A milestone has been reached - 3Mb down, 384Kb up. The future is bright.

I posted a comment on /. yesterday and ended up with first post. It had a bit of humor and a bit of genuine commentary in it (despite being only 24 bits in length) and ended up with a score of 5. No big deal.

The interesting part is that despite the fact that it was the first post in the thread, some mouthbreather decided to mod it redundant.

/. - it never ceases to amaze.

Well, the worst case scenario has come to pass - WoW is totally sick and I am buying it on the first day. I’m looking at getting the collectors edition even; I might as well since Bllizzard games have constituted like 80% of my gaming time overe the years. It’s worth it even thought I’ll probably stop playing the game constantly within a month.

The lure of infosec is too strong to deny for more than that amount of time, but right now my thoughts are occupied with launch day and spending Wednesday - Sunday gaming my ass off.

Well, after reading Linus’s comments on interpreted languages and discussing the matter with Ken some, I have come to the somewhat solid conclusion that I should discontinue my pursuit of additional Python knowledge.

Linus’s point was that if a given progam was fairly small, he’d write it using Bash, and that if the program required any true size or power he’d move to C. He thus didn’t see any need for the interpreted languages such as Perl and Python.

My idea has always been that I could use Python to accomplish all my small scripts as well as the larger, full-fledged apps. But it seems now like this is a path guided by my desire to learn Python, not a path based on logic. In reality, I can do 99% of my everyday stuff using Bash, and if I can, I probably should. Taking the extra steps to use Python and ensure that Python is on the box in question is arguably not the best route.

There are a few things I want to do as far as programming goes that I want to do in Python, but those are pretty far down on my project list right now, and even then it’s only like one or two apps. The vast majority of everything else I can do with Bash.

So, what are your thoughts? Should people doing predominatly small scripting tasks even venture down the road of interpreted languages, or is it a waste of time given the fact that Bash is available? Drop me a line and let me know your thoughts.

1. Keeping papers from flying away.
2. Throwing at people who like ISA Server.
3. Convincing people to try and/or go back to Linux.

(My thoughts from this thread at dslreports)

Here’s an analogy for the Windows users trying to fight malware. Imagine that you live in a place where everyone’s houses are built out of straw, and there is a wave of arson sweeping the town. Now imagine that some people, after having their houses burnt down a few times, decided to build their house out of stone instead of straw.

Here’s a conversation between an owner of a stone house and one of the regular townfolk who is looking to protect their straw house:

– Stone Hey, neighbor, the ruffians are coming through again, you may want to rebuild your house with stone instead of straw. The fire sticks they throw won’t even burn my house at all. All I have to do is replace a stone or two every few months and things are solid.

Stone: Nah, man….sorry. I am heading to my daughter’s soccer game. Good luck with your security.

–

This to me highlights the difference between the average user protecting their systems using Windows vs. them using Linux or OS X. Ask yourself one question:

Do you want to spend your time protecting your computer, or using it?

I’m in the use category. People have too much on their plates to spend time stacking layer upon layer in front of Windows so that they can protect themselves from flawed design.

Can Windows be secured? Sure it can - without a doubt. I ran it for years without a single incident - but that was because I was having fun protecting it (as many here do). This is people working on their tools. I don’t want to fix tools. I want to use them. In my view, a computer should be transparent and unimportant. What we do with them is what matters. The more time we spend fixing and defending our tools the less time we spend getting anything done with them.

So to all of you out there who are getting slightly tired of the rat race, consider going with an OS that will let you work with it rather than require you to babysit it constantly. Consider OS X. Consider Linux. Just like building a stone house there’ll be a learning curve, but it’ll be worth it.

This blog post points out some very interesting philisophical issues with Pixar’s new movie “The Incredibles”.

I noticed the two comments mentioned, but wasn’t able to link it to Neitsche the way the author did. What I thought the film was saying was that the struggle to keep everyone equal was hurting society as a whole - sort of like the Rush lyric, “And the trees were all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw.”

I didn’t see the “elevate the supers” angle that Neitsche spoke of, but rather a rebellion against the notion that we should keep from offending those that are not particularly bright or talented by making a point not to encourage those who are. To me, putting gifted people on a pedestal is another issue entirely.

Anyway, do check it out; it’s an interesting read.

Well, it’s that time again - time to game. I have been waiting for World Of Warcraft for years now and it’ll finally be here at the end of the month. I’ll be buying it, installing it, and playing on the very first night. I can’t wait to get started with my character and I look forward to adventuring with my mates online.

So, to anyone who is also looking to get into this totally sick MMORPG, drop me a line so we can share some pre-release enthusiasm.

Ken just (embarassed pause) … rebooted my Redhat box in order to fix Up2date…so I could do a kernel update.

I just don’t know what else I can say about that…I’m so disgusted. I wonder if I can just use windowsupdate.com to pull updates instead - at least then it would be somewhat dependable.

Long live portage and apt.