# "language lawyer: n. A person, usually an experienced or senior software engineer, who is intimately familiar with many or most of the numerous restrictions and features (both useful and esoteric) applicable to one or more computer programming languages. A language lawyer is distinguished by the ability to show you the five sentences scattered through a 200-plus-page manual that together imply the answer to your question ... if only you had thought to look there." -- The Jargon File<br/><br/>
# "Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate." -- W. H. Auden<br/><br/>
# "Once a zygote has been formed by the act of fertilization it constitutes a new individual member of society, and its destruction is, in effect, an act of aggression." -- D. Morris<br/><br/>
# "Please be aware that even in the finest crystal slight variations in clarity can occur. Small bubbles, shear marks and flow lines are inevitable in blown and molded crystal because each piece is the product of personal craftsmanship. These minor variations are not considered defects."<br/><br/>
# "Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to design things." -- P. Graham<br/><br/>
# "The system of control that we erect for rivalrous resources (land, cars, computers) is not necessarily appropriate for nonrivalrous resources (ideas, music, expression). Indeed, the same system for both kinds of resources may do real harm." -- L. Lessig<br/><br/>
# "Thomas Jefferson -- first of the rational anarchists, my boy, and one who once almost managed to slip over his non-system through the most beautiful rhetoric ever written. But they caught him at it, which I hope to avoid. I cannot improve on his phrasing; I shall merely adapt it to Luna and the twenty-first century." -- R. A. Heinlein<br/><br/>
# "To achieve impossible design goals through innovative personal craftsmanship, from proof of concept to production. To deliver before time and under budget. To make design decisions ever more quantitative. To elegantly apply the tools at hand."<br/><br/>
# "[To make more of a difference, go] from a high-profit, low-volume, uncertain-payment business to a low-margin, high-volume, certain-payment business." -- W. J. Clinton<br/><br/>
# "With e-mail, when I discover I have misspoken, I feel I owe you a correction, even if I likely wasn't talking about something that interested you when I did misspeak."<br/><br/>
////
We speak of [[Hippy Wikis]], not Guerrilla Wikis.
Three reasons why:
''1. People often design slang to exclude the foreigner.''
Geeks as a group tend to make negative connotations a badge of honor, in a spiteful spirit. The thinking is, if you're going to casually misunderstand me, then I'm going to help you make a blazing fool of yourself, so at least I get a laugh out of the pain.
For example ...
''2. Naming spite as spite reduces its power.''
The term ~TiddlyWiki suffers from this spite. To the uninformed, the term "tiddly" suggests a waste of time, whereas we're actually speaking of a new technology for saving the time lost in e-mail.
The term ~GuerrillaWiki suffers from this spite. To the uninformed, the term "guerrilla" suggests individual contributors warring against managers, whereas we're actually speaking of a new technology that encourages individual contributors to work more closely together with each other and with managers.
''3. Refusing to repeat spite reduces its power.''
We avoid mentioning ~TiddlyWiki amd ~GuerrillaWiki to the degree possible.
Viva corporate euphemisms.
////
Our vision was:
Make our confidential web pages reasonably easy to edit and maintain.
Deliver an inviting experience like editing Wikipedia, but run the server only on the client host while the client runs. Connect the clients thru shared storage, mounted locally, mounted via FTP, or mounted via SMB (//e.g.//, Windows network drives).
The ~TiddlyWiki engine answers our vision reasonably well: the ~TiddlyWiki engine runs only on the client host while the client runs. Thus we have wiki, so long as only one person edits. We distinguish wiki blogs from a true wiki, because ~TiddlyWiki is not yet good at merging changes made in parallel. Instead, to edit the same pages together with another person, you have to take turns. Sorry about that.
We can interconnect these wiki blogs so that altogether they create a kind of wiki. For example, we've written all the introductory material here. You can take a copy and edit your copy to please you and your close colleagues, or you can link to our one-size-fits-all copy here, whatever works best.
We can feed our interconnected wiki blogs while working out of the office, while traveling or at home. See [[Work vs. Home]].
////
These articles begin to show you how to create and modify Hippy Wikis.
See also the [[Welcoming]] and [[Cautionary]] articles.
////
[[Google Define IEEE|http://www.google.com/search?q=define+IEEE]] tells us IEEE is an "organization of engineers, scientists and students involved in electrical, electronics, and related fields [that] also functions as a publishing house and standards-making body".
Think like the AMA for medical doctors in the US or the ABA for lawyers in the US, but for computer engineers and such worldwide.
The [[Site Portal at Ieee.org|http://ieee.org/portal/site]] says [[R6 OEB|http://ewh.ieee.org/r6/oeb/]] of the Oakland East Bay is my "section", with Jeff Kalibjian serving as the Computer Society chapter chair.
Glitches seen in passing:
1. The site accepts the spelling "p.lavarre" for my user name while unreasonably rejecting the spelling "p.lavarre@ieee.org".
2. [[IEEE|http://ieee.org]] has gone to mixed case for names, naturally getting the spelling wrong for the wiki word of my "Last/Family/Surname" (~LaVarre) in the process. The site lets me edit my "Preferred Name" ... so I may never make time to correct the spelling in their other records.
3. [[Www.ieee.org|http://www.ieee.org/]] is down at "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.ieee.org", although [[Ieee.org|http://ieee.org]] and [[Www.computer.org|http://www.computer.org]] are up.
////
''1. Use your usual web browser to browse this wiki.''
Web browsers that work include the Linux Firefox, Mac OS X Safari, and Windows Internet Explorer browsers.
Clicking thru an underlined link works like you expect. Clicking thru a blue link without underline works differently. Clicking there pastes an article (technically, a "tiddler" article) into the page, somewhere near the link you clicked. You then read that article now, but when you return to this page later, that article will be gone again.
Likely you'll remember much of what the article said. If you do, then next time you'll finish viewing the page faster without having to click the article into place to reread it.
''2. To see this page again like it was, tell your browser to Refresh the page.''
For practice, try reading our [[Wiki vs. E-mail]] article.
Refreshing this page knocks the new tiddler articles out of your way, back off the page, as does clicking thru the Close and Close Others buttons. You can't damage this wiki just by browsing, you have to ask to Save Changes to damage this wiki.
To bookmark just one of these tiddler articles, choose Close Others and then Permaview. Your browser will then be showing you just the one article on the page, and then the bookmark you browser makes will bring you back to that view.
''3. Don't believe the illusion that keeps telling you that you can Edit these tiddler articles with any browser.''
To contribute an edit, you're supposed to install Mozilla.com's [[Firefox|http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/]] web browser and then agree to trust the ~JavaScript software that you find buried inside all this HTML. Of course, to install that ~JavaScript editing software on a company PC, you first need management approval.
''4. Contribute your own world of wiki.''
One way of making your own articles easy to edit is for you to include ~JavaScript in your HTML to help people edit your HTML.
See TiddlyWiki and [[Bugs.tiddlywiki.com]]. Take care to back up your work, of course.
''5. Read and understand the [[Cautions]].''
Of course.
////
I find some intriguing web services before I find time to try them out:
<<<
[[Acm.org Classic Books|http://acm.org/classics/]] - classic books on computer engineering, seemingly available without copy restriction
Facebook -- its design like iTunes lauded 2007-08 by ~TheAtlantic.com [["About Facebook"|http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200710/facebook]] by M. Hirschorn
__Google Sky__ may be part of [[Google Earth|http://earth.google.com/]]
[[IEEE]] - an "organization of engineers, scientists and students involved in electrical, electronics, and related fields [that] also functions as a publishing house and standards-making body".
[[MIT Open Courseware - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science|http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer-Science]] - the lecture part of a university education, available without charge
[[ShortUrl.com|http://shorturl.com/]] - sounds like you break free of your ISP, choose your own URL, without charge -- not to be confused with the unrelated delight of ~TinyUrl.com
[[Simple Wikipedia|http://simple.wikipedia.org]] - like Wikipedia, but more to the point
<<<
I lose track of some useful web services, if I'm not blogging in the year when I first find them useful. For example:
<<<
ACM classic articles such as "Reflections on Trusting Trust"
E-mail Echo Service to tell me what bytes I am sending
Index of entries of the Java Bug Parade modified by me when registered as p.lavarre
Index of entries of the Google Groups modified by me when registered as p.lavarre@ieee.org
<<<
If you try one of these web services before I do, please share your experience with me at [[Contact Me]].
////
The Wiki.~SecondLife.com [[Chatbot|http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Chatbot]] script lets you chat Linden Scripting Language (LSL) into an object of the [[Second Life]] to see that chatted language run.
This LSL Chatbot is my first effort of any size in LSL. Turns out that job is too large for any single script. Second Life divides the work of an object into parallel "tasks" that run scripts. Each task gets 16 ~KiB for byte code, stack, and heap. Including code in the script eats space for byte code, no matter whether you call the code or not.
Me writing enough code to compile and execute an LSL expression blows out of the 16 ~KiB, so naturally I'll next try to give the compile work to one script and the execute work to another.
See [[Reverse Polish LSL]]
////
For computer engineering, we collect some hardware for the lab.
////
For computer engineering, we collect some software for the lab.
////
These articles talk of the Linux experience.
cf. Nlz uni/app #6359 "sha1sum, the search process"
I get ~SHA-256 at ~30 MB/s thru the Python 64-bit i/o of open read to apply hashlib update then digest ...
Yes surely I should have found, rather than built my answer.
How then should I have found ~SHA-256 and ~SHA-1 in Linux? I have only ~MD5 there, in the form of md5sum. Similarly, over in Mac OS X Terminal Unix, I have ~MD5 and ~SHA-1 thru openssl, but no ~SHA-256.
How should I find, rather than build, such answers?
////
Discs that work:
<<<
''2007-01-04 ~Knoppix 5.1.1 ~CD-R'', ''2007-01-04 ~Knoppix 5.1.1 ~DVD-R''
Knoppix boots ~MacBook Pro 17"
The X Windows GUI appears after blinking thru ten tries at the first wrong way to configure.
<<<
<<<
''2007-~MM-DD Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 ~CD-R''
~MacBook Pro 17" boots.
<<<
Discs that don't work:
<<<
''2007-~MM-DD Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 ~CD-R''
~MacBook Pro 17" chokes by default and in safe graphics mode.
<<<
Related mysteries:
<<<
[[1 Button Right Click]]
[[Second Life Linux]]
<<<
////
These articles talk of the Apple Mac experience.
////
Keyboard shortcut sequences of Mac OS X that I use often include:
Finder ''~Command-Shift-A T ~Command-O'' to open ~TextEdit.
Finder ''~Command-Shift-U T ~Command-O'' to open Terminal.
iTunes ''~Command-T ~Command-F'' to run the iTunes visualizer as a screen saver.
Got some more that you like?
////
Apple Mac OS X mostly just works. What's missing?
# Apple.com open source: [[Paintbrush for the Mac|http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/home_learning/paintbrush.html]]
# Apple iLife -- bundled with hardware, but then rudely sold separately from Mac OS per se
# Apple Xcode -- included on your Mac OS install disc, but not installed by default
////
Intriguing, not yet much explored ...
Apple Preview > Tools > Adjust Size reports width x height in pixels, mm, etc. and helps you change as you please. Choose or type out dimensions or a resolution, ask for proportial scale and resample or not, see ~KiB guesstimated as you decided, be happy.
~AtomicParsley for editing Mp4 M4a M4b M4p M4v of iTunes, said ~MacOSXHints.com.
How to edit Ico files on the Mac, I do not know.
Paintbrush for the Mac may be to Mac OS as Paintbrush is to Windows. Apple.com blesses the http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/home_learning/paintbrush.html binary for Mac OS (implemented as Universal Cocoa, dated 2007-08-16). Sourceforge.net offers copyrighted source code, licensed GPL, at http://paintbrush.sourceforge.net/.
Gimp may be to Linux as Paintbrush is to Windows. Gimp.org blesses the http://gimp-app.sourceforge.net/ binary for X11 + Mac OS. http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Lite_Quickies/ may quickly explain how to change the size of an image (aka its scale, aka its resolution).
////
See also our [[Compute In Style]] celebration of things Apple has got right.
''Leopard Install''
<<<
UI/ Usability: Option Startup says Linux disc is Windows disk partition.
UI/ Usability: Wireless Install doesn't give you a Show Password click.
Possible Crash/Hang/Data Loss: Disk Utility copy of install disc image (or install disc) to partition works only if you do not ask to Erase before Restore. Asking to erase corrupts the destination, as First Aid will report.
Possible Enhancement: 9A581 install should finish repairing disk permissions without you having to restart and run the install disc to complete that chore. All good now, except //Warning: SUID file "System/ Library/ ~CoreServices/ ~RemoteManagement/ ~ARDAgent.app/ Contents/ ~MacOS/ ~ARDAgent" has been modified and will not be repaired.// without the blanks after the slashes.
Possible Enhancement: 9A581 install should complain if the password is in the hint, since it complains when the password is the hint.
<<<
''Leopard Startup''
Target Mode
<<<
UI/ Usability: No visual feedback confirms use of this ~FireWire drive in particular: no lights show writes, reads, and ejects in progress or completed.
<<<
''Leopard Operation''
Dashboard
<<<
UI/ Usability: 9A581 Output stale after ~Command-X cut of Dashboard Unit Converter input.
<<<
Finder
<<<
Possible UI/Usability: 10.5.1(9B18) two ~FireWire discs, one with N partitions at N > 1, eject one of those ... you get offered "Eject All" but that actually means Eject N.
<<<
<<<
Possible UI/Usability: 9A581 Look for confusion in how shift keys affect a Finder Eject of a disk partitioned into multiple volumes.
<<<
iChat
<<<
Possible UI/Usability: Drag to highlight works visually only with certain iChat > Preferences > Messages > balloon color -- //e.g.//, yes clear or purple, no aqua.
<<<
<<<
Possible UI/Usability: 9A581 Install Mac OS, start your first chat, turn on the preference to log chats — you should capture that first chat - do you?
<<<
Install Disc
<<<
~Command-X means Edit > Cut in contexts where ~Command-V does not mean undo by Edit > Paste. Workaround: ~Command-Z then still does mean Edit > Undo.
<<<
iTunes
<<<
UI/Usability: 9A581 ~Command-T shortcut to Visualizer disabled while zoomed small
<<<
Menu Bar
<<<
UI/Usability: 9A581 Menu Bar Translucent always - the translucence of the menu bar ("low alpha") denies me visual contrast even when I'm using the menu bar and without letting me ask for the classic look.
<<<
Safari
<<<
Right-click on a folder of links doesn't offer to sort it or undo the sort. Workaround: dragging the folder on and off the Desktop does.
<<<
Terminal
<<<
Possible Serious bug/ Other bug -- Tiger Terminal bash locate ran fine, but Leopard chokes:
{{{
$ locate which
locate: `/var/db/locate.database': No such file or directory
$
}}}
A workaround with side effects is:
{{{
# /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb
>>> WARNING
>>> Executing updatedb as root. This WILL reveal all filenames
>>> on your machine to all login users, which is a security risk.
#
}}}
<<<
~TextEdit
<<<
Possible UI/Usability: Visit Edit > Find > Find, choose "Full word" instead of Contains, and then type more than one word. You've created a query that can never succeed, without complaint, whoops, no matter whether you knew that you were in Full Word mode or not.
<<<
<<<
Possible UI/Usability: Visit Edit > Find > Find and ask to replace, time and again. The main text window doesn't update until after you click to accept the last suggested change.
<<<
System Preferences
<<<
Possible UI/Usability: Log in one user, log in another, try to change the startup partition, see the other user still logged in, log that user out, try again. Notice you have to relaunch System Preferences to make progress.
<<<
////
''10.5 Leopard Mac OS X Client'' with Vista Windows plus an Apple Time Machine configured more as a source code version control system, not so much as backup per se:
Setup like Tiger but adapted:
# Partition the boot disk with an Apple Partition Map into two partitions.
# Partition the boot disk with a GUID Partition Table into one partition.
# Install as for Tiger below.
# Run the Boot Camp Assistant to carve off ~32 ~GiB at the end to run Windows.
# Insert the Leopard disc to install Apple software for Windows.
# Rename the Windows hard drive.
# Back in Mac OS add a Backups partition by shrinking the Macintosh HD and asking to add it.
# Turn on Time Machine.
That detour into an Apple Partition Map sounds like a silly urban rumour, feels necessary to forget some of the history of the disk in some test cases.
''10.4 Tiger Mac OS X Client''
Setup:
# Install, ~Command-Q to Skip the registration, give the first user [[Your Wiki Name]].
# Choose Apple > Software Update to pull updates from the web, restart if prompted.
# Get new Mac boot firmware if [[Apple.com Boot ROM & SMC version numbers|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303880]] says you need to.
# Add admin, switch you down to standard user.
# Add a US keyboard mapping, if you don't have one already.
# Boot the install disc to run Disk Utility > First Aid > Repair Disk Permissions
See also: [[Mac OS X Tweaks]]
////
See also: [[Mac OS X Setup]], [[Mac Downloads]]
10.4 Tiger Mac OS X Client ...
''Tweaks For Integrity:''
Back up as needed.
Restart to run Disk Utility > First Aid > Repair Disk Permissions and Repair Disk from the install disc image, often enough.
iChat: Turn off Video > Camera Enabled to withdraw false invitation (when network refuses video stream)
''Tweaks For Convenience:''
Dashboard: local weather degrees C lo/hi, transliterator, unit converter
Dock > Keep In Dock: Terminal, ~TextEdit (and not also Disk Utility)
Downloads: Citrix ICA Client (for corporate VPN)
Downloads: Firefox (for corporate VPN) (inheriting nothing from Safari and not default browser)
Downloads: [[TiddlyWiki]] Firefox plugin (for editing our company's [[Hippy Wikis]] and wiki blogs)
iChat: Turn off Video > Microphone Enabled, Camera Enabled to accept only the gentler interruption of text chat
Terminal ~/.bash_profile
''Tweaks For Security:''
Mac OS X > System Preferences:
Sharing > Computer Name = (the short machine name from the label)
Accounts > Login Options > Automatic login = Disabled
Security > General > Yes to Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver
Screen Saver > Hot Corners > Lower Left = Start Screen Saver
iChat > Preferences > Messages > Yes to Automatically save chat transcripts
iTunes > Preferences > Advanced > No to Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library
[[Welcome]]
[[Instructions]]
[[Cautions]]
[[Downloads]]
[[Picks]]
[[Tools]]
[[Work In Progress]]
[[Quotables]]
[[Grokkables]]
[[Recommendations]]
[[Thank You]]
[[Contact Me]]
////
Reinstalling Vista can temporarily turn off all the Internet defences you've download via Windows Update since you first received the install disc ...
Microsoft.com has a fix for this.
Reinstalling Vista with the Internet connected does download the defences into the install process, potentially closing this window of vulnerability.
Actually closing the vulnerability requires skill & attention. The 2006-11 RTM Enterprise 32-bit Vista says it's helping you, if you reinstall Vista with the Internet connected. But then only the download of the patches is automagic, not also the install of the patches. You're supposed to figure out how to install the patches before you reconnect the net.
////
These articles talk of bizarre computer behaviour that I have not yet understood.
////
These articles discuss info made available to company employees only under ~Non-Disclosure Agreements (~NDAs).
Management requires that you understand the relevant NDA before you handle this info.
See also: [[Was Public]]
////
I enjoy the web services I get for typing out a name/ age/ gender/ etc., without additional charge:
<<<
[[Second Life]] - the premier three-dimensional chat world, no charge to play
<<<
I also enjoy the web services I get when I identify myself by credit card, without agreeing to any charges:
<<<
[[Amazon.com Search Inside The Book|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/10197041/002-7113140-3816829]] - see pages from books found in search, compare Google Books
<<<
To defend myself against spam, I sometimes give out the personal information of the people who should be fighting spam more effectively, rather than my own. I've registered Bill Gates, George Bush, Steve Jobs, and Tony Blair at one web site or another. Sometimes instead I give out the personal information of the ~CEO of the company asking for my information
////
A semi-anonymous guru/ relation/ friend gives me advice re the abstruse mysteries of [[Wired Linux]] and [[Wireless Linux]] ...
----
Do several critical things, googling and doing man pages as necessary ...
* ip addr
should report any assigned IP addresses, starting with the loopback device 127.0.0.1 and then iterating through all available ~NICs.
* iwconfig
will list all wireless devices, their ~ESSIDs and encryption stati.
I don't know how to get to network setup in knoppix, but it should be as simple as in ~SuSE or Windows Control Panel. You need to specify:
* DHCP Client or static IP addresses
If not DHCP then you need to specify
* Default Gateway (router) IP address (IPA)
* NIC IPA
Depending on the ~WiFi card you may need to specify
* ESSID
* Encryption, if any
* Access point (router) MAC address
What appears to be different between work and home is most likely the network address or firewall settings.
Your home network address is determined by what you set up in your router. If you haven't touched the router it prolly defaults to
<<<
192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0
<<<
Your work network may be something entirely different. If the NIC is a DHCP client and has set itself up according to the work settings, then it may still be looking for that, while your home router has a different scheme.
Within the global network address and netmask above you prolly will have a default address for the router of
<<<
192.168.0.1/255.255.255.0
<<<
and probably a DHCP server set up on the router.
The success of this scheme depends on your having set your network card to look for an IP address as a DHCP client. The alternative is to set the card up with static IP addresses, but AFAICT you just plugged and chugged, so it is prolly a DHCP client.
It usually helps to assign a default gateway IPA. DHCP doesn't do a very good job of that in general: you need to tell the NIC the answer to "who's my daddy?" I don't know either knoppix or mac network setup, but surely they have a way of configuring your NIC. The keyword is "default gateway", in this case 192.168.0.1/255.255.255.0.
Another rather generally important, if not critical, setting is to tell your wireless NIC who's its mommy, that is, what is the MAC address of the access point that is serving it - i.e., the MAC address of the router.
BOTH the work/MAC and home/Linux values for default gateway, access point, and network address prolly will be different, and can only be occasionally solved by the DHCP server without intervention.
And once past all this there are issues of WEP/WAP encryption and a host of other issues, not to mention the firewall.
Linux defaults to a lockdown as far as firewall settings are concerned. So it is quite possible that your Knoppix is set up to allow no intruders whatever. So you need to figure out how to examine the firewall in Knoppix.
The basic firewall is called iptables, but there is a host of GUI clients to ease its use. The best I've found is Guarddog from
www.simonzone.com, free of course.
The quickest way to find out if the firewall is blocking your access is to type the following in a terminal:
<<<
dmesg
<<<
This prints out the messages from the kernel. If you get a raft of messages that look like
ABORTED IN=ath0 OUT= MAC=... SRC=... DST=... LEN=... TOS=... PREC=... TTL=... ID=... DF PROTO=TCP SPT=80 DPT=... SEQ=... ACK=... WINDOW=... RES=... ACK RST URGP=...
then you can be pretty sure the firewall is complaining. The key things to look for are the SRC (source) IP address DST (destination) IPA, and DPT (Destination Port).
This example above tells me that my ~WiFi card (/dev/ath0 with the specified MAC address) received a packet from a ... IPA ... destined for the IPA of the ~WiFi card (...). It was a TCP (vice UDP) packet in HTML format (Source port 80) trying to access my (Destination) port ... This is very high numbered port and at present undefined, so there was something nefarious at work and the firewall said, fuggedaboutit: DROPPED.
If you want ...
* https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
is a wonderful site that will teach you all manner of stuff about ports and test your firewall as well.
----
////
A friend reports Linux Fedora Core 4/ Firefox 1.0.8 chokes a little over these large (~1 ~MiB) ~TiddlyWiki pages, spamming you with noise, although the Konqueror 3.5.3-0.2.fc4 browser also found in that Linux does work.
I have a quote of the noise, somewhere.
See also: [[Web Page Size Max]]
////
I have published some more or less awful source code thru the years ...
Members.aol.com:
<<<
[[1sh|http://members.aol.com/plscsi/tools/1sh/]] -- edit your Terminal input
[[CloudPlat|http://members.aol.com/ppaatt/cloudplat/]] -- make a free space in the cloud
[[OFPong|http://members.aol.com/plforth/ofpong]] -- boot Pong in place of PPC Mac OS
[[PLScsi|http://members.aol.com/plscsi]] -- chat SCSI into your storage
<<<
Wiki.python.org:
<<<
[[ctypes|http://wiki.python.org/moin/ctypes]] -- answer ~FAQs such as how to send & receiveSome bytes
[[decimal|http://wiki.python.org/moin/decimal]] -- round off estimates in engineering and scientific notation
[[doctest|http://wiki.python.org/moin/doctest]] -- halt after n-th failure
[[glob|http://wiki.python.org/moin/glob]] -- list names in folders that match Unix shell patterns
__hashlib__ -- work like openssl where openssl is missing or lacks a digest
__msvcrt__ -- turn off end-of-line translation for stdin and stdout across platforms
__random__ -- shuffle the lines of a file
<<<
Wiki.secondlife.com [[Ppaatt Lynagh|http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Ppaatt_Lynagh]]:
<<<
As described at [[Second Things]]
<<<
P.S. As yet, this article overlaps some with the [[Work In Progress]] article.
////
You probably don't want to read this article carefully.
This article exists to persuade our More > Missing menu to work correctly.
Our More > Missing menu links you to "orphan" articles that you can reach from the home page of this wiki in no other way. Left to itself, that menu would list not only true orphans but would then also erroneously list articles reached only by tags, thus unacceptably reducing the value of that menu to you.
Writing out the following two statements in full persuades the More > Missing menu to work correctly.
1. Our Tags menu links you to tag articles that list other articles:
<<<
[[Bugs]]
[[C]]
[[Cautionary]]
[[Games]]
[[How To Wiki]]
[[Lab Hardware]]
[[Lab Software]]
[[Linux]]
[[Mac]]
[[Pat LaVarre]]
[[Picked]]
[[Python]]
[[Second Living]]
[[Slang]]
[[Sociolinguistical]]
[[Standard Interfaces]]
[[Template Articles]]
[[Welcoming]]
[[Wiki Rollout]]
[[Windows]]
<<<
2. The tag articles of our Tags menu then link together the articles that share the tag:
<<<
[[Bugs]]: [[Bugs.blogger.com]], [[Bugs.google.com]], [[Bugs.python.org]], [[Bugs.sun.com]], [[Bugs.tinyurl.com]], [[Bugs.wikipedia.org]], [[Python Across Platforms]], [[SourceForge 1742798]], ...
[[C]]: [[Consciously Endian Code]], ...
[[Linux]]: [[Linux Plus]], ...
[[Mac]]: [[Apple PrintScreen]], [[Mac Chords]], [[Play Another iPod]], ...
[[Mysterious]]: [[Apple Bug Categories]], [[Apple TBDMDDN]], [[No Wiki Blog Here]], [[Peeking E-Mail]], ...
[[Python]]: [[BSCE Python]], [[Random Python]], ...
[[Second Living]]: [[AWSD Deciphered]], [[Bending Second Reality]], [[Second Life News]], [[Second Life Linux]], [[Second Profile Photo]], [[Second Wikipedia]], ...
[[Sociolinguistical]]: [[The Four Freedoms]], [[Plain English LGPL]], [[Guerilla Wikis]], ...
[[Standard Interfaces]]: [[3.0 USB SuperSpeed]], ...
[[Windows]]: [[Microsoft.com Helps Install]], [[Windows Bats]], [[Windows Nuggets]], [[Windows Unix Bats]]
<<<
////
My ongoing wiki contributions include:
<<<
http://wiki.python.org/moin/ctypes
http://wiki.python.org/moin/glob
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Ppaatt_Lynagh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pelavarre
<<<
My past efforts towards blogging/ open source/ wiki include:
<<<
http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=Pat+LaVarre - the Usenet chat world
http://home.comcast.net/~plavarre/ - my home with my ISP nowadays
http://members.aol.com/plforth/ofpong/ - play Pong rather than booting Mac OS X
http://members.aol.com/plscsi/ - pass the hex of SCSI thru an operating system, more or less transparently
http://members.aol.com/plscsi/cdbcomplete.html - learn the thirteen cases of negotiating SCSI data bursts
<<<
////
Things I hoped [[To Do]] but then failed to make time for ...
2007-10-02 Money.cnn.com [[Starbucks coffee-to-go bundles their choice of a free iTune|http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/24/news/companies/bc.apfn.starbucks.itunes.ap/]] pushed 2007-09-24 by http://livepage.apple.com/
2007-09-25 Burning Life festival in Second Life til ~10-01
////
These articles try to introduce me to you.
////
So some e-mail clients rudely act as if no other clients shared the e-mail service, deleting e-mail so that my other clients don't ever see it.
I hear Mac Mail can be configured for a POP mode that doesn't do this.
I hope that's true ...
////
These are many of the web services that I enjoy.
I hope you find some of these web services new to you, and all of them useful.
////
Joys of the web include my [[Second Life Picks]] and [[Gather More E-Mail]] and:
<<<
[[Free Web Services]]
[[Nearly Free Web Services]]
[[Bundled Web Services]]
[[Purchased Web Services]]
[[Intriguing Web Services]]
<<<
////
So what do the Gnu.org [[LGPL|http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lgpl.html]] and [[GPL|http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html]] mean, in plain English?
I am not a lawyer, and I have an opinion.
----
Some people leave you free to copy their stuff at your own risk. If you or those people are acting in the US without the advice of a lawyer, then likely you and they are underestimating the legal risks involved.
Some people assert copyright to zero your risk by forbidding you to copy their stuff ever, but then add a license to let you copy their stuff much of the time. The LGPL and GPL are licenses that let you copy their stuff much of the time.
When you assert copyright and specify a license, then people have to find you again if they want to copy your stuff under another license. You can help by offering a family of licenses, such as "the LGPL February 1999 version 2.1 or any later version". The [[Linux/COPYING|http://lxr.linux.no/source/COPYING]] license currently references the June 1991 GPL version 2 but adds clarifying notes.
----
No two people on Earth agree on exactly what the Gnu.org licenses mean, in plain English.
Copies you make for your own use may be "fair use", free of copy restrictions in US copyright law. Copies you make for confidential internal use by your colleagues at work may be "fair use". Copies you make to give away are "redistributions", governed by the copy restrictions of US copyright law.
For the copies governed by the copy restrictions of US copyright law, the Gnu licenses require you to do more than copy and edit.
The Gnu licenses may require you to assert copyright over your edits.
The Gnu licenses may require you to include talk of copyright, license, and warranty with your source and to leave any such talk in place in the source and the user interface of the edited work.
The Gnu licenses do require you to publish copies of your edits, with your copyright limited by the same license as the original work.
----
The LGPL differs from the GPL by only requiring you to publish copies of your edits of the original work, not also copies of any work you link with the original work.
////
My iPod runs out of battery charge if I listen to it all day long.
The iTunes copy restrictions for iPod's then interfere with my life if I plug the iPod in to whatever computer I have at hand. iTunes tells me I can "erase and sync" or "cancel". iTunes doesn't mention that I can just play the music.
To just play my tunes, I have to persuade Mac OS X to leave the iPod on the Desktop even after iTunes "cancels" it.
The script I run to keep my iPod around is:
{{{
#!/bin/bash -x
cd '/Volumes/P DOE/'
ls -1 iPod_Control/Music/F0[012]/ | grep -v '^$' | grep -v '/' | wc -l
read line
open iPod_Control/Music/F0[012]/
}}}
(And likely I should try F0? or F0* to accomodate iPod's larger than my ~1 GB.)
////
I was born again in the [[Second Life]] on 2007-09-01.
I enjoy the play of creating things that move and change shape. Wiki.secondlife.com [[Ppaatt Lynagh|http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Ppaatt_Lynagh]] is my page of contributions there. I stepped thru Wiki.secondlife.com [[LSL Portal|http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Portal]] to place most of my contributions. Within this wikiblog, the article [[Second Things]] is my collection of ideas of things to make.
To defend my anonymity, I change my appearance at random, often presenting one of the default body shapes, color, clothing, etc. Same as plain text chat, looking at me in Second Life tells you nothing of my real age, ethnicity, shape, color, etc. I like that.
I found my first free Linden dollars on 2007-09-16: I "camp" while scripting to earn L$1 for each 5 minutes presence of my avatar.
See also: [[LSL Chatbot]], [[Tiny Desktop Lab]]
////
I enjoy the web services that I pay to receive:
<<<
[[Apple Store|http://www.apple.com/store/]] - amazingly beautiful stuff
[[BusTrace.com|http://bustrace.com]] = a tool for ~US$1000 + ~US$400/upgrade that lets you see Windows talking SCSI and USB to block storage devices
[[Comcast|http://comcast.net]] - the broadband Internet Service Provider
[[Mac.com|http://mac.com]] - the web service that Apple sells, not yet insanely great
[[Nlzero.com|http://nlzero.com]] - the plain text "noise level zero" chat world left over from Byte magazine<<<
////
These articles talk of the Python programming language.
////
We write Python scripts to run on Apple Mac OS X, Linux, Microsoft Windows, etc.
We test for Microsoft Windows with code like:
{{{
if not (platform.system() in ('Microsoft', 'Windows')):
}}}
The Bugs.python.org thread of [[platform system may be Windows or Microsoft since Vista|http://bugs.python.org/issue1082]] is our effort to make the test for Windows alone work, without requiring also the test for Microsoft, now in 2006-11 Vista Windows same as before in XP Windows.
See also: platform.release(), platform.uname()
66 brief & pithy claims:
# "A blogging system that works keeps me writing."
# "A neutral point of view exists." -- Wikipedia, paraphrased
# "An alliance with a powerful person is never safe." -- Phaedrus
# "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." -- P. Greenspun
# "Any ten people less sensible than one, any hundred less sensible than ten, and so it goes."
# "Anything typed into a computer is approximately not private."<br/><br/>
# "Backing up less than everything is backing up less than enough."
# "Be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send." -- J. Postel<br/><br/>
# "Can't be thought, because can't be said."
# "Change is bad for interoperability. Only in death are there no changes."
# "Computers don't rot links, people do."
# "Curse the spammers and despair."<br/><br/>
# "Dead folks can't lead nobody nowhere." -- E. Pincham
# "Drawn in plain text is not chickenpox spam."<br/><br/>
# "Engineering is the art of proceeding on insufficient information."
# "Everything is a string. Digital numbers have value and length."
# "Exactly the kind of software that makes the uninitiated feel stupid." -- M. Asay<br/><br/>
# "Foolish, was I? Mmm. That's not the first time, nor the last."<br/><br/>
# "God delights in us." -- G. Thomas
# "God ... said, 'I am making everything new!'" -- Revelation 21:1-5 (NIV)<br/><br/>
# "Help me think, don't think for me."
# "Humble as an engineer."<br/><br/>
# "I am tormented by the fear of having impaired my meaning in seeking to render it more clear." -- A. De Tocqueville
# "I designed my English. When it doesn't work, I own the error."
# "I of course write the preface 'I trust already you know' when in fact I'm not sure."
# "I protest! I do hate giving in to the machine. The machine should yield to me."
# "If it doesn't repeat, it's not yet a problem."
# "If you don't fail often, you're not learning much."
# "I'm almost dead, and so are you, and so were we both on the days we were born."
# "Intentionally left mostly blank as yet."<br/><br/>
# "Jesus wept." -- John 11:35 (KJV, NIV, etc.)<br/><br/>
# "Let's all be different together."
# "Life witnessed never matches life reported, aye."<br/><br/>
# "Make it easy for people to do the right thing, and then more do."
# "Make it hard for people to do one wrong thing, and they'll choose another."
# "Most customer service systems are incapable of accepting technical input."<br/><br/>
# "Nothing digital works well when more than half full."
# "Of course I try not to let my ignorance keep me from speaking."
# "Patenting computer code isn't clearly moral."
# Q: "Don't you find it a little odd to be quoting yourself to probe a point?" A: "No."<br/><br/>
# "Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers." -- E. S. Raymond
# "'Reserved' is reserved to mean something else."<br/><br/>
# "She who ships first wins."
# "Sociolinguistics is the study of peoples divided by a common language."
# "Software that works is precious. Users don't idly discard it." -- T. Kidder
# "Some links don't rot quickly enough."<br/><br/>
# "Takes noise to add signal."
# "Takes work to add value."
# "Thank you for donating matter into Google space!"
# "The computing scientist [is] confused by the complexities of [her/his] own making." -- E. W. Dijkstra
# "The delightful thing about standards is that we have so many to choose from."
# "The difference between a novice and a guru is that the guru has made many more errors."
# "The English changes over time, but the plain hex does not lie."
# "The only problem with seeing too much is that it makes you insane." -- Phaedrus
# "The spiteful thinking is, if you're going to casually misunderstand me, then I'm going to help you make a blazing fool of yourself, so at least I get a laugh out of the pain."
# "The time history of code is a visual art."
# "Theory does not explain why computers mostly work, much less predict when they work reliably."
# "There's no point in criticising people: they don't hear you anyhow."
# "There is no wrong way to spell word."
# "Thruput is the first measure of quality."
# "Two watches don't tell the time." -- T13.org, paraphrased<br/><br/>
# "W W W stands for the World Wide Wait."
# "We didn't know that bugs were allowed."
# "What distinguishes a hang from a pause is the impatience of the observer."
# "What you see should be what I got. Works at my desk."
# "With 'should' and 'ought' I shall have nothing to do!" -- D. H. Lawrence<br/><br/>
Got comments? Answer me at [[Contact Me]].
////
Random numbers in Python as described 2007-09-21 by [[Google Site:Docs.python.org Random|http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3ADocs.python.org+Random]] ...
''[[from os|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-os.html]] [[import urandom|http://docs.python.org/lib/os-miscfunc.html]]''
<<<
os.urandom(256 / 8)
<<<
''[[import linecache|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-linecache.html]]'' examples:
<<<
linecache.getline('/etc/passwd', 4)
<<<
''[[import random|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-random.html]]'' examples
<<<
random.random()
random.randrange(6)
random.choice(['apple', 'pear', 'banana'])
random.sample(xrange(100), 10)
<nowiki>#</nowiki> some of these come from [[tut tour mathematics random|http://docs.python.org/tut/node12.html]]
<<<
''[[import uuid|http://docs.python.org/lib/module-uuid.html]]''
<<<
implementations of [[RFC4122|http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc4122.html]]
<<<
////
The recommendations I write tell you the qualities that I admire in my colleagues, thus something of what my own aspirations are. The [[LinkedIn.com Pat LaVarre|http://www.linkedin.com/in/plavarre]] page reports that I recommend ...
''Michael Mordue: Recruiter''
Michael listens. Michael listens so remarkably well that taking a cold call from Michael is a pleasure. Talking to Michael feels like talking to the person that the boss of your boss should be.
July 8, 2007
Top qualities: Personable, Expert, High Integrity
Pat ~LaVarre hired Michael in 2004.
''Hiro Oribe: Firmware Engineer at Iomega Corporation''
Hiro rapidly delivers firmware that just plain works forever thereafter. Hiro works first to deeply understand what the host and the user expect from the device, then creatively exceeds those expectations. Hiro's past includes creating the first example of how the Apple iPod connects to a host: specifically the Hagiwara bus-powered ~SmartMedia card reader that was the first USB Bulk Only Transport device on Earth.
July 10, 2007
Pat ~LaVarre (Design Engineer - Firmware, Software) worked directly with Hiro at Iomega.
''Thane Heninger: Software Engineer at Iomega''
Thane develops best-of-breed kernel & app software that integrates new devices into Mac and Linux and Windows. Thane accurately estimates schedule & cost and then strives to beat those reasonable expectations. Thane discovers early what extra work the device must do to look and feel native on the Mac.
July 18, 2007
Pat ~LaVarre (Design Engineer - Firmware, Software) worked directly with Thane at Iomega.
''Girish Desai: Sr. Firmware Engineer at Lexar Media''
Girish is technically innovative: inventing tunnels thru standard protocols, mathematically characterizing systems, discovering 3X efficiencies. Girish is an aggressive problem solver: identifying root cause and designing workarounds for field reports of trouble in hours, not weeks.
July 7, 2007
Pat ~LaVarre (Design Engineer - Software, Firmware, Hardware) worked with Girish at Lexar Media.
////
LSL lists divide into elements indexed by the integers 0, 1, 2, etc.
If we conventionally structure the list of words to execute so that the value of each parameter of a call appears in the list at its own index, we end up with Reverse Polish lists structured as:
# the indexed parameters, with a pointer value substituted for any list parameter
# the linked list of elements of list parameters, indexed by pointer values
# the name of the routine
For example ...
An LSL expression meaning teleport down the Z axis is:
{{{
llSetPos(llGetPos() + <0.0, 0.0, -2.1>);
}}}
That same expression, translated into a Polish expression lan