Rei - Through The Wire

Blog Moved

2005-05-03T21:48:00.001+01:00

This blog has been moved to http://luisrei.com

Another blog

2005-03-02T01:13:00.000Z

My friend Claudio Alves recently started his own blog. Looks like he's updating it frequently (unlike my blog). It's in portuguese so don't bother if you don't speak the language.

The End of Enterprise

2005-02-07T15:28:00.000Z

What the hell? Enterprise is the best Star Trek show since TOS!!! I mean TNG should've been called Star Trek Boring Fanatic Righteousness. Voyager was for the most part boring. The only spin-off that was actually good was DS9 and the first 3 seasons mostly sucked. Sure some of the most recent episodes (Deadalus and Observer Effect) were really bad but for the most part Enterprise has been one of the best sci-fi shows out there. In fact the only sci-fi shows i can think of as better than ST:ENT in recent years are Stargate and Farscape. The later is already dead while the former probably won't last more than another season (Season 9).
Back to my initial question: WHAT THE HELL??? I like others must blame this on UPN and Paramount for moving the show to the Friday night slot (the infamous “Kill a show slot"). Maybe we can still save it.

NationStates

2005-02-07T01:57:00.000Z

In all the vast wealth of information which flows through IRC, namely #archspace I found Jennifer Government: NationStates. From the FAQ:

Jennifer Government: NationStates is a nation simulation game. You create your own country, fashioned after your own ideals, and care for its people. Either that or you deliberately torture them. It's really up to you.

Sounds fun. I already created my nation.

The Sandman

2005-02-05T14:17:00.000Z

I'm currently reading The Sandman by Neil Gaiman.

... And Then I'm Gone

2005-02-05T14:04:00.000Z

Archspace set is over for me, at least for the next 2 weeks or so. Even though it only lasted 3 days for me it was the most fun I've ever had in an AS set. Our final (and only) post in the forums can be found here -"Thats what I call war".

Funny thing is this is the second set in a row my first target is Nighty. gg.
Again, congrats to Cyph. gg.

Furion
F.F.F.

The Wait

2005-01-30T01:42:00.000Z

Bored to death waiting for AS to reset I saw a few funny things around the web:
This Online Kinky Test - a vampire?!? 218 is kinda low score but i'm still young ;)
hehehe good work guys.
And if you're portuguese you might find this funny too.
And while we're on the topic:

In October 2004 it was discovered by MaxPatrol team that it is possible to defeat Microsoft® Windows® XP SP2 Heap protection and Data Execution Prevention mechanism.

Haven't read it yet tough.

Bash.org gets RSS Feed!

2005-01-24T15:48:00.000Z

Check it out.

Predictions

2005-01-10T11:59:00.000Z

Cringley just put up his 2005 predictions along with his comments on his 2004 predictions... Here's what I had to say back then about his predictions (2004 slashdot post) - my accuracy was 100% :P. I'm not going to bother this year...
PS: For all who predicted I'd be back playing AS in no time: you're right... what can I say? I'm addicted to it.

After the coma

2005-01-05T21:34:00.000Z

It happened almost two weeks ago (I think). Archspace was no longer being fun and I have exams now (January and February) so I made the decision to retire. It was the night before Christmas... hum... no it was a few days after that but it was late, 4am or something so I was confused... Anyway the game itself was and still is fun but the thing is: I play to win. If I can't win the game just isn't fun. And the thing about AS is it's a team game as you might have guessed if you read my previous post on the subject. Without team-playing it's no fun and off course, you can't win. That's double no-fun!!! The level of coordination was just too low - people went AWOL in the middle of wars, failed to show up for planned wars and so on... but those are not huge problems - yeah it sucks but the game went on. However, if you want to win and in those circumstances winning meant defeating the nº1 council you actually need SOME coordination and preparation - there was little of that :(. Anyway, kudos to my council speaker Nimlot he was the most reliable member of the council. I'm not sure if i'm going to play next set, it all depends: I'll have a lot more work than I've had so far and therefore a lot less free time. Even if I do find the time I'm not sure I'll play again - not unless I can solve the coordination problems or they solve themselves (yeah right! Problems solving themselves... doesn't happen often unfortunately).
Now that I'm out of AS I've been doing other stuff - catching up with the news (you know there was like this huge tsunami thing in Asia?), watching episodes from a few series and a few other things like studying and stuff. I imagine it's quite like waking up from a coma: you realize that the world around you has changed and you have a huge list of things to do - like installing that new hard drive you got for your birthday... ;)

BIRTHDAY!!!!

2004-12-06T02:23:00.000Z

I'm now 20 years old.

Python and The World of Tomorrow

2004-11-30T21:13:00.000Z

Python 2.4 is out and here are the highlights.

SCO.com got hacked again (screenshot) - with a lot of class. Their new slogan as far as I am concerned is "We own all your code pay us all your money." - damn good description of their business plan (tough the alternative would've been cool too: "All your codebase are belong to us"). For some reason, some people still think that defacing SCO's site is bad. Relax guys! I mean those people have called the OSS community a bunch of thieves, puppets, communists and probably, somewhere between the lines (or openly, didn't bother checking), terrorists. What more can they say? Somehow I don't think "vandals" will quite cut it. Kudos realloc dude.

Found the best Gnome 2.8 walk through yet.

The Unreal Tournment series have lots of cool mods but Damnation just rocks.

The upcoming Epia MS just made it into my "To Buy List".

Return to Normality... Sorta

2004-11-25T23:06:00.000Z

With my fully-functional computer back and Archspace (AS) resetting I can now return to my daily routine which is as unpredictable as routines get. I still have a backlog of things to do, namely burn DVDs, read blogs, read emails, get back to learning python and for a change, maybe, just maybe, STUDY! Or maybe not... after all, the next AS set begins on Dec 4...
Anyway, I'm sure I'll eventually gather the patience and time to try Markdown - I've always liked TXT and hated anything ending with ML (like HTML) tough XML looks cool - and it starts with an X!!!

Cooling Down

2004-11-24T10:38:00.000Z

Time to cool down from the frenzy of the past few weeks. I've been playing a MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) strategy game called Archspace. I had tried it before, months ago for about two weeks but the game ended before I actually learned how to play. This time, even tough I arrived late in the set (each time someone conquers the empire, the game resets) - id 915, the game lasted long enough for me to learn how to play and have a lot of fun. I knew three guys playing the game (all of which are my colleagues at Chefax R&D) and joined a council - a group of players who are usually allies - named SS Black Sun. We were in the top ten for most of the game and an offshoot named SS White Sun ended in tenth place but there were a few people missing there. I ended the game in an allied council, WD (WarDogs). The last few days of the set were absolutely brutal: the council that had been in the second place since I joined in was destroyed - we played a large part in its destruction. We took a lot of planets but lost a lot of ships. Than we had to deal with members of that council that had jumped out of it before its annihilation and in our weakened state we become a target for councils that wouldn't otherwise have dared attack us. Since Sunday morning up until Thursday morning we were continually at war. Then the game ended. While I didn't make it to the top ten, I ended in the 32nd place which I think is great for a first time. I owe this 'accomplishment' to my fellow council members, especially: Veanaro, Thorev, Nimlot, Tok'ra and xerux. I'm also in debt to our allies WD who helped me big time, even admitting me to their council and protecting me by sending me allied fleets when I was fleet-less and watching my planets being taken from me (this planet stealing from a fleet-less player is adequately called raping). WD finished in third place - way to go guys! The second place was taken by a subcouncil of the council that took the first place - Darkness Falls (DF).
Overall, coordinating a campaign over IRC and MSN messenger, sometimes with people from the other side of world was a lot of fun. Watching a mighty armada, MY Armada, be totally decimated in a single attack against a seemingly weaker opponent wasn't all that much fun to watch - even tough it was only a bunch of triangles (each representing a fleet). It was a lot more fun when after a series of lost battles, with the help of allies, we managed to take a much hated foe and watch as he was raped to death by various players (me included). The great thing about this MMO is that every opponent and ally is a real person, with dreams and hopes (except the empire which is vicious but simple AI - if you can even call it that :P). Each player is inherently different: when you crush them, some stay down, others try to get back up on their feet, some move on , others come back for revenge (and get beaten down again :D). Some are schizophrenic, others are paranoid. Some fearless to the point of being suicidal (coff coff) others are cowards. And like the jedis in KoTOR some only know how to solve their problems one way (:D) like jedi guardians and others always try diplomacy like jedi consulars.
Between strategy, battle tactics, management, diplomacy and spying, the fun never really ends - except when the set ends :(.

HL2 & Steam

2004-11-19T02:20:00.000Z

I'm going to avoid the issue of why I haven't blogged for so long (at least in this post) and say what I have to say - that's what blogs are for.

The world+dog knows by now that Valve has released Half Life 2, the much anticipated sequel to Hal Life. Unfortunatelly they also decided (read the discussion - example 1, example 2) that it is acceptable to treat their clients like crap just to annoy - not stop - software pirates. That's what DRM does in general but valve's steam is particularly good at it.

Guess who is not getting my money this xmas? That's right, valve! I'm not a big HL fan and I don't think it's worth humiliating myself giving money to people who would have no consideration or respect for me upon becoming their customer. Oh! And they would also treat me worse than a criminal. I've bought very few albums (almost none) this past 4 or so years because of the way the record labels (RIAA) treat their customers, if more VG developers start doing business the way valve is, I'm switching to some other form of entertainment - maybe board games.

Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You

2004-11-07T10:00:00.000Z

For The Record

2004-11-02T20:48:00.000Z

I HATE JAVA!
I HATE JAVA!
I HATE JAVA!

and

I HATE JAVA APPLETS!
I HATE JAVA APPLETS!
I HATE JAVA APPLETS!

Kill all java programmers!
Death to Sun!

Halo: The Fun Never Stops

2004-11-02T09:59:00.000Z

Playing Halo wasn't all that fun... certainly not as entertaining as FarCry (Best FPS currently available) or Doom 3 (second best). Nevertheless, I've had more fun with it than any other game. Red Vs Blue rocks and browsing around I've found stuff like this (Jumping Warthog Batman!). Now that's comedy!

Random Noise Part 2

2004-10-29T22:16:00.000+01:00

Jon Stewart on Crossfire - get it via Bittorrent or IFILM. The following Daily Show (IFILM) and some sort of response from the crossfire guys. The Bowtie journalist (as I will hence-forth refer to Tucker Carlson) was stupid enough to try to make fun of a professional comedian (the best since Jerry Seinfeld retired). The result? He made an ass of himself on international TV.

Jabber for MSN messenger. How nice considering that Relax just got the jabber server up @chefax he has also been experimenting with wikis. Wikis are overused and abused; their default UIs (which most people don't change) are not only ugly it's also BAD (for the use that they are given). Stop you are hurting the web. That doesn't mean that I hate wikis. I like wikis. Wikipedia rules (favorite definition).

Speaking of Relax, if it hadn’t been for him I would've never realized that the porn community (???) is an early adopter of social technologies. But before we go any deeper (no pun intended) into that subject, I would like to link to this blog.
I finally saw I, Robot - best movie I've seen in a couple of years (at least). I only read Asimov's Foundation books which are the best sci-fi books in my library. I regret not having read the others. It now feels kind of heretic being interested in AI (and related subjects) and not having read Asimov's classic science fiction books on the subject.

Which File Extension are You?

2004-10-27T01:56:00.000+01:00

Which File Extension are You?

Magnatune

2004-10-26T13:59:00.000+01:00

Magnatune (via Doug Kaye, previous post), from their webpage:

We're a record label. But we're not evil.
We call it "try before you buy." It's the shareware model applied to music. Listen to 326 complete MP3 albums we've picked (not 30 second snippets).
We let the music sell itself, because we think that's the best way to get you excited by it.
Our selection is intentionally small: we never waste your time with mediocre music.
If you like what you hear, download an album for as little as $5 (you pick the price), or buy a real CD, or license our music for commercial use.
Artists keep half of every purchase. And unlike most record labels, our artists keep all the rights to their music.
No major label connections and no venture capital.
We are not evil.

I only found it less than 30 minutes ago and I've already decided to purchase an album (as soon as I get myself a credit card). The album in question is Ehren Starks - The Depths of a Year and I'm listening to it as I type this. After thinking for a while about it, I'm going with the physical CD, I think the security and the options (rip it yourself, play it in a normal stereo without mp3 support - like the one currently in my car) are worth the extra ~$8 USD.
Final remark: Magnatune is a good idea, a good site and a good service.

The Da Vinci Code

2004-10-26T01:12:00.000+01:00

When I first heard of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code I assumed it was just another over hyped thriller with the same old dynamics and a rehashed story. This weekend I was happy to be proven wrong. I'm used to seeing right thru a plot long before it begins to unfold and this book was no exception (for the most part). What was indeed exceptional was the pace at which the story progressed and revelations were made, it gave quite an intensity to the book - that and the fact that I had a quite large, unintentional dose of caffeine which kept me awake and in a somewhat excited state (like an electron after being radiated with enough energy to make it go to the other side of the universe and back before it even left) during the entire weekend.
I'm still not myself (whatever that means) - I’ve been acting weird and confused all day - more so than usually.
Anyway, the book was interesting and I recommend it to anyone who has too little blood in the caffeine circulating through his or her body. Whatever.

led pr0n

2004-10-24T13:30:00.000+01:00

This post is rated X. (Via Adam)

Delicious Usefulness

2004-10-24T01:06:00.000+01:00

When I began to use del.icio.us its usefulness was somewhat limited. I had Firefox's Bookmarks Synchronizer Extension and I also had them stored in HTML online. I figured I could use del.icio.us for pages I found useful but not worthy of being in my firefox bookmarks or just as a temporary bookmark until I had a chance to better evaluate the page. More recently I started using them for my blogmarks and newsmarks.
It is important to explain what I mean by blogmarks since there are different definitions of that word: for Simon Willison it is simply a separate link blog; Will Pate's definition: [blogmarks -] "These are links I find around the web that I want to bookmark and blog at the same time". There may be other definitions but like Simon pointed out, the word does not seem to have a widely accepted meaning yet. So I decided to give them another meaning (someone else might also have given them this meaning before me but how likely is that?). To me, a blogmark is a link to an entry in a blog. Likewise, a newsmark is simply a link to a given news item on a given website.
If I were to bookmark every 'bookmark worthy' blog entry or news in Firefox, my bookmarks file would quickly became huge (it already is big) and chaotic. However, del.icio.us makes 'size' (as in number of bookmars) largely irrelevant: it is extremelly easy to search and organize bookmarks. It also has the added usefulness of allowing my friends, readers (both of them), and perfect strangers to see what blog entries and news items I find interesting and relevant enough to be bookmarked.
Today while reading slashdot I came across an article entitled "IBM Tells SCO Court It Can't Find AIX-on-Power Code". I found it intriguing given the fact that AIX only runs on IBM's POWER (recently POWER4 & POWER5). After reading the article it was obvious that it was one of the worst examples of reporting I had ever seen - and I've seen Fox News. But this isn't a post about the article itself so I won't comment any further tough I will give some pointers: 1, 2, 3, 4. Funny posts: 1, 2.
If I can't remember all the good sites, how can I be expected to remember all the bad ones (like LinuxWorld.com)? Well, I can't but thanks to del.icio.us, I can keep a list with all the advantages I previously mentioned for blogmarks and newsmarks. Here it is: the BadSites tag.

Desktop Search Wars

2004-10-21T23:06:00.000+01:00

The Desktop Search Wars are coming. For now, it is mainly a windows war but that is likely to change in the next 6 to 12 months. Google is the uncontested loser in technical terms tough it seems to wining in terms of popularity.
Me? I've chosen Copernic Desktop Search. Unlike GDS, it can read PDFs - given the fact that the majority of documents I have are in the PDF format you can understand why this is a requirement. It's more configurable than blinkx and has a better interface too. Both characteristics result in a more efficient, better searcher.

Tip for Firefox users: pick up Slogger.

Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars

2004-10-21T01:01:00.000+01:00

I'm sitting here typing this, listening to Aeryn's Funeral Theme - it somehow seems appropriate. I was amazed by this miniseries; Farscape was one of the best series ever, the miniseries had to live up to a high standard. And it did. In fact, in some ways, it even outdid the series. I can't get the scene were the command carriers emerge from the asteroid field of my mind. Or Rygel's underwater scenes. Breathtaking. That said, a two episode miniseries was far from enough to give a proper ending to farscape. The ending felt somewhat "Deus Ex Machina", nevertheless it was incredibly ironic: The very thing everyone was after almost destroyed them all and perhaps even more ironic is Scorpius' remark "This is insane".
I'm left with mixed feelings: I happy that the miniseries turned out this good and I'm sad because this is the end for Farscape. There will never be a series like Farscape. It was quite unique, unlike the many star treks, stargates and in some ways, even Andromeda - don't get me wrong, I like those series (especially DS9 & Andromeda) but they all feel the same (except DS9's final seasons and Andromeda's nietzschean/Tyr focused episodes). Farscape was somehow different.
So, should I be listening to Aeryn's Funeral Theme or Tchaykovsky's 1812 overture (which was played in season 3 of Farscape... or was it 4? It is all fading away so fast, like a dream after you wake up...)?

Dual Monitor

2004-10-18T12:33:00.000+01:00

I just plugged in my old CRT monitor in a dualview mode. I had the idea to do this ever since I had this extra monitor lying around but I finally got to it when I saw this article. I placed my feedreader in the second monitor and firefox in the first. When I click on a link in the feedreader it opens a new background tab in firefox, courtesy of my favorite mozilla extension: Tabbrowser Extensions. Too bad my old monitor really sucks. I can't believed how I tolerated it for so long.

Automatic Document Classification

2004-10-15T11:00:00.000+01:00

I've been having trouble organizing and finding almost anything in my 'Docs' directory and I was looking for something to do in python since I started learning it. Automatic document classification using Naive Bayesian classification seems like the ideal project. A tool to solve this problem will need to read TXTs, PDFs, PSs, HTMLs (single and multiple pages), CHMs, MS Office files, Open Office files, MS Reader files and probably a few others. Being capable of searching the web (and local drives) for related documents would also be cool; google's "related" search is a little less than perfect.

Google Desktop Search

2004-10-15T10:30:00.000+01:00

I tried to use google's latest tool yesterday but indexing takes so long I decided to leave it indexing this morning while I'm here at FEUP. I've already been told blinkx is a lot better tough I haven't tried it either.

Random Noise

2004-10-13T00:28:00.000+01:00

Cherry OS might be the best thing that has happened to Mac OS since BSD, if it manages to deliver (/.).
And while we're on the topic, who needs .Mac when you can have google? You get webmail without ads (at least for now...) or with tolerable and sometimes even useful text ads, good interface and functionality (searching, filters, labels, importing contacts from various sources), it's accessible via pop3, you can store files, blog and have a photo gallery with a 1GB limit. And the price? No, not $100/year. It's free! Oh and a lot of people actively developing tools for it should count for something.
People are finally waking up from the MySQL nightmare.
Parrot is interesting.
If I ever buy a PDA, I'll have to make an in-depth comparison between Microsoft Reader and Vade Mecum. Reader is looking a lot better from the outside.

EU invests in Grid Computing

2004-10-09T13:50:00.000+01:00

Money put to good use if you ask me. One of the projects that will receive funding from the EU is NextGRID which addresses grid computing greatest problems. NextGRID will seek architectural solutions that streamline all aspects of Grid operation: installation and maintenance of the infrastructure, development and deployment of Grid applications, user orchestration of the resulting resources, and operation of business models and processes through which the use of Grid technology can be made economically viable.

The Car of The Future

2004-10-07T15:14:00.000+01:00

Forget about KITT. If renault has its way, the car of the future will be more like KITT's arch-enemy, CARR.
But what really scares the hell out of me is that some (obviously insane) people think it's a good idea to put Microsoft Windows in control of a car.

The GDI Mess

2004-10-05T14:10:00.000+01:00

Even if microsoft's scanner at windowsupdate tells you that you're safe you should run GDI Scan. Read this forum post too (thanks to Jon Udell).
Here's the results from my first run:

Scanning Drive C:...
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE11\MSO.DLL
Version: 11.0.5606.0
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VGX\vgx.dll
Version: 6.0.2900.2180
C:\Program Files\Desktop Sidebar\gdiplus.dll
Version: 5.1.3097.0 <-- Vulnerable version
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\GDIPLUS.DLL
Version: 6.0.3260.0 <-- Vulnerable version
C:\Program Files\Symantec\Web Tools\GDIPlus.dll
Version: 5.1.3097.0 <-- Vulnerable version
C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache\sxs.dll
Version: 5.1.2600.2180
C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache\vgx.dll
Version: 6.0.2900.2180
C:\WINDOWS\system32\sxs.dll
Version: 5.1.2600.2180
C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.Windows.GdiPlus_6595b64144ccf1df_1.0.0.0_x-ww_8d353f13\GdiPlus.dll
Version: 5.1.3097.0 <-- Possibly vulnerable (Windows Side-By-Side DLL)
C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\x86_Microsoft.Windows.GdiPlus_6595b64144ccf1df_1.0.2600.2180_x-ww_522f9f82\GdiPlus.dll
Version: 5.1.3102.2180
Scan Complete.

Bad Luck, Pen Drives & Passwords

2004-10-04T23:30:00.000+01:00

My motherboard decided to die on me so I was left without my desktop PC. No biggie, I still had my laptop. Unfortunately, its hard drive had other plans. Oh well, I still have access to various computers both at Chefax and at FEUP. And one thing all those computers have in common: USB ports for me to plug my pen drive. I don't just carry data in it:
- Portable Firefox (with all the extensions I use) & Thunderbird
- Putty (Chefax Mirror)
- Real VNC
- UPX
- Winpcap & Python installer for windows (linux usually has python installed)
- etc

Due to a rather uninteresting chain of events my pen drive was missing a key file - my keys file. I have a different password for every account I have (gmail, hotmail, blogger, etc) and while they are all cool, I change most of them before I can remember them. I use Keep Pass to store and access them. It has big advantages in terms of security – it allows me to store them securely which in turn allows me to choose better passwords AND change them more often. It has a problem tough: without the password database file, you can forget about accessing all those accounts. Well, not exactly. Every one of those passwords can be changed or mailed to me - if I have the email account password. I use a special mail account to register for services on the internet. It was meant to protect me against (technicalities aside) spam but because I use it often, the password stuck to my brain. I didn't feel like changing all those passwords just now tough... And that doesn't explain why I haven't posted. The explanation for that is laziness combined with a rather busy month...

Owning your data

2004-09-06T22:25:00.000+01:00

This is what XML was made for.

The Case Of The Missing Posts

2004-09-05T11:34:00.000+01:00

I've been wanting to post about a lot of stuff, so why haven't I? There are three reasons: Far Cry, Metal Gear Solid and Doom 3. A week and a half ago I finished Far Cry. The gaming experience was good (if not excellent), the graphics were phenomenal. Like Filipe pointed out, the view is often breathtaking. I even got to hunt (translation: pick off helpless animals with a powerful rifle - and I don't mean the mercenaries or trigems). The sound (both sound effects and music) contributed to the almost perfect atmosphere the game created. And tough the game was long, (Filipe disagrees) it never seemed repetitive in spite of the fact that it boils down to 'clearing' a small area with enemies and moving to the next area - possibly thinning their numbers on the way with the help of a scope-equipped rifle. I begin wondering if a well written elaborate storyline instead of the simple one would've made the game better (more enjoyable) or worse by complicating something simple. Since the best example of a good elaborate story I've ever seen in a video game is that of Metal Gear Solid (which I consider the number one game of all time) and MGS 3: Snake Eater is nearing its release date, I decided to play the original MGS again (for the... herm... 8th? 9th time? probably more - I lost count). It is amazing to see how much progress games made in the last 5 years or so. I remember considering the AI in MGS impressive (like everyone else) and know I find it lacking and the genetically enhanced soldiers are incredibly short-sighted. Sure the mercenaries duck and call for help (it would've been nice seeing mortally wounded enemies beg for their lives but I guess not everyone is a sadistic bastard) but as you can see here, game AI has a long way to go. Here's two examples of what I would like to see:

- While shooting at mercenaries, I was usually ducked behind a rock or shooting from a corner, to that i could take cover while reloading or when they fired back. Since I was usually outnumbered, a simple tactic would've been for them to keep my position under constant fire by alternating fire (while one fired, the others reloaded) while one (or more) of them approached my position unseen, unhurt.
- The image I posted also shows a typical case of the lack of intelligence in games. I had already killed three or four enemies in that placed when they started coming in carefully (showing that they were no longer sure I was there). I still managed to kill a few (four perhaps) more in precisely the same way. What they should've done (and I'm no military or swat expert) since they saw me entering the building and saw their fellow mercenaries die would've been to throw a flash bang (smoke grenade or any other type of grenade) and then enter and to enter the building from both doors simultaneously. Alternatively, since the building was made of material that was easily permeable to the bullets, fire a few rounds at the places in which I could be hidden before entering - again from the various entry points available instead of just the front door.
- Use Team Tactics - it feels better killing something that is acting intelligent.

The first is relatively easy to implement compared to the second example which would be somewhat more complex - for a good implementation in a game such as far cry that is.

Moving on to a different subject, I've also began playing Doom 3. So far the game is much less hardware-intensive than far cry even tough the graphics are more detailed. This is due to two reasons: far cry plays out in extremely large shinny open spaces with a lot of freedom and those spaces are often filled with dozens of enemies - with a few rather large battles occurring occasionally between mercenaries and trigems. On one of such battles (near the entrance of the volcano) I noticed the game slowing down significantly after using the binoculars to mark the position of the bad guys. Doom 3 on the other hand is claustrophobic, dark and your rarely face more than three or four (big) enemies at the same time (or so I've been told and so far I can confirm this). I'm still at the beginning of the game (comms tower or something like that) but it seems to be building up a nice plot and I like reading other people's email (I'm gonna buy one of those "I read your e-mail" T-shirts). This might also explain why I've never been allowed to perform a software installation (as root) in a chefax server unsupervised. That and a few 'incidents' with root alias, backdoors & stuff...

Comments on Gush & My Ideal News Reader

2004-09-04T23:00:00.000+01:00

In a previous post, I mentioned my decision to drop Gush as my news reader and IM client. Today, Wes Carr, co-founder of 2Entwine, emailed me:

"(...) You mentioned that you did not like how Gush manages your feeds. We would love to hear your comments on that if you could be more specific. Unfortunately Gush does demand a good bit of processing power, but we can't blame you for that :) As for file sharing, it's scheduled for our next release. (...) we greatly appreciate any feedback you have to give."

Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned file sharing as a reason to drop Gush - at beast I would've dropped Gush as an IM client for it but not as a news reader. I'm pleased that file sharing will be supported in the next release. The 'response times' are also not critical - they can be somewhat frustrating tough. I wouldn't be too quick to blame on a slow/overburdened CPU either - given on the fact that I used gush on a dual 2.4GHz Xeon box and now use it (well, not anymore) on a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 (both with 1GB of memory - so that's not an issue). I mean, Doom 3 and Far Cry don't complain (much) why should Gush? I think it could probably be better optimized, at least make it seem more responsive even if under the hood it's actually being slower ( I believe Machine Learning will shine in the future doing this kind of stuff - more on this in another, dedicated post). What made me stop using Gush is more complicated. I said "I don't like the way it manages read/unread feeds". I obviously need to elaborate if I want anyone else to understand.

Let's that a look at my news reading habits. I subscribed to a huge amount of feeds: blogs (most of which are linked to in my blogroll), tech news sites (such as slashdot), Computer Security sites (such as SecurityFocus), hardware sites (such as engadget) and many sites from many other categories. Unfortunately, the time I dedicate to reading them is very limited. What this means is that on any given day I won't be able to read every single post I get on my news reader. I will often read only the ones with the most interesting titles. On weekends however, I have more free time and I often read some posts from certain preferred feeds that I didn't have time to read during the week. There are also certain feeds I always read whenever they have a new post (such as Relax's Presence and The Tao of Mac). Since I'm going 'back to school' soon (in 8 days) and therefore the amount of free time I have will decrease significantly, I predict that searching my feeds for specific words will become far more relevant.

Now, let's get back to Gush. Whenever you have new items on a given feed, the number of new items is shown next to the name of the feed. Most news readers do this; it's a way to know what you have and what you haven't read. They also (usually) make unread items bold. Unfortunately, the way gush is designed means that you read a feed not an item. This means that even if you've read only one post on my blog and you had a total of 4 unread posts, Gush will assume that you've read them all and the other 3 won’t be marked in any special way to show that they weren’t read. Thus, I'm unable to easily keep track of which posts I've read in feeds that I didn’t read completely. Gush also lacks 'filtering' capabilities (like those of SharpReader). And so far Gush has lacked the ability to search for content on online feeds (feeds which you're not subscribed to) through sites like feedster. This is however about to change and gush will soon become know for its search capabilities. And an easy way to import/export feeds like FeedDemon has would also be nice. In fact importing/exporting feeds in Gush is not easy at all. The only way I know to get the OPML out of it is to copy it from C:\Documents and Settings\rei\Application Data\Gush\Profiles\solidparadox@2entwine.net\RSS\subscriptions.opml (for me).
Another thing that is missing in Gush is the ability to flag an item. I flag the posts I want to blog about later.
The sad thing is that in spite of all this, Gush is so damn sexy that I'm tempted to use it! It is definitively a lesson in UI design.

So, what would my ideal news reader look like? It would have 3 panes (like MS Outlook 2003). The leftmost pane would be the Categories pane, the Feed pane in the middle and the Items pane on the right. It would be able to search downloaded feeds as well as searching online with the help of various services. Blogging from it sounds nice. And flags would make their appearance. I’m going to learn python (I’ll blog about it latter) and it might make a good first project.

Conclusion: Gush is a fantastic news reader but, at this moment, it’s not for everyone… well, at least not for me. I started this post convinced that I wasn’t going to use Gush again any time soon, now I’m trying to make excuses to use it again: “maybe I can use just for my favorite feeds, the ones I always fully read”. Regardless, I’m sure to keep an eye on it; I believe it will be greatly improved in future versions and will continue to innovate.

RIP Sender ID. Long Live SPF? Death to spam!

2004-09-04T19:25:00.000+01:00

Microsoft's greed and stupidty has killed Sender ID. I suspect that SPF won't die tough - it has a lot of supporters. It won't solve the spam problem either - not even by a longshot. Neverthless, it is a step in the right direction. The only way to stop spam is to make it unprofitable. Right now there isn't a single measure or technology that can do that. So what? Why not implement several measures and technologies to do it.
SPF, Bayesian Filtering, Blacklists, Whitelists, etc. More about this later.

Goodbye Accailm

2004-09-03T20:15:00.000+01:00

Acclaim filed for bankruptcy. I'll never forget the countless hours of Mortal Kombat 2 I played in my loyal Sega Mega Drive. The training. The tournaments. The challenges. The matches that got out of hand and into the real world. The simple fun of fatalities, seeing the look on your opponent's face as that final humiliating move ripped out the last shred of pride he had as a gamer - along with his character's head.
In case you're wondering, my character of choice was Sub Zero.

Changes

2004-09-02T16:53:00.000+01:00

I haven’t blogged for a while but now I have a lot to blog about. I'm going to start with the changes to my 'working' environment.
I bought a 21.3" monitor, the Samsung 213t (review) and cranked the resolution all the way to 1600x1200. I can't remember how I lived before it. It's one of those things you didn't know you couldn't live without. With some much space I decided to dump samurize and install Desktop Sidebar on windows and gkrellm on linux. Also dumped gush (which is still the most beautiful program I've seen) because I don't like the way it manages read/unread feeds or the fact that it is somewhat slow (at times blatantly irresponsive). The limitations of the IM client (send/receive files from my MSN contacts) were also annoying. I installed SharpReader again - my previous windows news reader. It's not perfect either, most notably is the lack of tabbed browsing. But for now, it will do. I also installed the Microsoft Virtual Desktop Manager - first thing it does? Crash. It's working fine now. All my current virtual desktop wallpapers are from Digital Blasphemy - they are quite impressive, even tough the ones I have are 1152x864 and not 1600x1200.
When I fired up firefox I saw immediately I needed to 'waste' some space. Googlebar seemed like the answer but it wasn't enough so I decided it was time for a few tricks, such as making the search bar wider.

Bluetooth about to become really useful

2004-08-31T01:02:00.000+01:00

Late is better than never - at least for bluetooth and its users (yours truly included). Can't wait for Wireless USB (WUSB).

Weekend

2004-08-30T11:56:00.000+01:00

I was 'offline' for most of the weekend; I still didn't have time to look at some of this stuff:
Edd Dumbill takes "A Closer Look at iFolder" (I mentioned iFolder in my previous post).
For some unknown reason, I haven't taken a closer look at IronPython which seems to be quite interesting. It certainly has potential (if all goes well): imagine every PDA with .NET (or preferably Mono) and IronPython, or better - every computer. I got to read part of the CPL because of it.
Another good idea is Coral. Since it showed up on /. I guess world+dog has heard of it.
Yet another good gmail tool: GmailFS, probably the best yet (at least the best hack). And I still don't know anyone with a gmail account which means that I wont get one anytime soon.
Version 1.0.1 of Xsupplicant was recently released. Little more than a year ago, when CICA told us their plans to set up a faculty-wide wireless network and we began experimenting: trying to get authentication right (with RADIUS), the one missing component for an entire FOSS implementation (on linux) was xsupplicant which wasn't good enough at the time. Good to see it has come this far.
FreeBSD is nearing another release.
Logitech introduced i's new laser mouse.
Deja vu?

Avalon and Indigo in XP, WinFS delayed.

2004-08-28T01:40:00.000+01:00

Microsoft revamps its plans for Longhorn removing winFS - no suprises here. It will also be releasing Avalon and Indigo for Windows XP. WinFS's delay is obviously good news for the Novell's iFolder. The fact that Longhorn is more than two years away is also good news to the OSS community. Linux 2.6 should be the dominant kernel at the time. Great projects such as dashboard, gnome storage (I think I saw a similar project to this one, also for gnome that looked better but I can't remember where) and KDE's new search engine will be concluded. Firefox will probably be at version 2+, if version 0.9 is this good (so much better than IE), just think of what version 2.0 will include and how much better it will be than IE then. Think machine learning (?) (I've made a note to myself to blog about this latter)! Not to mention that mono may have picked up quite a pace by then. And let's not forget that you rarely (never?) hear microsoft software early-adopters say they're happy. Competition is increasing and delays in products may cause Microsoft more problems than just temporarily lower stock prices.

UPDATE: beagle. nuff said.

Bayesian filtering

2004-08-26T09:23:00.000+01:00

Bayesian filtering is the process of using Bayesian statistical methods to classify text documents into one of several categories. Bayesian filtering gained currency when it was described in the paper "A Plan for Spam" by Paul Graham.

Links:
Bayes' Theorem
Better Bayesian Filtering - improvements to the algorithm in "A Plan For Spam".
SpamArchive.org - a community resource that provides a database of known spam to be used for testing, developing, and benchmarking anti-spam tools. Donate your spam!
POPFile - automatically sorts your messages and fights spam.
Mozilla Thunderbird - Mozilla's next generation e-mail client. Also uses bayesian filtering.

Open Source Licenses

2004-08-24T10:55:00.000+01:00

This post together with the first comment pretty much sum my own opinion on the matter. I also think that all licenses should have a human-readable version like the Creative Commons (example) instead of just having the lawyer-readable legal code (example). Is the open source community made of lawyers? Off course not and most of the open source contributions have so far been made by individuals not companies. These individuals are usually tech people (programmers, system administrators, engineers, etc) who have no special legal expertise. It's not that licenses are hard to understand, they're usually not (well, at least not the ones I've read - BSD, MIT, part of the GPL - too boring for me, and a few others). It's just a waste of time and raises the bar for people who are either new to the community or just want to make a casual contribution. It might even scare them initially.

ATI is smug but Nvidia's the bug in the rug

2004-08-23T16:01:00.000+01:00

Charlie Demerjian, looking straight at the horizon and through the marketing fog, is the author of the best piece of IT journalism I've seen in a very long while.

Comics

2004-08-23T12:48:00.000+01:00

Ctrl Alt Del - Tragically l337 is about two guys playing video games. One of them, Ethan, does all these insane things like beating up a game company executive, declaring a holiday season (winter-een-mas), blow up the PC, and so on. The other guy ends up 'cleaning the mess'. Later a linux geek with a pet penguin and a 'gaming girl' join the group. Ethan even creates an intelligent robot out of his Xbox which also becomes part of the group. This is my favorite comic strip.

VG Cats (video gaming cats) is also about video games but more focused on them than Ctrl Alt Del.

Everyone knows Dilbert and reads it religiously right?

Sinfest - uncompromising originality.

And the classic: Garfield.

UPDATE:
Terrible mistake: I forgot userfriendly.

ControlFreak

2004-08-22T23:29:00.000+01:00

ControlFreak is a remote control plugin for series 60 phones using bluetooth. I've been using it while reading in bed to change the volume (my mp3 are not normalized) or ocasionally skip a track.

Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System (CAPS)

2004-08-21T02:10:00.000+01:00

Probability theory put to good use:
Carnival Booth: An Algorithm for Defeating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System

"To improve the efficiency of airport security screening, the FAA deployed the Computer Assisted Passenger Screening system (CAPS) in 1999. CAPS attempts to identify potential terrorists through the use of profiles so that security personnel can focus the bulk of their attention on high-risk individuals. In this paper, we show that since CAPS uses profiles to select passengers for increased scrutiny, it is actually less secure than systems that employ random searches."

It is an interesting read for people who like to see good old mathematics crush political arguments or for those that never thought about it.

For those who think these and other (in)security measures (such as secret laws) would never be misused, think again - US senator Edward Kennedy's (Democrat) adventure.
Implications? Civil Liberties? Freedom of Movement? Freedom of Speech? I won't even mention privacy - no one seems to care about it anymore.

del.icio.us firefox search plugin & extension

2004-08-19T11:36:00.000+01:00

Just made a search plugin to search my bookmarks at del.icio.us from the mozilla firefox search bar.

You can download it here.

Unzip the file to the searchplugins/ directory in your mozilla firefox directory. You must be logged in for it to search your bookmarks.

Someone else wrote a firefox extension.

Social Bookmarks Manager

2004-08-18T12:11:00.000+01:00

Jon Udell blogged about this site (and has another blog entry related to it). Sounds cool.

Far Cry - I like guns. I don't like mercenaries.

2004-08-18T00:17:00.000+01:00

A pile of dead mercenaries. They are not very smart, are they?

Far Cry

2004-08-17T22:49:00.000+01:00

Today I mostly wasted my time playing Far Cry. I bought a new graphics card. I just couldn't wait for the nvidia GF FX6600 which is only coming out after september (presumably). I bought a FX5900XT. Far Cry runs smoothly now and I must say that in terms of graphics and gameplay it's one of the best games I've plaid in a long while. Filipe is also playing but he is way ahead of me. It will take a while for me to finish Far Cry but i'm already looking forward to doom 3.

Apart from shooting mercenaries and mutant apes I installed samurize and edited a config file and downloaded YahooPops.

Secrets and Lies

2004-08-17T01:08:00.000+01:00

I just started reading Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World by Bruce Schneier - it's an amazing book. I've added it to the (small) list of books wish I had read years ago. This one even before it was published. It would've made an amazing impact back in '97 when I started learning about computer security. It will make a difference now neverthless, just not as big But still quite considerable.

I've also read and do recommend Bruce Schneier's cryptography classic Applied Cryptography.

Gush

2004-08-16T12:35:00.000+01:00

Gush is a beautiful newsreader and an IM client with an innovative feature called "Announcements" (IM blogging). I haven't made any announcements yet but one day I will.

Gush now runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (it was previously only available for windows and OS X). Its interface is well designed and very aesthetically pleasing.

If only they made it possible to blog to blogspot from within gush... sigh.

Jail time for blaster variant author?

2004-08-13T18:05:00.000+01:00

Nickenamed BlasterMaster, a 19-year-old from Minnesota is responsible for creating and releasing a version of the infamous blaster worm. He now faces up to three years in jail and a fine. A sampling of p2pnet comment posts is avaibale here. People who commit violent crimes, or crimes under the threat of violence, drug deallers and drug addicts deserve the death penalty - I shouldn't even call them 'people'. Jails, in their current incarnation only make bad people worse. I don't think that those who commit crimes that don't hurt or threaten the physical wellbeing of another individual should be locked up in cages. Heavy fines and hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of community service are more than lesson enough and are a good deterrent for that kind of people. People like virus writers. This guy didn't even write blaster, he just slapped a backdoor on top of it.

Windows, Blogger, Mono, Tomorrow II

2004-08-13T11:45:00.000+01:00

Just great, as if Windows wasn't allready literally overflowing with non-intention 'features' (read bugs), MS had to make life harder for windows users with intentional stupid 'features'. Now I know why MS will provide a tool to block SP2... unfortunatelly i learned this to late...

Blogger is not making me all that happy either specially after having used MT before the new licenses showed up. I was only testing it and never made any real posts so migrating wasn't a problem. It's good enough for the temporary solution it is tough and I'll make my own template some time soon (soon, yeah right!). I also activated comments, don't expect me to read them, they're there just for your sole benefit - I promise I'll peek occasionally. How that benifits you is another question... look over there!

Know what would go well with this account? A gmail account. Unfortunatelly gmail is still a beta and I don't know anyone with a gmail account. I'm sure as hell not going to purchase an invite at ebay or beg for one in forums like a lot a people did.

I've downloaded the windows version of mono but I decided to try (and make an effort this time) to install mono on slackware.

A lot of the stuff I needed to do tomorrow I managed to do today. I went to the gym in the evening (8 pm) and didn't take care of my uncle's new PC because he'll be away on vacations for the next week or two (didn't ask). So tomorrow will be a slow day. I''m going to Chefax in the afternoon again but I don't think there's anything to do there. Filipe Carvalho will be there, he wasn't today. I just went there to drop something and João Paredes (Chefax's President) had stuff to do so there wasn't much time to chat - there's always IM but it just isn't the same.

Note To Self: get spel-cheking.

Windows, Blogger, Mono, Tomorrow

2004-08-12T09:20:00.000+01:00

With Windows XP SP2 out I finally felt like it was worth installing windows again. I deleted it about 2 months ago for a size adjustment to my main hard drive's partitions. I tried to install it a couple of weeks after that but the patchs were so many I gave up. Yesterday or something I downloaded the new SP2 via bittorrent and today i did it: i installed windows. Remembering a news story about something called picasa and everyone's favorite search engine I decided to google for it... one thing led to another and I ended up creating a blog...

Actually I've been wanting to create a blog for a while now but there really isn't a single open source solution that meets the requirements - and i've tried'em all, including the CMSs (Content Managment System). Hopefully this will change soon but until then my blog will remain at blogger.com.

I could stop complaining and code the "Publishing Platform" myself like Filipe Carvalho (Chefax's VP) suggested but I promised myself I would only code again in C# (bash scripts excluded) - what a lame excuse! It doesn't seem likely I will learn C# anytime soon tough. I've been unable to compile mono and I don't feel like trying too hard for now, too bad they don't have slackware packages (those outdated external ones from the super-lame www.slackcare.com don't count - i'm not downloading from there!). Maybe I'll download the windows version in spite of always feeling kind of weird to code in windows.

Tomorrow will be a busy day, my uncle gets his new computer and I told him I would configure it and install a few programs (like Open Office) - he will drop it off at my house around 1 pm and I told it would be ready by dinner time, I also have to be at chefax early in the afternoon - I have no idea how I will accomplish this considering that I've been leaving at noon and arriving from the gym around 3 pm (just in time to buy lunch or cook something quickly) and slulmbering the rest of the afternoon....